Carl E. Olson's Blog, page 215
June 7, 2012
Putting the Vatileaks Affair in Perspective
Putting the Vatileaks Affair in Perspective | Alan L. Anderson | Catholic World Report
The media’s furor over the leaks says more about their ignorance than about the Church itself.
It is a bit fun—and maybe a little saddening—to watch our secularist press work itself up into a lather over the so-called “Vatileaks” scandal. Just when the American bishops seem to be making headway with the faithful on the dangers posed by the HHS mandate, our elite journalists seem almost giddy to be handed what they believe is a story hinting at deep and dark intrigue in the Vatican. Along with the response to the Vatican’s critical assessment of segments of the Leadership Conference of Women Religious and the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith’s notification concerning a book by Sister Margaret A. Farley, RSM, the Vatileaks affair helps establish for our secular press their preferred narrative of a Church drowning in its own medieval incompetence.
Alas for them, the Vatileaks story as developed thus far will come as no surprise to the faithful and serves only as a sharp reminder of just how little our faith is understood by so many of the major actors in the media, highlighting, yet again, just why they so often fail to get it right when reporting on the Church.
To set the background: at issue in this seeming scandal are a series of leaked Vatican documents which form the basis of a new book titled Your Holiness: The Secret Papers of Benedict XVI, by Italian investigative reporter Gianluigi Nuzzi. In a June 3 New York Times article with the overwrought title, “As Vatican Manages Crisis, Book Details Infighting,” journalist Rachel Donadio breathlessly stated that “Vatileaks looks poised to become one of the most destructive, if one of the most hermetic, crises of Benedict’s troubled papacy.” Really? Because if the entirety of the scandal is accurately described in her article—and this truly is “one of the most destructive” crises His Holiness has or will face in his pontificate—then our current Holy Father has and will enjoy one of the more serene papacies of the Church’s 2,000-year history.
According to Donadio, the scandal amounts to “three shadowy Vatican machinations…a campaign to undermine the Vatican secretary of state, Cardinal Tarcisio Bertone; controversy over the management of the Vatican bank; and intense infighting between Italian cardinals vying for position in the Conclave that will one day elect Benedict’s successor.”
Seriously? That’s it? That’s the “scandal” which threatens to live as “the most destructive” episode in Pope Benedict’s pontificate? One suspects while His Holiness undoubtedly may be personally irked by such actions and feels compelled by duty to try to right the Church’s ship of state—feelings and compulsions undoubtedly also experienced by the faithful. One can be fairly certain His Holiness fully recognizes there’s nothing terribly new here. The whole thing has sort of a “dog bites man” feeling to it, hence the bemused chagrin when watching the media’s reaction to it.
June 6, 2012
Employee Pick of the Week: Anthony Ryan
May 15th, 2012 marked the debut of the Ignatius Press "Employee Pick of the Week" program which features savings of 40% off a book, movie, or compact disc personally chosen and recommended by an Ignatius Press employee.
Each week, an Ignatius Press employee will select a favorite book, movie, or other Ignatius Press product and will write a few sentences about why he/she thinks customers will enjoy the particular selection. The item will be on sale for 40% off the regular price for a week, and then a new item will be selected by another employee. A short bio of the selecting employee will also be included, giving customers a chance to learn a bit more about the people who are Ignatius Press.
Anthony Ryan's Pick of the Week:
As others at Ignatius Press have said about this "book of the week" pick, especially on our first time around, it's very difficult to pick one title since there are so many wonderful books by so many great writers. I decided to narrow my focus on a specific key area of our spiritual lives for my pick - Prayer.
The recently deceased Fr. Thomas Dubay was considered by many Church leaders as one of the very best contemporary writers and teachers on prayer and the spiritual life. He spent most of his priesthood speaking to religious and laity, and writing, on this topic. Ignatius has many books by this great priest. But the one that stands out the most is easily his masterpiece on prayer, Fire Within. This book on prayer should indeed be read by every Christian. The subtitle helps clarify why - St. Teresa of Avila, St. John of the Cross and the Gospel on Prayer.
Fr. Dubay was an expert on the writings and teachings of these two great Carmelite saints and Doctors of the Church on prayer. The writings of these two mystical writers can be difficult for many to grasp. Fr. Dubay has done us a tremendous service by synthesizing their writings on prayer, and connects them with Sacred Scripture, to present a book that, if read meditatively, will ignite that spiritual "fire within" that the disciples spoke about on the road to Emmaus after being with Jesus.
With the beautiful, life-changing insights on prayer from two such great saints like Teresa of Avila and John of the Cross, and Fr. Dubay and Scripture as our teachers to understand their insights, we will find, as Fr. Benedict Groeschel said about this book " a gold mine on prayer . . .a work of art by a master of the spiritual life."
This book will change your prayer life forever.
Fire Within is available in print and e-book formats. And don't miss these other inspiring titles by Fr. Dubay: Deep Prayer/Deep Conversion, Faith and Certitude, Happy Are You Poor, and Prayer Primer.
Anthony J. Ryan has been the Director of Sales & Marketing for Ignatius Press in San Francisco since 1981.
