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Q u i c k Q u e s t i o n s
ST. CHRISTOPHER, WHERE ARE YOU?
Q: I heard that the Church has decided that St. Christopher never existed. Is that true, and how does it square with canonizations of saints being infallible?
A: First of all, it's not true. The Church never issued any kind of decree saying that Christopher never existed. Furthermore, competent hagiographers, including Protestant ones, tell us that there was a Christopher, but we just don't know as much about him as some of the legends that grew up around him would suggest.
Second, it would not matter even if there were no Christopher. Papal infallibility applies only to those canonizations that a pope has done. Christopher was recognized as a saint in the period before popes became involved in the process, meaning his canonization is not subject to papal infallibility.
The confusion over Christopher's status comes from the 1969 reform of the Roman Calendar. This reform had been mandated by Vatican II in Sacrosanctum Concilium, its constitution on the liturgy. Because the Roman Calendar was getting crowded, especially with saints with local rather than universal followings, the Council declared: "Lest the feasts of the saints take precedence over the feasts commemorating the very mysteries of salvation, many of them should be left to be celebrated by a particular Church or nation or religious family; those only should be extended to the universal Church that commemorate saints of truly universal significance" (SC 111).
A revision of the Calendar was undertaken after the Council, and on February 14, 1969, Pope Paul VI issued a motu proprio with the unwieldy title "Approval of the Genera Norms for the Liturgical Year and the New General Roman Calendar" (AGN). In this document, which is found in standard sacramentaries, the Pope explained: "With the passage of centuries, it must be admitted, the faithful have become accustomed to so many special religious devotions that the principal mysteries of the redemption have lost their proper place. This was partly due to the increased number of vigils, holy days, and octaves, partly to the gradual overlapping of various seasons in the liturgical year" (AGN 1).
"The purpose of the reordering of the liturgical year and of the norms accomplishing its reform, therefore, is that through faith, hope, and love the faithful may share more deeply in 'the whole mystery of Christ as it unfolds throughout the year'" (ibid.).
"To put [the] decrees of the Council into effect, the names of some saints have been deleted from the General Calendar, and permission was granted to restore the memorials and veneration of other saints in those areas with which they have been traditionally associated. The removal of certain lesser-known saints from the Roman Calendar has allowed the addition of the names of martyrs from regions where the Gospel spread later in history" (AGN 2).
In the Calendar that this document serves to implement, Christopher's name is omitted. One can question whether Christopher should have omitted. The devotions to him were broad-based enough that they would seem to make him a saint of "universal significance." Nevertheless, nowhere in this reform is it implied that he did not exist or that he was not a saint.
James Akin
Q: A Seventh Day Adventist told me that, when a person dies, he is asleep and is aware of nothing. Does the Bible really teach this?
A: No. Those who hold to "soul sleep" assert that once a person dies, he enters a state of unconsciousness until the Second Coming. Some use this claim to argue that saints can't intercede for us, since they supposedly are asleep.
Isaiah 14:9-10 tells us that the dead are agitated and are speaking. 1 Samuel 28 tells of Samuel conversing with Saul after his death. In 1 Peter 3:19, Jesus preaches to souls in prison. Why preach to sleeping spirits? Talk about a bored audience! Try telling the rich man in the story of Lazarus and the rich man (Luke 16:19-31) not to worry, since he is just sleeping.
If the dead are asleep, one must ask how Jesus communicated with them during his transfiguration (Matt. 17:3), how they offer our prayers to God (Rev. 5:8), how they cry out in a loud voice in praise of God (Rev. 7:10), and how these sleeping, unconscious souls cry out, "How long will it be, holy and true master, before you sit in judgement and avenge our blood on the inhabitants of the earth?" (Rev. 6:10). That is a pretty windy statement for someone asleep! Those that have died are more alive than we are, and they surround us like a great cloud of witnesses (Heb. 12:1).
Jason Evert
Q: I know there are Bible verses that teach that God "rewards" believers for their good deeds in the next life, but doesn't this refer to some sort of special gifts or honor in heaven and not to heaven itself? Isn't it true that eternal life is a gift of grace and our good deeds cannot in any way contribute to it?
A: It is true that there are rewards above and beyond eternal life and that eternal life is a gift of grace, but Scripture plainly teaches that eternal life itself is a reward or fruit of our good deeds.
One passage which spells this out is Galatians 6:7-10: "Whatever a man sows, that he will also reap. For he who sows to his own flesh will from the flesh reap corruption, but he who sows to the Spirit will from the Spirit reap eternal life. So let us not grow weary in well-doing [Greek, "working good"], for in due season we will reap, if we do not lose heart. So then, as we have opportunity, let us do good [Greek, "work good"] to all men, and especially to those who are of the household of faith."
In this passage Paul states that "eternal life"-not just unspecified "rewards"-is the harvest "reaped" as a result of "sowing to the Spirit" through "well-doing" or "doing good to all men." One might press the analogy by pointing out that the harvest is still a "gift" of God, since the act of sowing does not make the seed alive or cause it to grow. The act of sowing undeniably leads to the harvest, and the same is true of our good deeds and eternal life.
Steven D. Greydanus
Q: Didn't Jesus come to show us the Old Testament God was not the God of love? Isn't the God of Moses a God of rules and fear and the God of Jesus a God of life and joy?
