A Call for action

Dear Friends,

(The Rev. Know-it-all needs to discuss something other than convoluted history and obscure theology because things are not so good back on planet earth. I will resume my treatise on the relationship between sacraments and religious swooning next week, unless things get even weirder.)

Archbishop Timothy Broglio, Archbishop for the Military Services of the USA, wrote a letter to be read at all Sunday Masses for U.S. military personnel around the world. The letter is critical of the Obama administration’s decision to rescind the exemption for the Catholic Church that allows Catholic institutions not to provide condoms, sterilization, artificial birth control, and chemically induced abortions by means of insurance provided to employees. The letter said that the decision by the Obama Administration as part of new federal health care law “is a blow to a freedom that you have fought to defend and for which you have seen your buddies fall in battle,” and that “We cannot—we will not—comply with this unjust law.”   

Today, there are hurried meetings. As of this writing, (Feb. 8, 2012), Archbishop Broglio spoke with Secretary of the Army John McHugh and they have “agreed that it was a mistake to stop the reading of the archbishop's letter,”  The Archbishop has also agreed to McHugh's suggestion that the words, “We cannot, we will not comply with this unjust law,” will not be in the letter for fear that “it could potentially be misunderstood as a call to civil disobedience.” 

The chaplains have narrowly missed being in the position, as I understand it, of deciding whether or not to obey their bishop or their commander in chief. I am reminded of the sad days that destroyed the faith of England, when the clergy had to obey the king or obey the pope. Only one bishop (St. John Fisher) and St. Thomas More, the former chancellor resisted the king, dying for their faith and conscience, imprisoned by the administration of Henry the Eighth for refusing to give their blessing to the marriage of Henry and Ann Boleyn, and eventually beheaded for treason. 

Thomas More in particular did not ever even publicly oppose the marriage. He was executed simply for not endorsing it. We Catholics are once again in this difficult position as were our forbears in the faith. We are being asked not only to give our blessing, but to pay for what we regard as a perversion of one of our seven sacraments. In the 1966 film, “A Man For All Seasons” Sir Thomas More, having been convicted of treason by means of  false testimony, finally gives his opinion of the King’s marriage. He cries out, “ I am here because I would not consent to the marriage!” 

We are in exactly the same position. We will not consent to the forced redefinition of the sacrament of marriage. We Catholics define marriage as permanent, faithful and familial. America now defines marriages as temporary, narcissistic and self-gratifying. For us, marriage is an exclusive relationship between a man and a woman that exists for the sake of stable families in which children can be brought into the world in as much emotional and physical safety as possible.  For them, marriage can be ended by divorce when it no longer meets one’s needs, or the relationship is unsatisfying. Instead of faithfulness to another, one’s own interests are paramount. Instead of the emotional and physical safety of children, America’s new definition of marriage makes the giving of life optional. Pleasure and emotional gratification give marriage meaning.   

We are not saying that they may not do these things. We are just asking to be allowed to hold to our own beliefs, to the freedom of our consciences and to the free expression of our faith in the public forum. We Catholics are on trial for the sake of Marriage and the Universality of the Church, just as surely as was St. Thomas More. Don’t be fooled. They will not give up. They will not rest until they have American marriage blessed by an American, not a Catholic Church. 

They are a bit surprised by the Catholic reaction. They had thought we would remain asleep while the country was ruined. They may back off until they can hear us snoring again. Stay awake!  St. Paul reminds us in his letter to the Romans: “It is already the hour for you to wake from sleep. The night is almost gone, and the day is near. Therefore, let us lay aside the deeds of darkness and put on the armor of light. Let us behave properly as in the day, not in carousing and drunkenness, not in sexual promiscuity and sensuality, not in strife and jealousy. But put on the Lord Jesus Christ! (Romans 13:11-14).

So what can we do? Go to the Relevant Radio Website. Just do a web search for Relevant Radio and at the top right-hand corner just below Our Lady of Guadalupe’s picture where it says Enter Keyword type in HHS.  Also, go to the USCCB Website. (That’s the United States  Conference of Catholic Bishops. USCCB works just as well)   There you will see URGENT ACTION ALERT under those words  you will find WRITE to CONGRESS TODAY. Click on this and it will guide you through the process.  Another good thing to do: get the movie “A Man For All Seasons.” Watch it. Have your children watch it, reminding them that it is a true story.

 

Here is the letter I wrote:

Hon. Senator Durbin, Hon. Senator Kirk, Hon. Representative Schakowsky,

I am writing to ask you to support Senator Rubio's bill protecting religious freedom. I am very concerned about  the decision by Kathleen Sebelius  and the current administration to deny the insurance exemption for churches that object to artificial birth control and chemical abortions. I  object, not simply because I am a Catholic, and a clergyman, but because my ethnic origins are German. My family fled Germany in the 19th century to escape a growing of tyranny. My cousins who remained in the old country were gradually forced to pay for and then to assist in the horrors of the Nazi holocaust. They were fooled by the slow, incremental denial of fundamental human rights. “First they came for the Jews, but I was not a Jew, then came for the Gypsies, but I was not a Gypsy..... “Now in America, “First they are coming for the Catholics....” I cannot believe that in this country that I love, I and my congregation will be forced to pay for what we regard as murder. I appeal to your love of country and your love of justice, don't force the Catholic Church to abandon its mission to those in need by insisting that we provide the means of murder to those we employ. Such a situation could end in the closing of our schools, hospitals and charities and thus cause the unemployment of a million people.  Please help.

Letter to Penny Quostal, part 5

Letter to Penny Quostal, continued:

The original word for the Sacraments, oddly enough is not “sacrament.” Sacrament is a Latin word, and as you must know, having the intelligence to peruse this column, the primary language of the early Church was Greek.  Greek culture and language was to the ancient world what America and English is to the modern world. Greek was spoken (as a second language) from Spain to India, from Germany to Ethiopia. It was the language of trade and international communication. 

