Carl E. Olson's Blog, page 191
October 15, 2012
St. Teresa of Avila, "a woman extraordinarily gifted, both naturally and supernaturally..."
A couple of excerpts from 
Fire Within: St. Teresa of Avila, St. John of the Cross, and the Gospel--On Prayer, the late Fr. Dubay's outstanding study on prayer:
By all accounts, St. Teresa, the
foundress from Avila, was a woman extraordinarily gifted, both naturally
and supernaturally. In her were combined physical beauty, especially in
her youth, and a charm of personality that neither illness nor age
diminished. All witnesses seem to agree that she was the type of woman
no one can adequately describe in a few pages. She was one of those rare
personalities who combine qualities that seem to exclude one another
and are seldom found together in one individual. She loved tenderly and
affectionately, yet would brook no nonsense from anyone. She possessed
both a strong self-image and an astonishing humility. A born leader, she
was yet completely obedient to her superiors. She could be a windmill
of activity at one time and at another be lost in mystical
contemplation. Though she was highly intelligent and amazingly
efficient, she gravitated toward simple, humble men and women. (pp.
14-15)
Regarding a woman of prayer and penance
who came to visit her, Teresa remarks that "she was so far ahead of me
in serving the Lord that I was ashamed to stand in her presence", and
she says of the nuns with whom she lived in her first reformed convent
that "this house was a paradise of delight for Him. ... I live in their
company very, very much ashamed." She was of the opinion that she
deserved to be persecuted, and she welcomed even untrue accusations
against herself. Foundress though she was, Teresa must have been known
widly for choosing to do menial tasks, for that trait comes up more than
once in the depositions of her process.
In the very nature of things there is an
intimate connection between humility and obedience, and while I am
omitting in this sketch many of St. Teresa's heroic virtues, I feel that
the latter should be joined to the former. To appreciate both of these
virtues in her, we need to recall that she was anything but a timid,
passive individual. Diffident people often do not find it difficult to
acquiesce to another's decisions either because they are reluctant to
assume responsibility for important decisions or because they fear
failure and criticism. But as we have noted, Teresa was of an entirely
cast of mind: she was full of ideas and abounding in initiative and
determination. Criticism bothered her not in the least. Being a born
leader, she must have found submitting to another's will naturally
irksome. Yet her obedience was legendary. We cannot here detail the many
examples of the prompt, joyful carrying out of difficult directions
that she must have found extremely painful to her buoyant determination.
What she taught, she lived. (p. 27)
And here are some quotes from St. Teresa of Avila (1515-1582), the great
Carmelite contemplative, mystic, Saint, and Doctor of the Church, whose
feast is celebrated today:
• "There is no stage of prayer so sublime that it isn't
necessary to return often to the beginning. Along this path of prayer,
self knowledge and the thought of one's sins is the bread with which
all palates must be fed no matter how delicate they may be; they cannot
be sustained without this bread."
• "It is a dangerous thing to be satisfied with ourselves."
• "Do not be negligent about showing gratitude."
• "Those who in fact risk all for God will find that they have both lost all and gained all."
•
"We shouldn't care at all about not having devotion—as I have said—but
we ought to thank the Lord who allows us to be desirous of pleasing
Him, even though our works may be weak. This method of keeping Christ
present with us is beneficial in all stages and is a very safe means of
advancing."
• "Everything other than pleasing God is nothing."
• "Our security lies in obedience and refusal to deviate from God's law."
•
"Once you are placed in so high a degree as to desire to commune in
solitude with God and abandon the pastimes of the world, the most has
been done."
• "Teach by works more than by words. ... We must all try to be preachers through our deeds."
•
"Mental prayer in my opinion is nothing else than an intimate sharing
between friends; it means taking time frequently to be alone with Him
who we know loves us. In order than love be true and friendship endure,
the wills of the friends must be in accord."
• "I don't know why
we are amazed that there are so many evils in the Church since those
who are to be the models from which all might copy the virtues are so
obscurely fashioned that the spirit of the saints of the past has
abandoned the religious communities. May it please the divine Majesty to
remedy this as He sees it to be necessary."
• "Now, Lord, now; make the sea calm! May this ship, which is the Church, not always have to journey in a tempest like this."
Those are from the fourth volume of Sermon in a Sentence: A Treasury of Quotations on the Spiritual Life, a series (five, so far) of books featuring quotes from St. Thérèse of Lisieux (vol. 1), St. Francis de Sales (vol. 2), St. Catherine of Siena (vol. 3), and St. Thomas Aquinas (vol. 5). The books are edited and arranged by John P. McClernon, who also writes bios of the saints for each book.
On February 2, 2011, Pope Benedict XVI devoted his General Audience to St. Teresa, saying:
It is far from easy to sum up in a
few words Teresa’s profound and articulate spirituality. I would like
to mention a few essential points. In the first place St Teresa
proposes the evangelical virtues as the basis of all Christian and
human life and in particular, detachment from possessions, that is,
evangelical poverty, and this concerns all of us; love for one another
as an essential element of community and social life; humility as love
for the truth; determination as a fruit of Christian daring;
theological hope, which she describes as the thirst for living water.
Then we should not forget the human virtues: affability, truthfulness,
modesty, courtesy, cheerfulness, culture.
Secondly, St Teresa proposes a profound harmony with the great
biblical figures and eager listening to the word of God. She feels
above all closely in tune with the Bride in the Song of Songs and with
the Apostle Paul, as well as with Christ in the Passion and with Jesus
in the Eucharist. The Saint then stresses how essential prayer is.
Praying, she says, “means being on terms of friendship with God
frequently conversing in secret with him who, we know, loves us” (Vida
8, 5). St Teresa’s idea coincides with Thomas Aquinas’ definition of
theological charity as “amicitia quaedam hominis ad Deum”, a type of
human friendship with God, who offered humanity his friendship first; it
is from God that the initiative comes (cf. Summa Theologiae II-II, 23, 1).
Prayer is life and develops gradually, in pace with the growth of
Christian life: it begins with vocal prayer, passes through
interiorization by means of meditation and recollection, until it
attains the union of love with Christ and with the Holy Trinity.
Obviously, in the development of prayer climbing to the highest steps
does not mean abandoning the previous type of prayer. Rather, it is a
gradual deepening of the relationship with God that envelops the whole
of life.
Rather than a pedagogy Teresa’s is a true “mystagogy” of prayer: she
teaches those who read her works how to pray by praying with them.
Indeed, she often interrupts her account or exposition with a prayerful
outburst.
Here are some of the resources from Ignatius Press relating to St. Teresa of Avila:
• Fire Within: Teresa of Avila, John of the Cross and the Gospel on Prayer, by Fr. Thomas Dubay, S.M.
• Drink of the Stream: Prayers of Carmelites , compiled by Penny Hickey
• Teresa of Avila: Personality and Prayer , a DVD series by Fr. Dubay
• St. Teresa of Avila , an ambitious mini-series shot in Spain
No New or Different Church
No New or Different Church | Fr. James V. Schall, S.J. | Catholic World Report | Sojourns with Schall
The Second Vatican Council did not present or advocate a “new” Church or a “hermeneutic of rupture”.
“The Council Fathers neither could nor wished to create a new or different Church. They had neither the authority nor the mandate to do so. It was only in their capacity as bishops that they were now Council Fathers with a vote and decision-making power, that is to say, on the basis of the Sacrament and in the Church of the Sacrament. For this reason they neither could nor wished to create a different faith or a new Church, but rather to understand these more deeply and hence truly to ‘renew them.’ This is why a hermeneutic of rupture is absurd and is contrary to the spirit and the will of the Council Fathers.” — Pope Benedict XVI, Reflections at 50th Anniversary of Opening of Vatican II, October 11, 2012.
I.
When the Church does something, it first remembers. Pope Benedict XVI went to Loreto fifty years after Vatican II because Blessed John XXIII went to Loreto at the beginning of Vatican II. Benedict himself tells us that October 11, 1962 was a “splendid day.” He recalls the solemn procession of the two thousand Council Fathers into the St. Peter’s.
