Carl E. Olson's Blog, page 42

Youth ministry today: Its strengths and limitations

Amanda Tralle, left, 18, and adult leader Michelle Mascolo of Our Lady of Mercy Parish in Hicksville, N.Y., sing following eucharistic adoration at St. Ignatius Loyola Church in Hicksville, N.Y. (CNS photo/Gregory A. Shemitz, Long Island Catholic)

Youth ministry today: Its strengths and limitations | Bill Maguire | CWR blog

Too many parish youth groups shut out the very persons God intended to have the most impact on a teen’s faith: the parents.

It’s remarkable what God can do in a young person’s life over the course of a single weekend. Some whose hearts and spirits have been broken by their sins or the sins of others experience genuine healing through confession; others who’ve gone to Sunday Mass their entire lives encounter the real presence of Christ for the first time in Eucharistic adoration; others whose hearts and minds were shut to the faith warm and begin to open; still others discover the initial stirrings of a vocation to the priesthood or religious life.

This is the power of large-group evangelization. These events can include youth conferences, weekend retreats, the March for Life, mission trips, and so forth. Parish youth groups can be highly effective at large-group evangelization. In fact, such groups shine brightest and do best when they focus on this kind of youth outreach.

I know this is possible, because like many people who’ve served young people in the New Evangelization, I’ve seen with my own eyes and I’ve touched with my own hands (1 John 1).

Limitations of large parish youth groups

Like others who’ve seen and touched, however, the unavoidable question quickly imposes itself: How do we preserve this beautiful encounter with Christ and yet help teens to build an ongoing, consistent Christian life once they’ve come down from their mountaintop experiences?

St. John Paul II put it this way:

Some experiences of religious enthusiasm, which the Lord sometimes grants, are only initial and passing graces which have the purpose of prodding [one] towards the decisive commitment of conversion, walking generously in faith, hope, and love.

And if anyone is qualified to speak about experiences of religious enthusiasm in the life of teens, it’s John Paul II: a man who facilitated the experience of religious enthusiasm for millions of young people at the World Youth Day events he initiated and over which he presided.

The Holy Father continues, however:

Continue reading on the CWR blog.

Turning Youth Ministry into Apprenticeship in the Christian Life

Fourteen-year-old Oscar Kha is silhouetted as he prays during Mass at St. John the Evangelist Church in Greece, N.Y. (CNS photo/Mike Crupi, Catholic Courier)

Turning Youth Ministry into Apprenticeship in the Christian Life | Bill Maguire | CWR

YDisciple, a new program from the Augustine Institute, takes a fresh approach toward teen ministry—one that is rooted in the parent-child relationship and in family life.

“Our children need sure guidance in the process of growing in responsibility for themselves and others.  Christian communities are called to support the educational mission of families. They do this above all by living in fidelity to God’s world, cultivating faith, love and patience. Jesus himself was raised in a family; when he tells us that all who hear the word of God and obey are his brothers and sisters, he reminds us that for all their failings, our families can count on his inspiration and grace in the difficult but rewarding vocation of educating their children.” — Pope Francis, General Audience, March 20, 2015

The Augustine Institute—creators of the widely popular and effective Symbolon faith-formation program for adults—has developed another excellent resource for parishes. This time, with YDisciple, AI offers a dynamic tool for reaching out to teens with the vibrant enthusiasm of the New Evangelization.

Precisely because YDisciple seeks to identify and address effectively the unique needs of teen disciples, it breaks with the current paradigm of all-too-many parish youth ministry programs: namely, that youth ministry should be largely peer-dominated, parent-free zones (for more on the benefits and significant drawbacks of youth ministry as it exists in most parishes, see "Youth ministry today: Its strengths and limitations").

YDisciple : Outreach to youth through parents

The YDisciple handbook begins with quotes from the Catechism and Familiaris Consortio regarding the privileged role of parents and the family in the evangelization and formation of young people. The handbook continues, stating clearly:

Any youth ministry initiative should begin with parents. Parents have the greatest influence in the lives of their teenagers, and they will be held accountable to God for the formation of their children. The role of the parish is to assist parents in fulfilling this responsibility. For this reason, the Church teaches that all pastoral work must take into consideration the pastoral care of the family.