Latin was more common in the west, outside of Rome where, at times,  more people spoke Greek than Latin and Aramaic, a Semitic language similar to Hebrew, more common in the East, but in most places, there was somebody who spoke a little Greek.  So the Holy Spirit used the Greek word “mysterion” to describe those seven ceremonies that Christians practiced. Baptism, Anointing (called Confirmation in the West, Chrismation in the East) Eucharist, Matrimony, Ordination, Penance and the Anointing of the Sick (formerly called Extreme Unction or the Last Rites).

So what is a mysterion? It is most certainly not what we mean in modern English by the word “mystery.” A mystery is something you watch on TV or read on a dark and stormy night. The imprecise use of the word has caused a lot of trouble in the Church.  Remember when you were seven years old and asked the nun who was trying to cram the catechism into your little heathen head, and you asked her, “Sister, how can there be three persons in one God and not be three gods?” Or “how can bread and wine become Jesus when they still taste like bread and wine? Huh? Huh?” 

She would sigh, say, “It’s a mystery!” and lay her poor habited head on the desk. She was probably about 20 years old, and was trying to wrestle 40 seven-year-olds and their unpredictable bodily functions into some kind of order, all for the greater glory of God.   

When she said, “It’s a mystery!” what she was really saying was “Look, kid, I don’t understand it so there’s no way you’re going to understand it. Now just color in the book and stop pestering me.” I am amazed that more of these idealistic, valiant young  women didn’t go absolutely bonkers. 

So, we grew up thinking that the mystery of faith was just an idea that made no sense but was still true and if we wanted to get to heaven, we just had to swallow the idea and not ask too many questions. And Remember to put your envelope in the basket on Sunday. Amen. One gets the feeling that when the priest chants “the mystery of faith” after the consecration at Mass, he might as well be chanting, “we have no idea what’s actually going on here!” 

This is not what mystery means in the theological sense. The Greek word “mysterion” as in “mystery” comes from the Greek word “myo” meaning to shut (the lips), hence to whisper. A mysterion is a thing whispered, a secret.   When the priest says “Mystery of Faith” he is actually saying “the secret of faith.” Jesus said to His disciples, “To you it has been given to know the mysteries of the kingdom of God.” (Luke 8:10) He was really saying “To you it has been given to know the SECRETS of the kingdom of God.”  That’s different. 

We still use it in this sense when we pray the Rosary. We speak of the mysteries of the Rosary. For instance, the second joyful mystery is titled “Mary visits Elizabeth.” What’s so mysterious about that, at least in the modern sense? If you understand there are the fifteen, oops, the twenty SECRETS of the Rosary, it makes a whole lot more sense. To the world it looks like two pregnant ladies klatsching, perhaps even kvetching. 

To us, to whom the mysteries of the kingdom have been given, it is the moment when the Old and New Testaments meet, the moment when the old woman Elizabeth, bearing the last prophet of the old covenant greets the Virgin Mother, the young woman, bearing the new covenant.  The messiah, the prophet promised by Moses is hidden in her womb. The old acknowledges the new and rejoices. 

So it is with the seven Sacraments, more properly called the seven Mysteries, that is the seven Secrets. The world may see a priest holding a little round piece of bread. We believers know the secret. It isn’t really bread. It is the perfect sign of God’s love for the world. It is his heart made visible on the altar, His only begotten Son, the whole Christ, His body, blood soul and divinity.  I can see it. Can’t you? I can see it because I have the eyes of faith. After Jesus told the disciples that the secrets of the kingdom had been entrusted to them, that Jesus once said, “seeing they dot not see, and hearing they do not understand.”

At the time of Christ the word mysterion most commonly referred to secret religious rites that initiated people into the secret religious societies. The only comparable groups I can think of in our world today are the Moonies, the Druze and the Masons. The Masons are members of a fraternal organization that initiates members by entrusting certain secret practices and beliefs, the higher the degree that one achieves in Freemasonry, the more secrets are entrusted to him. The initiate swears a solemn oath to abide by the rules of the fraternity and to keep the "secrets of Freemasonry.”   

This is exactly what the ancient Greek cults did. The most famous of the ancient Greek mystery religions was the Eleusinian mystery. Initiates gathered in the market place of Athens on a certain day every year, walked the 14 miles to the shrine of the goddess Demeter and were shown secret objects sacred to the goddess and then sworn into the group with the most solemn oath not to reveal what they had seen. Like the Masons, the Mysteries of Eleusis had degrees of initiation and one could ascend to the highest secrets of the group. To reveal these secrets meant death, and to this day we have very little idea of what actually went on. The mysteries provided a sense of intimacy and belonging and a promise of afterlife that was lacking form the state religion and its mythology.

When Jesus spoke of the Mysteries of the Kingdom, He was clearly dealing in a category that was known to His disciples, but there was something very different about the Christian mystery. “What I tell you in the dark, speak in the daylight; what is whispered in your ear, proclaim from the rooftops.” (Matt 10:27) The function of the Church was not to hide the secrets, but to reveal them. Heaven is not like earth. Heaven is like Jesus.  He is the sacrament of heaven. He is the visible image of the invisible God

Next week: You still haven’t explained anything about the relationship of the diaconate to the presbyterate...... I’m getting there.

Letter to Penny Quostal, part 4

So, Ms. Quostal, in your original question, which most of our readers have long since forgotten, you wonder why, when the bishop lays his hands on the head of one being ordained, nothing appears to happen? When a Pentecostal faith healer lays his hands on someone who is praying for healing, that person may fall over, speak in tongues or some such interesting thing.  You are assuming that the laying on of hands always means the same thing. It doesn’t.