Then he remembers that Pius XI, in 1931, had dedicated the day to the Divine Motherhood of Mary. And why was this? To recall that 1500 years before this date, in 431, the Council of Ephesus acknowledged Mary as Mother of God; it affirmed “God’s indissoluble union with man in Christ.” John XXIII obviously chose this day, with all its overtones in full memory “to anchor the Council’s work firmly in the mystery of Jesus Christ.” Benedict, who was there as a young theologian, saw this procession as witness to the “image of the Church of Jesus Christ which embraces the whole world.”
Whether fifty years is sufficient to evaluate fully the work of Vatican II is doubtful. Benedict is frank. At the time the Church appeared to be losing influence in society. “Christianity, which had built and formed the Western world, seemed more and more to be losing its power to shape society. It appeared weary and it looked as if its (the West’s) future would be determined by other spiritual forces.” But the call of the Council seemed to be an innovation of great moment. “Great things were about to happen,” as Benedict recalled the mood at the time. The Italian word aggiornamento—to bring up-to-date—was on everyone’s lips.
The Year of Faith: Recovering a Culture that is Genuinely Catholic
The Year of Faith: Recovering a Culture that is Genuinely Catholic | Arland K. Nichols | Homiletic & Pastoral Review
Surveys of Catholics reveal that a majority do not live in accord with, or simply do not know, their Catholic faith. … On October 11, Pope Benedict called for a “Year of Faith” to “rediscover the journey of faith” in the midst of “a profound crisis of faith that has affected many people.”
Standing like dust-covered artifacts of a by-gone age, the Catholic Churches of Europe see only a small portion of baptized Catholics on any given Sunday. A majority of married Catholics in the United States, and Europe, use contraception; many support a politically correct redefinition of marriage; and believe abortion is justified; in at least some circumstances. Any survey of Catholics reveals that a majority do not live in accord with, or simply do not know, their Catholic faith.
This ignorance of the faith has not gone unnoticed by Pope Benedict who, when visiting the United States in 2008, painfully noted “that many of the baptized, rather than acting as a spiritual leaven in the world, are inclined to embrace attitudes contrary to the truth of the Gospel.” The Holy Father recognizes that we live in, and are greatly influenced by, a secular age. Recent popes, in noticing the growth of secularism and the weakening of faith, have responded: Blessed John Paul II called for a “new evangelization,” a call expanded by Pope Benedict, who founded the Pontifical Council for the New Evangelization. Beginning on October 11, Pope Benedict called for a “Year of Faith” so that men and women might “rediscover the journey of faith” in the midst of “a profound crisis of faith that has affected many people” (Porta fidei1 & 2).
Evangelization Inspires Minds and Hearts
In 1978, the first public words uttered by the first Slavic pope were “Be not afraid”—words that still remind us that we must not be afraid to believe and proclaim the good news. We must be a people willing to give our very lives to transform our culture, from what Pope Benedict has called “a dictatorship of relativism,” to one that fosters a culture of life and love. With this “year of faith,” the Holy Father is reminding us that “we must be committed to promoting the evangelization of cultures, conscious that Christ himself is the truth for every man and woman, and for all human history” (Sacramentum Caritatis 78). Amid a secular culture that is increasingly intolerant and militant, we must not be afraid to believe, and to be willing to communicate what we believe.
The Introduction to "The Price to Pay: A Muslim Risks All to Follow Christ"
The Introduction to The Price To Pay: A Muslim Risks All to Follow Christ
by Joseph Fadelle (Also available as an Electronic Book Download)
What then shall we say to this? If God is for us, who is against
us? He who did not spare his own Son but gave him up for us all, will he not
also give us all things with him? Who shall bring any charge against God’s
elect? It is God who justifies; who is to condemn? Is it Christ Jesus, who
died, yes, who was raised from the dead, who is at the right hand of God, who
indeed intercedes for us? Who shall separate us from the love of Christ? Shall
tribulation, or distress, or persecution, or famine, or nakedness, or peril, or
sword? As it is written, “For your sake we are being killed all the day long;
we are regarded as sheep to
be slaughtered.” No, in all these things we are
more than conquerors through him who loved us. For I am sure that neither
death, nor life, nor angels, nor principalities, nor things present, nor things
to come, nor powers, nor height, nor depth, nor anything else in all creation,
will be able to separate us from the love of God in Christ Jesus our Lord. (Rom
8:31–39)
Amman, December 22, 2000
Your sickness is Christ, and there is no remedy. You can never be cured of it.
My uncle Karim pulled out a revolver and pointed it at my chest. I held my
breath. Behind him, four of my brothers looked at me defiantly. We were alone
in a desert valley.
Even at that moment I did not believe it. No! I did not want to believe that
the members of my own family, including the uncle whom I had served faithfully
in the past, could really intend to kill me. How did they come to hate me so much—me,
their own blood, the one who had played with them as a child and had been
nourished by the same milk?
I did not understand it.
I did not understand either why, of all people, Karim, my beloved uncle, was
the one threatening me now—the man whose skin I had so often saved when he got
into trouble with my uncompromising father, the head of the family clan. Why?
Why could my family not simply accept my new life? Why did they want at all
costs to make me become one of them again?
Little by little I began to understand with dismay: they were willing to do
anything to get me back—me, the heir of the Musawi tribe, the favorite. I
recalled the beginning of that incredible scene.
Karim started by saying, “Your father is sick. He insists that you come back.
He authorized me to tell you that he would like to forget the past, everything
that has happened.” My brothers had not haggled about the promises made by my
father: one simple little yes on my part, and once again I could have the
house, the automobiles, and the revenues. In exchange, I had to forget the harm
that they [the Christians] had done to me!
How could I forget? And it was not just a question of forgetting! It was a
question of my faith.
“I cannot return to Iraq. I am baptized.”
“Baptized? What is that . . . ?!”
I had become a Christian; my life had changed. I could not go backward now. My
name was no longer Muhammad. My old first name no longer meant anything to me. But
I saw very well that they did not even understand what I was saying to them.
For them there was only a problem that could easily be settled with money.
Everything depended on the sum to be offered. But all of their attempts ran
into a wall: I refused to become Muslim again. To them I was an apostate.
We had already spent three hours discussing it at the side of the desert road.
We had not made an inch of progress; each one was still encamped on the
position that he had taken up. I was psychologically drained by the questions
from every side.
Suddenly the tone intensified. The aggression became palpable, menacing: “If
you are not willing to come with us, someone will kill you. In any event your
body will be repatriated. And your wife and children will die of hunger here; they
will come back to their country on their own.” For a brief moment I forgot the
distressing situation that I was in and attempted a vague interior smile tinged
with sadness. How could that Shiite Iraqi imagine for one second that an Arab
woman would manage to earn a living by her own efforts, without the help of a
man?
In the absence of a counterargument, my uncle Karim’s eyes showed hatred and
his expression hardened.”
“You must have undergone brainwashing”, he remarked coldly.
I could tell that he too was at the end of his patience, that he did not want
to talk anymore. An evil like this called for a radical remedy: Islamic law,
Sharia.
“You know our law. You know that there is a fatwa against you. This fatwa
orders us to kill you if you do not become a good Muslim again like us, like
before!”
I felt nauseous. My stomach clenched into an even tighter knot. I knew what was
going to happen. In recalling that death sentence, Karim was obliged to follow
through or else be considered an unbeliever or, worse, a renegade. My last
support had just slipped out from under my feet. Confronting the inevitable, I
exploded: “If you want to kill me, go ahead! You came with weapons and used
force, but I would like to use reason and speak with you. Read the Qur’an and
then the Gospel, and after that we can have a real discussion. Anyway, I do not
think that you really have the courage to shoot me!”
The wave of anger and fear had made me talk too fast. What did I have to gain
from such provocative language, like the swagger of the man sentenced to death
who defies the firing squad one last time? Maybe I thought that, being foreigners
in that country, they would not dare to alert the nearby localities by the
noise and thus risk being arrested. The detonation was deafening, with endless
repercussions in the valley. By what miracle had Karim not succeeded in hitting
me? In the depths of my soul I heard something like a female voice that
whispered to me, “Ehroub. Flee!”
