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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 x, Number x
 January 2004 
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What Does the Pope Do?
Q: A non-Catholic friend has asked me what the pope does and how he spends his day. I’m also curious about John Paul’s reign and how he may have changed expectations of what the pope does.
A: The pope’s day-to-day duties are ordered toward the shepherding and governing of the Church. Here is a brief list of some of his regular activities:
- Preaching, celebrating liturgies, and giving audiences to groups and individuals
- With the aid of his staff and curial offices, making policy and pastoral decisions (e.g., choosing and appointing bishops, assigning bishops to particular jurisdictions, regulating liturgical practices, managing the Church’s finances, etc.)
- Meeting with each of the world’s bishops at least once every five years
- Writing and promulgating encyclicals and other documents setting forth the teachings of the Church and speaking out against errors of the modern world
- Meeting with world leaders to promote and advocate peace, respect for life, and human dignity.
One of the major contributions that John Paul II has made to the office of the papacy is that he has traveled more frequently and extensively than previous popes, enabling millions to meet him who would otherwise not get the chance. Pope Paul VI began the practice, but it’s been a defining aspect of John Paul II’s reign.
It made news recently that popes do not receive a salary for their work. The various curial offices provide for the pope’s household, but he himself does not draw a salary.
Q: We call Joseph Mary’s "husband." I thought that if a marriage isn’t consummated, it isn’t technically a marriage. Is Joseph’s title as Mary’s husband merely honorary?
A: A man and a woman are truly married as soon as they commit themselves to each other by vow before God—not when the marriage is consummated. In a Christian context, a sacramental marriage becomes indissoluble when the marriage is consummated, but the marriage itself exists from the time the vows are said. Joseph and Mary were married under the Old Covenant and so their marriage wasn’t the Christian sacrament, and wouldn’t have been truly indissoluble in any case. But because they were pledged by oath to one another, their marriage was a true and valid one.
Incidentally, the point is more than a technicality, since Matthew seems to predicate Jesus’ messianic claim to the title "Son of David" (a phrase used throughout Matthew’s Gospel) at least in part on his legal status as the son of Joseph, whom the angel addresses as "son of David" (Matt. 1:20).
Q: I’m a cradle Catholic. When I was young and rebellious, I briefly fell in with formerly Catholic Fundamentalists, during which time I was baptized by full immersion. I quickly returned, and now receive the sacraments regularly. Did I commit a sin? Did I somehow compromise my Catholic infant baptism?
A: If you sincerely believed at the time that you were attempting to follow the Lord’s will, you did not commit a mortal sin by your second baptism, although it was objectively sacrilegious. Mortal sin requires sufficient knowledge as well as grave matter and full consent of the will. If any of the three conditions are missing, there is no mortal sin. Only if you knew your first baptism was valid and that a second baptism would be gravely wrong but chose to do so anyway would you have committed serious sin.
You don’t need to worry about your first baptism. Like a valid marriage, a valid baptism cannot be undone or invalidated. More than that, like holy orders and confirmation, baptism confers an indelible character on the soul, so the sacrament is permanent and unrepeatable. (Even matrimony can be validly received more than once, in the event of a spouse’s death.) Your second baptism was invalid, but your first and only true baptism was unaffected.
Presumably when you returned to the Church, you confessed having left the Church and joined another denomination (including mention of your attempted re-baptism) because you now know that what you did was contrary to the Lord’s will. If not, do so the next time you go to confession. Even if your brief sojourn outside the Church was not a mortal sin due to lack of sufficient knowledge, the grace of the sacrament of penance can strengthen you against future temptations.
Q: Why do religions baptize infants? I think the Bible is clear that we will be judged ourselves, not by something we are born with (cf. Ezek. 18:20). Several other passages indicate that one is born innocent but, at some later point, becomes guilty by choosing sin (cf. Rom. 7:9–11; Ezek. 28:15; Is. 59:1–2).
A: It’s quite true that babies have no personal guilt and are not guilty of personal sin. That is why repentance is not necessary for them at baptism. They have nothing to repent of. They inherited from Adam and Eve not sin but the consequence of sin, which is a lack of sanctifying grace or spiritual life. We call this original sin, but it is really the consequence of the original sin that we are referring to.
