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Q u i c k Q u e s t i o n s
SAFE FOR CONSUMPTION?
Q: Our DRE ordered a vacation Bible school curriculum "published with ecclesiastical approval" (Family of God, Liguori Press, 1994) that has prayers to "God, who is father and mother to us," and teaches children that openness, harmony, and teaching are virtues. She says that since this program has an imprimatur, we have to use it and not put together our own. Is there a difference between an imprimatur and "published with ecclesiastical approval"? How do we go about getting an imprimatur for our own material?
A: "Published with ecclesiastical approval" is not the same thing as an imprimatur. All it means is that the publisher has the permission of the bishop to operate in his diocese. It does not mean that the work has been submitted to the bishop for review. If the one of the diocesan censors had cleared the work, it would bear the censor’s statement, called the nihil obstat, and, if the bishop then thought it was worth publishing, it would bear his statement of approval, called the imprimatur. (Although the Latin terms do not always appear nowadays, the statements from the censor and bishop will appear.)
If something bears the label "published with ecclesiastical approval," it usually means that neither the bishop nor his staff ever saw the work, and the label has no canonical weight. Some publishers use the label "published with ecclesiastical approval" to indicate that they operate with the blessing of their bishop, but at other times this label is used as a dodge to try to get around the need for an imprimatur—especially if it is thought the bishop would refuse.
For example, the liberal publication Catholic Update normally manages to get an imprimatur, but a recent issue suggested the use of pita bread for the Eucharist in Latin Rite churches, even though the practice is forbidden by canon law. Since no publication suggesting that could be given an imprimatur responsibly, no imprimatur appeared on that issue, which bore instead the label "published with ecclesiastical approval"—an attempt to make it sound like the document carried more weight than it did.
According to canon 827 of the 1983 Code of Canon Law, writings dealing with catechetical formation cannot be used without an imprimatur. Since Family of God does not have an imprimatur (a fact I verified with the publisher), it should not be used as a parish program if it has catechetical content, which it presumably does since it is a vacation Bible school curriculum and since it instructs children how to pray (e.g., to "God, who is father and mother to us"). One could run a summer event that has no catechetical content—such as a day-care service or carnival—without an imprimatur on the materials used (e.g., "this is how we play this game"). Any catechetical materials must carry an imprimatur. To see about getting one for material that you write, contact your diocese’s canon lawyer.
James Akin
Q: My Baptist friend says that when Jesus talks in John 6 about "eating his flesh and drinking his blood," he was using a shocking metaphor to shake up people who were not ready for his real point (faith, of course), just as he did when he said, "Destroy this temple and in three days I will rebuild it" (John 2:19). What do you say to that?
A: I say, if Jesus’ hearers were not ready for his "real point," and if that "real point" was faith, then why did Jesus go on at such length earlier in the chapter (6:29–47) about having faith in him?
In John 2, as your friend rightly says, Jesus didn’t wish to speak openly of his Resurrection to faithless men, so he used a "shocking metaphor" to obscure his real point and "shake them up" at the same time. But in John 6 Jesus spoke quite openly about having faith in him. He laid those cards right on the table. Why would he then seek to muddle what he had just stated so plainly?
Jesus used figurative language for one of two reasons: to illumine or to obscure. When he sought to illumine, he sometimes appended plain explanations to his metaphors (especially if he had been misunderstood); but nowhere did he do what your friend thinks he did here: follow a clear exposition with puzzling metaphors on the same point. There would be no reason to do so: If he meant to be obscure, he would not have been so plain to start with; and if he meant to be clear, he would not have muddied the waters with obscure metaphors.
Stephen Greydanus
Q: The Chair of Peter has fled Rome as predicted, and now resides in Palmar de Troya, Spain, and the Catholic Church resides there in all her purity and glory. Fr. Clemente was destined to be the "Glory of the Olives," and the true pope is Gregory the XVI, as affirmed by apparitions of Jesus, Mary, Padre Pio, and others. There is no salvation outside the Catholic Church, and this Church now resides in Palmar, fulfilling all the prophecies.
A: I agree that there is no salvation outside the Catholic Church. For this reason, I recommend that you return to it.
Unapproved apparitions do not elect popes. The Church that is the pillar and foundation of truth does.
You stated that Fr. Clemente was destined to be the "Glory of the Olives" referred to in the prophecy attributed to St. Malachi. Fr. Clemente is a Carmelite, and the prophecy refers to a Benedictine. According to that prophecy, a Benedictine should follow John Paul II.
Thus, the Palmarian interpretation is faulty—but that is beside the point. The whole prophecy is bogus. The Church in Palmar de Troya is a schismatic sect, and you are obliged to leave it at once to return to the bosom of your Mother, the Church.
Jason Evert
Q: Who were the Diaspora Jews?
A: Jews living in communities outside the Holy Land due to things like deportation and immigration. The significance of the Diaspora for the Catholic faith is twofold. First, the Diaspora "paved the way" for the gospel into the lands beyond Israel. It is not for nothing that the apostles always began at the synagogue in presenting the gospel on their missionary journeys.