A native of St. Paul, MN., after graduating from the University of St. Thomas with a major in Business Administration, he spent a year working as a volunteer for the Franciscan Friars of Marytown. Anthony then became the Director of Religious Education for Our Lady of Peace Church and Shrine in Santa Clara, CA., and he also directed the Youth Mission for the Immaculata retreat programs for women for 13 years.
He served for several years on the National Board of Directors for the Militia Immaculata, and has spoken often to various Catholic groups on the life and spirituality of St. Maximilan Kolbe, as well as on the story and message of Our Lady of Fatima. Anthony is the founding Board President of Trinity Grammar & Prep school in Napa, CA. (now called Kolbe Academy & Trinity Prep). He and his wife Marcia have four children and reside in Napa, CA.
Previous picks of the week:
Continuing Double Standards
Continuing Double Standards | David F. Pierre, Jr. | Catholic World Report
Major media outlets continue to turn a blind eye to the abuse of children in public schools, while rehashing decades-old accusations against the Church.
Does the abuse of innocent children really upset the decision-makers at our country’s leading newspapers, or is it only bothersome if it involves the Catholic Church?
Just weeks ago in April, the United States Conference of Catholic Bishops released its annual audit of compliance with the 2002 Dallas Charter, the landmark initiative by the bishops to deal with accusations of abuse by priests.
The report concluded that in 2011 there were a mere seven credible abuse accusations against Catholic priests in all of the United States involving minors.
While any number greater than zero is upsetting, the report demonstrates that no other organization is striving to make itself a safe environment for children more than the Catholic Church in the United States. Between annual audits, diocesan review boards, abuse prevention training, millions spent every year on therapy and settlements for victims, and more, the Catholic Church has taken unprecedented steps to keep the children in its care safe.
Yet you would never know this from reading some of the nation’s leading opinion-makers.
According to a recent editorial in the Washington Post, the Church still “protects abusers” and “remains focused more on safeguarding its image than protecting victims.”
The New York Times’ Maureen Dowd claims the Church is “more offended by nuns’ impassioned advocacy for the poor than by priests’ sordid pedophilia,” while the Boston Globe’s Joan Vennochi would have you believe that Pope Benedict himself “tolerates” a “worldwide network of priests” that enables child abuse.
Not the Catholic Church? The untold scandals
Meanwhile, these same journalists who want you to believe that the abuse of children is still a pervasive problem in the Church today are largely ignoring shocking abuses and cover-ups happening today in our public schools.
"The Truth About God" by Fr. James V. Schall, S.J.
Newly posted on the Homiletic & Pastoral Review site:
Dominus Jesus was issued on the Feast of the Transfiguration in 2000. Cardinal Joseph Ratzinger was then Prefect of the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith. Though not “inspired,” perhaps, in any technical sense, still the document was “prophetic.” It represents the teaching of the ordinary Magisterium of the Church. In many ways, it is one of the most instructive and incisive of all recent papal documents.
As I look back on it now, it was a document meant to recall the central teaching of what Christianity is about. But even more, perhaps, it was to inspire Christians with the courage of their mission, which remains to go forth and teach all nations what Christ has asked and commanded. 1 It does indicate that we should be prudent, and theologically accurate, in whatever we do. But it does not say: “Go forth and teach all nations, except Jews, Protestants, Muslims, Buddhists, Chinese communists, sincere secularists, or Hindus.” This would, in practice, only leave a few African pagans who are not yet Muslim or Christian.
The fact is that, even with all the technological means available to us today, politically and culturally, it is less and less possible to teach and present Catholicism outside its own confines, and it is often under attack there. Freedom of religion is today much narrower than at almost any time in modern history. “Hate language” legislation has become largely a democratic, totalitarian tool to silence any real freedom of religion.
The document begins by stating what the Church itself is obliged to do and teach. It defines positions which deviate from that central purpose that is put into the world by Christ. It is thus of great significance to know just who and what Christ was and is—God? a prophet? a zealous man? a madman? “The Church’s universal mission is born from the command of Jesus Christ, and is fulfilled in the course of the centuries in the proclamation of the mystery of God, Father, Son, and Holy Spirit, and the mystery of the Incarnation of the Son, as saving event for all humanity” (§1). Obviously, at the end of the second millennium, “this mission is still far from complete” (§2).
At this point, many begin to wonder: “Why is it not complete?” Surely two thousand years is enough time to give to a divine project. The implication is either that it really is not divine, or that the folks in charge, the pope and the hierarchy, have constantly botched the job, misunderstanding the mission. Many, therefore, want to find another way to salvation, one that would utilize other religions and rites. Christianity is only one among many ways, not the way. Dominus Jesus reaffirms the centrality of the Church and the place of Christ, true man and true God. It also relates the truths, found in other religions and philosophies, to the purposes of revelation.
Read the entire essay at HPRweb.com.
June 5, 2012
Defending and Defining Words of Wisdom
Defending and Defining Words of Wisdom | Carl E. Olson | Catholic World Report
John W. Carlson’s new philosophical dictionary is an impressive and valuable work of scholarship inspired by love of wisdom, St. Thomas, and Bl. John Paul II.