Adam and Eve were created in a state of original grace or spiritual life. As long as they remained in God’s friendship, that original grace remained. But as soon as they sinned, they lost this precious gift, without which we cannot enjoy friendship with God or eternal life in heaven.
Adam and Eve could not pass on to their children a spiritual gift they no longer had. Through the sacrament of baptism, sanctifying grace is restored to the soul. This is why babies are baptized. The sacrament restores sanctifying grace to the soul, makes them children of God, and enables them to inherit heaven.
Q: Someone asked me about when original sin is actually present in a soul, particularly in an unborn baby’s soul. I know the Church entrusts unbaptized infants to God’s mercy; I suppose the same is true for the unborn, or those stillborn. Please help me because someone is very concerned about her baby dying before birth in original sin.
A: Original sin is present in the soul—or, to put it another way, sanctifying grace is absent from the soul—from the moment of conception. This is why our Lady’s preservation from original sin is called the Immaculate Conception. God, in anticipation of Christ’s work on the cross, by his grace saved the Blessed Mother from original sin at the moment of her conception. We receive that grace later, at baptism.
So, yes, any baby, born or unborn, who dies unbaptized dies in original sin—but not in personal sin. This is crucial, because the punishments and sufferings of hell are incurred only through personal sin, not original sin. Thus, while the exact state of unbaptized babies after death is not clearly established in Catholic dogma, we do know something about what their state is not: They are not subject to the punishments and sufferings of hell.
If not in hell, where are they? Some theologians have speculated that, having neither the supernatural grace necessary for heaven nor the personal sin necessary for hell, such souls might exist in a state in which they neither suffer punishments nor enjoy divine happiness in heaven. This hypothetical state is called limbo, and has been imagined as a condition of perfect natural happiness.
Other Catholics are of the hope and opinion that, because God is not bound by the sacraments and can work outside them in extraordinary circumstances, he chooses to give infants dying without baptism the gift of sanctifying grace at the moment of death, just as he gives it to baptized babies at the moment of their baptism. Given his desire that all might be saved (cf. 1 Tim. 4:10) as well as his special love for children (cf. Matt. 19:14), we may hope that this is so. In any case, the Church entrusts such children to God’s love and mercy.
Q: Since the Church acknowledges that those in other churches and even other religions can be saved, what would be the incentive for a non-Catholic to convert?
A: The Second Vatican Council puts it this way: "Those who, through no fault of their own, do not know the gospel of Christ or his Church, but who nevertheless seek God with a sincere heart, and, moved by grace, try in their actions to do his will as they know it through the dictates of their conscience—those too may achieve eternal salvation" (Lumen Gentium 16).
Note the conditions:
1. "Through no fault of their own": Someone who knows that the Catholic Church is the true Church has the obligation to become Catholic; someone who has reason to believe that the Catholic Church may be the true Church has the obligation to carefully investigate the Church.
2. "A sincere heart": In order for ignorance to be blameless (or invincible in classical terminology) the person must sincerely believe that he is following what God requires. If he has reason to believe that what the Catholic Church believes is God’s requirement and ignores it, his ignorance is not invincible but vincible, i.e., he is at least partly to blame.
3. "May": All things being equal, a Catholic has a better chance of getting to heaven than a non-Catholic because the Catholic has recourse to the sacraments, which strengthen the Catholic in his Christian journey and are God’s normative means of bestowing supernatural grace.
The "incentive" for being Catholic is that the Catholic Church is the Church founded by Christ and preached by the apostles and their successors. The Church offers recourse to all of the sacraments, the normative means of receiving justification and persevering in the Christian journey to salvation.
Q: My daughter’s godmother has started attending an Assembly of God church. I gently reminded her that she is turning her back on the Eucharist just as some of the disciples did in John 6. I feel that she is being lured and deceived by entertainment. What else can I say to her? Also, what are the Church’s rules regarding a godparent leaving the Catholic Church?