Sean Dalton, director of YDisciple, highlights Pope Francis’ insights concerning the essential role of moms and dads in the religious formation of their children and the vital need for the Church to reevaluate and renew our current (and failing) outreach to young people:

Continue reading at www.CatholicWorldReport.com.

Pretty Little Lies: The Idolness of Bruce Jenner

"The Adoration of the Golden Calf" (L'Adoration du Veau d'or) by Nicolas Poussin (1594-1665) [WikiArt.org]

Pretty Little Lies: On the Idolness of Bruce Jenner | Lauren Enk Mann | CWR 

Both Jenner and the adoring media are falling prey to one of the oldest, gravest sins: idolatry, the worshiping of false gods which we ourselves have crafted

By now, the hubbub over Bruce Jenner's Vanity Fair cover has reached most ears. And eyes. After extensive surgery and hormone treatment, with the aid of heavy makeup and Photoshop, Jenner posed in a corset as "Caitlyn" for Vanity Fair's exclusive 22-page article on his transition from a man to a woman.  

Effusive praise for "Caitlyn" Jenner flooded the internet following the cover's debut—a reaction symptomatic of society's default approach to the human person. The reaction stands squarely on a decades-long foundation of practices that deny the God-given meaning of human sexuality, from divorce and contraception to porn and the social acceptance of gay "marriage". There is no inherent human nature that you could mar or offend by doing these things, says the world. 

But why is our society so gullible in the face of such lies? It is said that the devil can appear as an angel of light—he is, after all, the father of lies. And Bruce Jenner is living a colossal lie. But because he looks glamorous doing it, he is heaped with praise as media echo chambers resound with affirmations of his "courage."

Lies are ugly things, but the point of a lie is to hide its true face; lies don't seem ugly, but attractive and appealing. They steal the looks of something good—beauty, compassion, or happiness—and mimic it, relying on a deceptive veneer to win us over. 

This devilish tactic is one reason the world so easily swallows grave moral errors. 

Continue reading at www.CatholicWorldReport.com.

Journeying with Abraham, the Father of Faith

Steve and Janet Ray on location, working on the filming of the 10-part video series "The Footprints of God: The Story of Salvation From Abraham to Augustine"

Journeying with Abraham, the Father of Faith | CWR Staff | Catholic World Report

Author and filmmaker Stephen Ray discusses his ambitious video series, traveling in Iraq, filming in the Holy Land, and delving into the incredible life of Abraham

Stephen K. Ray was raised in a devout Baptist family and was very involved in the Baptist denomination as a teacher of Biblical studies. Steve and his wife Janet entered the Catholic Church in 1994. Since that time, Steve has been active as an author, speaker, blogger, apologist, and film producer. He is the author of Crossing the Tiber: Evangelical Protestants Discover the Historical Church, Upon This Rock: St. Peter and the Primacy of Rome in Scripture and the Early Church, and St. John's Gospel: A Bible Study and Commentary, all published by Ignatius Press.

Steve and Janet are currently writing and producing a 10-video series for Ignatius Press called The Footprints of God: The Story of Salvation From Abraham to Augustine, filmed on location in the Holy Land and other parts of the Middle East. His website is www.catholic-convert.com. The most recent film, titled Abraham: Father of Faith and Works, is now available from Ignatius Press. He corresponded recently with Catholic World Report, shortly before departing for another trip to the Holy Land.

CWR: This movie about Abraham is the eighth of 10 videos in this long and challenging project. When did you start filming this series and what sort of time, energy, and effort has gone into the project?

Ray: Long and challenging, indeed! It all began in 1995, the year after we converted to the Catholic Church from Evangelical Protestants. We took our family to Israel to see land of Our Lord and Lady, the land of the Bible and Catholic history. When I stepped off the plane in Tel Aviv I fell to the tarmac and kissed the ground with tears welling up in my eyes. This adventure with our family had a profound impact on all of us. It made me want to share the land and its story with everyone.