Dr. John W. Carlson is a professor of philosophy at Creighton University. He is the author of Understanding Our Being: Introduction to Speculative Philosophy in the Perennial Tradition and the recently published Words of Wisdom: A Philosophical Dictionary for the Perennial Tradition (Notre Dame, 2012). He was recently interviewed by Carl E. Olson, editor of Catholic World Report, about the importance of philosophy, Blessed John Paul II’s encyclical Fides et Ratio (1998), and the reason he penned a dictionary with 1,173 entries.
CWR: Let’s begin with a Big Picture question: what is the state of philosophy today? I ask because philosophy today seems to be dismissed often by certain self-appointed critics. For example, the physicist (and atheist) Lawrence Krauss, author of A Universe from Nothing, said in an interview with The Atlantic that philosophy no longer has “content,” indeed, that “philosophy is a field that, unfortunately, reminds me of that old Woody Allen joke, ‘Those that can’t do, teach, and those that can’t teach, teach gym.’” Why this sort of antagonism toward philosophy?
Dr. Carlson: So Krauss in a single sentence denigrates both philosophy and gymnasium. May we begin by remarking that Plato—who thought highly of both—would not be impressed?
Your question, of course, is a good one. A response to it requires noting salient features of Western intellectual culture, as well as key concerns of philosophers in the recent past. Over the last century and a half, our culture has come to be dominated by the natural or empirical sciences and technological advances made possible by their means. It thus is not surprising that there has arisen in various quarters a view that can be characterized as “scientism”—i.e., one according to which all legitimate cognitive pursuits should follow the methods of the modern sciences. Now, somewhat ironically, this view is not itself a scientific one. Rather, it can be recognized as essentially philosophical; that is, it expresses a general account of the nature and limits of human knowledge. But if it indeed is philosophical, we might well ask on what basis scientism is to be recommended. Does this view adequately reflect the variety of ways in which reality can be known? To say the least, it is not obvious that the answer to this question is “Yes.”
A second factor contributing to the idea that philosophy has no specific content is the following: throughout much of the 20th century, a principal focus for many thinkers—whether pragmatists, process philosophers, linguistic analysts, phenomenologists, or, for that matter, followers of St. Thomas Aquinas—was the question of philosophical method. Today, however, philosophers of virtually every school once again are taking up substantive issues. (Professor Krauss apparently did not get the memo.) It may be added that, throughout the century, Thomist thinkers continued to treat, in addition to methodological issues, questions of philosophical substance—e.g., questions about the nature and “principles” of being, about the defining characteristics of the human good, etc. Needless to say, their approach to these topics was not, in the strict sense, empirical. But as a leading 20th century Thomist, Yves R. Simon, once remarked: “Let genuine scientists read our [philosophical] works; they will see we are kindred spirits.”
I would hope that this statement applies as well to the accounts in Words of Wisdom.
CWR: Turning to the realm of Catholic philosophy and belief: Blessed John Paul II’s encyclical Fides et Ratio (1998) met with criticism and even derision from certain Catholic intellectuals. Why was this? And how is it that the encyclical had such an important impact on you and other philosophers?
June 4, 2012
The Eternal Priesthood of Jesus Christ
Fr. Austin E. Green, O.P. | Homiletic & Pastoral Review
“You are a priest forever, according to the order of Melchizedek.”
Although there are tens of thousands of priests in the Catholic Church, there is, in the most proper sense of the word, only one Priest, and that Priest is Jesus Christ. All other priests, however, many thousands there may be, are sharers in that one priesthood of Christ. They truly share in the priesthood of Christ, but only Christ himself has the fullness of the priesthood. And this is because only Christ is, himself, the Victim and the Priest who offers the Victim. As St. Paul expressed it, “There is one mediator between God and man, the Word of God who is himself a man, Jesus Christ” (1 Tim 2:5). To adapt the simile of Jesus himself, and apply it to the priesthood, we might say that Jesus is the vine, and the other priests are branches; that is, every ordained priest draws his priestly power from the one Priest, Jesus Christ. Jesus has the fullness of the priesthood as the source from which others, precisely as ordained priests, have obtained the fullness of their priestly power, and by which they are sustained, from day to day, in their priestly functions. The ordained priest shares in the fullness of Christ’s priesthood and in the unique mediatorship of Christ.
In the ancient temple at Jerusalem, Levitical priests sacrificed animals as sin-offerings in expiation for the people’s sins, and for the restoration of peace with God. The death of Christ—because it is the death, not only of a man in his created human nature, but also of a man whose Person is the very Son of God himself—far surpasses these ancient sacrifices, which were only a dim foreshadowing of the sacrificial death of Christ. The sacrifice of animals could not take away sin, but could only remind people that they needed to repent of their sins, asking God for forgiveness. This was a forgiveness that was, in fact, granted only through the sacrifice of Christ on the cross; a forgiveness that applied to all sins, those which preceded as well as those which followed upon the sacrifice of Christ.