A: It is tragic whenever a godparent leaves the Church, but there is no formal Church procedure for replacing such a godparent. To be a godparent is, among other things, to act as an official witness of the baptism, and since your friend did in fact witness the baptism in this capacity, it is not possible to designate another individual a "godparent" after the fact.
You can certainly ask a friend or relative whose spiritual maturity you trust to become a spiritual mentor for your child, providing for your child the Catholic spiritual support that her godmother is no longer able to provide. In time, your child might choose to ask this spiritual mentor to become her confirmation sponsor.
Of course, should your straying friend return to the Church and become firm in her faith, she should in due time be invited to participate in and support your daughter’s spiritual development.
Perhaps you might share with your friend Jimmy Akin’s booklet Mass Appeal, which may help her to develop a new appreciation for what she is considering leaving behind.
Q: How do I answer Traditionalists who claim that the Second Vatican Council was only a pastoral council and didn’t define anything new? Also, do you know if there are any apologetical books out yet countering Traditionalists?
A: The best book on the subject is the now unfortunately out-of-print The Pope, the Council, and the Mass by James Likoudis and Kenneth D. Whitehead. Here is how they respond to this argument:
"The term ‘pastoral council’ as applied to Vatican II is merely a popular description and does not refer to any specific type of council recognized by the authority of the Catholic Church (the teachings and decisions of which would presumably somehow not be as binding upon members of the Church as those of a ‘dogmatic’ council). In the Church there are traditionally councils, or synods, which are styled ‘national councils,’ ‘provincial councils,’ or ‘general (ecumenical) councils,’ but none styled specifically a ‘pastoral council.’
"Pope John XXIII, in calling the Council, stated that the reasons he was doing so were of a character that could be broadly termed ‘pastoral,’ although Pope John himself, in using the word, merely spoke of the need today of a Church Magisterium ‘that is predominantly pastoral in character.’ Pope Paul VI similarly spoke of the ‘pastoral nature of the Council’ in his weekly general audience of January 12, 1966, but he didn’t call it a ‘pastoral council’ as if this were some new species of Church gathering that the faithful might go along with or not, as they chose" (p. 33).
This is only a small snippet from a much longer answer the authors give on this topic. To fully appreciate the strength of their argument, try to find a copy of the book. It will be reprinted in about a year, but in the meantime, if you can find it through interlibrary loan or on the Internet, it is well worth the search.
Q: The nun teaching my RCIA class said the Second Vatican Council changed the Church’s teaching on the reliability of Scripture, saying that it has only "limited inerrancy" or inerrancy only on matters of faith and morals. Is thus true?
A: Not by a long shot. Vatican II’s Dogmatic Constitution on Divine Revelation (Dei Verbum), states, "Therefore, since everything asserted by the inspired authors or sacred writers must be held to be asserted by the Holy Spirit, it follows that the books of Scripture must be acknowledged as teaching solidly, faithfully, and without error that truth which God wanted put into the sacred writings for the sake of our salvation" (DV 11).
Proponents of the theory of "limited inerrancy" claim the last clause of that is restrictive: Inerrancy extends only to things pertaining to our salvation, not to other things that may be found in Scripture.
You can show this is false just by reading the rest of the sentence. It says that "everything asserted by the inspired authors or sacred writers must be held to be asserted by the Holy Spirit." When one of the authors of Scripture makes a factual assertion—as opposed to using a figure of speech or a literary device, which are common in Scripture and which we often don’t recognize—it means that the Holy Spirit himself makes that same assertion.
Since the Holy Spirit knows everything and does not lie, he cannot make a false factual assertion on any topic he speaks about. Because his infallibility is not limited to faith and morals, anything he says is automatically true.
The "for the sake of our salvation" clause thus is not a restrictive clause, but a purposive clause—it explains why God put this truth in Scripture.
What most people don’t know is that the original draft of Dei Verbum contained a more ambiguous phrase (which said that Scripture faithfully taught "saving truth"), and, when multiple bishops cried out against this phrase because of its potential to be misunderstood, the pope himself intervened to make sure that the document would not be understood to be changing the Church’s teaching on inerrancy. This fact is ignored by people who deny the unrestricted inerrancy of Scripture.
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