The next step came in the year 2000 when I woke up in the middle of the night. I am not certain to this day whether it was a dream, a revelation, an angel, or simply indigestion. But it was all in my head and I knew exactly what I had to do.

As soon as I woke up I grabbed my wife Janet and shook her and said, "We have to do a video documentary on the whole story of salvation for my Catholic perspective!” Shaking and scared since I woke her up so quickly, she said, “You woke me up in the middle of the night, scaring me to death, to tell me that! We can’t even take good pictures — how does God expect us to make movies? Go back to sleep!"

But I couldn’t sleep. I was inspired and trembling. I jumped out of bed and ran to my computer. By the time the sun came up that morning I had put together the outline for the documentary series. I knew the titles, the biblical people we would feature, the places we would film, and the whole drama I wanted to present. My target audience would be the Catholic family. It could not be a boring “talking head” documentary but had to be a rollicking adventure. We wanted to bring the lands of the Bible and the Catholic Church into the homes of every Catholic family.

CWR: Speaking of adventures, what was it like filming in Iraq, Turkey, and Israel?

Continue reading at www.CatholicWorldReport.com.

Galileo was Right—But So Were His Critics

Giovanni Battista Riccioli (left) and Galileo Galilei (right) are the main characters in the new book "Setting Aside All Authority, written by Dr. Christopher M. Graney and published by University of Notre Dame Press.

Galileo was Right—But So Were His Critics | Kevin Schmiesing | CWR

An interview with Dr. Christopher M. Graney, author of "Setting Aside All Authority: Giovanni Battista Riccioli and the Science against Copernicus in the Age of Galileo"

Ever since the seventeenth century, the celebrated “Galileo affair” has been one of the featured items on the list of dark moments in the history of Catholicism. That the Church mistreated the Italian astronomer—or at least misjudged his claims concerning the structure of the solar system—seems clear. Pope John Paul II, for example, apologized for the Church’s condemnation of Galileo in 1992. No one now disputes the fact that the earth revolves around the sun rather than the other way around.

For anti-Catholic historians and polemicists the episode is but the most obvious instance of the supposedly perennial conflict between religion—often enough Catholicism specifically—and science. The seventeenth-century battle, in the conventional view, pitted clergymen, who relied on revelation, against scientists, who relied on empirical observation.

But what if this typical portrayal of the heliocentric debate is almost entirely wrong?

That’s the claim of Dr. Christopher M. Graney in Setting Aside All Authority: Giovanni Battista Riccioli and the Science against Copernicus in the Age of Galileo (University of Notre Dame Press, 2015). Graney, professor of physics at Jefferson Community and Technical College in Louisville, Kentucky, credits a question from one of his students with propelling him into an exploration of the history of heliocentrism and its skeptics. He corresponded recently about his surprising findings.

CWR: One of the blurbs on the back cover calls it “the most exciting history of science book so far this century.” I took that as hyperbole—until I read the book. It has the potential to overturn some important and entrenched narratives in the history of the relation between science and religion. To understand how, we need to know a little bit about the central character, Giovanni Battista Riccioli, whom you seem determined to rescue from obscurity. Who was he and why is he important?

Graney: Your comment about obscurity reminds me of my wife dubbing me “Riccioli’s agent.” He was an Italian Jesuit priest who worked in Bologna. He was born at the turn of the seventeenth century, so he was a very young man when Galileo was making big discoveries with the telescope in the 1610’s. Riccioli was bitten by the science bug, and eventually obtained permission from his superiors to devote time to science. He did a lot of physics experiments, including some of the first experiments to precisely study gravity. His results were quite good (he was very “detail oriented,” maybe to the point of being a little obsessive about it). He made a lot of astronomical observations with the telescope; he and his fellow Jesuit Francesco Maria Grimaldi gave the features on the moon the names we use today. Your readers may recall that Apollo 11 landed in an area on the moon called “Tranquility.” Riccioli gave it that name. He wrote a huge book on physics and astronomy, called the New Almagest, published in 1651, that became a standard reference book. He was a prominent opponent of the heliocentric theory and was well-known in his time.

