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Q u i c k Q u e s t i o n s
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This Rock
Volume 11, Number 12
 December 2000 
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Is It Okay to Celebrate Kwanzaa?
Q: Is there a Church position on African-American Catholics celebrating Kwanzaa?
A: Kwanzaa is a seven-day holiday celebrated from December 26 to January 1. Established in 1966, it was developed by Dr. Maulana Karenga as a way of strengthening African-American culture and families. The name Kwanzaa means "first fruits," and each day of the celebration focuses on one of seven themes: unity, self-determination, collective work and responsibility, cooperative economics, purpose, creativity, and faith.
There is no official Church position on whether Kwanzaa should be celebrated. That being said, one may go on to ask whether the celebration of Kwanzaa would be good or bad on prudential grounds.
Catholic moral theology recognizes the principle that all ethnic groups should celebrate the good things about their culture. But one might question whether Kwanzaa is the best way to celebrate African-American culture. Kwanzaa may not be ethnically open in the way other holidays are. For instance, custom holds on St. Patrick’s Day that "everyone is Irish for a day." Similarly, non-Chinese are welcome at celebrations of Chinese New Year. If Kwanzaa does not have a reciprocal openness to other ethnic groups, prudential people of every ethnic group might conclude that we don’t need racially exclusive holidays in America.
Also, since Kwanzaa falls over the octave of Christmas, its celebration may distract from the Christmas season, which is one of the most important seasons on the liturgical calendar.
Finally, one might consider whether Kwanzaa accurately reflects African-American heritage. Neither the people of Africa nor African-Americans are monolithic. There is considerable diversity among both, and Kwanzaa may reflect the cultural heritage of some more than others.
Q: Please tell me how an angel becomes a saint, as in Saint Michael the Archangel.
A: The good angels are saints because God created them in a state of holiness or sanctity. He also enabled them to make a free choice for or against him. Those that made the choice for him were confirmed in their holiness. Those that chose against him lost their holiness.
Of those angels who remained in holiness, Scripture tells us the names of three—Michael (Dan. 10:13), Gabriel (Dan. 8:16), and Raphael (Tob. 12:15). It became customary for Christians to speak of them as holy—"Holy Michael," for example, which in Latin is Sanctus Michaelus. This then gets translated into English as Saint Michael.
There was no official canonization of these angels. Like the human saints in the first part of Church history, they were recognized as saints by popular acclaim rather than by papal decree.
God has chosen to keep the great majority of the angels anonymous to us in this life, and so we simply pray to "the holy angels" or one’s guardian angel without knowing their names.
Q: I have encountered a Protestant who has a novel defense against the statement in James 2:24 that we are not saved by faith alone. He claims this only applies to "the Tribulation." How can he make this claim?
A: It would seem that you have encountered an ultradispensationalist. Ultradispensationalism is a rare and extreme Protestant position that holds the only books of the New Testament that are directly relevant to us today are Paul’s prison epistles. All other books of the New Testament are thought to apply to different ages and are only indirectly relevant to Christ’s followers today. Ultradispensationalists draw the inference that baptism was at one time necessary for salvation but is not meant for our age, since it isn’t mentioned in the prison epistles.
You seem to have encountered one of the ultradispensationalists who allow that during the Great Tribulation—a period of turmoil they envision as yet in the future—some parts of the New Testament currently in abeyance will become legally binding again. They believe that the book of James is not relevant to how one is saved in our day but that it will again become relevant in the future.
Needless to say, it is quite difficult to deal with such people on an apologetic level. They have jettisoned so much of the evidence that one could use in apologetic discussions that it is hard to convince them of much of anything.
For a Protestant (and, indeed, a dispensationalist) critique of ultradispensationalism, check the Internet for the article "Wrongly Dividing the Word of Truth" by H. A. Ironside.
Q: I’m divorced from my one marriage in the Catholic Church, but I never got an annulment. I was told since my marriage wasn’t annulled that I could not receive the sacraments. Is that true?
A: Being divorced does not prevent one from receiving the sacraments. Neither does the fact that your prior marriage has not been annulled.