The laying on of hands had a number of meanings in the Bible. It was a way to ask God to give a blessing. For instance, Isaac blessed Jacob by the laying on of hands. (Genesis 27:27) This is what happens in a prayer meeting or healing service. The person doing the praying is asking God to bless or heal someone and different people react in different ways to the experience of God’s Holy Spirit. 

The Moravian Brethren, a movement similar to Pentecostalism met in the Quaker meeting house on Aldersgate Street in London. John Wesley, the founder of the Methodist movement had a life-changing, even a world-changing experience there in 1727. He didn’t fall over or speak in tongues. He simply said that “I felt my heart strangely warmed.”  He was an understated sort of fellow. Some people fall over. Some people don’t. The whole thing is that different people react to the perception of God’s Holy Spirit in different ways. It is a human reaction, not necessarily a divine or supernatural action. 

I remember a priest who was prayed over at a prayer meeting who said  afterwards that he had never felt that God was alive. He had always believed it, but never felt it.  It was no less real when he didn’t feel it, and no more real when he did. It was just that he now felt what he had always known. That’s one function of the laying on of hands. In this case it confers nothing. It is a  form of prayer, a kind of petition.

The next example of the laying on of hands in the Bible is found in Leviticus 16: 21. The high priest transferred the sins of  Israel to a sacrificial goat by the laying on of hands.  We see the same thing going on in Exodus 29:10 and Leviticus 1:4. The laying on of hands was a way to designate sacrifice. This is closer to what happens in ordination. To ordain means to arrange or appoint unalterably. As in the phrase, “ordained since the beginning of time.”  It means to consecrate to God’s use. 

It has nothing to do with “experience of the Holy Spirit.” It has everything with offering yourself sacrificially for use by the Holy Spirit. The two are different things. Paul the Apostle fell over on the Damascus road. That didn’t make him a priest. We read in Acts 13:2

“While they were worshiping the Lord and fasting, the Holy Spirit said, ‘Set apart for Me Barnabas and Saul for the work to which I have called them.’ Then, when they had fasted and prayed and laid their hands on them, they sent them on their mission.”   

See? No falling over, just being set apart for a certain work, which ultimately involved the sacrifice of their lives. Falling over and ordination: two completely different things.

Ordination goes way back in Israelite/Jewish tradition. Moses ordained Joshua by the laying on of hands. ( Num  27:15-23, Deut  34:9) He and the elders of Israel  ordained their successors, also by the laying on of hands in this way. This unbroken chain of ordination of elders by the laying on of hands continued through the time of the Second Temple and only seems to have ended in the late Roman Empire when  Emperor Theodosius II executed Gamaliel VI and abolished the great Sanhedrin. 

This idea of ordination by the laying on of hands isn’t something we made up. The idea of an unbroken chain of ordination comes from the Bible and our Israelite roots. The Israelites ordained their elders. Don’t forget that the word priest comes from the Greek word “presbyter” which means elder.  I can think of nowhere in the Bible where religious experience alone confers authority on a person. 

Religious experience may call a person to ordination or be the result of ordination, but it is not, in and of itself, ordination. Ordination has to do with the unbroken chain of relationship. Catholics, Eastern Orthodox and the Church of the East have it. Rev. Billy Bob’s Church of What’s Happening Now with Signs and Wonders Following does not, no matter how many people fall over when the Rev. Billy Bob prays for them.  Ordination is God’s plan in the Bible for the Church. Religious experience is wonderful. It is a gift from God that proves God is generous to sinners like me, but it isn’t ordination. 

Ordination is a sacrament, which, as I have said, is an outward sign instituted by Christ to give grace. You may think that someone falling over is an outward sign. It isn’t. It is an external reaction to an inward experience and though it might have great meaning for the person experiencing it, it is meaningless, or at best hard to interpret, for those who see it. 

A sacrament is incontrovertibly external. There was no doubt when I went up to the altar and placed my hands in the Bishop’s hands and he looked square into my eyes without blinking and asked, “Will you respect and obey me and my successors?” I said “yes” and he laid his hands on my head, and from that moment on I was consecrated to a specific work in the church and my life became a sacrifice to the Lord for his people just as surely as the Yom Kippur goat became a sacrifice for the good of Israel. I might not have known it then, but I know it now. I was not “empowered.” I was consecrated. It’s a different thing. 

Today, as I write these things, it is the 44^th anniversary of my experience of the Baptism in the Holy Spirit, so called. It really was an immersion in the awareness of the presence of God. It helped me on the road to ordination and was incontrovertibly a life changing experience. Everything I have done since has been colored by that experience and the direction my life has taken is most certainly the result of that evening in January of 1968. 

At the time I had no idea what the whole thing meant, even though it would change my life. I had not asked for the experience, but God gave it to me without my asking. It was a calling, the beginning of an amazing and  difficult journey. Ordination was quite different. 

On May 14, 1975, I knew exactly what ordination meant. I would offer my life at the altar with Christ for the well being of his Bride, the Church, and for the salvation of the world. In the religious experience of the Baptism in the Holy Spirit God was calling me. In ordination, God called and I answered and was set apart.  Different things.  One was an experience, given by God. The  second a covenant that involved God and this sinner, that is to say, it was a sacrament. You have to have your eyes open for a covenant. Falling over is not part of it.  It is an outward sign, not just an inward experience that causes an outward reaction. The sign is meant to be outward, not the reaction.

Next week: More about Sacraments. It will involve more Greek and Latin words. Oh Boy! I bet you can’t wait!

