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Q u i c k Q u e s t i o n s
NO NON-ESSENTIAL STUFF, PLEASE
Q: I believe in the Real Presence in the Eucharist. I just don’t buy all that that non-essential stuff about the Pope and Mary .
A: It’s good that you acknowledge the truth of the Real Presence of Jesus in the Eucharist. But Communion, as its name implies, is about more than a merely vertical "Me ’n’ Jesus" relationship. It is communion, a profession of unity with the fullness of the Body of Christ in heart, mind, and body. And the celebration of this communion has been solemnly delegated by Jesus to his one, holy, Catholic, and apostolic Church in union with the bishops and the pope. That means that when you receive Communion from that Church, you are publicly declaring your complete assent to her teaching—including what she defines as essential (such as the infallibility of the pope and the Marian dogmas). If you don’t want to be received into full communion with her, it is worth asking yourself "Why do I want to receive communion from her?" To complain about it is like complaining, "Just because I don’t believe in democracy, everybody refuses to vote for me!" or grumbling, "How dare they deny a Catholic burial to man just because he denies the afterlife!"
As a convert myself, I can confidently say that I have never found a single aspect of Catholic dogmatic teaching to be anti-biblical or "unessential." The shocking fact about entering into union with the Catholic Church is twofold: First, you are seriously expected to say "I believe and profess all that the Holy Catholic Church believes, teaches, and proclaims is revealed by God." Second, you find that you can do so with a clear conscience, a full mind, and glad heart. Don’t settle for vague generalities about the supposedly impossible-to-believe nature of Catholic teaching.
Mark P. Shea
Q: The fact that the Church is the foundation and pillar of the truth doesn’t prove anything. After all, a pillar only holds things up; it is not itself what it supports.
A: Quite true, yet you failed to discern the point. Since the Church is the foundation or the pillar of the truth, it must be infallible, for a pillar that can crumble is worthless. Without the pillar, there would be no truth, just as there cannot be a house where there is no foundation. If the Church is the foundation of the truth, then this foundation must be faultless, blameless, perfect, or, in theological terms, infallible.
Mario Derksen
Q: Where do the words "Blessed Sacrament" appear in the Bible?
A: The words "Blessed Sacrament" do not appear in the Bible, just as the word "Trinity" cannot be found on the written page either. Does this make the Trinity anti-biblical? Of course not, because it is steeped in Scripture and is the fundamental doctrine of Christianity. While the Bible contains explicitly or implicitly all that one needs to know to get to heaven, certain words or phrases not found in it still can be used to deepen one’s understanding of God’s word. Does this violate Paul’s warning in 1 Corinthians 4:6, where he commands us "not to go beyond what is written"? Not at all. Here Paul refers to God’s promise in the Old Testament, not to the canon of the New, which had not been declared, let alone even written completely.
The role of Scripture in the Christian economy of salvation is often misunderstood. One must call to mind that the Bible did not fall from heaven into the hands of the early Church. Just as the Church took centuries to determine the canon of Scripture (the listing is not found in the text, the table of contents being a modern addition), so the Church plowed through centuries of Arian, Sabellian, Gnostic, Monophysite, and other heresies to formulate the doctrine of the Trinity. The Holy Spirit guided the Church to a deeper understanding of God’s nature and personhood. The presence or absence of a word is not the issue. Whether or not that word speaks truly of a certain doctrine is.
The next step to cover, then, is the words themselves. The word "sacrament" was first used in the third century to describe the Eucharist. "Sacrament" comes from the Latin word "sacramentum," meaning "oath" or "mystery." This oath is clear in John 6, and this mystery is the source and summit of Christian life. The sacrament is "blessed" because the consecrated Host is the Body, Blood, soul, and divinity of Jesus Christ. When the Lord humbles himself under the appearance of bread and wine to become our spiritual nourishment, it is indeed a blessed mystery and oath of his love for us. In John 6 Jesus tells us that his flesh and blood are true food and drink; those who don’t accept this teaching,
because it is hard, leave him. Jesus does not call them back to say that he was speaking symbolically, but allows them to leave him. This is the only instance in the Gospels where disciples part from Jesus for doctrinal reasons. "Do you also want to leave?"
To learn what the early Church understood the Lord’s supper as, read Ignatius of Antioch, Irenaeus (180–199), Clement of Alexandria, Cyprian, and Cyril of Jerusalem—they wrote from the beginning of the second century until the middle of the fourth. You will be pleasantly surprised.
Jason Evert
Q: What happens to those who die and do not believe?
A: Depends. If you mean "What happens to those who die rejecting Christ?" the Church’s answer is uncompromising: They will go to hell. But no one goes to hell by accident. If someone is simply ignorant of the name of Christ through no fault of his own, no culpability accrues. He has not rejected Christ. Moreover, we know Christ is not constrained by our knowledge. He can work in a heart even when that heart is only dimly aware of it.
Jesus speaks of this in the parable of the sheep and the goats. The ones judged here are "the nations"—those outside the visible communion of the Church. How are they judged? By the way they responded to Christ when he came to them in disguise. "I was sick and you visited me; hungry, and you fed me; thirsty and you gave me something to drink." How do the sheep and the goats respond? With surprise. The point is, we may not know it, but Christ comes to us even when we don’t (or can’t) come to him. This is why the Church counsels us to hope and pray for the dead. We must not pretend we know what God is up to in the lives of others. We know where the grace is. We do not know where it is not.
Mark P. Shea
Q: A priest defined invincible ignorance as "the sincere rejection of an obvious truth in the face of incontrovertible fact."