It is, in fact, this offering of his life on the cross, which essentially constitutes Jesus as priest, our great high priest.
“Be a Straight Shooter in the Midst of This Crooked Generation”
“Be a Straight Shooter in the Midst of This Crooked Generation” | Carl E. Olson | Catholic World Report
This Keynote Address was given at the Baccalaureate Mass and Commencement for St. John Bosco High School (Silverton, Oregon), held at Mount Angel Abbey on Friday, June 1, 2012.
Thank you, Rolando. And thank you, faculty and teachers of Saint John Bosco High School for your gracious invitation to speak at this graduation. It is an honor to be here.
Good evening, graduates, and congratulations!
Twenty-five years ago this very week, I graduated from high school in Plains, Montana, a small town with a dozen churches, three restaurants, two grocery stores, one police officer, and no stop lights.
High school graduations were a big deal in that small town, and I can still remember the emotions of the moment, of being happy and excited, as well as a little nervous about the future.
At that moment, I thought I had my life planned out. And I knew I had plenty of time to accomplish all of the things I wanted to do.
But over the past twenty-five years I’ve learned that time moves very quickly. It actually speeds up as you get older! And I’ve learned that many of the things I wanted to accomplish were not what God wanted for me.
And I would tell you more about my life and all of the mistakes I made and lessons I’ve learned, but I was told we do not have the necessary ten hours for that particular talk.
So, instead, I want to talk about you, the graduates. Not that I know you well at all, of course. Tonight is the first time we’ve met. But I do know one important, essential thing about each one of you: you are a Catholic, a Christian, a disciple of Jesus Christ.
You have been baptized in the name of the Father, the Son and the Holy Spirit, and have been regenerated in the waters of baptism, united with Christ, incorporated into the Church, renewed by the Holy Spirit, and filled with the divine life of God.
One of my favorite passages from the Catechism of the Catholic Church is the very first sentence of the first paragraph: “God, infinitely perfect and blessed in himself, in a plan of sheer goodness freely created man to make him share in his own blessed life.” Each of you was created by God out of the overflowing abundance of his perfect love. It is impossible to fully comprehend that truth, but I think we sometimes take it for granted and don’t contemplate it enough.
Before I became Catholic, I spent two years at an Evangelical Bible college. In one of my very first classes, a professor made this rather shocking statement: “God does not need you.” He repeated it several times, pointing to us, staring at us. He actually yelled it! And then he said, “But God created you out of love and he loves you so much he came and died for you.” God is indeed good, despite vicious rumors to the contrary!
However, there are a lot of people, including many Christians, who think God owes them something. I know that I have sometimes fallen into that trap. I’ve learned that if we live as if God owes us something, we are implicitly saying that we, in some way, know more than God! “If only God would realize what I have already figured out!”
Being a Catholic means being completely honest about the distance between God, the Creator of all things, and myself, a creature who is limited and, frankly, doesn’t know as much as I think I do. The famous 20th-century preacher Archbishop Fulton Sheen once wrote “A Catholic may be defined as one who made the startling discovery that God knows more than he does.”
June 2, 2012
The Trinity: Three Persons in One Nature
The Trinity: Three Persons in One Nature | Frank Sheed | From Theology and Sanity | Ignatius Insight
Print-friendly version
The notion is unfortunately widespread that the mystery of the Blessed Trinity is a mystery of mathematics, that is to say, of how one can equal three. The plain Christian accepts the doctrine of the Trinity; the "advanced" Christian rejects it; but too often what is being accepted by the one and rejected by the other is that one equals three. The believer argues that God has said it, therefore it must be true; the rejecter argues it cannot be true, therefore God has not said it. A learned non-Catholic divine, being asked if he believed in the Trinity, answered, "I must confess that 
the arithmetical aspect of the Deity does not greatly interest me"; and if the learned can think that there is some question of arithmetic involved, the ordinary person can hardly be expected to know any better.
(i) Importance of the doctrine of the Trinity
Consider what happens when a believer in the doctrine is suddenly called upon to explain it — and note that unless he is forced to, he will not talk about it at all: there is no likelihood of his being so much in love with the principal doctrine of his Faith that he will want to tell people about it. Anyhow, here he is: he has been challenged, and must say something. The dialogue runs something like this:
Believer: "Well, you see, there are three persons in one nature."
Questioner: "Tell me more."
Believer: "Well, there is God the Father, God the Son, God the Holy Spirit."
Questioner: "Ah, I see, three gods."
Believer (shocked): "Oh, no! Only one God."
Questioner: "But you said three: you called the Father God, which is one; and you called the Son God, which makes two; and you called the Holy Spirit God, which makes three."
Here the dialogue form breaks down. From the believer's mouth there emerges what can only be called a soup of words, sentences that begin and do not end, words that change into something else halfway. This goes on for a longer or shorter time. But finally there comes something like: "Thus, you see, three is one and one is three." The questioner not unnaturally retorts that three is not one nor one three. Then comes the believer's great moment. With his eyes fairly gleaming he cries: "Ah, that is the mystery. You have to have faith."