Letter to Penny Quostal, part 3

Letter to Penny Quostal, continued:

At this point in our disquisition we come to an interesting point. God makes use of some very shady people. I am thoroughly tired of people complaining about Renaissance popes and their decadence. In the past century or two, the popes have been routinely virtuous men, but in times past there have been popes who came with, well, baggage. And sometimes with an illegitimate child or five. The Catholic Church has cleaned up its act over the past 500 years pretty well, despite some recent unpleasantness. The track record of Pentecostal faith-healer-miracle-workers is at least as dicey as the worst epochs of Catholic history.  I have already mentioned Brother Swaggart. Don’t forget the amazing Jim and Tammy Faye Baker, Marvin Gorman, Ted Haggard and the great Benny Hinn whose wife is divorcing him. One only wonders who will get possession of the Gulf Stream jet that he purchased for his ministry at the price of $36 million.

Catholics have had their share of venal, sinful, money-grubbing  idiots and so has every other Christian group. The abuse of the manifestations of God’s Holy Spirit does not detract from their reality. I’ve had worried people asked me “If the preacher who healed my lumbago has been disgraced, will my lumbago come back?” 

We Catholics solved this problem in 313 AD when we dealt with the Donatist heresy. The Donatists held that sinful clergy, who may have handed over the sacred books during the Roman persecutions could not validly administer sacraments. In 311, a new bishop was ordained for Carthage by a bishop who had weakened during persecution. The Donatists eventually left the Catholic Church and chose a fellow named Donatus as their bishop, hence the name. Pope Miltiades said that the moral  perfection of the man is not the point. 

It is grace that saves and if the bishop or priest or deacon administers a sacrament doing what the Church says and intending what the Church intends, sinner though he may be, the Sacrament is valid. After all, you may think your confirmation was just swell followed by a great party and a lot of nice presents, but secretly the bishop who confirmed you was running guns to the Hottentots and losing Archdiocesan funds at the dog track, so, without knowing it, you wouldn’t really be confirmed! Or still worse ordained! The Donatists kept long pedigrees of perfect bishops to prove that they had nothing but saints in their background. Yeah, right.

Because of this episode, the Catholic Church developed the principal of “Ex opere operato” or “From the work having been done.”  ( It loses a little in the translation.) It means that if a bad priest says Mass it is still Mass if he says it the way he’s supposed to.  On the other hand a very good priest can say a very bad Mass. He may be a saint who is clueless, who writes his own consecration that is politically correct, consecrates twinkies and Hawaiian punch at children’s liturgies and is the nicest guy in the world. No matter what a sweetheart he may be and no matter how good he is with dogs and small children, his Masses are still not valid. Entertaining maybe, but not valid. 

A bad priest can say a good Mass, a bad bishop can ordain good priests, a bad pope can still count on the guidance of the Holy Spirit, because it’s all grace. Christ is the one who works in the Sacraments, not the priest or the bishop or the pope, and though God may work through a bad man, that man will have a harsher judgment, St. James tells us. (James 3:1) 

Herein lies part of the answer to the question asked: Sacraments are external and objective. The manifestations of the Holy Spirit are not. They are internal and subjective. They are a reaction of our humanity to the experience of God’s amazing love and grace. They are subject to our own personal interpretation and sometimes misinterpretation. They are words from God to the human heart and, to the degree that the heart clings to corruption, it corrupts the word that God may send prophetically. Sacraments are completely different. They are outward, objective visible signs established by Christ to give grace. More on this later.

The whole strange business points out some very important truths regarding the “manifestations” of the Holy Spirit. First, they are not necessarily signs of  a person’s sanctity. The Scriptures say that “by their fruits you shall know them” (Matt 7:16), not by their “gifts.” And what are the fruits of the Holy Spirit? (Galatians 5:22) “But the fruit of the Spirit is love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, gentleness, self-control ...” 

The Christian life and the indwelling of the Spirit of God are to be judged not by whether you fall over, or can heal the sick, but by a life of genuine love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, gentleness, self-control. Manifestations of the Holy Spirit are always prophetic, that is, they are in a certain sense, words from God and so are subject to our imperfect understanding. They are the reaction of the human person to the sensed presence of God. They are always part God and part us. In 1^st Corinthians 13:9 we read, “For we know in part and we prophesy in part...”  In other words, no prophecy outside of the word of Scripture is 100% and even our individual interpretation of Biblical prophecy is incorrect, at least in part. That’s why God gave us a pope in Rome. Part of his job is to guard the authentic tradition of revealed truth. 

Without real authority, you get some really weird stuff.  Just think of the many times that “Biblical prophecy” has pinpointed the return of Lord at tea time of a Thursday, and then the prophet calls a press conference on Friday, explains how miscalculated and calls it for the coming Monday. You think people would get tired of it. “For we know in part and we prophesy in part.”  All these things are part God and part us. And that’s just fine. It makes them no less real, but I want to arrive at the point of holiness and humility that it is mostly God and not mostly me! 

Scripture tells us to “test the spirits to see if they are from God because many false prophets have gone out into the world.”(1John 4:1)  Sometimes it’s mostly  us and very little God.  This goes for Pentecostal faith healers and Catholic mystic wanna-bees who see the blessed Mother appearing every Tuesday and Thursday in a cabbage patch on the family farm. 

For all its problems and abuses, the Pentecostal/Charismatic renewal was not a waste of time. Fr. Branagan of St. Armadillo’s in Amarillo makes a good point. “The real struggle in the Church is not between the so-called liberal and conservative. It is between those who believe in supernatural reality and those who don’t.”  At a time when my teachers, most of whom left the priesthood, didn’t believe a word of this stuff. It was always “Christ as...”  Christ as liberator Christ as healer, Christ as leftist rebel, Christ as misunderstood rabbi... Christ as, Christ as, Christ as... never just Christ. 

They  were gnostics who believed in salvation by progressive theology, not by grace through faith.  St Paul told St. Timothy that “people will be lovers of themselves ....not lovers of the good,  ..lovers of pleasure rather than lovers of God, having a form of godliness but denying its power. Have nothing to do with them.”(1Tim3:2-5)  Novenas and rosaries and Eucharistic adoration were all discouraged to the point of being forbidden in my seminary days and a young man could be tossed from the seminary for being too pious. The Pentecostals were my hiding place until the worst of the storm was past and it was once again allowed to believe in the power of God to heal and change lives.  They were very dark times, but for all the abuses of the Holy Spirit’s manifestations, we Pentecostals never let the theologians quite forget that God works in a real and powerful way in the world. Still, I miss Pentecostalism and long for a return of the real thing. There is so little of it left these days.