I did not try then to explain this strange occurrence but took to my heels and
dashed off as though escaping from a brush fire.
As I ran I heard bullets whistling around me. There were certainly some aimed
at me, and aimed to kill me, judging by the trajectories, which came very close
to grazing me. The seconds seemed to pass like centuries, until I managed to
get far enough away that I could no longer hear their voices.
Since I was still running and thinking of the last minute that I had left to
live, I did not feel the pain caused by the bullet. I just noticed that my foot
became airborne, as though propelled by an incredible force. When I realized
what was happening, I was on the ground, in the mud, with the sensation of a
hot liquid running along my leg. But since I was completely wet, I could not
tell whether it was blood or mud. My last thought was to notice the silence
that had fallen. The weapons had stopped, no doubt when they saw me fall. Then
I lost consciousness.
October 13, 2012
“What must I do to inherit eternal life?”
A Scriptural Reflection on the Readings for Sunday, October 14, 2012 | Carl E. Olson
Readings:
• Wis 7:7-11
• Ps 90:12-13, 14-15, 16-17
• Heb 4:12-13
• Mk 10:17-30
“Once
we see Jesus as a teacher of enlightenment, faith changes its focus,” wrote New
Age guru Deepak Chopra in his 2008 best-seller, The Third Jesus: The Christ
We Cannot Ignore (New York, 2008),
“You don't need to have faith in the Messiah or his mission.”
Chopra’s
statement is a perfect summation of the way many people today claim to accept
Christ while actually rejecting him. And although the language of
“enlightenment” might be modern and monistic, Chopra’s approach is hardly new.
In fact, it bears a strong resemblance to the path chosen by the rich young
ruler, whose encounter with Jesus is described in today’s Gospel reading.
Kneeling
in respect, the man addressed Jesus as “Good teacher” and asked, “What must I
do to inherit eternal life?” It was a good start. After all, many people of the
first century and the twenty-first century (and every century between) have
failed to appreciate Jesus as a teacher. Many of them, it seems, don’t even ask
the basic, essential questions about their existence: “Who am I? Why am I here?
What or who am I made for?”
“Why,”
Jesus asked the man, “do you call me good? No one is good but God alone.” This
response is often misunderstood or misinterpreted. Some skeptics say, “See! Jesus denied that he was God!” But
this misses how Jesus used questions to prompt deeper answers, and how he
offered in his response an invitation to deeper reflection and recognition. Put
another way, Jesus was asking the rich young man to more clearly identify the
basis for his recognition that Jesus was good.
In
reciting some of the core commandments of the Law, Jesus further opened the
doors of invitation. He knew—as the one of gave the Law and fulfilled it
perfectly—that the Law was a signpost, not the destination. The Law, as Paul
often pointed out, reveals our desperate need for God, but cannot save us.
The
young man seemed to implicitly understand the incomplete nature of the Law, for
he had observed the Law his entire life, yet wanted something more. Jesus then
took the invitation to the next level, asking him to sell his possessions,
“then come, follow me.” It is here that the rubber meets the road, for it is
one thing to give your attention to a teacher for a few hours, days, or
semesters; it is quite another to give yourself completely to the Savior. It’s
nice to have a good teacher; it’s frightening to a put your life in the hands
of the Messiah and to join in his mission.
“He
did not follow,” wrote St. Augustine of the rich young man, “He just wanted a good
teacher, but he questioned who the teacher was and scorned the identity of the
One who was teaching.” Jesus seems so agreeable as long as he agrees with us.
It is so much easier to make him a mere teacher, or to remake him in our image
and according to our likes and dislikes. Jesus, however, will have none of it,
for he came not just to teach but also to transform.
The
treasure of earth is so tangible, while the treasure of heaven can seem remote
and unobtainable. Pleasure is so immediate, while God can sometime seem so
distant. Power is intoxicating, while humility can appear dry and dull. We can
be tempted to despair, like the disciples, and exclaim, “Then who can be
saved?” In response to this question, Jesus offered a third invitation—or,
better, a third overture of the same essential invitation: “For human beings it
is impossible, but not for God.” This is the invitation to total faith and
familial trust in God the Father, who sent the Son as Savior, and who gives the
Holy Spirit as a seal “in our hearts as a guarantee” (cf. 2 Cor. 1:21-22).
Many
men—rich, famous, and otherwise—have rejected the invitation. Will we depart in
sadness or accept in gladness?
(This "Opening the Word" column originally appeared in the October
11, 2009, edition of Our Sunday Visitor newspaper.)
October 12, 2012
History’s View of Vatican II
History’s View of Vatican II | Michael J. Miller | Catholic World Report
The who, what, where, when, and why of the Council
The famous
black-and-white photograph of the Second Vatican Council in session, taken from
a high balcony at the back of Saint Peter’s Basilica, shows more than 2,000
Council Fathers standing at their places in slanted stalls that line the nave,
with more than a dozen rows on either side. It resembles nothing so much as a
gargantuan monastic choir—unless it puts you in mind of the British Parliament
with the dimensions quadrupled.
Contemporary
perceptions of the Council varied widely, partly because of the extensive media
coverage. Although it promulgated a dogmatic
constitution on the Church, Lumen Gentium,
Vatican II was not a “constitutional convention.” An ecumenical council can
teach about the Church but cannot modify a divine institution, any more than a pope
can invent a new doctrine or change one of the Ten Commandments.
In his latest
book, The Second Vatican Council: An
Unwritten Story (Loreto Publications, 2012), Roberto de Mattei, a historian in Rome, writes: “[Ecumenical] Councils
exercise, under and with the Pope, a solemn teaching authority in matters of
faith and morals and set themselves up as supreme judges and legislators,
insofar as Church law is concerned. The Second Vatican Council did not issue
laws, and it did not even deliberate definitively on questions of faith and
morals. The lack of dogmatic definitions inevitably started a discussion about
the nature of its documents and about how to apply them in the so-called
‘postconciliar period.’”
Professor de
Mattei outlines the two main schools of thought in that discussion. The first
and more theological approach presupposes an “uninterrupted ecclesial
Tradition” and therefore expects the documents of Vatican II to be interpreted
in a way consistent with authoritative Church teaching in the past. This is the
“hermeneutic of continuity” emphasized by Pope Benedict XVI.
October 11, 2012
The Scandal of Faith
The Scandal of Faith | Carl E. Olson | Catholic World Report | Editorial
The Year of Faith and the 50th anniversary of Vatican II are occasion for self-examination and bold proclamation.
"It was by no means only yesterday that truth became embarrassing." With those rather wry words, Jean Daniélou, S.J., opened his book, Scandaleuse Vérité, published in English as The Scandal of Truth in August 1962. Daniélou, whose father was a Communist, was not taken in by the starry-eyed optimism of the early Sixties; on the contrary, he saw clearly that a humanism divorced from faith in Jesus Christ ends in despair and ruin, for "while man may be destined for happiness, he has been injured by sin, and can be healed only by the Cross."
And, in an introductory remark that is just as appropriate today as it was fifty years ago, he stated:
Above all I want to say to young Christians that they should not allow themselves to be over-awed by the false vestiges of modern-day doctrines, who murkiness masks the uprightness of eternal truth. The shocking bankruptcy of Marxist optimism and of the philosophies of despair as well has nothing about it that should impress them.
This, of course, was written before "Marxist optimism", in various forms, set the Western skies aflame and send shockwaves through campuses and governments in the late Sixties, as the supposedly best and brightest of a generation jumped off the crumbling cliff of Western civilization into the murkiness of modern-day doctrines. Much has changed in the years since, but the murkiness remains. Truth is still embarrassing; worse, it is increasingly mocked and savaged as an affront to "progress", "tolerance", and a hundred other empty buzz words co-opted by the post-modern sophists who dominate popular culture, media, and politics.