Now it is true that the doctrine of the Blessed Trinity is a mystery, and that we can know it only by faith. But what we have just been hearing is not the mystery of the Trinity; it is not the mystery of anything, it is wretched nonsense. It may be heroic faith to believe it, like the man who
Wished there were four of 'em
That he might believe more of 'em
or it may be total intellectual unconcern - God has revealed certain things about Himself, we accept the fact that He has done so, but find in ourselves no particular inclination to follow it up. God has told us that He is three persons in one Divine nature, and we say "Quite so", and proceed to think of other matters - last week's Retreat or next week's Confession or Lent or Lourdes or the Church's social teaching or foreign missions. All these are vital things, but compared with God Himself, they are as nothing: and the Trinity is God Himself. These other things must be thought about, but to think about them exclusively and about the Trinity not at all is plain folly. And not only folly, but a kind of insensitiveness, almost a callousness, to the love of God. For the doctrine of the Trinity is the inner, the innermost, life of God, His profoundest secret. He did not have to reveal it to us. We could have been saved without knowing that ultimate truth. In the strictest sense it is His business, not ours. He revealed it to us because He loves men and so wants not only to be served by them but truly known. The revelation of the Trinity was in one sense an even more certain proof than Calvary that God loves mankind. To accept it politely and think no more of it is an insensitiveness beyond comprehension in those who quite certainly love God: as many certainly do who could give no better statement of the doctrine than the believer in the dialogue we have just been considering.
How did we reach this curious travesty of the supreme truth about God? The short statement of the doctrine is, as we have heard all our lives, that there are three persons in one nature. But if we attach no meaning to the word person, and no meaning to the word nature, then both the nouns have dropped out of our definition, and we are left only with the numbers three and one, and get along as best we can with these. Let us agree that there may be more in the mind of the believer than he manages to get said: but the things that do get said give a pretty strong impression that his notion of the Trinity is simply a travesty. It does him no positive harm provided he does not look at it too closely; but it sheds no light in his own soul: and his statement of it, when he is driven to make a statement, might very well extinguish such flickering as there may be in others. The Catholic whose faith is wavering might well have it blown out altogether by such an explanation of the Trinity as some fellow Catholic of stronger faith might feel moved to give: and no one coming fresh to the study of God would be much encouraged.
(ii) "Person" and "Nature"
Let us come now to a consideration of the doctrine of the Blessed Trinity to see what light there is in it for us, being utterly confident that had there been no light for us, God would not have revealed it to us. There would be a rather horrible note of mockery in telling us something of which we can make nothing. The doctrine may be set out in four statements:
In the one divine Nature, there are three Persons - the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit.
The Father is not the Son, the Son is not the Holy Spirit, the Holy Spirit is not the Father: no one of the Persons is either of the others.
The Father is God, the Son is God, the Holy Spirit is God.
There are not three Gods but one God.
We have seen that the imagination cannot help here. Comparisons drawn from the material universe are a hindrance and no help. Once one has taken hold of this doctrine, it is natural enough to want to utter it in simile and metaphor - like the lovely lumen de lumine, light from light, with which the Nicene Creed phrases the relation of the Son to the Father. But this is for afterward, poetical statement of a truth known, not the way to its knowledge. For that, the intellect must go on alone. And for the intellect, the way into the mystery lies, as we have already suggested, in the meaning of the words "person" and "nature". There is no question of arithmetic involved. We are not saying three persons in one person, or three natures in one nature; we are saying three persons in one nature. There is not even the appearance of an arithmetical problem. It is for us to see what person is and what nature is, and then to consider what meaning there can be in a nature totally possessed by three distinct persons.
The newcomer to this sort of thinking must be prepared to work hard here. It is a decisive stage of our advance into theology to get some grasp of the meaning of nature and the meaning of person. Fortunately the first stage of our search goes easily enough. We begin with ourselves. Such a phrase as "my nature" suggests that there is a person, I, who possesses a nature. The person could not exist without his nature, but there is some distinction all the same; for it is the person who possesses the nature and not the other way round.
One distinction we see instantly. Nature answers the question what we are; person answers the question who we are. Every being has a nature; of every being we may properly ask, What is it? But not every being is a person: only rational beings are persons. We could not properly ask of a stone or a potato or an oyster, Who is it?
By our nature, then, we are what we are. It follows that by our nature we do what we do: for every being acts according to what it is. Applying this to ourselves, we come upon another distinction between person and nature. We find that there are many things, countless things, we can do. We can laugh and cry and walk and talk and sleep and think and love. All these and other things we can do because as human beings we have a nature which makes them possible. A snake could do only one of them - sleep. A stone could do none of them. Nature, then, is to be seen not only as what we are but as the source of what we can do.
But although my nature is the source of all my actions, although my nature decides what kind of operations are possible for me, it is not my nature that does them: I do them, I the person. Thus both person and nature may be considered sources of action, but in a different sense. The person is that which does the actions, the nature is that by virtue of which the actions are done, or, better, that from which the actions are drawn. We can express the distinction in all sorts of ways. We can say that it is our nature to do certain things, but that we do them. We can say that we operate in or according to our nature. In this light we see why the philosophers speak of a person as the center of attribution in a rational nature: whatever is done in a rational nature or suffered in a rational nature or any way experienced in a rational nature is done or suffered or experienced by the person whose nature it is.