A: Nonsense. If that were true, then the whole meaning of invincible ignorance excusing one from guilt would be meaningless, since all we need then do is to keep insisting ("sincerely," of course) that even in the face of incontrovertible fact we’re right. It would then be possible for us to be absolutely free from sin ever again—simply by refusing to acknowledge that anything we had done was a sin.
Sincerity never has been found on a list of virtues anywhere in Catholic theology. Every priest I know who’s been ordained five years or more has buried folks who were killed by people who "sincerely" never meant to harm them. Nonetheless, the dead remain dead.
In questions of conscience dealing with infallible doctrine, sincerity has little place. All it means, and all it can mean, is that you’re wrong—sincerely wrong, of course, but wrong nonetheless. And while that may excuse from the guilt associated with sin, it doesn’t change any of the consequences that derive from that error.
Invincible ignorance is, more properly speaking, "that kind of ignorance on which we find ourselves forced to act, when we either could not have known the truth or could not ‘reasonably’ have been expected to discover it with effort." The kind of ignorance the priest above describes is not "invincible" ignorance at all. It is quite vincible. It requires only two things: hard work and the honesty to acknowledge that it is not sufficient for me to be satisfied with that "sense of certainty" with which so many of us confuse truth and certainty itself.
It is, however, the kind of ignorance associated with contumacy, obstinacy, and rebellion, none of which excuse or exculpate. If you—a baptized Catholic living in the United States, not mentally impaired, and at least vaguely aware of Catholic teachings—are unaware that fornication is a sin yet still fornicate, you are almost assuredly as guilty of it as if you clearly had known its sinfulness all along, for you areexpected to find out what the Church’s teachingsare, not to sit back and demand that someone else point them out to you or point them out in such a way that you find them palatable.
Invincible ignorance would apply to a situation that dealt with a knowledge of Jesus’ divinity in 100 B.C. There is no way they could have known. Romans in A.D. 33, never having heard of Christ, never accepted him as Messiah—that, too, is invincible ignorance.
There is such a thing as the "grace of state," which accompanies every sacrament, including baptism. However difficult it might be to understand or accept the doctrines of an infallible Church, it is never too difficult to do (grace helps you to believe) and cannot fall beneath the aegis of "invincible" ignorance. The greater the opportunity to have learned the truth, the less invincible ignorance can be. It becomes culpable ignorance, and you’re held responsible for your self-chosen ignorance.
Fr. Hal Stockert
Q: Why bother with holy water?
A: In itself holy water isn’t exceptional. It’s plain water sprinkled with a little salt, which in ancient times symbolized incorruption and immortality and which today is added when the priest blesses the water. The use of holy water isn’t superstitious because Catholics don’t believe the water itself does anything. There are no magical properties to it. Put a drop under the microscope and all you’ll find is a drop of salty water.
The spiritual benefit of holy water comes from the devotion of the people who use it. Anything can be used for good ends because everything God created is good. When water is blessed and transformed into holy water, it is "set aside" for a religious purpose, and such a purpose is by nature good. In the Old Testament water was used to consecrate priests (Ex. 29:4, Lev. 8:6, Num. 8:7). It was used before sacrifices were offered (Ex. 30:18–19). In Solomon’s Temple there were ten giant basins of water (1 Kgs. 7:38–39). In the New Testament Christ washed the apostles’ feet with water (John 13:4-10), a ceremony preserved in the Maundy Thursday liturgy, and water flowed out of the side of Christ (John 19:34).
Because of such scriptural and historical connections, Catholics see holy water as a sign of God’s continual imparting of grace through the Church and through holy actions, especially through the sacraments. Just as the sign of the cross reminds us of the sacrifice on Calvary and of the chief Christian doctrine, the Trinity, so holy water (which commonly is used when making the sign of the cross) reminds us of the cleansing power of God’s grace. What’s more, holy water’s use reminds us of the incarnational aspects of our faith: Christ used everyday things—bread, wine, oil, water—to transmit grace and healings, both spiritual and physical. When we dip our fingers into the stoup at the church door, we recall, in a tactile manner, that ours is not a disembodied, ethereal faith, but one in which God himself took on our flesh and thus resanctified his creation.
Karl Keating
Q: The Bible states quite clearly that the one sacrifice offered by Jesus suffices completely for the atonement of sin (Heb. 10:11–12). How can Catholics contradict this scriptural doctrine, so very plain in its statement, by sacrificing Christ again every day?
A: If Catholics were sacrificing Christ again every day, I agree that there would be a conflict. The idea that Catholics are sacrificing Christ again every day is not something Catholics teach, but it is taught about Catholics by some non-Catholics—or, perhaps, by certain Catholics who are poorly grounded in their faith. It is Catholic dogma that the one death of Jesus broke the hold of sin. "Christ is risen from the dead, by death he conquered death, and to all those in the graves, he has granted life!" (Resurrection matins, Byzantine Rite). It precisely from this one sacrificial death that the Lord’s Supper (and therefore the liturgy itself) draws its significance, since every liturgy is the Last Supper offered in mystery in an unbloody fashion. There is no conflict with the cited Scripture.
Fr. Hal Stockert
Q: In the July/Aug. issue, Mark P. Shea said that to baptize the babies of others without the parents' permission renders the baptism invalid. Surely this can't be correct.
A: Thanks for catching the typographical error. In fact, Mark Shea had correctly stated that such baptisms are valid but not licid.
However, in danger of death, such infants may be baptized, even over the parents' objections, whether Catholic or non-Catholic, and such baptisms are licid as well as valid (CIC 868, 2).
Terrye Newkirk
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