So what’s the difference between the laying of hands that confers a Sacrament and praying over people in Pentecostal prayer groups? What are Sacraments anyway? That, dear reader, will have to wait until next week.....

Letter from Penny Quostal - part 2

Letter to Penny Quostal continued:

(This is ultimately going to be a disquisition on the nature of sacraments and in particular, the relationship between the diaconate and priesthood. Why then, you may well ask, has he veered off into religious strangeness? Simply because about one out of ten Christians alive today has had some experience with Pentecostalism, Catholic, Protestant and everything in between. This is particularly true in Africa, Latin America and Asia where lies the future of the church and the world. American Christianity is now the victim of the convenient theologies of the mega church which largely cater to popular feeling and are often a kind of “Pentecostalism lite.” This stuff is everywhere. The question with which I am dealing can be paraphrased: “How come when Pentecostal preachers pray over somebody, something happens? When Catholic bishops do, nothing appears to happen.” Fair question. I will continue now...)

So then, in order to answer the original question, I have to explain what it means to be “slain in the spirit?” It sounds a little frightening. Catholic Charismatics try to make it a bit more palatable by calling it “resting in the spirit.” A rose by any other name would still have thorns. In the church of Santa Maria della Vittoria in Rome, there is a statue called “St. Teresa (of Avila) in Ecstasy” by Gian Lorenzo Bernini. Her heart is being pierced by an arrow of love and she is falling back, not unconscious, but absolutely aware only of the arrow of God’s love held by an angel. 

We have examples of something similar in the Bible. In the Apocalypse, we read about St. John’s vision: “When I saw him, I fell at his feet as though dead. Then he placed his right hand on me and said: “Do not be afraid. I am the First and the Last. I am the Living One.”(Rev. 1:17,18) In the first book of Samuel, the nineteenth chapter, we find the story of Saul who, on his way to kill David, meets a group of prophets and is seized by the Holy Spirit and he rips off his clothes and falls to the ground where he lay naked, prophesying all night and all day. When the temple guard came to arrest Jesus in the garden of Gethsemane we read something similar. “Jesus asked, ‘Whom do you seek?’ They answered Him, ‘Jesus the Nazarene.’ He said to them, ‘I am He’... They drew back and fell to the ground.” (John chapter 18)  Then we have the story of the conversion of St. Paul. In the ninth chapter of the Acts of the Apostles we read, “He (Paul) fell to the ground and heard a voice say to him, "Saul, Saul, why do you persecute me?”   

Interestingly the experience seems to happen to bad people, more often than not.  Saul, Paul and the Temple guards were all on their way to commit murder. They were stopped in their tracks by an experience of the power of God to which they responded by falling to the ground. One may presume St. Teresa of Avila to be a different case. 

I have witnessed and experienced the phenomenon. I remember one Pentecostal faith healer who would just touch a person, often on the arm and start talking about the glory of God and over they would go. I’ve seen whole rows of people collapse like puppets with their strings cut.  This particular faith healer even used this odd gift for the purpose of crowd control, not unlike the Lord when he stopped Saul, Paul and the temple guards. 

The questioner mentioned that when a charismatic preacher prays over someone, that person “fall(s) unconscious for some time.”  This is not quite accurate. The sensation is not one of unconsciousness, but rather one of complete peace. It’s as if the person says to himself “I’m standing, but there is no particular reason to do so because I feel so absolutely peaceful!” and down they go! It’s a real thing. I have no idea whether it is natural or supernatural. I suspect it is a bit of both, but it does happen. It is not illegal and when it is a spontaneous response to the sense of the nearness of God, I don’t think it is immoral.

Now, on to the abuses of the phenomenon which, quite frankly are immoral.  I have attended countless prayer meetings and revival meetings during which there is prayer for the healing of the sick. People routinely fall over, and if they don’t fall over the faith “healer” will pray with great intensity until they do. Sometimes when the “healee” is not cooperative, the “healer” will give them a little shove when they have wasted enough time with that particular supplicant. I have had disconsolate people come up to me saying, “Father, God didn’t bless me! When they prayed over me, I didn’t fall over!”  This makes me want to turn out the lights and send everybody home. It’s absolutely nuts! The phenomenon is real and when it’s real it’s full of joy and peace. Often it is faked and contrived and even dangerous. I have known people who injured themselves when shoved by a faith healer. I have never known anyone who was injured when the experience was spontaneous and genuine. 

You may think from all this that I disapprove of Pentecostalism. On the contrary! I miss Pentecostalism. There isn’t much of it around any more either in its Catholic or  Protestant form. There are a lot of showy non-denominational churches that are all about making people feel good. There are a lot of Catholic prayer group leaders who try to get people excited like in times past. The means by which they harangue the crowd into a kind of hysteria is the microphone. I remember one prayer group that had fallen on hard times. They really believed that if they felt it, it must be true, and if it was louder they would feel it.  Needless to say a lot of the leadership had fallen into terrible sin and the group which had numbered in the hundreds was down to 15 or 20 members. They insisted on having the meetings in the large empty church and on using five microphones. If only they could make things louder, everyone would come back and the glory days would return. It never occurred that if they got quieter, that might actually happen. A really good prayer meeting is where everybody is going nuts and there’s no amplification. If the Holy Spirit doesn’t show up at the meeting, well, there’s always electrical noise.