The Challenge of the Council
Two months after the publication of Daniélou's book—fifty years ago today—the Second Vatican Council opened. In his opening address. Blessed John XXIII stated:
The major interest of the Ecumenical Council is this: that the sacred
heritage of Christian truth be safeguarded and expounded with greater
efficacy. That doctrine embraces the whole man, body and soul. It bids us
live as pilgrims here on earth, as we journey onwards towards our
heavenly homeland. ...
John XXIII has sometimes been criticized for an apparently naive optimism. If the Pope's optimism is perceived as merely earthly or pragmatic in nature, the critics are correct. But John XXIII was not merely optimistic, but authentically hopeful, and the difference is essential. The key here is in John XXIII's emphasis on living as pilgrims, as people who, as he stated in the same address, "have a twofold obligation: as citizens of earth, and as citizens of heaven." Christians who live as if this world is all that matters fail their divine vocation, while Christians who live as if this world matters not all also fail their divine vocation, which is to be a disciple amidst the dust and trials of this world. "The Christian optimism," wrote G. K. Chesterton in Orthodoxy, "is based on
the fact that we do not fit in to the world. ... The optimist's pleasure was prosaic, for it dwelt on
the naturalness of everything; the Christian pleasure was poetic, for it dwelt
on the unnaturalness of everything in the light of the supernatural."
This light, John XXIII emphasized, is the light of divine revelation passed down through the Church, in continuity with herself, if such a qualification need be expressed (alas, it does):
What is needed at the present time is a new enthusiasm, a new joy and
serenity of mind in the unreserved acceptance by all of the entire
Christian faith, without forfeiting that accuracy and precision in its
presentation which characterized the proceedings of the Council of Trent
and the First Vatican Council. What is needed, and what everyone imbued
with a truly Christian, Catholic and apostolic spirit craves today, is
that this doctrine shall be more widely known, more deeply understood,
and more penetrating in its effects on men's moral lives. What is needed
is that this certain and immutable doctrine, to which the faithful owe
obedience, be studied afresh and reformulated in contemporary terms. For
this deposit of faith, or truths which are contained in our
time-honored teaching is one thing; the manner in which these truths are
set forth (with their meaning preserved intact) is something else.
Nearly twenty years ago, I was a young Evangelical Protestant who had, by God's grace, survived a couple of crises of faith (one of them while in Bible college), each of which forced me to confront, question, and wrestle with the assumptions of my childhood faith. (Eventually, in 1997, I entered the Catholic Church; for more on that, see my April 2012 editorial, "On Fifteen Years a Catholic".) At the heart of these crises—and I don't use the word "crises" dramatically or loosely, just frankly—were two basic questions: Why do I exist? And does Jesus Christ provide the answers to that question and every question that follows?
Why Do We Need Faith?
Why Do We Need Faith? | Joseph Ratzinger | From What It Means to Be a Christian
Editor's note: In the original Preface to
What It Means to Be a Christian , written in Münster on Easter 1965, Joseph Ratzinger wrote the following:
This little book presents in written form three sermons
that the author preached in the Cathedral at Münster to a congregation from the
Catholic Student Chaplaincy, December 13-15, 1964. The response to my efforts once
again to raise the question of what being Christian means for us in today's
world and to answer that question, in the spoken words of these sermons, has encouraged
me to publish them. I have consciously avoided going beyond the linguistic and material
limitations inherent in the whole of this on account of its origin; with just a
few alterations, it bears the form it took at the given moment. It is my hope
that what I have said, in a form that makes no literary claims, may help in its
own way toward that renewal of faith and proclamation which we so much need in
a world that has fundamentally changed.
Here is the chapter titled, "Why Do We Need Faith?"
Being a Christian means having love. That is unbelievably difficult and, at the
same time, incredibly simple. Yet however difficult it may be in many respects,
discovering this is still a profoundly liberating experience. You will probably
say, however: Well and good, that is what Jesus' message is about, and that is
very fine and comforting. But what have you theologians and priests made of it,
what has the Church made of it? If love is enough, why do we have your dogma?
Why do we have faith, which is forever competing with science? Is it not really
true, then, what liberal scholars have said, that Christianity has been
corrupted by the fact that, instead of talking with Christ about God the Father
and being like brothers to each other, people have constructed a doctrine of
Christ; by the fact that people, instead of leading others to mutual service,
have invented an intolerant dogma; by the fact that instead of urging people to
love, they have demanded belief and made being a Christian depend on a
confession of faith?
There is no doubt that there is something terribly serious in this question,
and like all really weighty questions, it cannot be dealt with just like that,
with a well-turned phrase. At the same time, however, we cannot miss the fact that
it also involves a simplification. To see this clearly, we need only
realistically apply our reflections so far to our own lives. Being a Christian
means having love; it means achieving the Copernican revolution in our
existence, by which we cease to make ourselves the center of the universe, with
everyone else revolving around us.
If we look at ourselves honestly and seriously, then there is not just
something liberating in this marvelously simple message. There is also something
most disturbing. For who among us can say he has never passed by anyone who was
hungry or thirsty or who needed us in any way? Who among us can say that he
truly, in all simplicity, carries out the service of being kind to others? Who
among us would not have to admit that even in the acts of kindness he practices
toward others, there is still an element of selfishness, something of
self-satisfaction and looking back at ourselves? Who among us would not have to
admit that he is more or less living in the pre-Copernican illusion and looking
at other people, seeing them as real, only in their relationship to our own
selves? Thus, the sublime and liberating message of love, as being the sole and
sufficient content of Christianity, can also become something very demanding.
It is at this point that faith begins. For what faith basically means is just
that this shortfall that we all have in our love is made up by the surplus of
Jesus Christ's love, acting on our behalf. He simply tells us that God himself
has poured out among us a superabundance of his love and has thus made good in
advance all our deficiency. Ultimately, faith means nothing other than
admitting that we have this kind of shortfall; it means opening our hand and
accepting a gift. In its simplest and innermost form, faith is nothing but
reaching that point in love at which we recognize that we, too, need to be
given something. Faith is thus that stage in love which really distinguishes it
as love; it consists in overcoming the complacency and self-satisfaction of the
person who says, "I have done everything, I don't need any further
help." It is only in "faith" like this that selfishness, the
real opposite of love, comes to an end. To that extent, faith is already present
in and with true loving; it simply represents that impulse in love which leads
to its finding its true self: the openness of someone who does not insist on
his own capabilities, but is aware of receiving something as a gift and of standing
in need of it.
This faith is of course susceptible to many and varied developments and
interpretations. We need only to become aware that the gesture of opening our
hand, of being able to receive in all simplicity, through which love first
attains its inner purity, is grasping at nothing unless there is someone who
can fill our hands with the grace of forgiveness. And thus once again everything
would have to end in idle waste, in meaninglessness, if the answer to this,
namely, Christ, did not exist. Thus, true loving necessarily passes into the
gesture of faith, and in that gesture lies a demand for the mystery of Christ,
a reaching out toward it--and that mystery, when it unfolds, is a necessary
development of that basic gesture; to reject it would be to reject both faith and
love.
And yet, conversely, however true this may be--and however much christological
and ecclesiastical faith is for that reason absolutely necessary--at the same
time, it remains true that everything we encounter in dogma is, ultimately, just
interpretation: interpretation of the one truly sufficient and decisive
fundamental reality of the love between God and men. And it remains true,
consequently, that those people who are truly loving, who are as such also
believers, may be called Christians.
Related IgnatiusInsight.com
Articles:
• Seeing Jesus
in the Gospel of John | Joseph Cardinal Ratzinger | From
On The Way to Jesus Christ
• Are Truth, Faith,
and Tolerance Compatible? | Joseph Cardinal Ratzinger | From Truth
and Tolerance: Christian Belief and World Religions.
• On Reading the Pope | Fr. James V. Schall, S.J.
• Reincarnation: The Answer of Faith | Christoph Schönborn
• Exploring the Catholic Faith! |
An Interview with Diane Eriksen
• The Source of Certitude | Thomas Dubay, S.M. |
Epilogue to Faith and Certitude
• The Crisis of Faith | Father John Hardon, S.J.
