Dear Rev. Know it all,
I get very confused by all the titles and names used by Catholics. What is the difference between Cardinals and bishops or archbishops. You’ve got monsignors and pastors and archdeacons and mitred abbesses and protonotaries apostolic. Can you explain?
Thank you,
B. Racrasy
Dear B,
It’s really not that complicated, but, as with most things a little history is important. First let’s define hierarchy. In current language “hierarchy” means “chain of command.” This is not its original meaning. It’s a Greek word that means “sacred leadership.” The first sacred leadership was created by God at the beginning of time. It’s called “Mom and Dad.” They may be in charge, but the center of the household isn’t mom or dad. Ask any parent. It’s the kids. Real leadership is about service and if a hierarchy is doing its job it is serving. The pope is called “the servant of the servants of God.” That’s the sense of the word “hierarchy” in Catholic thought.
From the first century until now, the basic structure of the hierarchy is really very simple: bishop, priest, deacon and laity. “Bishop” comes from the Greek word “episcopos” which literally means supervisor, one who has oversight. “Priest” comes from the word “presbyteros” which means elder, one who is older in the Lord. “Deacon” comes from the Greek word “diakonos” which means table waiter or steward, and finally the word laity (or layman or laywoman) comes from the Greek word “laos” which means “the people.” So there you have it: bishop, priest and deacon, dedicated to the care of the people of God.
Are you ready for more Greek? (What’s with all the Greek? Why don’t you just use English? English!! English changes word meanings faster than Imelda Marcos changes shoes. In a hundred years English will be incomprehensible by today’s standards. Ancient Greek will still be ancient Greek. That’s why!) Where was I? Oh yes, another Greek word: Diocese. Diocese is a Greek word meaning administrative district. The Catholic Church is arranged into administrative districts served by supervisors, elder and stewards.
“Wait a minute. It can’t be that simple. The pope is a pretty big deal in Catholicism, as far as I’ve heard.” Well, the pope is the Bishop of Rome, and Rome is the city where St. Peter and St. Paul served, were martyred and are buried. The first Christians believed the role of St. Peter passed on to his spiritual descendants. Jesus had given him the keys of the kingdom and had told him to strengthen his brethren. (Matt16:19 and Luke 22:32) In particular the phrase “keys of the kingdom of heaven” refers to Isaiah, 22:15-25. In the Old Testament, the king had a kind of prime minister or vizier, called the “Albayit.” It was a hereditary position, but Hezekiah, the king threw Shebna and his family out of the job and replaced him with Eliakim son of Hilkiah. Jesus was referring to a hereditary post when he gave Peter the keys of the kingdom. The first Christians took this to mean that Peter’s successor would continue his ministry of teaching and governing. In 180 AD, St Irenaeus of Lyon, a Greek who was Bishop of a city in what is now Southern France wrote the following in “Adversus Haereses."
“We point to the tradition of that very great and very ancient and universally known Church, which was founded and established at Rome, by the two most glorious Apostles, Peter and Paul. We point, I say, to the tradition which this Church has from the Apostles...which comes down to our time through the succession of her bishops...., and so we put to shame . . . all who assemble in unauthorized meetings. For with this Church, because of its superior authority, every Church must agree.”
St. Irenaeus was born around 120AD and had been a disciple of St. Polycarp who had been a disciple of St. John, so this belief that the bishop of Rome had a unique role in the Church goes back to the first days of the faith. “Well,” you may ask, “What is the difference between the pope and the Bishop of Rome?” To which I would respond, “None at all.” The word “Pope,” or “papa” as most languages say it, means exactly that: papa. It derives from the Semitic word “abba” and means “dad,” “pappa.” It is a diminutive for Father. Hence, we call the bishop of Rome the Holy Father or the Pope, just as St. Paul thought of himself a father to the Corinthians. (I Cor.4:14,15) In the same way the Bishop of Rome has been thought of as a father to the whole Church since its first days and thus is called, the Holy Father, and “Papa,” but he is the bishop of Rome, the successor of St. Peter.
The bishop of Rome has jurisdiction over the bishops and faithful of the whole world and appoints bishops in consultation with the local community. He can also remove bishops, but in fact this is almost never done. When a bishop needs to go, the Pope will first call him over to Rome for a chat and suggest that, for the good of the Church, he resign. If he refuses, there will be canonical process to remove the bishop (“canonical” means having to do with Church law.) If a bishop does anything that excommunicates him, automatically he loses all his status and his powers immediately without a process. One thinks of the wacky bishop a few years back who joined the Moonies and got married.)
The pope is the visible source of the unity of the bishops and of the faithful. Vatican II reaffirmed everything Vatican I taught about the papacy and infallibility, but taught that bishops are not “vicars of the Roman Pontiff," but in their local dioceses they are “vicars (representatives)... of Christ." So, it would seem that the pope is the universal representative of Christ and bishops are the local vicars of Christ. He has this role, quite simply because he is the Bishop of Rome.
Two interesting side notes: What does it mean that the pope is the bishop of Rome and why do popes change their name when they become pope?
Though the pope is the diocesan Bishop of the Diocese of Rome, he delegates most of the day-to-day work of leading the diocese to the Cardinal Vicar, who has direct oversight of the diocese's pastoral needs. The Cathedral of Rome is not St. Peter’s, it is St. John Lateran. St Peter’s is where the pope lives and works as the universal shepherd.
Originally the popes used their baptismal names. In AD 533, a man named Mercurius was elected pope. He decided that it would be wrong for a pope to be named after a Roman god, so he changed his name to John and was known as Pope John II. From that time on some popes took a new name and some kept their baptismal name. The symbolism of taking a new name at Baptism or Confirmation is the same. In Christ we become new, thus a new name. As soon as the new pope is elected, and accepts the election, he is asked, “By what name shall you be called?" The senior Cardinal Deacon, or Cardinal Protodeacon, (believe it or not, a lower ranking cardinal. I’ll explain later) comes out onto the balcony of Saint Peter's and says "I announce to you a great joy: We have a Pope! The Most Eminent and Most Reverend Lord, (“Lord ," is used here in the medieval sense of “Lords and Ladies," not in the biblical sense) Lord (first name), Cardinal of the Holy Roman Church (last or family name) who takes to himself the name (name as pope)" It's quite an exciting moment. I still remember when Pope John Paul II was elected. I still remember thinking," Wotyla? That doesn't sound very Italian." And it wasn't!!!
A pope usually chooses his new name to indicate whom he wants to imitate in his papacy. The current pope chose the name Benedict, because the last Pope Benedict struggled through the crisis in Europe between the wars. Benedict XVI has a heart for the re-conversion of Europe and the revival of Christian culture. Interestingly Pope Benedict published the book “Jesus” (a wonderful bible study book) under both his baptismal and papal names. He implied by doing this that this was a book he had started as Joseph Ratzinger, and it was not to be taken as papal teaching.
(Much, much more to follow.)
Rev. Know-it-all
Sunday, June 27, 2010
Saturday, June 19, 2010
Did Mary have other children?
Dear Rev. Know it all,
A question came up at Bible Study last night. One of the group insisted that the Bible says Mary had other children than Jesus, and that, though Jesus was miraculously conceived, Mary and Joseph were just like any other married couple. Also, I noticed that there is no genealogy of Mary in the Bible, and that the genealogies of Joseph in Matthew and Luke seem to contradict each other. If Joseph wasn’t actually the father of Jesus, how can Jesus be descended from David?
Yours,
Gene E. O’Lojey
Dear Gene,
These are two important and interrelated questions. It is true that the Bible says Jesus had brothers. It doesn’t say that Mary had other children. One thing is not the same as the others.
The first question asks about something usually called “the perpetual virginity of Mary.” We believe that Mary remained a virgin her whole life. This is emphatically believed by both Catholic and Orthodox Churches and even by the first Protestant reformers, Zwingli, Luther and Calvin. Since it’s not directly mentioned in the Bible, it was not included in Protestant creeds. Only modern evangelical Protestants insist that Mary and Joseph were the parents of other children. In doing this, they try to de-emphasize the reverence that traditional Christians have for the Blessed Mother.
Well, what does the Bible say? James and Joses are mentioned in Mark 6:3. "Is he (Jesus) not the carpenter, the son of Mary, and the brother of James and Joses and Judas and Simon? And are not his sisters here with us? And they took offense at him." This would make it seem that Mary had children. However James and Joses are mentioned again in Mark 15:40, which mentions among the women present at Jesus' crucifixion a "Mary, the mother of James the Less and Joses". This would make it seem that they are cousins of Jesus, by a different Mary. Catholic tradition favors the “cousins” approach. It was taught by St. Jerome and other Church fathers that the term "brother" in biblical times had a broader meaning and included cousins and other more distant relatives as well.
The Greek and Eastern Churches follow a different but very ancient tradition that’s first recorded in the Protevangelion of St. James. It was probably written around 150AD. Here is a quote from the Protoevangelion (Book I chapter 7. Vs12,13)
“And the high-priest said, ‘Joseph, you are the person chosen to take the Virgin of the Lord, to keep her for him. But Joseph refused, saying, I am an old man, and have children, but she is young, and I fear, for fear that I should appear ridiculous in Israel.”
Some traditions even say that Salome was the name of Joseph’s first wife who had died, leaving him a widower. This tradition was held by all the Western Church fathers until after St. Ambrose, as well as the Greek fathers.
Fr. Bargil Pixner, the great, recently deceased Benedictine scholar and archeologist has some interesting ideas that tie together the Protoevangelion and the archeology of the Holy Land. Many authorities maintain that a vow of celibacy was unheard of at the time of Christ, and thought the Pharisees certainly didn’t believe in permanent celibacy, there were some Jewish who did.