CWR: One of your main contentions is that even though in the long run Copernicus would be proven right by science, considering what was known at the time Riccioli actually had the stronger scientific case. Can you describe some of the problems that heliocentric theorists in the early seventeenth century had no good answer for?

Continue reading at www.CatholicWorldReport.com.

Theology of the Body: Insights for the Synod on the Family

Joseph Known to His Brethren, by Harold Copping (1863-1932)

Theology of the Body: Insights for the Synod on the Family | Dr. Peter Khan | Homiletic & Pastoral Review

Introduction

The upcoming Synod of Bishops on the Family, in October 2015, faces a huge challenge. The preparatory document for the synod reminded us that many families find themselves crushed and abandoned. 1 The document also acknowledged that a crisis of faith underlies this crisis in marriage and the family. The bishops and cardinals, and the Holy Father, see the many difficulties that arise when family life becomes separated from the faith of the Church. No one can just walk away from those who experience difficulties. Equally, though, the word of truth and hope that families need to hear is not necessarily easy to uncover. The earlier Synod on the Family (in October last year) found this challenging, by all accounts.

There is a great deal that the next synod could gain from looking to the theology of the body as it seeks to offer this word of truth and hope. After all, we have seen in recent years how the teaching of Pope St. John Paul on the theology of the body has brought great hope and life to the Church where it has been welcomed. The synod last year, though, did not look towards this theology for answers to the difficulties that we face in our marriages and families. Why might this have been the case? Fr José Granados argued earlier that there is a missing chapter in the theology of the body, the transition between the fallen and redeemed states of humanity. 2 The theology of the body does, of course, pay most attention to human nature before the Fall, to the Fall itself, and to the redeemed state. I believe that people sometimes see the theology of the body as pertaining to an unattainable ideal state. Adam and Eve in the Garden of Eden; aren’t the images so often sentimental and wistful? It can be easy to think that life in the beginning has little to do with couples who are struggling today.

I would like to explore this missing chapter in the theology of the body, the transition between the fallen and redeemed states. I will principally use the method of the theology of the body, rather than expound its substantive content. While this remains somewhat uncharted territory, William Kurz has highlighted how the method, for instance, involves a close reading of Scriptures in light of these various states of human nature. 3 Reflection on human experience also forms an integral part of the approach, along with careful philosophical underpinnings. Writing on the theology of the body typically remains within the immediate lines on which John Paul laid out his ideas. In order to address the transition, though, I will follow Granados in stretching the boundaries. My focus won’t just be on sexuality as it pertains to couples, but on the wider life of the family. In this, we follow indications that John Paul gave, when he indicated that, in principle, the theology of the body applies to such areas as suffering, 4 work 5 and children. 6

The Family of Jacob: The People of Israel

This article focuses on a single family, on the family of  Jacob. 

Continue reading at www.HPRweb.com.

"The Trinity: Three Persons in One Nature" by Frank Sheed

 

The Trinity: Three Persons in One Nature | Frank Sheed | From Theology and Sanity | Ignatius Insight 

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 rigid man, 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 Trinity: The Mystery that addresses our deepest longings and questions

"Trinity" (Троица) by Andrei Rublev (c. 1410) [WikiArt.org]

A Scriptural Reflection on the Readings for the Solemnity of the Most Holy Trinity | Carl E. Olson

Readings:
• Dt 4:32-34, 39-40
• Psa 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 well-being 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, issue of Our Sunday Visitor newspaper.)

A Layman Responds to Cardinal Kasper’s Proposal, Part II

Cardinal Walter Kasper, retired president of the Pontifical Council for Promoting Christian Unity, in January 2014. (CNS photo/Paul Haring)

A Layman Responds to Cardinal Kasper’s Proposal, Part II | Dr. José Durand Mendioroz | CWR

An Argentine lawyer and professor of law responds in detail to the arguments and suggestions of Cardinal Walter Kasper.

[Editor’s note: This is the second installment in a series examining Cardinal Walter Kasper’s proposals regarding the reception of Communion by the civilly divorced and remarried. The first can be read here.]