• Understanding The Hierarchy of Truths | Douglas Bushman, S.T.L.
Joseph Ratzinger, now Pope Benedict XVI, was for over two decades
the Prefect for the Congregation of the Doctrine of the Faith under Pope
John Paul II. He is a renowned theologian and author of numerous books.
A mini-bio and full listing of his books published by Ignatius Press are
available on his IgnatiusInsight.com
Author Page.
Why Believe? An Apologetic of Faith
"Faith is
always at a disadvantage; it is a perpetually defeated thing which
survives all of its conquerors," wrote G. K. Chesterton.
Faith is the Christian word. Avery Cardinal Dulles, S.J., in his masterful theology of faith, The Assurance of Things Hoped For,
writes, "More than any other religion, Christianity deserves to be
called a faith" (3). He points out that in the New Testament the Greek
words for "faith" and "belief" occur nearly 500 times, compared to less
than 100 for "hope" and about 250 for "charity" or "love." Which is not
to say, of course, that faith is more important than love, since Paul
makes it clear that love is the greatest of the three theological
virtues: "So faith, hope, love abide, these three; but the greatest of
these is love" (1 Cor. 13:13).
But there is no doubt—pun intended—that faith is essential to being a
Christian and to having a right relationship with God, as the author of
the Epistle to the Hebrews states, emphatically and succinctly: "And
without faith it is impossible to please him. For whoever would draw
near to God must believe that he exists and that he rewards those who
seek him" (Heb. 11:6).
The daunting work of defining and analyzing faith has been described,
with perhaps a dose of knowing humor, as the "cross of theologians." As
with hope and love, the virtue of faith can appear initially rather
simple to define, often as "belief in God." But some digging beneath the
surface suggests a far more complicated task, as some basic questions
suggest: What is belief? How is faith obtained? Is it human or divine in
origin? How should man demonstrate his faith? What is the relationship
of faith to the will, to the intellect, and to the emotions?
The apologist, meanwhile, must respond to charges against faith: that
it is "irrational" or that it is the cause of conflict and violence. In
recent years a number of popular, best-selling books written by
atheists have called into question not only tenets of Christianity—the
historical reliability of the Bible, the divinity of Jesus, the
Resurrection, and so forth—but the viability and rational soundness of
faith itself.
One such book is The End of Faith: Religion, Terror, and the Future of Reason
by Sam Harris, which repeatedly—mantra-like—uses words such as
"ignorant" and "irrational" in making the case that religious faith is
not only outdated, but overtly evil. Every religion, Harris muses,
"preaches the truth of propositions for which no evidence is even conceivable. This puts the ‘leap’ in Kierkegaard’s leap of faith" (Harris, The End of Faith,
23). He adds: "Religious faith represents so uncompromising a misuse of
the power of our minds that it forms a kind of perverse, cultural
singularity—a vanishing point beyond which rational discourse proves
impossible" (Harris, The End of Faith, 25).
Calling Christians and other religious believers stupid and
unreasonable is often the default argument for Harris; it is also an
approach, crude yet often effective, embraced by many who believe that
religious faith is an offense to enlightened, modern man. With that
basic opposition in mind, let us take up two basic tasks: defining what
faith is and answering some of the charges against belief.
Do I Trust the Chair?
A witticism goes: "Everybody should believe in something; I believe
I’ll have another drink." It is more accurate to say that everybody does
believe in something, even if it is belief in the ability to live
without belief. Of course, even the skeptic understands that life in the
material world requires certain types of belief or faith, using those
terms broadly and non-theologically: the belief that stop lights will
work correctly, faith that I will be given a paycheck at the end of the
month, the trust that my g.asp of basic math will keep me on the good
side of the IRS.
One argument posits that sitting upon a chair is an act of faith, so
even atheists have faith when they sit on a chair in, say, a home they
are visiting for the first time. If for some reason I doubted the chair
in question would hold my weight, I could ascertain its load-bearing
capabilities by asking my host to sit in it first, thereby ridding
myself of concern (and likely puzzling or offending my host). The
argument only goes so far when it comes to faith in what cannot be seen,
touched, or proven by scientific means. It does, however, suggest what
many people are reluctant to admit: that all of us have beliefs and we
live our lives based on those beliefs, even if we never articulate or
define them. As Joseph Ratzinger observes in Introduction to Christianity,
"Every man must adopt some kind of attitude to the basic questions, and
no man can do this in any other way but that of entertaining belief." (Introduction to Christianity [2nd ed.], 71)
We, as creatures, have limited, finite knowledge, and so must make
decisions—practical, relational, philosophical—without the luxury of
proof. We use common sense and rely on our experience and,
significantly, on the experience and testimony of others. I may not know
for certain that the chair will hold me, but I conclude it is rational
to think it will, based on certain observations: The chair looks
well-constructed; it appears to be used on a regular basis; and it is in
the home of someone who isn’t the sort of person to ask guests to sit
on a chair that might fall apart upon human contact. Sitting on the
chair is a reasonable thing to do. Implicit here is the matter of trust.
Do I trust the chair? Do I trust my host? And, more importantly, do I
trust my perception and assessment of the chair?
Consider another example. You receive a phone call at work from your
best friend, who is also your neighbor. He exclaims, with obvious
distress, "Your house is on fire! Come home quickly!" What is your
reaction? You believe your friend’s statement—not because you’ve seen a
live shot of your house in flames on a Channel 12 "news flash" but
because of your faith in the truthfulness of the witness. You accept his
word because he has proven himself worthy of faith in various ways.
Trust in testimony and witness is an essential part of a theological
understanding of faith.
God’s Gift and Our Response
The Old Testament emphasizes trusting in God and obeying his
utterances, which were often (although not exclusively) entrusted
(there’s that word again!) to patriarchs and prophets: Abraham, Jacob,
Moses, Samuel, Jeremiah, and others. But while there are many men and
women of faith in the Old Testament, trustworthiness and faithfulness
are most clearly ascribed to God: "Know therefore that the Lord your God
is God, the faithful God who keeps covenant and steadfast love with
those who love him and keep his commandments …" (Deut. 7:9). The
well-known narratives of the Old Testament are accounts of faith and
faithfulness (and much faithlessness), all deeply rooted in a
covenantal understanding of God’s revelation of himself to man. It is
God who initiates and it is God who gives wisdom, understanding, and
faith.
The New Testament places more emphasis on the doctrinal content of
faith, focusing upon man’s response to the message and person of Jesus
Christ. Again, faith is a gift that comes from God, accompanied by God’s
promises of life. "No one can come to me," Jesus declares, "unless the
Father who sent me draws him; and I will raise him up on the last day"
(John 6:44). Paul repeatedly states that faith is intimately linked with
trust and obedience, referring to the "obedience of faith" (Rom. 1:5),
exhorting the Christians at Philippi to "work out your own salvation
with fear and trembling" (Phil. 2:12), and telling the Galatians that
circumcision is not the issue of concern, "but faith working through
love" (Gal. 5:6). Faith is portrayed as a living, vital movement that
brings man into a grace-filled union with the Father, through Jesus, in
the Holy Spirit. According to James and John, while faith is distinct
from good works, it is never separate from them, for they display the
reality of faith: "Show me your faith apart from your works, and I by my
works will show you my faith" (Jas. 2:18), and "this is his
commandment, that we should believe in the name of his Son Jesus Christ
and love one another, just as he has commanded us" (1 John 3:23).
Needless to say, the Old and New Testaments together present a
complex and rich tapestry of understandings of faith, including
elements, Cardinal Dulles writes in his study, "such as personal trust,
assent to divinely revealed truth, fidelity, and obedience" (Assurance, 17).