In the Qumran “Great Temple Scroll,” (11QMiq), we read, “When a young woman makes a vow of continence to the Lord.... and her father hears about it....and says nothing about it.... the vow will be binding on both father and daughter. The same holds true for a married wife in respect to her husband. If he confirms the vow, both spouses will be obligated to it.”
Fr. Pixner points out that Royal Davidic family was late in returning to the Holy Land after the Babylonian exile. They only returned in the century before the time of Christ, and when they returned and settled in places that had associations with radical sects of Judaism, such as the Essenes, that preached the immanent coming of the Messiah. The traditional place of Mary’s early childhood in Jerusalem adjoins the temple and was an Essene neighborhood. The traditional site of the Last Supper and Pentecost are in the Essene quarter in southwest Jerusalem. John the Baptist, a close relative of Jesus seems to have been involved in one these groups, and was quite possibly the leader of one.
Fr. Pixner pays serious attention to the old stories of Mary’s childhood that are found in the Protoevangelion because they reflect the beliefs and practices of the Messianic sects like the Essenes. The Davidic family would have had common cause with these groups who longed for the Messiah to purify the temple, the priesthood and the monarchy. It only makes sense. After all, job prospects would certainly have looked brighter if the Herod/Maccabee family were tossed out of the monarchy and the Davidic family restored. That is certainly the backdrop of the Gospel, and explains Jesus’ strained relation with some members of His family. They wanted revolution. Jesus preached conversion.
So, the story may go something like this. Mary was raised in the shadow of the temple and served as some young Jewish girls did with the traditional women’s tasks of sewing and weaving. (Please no politically correct grumbling. History is history and I would never dream of asking women to do that sort of thing for the Church in this enlightened age.) She may have taken a vow of virginity, with the permission of her father, Joachim and when it came time to arrange her marriage, Joachim may have found an older, widowed relative to marry her and thus protect her vow. None of that is inconsistent with the Gospel or the customs of the time.
Though the Protoevangelion has a lot of fanciful material in it, it does seem to reflect very old stories. These traditions seem what the relatives of Jesus believed in the first century, and there were quite a few relatives around. Julius Africanus was a Christian historian born in the Holy Land around 160AD. He claims to have gotten his information from the family of Jesus, who were called the “desposyni,” that is “the family of the master.” Their identities were well known in the ancient world. Some of the relatives of Jesus claimed special distinction in the early Church. The bishops of Jerusalem all seem to have been relatives of Jesus up until 135AD when the city was destroyed by the emperor Hadrian. (By the way, none of these relatives of Jesus ever claimed descent from Him, no matter what the DaVinci Code claims.)
The family of Jesus and the first believers didn’t forget these things. The memory of families in the traditional societies goes back centuries, even in families without famous members. Certainly, Jesus would have been well remembered and the stories about Him cherished by His relatives. These old stories don’t die out.
It always amazes me that we in the 21st century think we know better than those who were Jesus’ close relatives in the first years of Christianity. We have received these things from them. It is the consistent tradition of Christianity until very recent times that the relationship between Mary and Joseph was not a typical marriage, and that Mary was perpetually a virgin. The Bible witnesses to this too, when Jesus asks John to care for His mother. The Scriptures say that she lived with him from that day on. (John 19:26,27) If she had other children, custom and family feeling would certainly have dictated that she live with them, but the evidence of Scripture is clear that Mary stood alone at the foot of the cross. Thus, we have the witness of both Scripture and very strong tradition that Mary was Ever-Virgin.
Your second question is also very important and actually related to your first question, “Why do the Gospels not have a genealogy of Mary and why do the genealogies of Joseph seem to contradict each other?” the answer is really quite simple. The same Julius Africanus mentioned above learned it from the relatives of Jesus. (Look in Eusebius Ecclesiastical History Chapter 7.) The Jews, as many other cultures, have a way to keep family lines from dying out, if a man dies leaving no sons to keep his name alive. This is called a levirate marriage. Deuteronomy 25:5-6 says that a brother should marry the widow of his deceased brother if his brother has no sons. The firstborn child is considered the firstborn son of the deceased brother. (In certain cases in the Middle East, adoption rather than actual marriage, is also used to keep families from dying out.) Julius Africanus claims that he was told by Jesus’ relatives Joseph’s lineage comes such levirate relationships. The Gospel of Matthew records the biological genealogy of Joseph and the Gospel of Luke records the legal genealogy of Joseph. Eusebius of Caesarea in this same chapter 7 points out that Mary’s genealogy is essentially the same as Joseph’s because people married within families, and they still do in much of the Near East.
How are these two things related? Simple. Your friend at the Bible study said that “The Bible says....” the Bible doesn’t say that Mary had other children. It says that Jesus had brothers named James and Joses. The text no where says that Mary was their mother. Your friend thinks he knows the bible, but he doesn’t know it very well.
The Bible when taken alone and out of its context does say that Joseph is the son of both Eli and Matthan. Look at the genealogies. They don’t match at all! The Church could have edited out difficult passages, but she never has. She kept them and guarded them as family treasures passed down through the ages. The Bible is our book. By the inspiration of the Holy Spirit, we wrote it, (at least the later parts) we compiled it and we have faithfully passed it on from generation to generation. It can only be read and understood in the light of the traditions we have received and that the Church has studied since the very beginning. Modern arrogance is no substitute for the authority Christ gave His Bride, the Church.
Yours,
Rev. Know-it-all
A question came up at Bible Study last night. One of the group insisted that the Bible says Mary had other children than Jesus, and that, though Jesus was miraculously conceived, Mary and Joseph were just like any other married couple. Also, I noticed that there is no genealogy of Mary in the Bible, and that the genealogies of Joseph in Matthew and Luke seem to contradict each other. If Joseph wasn’t actually the father of Jesus, how can Jesus be descended from David?
Yours,
Gene E. O’Lojey
Dear Gene,
These are two important and interrelated questions. It is true that the Bible says Jesus had brothers. It doesn’t say that Mary had other children. One thing is not the same as the others.
The first question asks about something usually called “the perpetual virginity of Mary.” We believe that Mary remained a virgin her whole life. This is emphatically believed by both Catholic and Orthodox Churches and even by the first Protestant reformers, Zwingli, Luther and Calvin. Since it’s not directly mentioned in the Bible, it was not included in Protestant creeds. Only modern evangelical Protestants insist that Mary and Joseph were the parents of other children. In doing this, they try to de-emphasize the reverence that traditional Christians have for the Blessed Mother.
Well, what does the Bible say? James and Joses are mentioned in Mark 6:3. "Is he (Jesus) not the carpenter, the son of Mary, and the brother of James and Joses and Judas and Simon? And are not his sisters here with us? And they took offense at him." This would make it seem that Mary had children. However James and Joses are mentioned again in Mark 15:40, which mentions among the women present at Jesus' crucifixion a "Mary, the mother of James the Less and Joses". This would make it seem that they are cousins of Jesus, by a different Mary. Catholic tradition favors the “cousins” approach. It was taught by St. Jerome and other Church fathers that the term "brother" in biblical times had a broader meaning and included cousins and other more distant relatives as well.
The Greek and Eastern Churches follow a different but very ancient tradition that’s first recorded in the Protevangelion of St. James. It was probably written around 150AD. Here is a quote from the Protoevangelion (Book I chapter 7. Vs12,13)
“And the high-priest said, ‘Joseph, you are the person chosen to take the Virgin of the Lord, to keep her for him. But Joseph refused, saying, I am an old man, and have children, but she is young, and I fear, for fear that I should appear ridiculous in Israel.”
Some traditions even say that Salome was the name of Joseph’s first wife who had died, leaving him a widower. This tradition was held by all the Western Church fathers until after St. Ambrose, as well as the Greek fathers.
Fr. Bargil Pixner, the great, recently deceased Benedictine scholar and archeologist has some interesting ideas that tie together the Protoevangelion and the archeology of the Holy Land. Many authorities maintain that a vow of celibacy was unheard of at the time of Christ, and thought the Pharisees certainly didn’t believe in permanent celibacy, there were some Jewish who did.
In the Qumran “Great Temple Scroll,” (11QMiq), we read, “When a young woman makes a vow of continence to the Lord.... and her father hears about it....and says nothing about it.... the vow will be binding on both father and daughter. The same holds true for a married wife in respect to her husband. If he confirms the vow, both spouses will be obligated to it.”
Fr. Pixner points out that Royal Davidic family was late in returning to the Holy Land after the Babylonian exile. They only returned in the century before the time of Christ, and when they returned and settled in places that had associations with radical sects of Judaism, such as the Essenes, that preached the immanent coming of the Messiah. The traditional place of Mary’s early childhood in Jerusalem adjoins the temple and was an Essene neighborhood. The traditional site of the Last Supper and Pentecost are in the Essene quarter in southwest Jerusalem. John the Baptist, a close relative of Jesus seems to have been involved in one these groups, and was quite possibly the leader of one.
Fr. Pixner pays serious attention to the old stories of Mary’s childhood that are found in the Protoevangelion because they reflect the beliefs and practices of the Messianic sects like the Essenes. The Davidic family would have had common cause with these groups who longed for the Messiah to purify the temple, the priesthood and the monarchy. It only makes sense. After all, job prospects would certainly have looked brighter if the Herod/Maccabee family were tossed out of the monarchy and the Davidic family restored. That is certainly the backdrop of the Gospel, and explains Jesus’ strained relation with some members of His family. They wanted revolution. Jesus preached conversion.
