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Q u i c k Q u e s t i o n s
INFANCY NARRATIVES
Q: Isn’t it wrong to baptize a baby? After all, they don’t even know what baptism is.
A: On the contrary, it would be the best thing you could do for a baby. Baptism is a grace from God, not something we do for God. Grace does not depend on our intellectual achievements any more than it depends on any other human achievement. This is one of the many ironies inherent in opposition to the ancient Christian practice of infant baptism. To refuse baptism to a baby on the grounds that "the child isn’t able to understand what is happening" is to presume that God gives grace only to those who are smart or old enough to figure out how to get it. This is an implicit assumption of salvation by intellectual works specifically condemned by Scripture and Catholic teaching.
Mark P. Shea
Q: A friend of mine just got re-baptized. He was baptized as an infant and just got re-baptized by another church. I think that he may have sinned against the Holy Spirit.
A: Objective, yes, he did commit a sin against the Holy Spirit. By being re-baptized, he implied by his actions that what the Holy Spirit did in his first baptism was not sufficient. Objectively, that is a sin, because it insults the work of the Holy Spirit. But it is not the same thing as the sin against the Holy Spirit—the sin of "blasphemy against the Spirit"—which involves a final refusal to repent.
By trying to be baptized again, your friend was expressing a willingness to repent and be saved, so clearly no final impenitence was involved. Even though your friend’s action was objectively a sin, he may have committed it in innocent ignorance, in which case God won’t hold it against him. The sin of getting re-baptized unconditionally would be a grave one, which means that it would be a mortal sin if the usual conditions were met. But he may have been re-baptized with sufficient ignorance that the sin would not have been mortal. Either way, what he should do is go make a good confession (John 20:21–23), and, whether the sin was mortal or venial, he will be forgiven. James Akin
Q: Outside of Lent, do we have to do anything special on Fridays?
A: Friday remains a day of penance, even outside of Lent. Here is what the Code of Canon Law has to say: "All Christ’s faithful are obliged by divine law, each in his or her own way, to do penance. However, so that all may be joined together in a certain common practice of penance, days of penance are prescribed. On these days the faithful are in a special manner to devote themselves to prayer, to engage in works of piety and charity, and to deny themselves, by fulfilling their obligations more faithfully and especially by observing the fast and abstinence which the following canons prescribe" (canon 1249).
This is the same as with worship. All the faithful are obliged by divine law to worship God and, so that all may join together in the corporate worship of God, days of worship (Sundays and holy days of obligation) have been instituted. The flip side of this is penance: "All are obliged to repent, and so that there may be corporate repentance toward God, days of penance have been set up, as in the Old Testament when the Jews proclaimed a national fast to do repent of their sins against God. Today, Friday is the chief day of penance since Christ died because of our sins on Friday, and Sunday is the chief day of worship, since Christ rose for our salvation on Sunday" (canon 1250).
"The days and times of penance for the universal Church are each Friday of the whole year and the season of Lent. . . . Abstinence from meat, or from some other food as determined by the episcopal conference, is to be observed on all Fridays, unless a solemnity should fall on a Friday. Abstinence and fasting are o be observed on Ash Wednesday and Good Friday. . . . The law of abstinence binds those who have completed their fourteenth year. The law of fasting binds those who have attained their majority [i.e., eighteen years; canon 97:1], until the beginning of their sixtieth year. Pastors of souls and parents are to ensure that even those who by reason of their age are not bound by the law of fasting and abstinence are taught the true meaning of penance. . . . The episcopal conference can determine more precisely the ways in which fasting and abstinence are to be observed. In place of abstinence or fasting it can substitute, in whole or in part, other forms of penance, especially works of charity and exercises of piety" (canons 1251-1253).
Thus the law of abstinence from meat is still binding unless one’s national bishops’ conference has provided for alternate forms of penance. In the United States, the National Conference of Catholic Bishops has obtained permission from the Vatican for such substitution. Catholics are obliged to do some form of penance on Fridays and keep the day as per canon 1249, but now they can choose the form of penance they wish to do.
James Akin
Q: The Ten Commandments forbid the use of images but the Catholic Church allows it. Why?
A: The Jews were forbidden to have images under the Old Covenant (with a few exceptions). The reason for this was that the temptation to worship the image was strong for them. But, as C. S. Lewis says, it was the destiny of that people to be turned from the thing that resembled God to God himself. When God the Son becomes incarnate and becomes the express image of the invisible God (Heb. 1:3), our relationship to images changes. The prohibition of images is discovered to be provisional until the true incarnate Image appears. Images are now permissible since God himself has become a kind of image in Christ. Thus our images of God are now windows into his Incarnation rather than fertility images, figments of our imagination, or idols. We do not worship images. We see through them to the Incarnate God and his saints, who are also images of Christ.
Mark P. Shea
Q: I hear contradictory things about the order of the synoptic Gospels? What gives?