When most people think of Pentecostalism, they think of noise. Pentecostalism is really about quiet. Profound and expectant quiet. Pentecost was one afternoon of supernatural ministry that changed the world. It was preceded by nine days of expectant waiting.  The heart of the Pentecostal movement when it still had anything to do with Pentecost was the “tarry” service. The old King James’ version of the Bible in Luke 24:49 reads “And, behold, I send the promise of my Father upon you: but tarry ye in the city of Jerusalem, until ye be endued with power from on high.”   

Tarry is an old word meaning “wait” the Pentecostal tarry service was the very heart of the movement. People would lock themselves into a church or wherever they happened to meet on a Saturday night and just wait on the Lord. Sometimes they would wait for days. They weren’t going to do anything until the Holy Spirit arrived. There were no hymn books, no prayer leaders, no sermons, no “order of service.” They just waited. 

I remember with fondness the Puerto Rican grandmothers who would lock themselves into a church on the west side of Chicago with a coffee pot, a few blankets and pillows and just prepare to wait out God, and as they put it, they would “pray through.” There is none of that now. There are music ministries and preachers and healing Masses.  There are mega-churches with theater seats and membership drives. There are programs and seminars and what began in the Spirit is sadly ending in the flesh. (Galatians 3:3)

Next week: More interesting Pentecostal weirdness. Also, the finest defense of classical Pentecostalism out there is the movie “The Apostle” by Robert Duvall.

What happens at an Ordination?

Dear Rev. Know it all,

  

During priestly ordination, the Bishop places his hands on the head of the one to be ordained to fill him with the Holy Spirit. Nothing extraordinary visibly happens to the candidate for ordination. At certain meetings of the Charismatic Renewal, when the priest imparts the Holy Spirit for charismatic healing people are "slain by the Spirit" and fall unconscious for some time. Can you explain the difference?

Thank you and blessed New Year,

Mrs. Penny Quostal

Dear Mrs. Quostal,

The simple answer is that one (ordination) is a sacrament. The other (to be “slain in the Spirit”) is an experience.  Now, on to the complicated answer.

   

For those who are not aficionados of things charismatic, or as I prefer, Pentecostal, let me provide some background. In his first letter to the Corinthians, (12:7-11) St. Paul tells us that “...the manifestation of the Spirit is given to each for the good of all. To one is given the word of wisdom ... to another the word of knowledge ... to another faith...to another gifts of healing ... the working of miracles... prophecy…discerning of spirits... tongues and interpretation of tongues.  “Phanerosis”  is the  word in the text that means “manifestation.” “Charisma” is rendered “gift” and is used once referring to healing in the previous passage. “Manifestation” seems to refer to the whole list. Only healing is specifically called a gift. The Charismatic Renewal, so called, is specifically a renewal of the external manifestations of the Holy Spirit, not the gifts of the Holy Spirit, which are  Wisdom, Understanding, Counsel (Right Judgment), Fortitude (Courage),  Knowledge, Piety (Reverence), Fear of the Lord (Wonder and Awe).

I prefer the word “Pentecostal” to the word “charismatic.”  The gifts of the Holy Spirit have never been de-emphasized though manifestations have been. Pentecost, celebrated 50 days after the Passover, was the Jewish feast on which God’s power was made visible through the apostles by the gift of tongues. The purpose of the gift of tongues wasn’t to make the apostolic preaching of  the Gospel understandable to the assembled crowd of Jewish pilgrims, all of whom were Jews from around the world. The crowd  spoke Greek, Hebrew, Aramaic and possibly Latin. They had three or four languages in common. The marvel was that they heard the apostles speaking in the  languages of their respective places of residence. The Pentecostal gift of tongues was a prophetic manifestation of the Holy Spirit, telling the assembled crowd that the Gospel was universal, not just Jewish. It was a prophetic moment. The first Pentecost was a call to arms. The Church of Jesus would be missionary and universal (in Greek,“apostolikos” and “katholikos”) or Apostolic and Catholic. 

So what is Pentecost, Pentecostalism, Pentecostal churches, Charismatic Renewal and what is “slain in the Spirit?” It sounds frightening! Fasten your seat belts. This will take a while.

Modern Pentecostalism started as a movement. It ended as a church or perhaps I should say an “ecclesial community.”  Actually it ended with a lot of divided, theologically splintered churches. For the sake of precision I will use the word Pentecostal” or “Pentecost” referring to the movement of which I have been a part for 44 years. When I am speaking of those groups who have organized the brains out of the whole thing, I will use the words “Pentecostal church(es)” in the case of Protestants or “Charismatic Renewal” in the case of Catholics.

There have been many “Pentecostal” outpourings in the history of the Church. In 180AD, 150 years after the first Christian Pentecost, St. Irenaeus wrote about the visible manifestations of the Holy Spirit including the gift of tongues and healings. He taught that one way to tell the difference between gnostic heretics and Catholics was that the Catholic Church had the manifestations of the Spirit, especially the gift of healing. Another way was to find out whether the teacher in question  agreed with the bishop of Rome. The Gnostic heretics didn’t do either!  As the Church made its peace with the world and the Roman Empire,  the outward manifestations of the Spirit became common only in the lives of great saints, particularly monks. St. Augustine of Hippo (354-430 AD) thought that these wonders were meant only for the early Church to attract the world’s attention to the Gospel. He changed his mind when he saw a renewal of miracles in his own community. St. Francis of Assisi (1182-1226) and his followers seemed to manifest the Holy Spirit visibly including a sort of spontaneous prayer not unlike what modern Pentecostals and Charismatics call singing in tongues.

The current Pentecostal movement traces its beginnings back to New Year’s Eve, 1900. A  Methodist Bible College founded by Rev. Charles Parham of Topeka, Kansas, experienced what they believed to be an outpouring of the Holy Spirit. They claimed to have received a “baptism in the Holy Spirit” evidenced by the gift of tongues (“Baptism” is simply the Greek word for  “immersion” and “tongues” here refers to a kind of ecstatic speech.) This “Baptism in the Holy Spirit with the evidence of speaking in tongues” became the required norm for the Pentecostal churches. If you had not spoken in tongues, you did not “have the Holy Spirit.”  I have no idea how they came to this conclusion. It’s not in the Bible and is certainly not part of Christian tradition or Catholic faith. 