A: Absolutely not. The idea espoused here is not one found on the lips of Jesus or his apostles, but upon the lips of the anti-Semite Marcion, who lived in the second century. It is a grotesque misreading of the New Testament to claim that Jesus repudiated the revelation given to Moses. As Jesus himself says, "Think not that I have come to abolish the Law and the prophets; I have not come to abolish them but to fulfill them" (Matt 5:17).
The Church emphasizes the continuity between how God revealed himself to our elder brothers, the Jews, and how he revealed himself at the beginning of the Christian age-first because it is a fact and second because viewing Old Testament revelation as somehow opposed to Christianity can lead to tragic and sinful persecution of the Jews, as history has borne tragic witness. There is no opposition between the character of God in the Old Testament and in the New. In the Old Testament we are told to "give thanks to the Lord, for he is good, for his steadfast love endures for ever" (Ps. 136:1), while in the New Testament Jesus commands us to fear God (Luke 12:5).
It is profoundly unjust to both Judaism and Christianity to talk about the Old Covenant as a religion of "rules and fear" and of the New Covenant as simply sweetness and light. Judaism is full of a warm celebration of life and joy and Christianity is quite capable of stressing the towering majesty and even terror of God. Read the book of Revelation or the book of Hebrews or Jesus' words to the hypocrites of his day (Matt. 23) if you don't believe this.
Mark P. Shea
Q: I think that our suffering is created because of our failure to fully realize our own divinity. That is why I think Jesus came-to show us how to create an alternate reality by creating an inner reality of health and power.
A: This is an impossible and bizarre way of misunderstanding the message of Christ. First of all, Christ never said anything about us "realizing our divinity." That is a bunch of New Age nonsense. The New Testament makes it abundantly clear that we are not God. Second, not all suffering due to a person's sin. Just ask the crucified Christ who, though he is fully God (and fully realized it), hung upon the cross not for his sin, but for ours. Just ask the blind man of whom Jesus said neither he nor his parents sinned, yet he was born blind (John 9:3). Or just ask Paul, who begged three times to have the thorn in his flesh removed and was told by Christ, "My grace is sufficient for you, for my power is made perfect in weakness" (2 Cor 12:9).
It places a crushing burden on the sick and suffering to say, "Just snap out of it. You're only hurting because you have no faith." Worse still, it places the soul of one who says such things in jeopardy, for we can easily find ourselves numbered among those to whom Christ says, "Woe to you! For you load men with burdens hard to bear, and you yourselves do not touch the burdens with one of your fingers!" (Luke 11:46).
Mark P. Shea
Q: I received a brochure in my church bulletin regarding the bishops' upcoming meeting. It was from a group of Catholics that wanted to urge the bishops to reinstate the practice of meatless Fridays. Why are we retreating into the past? There are many areas we could put this kind of energy to better use. How about the poor and the homeless? The shut-ins? The people of Haiti? How did this become an issue within the Church?
A: The purpose of the proposal to return to meatless Fridays is to do so as an act of penance for having allowed the culture of death to take over America, where between one and two million children are killed every year by abortion, where violence on the streets is rampant, and where we are on the verge of legalizing euthanasia.
The purpose of the restoration of the discipline would be to do penance in hopes that God will help us change our society and push back the culture of death. It also will serve to raise people's consciousness about the need to combat the culture of death rather than sitting back and doing nothing.
You are obviously in favor of helping people, and the goal of the restoration would be to help people by working to turn America back to the culture of life, where people are cherished and protected instead of callously killed whenever they are "inconvenient."
We should avoid being guilty of chronological snobbery in viewing the present as automatically superior to the past. We should have no fear of "retreating into the past" with our practices if doing so would help solve problems in the present.
Sociological studies have shown that the fewer demands a church makes of its members, the weaker their faith becomes, and eventually they end up doing nothing. Right now, the Church in America expects almost nothing of its members, and there has been a corresponding decline in activity on the part of the laity. If we want to see the homeless and shut-ins helped, nothing will do that better than helping Catholics builds their devotional lives, such as reawakening them to the fact that Friday is a day of penance (something which is true even now; the form of penance to be done being up to the individual).
James Akin
Q: I have a friend who is flirting with a radical form of Catholic Traditionalism. Sometimes he talks about modernist heretics taking over the magisterium and betraying Catholic tradition. He has canned arguments about things like religious freedom and dialogue, universalism, liturgical norms, and so forth. He says he can't be in schism since he's just clinging to Catholic tradition. What can I say to him?
A: Point out that his claim about "clinging to tradition" is precisely what is claimed by all schismatics-Orthodox, Donatists, even, in their own way, Protestants, who say they believe only what was "handed down" by the apostles in Scripture.
Everyone says that what he is clinging to (as against Rome) is "tradition." But when you ask these people how they know that their views rather than Rome's represent the true tradition, they all fall back on private judgment: "Look how this Romanist practice or decree contradicts this earlier council or text of Scripture! Clearly our view-not Rome's-represents tradition (or biblical teaching)."
In practice, schismatics do not receive their church's teaching on their church's authority; they accept their church's authority because their church agrees with their preferred beliefs. They don't accept the message at the word of the messenger; they choose the messenger based on the message.
Ask your friend who is the arbiter of what does or does not constitute tradition: the individual or the magisterium? Either the Church is our judge or we are its judge. Either we judge our ideas by the teaching of the Church or we judge the teaching of the Church by our ideas. And that includes our ideas about tradition.
Steven D. Greydanus
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