A: The traditional order, sometimes called the Augustinian order, is Matthew, Mark, Luke. The sequence most commonly advocated today in Bible commentaries, both Catholic and Protestant, is Mark, Matthew, Luke, with Matthew and Luke being understood as more or less simultaneous. This sequence, known as "Markan priority," may be nearing collapse as an intellectual construct. To back it, a scholar needs to ignore most external evidence regarding the order of the synoptics—that evidence favors the traditional order—and he needs to believe in the existence of a "sayings source," a first-century document supposedly used by Matthew and Luke to fill in the gaps in Mark’s account. The Gospel by Mark, being the shortest and simplest, leaves out much material that appears in Matthew and Luke (and sometimes in Matthew or Luke). If Matthew and Luke depended on Mark, they also must have depended on some other source for their extra information.
This other source is commonly referred to a "Q," from the German Quelle ("source"). The problem is that no ancient document quotes from or even alludes to Q, and no more recent manuscript claims to be a transmittal of it. Thus Q is entirely an intellectual construct, something posited to shore up the major weakness in the Markan priority theory. Some scholars claim to have discovered not a unified Q, but one made of multiple strands, perhaps as many as four, which means they presume the existence of four documents, even though there is no external evidence for even one of them.
The theory of Markan priority seems to be losing ground rapidly. Prof. William Farmer, one of the world’s top biblical scholars and a fairly recent convert to the Catholic faith, wrote a book examining why so many scholars hold on to a theory that is now seen to have glaring weaknesses. He thinks they won’t be holding on to it for too much longer. Like the Ptolemaic theory, the Markan priority theory eventually will be junked.
Karl Keating
Q: Jews were prohibited from drinking blood by the Old Testament. So if the Catholic idea about the Eucharist as the "Blood of Christ" is correct, didn’t Jesus break the Law of God?
A: Nope. He fulfilled it. "The blood is the life," as the Torah taught the Jews, and the life of a creature belongs to God. Hence the Jews were to pour the blood out on the earth, not because it was too vile but because it was too sacred. They were to seek their life, not from any creature, but from God himself. How fitting then that when Jesus (Who is the Life [John 14:6]) comes we are commanded to drink his blood (Matt. 26:27–28). His is the blood we not only may but must drink if we are to have life in us (John 6:53). It is the reality of which all other blood is an image (Heb. 9).
Mark P. Shea
Q: How can the saints in heaven hear us?
A: Jesus said that he is the true vine, and we are the branches. When a Christian (one branch) dies physically and is taken up into heaven (he might have to go through purgatory first, of course), he isn’t broken off the vine. He remains in Christ (Rom. 8:38–39). The deceased Christian is still united with the vine (Jesus) and with the other branches (all other Christians, living or dead). This communion of saints makes possible the sharing spiritual things with other Christians—including intercessory prayer.
Mario Derksen
Q: According to 1 Timothy 2:5, theonly Mediator between God and us is Jesus. So, isn’t Mary’s and the saints’ intercession unbiblical?
A: Not at all. Look closely at what 1 Timothy 2:5 really says: Jesus is the only mediator between God and man. Because Jesus was the God-Man, only he can be the Mediator, the one who is between. Between men and the Father, there is the Son. This doesn’t undercut our belief that the saints in heaven intercede for us because these saints, too, are men; they are members of mankind. Thus, we (men) ask them (men, too) to pray to the one Mediator (Jesus) in order to find favor with the Father.
Mario Derksen
Q: Over the next twenty years, will things get better or worse in the Church?
A: Much better. The troublemakers are getting old and are losing influence. They can't find enough fresh recruits. Only orthodox groups are growing. Result: The Church is headed for a springtime.
Karl Keating
Q: Can only Christians administer baptism?
A: No. Anybody—even an atheist—can administer baptism if he has the proper intention. According to the Catechism of the Catholic Church (CCC 1256) "the intention required is to will to do what the Church does when she baptizes, and to apply the Trinitarian baptismal formula." The reason anybody can baptize is that it is, in fact, Jesus Christ who performs the baptism. Once again, baptism is God’s grace to us, not our work for him.
Mark P. Shea
Q: If it is true that baptism is God’s grace to us, wouldn’t it make sense to just go around baptizing every baby—and even adults who don’t want it? After all, if it’s grace and not works, then our response doesn’t matter, does it?
A: On the contrary, baptism is grace and not magic. Since grace perfects nature (as distinct from magically annihilating it), our response matters a great deal. Recall that Creator and Redeemer are one and the same God. Creation is so ordered by the Creator that parents are responsible to communicate life (biological, emotional, moral, and spiritual) to their children. To baptize either an unwilling adult or somebody else’s child against the wishes of the parents is an act of spiritual kidnapping that violates nature and is therefore invalid according to the Church. In Catholic understanding, to baptize anybody validly, the baptizer must intend to baptize according to the mind of the Church. This means he must baptize in water using the Trinitarian formula and he must have the permission of the candidate, or, if he is incompetent to give such permission, the permission of the candidate’s parent or guardian. God the Redeemer’s grace does not violate the nature made by God the Creator, especially the sacred nature of the bond between parent and child. Neither, when dealing with someone who is now independent of parental or guardian authority, does God the Redeemer’s grace force baptism against the will of any human person made by God the Creator.
Mark P. Shea
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