So, the story may go something like this. Mary was raised in the shadow of the temple and served as some young Jewish girls did with the traditional women’s tasks of sewing and weaving. (Please no politically correct grumbling. History is history and I would never dream of asking women to do that sort of thing for the Church in this enlightened age.) She may have taken a vow of virginity, with the permission of her father, Joachim and when it came time to arrange her marriage, Joachim may have found an older, widowed relative to marry her and thus protect her vow. None of that is inconsistent with the Gospel or the customs of the time.
Though the Protoevangelion has a lot of fanciful material in it, it does seem to reflect very old stories. These traditions seem what the relatives of Jesus believed in the first century, and there were quite a few relatives around. Julius Africanus was a Christian historian born in the Holy Land around 160AD. He claims to have gotten his information from the family of Jesus, who were called the “desposyni,” that is “the family of the master.” Their identities were well known in the ancient world. Some of the relatives of Jesus claimed special distinction in the early Church. The bishops of Jerusalem all seem to have been relatives of Jesus up until 135AD when the city was destroyed by the emperor Hadrian. (By the way, none of these relatives of Jesus ever claimed descent from Him, no matter what the DaVinci Code claims.)
The family of Jesus and the first believers didn’t forget these things. The memory of families in the traditional societies goes back centuries, even in families without famous members. Certainly, Jesus would have been well remembered and the stories about Him cherished by His relatives. These old stories don’t die out.
It always amazes me that we in the 21st century think we know better than those who were Jesus’ close relatives in the first years of Christianity. We have received these things from them. It is the consistent tradition of Christianity until very recent times that the relationship between Mary and Joseph was not a typical marriage, and that Mary was perpetually a virgin. The Bible witnesses to this too, when Jesus asks John to care for His mother. The Scriptures say that she lived with him from that day on. (John 19:26,27) If she had other children, custom and family feeling would certainly have dictated that she live with them, but the evidence of Scripture is clear that Mary stood alone at the foot of the cross. Thus, we have the witness of both Scripture and very strong tradition that Mary was Ever-Virgin.
Your second question is also very important and actually related to your first question, “Why do the Gospels not have a genealogy of Mary and why do the genealogies of Joseph seem to contradict each other?” the answer is really quite simple. The same Julius Africanus mentioned above learned it from the relatives of Jesus. (Look in Eusebius Ecclesiastical History Chapter 7.) The Jews, as many other cultures, have a way to keep family lines from dying out, if a man dies leaving no sons to keep his name alive. This is called a levirate marriage. Deuteronomy 25:5-6 says that a brother should marry the widow of his deceased brother if his brother has no sons. The firstborn child is considered the firstborn son of the deceased brother. (In certain cases in the Middle East, adoption rather than actual marriage, is also used to keep families from dying out.) Julius Africanus claims that he was told by Jesus’ relatives Joseph’s lineage comes such levirate relationships. The Gospel of Matthew records the biological genealogy of Joseph and the Gospel of Luke records the legal genealogy of Joseph. Eusebius of Caesarea in this same chapter 7 points out that Mary’s genealogy is essentially the same as Joseph’s because people married within families, and they still do in much of the Near East.
How are these two things related? Simple. Your friend at the Bible study said that “The Bible says....” the Bible doesn’t say that Mary had other children. It says that Jesus had brothers named James and Joses. The text no where says that Mary was their mother. Your friend thinks he knows the bible, but he doesn’t know it very well.
The Bible when taken alone and out of its context does say that Joseph is the son of both Eli and Matthan. Look at the genealogies. They don’t match at all! The Church could have edited out difficult passages, but she never has. She kept them and guarded them as family treasures passed down through the ages. The Bible is our book. By the inspiration of the Holy Spirit, we wrote it, (at least the later parts) we compiled it and we have faithfully passed it on from generation to generation. It can only be read and understood in the light of the traditions we have received and that the Church has studied since the very beginning. Modern arrogance is no substitute for the authority Christ gave His Bride, the Church.
Yours,
Rev. Know-it-all
Saturday, June 12, 2010
Who wrote the Bible?
Dear Rev. Know it all,
Who wrote the Bible?
Sincerely,
Solomon “Sol” A. Scriptura
Dear Sol,
First, the simple answer. A lot of people wrote the Bible, because the Bible is not a book. It’s a library. The word Bible comes from a Greek word (of course) “biblia.” Biblia is plural. It means “books.” (Biblion = one book, biblia =2 or more books) There are seventy-three books in the Bible, (unless you are Protestant, in which case you only have 66 books. Pity.)
There are a lot of sacred books in the world. Perhaps you are really asking “How did some books come to be regarded as uniquely inspired by Christians?” It starts with the Jews, or rather with the Israelites, somewhere in the Sinai Desert. Sometime between 1450 and 1250 years before the birth of Jesus. A fellow named Moses led the Israelites out of slavery in Egypt through the sea to an encounter with God at the foot of His holy mountain. Moses went up the mountain and came back with the law given by God. So it seems that God, through the agency of Moses wrote the first the sacred books of the Hebrews, as the Israelites were also called.
Over the next thousand plus years, books of history, prophecy and religious poetry and parables were added to those first books of Moses. They were a loose collection of about forty or fifty books that were respected as inspired, some more than others. About 200 years before the birth of Jesus many, perhaps a majority of Israelites — now called Judeans, from which we get the word Jew — lived outside the Holy Land and no longer spoke their ancestral language, Hebrew.
Alexandria, a Greek speaking city on the Mediterranean coast of Egypt, had a large population of Jews. The king of Egypt commissioned a Greek translation of the Hebrew holy books. It was called the “Septuagint”, or the “Books of the Seventy.” The name comes from the legends surrounding the translation, something about 70 or seventy-two scholars, or perhaps 70 days necessary for the work of translation. We really know very little about the origin of the Septuagint. Still, the Septuagint became the authoritative canon of Scripture for Greek-speaking Jews, who quite possibly outnumbered the Jews who spoke Aramaic, a language close to Hebrew. (Just a word about “canon.” Canon originally meant a measuring rod. It is related to the English word “cane.” Anything that is a canon or canonical is considered normative, something against which other things can be measured.)
The first disciples of Jesus seem to quote the Septuagint rather than the Hebrew original when they use the Hebrew Scripture and even the Qumran documents seem often to rely on the Septuagint rather than the Hebrew originals. So the Septuagint was very popular at the time of Christ. When the disciples went out into the Greek-speaking world, both Jewish and Gentile, they used the Septuagint as normative. The majority of Jews at the time of Jesus were probably Greek speakers, just as now the largest single group of Jews are English speakers.
There were more than a million Greek-speaking Jews living in Egypt, while less than a million lived in the Holy land. There were perhaps 4 or 5 million Jews alive at them time of Christ, and practically none used Hebrew as a first language. For many of them, the Septuagint was the Bible, and when Christianity moved out of the Greek-speaking Jewish world into the Roman empire, they regarded the Septuagint as the Scriptures.
The first followers of Jesus didn’t have a defined New Testament, but the phrase used by St. Justin Martyr around 160 AD is interesting. He speaks of the “memoirs of the apostles.” It seems that what we regard as the 27 books of the New Testament took a while to develop, though they seem to have been in place a hundred years after Jesus. They were the texts that were commonly read at Mass by the early Christians along with the Septuagint. That’s probably how they came to be regarded as Scripture.
At this same time, (@140 AD) a man named Marcion began to teach that the God of the New Testament was not the same as the savage God of the Old Testament. He also taught that the Old Testament Scriptures were not valid. He recognized only a shortened Gospel of Luke, and ten of Paul's epistles. All other writings were rejected. This is interesting in itself because it implies that as early as 140 AD, certain books were held to be uniquely inspired. In response to Marcion, the first Christians started to list the books that they held sacred.
By the early 200's, Origen of Alexandria probably used the same 27 books we now regard as the New Testament editions. The Muratorian fragment indicates a New Testament with four gospels. The Muratorian fragment is perhaps the oldest known list of the books of the New Testament from perhaps 170 AD. It claims to be a list of all the works that were accepted by the churches. There was still debate about the New Testament canon, but the major writings were accepted by almost all Christians by 200-250 AD.
In his Easter letter of 367, Athanasius, Bishop of Alexandria, listed the same books that we regard as the New Testament canon, calling them “canonized" along with the Septuagint, though he rejected the book of Esther. The Synod of Hippo, in northern Africa, in 393, approved the New Testament, as it stands today, together with the Septuagint books, as did the Councils of Carthage in 397 and 419. St. Augustine regarded the scriptural canon as closed, as did Pope Damasus I and the Council of Rome in 382. Damasus' commissioning of the Latin Vulgate edition of the Bible, c. 383, was instrumental in the fixation of the canon in the Latin speaking world.
There is however, a fly in the biblical ointment. Christians were not the only ones worrying about the nature of the biblical canon. As early as Rabbi Akiba who died in 135 AD, the Jews were worrying about the exact text of scripture. Rabbi Akiba also believed that Simon bar Kochba was the Messiah and seems to have encouraged his revolt against Rome in 132 AD. In the Bar Kochba revolt, all Jews who professed Jesus as Messiah were expelled from the territory controlled by the revolutionaries.
Thus began the split between Judaism and Christianity that endures to this day, though at the time a great percentage, possibly the majority of Christians were ethnically Jewish or Samaritan. The Jewish scriptures and the Christian scriptures also seem to begin their rift at this time. The Christians accepted the larger Septuagint canon, but the followers of Akiba and the rabbinic Judaism he helped to found, rejected any book for which the Hebrew original was no longer in existence. These are Tobit, Judith, Wisdom, Sirach, (also called Ben Sira or Ecclesiasticus) Baruch, 1 Maccabees, 2 Maccabees and sections of Daniel and Esther, 7 books plus the non Hebrew sections.