Thus there is a reality in us by which we are what we are: and there is a reality in us by which we are who we are. But as to whether these are two really distinct realities, or two levels of one reality, or related in some other way, we cannot see deep enough into ourselves to know with any sureness. There is an obvious difference between beings of whom you can say only what they are and the higher beings of whom you can say who they are as well. But in these latter - even in ourselves, of whom we have a great deal of experience - we see only darkly as to the distinction between the what and the who. Of our nature in its root reality we have only a shadowy notion, and of our self a notion more shadowy still. If someone - for want of something better to say - says: "Tell me about yourself", we can tell her the qualities we have or the things we have done; but of the self that has the qualities and has done the things, we cannot tell her anything. We cannot bring it under her gaze. Indeed we cannot easily or continuously bring it under our own. As we turn our mind inward to look at the thing we call "I", we know that there is something there, but we cannot get it into any focus: it does not submit to being looked at very closely. Both as to the nature that we ourselves have and the person that we ourselves are, we are more in darkness than in light. But at least we have certain things clear: nature says what we are, person says who we are. Nature is the source of our operations, person does them.
Now at first sight it might seem that this examination of the meaning of person and nature has not got us far toward an understanding of the Blessed Trinity. For although we have been led to see a distinction between person and nature in us, it seems clearer than ever that one nature can be possessed and operated in only by one person. By a tremendous stretch, we can just barely glimpse the possibility of one person having more than one nature, opening up to him more than one field of operation. But the intellect feels baffled at the reverse concept of one nature being totally "wielded", much less totally possessed, by more than one person. Now to admit ourselves baffled by the notion of three persons in the one nature of God is an entirely honorable admission of our own limitation; but to argue that because in man the relation of one nature to one person is invariable, therefore the same must be the relation in God, is a defect in our thinking. It is indeed an example of that anthropomorphism, the tendency to make God in the image of man, which we have already seen hurled in accusation at the Christian belief in God.
Let us look more closely at this idea. Man is made in the image and likeness of God. Therefore it is certain that man resembles God. Yet we can never argue with certainty from an image to the original of the image: we can never be sure that because the image is thus and so, therefore the original must be thus and so. A statue may be an extremely good statue of a man. But we could not argue that the man must be a very rigidman, because the statue is very rigid. The statue is rigid, not because the man is rigid, but because stone is rigid. So also with any quality you may observe in an image: the question arises whether that quality is there because the original was like that or because the material of which the image is made is like that. So with man and God. When we learn anything about man, the question always arises whether man is like that because God is like that, or because that is the best that can be done in reproducing the likeness of God in a being created of nothing. Put quite simply, we have always to allow for the necessary scaling down of the infinite in its finite likeness.
Apply this to the question of one person and one nature, which we find in man. Is this relation of one-to-one the result of something in the nature of being, or simply of something in the nature of finite being? With all the light we can get on the meaning of person and of nature even in ourselves, we have seen that there is still much that is dark to us: both concepts plunge away to a depth where the eye cannot follow them. Even of our own finite natures, it would be rash to affirm that the only possible relation is one person to one nature. But of an infinite nature, we have no experience at all. If God tells us that His own infinite nature is totally possessed by three persons, we can have no grounds for doubting the statement, although we may find it almost immeasurably difficult to make any meaning of it. There is no difficulty in accepting it as true, given our own inexperience of what it is to have an infinite nature and God's statement on the subject; there is not difficulty, I say, in accepting it as true; the difficulty lies in seeing what it means. Yet short of seeing some meaning in it, there is no point in having it revealed to us; indeed, a revelation that is only darkness is a kind of contradiction in terms.
(iii) Three Persons - One God
Let us then see what meaning, - that is to say, what light, - we can get from what has been said so far. The one infinite nature is totally possessed by three distinct persons. Here we must be quite accurate: the three persons are distinct, but not separate; and they do not share the divine nature, but each possesses it totally.
At this first beginning of our exploration of the supreme truth about God, it is worth pausing a moment to consider the virtue of accuracy. There is a feeling that it is a very suitable virtue for mathematicians and scientists, but cramping if applied to operations more specifically human. The young tend to despise it as a kind of tidiness, a virtue proper only to the poor-spirited. And everybody feels that it limits the free soul. It is in particular disrepute as applied to religion, where it is seen as a sort of anxious weighing and measuring that is fatal to the impetuous rush of the spirit. But in fact, accuracy is in every field the key to beauty: beauty has no greater enemy than rough approximation. Had Cleopatra's nose been shorter, says Pascal, the face of the Roman Empire and so of the world would have been changed: an eighth of an inch is not a lot: a lover, you would think, would not bother with such close calculation; but her nose was for her lovers the precise length for beauty: a slight inaccuracy would have spoiled everything. It is so in music, it is so in everything: beauty and accuracy run together, and where accuracy does not run, beauty limps.