At the Threshold of Belief
Augustine and Aquinas stressed that the object of belief cannot be
seen or directly perceived, nor proven by mere logic. If you can prove it, you don’t need to believe in it. And yet, as Josef Pieper explained in his essay, "On Faith," the believer must
know enough about the matter to understand "what it is
all about." An altogether incomprehensible communication is no
communication at all. There is no way either to believe or not to
believe it or its author. For belief to be possible at all, it is
assumed that the communication has in some way been understood. (Faith Hope Love, 24)
God has revealed himself in a way that is comprehensible to man (in
an act theologians call "divine condescension"), even if man cannot
fully comprehend, for example, the Incarnation or the Trinity. Reason
and logic can take man to the door of faith, but cannot carry man across
the threshold. "What moves us to believe," explains the Catechism, "is
not the fact that revealed truths appear as true and intelligible in the
light of our natural reason: We believe because of the authority of God
himself who reveals them, who can neither deceive nor be deceived" (CCC
156).
Belief can also rest upon the testimony of someone else, as Paul
states: "But how are men to call upon him in whom they have not
believed? And how are they to believe in him of whom they have never
heard? And how are they to hear without a preacher?" (Rom. 10:14).
Aquinas succinctly remarks: "Now, whoever believes, assents to someone’s
words…" (Summa Theologiae II:2:11). Pieper points out,
however, that this leads to a significant problem: that no man is
superior enough spiritually to serve as "an absolutely valid authority"
for another man. This problem is only solved when the One who is above
all men communicates with man. This communication, of course, reaches
perfection in the Incarnation, when God becomes man—that is, when the
Word, God’s perfect communication, becomes flesh. And this is why, to
put it simply, the historicity of Jesus Christ and the witness of those
who knew him is at the heart of the Catholic faith.
Faith is ultimately an act of will, not of emotion or deduction. The Catechism of the Catholic Church,
quoting Aquinas, teaches, "In faith, the human intellect and will
cooperate with divine grace: Believing is an act of the intellect
assenting to the divine truth by command of the will moved by God
through grace" (CCC 155). This submission is called "the obedience of
faith" (CCC 143). Logic, reason, and recognition of authority go only so
far; an act of will, dependent upon God’s grace, is required for faith
to be realized. Yet this response of the will is not an impersonal act,
like selecting numbers for the lottery, but an intensely personal
response. "We believe, because we love," wrote John Henry Newman in a
sermon titled, "Love the Safeguard of Faith against Superstition." "The
divinely enlightened mind," he continued, "sees in Christ the very
Object whom it desires to love and worship,—the Object correlative of
its own affections; and it trusts him, or believes, from loving him."
So much for understanding what faith is. What are some of the popular, common criticisms of faith that need answering?
Faith is contrary to reason. Harris puts it in this
provocative form: "And so, while religious people are not generally
mad, their core beliefs are. This is not surprising, since most
religions have merely canonized a few products of ancient ignorance and
derangement and passed them down to us as though they were primordial
truths" (The End of Faith, 72). Yet the claim, "I don’t need
faith!" is ultimately a statement of faith. If reason is the ultimate
criteria of all things, can the skeptic prove, using reason, that reason
explains everything about reality? To say "I will only trust that which
I can logically prove" begs the question: "How do you know you can
trust your mind and your logic? Aren’t you placing your faith in your
reason?"
Thus atheism requires belief, including faith in (choose one) the
perfectibility of human nature, the omniscience of science, the equality
of socialism, or the steady conquest of political, technological, and
social progress. But reasoned observation shows that the "truths"
produced by these philosophies and systems of thought are lacking and
incomplete; they cannot provide a satisfactory answer to the big
questions about life, reality, and existence. The belief in science is a
good example. The Catholic Church recognizes that science, the study of
physical realities through experimentation and observation, is a valid
source of truth. But this is quite different from believing that science
can and will provide the answers to every question put forth by man.
That is a belief—commonly called scientism—that cannot be proven but
rests upon the unstable premise of materialism, which is a philosophical
belief, not a matter of proven scientific study. For example, Harris
writes that there "is no reason that our ability to sustain ourselves
emotionally and spiritually cannot evolve with technology, politics, and
the rest of culture. Indeed, it must evolve, if we are to have any future at all" (The End of Faith, 40). If that isn’t an overt statement of dogmatic faith, what is?
Put simply, the Church believes that reason is limited and not contrary to faith. True faith is not irrational, but supra-rational. In the words of Blaise Pascal, author of Pensées,
whose rational genius is difficult to deny (unless one wishes to be
unreasonable about it): "Faith certainly tells us what the senses do
not, but not the contrary of what they see; it is above, not against
them" (Pensées, 68). So faith does not contradict the facts of the material world, but goes beyond them.
Faith is a crutch for those who can’t handle the difficulties of life.
I once worked for a delightful Jewish lady who was married to a
self-described atheist. She once told me, with obvious frustration, that
he would often tell her that faith in God was simply "a crutch." This
is not an argument at all; it is simply of way of saying, "I’d rather
trust in myself than in God." But belief in self only goes so far; it
obviously does not save us from death, or even suffering, disease,
tragedy, heartache, depression, and difficulties. Everyone has a
"crutch," that is, a means of support we turn to in the darkest moments.
These can include power, money, drugs, sex, fame, and adulation, all of
which are, by any reasonable account, limited and unsatisfying when it
comes to the ultimate questions: What is the meaning of life? Why am I
here? Who am I? Harris, for his part, spends a considerable portion of
the final chapter of his book arguing that Eastern mysticism is a
thoroughly rational and legitimate means for living a full life. In the
end, his book says, "Religion is evil. Spirituality is good." But
spirituality does not provide answers; religion does.
Faith is the source of superstition, bigotry, and violence.
We’ve all heard variations on this theme, mouthed by the increasing
number of people indoctrinated to believe that nothing good ever came
from Christianity and that every advance in human history has been due
to the diminishing influence of Christian thought, practice, and
presence. Never mind that the bloodiest and most savage century in human
history was dominated by forms of atheistic Marxism (e.g., the Soviet
Union) and neo-pagan Fascism (e.g., Nazi Germany), accounting for the
deaths of tens of millions. Harris insists that Communism and Nazism
were so bad because they were religious in nature:
Consider the millions of people who were killed by Stalin
and Mao: Although these tyrants paid lip service to rationality,
communism was little more than a political religion. … Even though their
beliefs did not reach beyond this world, they were both cultic and
irrational. (Harris, The End of Faith, 79)
This is actually quite true, and provides further evidence that every
"ism"—even atheism, materialism, and the "pragmatism" endorsed by
Harris—is religious in nature. History readily shows that man is a
religious animal who thinks religious thoughts and has religious
impulses. As Chesterton wrote in Heretics:
Every man in the street must hold a metaphysical system,
and hold it firmly. The possibility is that he may have held it so
firmly and so long as to have forgotten all about its existence. This
latter situation is certainly possible; in fact, it is the situation of
the whole modern world. The modern world is filled with men who hold
dogmas so strongly that they do not even know that they are dogmas.
("Concluding Remarks on the Importance of Orthodoxy")
Chesterton suggests elsewhere that if you wish to be free from
contact with superstition, bigotry, and violence, you’ll need to
separate yourself from all human contact. The choice is not between
religion and non-religion, but between true religion and false religion.
Christian faith, then, is not contrary to reason. Nor is it merely a
phantasmal crutch built on pious fantasies. Neither is faith the source
of evil. Faith is a supernatural virtue, a gift, and a grace. Faith is
focused on God and truth; it is the friend of wisdom. "Simple
secularists still talk as if the Church had introduced a sort of schism
between reason and religion," wrote Chesterton in The Everlasting Man,
"The truth is that the Church was actually the first thing that ever
tried to combine reason and faith" ("Man and Mythologies"). The
challenge for every Catholic is to give assent and to have faith, while
the Catholic apologist must strive to show that such assent is not only
reasonable, but brings us into saving contact with the only reason for
living.
SIDEBARS
If You Understood Him, It Would Not Be God
A key Christian thinker regarding faith is Augustine,
especially noteworthy here because he often wrote in a controversial
context, providing a wealth of theological and philosophical insights
into the nature of belief. As he acknowledged in his Confessions
and elsewhere, faith is only as worthwhile and strong as its object and
its source. For Augustine, of course, both the object and source of
faith is God. There should not be any tension or conflict between reason
and faith, especially since they both flow from the same source.