St Jerome did not think these books canonical, but he included them in the Vulgate, (Latin Bible) because the Church regarded them as canonical and had done so for three centuries. The current Jewish text called the Masorah, or Masoretic text (a Hebrew word meaning handed down), was finally completed and accepted predominantly between the 7th and 11th centuries.
Martin Luther rejected the Catholic Canon of the Septuagint/Old Testament, in favor of the Masoretic text and attempted to remove the books of Hebrews, James, Jude and Revelation from the New Testament because they contradicted certain Protestant doctrines such as Sola Scriptura and Sola Fide. His changes to the New Testament weren’t generally accepted among his fellow reformers. But, these books are still ordered last in the Luther Bible.
There are more problems with the text of Scripture. Manuscripts have variant readings and there are disputes about translation and so on. What can one do to get the “true text” of the Bible? If you believe the reformation rule of Sola Scriptura, (Bible alone), you are up the proverbial creek without a text. But if you understand that these books are written by many human beings who were inspired by the Holy Spirit, you don’t really have a problem.
The question you asked at the beginning, “who wrote the Bible?” is really very easy to answer. Around a hundred people wrote it. The more important question is "who chose these books as unique and sacred?" The Holy Spirit working through the ministry of the Church did that. She recognized these particular books as being uniquely “God-breathed” (which is what inspired means) and useful for learning the ways of God. The real author of the whole library is the Holy Spirit.
Remember what St. Paul tells us in 1 Timothy 3:15 “The church is the pillar and foundation of truth,” not the Bible. When there is a variant text, or translation, we have the unbroken tradition of two thousand years to tell us the exact meaning of those things that are doubtful. We had already been saying Mass for almost fifty years when the last parts of the New Testament were set down on paper, and, in a certain sense, it was Mass that created the Bible. It was at Mass that these books were publicly read and found to be uniquely filled with the Holy Spirit.
When you think about it, for Catholics, the Church is the mother of the Bible. For Protestants, the Bible is the Mother of the Church.
I hope this helps,
Rev. Know-it-all
Who wrote the Bible?
Sincerely,
Solomon “Sol” A. Scriptura
Dear Sol,
First, the simple answer. A lot of people wrote the Bible, because the Bible is not a book. It’s a library. The word Bible comes from a Greek word (of course) “biblia.” Biblia is plural. It means “books.” (Biblion = one book, biblia =2 or more books) There are seventy-three books in the Bible, (unless you are Protestant, in which case you only have 66 books. Pity.)
There are a lot of sacred books in the world. Perhaps you are really asking “How did some books come to be regarded as uniquely inspired by Christians?” It starts with the Jews, or rather with the Israelites, somewhere in the Sinai Desert. Sometime between 1450 and 1250 years before the birth of Jesus. A fellow named Moses led the Israelites out of slavery in Egypt through the sea to an encounter with God at the foot of His holy mountain. Moses went up the mountain and came back with the law given by God. So it seems that God, through the agency of Moses wrote the first the sacred books of the Hebrews, as the Israelites were also called.
Over the next thousand plus years, books of history, prophecy and religious poetry and parables were added to those first books of Moses. They were a loose collection of about forty or fifty books that were respected as inspired, some more than others. About 200 years before the birth of Jesus many, perhaps a majority of Israelites — now called Judeans, from which we get the word Jew — lived outside the Holy Land and no longer spoke their ancestral language, Hebrew.
Alexandria, a Greek speaking city on the Mediterranean coast of Egypt, had a large population of Jews. The king of Egypt commissioned a Greek translation of the Hebrew holy books. It was called the “Septuagint”, or the “Books of the Seventy.” The name comes from the legends surrounding the translation, something about 70 or seventy-two scholars, or perhaps 70 days necessary for the work of translation. We really know very little about the origin of the Septuagint. Still, the Septuagint became the authoritative canon of Scripture for Greek-speaking Jews, who quite possibly outnumbered the Jews who spoke Aramaic, a language close to Hebrew. (Just a word about “canon.” Canon originally meant a measuring rod. It is related to the English word “cane.” Anything that is a canon or canonical is considered normative, something against which other things can be measured.)
The first disciples of Jesus seem to quote the Septuagint rather than the Hebrew original when they use the Hebrew Scripture and even the Qumran documents seem often to rely on the Septuagint rather than the Hebrew originals. So the Septuagint was very popular at the time of Christ. When the disciples went out into the Greek-speaking world, both Jewish and Gentile, they used the Septuagint as normative. The majority of Jews at the time of Jesus were probably Greek speakers, just as now the largest single group of Jews are English speakers.
There were more than a million Greek-speaking Jews living in Egypt, while less than a million lived in the Holy land. There were perhaps 4 or 5 million Jews alive at them time of Christ, and practically none used Hebrew as a first language. For many of them, the Septuagint was the Bible, and when Christianity moved out of the Greek-speaking Jewish world into the Roman empire, they regarded the Septuagint as the Scriptures.
The first followers of Jesus didn’t have a defined New Testament, but the phrase used by St. Justin Martyr around 160 AD is interesting. He speaks of the “memoirs of the apostles.” It seems that what we regard as the 27 books of the New Testament took a while to develop, though they seem to have been in place a hundred years after Jesus. They were the texts that were commonly read at Mass by the early Christians along with the Septuagint. That’s probably how they came to be regarded as Scripture.
At this same time, (@140 AD) a man named Marcion began to teach that the God of the New Testament was not the same as the savage God of the Old Testament. He also taught that the Old Testament Scriptures were not valid. He recognized only a shortened Gospel of Luke, and ten of Paul's epistles. All other writings were rejected. This is interesting in itself because it implies that as early as 140 AD, certain books were held to be uniquely inspired. In response to Marcion, the first Christians started to list the books that they held sacred.
By the early 200's, Origen of Alexandria probably used the same 27 books we now regard as the New Testament editions. The Muratorian fragment indicates a New Testament with four gospels. The Muratorian fragment is perhaps the oldest known list of the books of the New Testament from perhaps 170 AD. It claims to be a list of all the works that were accepted by the churches. There was still debate about the New Testament canon, but the major writings were accepted by almost all Christians by 200-250 AD.
In his Easter letter of 367, Athanasius, Bishop of Alexandria, listed the same books that we regard as the New Testament canon, calling them “canonized" along with the Septuagint, though he rejected the book of Esther. The Synod of Hippo, in northern Africa, in 393, approved the New Testament, as it stands today, together with the Septuagint books, as did the Councils of Carthage in 397 and 419. St. Augustine regarded the scriptural canon as closed, as did Pope Damasus I and the Council of Rome in 382. Damasus' commissioning of the Latin Vulgate edition of the Bible, c. 383, was instrumental in the fixation of the canon in the Latin speaking world.
There is however, a fly in the biblical ointment. Christians were not the only ones worrying about the nature of the biblical canon. As early as Rabbi Akiba who died in 135 AD, the Jews were worrying about the exact text of scripture. Rabbi Akiba also believed that Simon bar Kochba was the Messiah and seems to have encouraged his revolt against Rome in 132 AD. In the Bar Kochba revolt, all Jews who professed Jesus as Messiah were expelled from the territory controlled by the revolutionaries.
Thus began the split between Judaism and Christianity that endures to this day, though at the time a great percentage, possibly the majority of Christians were ethnically Jewish or Samaritan. The Jewish scriptures and the Christian scriptures also seem to begin their rift at this time. The Christians accepted the larger Septuagint canon, but the followers of Akiba and the rabbinic Judaism he helped to found, rejected any book for which the Hebrew original was no longer in existence. These are Tobit, Judith, Wisdom, Sirach, (also called Ben Sira or Ecclesiasticus) Baruch, 1 Maccabees, 2 Maccabees and sections of Daniel and Esther, 7 books plus the non Hebrew sections.
St Jerome did not think these books canonical, but he included them in the Vulgate, (Latin Bible) because the Church regarded them as canonical and had done so for three centuries. The current Jewish text called the Masorah, or Masoretic text (a Hebrew word meaning handed down), was finally completed and accepted predominantly between the 7th and 11th centuries.
Martin Luther rejected the Catholic Canon of the Septuagint/Old Testament, in favor of the Masoretic text and attempted to remove the books of Hebrews, James, Jude and Revelation from the New Testament because they contradicted certain Protestant doctrines such as Sola Scriptura and Sola Fide. His changes to the New Testament weren’t generally accepted among his fellow reformers. But, these books are still ordered last in the Luther Bible.
There are more problems with the text of Scripture. Manuscripts have variant readings and there are disputes about translation and so on. What can one do to get the “true text” of the Bible? If you believe the reformation rule of Sola Scriptura, (Bible alone), you are up the proverbial creek without a text. But if you understand that these books are written by many human beings who were inspired by the Holy Spirit, you don’t really have a problem.
The question you asked at the beginning, “who wrote the Bible?” is really very easy to answer. Around a hundred people wrote it. The more important question is "who chose these books as unique and sacred?" The Holy Spirit working through the ministry of the Church did that. She recognized these particular books as being uniquely “God-breathed” (which is what inspired means) and useful for learning the ways of God. The real author of the whole library is the Holy Spirit.
Remember what St. Paul tells us in 1 Timothy 3:15 “The church is the pillar and foundation of truth,” not the Bible. When there is a variant text, or translation, we have the unbroken tradition of two thousand years to tell us the exact meaning of those things that are doubtful. We had already been saying Mass for almost fifty years when the last parts of the New Testament were set down on paper, and, in a certain sense, it was Mass that created the Bible. It was at Mass that these books were publicly read and found to be uniquely filled with the Holy Spirit.
When you think about it, for Catholics, the Church is the mother of the Bible. For Protestants, the Bible is the Mother of the Church.