Returning to the point at which this digression started: we must not say three separate persons, but three distinct persons, because although they are distinct - that is to say, no one of them is either of the others - yet they cannot be separated, for each is what he is by the total possession of the one same nature: apart from that one same nature, no one of the three persons could exist at all. And we must not use any phrase which suggests that the three persons share the Divine Nature. For we have seen that in the Infinite there is utter simplicity, there are no parts, therefore no possibility of sharing. The infinite Divine Nature can be possessed only in its totality. In the words of the Fourth Council of the Lateran, "There are three persons indeed, but one utterly simple substance, essence, or nature."
Summarizing thus far, we may state the doctrine in this way: the Father possesses the whole nature of God as His Own, the Son possesses the whole nature of God as His Own, the Holy Spirit possesses the whole nature of God as His Own. Thus, since the nature of any being decides what the being is, each person is God, wholly and therefore equally with the others. Further, the nature decides what the person can do: therefore, each of the three persons who thus totally possess the Divine Nature can do all the things that go with being God.
All this we find in the Preface for the Mass on the Feast of the Holy Trinity: "Father, all-powerful and ever-living God, ... we joyfully proclaim our faith in the mystery of your Godhead ...: three Persons equal in majesty, undivided in splendor, yet one Lord, one God, ever to be adored in your everlasting glory."
To complete this first stage of our inquiry, let us return to the question which, in our model dialogue above, produced so much incoherence from the believer - if each of the three persons is wholly God, why not three Gods? The reason why we cannot say three Gods becomes clear if we consider what is meant by the parallel phrase, "three men". That would mean three distinct persons, each possessing a human nature. But note that, although their natures would be similar, each would have his own. The first man could not think with the second man's intellect, but only with his own; the second man could not love with the third's will, but only with his own. The phrase "three men" would mean three distinct persons, each with his own separate human nature, his own separate equipment as man; the phrase "three gods" would mean three distinct persons, each with his own separate Divine Nature, his own separate equipment as God. But in the Blessed Trinity, that is not so. The three Persons are God, not by the possession of equal and similar natures, but by the possession of one single nature; they do in fact, what our three men could not do, know with the same intellect and love with the same will. They are three Persons, but they are not three Gods; they are One God.
Related Ignatius Insight Book Excerpts:
• The Incarnation | Frank Sheed
• The Problem of Life's Purpose | Frank Sheed
• The Trinity and the Nature of Love | Fr. Christopher Rengers
• The Creed and the Trinity | Henri de Lubac
• • The Ministry of the Bishop in Relation to the Blessed Trinity | Cardinal Francis George, O.M.I
• The Reality of God": Benedict XVI on the Trinity | Fr. James V. Schall, S.J.
• Eternal Security? A Trinitarian Apologetic for Perseverance | Freddie Stewart, Jr.
• Jean Daniélou and the "Master-Key to Christian Theology" | Carl E. Olson
• God's Eros Is Agape | Fr. James V. Schall, S.J.
• First Musings on Benedict XVI's First Encyclical | Fr. Joseph Fessio, S.J.
• Some Comments on Deus Caritas Est | Mark Brumley
• Love Alone is Believable: Hans Urs von Balthasar's Apologetics | Fr. John R. Cihak
• Understanding The Hierarchy of Truths | Douglas Bushman, S.T.L.
Frank Sheed (1897-1981) was an Australian of Irish descent. A law student, he graduated from Sydney University in Arts and Law, then moved in 1926, with his wife Maisie Ward, to London. There they founded the well-known Catholic publishing house of Sheed & Ward in 1926, which published some of the finest Catholic literature of the first half of the twentieth century.
Known for his sharp mind and clarity of expression, Sheed became one of the most famous Catholic apologists of the century. He was an outstanding street-corner speaker who popularized the Catholic Evidence Guild in both England and America (where he later resided). In 1957 he received a doctorate of Sacred Theology honoris causa authorized by the Sacred Congregation of Seminaries and Universities in Rome.
Although he was a cradle Catholic, Sheed was a central figure in what he called the "Catholic Intellectual Revival," an influential and loosely knit group of converts to the Catholic Faith, including authors such as G.K. Chesterton, Evelyn Waugh, Arnold Lunn, and Ronald Knox.
Sheed wrote several books, the best known being Theology and Sanity, A Map of Life, Theology for Beginners and To Know Christ Jesus. He and Maise also compiled the Catholic Evidence Training Outlines, which included his notes for training outdoor speakers and apologists and is still a valuable tool for Catholic apologists and catechists (and is available through the Catholic Evidence Guild).
For more about Sheed, visit his IgnatiusInsight.com Author Page.
The invitation of the Trinitarian mystery
A Scriptural Reflection on the Readings for Sunday, June 3, 2012, the Solemnity of the Most Holy Trinity | Carl E. Olson
Readings:
• Dt 4:32-34, 39-40
• Ps 33:4-5, 6, 9, 18-19, 20, 22
• Rom 8:14-17
• Mt 28:16-20
The popular television show “Unsolved Mysteries,” was a documentary-styled program pursuing answers to crimes and strange events that had yet to be solved and explained. As the saying goes, everyone loves a good mystery, as evidenced by the success of that show and the popularity of so many movies, books, and television programs about solving mysteries and crimes.