Therefore, reason should and must play a central role in the spiritual
life; it is by reason that we come to know and understand what faith and
belief are. In Augustine’s intense quest for God he asked: Can the
Triune God be understood by reason alone? The answer is a firm "No." "If
you understood him," he insisted, "it would not be God" (Sermo 52, 6, 16: PL 38, 360; Sermo 117, 3, 5: PL 38, 663). The insufficiency of reason in the face of God and true doctrine is also addressed in the Confessions. Regarding an immature Christian who is ill-informed about doctrine, the Bishop of Hippo notes:
When I hear of a Christian brother, ignorant of these
things, or in error concerning them, I can tolerate his uninformed
opinion; and I do not see that any lack of knowledge as to the form or
nature of this material creation can do him much harm, as long as he
does not hold a belief in anything which is unworthy of thee, O Lord,
the Creator of all. But if he thinks that his secular knowledge pertains
to the essence of the doctrine of piety, or ventures to assert dogmatic
opinions in matters in which he is ignorant—there lies the injury. (Confessions V:5)
Another example of Augustine’s high regard for reason and for its
central place in his religious commitments can be seen in his experience
with the teachings of Mani. As Augustine learned about the Manichaean
view of the physical world, he became increasingly e.asperated with the
lack of logic and rational evidence in it. The breaking point came when
he was ordered to believe teachings about the heavenly bodies which were
in clear contradiction to logic and mathematics: "But still I was
ordered to believe, even where the ideas did not correspond with—even
when they contradicted—the rational theories established by mathematics
and my own eyes, but were very different" (Confessions V:3). And so Augustine left Manichaeanism in search of a reasonable faith.
Eight Books About Faith
The Assurance of Things Hoped For, by Avery Dulles, S.J.
Confessions by St. Augustine
Faith and Certitude by Thomas Dubay, S.M.
Faith Hope Love by Josef Pieper
Fides et Ratio ("On Faith and Reason"), by Pope John Paul II
A Grammar of Assent by John Henry Newman
Introduction to Christianity by Joseph Cardinal Ratzinger
Pensées by Blaise Pascal
[This article originally appeared in This Rock magazine.]
"The Crisis of Faith" by Fr. John Hardon, S.J.
The Crisis of Faith | By Father John Hardon, S.J.
Every rational human being believes. When we believe we accept the word
of another person. Someone knows that something is true, either from experience
or reason, and we accept what he tells us because we trust that he knows
what he is talking about and is not deceiving us.
On this basis the only unbeliever would be a person who is completely
out of his mind. We believe that the persons whom we call our father and
mother are our parents. We believe that what we are buying is what the
store tells us is worth paying for. We believe that the lessons we learned
in childhood are true. Who would even enter marriage unless both partners
believed in the spouse with whom they were entering matrimony?
In a word, faith is part of our very nature as rational human beings.
However, it is one thing to believe in other people and something else
to believe in God. To believe in what people tell us is called human faith.
To believe in what God has revealed is called Divine faith. To be still
more clear, Divine faith properly so called is the assent of our intellect
to what God has revealed, not because we comprehend what God tells us
it true, but only because we accept a truth on His authority who can neither
deceive, or be deceived.
God cannot deceive because He is all good and therefore cannot tell a
lie. He cannot be deceived because He knows all things and therefore can
never be wrong.
St. John the Evangelist raises one of the most embarrassing questions
in the Bible. How is it, he asked, that we who are so ready to believe
in men are so slow to believe in God? The answer is painfully obvious.
We are so slow to believe in God because what He demands of us is nothing
less than to accept incomprehensible mysteries which are beyond our human
capacity even to conceive before they are revealed, and beyond our grasp
to fully penetrate even after they are revealed.
We see that faith and revelation are related as cause and effect. God
reveals Himself, who He is and what He wants; if we respond we believe.
All of this has been a prelude to the real message of this article, for
the present crisis in the Catholic Church is really a crisis of faith.
What is the Crisis?
A crisis in general is a situation that was unexpected but that poses
certain grave problems for urgent solution. It is in the nature of a disaster,
but not quite. More accurately, it could be described as impending disaster
that calls for immediate and drastic action. If action is promptly and
properly taken, the impending disaster will not occur. In fact, as a result
of meeting the serious problems that a crisis raises, great good will
come from having risen to the critical situation.
When we say that the Church is faced with a crisis of faith, we mean just
that. It is a critical period in the Church's life when millions of her
faithful are confused about their beliefs. They are uncertain about what
as Catholics they are to hold. And as a result they are emotionally insecure,
bewildered and, in Christ's words, wandering as sheep without a shepherd.
Wherein precisely lies the crisis? It might be described as a communitarian
state of mind which differs somewhat in different people. But many of
them are in one of three mental attitudes towards even the most sacred
mysteries of Divine revelation.
Some are in open rebellion against the faith of their fathers. They resent
the fact that, as some will tell you, they had been brainwashed to believe
what modern science, or scholarship, or study, or the social sciences,
or psychology now show to have been useful props in the past, or perhaps
convenient labels for the unknown, but these beliefs are no longer tenable
today.
Other people are not yet ready to discard the Faith they may still cherish
with one part of their being, maybe for emotional or ritual or personal
reasons. But they have serious doubts about so much of what Catholics
used to believe with the naivete of children. Some articles of faith they
are willing to admit, but others they have strong reservations about.
There is so much talk nowadays about collegiality that what used to be
called the papal primacy is, for such people, no longer an established
article of faith.
There are so many theories going the rounds about transfinalization and
transignification that belief in the real bodily presence of Christ in
the Most Holy Eucharist, for such people, is uncertain to say the least.
That is why some priests are so casual in their indiscriminate giving
of Holy Communion to anyone, whether Catholic or Protestant or, for that
matter, Jewish or Hindu.
There is so much speculation everywhere, they feel, about Christ's personality,
that it seems to them that to bring Christ down to our own level we must
make Him a human person, who perhaps, in the Nestorian fashion, was also
divine; but He only gradually developed His full awareness of who He was.
He could not, it is thought, have been truly human if from the first moment
of His existence He was conscious of His dual identity.
There are so many problems raised by the demographic experts, and the
social scientists about the expanding world population, that not a few
people seriously doubt the teaching of the Church on contraception. And
besides, rearing a normal family in contraceptive societies like America
would place an intolerable burden on Catholics. So they settle for questioning
the Church's magisterium and follow instead the teaching of the Church's
sworn enemies.
Among priests, they have heard and read so much about being open to the
Spirit, so much about problems of identity, so much about optional celibacy,
so much about leadership instead of authority, about relating to the world,
about cultic mentality instead of sound involvement, about the Eucharist
as a meal, and confession being emotionally harmful, so much about a functional
priesthood, so much about the hierarchy as teachers, indeed, but not divinely
authorized to command obedience.
We have acquired a whole new vocabulary about relevance, and involvement
and harmonization and power politics and the third way and sensitivity
programs and ritual preoccupation and respectful disobedience and communal
discernment and institutionalism, that it is no wonder so many have serious
doubts not only about this or that feature of Catholic life, but even
about its value at all.
Given all that is happening, a third group of people are not rejecting
the Faith or in serious doubt about Catholic doctrine, but they are bewildered.
Modern popes have addressed in their documents the synonyms for bewilderment
that besets millions of the still faithful faithful. They are confused,
and distraught, and perplexed, and worried and some are all but crushed
by the spectacle of a post-conciliar Church that is caught up in an interior
convulsion of spirit that has rocked all of Christendom to its foundations.
In spite of brave words to the contrary, anyone familiar with what is
happening is concerned; and the spectacle shows no signs of an early abating.
Why the Crisis?
Sheer realism, then, requires that we admit there is a crisis of faith
in the Church. What are we to make of it? How to explain it? Why is there
a crisis at all? By now many explanations have been given and they all
have merit, insofar as they honestly face the facts and concede what those
who still believe firmly are convinced is true: that for numerous still
nominal Catholics, and for not a few of their clerical, religious and
lay leaders, the unqualified faith of Catholic Christianity has been weakened
and for some of them has been lost.