I hope this helps,
Rev. Know-it-all
Sunday, June 6, 2010
Why do we worship on Sunday?
Dear Rev. Know it all,
A friend of mine told me that Sunday Mass proves that the Catholic Church is not the church that Jesus founded because Jesus was a practicing Jew and St. Paul and St. Peter were practicing Jews and all the first Christians were practicing Jews and they would certainly have worshiped on Saturday because Saturday, the seventh day of the week is the Sabbath, not Sunday which is the first day of the week. The very concept of the week and the imposition of Sunday worship were unknown in the ancient world until the emperor Constantine created the Catholic Church and imposed Sunday as a day of worship because he was really a sun worshiper. Is this true?
Yours,
Judy Eizer
Dear Ms. Eizer,
You friend is obviously watching too much of the History Channel. Aren’t I always telling you not get your religion, or your history for that matter, from the History Channel? These days, the History Channel is mostly about Nostradamus and UFOs. The fact that the church celebrates Mass, or more properly the Eucharist, on Sunday proves that it is the most Jewish, or more properly, Israelite, church there is.
The Jewish (originally Babylonian) 7-day week was well know in Rome and Alexandria in the first century. Both cities, especially Alexandria, the empire’s largest city, had very large Jewish communities. Perhaps as much as 10% of the empire was made up of Jews and Samaritans. The seven-day week was well known as early as the 1st century and had replaced the Roman (originally Etruscan) 9-day week by sometime in the third century. By the time Constantine made it official in 321AD, the 9-day week was a thing of the past. Constantine simply recognized a useful system already in place.
Now, on to the Eucharist! Mass is a fairly recent word, late Latin, or early middle ages, I suspect. It means “the Dismissal.” The proper name in Greek and Latin for the central act of worship in the Catholic Church is “Eucharist,” a Greek word that means “Thanksgiving.”
Your friend’s first error is to say that the Jews worshiped on Saturday. They worshiped every day, Saturday being a day of increased restrictions, not necessarily of assembly. Though Jews usually go to synagogue on Saturday, they are not required to do so. The synagogue is not mentioned in the torah. It is a late development in Judaism. That the Eucharist was celebrated on the first day of the week, and not on the Sabbath, is clear from the Biblical text. Read Acts 20:7; "On the first day of the week we came together to break bread.” (the Breaking of the Bread” was an early name for the Eucharist) or 1Corinthians 16:2; On the first day of every week, each one of you should set aside a sum of money in keeping with his income, saving it up, so that when I come no collections will have to be made. Also, Apocalypse 1:10, On the Lord's Day I was in the Spirit. So, the first day of the week was the day of Christian Assembly.
The importance of Sunday becomes even clearer in the first non-Biblical Christian authors. In the “Teaching of the Twelve Apostles” (also called the “Didache”, written somewhere in Syria between 80 and 110 AD) the injunction is given: "On the Lord's Day, come together and break bread. And give thanks (offer the Eucharist), after confessing your sins that your sacrifice may be pure". St. Ignatius (around 105 AD) speaks of Christians as "no longer observing the Sabbath, but living in the observance of the Lord's Day, on which also Our Life rose again". In the Epistle of Barnabas (around 100AD) we read: "Wherefore, also, we keep the eighth day (i.e. the first of the week) with joyfulness, the day also on which Jesus rose again from the dead".
Finally, St. Cæsarius of Arles in the sixth century taught that the holy Doctors of the Church had decreed that the whole glory of the Jewish Sabbath had been transferred to Sunday, and that Christians must keep Sunday holy in the same way as the Jews had been commanded to keep holy the Sabbath Day. The observation of Sunday as a kind of Sabbath of rest was introduced gradually, but from the very beginning, the Christian community assembled and celebrated the Eucharist on Sunday, the first day of the week.
The question is not when or if this happened. It was clearly the practice of the first Christians from at least 50AD. The question is, “Why did this happen?” The answer is really very simple. The first Christians observed the Jewish synagogue and temple liturgy when they were able. They observed Sabbath. For instance, we read in Acts 16:13 On the Sabbath we went outside the city gate to the river, where we expected to find a place of prayer. Daily morning and evening prayer in the synagogues mirrored the daily morning and evening (late afternoon) sacrifices in the temple. Christians continued these observances and we still do. They are the origin of morning and evening prayer from which the Liturgy of the Hours developed. (also called the breviary or the divine office) The Jews had a very structured liturgy and here lies the problem. The first Catholics, being observant Jews, just couldn’t do some things on the Sabbath. There are 39 melakhot (forbidden things) that surround Sabbath observance, things such as lighting fires, or bearing burdens, among which was counted the carrying of money. We have already seen that the Christians collected charitable funds at their meetings. Jews are forbidden to carry money on the Sabbath. They even try not to talk about it. There is something else forbidden on the Sabbath that is even more to the point.
The regular Jewish liturgy has certain restrictions on Sabbath. Personal petitions may not be made in the synagogue liturgy and Psalm 100 (Mizmor LeTodah, the psalm for the Thanksgiving offering), is omitted from the liturgy on Sabbath even to this day by certain Jewish communities because the todah or Thanksgiving offering could not be offered on Sabbath when the temple still functioned in Jerusalem. The Thanksgiving sacrifice was forbidden because all personal petitions and prayers were forbidden in Sabbath liturgy.
There it is. The Thanksgiving Sacrifice could not be offered on Sabbath and the Eucharist is the Thanksgiving Sacrifice par excellence. The very word means Thanksgiving and, as I’ve said above, the Didache insists that the Eucharist was a true sacrifice because it must be made pure by the confession of sins. “And give thanks (offer the Eucharist), after confessing your sins that your sacrifice may be pure". The Rabbis say in the Talmud that when the Messiah comes all the sacrifices of the temple will cease except the Thanksgiving Sacrifice.
The first Christians held that Jesus was the Messiah and that he had delivered them from death. When a person was in mortal danger and was healed or rescued from danger, he needed to bring a "Thanksgiving-offering" to the temple. Were the first Christians not rescued form death by the resurrection? Would it not be reasonable to offer the Eucharist, the finest Thanksgiving Sacrifice they knew? They couldn’t offer it on Sabbath. It is notable that the Thanksgiving Sacrifice could be eaten anywhere in the city (The met in their homes for the breaking of the Bread Acts 2:46). Their assembly would have to wait for the first day of the week which was associated in their minds with Jesus’ Resurrection anyway. It was not offered in Herod’s temple, but in the temple not made by hands, the temple of living stones, the Church Assembled! In one fell swoop we see that the first Jewish Catholics were simply practicing Jewish custom by offering Mass on Sunday. It also shows that they regarded the Eucharist as a true sacrifice.
The Eucharist belonged to the temple, not to the synagogue, because it was the Sacrifice of Calvary renewed, not just a word service. Had it been simply a word service or fellowship meal, they could have and would have done it on Saturday. Those who claim that Mass is not a sacrifice, but simply a commemorative meal, and those who maintain that Saturday is the day Christians should gather are far removed from the practice of the first Christians they claim to emulate. It is the Catholic Church that preserves the unbroken chain of worship that the Lord promises in the Law of Moses. “You shall offer bread and wine and a Lamb forever”, bread and wine, become the Lamb which is Christ.
Rev. Know-it-all
A friend of mine told me that Sunday Mass proves that the Catholic Church is not the church that Jesus founded because Jesus was a practicing Jew and St. Paul and St. Peter were practicing Jews and all the first Christians were practicing Jews and they would certainly have worshiped on Saturday because Saturday, the seventh day of the week is the Sabbath, not Sunday which is the first day of the week. The very concept of the week and the imposition of Sunday worship were unknown in the ancient world until the emperor Constantine created the Catholic Church and imposed Sunday as a day of worship because he was really a sun worshiper. Is this true?
Yours,
Judy Eizer
Dear Ms. Eizer,
You friend is obviously watching too much of the History Channel. Aren’t I always telling you not get your religion, or your history for that matter, from the History Channel? These days, the History Channel is mostly about Nostradamus and UFOs. The fact that the church celebrates Mass, or more properly the Eucharist, on Sunday proves that it is the most Jewish, or more properly, Israelite, church there is.
The Jewish (originally Babylonian) 7-day week was well know in Rome and Alexandria in the first century. Both cities, especially Alexandria, the empire’s largest city, had very large Jewish communities. Perhaps as much as 10% of the empire was made up of Jews and Samaritans. The seven-day week was well known as early as the 1st century and had replaced the Roman (originally Etruscan) 9-day week by sometime in the third century. By the time Constantine made it official in 321AD, the 9-day week was a thing of the past. Constantine simply recognized a useful system already in place.
Now, on to the Eucharist! Mass is a fairly recent word, late Latin, or early middle ages, I suspect. It means “the Dismissal.” The proper name in Greek and Latin for the central act of worship in the Catholic Church is “Eucharist,” a Greek word that means “Thanksgiving.”
Your friend’s first error is to say that the Jews worshiped on Saturday. They worshiped every day, Saturday being a day of increased restrictions, not necessarily of assembly. Though Jews usually go to synagogue on Saturday, they are not required to do so. The synagogue is not mentioned in the torah. It is a late development in Judaism. That the Eucharist was celebrated on the first day of the week, and not on the Sabbath, is clear from the Biblical text. Read Acts 20:7; "On the first day of the week we came together to break bread.” (the Breaking of the Bread” was an early name for the Eucharist) or 1Corinthians 16:2; On the first day of every week, each one of you should set aside a sum of money in keeping with his income, saving it up, so that when I come no collections will have to be made. Also, Apocalypse 1:10, On the Lord's Day I was in the Spirit. So, the first day of the week was the day of Christian Assembly.