The Trinity is also a mystery, but not the sort that needs to be solved, or can be solved. The popular apologist Frank J. Sheed (1897-1981), author of the classic work, Theology and Sanity (Ignatius Press), explained that a theological mystery is not a puzzle, nor is it “something that we can know nothing about: it is only something that the mind cannot wholly know.” The mystery of the Trinity is beyond our understanding precisely because God is so beyond man, who is limited and finite.
Sheed used the analogy of an endless art gallery into which the visitor walks deeper and deeper—never reaching the end but finding the visit to be completely satisfying. Sheed also describes “a Mystery” as “an invitation to the mind.” The Trinity, in fact, is an invitation, not only to the mind but to every hidden part and deep longing of man.
Although the Trinity was not revealed until after the Incarnation, there are tiny hints in the Old Testament. Before God revealed himself as Father, Son, and Holy Spirit, he established that he is the one, holy, and personal Creator. The Israelites were surrounded by pagan tribes and groups believing in any number of gods. Many of those gods were bound to specific places and had only a capricious interest in the wellbeing of man
Moses asked the Israelites, in today’s reading from Deuteronomy, “Did a people ever hear the voice of God speaking from the midst of fire, as you did, and live? Or did any god venture to go and take a nation for himself from the midst of another nation …?” The one, true God spoke to Moses and the people, and he formed a covenantal people for the good of the world. The significance of these two actions cannot be overstated; they are essential acts that ultimately lead to God speaking to man through the Word—the second person of the Trinity—and establishing a people of God, the Church, through a new and everlasting covenant.
That covenant, rooted in the Father’s love, the Son’s sacrifice, and the power of the Holy Spirit, is intensely familial, relational, and loving. We have received, St. Paul told the Christians in Rome, “a Spirit of adoption,” by which we are made sons of God who are able to cry, “Abba, Father!” This gift of sonship is to be shared with the entire world. “Go, therefore,” Jesus told his apostles as he commissioned them to be his spokesmen, “and make disciples of all nations.” And how are disciples made? By being baptized in the name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Spirit, and by following the rules of the family of God, the Church.
One of the most puzzling, even perverse, falsehoods of our age is the notion that the Christian belief in the Trinity somehow makes God too specific and exact, and that spiritual growth and enlightenment is best reached by speaking of God in vague and abstract ways. This is like saying that a child is harmed by personally knowing his two parents, and that he would better off believing any one of millions of adults just might be his father or mother.
The fear of so many, at the heart of it, is that an encounter with the true and living God will change them; it will require a transformation in what they do and think—and in who they are. That, of course, is true. But accepting the invitation of the Trinitarian mystery is not about solving God, but recognizing that the answers to our deepest questions are found within that mystery.
(This "Opening the Word" column originally appeared in the June 7, 2009, edition of Our Sunday Visitor newspaper.)
June 1, 2012
Lady Gaga Gets the Indonesian Boot
Lady Gaga Gets the Indonesian Boot | Matthew Cullinan Hoffman | Catholic World Report
Asians are sending a message to America. Are we listening?
News of the cancellation of the Lady Gaga concert scheduled for early June in Jakarta, Indonesia is receiving a lullingly uniform spin in the American and international media. It is, we are told, a morality play about the triumph of radical Islamism over artistic freedom, and a disturbing omen of Indonesia’s supposed slide into religious fanaticism.
In reality, however, the negative response to Gaga’s hypersexualized and iconoclastic performances was not isolated to extremists, nor to the country of Indonesia. Gaga’s religion-insulting concert tour and other, similar forms of entertainment are increasingly ill-received throughout the region of Southeast Asia and beyond, and reflect a growing indignation at what is perceived as an American cultural imperialism that treats the moral values of other countries with contempt.
Blame for the Jakarta fiasco is being assigned to an organization known as the Islamic Defenders Front (FPI), a hard-line Muslim group known for its clashes with Christians and its strict interpretation of the Koran. According to the International Crisis Group, a peacemaking organization whose verdict on the affair is being quoted by the Associated Press, it is “clear that there wouldn’t have been a thought of canceling the concert” if the FPI and other extremist groups hadn’t “mobilized” to stop it.
The FPI and kindred groups, however, were not at all alone in their opposition to the Jakarta concert. In fact, it was vigorously opposed by a dozen other Islamic organizations, including the Indonesian Ulema Council, the highest Muslim authority in a country known for its moderate religious temperament.
Moreover, opposition to Gaga’s performance didn’t stop at the border of Indonesia. In fact the tour, dubbed the “Born this Way Ball” in reference to Gaga’s scientifically-unsubstantiated claim that homosexuals are born with their “gay” orientation, has provoked protests in multiple countries in the region, mostly by Christian groups.
Carl E. Olson's Blog
- Carl E. Olson's profile
- 20 followers