What complicates the issue and, in fact, is part of the crisis, is that
not infrequently those who no longer interiorly believe in the integrity
of God's revelation insist that they are not only Christians and Catholics
but frankly better Christians and better Catholics than those whom they
condescendingly call pre-counciliar, or anti-intellectual, or simply unaware
of what is going on.
There is no point here in answering the learned objections brought up
against the historic faith of the Catholic Church. Nor is there room in
the present context for dealing at length with those who speak of discontinuity
of faith in place of continuity, or who opt for a continuing revelation
that erases the notion of a completed revelation in the person of Jesus
Christ and the apostolic age, or who insist on redefining every single
premise of the Church's perennial teaching, in favor of a process theology
in which everything - including God - is said to be in perpetual and never-ending
change.
Why did such a crisis come about in the first place? Surely no phenomenon
is without some explanation, and this one better be explained. The explanation
is not hard to find. There is a crisis of faith in the Catholic Church
because there has been an intrusion of alien ideas.
The moment we say this, however, we are immediately confronted with the
two terms, "intrusion" and "alien ideas," for the simple reason that those
responsible for the crisis will deny either that there has been an intrusion
or that the new ideas are anything else except that they are "new," but
they should not be called alien.
An idea is alien to any religion when it openly contradicts what that
religion stands for. For example: the Catholic Church has always believed
that God is all perfect because He is infinite. There are now writers,
ostensibly Catholic, who say the opposite, that God is finite and, in
fact, He needs us to reach whatever perfection He will eventually attain.
The Catholic Church has always believed that God became man in the Person
of Jesus Christ. There are now learned writers who deny this: they believe
that Jesus is somehow divine because God was close to Him, but He is really
only human, the Man from Nazareth.
The Catholic Church has always believed that Christian marriage is an
indissoluble union of one man and one woman until death. There are now
presumably Catholic moralists who say that is part of the past. From now
on (they say) even sacramental marriages can and should be dissolved with
the freedom to enter a second or a third partnership after divorce.
The Catholic Church has always believed that Jesus Christ practiced the
counsels of chastity, poverty, and obedience, and those who receive the
grace are urged to follow His example. But now there are ostensibly Catholic
proponents of a new spirituality that erases this whole tradition. Instead
of celibacy they propose meaningful relationships with persons of the
opposite or same sex; instead of actual poverty they would substitute
a subjective concern for the poor, and instead of obedience they promote
shared responsibility or group consensus to replace authority.
But if these ideas are alien, in the sense of foreign to the Catholic
philosophy of life, are they intrusions? Yes, they are on several counts,
as anyone who knows what is taking place in the world can testify.
They are first of all an intrusion because they are unjustified by the
premises of authentic Roman Catholicism. A finite God is not an infinite
God; a merely human Jesus is not the Son of God who became man for our
salvation; a sacramental priesthood is not a merely functional ministry;
an indissoluble marriage is not a dissoluble marriage; and a purely subjective
poverty or nominal celibacy or verbal obedience are not the evangelical
counsels that the Church has declared were revealed to us in the life
and teaching of the Savior.
Either the Catholic Church remains constant in her fundamental articles
of faith, over the centuries, or she is no longer the Church founded by
Christ.
These alien ideas are furthermore an intrusion because for many persons
they have literally invaded people's minds by unsuspected credence being
given to things that appeared orthodox but are in fact heterodox.
It is not to lay blame on particular individuals whose names by now are
commonplace to anyone professionally in the sacred sciences. What is beyond
question is that in many, perhaps most, cases when these vagrant ideas
were first ventilated they seemed so plausible, even persuasive, that
it is not surprising there have been so many victims of this massive assault
on the believing Catholic mind.
But there is one more reason that must sadly be added to explain why it
is justifiable to call what we are describing an invasion of alien ideas.
An invasion is, by definition, done not only by an outside force and not
only surreptitiously. It is also done coercively.
Of course it is not always by physical force, although physical violence
even now is being exercised against millions of our fellow Christians
in China, and Africa, where the most inhuman means are used to break down
the resistance of priests, religious and the laity - to give up their
Catholic heritage.
What is meant by intrusion is the coercive pressure: psychological and
social, economic and legal, academic and professional, educational and
governmental that cumulatively can become all but irresistible to conformity
with the people and agencies and institutions that are in control of today's
mind-shaping structures and social communications.
That some of these compulsive elements have also entered the sacred precincts
of the Church's organization is not strange. There is a crusade of conformism
in societies like America. Woe to anyone who dares to raise a voice in
protest or who invokes the rights of conscience to protect himself from
those who, in the name of conscience, are demanding allegiance to doctrinaire
theories of a structure-less Church, or a cult-less priesthood, or a ruleless
religious life, or that every marriage is open to ecclesiastical annulment.
Just one more observation, a plea for confidence, which means implicit
trust in God.
No one who knows what the situation is, doubts that the Catholic Church
is going through a veritable emergency of faith. What is an emergency
but a time for urgent decisions, that is discriminating judgment? What
leaders of the Church need to do today is not be shaken by the storm that
is raging all around them, but to hold on literally for dear life to what
Christ has revealed, to what has been defended for us by the champions
of orthodoxy like Athanasius, Augustine, Jerome and Gregory the Great,
lived out before us by saints and mystics like Benedict, Francis and Ignatius
Loyola, like Clare, Margaret Mary and Teresa, like Elizabeth Seton and
Thomas More, and experienced by us in whatever span of life we have so
far lived.
There are seductive voices everywhere and some are very erudite. They
may also claim numbers on their side. But no, the numbers in favor of
the true Faith and the true Church are legion. They are all the myriad
souls since Christ ascended to His Father who are now in the Church Triumphant.
They are our intercessors before the throne of God, as they are also our
consolation that we are not deceived. The present crisis is really a challenge
or, better, a glorious opportunity to prove our loyalty to Christ the
Truth so that one day we may possess Christ our Life who told us not to
fear, "I have overcome the world." So shall we, with the help of His grace,
and the Church will be the better and stronger for the experience of these
critical times.
Prayer
Lord Jesus, you foretold that your Church would suffer opposition and
persecution, even as you did. You declared that, so far from being anxious
or worried, we should actually rejoice when the world hates us and says
all manner of evil against us, for your Name. Give us the courage we need
to resist the onslaught of seductive untruth. Above all, give us the confidence
to realize that the trials of this life are a prelude to the glory that
waits us, provided we have remained unshaken in our allegiance to you
and your spouse, the Holy Catholic Church, of which you are the Teacher
and the Guide. Amen.
This article originally appeared in the March/April 1996 of The Catholic
Faith. Like many of Fr. Hardon’s articles, it was both timely
and timeless.
Father John Hardon, S.J. (b. June 18th, 1914 - d. December 30, 2000) was the
Executive Editor of The Catholic Faith magazine. He was ordained
on his 33rd birthday, June 18th, 1947 at West Baden Springs, Indiana. Father
Hardon was a member of the Society of Jesus for 63 years and an ordained
priest for 52 years. Father Hardon held a Masters degree in Philosophy from
Loyola University and a Doctorate in Theology from Gregorian University
in Rome. He has taught at the Jesuit School of Theology at Loyola University
in Chicago and the Institute for Advanced Studies in Catholic Doctrine at
St. John's University in New York. A prolific writer, he authored over forty
books, including The Catholic Catechism, Religions of the World, Protestant
Churches of America, Christianity in the Twentieth Century, Theology of
Prayer, The Catholic Lifetime Reading Plan and two question and answer
catechisms on the Holy Father's encyclicals The Gospel of Life and
The Splendor of Truth. In addition, he was actively involved with
a number of organizations, such as the Institute on Religious Life, Marian
Catechists, Eternal Life and Inter Mirifica, which publishes his catechetical
courses. For more about Fr. Hardon, visit this
page at Dave Armstrong’s website.
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