The importance of Sunday becomes even clearer in the first non-Biblical Christian authors. In the “Teaching of the Twelve Apostles” (also called the “Didache”, written somewhere in Syria between 80 and 110 AD) the injunction is given: "On the Lord's Day, come together and break bread. And give thanks (offer the Eucharist), after confessing your sins that your sacrifice may be pure". St. Ignatius (around 105 AD) speaks of Christians as "no longer observing the Sabbath, but living in the observance of the Lord's Day, on which also Our Life rose again". In the Epistle of Barnabas (around 100AD) we read: "Wherefore, also, we keep the eighth day (i.e. the first of the week) with joyfulness, the day also on which Jesus rose again from the dead".
Finally, St. Cæsarius of Arles in the sixth century taught that the holy Doctors of the Church had decreed that the whole glory of the Jewish Sabbath had been transferred to Sunday, and that Christians must keep Sunday holy in the same way as the Jews had been commanded to keep holy the Sabbath Day. The observation of Sunday as a kind of Sabbath of rest was introduced gradually, but from the very beginning, the Christian community assembled and celebrated the Eucharist on Sunday, the first day of the week.
The question is not when or if this happened. It was clearly the practice of the first Christians from at least 50AD. The question is, “Why did this happen?” The answer is really very simple. The first Christians observed the Jewish synagogue and temple liturgy when they were able. They observed Sabbath. For instance, we read in Acts 16:13 On the Sabbath we went outside the city gate to the river, where we expected to find a place of prayer. Daily morning and evening prayer in the synagogues mirrored the daily morning and evening (late afternoon) sacrifices in the temple. Christians continued these observances and we still do. They are the origin of morning and evening prayer from which the Liturgy of the Hours developed. (also called the breviary or the divine office) The Jews had a very structured liturgy and here lies the problem. The first Catholics, being observant Jews, just couldn’t do some things on the Sabbath. There are 39 melakhot (forbidden things) that surround Sabbath observance, things such as lighting fires, or bearing burdens, among which was counted the carrying of money. We have already seen that the Christians collected charitable funds at their meetings. Jews are forbidden to carry money on the Sabbath. They even try not to talk about it. There is something else forbidden on the Sabbath that is even more to the point.
The regular Jewish liturgy has certain restrictions on Sabbath. Personal petitions may not be made in the synagogue liturgy and Psalm 100 (Mizmor LeTodah, the psalm for the Thanksgiving offering), is omitted from the liturgy on Sabbath even to this day by certain Jewish communities because the todah or Thanksgiving offering could not be offered on Sabbath when the temple still functioned in Jerusalem. The Thanksgiving sacrifice was forbidden because all personal petitions and prayers were forbidden in Sabbath liturgy.
There it is. The Thanksgiving Sacrifice could not be offered on Sabbath and the Eucharist is the Thanksgiving Sacrifice par excellence. The very word means Thanksgiving and, as I’ve said above, the Didache insists that the Eucharist was a true sacrifice because it must be made pure by the confession of sins. “And give thanks (offer the Eucharist), after confessing your sins that your sacrifice may be pure". The Rabbis say in the Talmud that when the Messiah comes all the sacrifices of the temple will cease except the Thanksgiving Sacrifice.
The first Christians held that Jesus was the Messiah and that he had delivered them from death. When a person was in mortal danger and was healed or rescued from danger, he needed to bring a "Thanksgiving-offering" to the temple. Were the first Christians not rescued form death by the resurrection? Would it not be reasonable to offer the Eucharist, the finest Thanksgiving Sacrifice they knew? They couldn’t offer it on Sabbath. It is notable that the Thanksgiving Sacrifice could be eaten anywhere in the city (The met in their homes for the breaking of the Bread Acts 2:46). Their assembly would have to wait for the first day of the week which was associated in their minds with Jesus’ Resurrection anyway. It was not offered in Herod’s temple, but in the temple not made by hands, the temple of living stones, the Church Assembled! In one fell swoop we see that the first Jewish Catholics were simply practicing Jewish custom by offering Mass on Sunday. It also shows that they regarded the Eucharist as a true sacrifice.
The Eucharist belonged to the temple, not to the synagogue, because it was the Sacrifice of Calvary renewed, not just a word service. Had it been simply a word service or fellowship meal, they could have and would have done it on Saturday. Those who claim that Mass is not a sacrifice, but simply a commemorative meal, and those who maintain that Saturday is the day Christians should gather are far removed from the practice of the first Christians they claim to emulate. It is the Catholic Church that preserves the unbroken chain of worship that the Lord promises in the Law of Moses. “You shall offer bread and wine and a Lamb forever”, bread and wine, become the Lamb which is Christ.
Rev. Know-it-all
Sunday, May 30, 2010
What is the 3rd force opposing Christianity?
Dear Rev. Know-it-all,
In your previous column you remarked that there are three forces in the modern world that want to eliminate Christianity. You mentioned Marxism and Islam. What is the third?
Yours once again,
Isabela Giornata
Dear Isabela,
I’m getting to that. Lenin said that in the West there would always be useful idiots. The most useful idiots available today are found in the Mediacracy. By Mediacracy, I mean the geniuses of the media who, for the most part, are secular fundamentalists. (Interesting term, no? They are fundamentalist in that they blindly accept the tenets of their religion, secular humanism, without any questions.)
We, in the West, believe that the minute you are on TV, you have acquired the status of “Expert In All Things.” Madonna becomes a theologian, Jane Fonda becomes a diplomat and everybody becomes an ecologist. I’ve always enjoyed the old commercial in which Angela Lansbury is asked to recommend a painkiller. Angela Lansbury? Does being an actress in the series “Murder She Wrote” qualify a person to give medical advice? Apparently in the minds of advertising agents and the fools who trust them it does. Such is the intellectual depth of those who control what you see in your living room. (I’ve always wondered about the premise of “Murder She Wrote.” If a dead body appeared every time Angela Lansbury showed up in a quaint New England seaside town, I would begin to suspect Angela Lansbury.)
Where was I? Oh yes. We moon over these idiots and take their advice on every decision of good taste, political correctness and morality, from the New York Times at the top to Jerry Springer on the bottom, and Oprah somewhere in between. They systematically anaesthetize us to every immorality. The televised governing class feeds us on a steady diet of corrupt assumptions. Everybody knows the Crusades were evil. Everybody knows the Spanish Inquisition killed millions. Everybody knows that abortion is a private decision. Everybody knows that Queen Mary was blood thirsty and Queen Elizabeth I “good Queen Bess” was the best ruler England ever had and wouldn’t hurt a fly. Everybody knows that Islam is the religion of peace and we should never discriminate or profile. Everybody knows that any kind of censorship is wrong. Everybody knows... Everybody knows.... Everybody knows....
When is the last time you saw a show that didn’t say divorce was okay, that same-sex relationships were okay, that sexual promiscuity was okay, and these are just the sitcoms!. I could go on and on, but my intention is not just to rage at the situation. Rather, I am impressed at how they have done it. They have just made the assumption, repeated the lie and said, “Well, let’s move on now. Wash, rinse and repeat...” They have gotten us to agree to their premises without any real discussion.
Here is a case in point. Few people have done more to change the world than Alfred Kinsey with his study titled “Sexual Behavior in the Human Male” released in 1948. It was hailed as a triumph of scientific research and began the avalanche of the sexual revolution. One problem: Kinsey’s research was very poorly done. His statistical samplings were not representative of the group he was studying, and most astounding of all, as James Jones points out in his 1997 biography “Alfred C. Kinsey: a Public/Private Life” Kinsey’s own very twisted sexuality drove his research. It was bad research by a troubled man. And everybody believed it because they wanted to. It relieved them of guilt about destructive sexual behavior. In 2004, there was a popular movie made starring Liam Neeson that portrayed Kinsey as hero of liberation. Everybody knows Kinsey is a hero. Everybody knows???
Another example; In every sitcom and TV commercial dad is clueless. The Mediacracy has done all it can to trash fatherhood and family life. They have trashed a lot more than that. When was the last time you saw a show that lionized honest poverty? Was there ever such a show? I vaguely remember such shows in my distant youth in which not everybody was rich. Remember the “Honeymooners” ? He was a bus driver. They struggled. They were poor, They worked hard. They weren’t glamorous. They fought and still somehow they stayed together because they loved each other. “Good Times” was another sitcom that aired from 1974 until 1979, on CBS. It was about struggling African-Americans who valued family, faithfulness and honor. Now everybody in sitcoms is rich, doesn’t seem to work and is sleeping around. If you are really adventurous, look at TV aimed at African-American youth. Simplicity and hard work are not the models held up there either. Lots of bling and lots of, well..... I can feel you getting nervous just reading this. Shall we pretend that one of the most disadvantaged groups in our society is not being used and abused for the monetary well being of the Mediacracy?
I plan to get a lot more offensive. Here goes. Another swell example of the gradual anaesthetization of the culture is a Penn and Teller comedy show. I will quote from it. I am not making any of this up. “Tonight we’re going to take you through the da*n Bible and show you it’s full of inaccuracies. Really, no kidding. Go get your g*dda*mn Bible! If you don’t read along with us tonight, you’re going to think we’re making this sh*t up.” I’m not sorry if I offend. You need to know that the culture has turned its back on the Faith and the Book that founded it. The darlings of the Mediacracy mock what you hold dearest. If we cannot defend our faith as well as witness to it we are not hearing the Biblical injunction from St. Peter’s first letter that I quoted last week.