The classical Protestant churches, such as Presbyterian, Lutheran, Episcopalian, Baptist and even Methodist followed the Lutheran/Calvinist doctrine of dispensationalism, saying that God works one way in a certain age, or dispensation, of the world and differently in another age. Luther and classical Protestantism after him have maintained that the miraculous manifestations of the Holy Spirit were valid only for the initial spreading of the Gospel. “When the perfect comes, the partial will pass away.” (1Cor 13:10) They interpreted this to mean that when the last verse of Scripture was written, miracles were no longer necessary for the life of the Church. 

Catholics and orthodox Churches maintain that miracles are an integral part of the life of the Church. This meant that, in some ways, Pentecostalism with its belief in miracles, seemed more Catholic than it did Protestant. This is at the heart of an interesting problem. Pentecostalism is more Catholic than Protestant. The experience is very much like Catholic mysticism. The theology and ecclesiology that Protestants tacked on to the experience are a strange brew of Calvinism and Congregationalism.  Mainline Protestants vehemently and sometimes violently resisted Pentecostalism, so in April 1914, 300 Pentecsotals met in Hot Springs, Arkansas, and formed the Assemblies of God Church. The church then splintered into Independent Assemblies of God, that denied the authority of any church beyond the local congregation, foursquare church, the already extant and pentecostalized Church of God and on and on.

In 1967, at Duquesne University in Pittsburgh, students who had been exposed to pentecostalism shared their experience with others at a retreat, from there the experience took root among the Catholics. That’s where I come in. In my misspent and liberal youth, I was on an ecumenical committee and thus made contact with what seemed to be the ultimate ecumenical movement: Pentecostal prayer meetings. When I came home from school, an 18-year-old who already knew that he knew it all, I told my parents that I had experience a Baptism in the Holy Spirit and that you could have a personal relationship with Christ, that God spoke prophetically in our times and that He worked miracles and healed the sick. They said, “We are Catholics and we’ve always believed these things and are glad that you finally agree with us.” That took all the wind out of my sails and I realized that I was still a Catholic and always would be.

Pentecost is not a theology or an organization. It is an experience. We used to call ourselves Catholic Pentecostals, until 1983 when Jimmy Swaggart, an ordained minister of the Assemblies of God church, the largest single Pentecostal church, wrote “A Letter to my Catholic Friends” which essentially said you couldn’t be saved and Catholic at the same time. I remember it well. At that point the whole Pentecostal movement foundered. The Catholic Pentecostals responded “If you are going to beat us with your Bibles, we’ll strangle you with our Rosaries.” I suspect that the Holy Spirit got disgusted with the whole thing and took a much needed vacation.   

I remember a great gathering of Pentecostal/ Charismatic ministers and group leaders in New Orleans in 1988. Perhaps I have the date wrong, but I will never forget the event, organized by Dr. Vinson Synan. It was, by my lights, the last high water mark of the Pentecostal movement before much of it dissolved into silly emotionalism and strange theologies. Brother Swaggart had been invited to participate in the conference that we all thought would be pleasing to God. He refused to participate because he would not stand on the same stage with Catholics. Apparently he was busy that weekend at the Travel Inn Motel, also in New Orleans. He was ultimately de-frocked by the Assemblies of God and started his own church. 

This event is almost forgotten by the historians of religion. I believe it is one of the most important events in the history of Catholicism. Jimmy Swaggart was an amazing preacher and was expertly dubbed in Spanish and Portuguese. He was well financed and widely heard throughout Latin America, so much so that Latin America was at the point of abandoning the Catholic faith. I used to irritate my confreres in the Spanish-speaking apostolate by calling Brother Swaggart the most popular theologian in Latin America, which he most certainly was. His hobbies, which seem to have continued, ended all that. It also ended any real progress in grass roots ecumenism. 

So what is “pentecostalism?” It is the experience of Pentecost, an immersion in and a  manifestation of the power of God to change lives. It is not perfect. “For we know in part and we prophesy in part.” (1Cor.13:9) It is part me and part God, unlike Christ who was completely God and completely man. It needs authority. It is the manifestation of God’s presence filtered through sinners like me. It  often involves ecstatic speech call glossolalia, also called speaking in tongues, or by prophetic speech or healing. When it is subject to the appropriate authority, the Church established by Christ, it can be a very fine thing. When it is not, it is dangerous and divisive. When it is simply the experience, stripped of the add-ons of bad theology, it is a renewal of our calling to be missionaries in our daily life.

(You will notice that, at this point, the Rev. Know-it-all has completely failed to answer the question. He has not even defined what it means to be “slain in the Spirit.” That’s because, as usual he is far from finished on the topic.)

Why the new translation of the Mass? part 11 Final thoughts

So there you have it, Verne, a blow by blow attempt at explaining the meanings behind the changes of the congregational responses in the Mass. There is not time to go through all the changes, but the change in the parts the priest says are everywhere. It feels like I am saying a different Mass than I have said since I was ordained getting nigh unto forty years ago. It is maddening. I am an old dog expected to learn new tricks. I have to keep my eyes glued to the Missal. 

The words aren’t even the hardest part of the whole exercise.  It is the grammatical structure that makes one crazy. It is a Latin structure not an American-English structure.  Latin uses periodic sentences which have a dependent clause after a dependent clause that make no sense until you get to the final clause or phrase. An example: “When the barbarians stormed the gates, the gates being tightly locked, the king, who being at table, which was set for a feast, told them to make an appointment with his secretary.”  Dis ain’t duh way we talk on duh sout’ side of Chicahhhgo. I am very partial to the Chicago version of American English, especially the evocative and poetic way it is spoken on the south side. 