What would keep you from the sacraments is having attempted a new marriage without the former one being annulled. Any new marriage you may have attempted without an annulment will be presumed invalid, meaning that if you are living a conjugal life with a new partner you are presumed to be in a state of grave sin. It would be that sin, not being divorced without an annulment, that would keep you from receiving Communion.
If you have not attempted a new marriage since your previous one, or if you are living chastely until your current marital situation is rectified, then you can receive the sacraments.
Q: My sister, who has been a Christian all of her life, recently converted to Islam. She no longer believes that Jesus is God. She says that if Jesus were God, why did he pray to himself all of the time and why, especially, in Gethsemane when he was suffering?
A: Your sister’s question is based on a failure to understand the doctrine of the Trinity. God is one Being who is three Persons—the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit. Because these three are distinct persons, it is in no way unexpected for one of the Persons to speak to another one of the Persons, such as the Father. In such cases, he isn’t "talking to himself" because he is talking to a different Person.
For help in answering other objections your sister may pose and for suggestions on how to win her back to Christ, consider getting Answering Islam by Norman Geisler and Abdul Saleeb, available from Catholic Answers (1-800-291-8000, item B0197).
Q: The Watchtower Society’s booklet "Should You Believe in the Trinity?" makes numerous references to Bible scholars who seem to reject the doctrine of the Trinity. What should I make of this?
A: Not much. This booklet, first published in 1989, is a classic example of how the Watchtower Society (WTS), the parent organization for Jehovah’s Witnesses, misrepresents and distorts what these authors said. The WTS eliminates crucial portions of excerpts by means of an ellipsis or pulls a sentence or two completely out of context, resulting in an opposite twist on the passages in question. While numerous examples could be given, here are two:
On page four of the booklet, a quote is taken from Jesuit author Joseph Bracken’s book What Are They Saying About the Trinity? . The quote reads: "Priests who with considerable effort learned . . . the Trinity during their seminary years naturally hesitated to present it to their people from the pulpit, even on Trinity Sunday." It seems Fr. Bracken is saying that priests are reluctant to teach on the topic of the Trinity in general. What the first ellipsis eliminates, though, is an important modifier. The sentence actually reads, "Priests who with considerable effort learned the Thomistic explanation of the Trinity during their seminary years . . ." (Bracken, 3; emphasis added). In other words, Fr. Bracken is talking about one specific way of explaining the Trinity doctrine, not the doctrine itself.
On page 6 of the booklet, the New Catholic Encyclopedia is quoted as saying, "The doctrine of the Holy Trinity is not taught in the OT [Old Testament]." While it’s true that this doctrine is not expressly taught in the Old Testament, the booklet gives the impression that the concept of a triune God is wholly absent from the pages of the Old Testament.
If you look up the encyclopedia article, just four sentences after the statement quoted there is this: "On account of the polytheistic religions of Israel’s pagan neighbors, it was necessary for the teachers of Israel to stress the oneness of God. In many places of the OT, however, expressions are used in which some of the Fathers of the Church saw references or foreshadowings of the Trinity." Two sentences further we read, "The revelation of the truth of the triune life of God was first made in the NT [New Testament], where the earliest references to it are in the Pauline epistles" (New Catholic Encyclopedia, 14:306). So clearly the New Catholic Encyclopedia acknowledges that the Trinity doctrine was present, either in foreshadowing or in substance, in both the Old Testament and the New Testament.
Q: I have a friend who bought a crucifix at an estate sale. On the bottom a skull and crossbones are engraved. What do they mean?
A: The skull and crossbones that one sometimes sees depicted at the foot of the cross in paintings, sculptures, and other forms of artwork symbolize the skull and bones of Adam. According to legend, Adam was buried on Golgotha, the hill where Christ was crucified.
There is no reason to think that this legend is true, but it found a place in art—not surprising considering the powerful symbolism involved. It was on the cross that Christ, the New Adam (cf. 1 Cor. 15:45), bought us the gift of life. How better to symbolize this triumph than by showing the bones of the first Adam who brought us death? Indeed, the use of the skull to show Christ’s triumph over death may have come first and the legend about Adam’s burial may have arisen as an explanation of it.
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