Another example: “Piss Christ” is a 1987 photograph by photographer Andres Serrano. It depicts a small plastic crucifix submerged in a glass of the artist's urine. It won the Southeastern Center for Contemporary Art's "Award in the Visual Arts" competition, sponsored in part by the National Endowment for the Arts, a U.S. government agency. In other words, your taxes paid for it. Here’s one more: In 1999,Chris Ofili painted, “The Holy Virgin Mary,” a depiction of the Virgin Mary, as a part of the “Sensation” exhibit shown in New York City at the Brooklyn Museum of Art from 2 October, 1999 to 9 January, 2000, you guessed it, funded in part by your tax dollars at work. The painting depicted the Blessed Mother surrounded by images from exploitation movies, close-ups of female genitalia cut from pornographic magazines, and elephant dung. How avant garde! Slapping Christians around is a very brave thing, as long as they turn the other cheek.
Islam, the religion of Peace, does not put up with this sort of thing. Theo Van Gogh, the great-great nephew of artist Vincent Van Gogh, was murdered by Mohammed Bouyeri in 2004.Van Gogh had made a movie dealing with the topic of violence against women in some Islamic societies. It told the stories of four abused Muslim women. Imam Fawaz of the as-Sunnah Mosque in The Hague, Netherlands, gave a sermon several weeks before the murder in which he called Theo van Gogh “...a criminal bastard and beseeched Allah to visit an incurable disease upon the film maker.” We Christians are enjoined to pray for our critics and to ask God to bless them. Islam has a different approach. Can you imagine what would happen if the Koran were treated in the way that brave artists of the left treat the symbols of Christianity?
So by all means, defend the faith in ways means permitted to us, by honesty and virtue and by the clear presentation of the faith and its history. Witness to it by your lives, but defend it by your words and actions. If we do these things now, perhaps we will not soon have to defend ourselves in a more forceful way.
Rev. Know-it-all
In your previous column you remarked that there are three forces in the modern world that want to eliminate Christianity. You mentioned Marxism and Islam. What is the third?
Yours once again,
Isabela Giornata
Dear Isabela,
I’m getting to that. Lenin said that in the West there would always be useful idiots. The most useful idiots available today are found in the Mediacracy. By Mediacracy, I mean the geniuses of the media who, for the most part, are secular fundamentalists. (Interesting term, no? They are fundamentalist in that they blindly accept the tenets of their religion, secular humanism, without any questions.)
We, in the West, believe that the minute you are on TV, you have acquired the status of “Expert In All Things.” Madonna becomes a theologian, Jane Fonda becomes a diplomat and everybody becomes an ecologist. I’ve always enjoyed the old commercial in which Angela Lansbury is asked to recommend a painkiller. Angela Lansbury? Does being an actress in the series “Murder She Wrote” qualify a person to give medical advice? Apparently in the minds of advertising agents and the fools who trust them it does. Such is the intellectual depth of those who control what you see in your living room. (I’ve always wondered about the premise of “Murder She Wrote.” If a dead body appeared every time Angela Lansbury showed up in a quaint New England seaside town, I would begin to suspect Angela Lansbury.)
Where was I? Oh yes. We moon over these idiots and take their advice on every decision of good taste, political correctness and morality, from the New York Times at the top to Jerry Springer on the bottom, and Oprah somewhere in between. They systematically anaesthetize us to every immorality. The televised governing class feeds us on a steady diet of corrupt assumptions. Everybody knows the Crusades were evil. Everybody knows the Spanish Inquisition killed millions. Everybody knows that abortion is a private decision. Everybody knows that Queen Mary was blood thirsty and Queen Elizabeth I “good Queen Bess” was the best ruler England ever had and wouldn’t hurt a fly. Everybody knows that Islam is the religion of peace and we should never discriminate or profile. Everybody knows that any kind of censorship is wrong. Everybody knows... Everybody knows.... Everybody knows....
When is the last time you saw a show that didn’t say divorce was okay, that same-sex relationships were okay, that sexual promiscuity was okay, and these are just the sitcoms!. I could go on and on, but my intention is not just to rage at the situation. Rather, I am impressed at how they have done it. They have just made the assumption, repeated the lie and said, “Well, let’s move on now. Wash, rinse and repeat...” They have gotten us to agree to their premises without any real discussion.
Here is a case in point. Few people have done more to change the world than Alfred Kinsey with his study titled “Sexual Behavior in the Human Male” released in 1948. It was hailed as a triumph of scientific research and began the avalanche of the sexual revolution. One problem: Kinsey’s research was very poorly done. His statistical samplings were not representative of the group he was studying, and most astounding of all, as James Jones points out in his 1997 biography “Alfred C. Kinsey: a Public/Private Life” Kinsey’s own very twisted sexuality drove his research. It was bad research by a troubled man. And everybody believed it because they wanted to. It relieved them of guilt about destructive sexual behavior. In 2004, there was a popular movie made starring Liam Neeson that portrayed Kinsey as hero of liberation. Everybody knows Kinsey is a hero. Everybody knows???
Another example; In every sitcom and TV commercial dad is clueless. The Mediacracy has done all it can to trash fatherhood and family life. They have trashed a lot more than that. When was the last time you saw a show that lionized honest poverty? Was there ever such a show? I vaguely remember such shows in my distant youth in which not everybody was rich. Remember the “Honeymooners” ? He was a bus driver. They struggled. They were poor, They worked hard. They weren’t glamorous. They fought and still somehow they stayed together because they loved each other. “Good Times” was another sitcom that aired from 1974 until 1979, on CBS. It was about struggling African-Americans who valued family, faithfulness and honor. Now everybody in sitcoms is rich, doesn’t seem to work and is sleeping around. If you are really adventurous, look at TV aimed at African-American youth. Simplicity and hard work are not the models held up there either. Lots of bling and lots of, well..... I can feel you getting nervous just reading this. Shall we pretend that one of the most disadvantaged groups in our society is not being used and abused for the monetary well being of the Mediacracy?
I plan to get a lot more offensive. Here goes. Another swell example of the gradual anaesthetization of the culture is a Penn and Teller comedy show. I will quote from it. I am not making any of this up. “Tonight we’re going to take you through the da*n Bible and show you it’s full of inaccuracies. Really, no kidding. Go get your g*dda*mn Bible! If you don’t read along with us tonight, you’re going to think we’re making this sh*t up.” I’m not sorry if I offend. You need to know that the culture has turned its back on the Faith and the Book that founded it. The darlings of the Mediacracy mock what you hold dearest. If we cannot defend our faith as well as witness to it we are not hearing the Biblical injunction from St. Peter’s first letter that I quoted last week.
Another example: “Piss Christ” is a 1987 photograph by photographer Andres Serrano. It depicts a small plastic crucifix submerged in a glass of the artist's urine. It won the Southeastern Center for Contemporary Art's "Award in the Visual Arts" competition, sponsored in part by the National Endowment for the Arts, a U.S. government agency. In other words, your taxes paid for it. Here’s one more: In 1999,Chris Ofili painted, “The Holy Virgin Mary,” a depiction of the Virgin Mary, as a part of the “Sensation” exhibit shown in New York City at the Brooklyn Museum of Art from 2 October, 1999 to 9 January, 2000, you guessed it, funded in part by your tax dollars at work. The painting depicted the Blessed Mother surrounded by images from exploitation movies, close-ups of female genitalia cut from pornographic magazines, and elephant dung. How avant garde! Slapping Christians around is a very brave thing, as long as they turn the other cheek.
Islam, the religion of Peace, does not put up with this sort of thing. Theo Van Gogh, the great-great nephew of artist Vincent Van Gogh, was murdered by Mohammed Bouyeri in 2004.Van Gogh had made a movie dealing with the topic of violence against women in some Islamic societies. It told the stories of four abused Muslim women. Imam Fawaz of the as-Sunnah Mosque in The Hague, Netherlands, gave a sermon several weeks before the murder in which he called Theo van Gogh “...a criminal bastard and beseeched Allah to visit an incurable disease upon the film maker.” We Christians are enjoined to pray for our critics and to ask God to bless them. Islam has a different approach. Can you imagine what would happen if the Koran were treated in the way that brave artists of the left treat the symbols of Christianity?
So by all means, defend the faith in ways means permitted to us, by honesty and virtue and by the clear presentation of the faith and its history. Witness to it by your lives, but defend it by your words and actions. If we do these things now, perhaps we will not soon have to defend ourselves in a more forceful way.
Rev. Know-it-all
Sunday, May 23, 2010
Is "defend" the faith the same as "witness" to the faith?
Dear Rev. Know it all,
I belong to a pontifical order called the Mystic Knights of the Holy See. Recently one of the leaders of the group decided to change the wording of our charter from “To defend the faith” to “to witness to the faith.” Are these the same thing?
Yours,
Dame Isabela Giornatta
Dear Isabela,
They most certainly are not! The word in the New Testament for witness is “martyr.” which occasionally involves letting yourself be killed. There is another, more forceful word in the New Testament for defense “Amunomai” which means to defend with force. We find it in Acts 7 where Moses strikes the Egyptian. The first is “apologia,” a defense made with words. I would maintain that under certain circumstances we are allowed to defend with force, but we are commanded to defend with words. 1Peter 3:14 commands us, “...do not be frightened... Always be prepared to make a defense to everyone who asks you to give the reason for the hope that you have. But do this with gentleness and respect, keeping a clear conscience.”
The use of force is very limited for the Catholic. The Catechism (paragraph 2309) lists four strict conditions for "legitimate defense by military force": 1 The damage inflicted by the aggressor on the nation or community of nations must be lasting, grave, and certain; 2 All other means of putting an end to it must have been shown to be impractical or ineffective; 3 There must be serious prospects of success; 4 The use of arms must not produce evils and disorders graver than the evil to be eliminated.”