Second, it was the establishment of numerous Diaspora communities (and the subsequent loss of knowledge of Hebrew among the rank and file of those communities) that occasioned the translation of the Old Testament into the Greek Septuagint. It is the Septuagint that the New Testament typically quotes, since it is the Bible that the apostles’ audience is most likely to be familiar with. Therefore, it is the Septuagint canon (including the seven deuterocanonical books of Wisdom, Tobit, 1 and 2 Maccabees, Judith, Baruch, and Sirach) which the Church adopted as its Old Testament.
In the time of Christ, of course, Israel still possessed Judea as a homeland, so there was a significant population of Judean Jews as well as Diaspora Jews.
Tragically, virtually all of the Jewish nation became the Diaspora after the final destruction of Jerusalem by the Romans in response to the Bar-Kochba rebellion in the second century.
Mark P. Shea
Q: What relationship does the Catholic Church perceive to exist between itself and various Protestants (the baptized ones who still accept their faith)?
A: Validly baptized Protestants are regarded as true Christian brothers and sisters who are in imperfect relationship with the Church. The nature of the imperfections is as varied as Protestantism itself.
The idea at work here is that the faith is an incarnational thing, not just a "spiritual" (i.e., disembodied) thing—just like Jesus himself. Thus, it is possible to be out of union with the Church "bodily" (i.e., structurally, sacramentally, liturgically) yet still have a spiritual unity with the Church. Likewise, it is possible to be "bodily" united to the Church yet cease to be in communion with her spiritually (as an apostate Catholic is if he keeps going to Communion yet rejects the Creed or continues unrepentant in grave sin). The latter form of disunity with Church is more serious than the former.
Mark P. Shea
Q: Jesus says in John 3:3–5 that only those "born of water and Spirit" can enter the Kingdom of God. How can you claim this refers to literal water baptism when not even you Catholics believe that all people who die without baptism are consigned to hell? You pretend to read it literally, but then you water it down. Why not admit that he really means coming to faith, and take his exclusive language at face value?
A: Later in this chapter Jesus says, "He who does not believe is condemned already" (3:18). Now, almost no one thinks that all people (including infants and the severely retarded) who die without personal faith are consigned to hell, yet we do not conclude that Jesus was not really talking about faith. There are two issues here: whether a statement is meant literally and whether it is meant absolutely. Virtually everyone allows that some who have not been "born of water and Spirit" (however that is understood) may still be saved. You probably allow for "exceptions" yourself. You have not escaped this difficulty, only compounded it by concluding that Jesus is talking about something other than literal water. (Notice the context, by the way: Immediately after Jesus’ speech, the disciples go about baptizing [3:22]).
The same reasoning applies, incidentally, to Jesus’ statements in John 6 about those who do not eat his flesh and drink his blood having no life in them. The question whether the requirement is absolute is distinct from the question whether it is meant literally.
Stephen Greydanus
Q: I read in a Dave Hunt book that the Catholic Church taught in Vatican II that only some of Scripture is inerrant. Is this true? I believe that it is inerrant, but can science contradict this?
A: Hunt grossly misinterprets Vatican II with his quotation from Dei Verbum, paragraph 11. The quotation reads, "We must acknowledge that the books of Scripture, firmly, faithfully, and without error, teach that truth which God, for the sake of our salvation, wished to see confined to the sacred Scriptures." Hunt takes this to mean that we teach that if a certain verse in the Bible does not directly pertain to our salvation, then it is not inerrant. This is wrong. If Hunt had done his homework and checked the footnotes, which refer to an encyclical of Pope Leo XIII and to the teaching of Trent, he’d see that the Catholic Church unswervingly affirms the inerrancy of Scripture. Jason Evert
Q: My sister-in-law has a video about John Hus, who was executed for heresy in the 1400s. How do I respond to this?
A: I would respond by pointing to similar examples where the different kinds of Protestants executed people. Every stream of the Protestant Reformation was tainted with this. In the Anglican stream, Henry VIII executed Thomas More and scores of others. In the Calvinist stream, Calvin executed the heretic Servetus. In the Lutheran stream, Luther advocated the killing of Anabaptist leaders and the burning of Jewish synagogues. In the Anabaptist stream, Anabaptists seized the town of Münster in 1534, burned all the books in the city (except the Bible), and killed many people, before their attempt to establish a "New Jerusalem" fell apart the next year.
Point out to your sister-in-law that you can make any group look bad if you get to quote its history selectively. Then lend her a copy of the video A Man for All Seasons, an Academy-Award "Best Picture" about Henry VIII’s interaction with Thomas More. It’s a lot better than the Hus video she has.
For what it’s worth, no matter what grand light the video tries to paint Hus in, he wasn’t really much more than a parroter of Wyclif, and then only partially, for Hus disagreed with Wyclif on the sacraments (Hus being more Catholic than Wyclif).
Even the very biased article on Hus in the Protestant New Schaff-Herzog Encyclopedia of Religious Knowledge, which tries to put Hus on a pedestal, admits that "in his struggles with the University of Prague and his ecclesiastical opponents he cannot be freed altogether from the reproach of slander and abuse"—i.e., he lied about and insulted his opponents—and "his learning was not of a universal range; wherever he goes beyond Wyclif, he falters and becomes dull or verbose"—i.e., he was a man of limited intellectual horizons who latched onto one particular author as his font and parroted him, as some have done with Freud or Marx or Calvin.
James Akin
Q: I'm shy. What's the alternative to my trying to promote the faith?
A: No faith.
Karl Keating
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