The conditions to receive sacramental Communion

We will analyze here the “conditions” under which Cardinal Kasper would allow sacramental Communion for divorced persons in second civil unions, with the end in mind of evaluating if these conditions are in the first place sufficiently defined. Later we will analyze the reception Cardinal Kasper’s proposals met with at the Extraordinary Synod on the Family last October, as reflected in the post-synodal Final Report.

“If a divorced and remarried…”

We should be precise in the terms employed in order to avoid misconstruing their real significations by “slippage in meaning.”

The first condition cited here is remarkably imprecise, inasmuch as it refers to two realities in the civil sphere, while what interests us here is the religious sphere, in which neither divorce nor remarriage once divorced is possible. The formulation needs to utilize appropriate, fitting terms; if a “divorcee” had never contracted a sacramental marriage, it would be of no interest to us in the matter being analyzed.

Moreover, one should not facilitate an equivocation—even an unconscious one—between sacramental and civil marriage, due to their distinct natures and effects and to the institutional precariousness of civil marriage. In order to attain a greater clarity, we shall speak of sacramental marriage and of civil marriage (or civil union).

We should then reformulate this condition; if we lose some concision, we avoid something worse—that is, confusion: “If someone who is bound by a sacramental marriage should civilly marry a person other than the sacramental spouse…”

“…is truly sorry that he or she has failed in the first marriage”

We should state precisely that in this case there is no “first” marriage, but only “a single sacramental marriage.” The second has no merely ordinal difference from the first, but does have an essential difference: the religious marriage subsists in the life of the spouses, while in the civil sphere the sequence is marriage, divorce, and remarriage.

The cited condition is broader than is indicated by Kasper in his initial exposition (the “deserted” spouse without guilt). Because if only an innocent were involved, what would he or she repent of in regards to the separation?

Continue reading at www.CatholicWorldReport.com.

How Same-Sex Marriage Won Out in Ireland

How Same-Sex Marriage Won Out in Ireland | Michael Kelly | CWR

Intense pressure from political and cultural elites, together with millions of dollars in foreign funding, resulted in a victory for gay rights activists in the majority-Catholic country.

Ireland, once dubbed “the most Catholic country in the world” by the future Pope Paul VI, has become the first country in the world to adopt same-sex marriage by means of a popular vote.

For months, opinion polls had been consistent is showing huge levels of support for the constitutional amendment to re-define marriage.

On the day, 62 percent of people voted “yes” for same-sex marriage. It was not the absolute landslide pundits had predicted, but it was an emphatic rejection of the traditional understanding of marriage as between one man and one woman.

David Quinn, director of the Iona Institute and de facto leader of the “no” campaign, was magnanimous, conceding defeat just over an hour after the counting of votes began and the pattern was clear.

Archbishop of Dublin Diarmuid Martin described the result as a “social revolution.”

“We [the Church] have to stop and have a reality check, not move into denial of the realities,” Archbishop Martin said. “We won’t begin again with a sense of renewal, with a sense of denial.”

The archbishop—a former Vatican diplomat who has headed Ireland’s largest diocese for more than a decade—had been criticized during the campaign by some for being too timid in presenting the Church’s teaching on marriage. In the final days, he did take to the airwaves to make a plea for a “no” vote. However, he angered some “no” campaigners for refusing to say Catholics ought to vote “no.”

The bishop of Elphin, Kevin Doran, was among the most vocal opponents of the redefinition of marriage in the Irish hierarchy. He led a robust campaign and frequently engaged in media debates in an attempt to have the proposal defeated.

Responding to the result, he said: “The outcome of the marriage referendum is clear and decisive.”

Bishop Doran got to the heart of why the “yes” campaign proved so convincing in the end. “It seems that many people voted ‘yes’ as a way of showing their acceptance and their love for friends and family members who are gay,” he said.

“Large numbers obviously believed that they could vote ‘yes’ without in any way undermining marriage.”

How has it happened that a country in which 84 percent of people describe themselves as Catholic has become the first state in the world to enact same-sex marriage by means of a popular vote?

Continue reading at www.CatholicWorldReport.com.