The Latinized periodic sentences of the new translation seem foreign and removed from everyday life. At times, they even seem like the bad translations handed to me over twenty five years of giving Latin exams, and still worse, they remind me of the horrible translation I handed into to my professors in a past century. 

"So then Rev. Know-it-all, you are opposed to the change?"

On the contrary! I think the whole thing is long overdue, but Heaven has its timing.

First of all, the language used in the newest Missal is the common language, not the local language. According to Wikipedia, there are 375 million people in the world who speak English as their native language. There are almost two billion who speak English, to some degree as a second language, making English the most widely spoken language in the world. The vast majority of these people are clueless when they hear Americans speaking English. 

I will never forget meeting some American cousins in the kitchen of the ancestral tavern in lower, upper-Hessia. (There actually is such a place.) We were coincidentally visiting the old country at the same time and were feasting on Germanic microwave pizza. Yum. We lapsed into American, and the German cousins, who had learned Oxford English, were completely dumbfounded when I asked a fellow American to hit me with a piece of pizza. The Germans present had no idea why I would want to be struck with a wedge of hot, gooey cheese and tomato sauce. Of course I was requesting a piece of pizza, using the colorful, Las Vegas idiom, “to hit” as in to give me another card at the blackjack table -- not that the Rev. Know-it-all is an aficionado of games of chance.

We, Americans seem to think that we are at the cutting edge of everything. During the halcyon days of the Second Vatican Council, we believed that America was the land created by God to enlighten all those backward countries in Europe. We had stormed in to save them in the Second World War, as every good American boy knows, never mind the sacrifices of the English (almost 400,000 military deaths) the Poles (250,000) and even the Russians( 7-8 million), so we would storm in to save them theologically, and liturgically in the Council. Guess what? Things have changed. There are about 70 million Catholics in the Untied States. Perhaps 30 or 40, million of them speak Spanish. That means the English only speaking Catholics of the United states are a tiny group of perhaps 30 or 40 million, who tend to participate in Mass and the life of the Church when they feel like it. About half of them, 15 to 20 million, attend Mass regularly.

In Africa there are 140,000,000 (One hundred and forty million) Catholic. There are between 4 and 15 million Catholic in China. The Catholics of Africa talk to one another in English, not in American. The same is true in large measure of the Philippines. In the Philippines, there about 170 different languages spoken. Tagalog is spoken by only  22 million as a native language. English is the language preferred for professions and for many textbooks. My point is this: Spanish, French, Portuguese and English are the languages of the vast majority of Catholics and the English used is not necessarily American English. We Americans have no idea how odd our English is.  Sometimes, it is so informal as to be incomprehensible. 

English-speaking America which prided itself on being the Catholic vanguard, is fast becoming a backwater of graying, irritated progressives who think the high point of Catholic culture was the age of Aquarius back in the glorious sixties. The “new translation” is a reminder to the young liberals now that they are seventy and eighty years old, that the there is no such thing as an American Church. There is a Catholic Church in America. The English speaking Catholic clergy of this country must decide; will they be part of a Universal Church or will they continue to pretend that they are the arbiters of all things truly Catholic? 

The Mass has never been said in the local language. It has always been said in a sacred language, a common language, not a local language. Aramaic, the first language of the Mass was the common speech of people from the Jordan Valley to India and beyond. Koine Greek was not the classical Greek of the schools of Athens, nor the patois of Alexandria of up-country Turkey. Koine Greek was the common Greek of the Mediterranean world.  The Latin of the Mass was not the Latin of Iberia that was evolving into Spanish, nor the Latin of Tuscany that was evolving into Italian. It was the Latin of the empire that was spoken in law courts, not kitchens. So it is with the English of the Mass it is a common English, not the English that we butcher in our everyday lives. It is a lingua sacra, a lashon kodesh as different from our daily speech as the Hebrew of the synagogue is different from the Israeli shouted on the streets of Tel Aviv. It is understandable, though that may take a little effort, but it isn’t quite the way we talk.

There is one more interesting aspect of the change. It is a matter of justice. “For in the same way you judge others, you will be judged, and with the measure you use, it will be measured to you.” (Matt 7:2)  The law of measuring is an incontrovertible principle of the Kingdom of God. It would be easier to break the laws of physics than the principles of the Kingdom. What goes around comes around. I will probably never be able to say Mass without working at it a little bit, with having a book in front of me, without having to think about it. I will never be able to “wing it” again and to think about what I am going to do after Mass or what I need to get done today. As a celebrant, I will have to pay close attention to what I am saying and doing. Offering the Holy sacrifice of the Mass will never again be as comfortable as an old pair of shoes. It will always be a bit foreign to me and to the all of us older priests. What goes around comes around.

I think back on my old pastor, Monsignor O’Brien. When he was up in years, everything changed. He obeyed, I suspect grudgingly, but he obeyed. The liturgy that he had learned in his childhood, for which he served as an altar boy which he had studied in Rome during the First World War by the light of an oil lamp, the liturgy that he had celebrated for almost fifty years of priesthood was gone over night. It was strictly forbidden to continue to say the Mass of a thousand years without specific permission. It is a matter of great wonder and even humor to me that apparently there are some aging liberals who are planning to ask the Holy Father for an indult, permission that is, to continue to say the Mass as it was until a month ago. These same progressives who fought the indult to say the Tridentine Mass now want an indult for themselves. The mind boggles!  

Remember, what goes around comes around, whether you call yourself a liberal or a conservative. Both are bound by the principles of the kingdom of God.  If this whole thing proves anything, it proves that the word of the Lord endures forever.  “For in the same way you judge others, you will be judged, and with the measure you use, it will be measured to you.”