All but the strictest pacifist would agree that defending ourselves against someone like Hitler is legitimate. Similarly, if someone wants to kill you or your spouse and children, self defense is legitimate, first with reason and then with force, if necessary. The goal is always defense, never aggression. One cannot fight for gain, nor honor nor revenge, but only for life. The Catholic defense begins with words, (apologia) and uses force (amunomai) only as a last resort.
There are three forces in the modern world that want to eliminate Christianity. One is Marxism. Marxism turned out to be remarkably short lived. Even Marxists are beginning to think some Christianity might be useful, even in an atheist society.
The second force is an old enemy that we moderns don’t want to call an enemy, even as they kill and enslave untold thousands. After all, everything is beautiful in its own way. It is hard for polite Americans and Europeans to believe that Islam is violent. Who are we to call them immoral, when we ourselves have conducted such bloodthirsty wars and have engaged in violent imperialism for the better part of 500 years? Wait! Did I say anything about immorality? The wars of Islam are quite moral by Islamic standards. Herein lies the problem. We moderns are so narcissistic that we refuse to believe that anyone can be different from us. Islam has a different moral system than that of Christianity. In this case, to defend the faith is first to enunciate that difference clearly. So let the enunciating begin!
Read the Koran. I think everyone should. Every clergyman should be a Koranic expert. Here are some interesting excerpts. Surah (48:29) - Muhammad is the messenger of Allah. And those with him are hard (ruthless) against the disbelievers and merciful among themselves. Surah (8:12) - I will cast terror into the hearts of those who disbelieve. Therefore strike off their heads and strike off every fingertip of them. Surah (9:123) - O you who believe! Fight those of the unbelievers who are near to you and let them find in you hardness. Surah (5:33) - The punishment of those who wage war against Allah and His messenger and strive to make mischief in the land is only this, that they should be murdered or crucified or their hands and their feet should be cut off on opposite sides or they should be imprisoned; this shall be as a disgrace for them in this world, and in the hereafter they shall have a grievous chastisement. Surah (9:5) — known as "the verse of the sword" — declares "Fight and slay the pagans wherever you find them, and seize them, beleaguer them, and lie in wait for them in every stratagem.” Muhammad himself led 27 military campaigns and initiated about 38 others. “I am the prophet that laughs when killing my enemies.” (Muhammad quoted in the Hadith)
Note following contrast. Jesus said in Matt (5:38) "You have heard that it was said, 'Eye for eye, and tooth for tooth. But I tell you, Do not resist an evil person. If someone strikes you on the right cheek, turn to him the other also... Love your enemies and pray for those who persecute you.”
The Koran says: Surah (5:45) "And We prescribed to them that life is for life, and eye for eye, and nose for nose, and ear for ear, and tooth for tooth, and (that there is) reprisal for wounds.” And Surah (2.179 ) “There is life for you in (the law of) retaliation, O men of understanding, that you may guard yourselves.” Surah (5:45) also says “but he who foregoes it, it shall be an expiation for him; and whoever did not judge by what Allah revealed, those are they that are the unjust.” This does not discourage retaliation. I simply means that it is not obligatory to literally take eye for eye, though one may do so. The injured party has the option to remit or forego retaliation and instead receive compensation in money, goods or livestock. This option is known as "diya."
I am not trying to say here that one moral system is better than the other. They are just different from each other. In fact, in significant ways, they are diametrically opposed.
It is hard to estimate what this has meant over the decades. Your order was founded during the Crusades and unfortunately, we in the West are fond of feeling guilty and thus the Crusades, an attempt to defend the Christian world against violent aggression, are not very popular at the moment. We in the Christian world beat our breasts and blame ourselves for all the slaughter, but we really have no way to accurately count the bodies and know who killed how many of whom. Still, the Crusades, at least as planned, fulfilled the criteria for a just war. Remember that the Middle East was and is the heartland of the Christian faith. The overwhelming majority of it inhabitants were committed Christians at the time of the Muslim conquest.
The Crusades were a response to a century of the prohibition of Christian pilgrimage, the destruction of Christian shrines and the murder of Christians that began in earnest under the reign the mad Caliph, Abu ‘Ali al-Mansur al-Hakim (985-1021). He ordered the destruction of churches, the burning of crosses, and the seizure of Church property. He moved against the Jews with similar ferocity. Over a period of ten years, thousands of churches were destroyed. In 1009, Hakim ordered the destruction for the Church of the Holy Sepulcher in Jerusalem. The situation grew worse for Christians as the century progressed. In 1056, the Muslims forbade European Christians from entering the Church of the Holy Sepulcher. When the Muslim Turks became the dominant Islamic force in the region, they enforced new Islamic restrictions for both native Christians and pilgrims (whose pilgrimages they blocked). When in 1077, the Turks conquered Jerusalem, the Seljuk Emir Atsiz bin Uwaq promised not to harm the inhabitants of Jerusalem, but once his men had entered the city, they murdered 3,000 people. About 20 years later, after a century of anti-Christian slaughter and persecution, Pope Urban initiated the Crusades, which politically correct people now say are a barbarity perpetrated against the innocent Muslim world.
It may be hard to know the numbers when looking at the Crusades, but it is possible to get a more realistic idea by looking at the history of India. An estimate of the number of people killed, based on the Muslim chronicles and demographic calculations, was done by the author K.S. Lal in his book “Growth of Muslim Population in Medieval India.” It seems that between 1000 CE and 1500 CE, the population of Hindus decreased by 80 million. This is disputed by some, but it is known that the conquest of Afghanistan in the year 1000 was followed by the annihilation of the Hindu population. The region is still called the Hindu Kush, i.e. Hindu slaughter. The Bahmani sultans (1347-1480) in central India made it a rule to kill 100,000 captives in a single day, and many more on other occasions. This seems unbelievable but it is enlightening to look at some well documented modern sources.
Ever heard of the Hindu Genocide in East Pakistan? Nandan Vyas ("Hindu Genocide in East Pakistan", Young India, January 1995) has argued convincingly that the number of Hindu victims in the 1971 genocide was approximately 2.4 million. Most were Hindus, but it is thought that 1,250,000 may have been Christians.
That was not ancient history. That was 1971. If in 1971 the Pakistani Muslim Army killed millions of Indians whom they regarded as pagans could Will Durant be correct in his statement, “The Mohammedan Conquest of India is probably the bloodiest story in history."? Are you familiar with the slaughter of 2 million Christians in the Sudan in the second half of the twentieth century? (Oh, that must be exaggerated. Perhaps it was only one million.) Some Assyrian friends just told me about three busloads of Christian university students that were bombed a few weeks ago as the students returned home from school in Mosul. Our town is filling up with Assyrian refugees from Muslim violence. (It is important to remember that most Arab speakers in the U.S. are Christians and to welcome them as our friends and brothers in the Lord.)
The story in the West is the same. According to Rev. Archimandrite Nektarios Serfes: 1.8 million Armenian Christians, including over 4,000 bishops and priests, were killed by the Turks along with 1,750,000 Greek Christians from 1914-1922.
So, to initiate religious war is not immoral by Islamic standards. It is an act of virtue. Remember the hundreds, perhaps thousands of Iranian children, many as young as ten to twelve, whose mission was to detonate mines and draw fire in preparation for full-scale attacks against Iraqi lines during the Iran-Iraq war (1980-1988)? The boys carried plastic keys to heaven. They were told by their leader, Ayatollah Khomeini, that if they were killed on the battlefield they would go directly to paradise. "The purest joy in Islam," Khomeini said "is to kill and be killed for Allah.”
Aggressive religion is only immoral by Christian standards, certainly not by Islamic standards. Does that mean we must always be passive witnesses, i.e. martyrs? I don’t think so. We can and should defend, first by a clear statement of truth, whether that truth is politically correct or not. To pretend that Islam is non-violent is wishful thinking.
So, keep defending the truth by enunciating it clearly. Let people make an honest decision. Do they want the world to be ruled by “...the prophet who laughs as he slaughters his enemies,” or would they prefer the Prince of Peace, even though some of His followers are not always on their best behavior?
Rev. Know-it-all
I belong to a pontifical order called the Mystic Knights of the Holy See. Recently one of the leaders of the group decided to change the wording of our charter from “To defend the faith” to “to witness to the faith.” Are these the same thing?
Yours,
Dame Isabela Giornatta
Dear Isabela,
They most certainly are not! The word in the New Testament for witness is “martyr.” which occasionally involves letting yourself be killed. There is another, more forceful word in the New Testament for defense “Amunomai” which means to defend with force. We find it in Acts 7 where Moses strikes the Egyptian. The first is “apologia,” a defense made with words. I would maintain that under certain circumstances we are allowed to defend with force, but we are commanded to defend with words. 1Peter 3:14 commands us, “...do not be frightened... Always be prepared to make a defense to everyone who asks you to give the reason for the hope that you have. But do this with gentleness and respect, keeping a clear conscience.”
The use of force is very limited for the Catholic. The Catechism (paragraph 2309) lists four strict conditions for "legitimate defense by military force": 1 The damage inflicted by the aggressor on the nation or community of nations must be lasting, grave, and certain; 2 All other means of putting an end to it must have been shown to be impractical or ineffective; 3 There must be serious prospects of success; 4 The use of arms must not produce evils and disorders graver than the evil to be eliminated.”
All but the strictest pacifist would agree that defending ourselves against someone like Hitler is legitimate. Similarly, if someone wants to kill you or your spouse and children, self defense is legitimate, first with reason and then with force, if necessary. The goal is always defense, never aggression. One cannot fight for gain, nor honor nor revenge, but only for life. The Catholic defense begins with words, (apologia) and uses force (amunomai) only as a last resort.
There are three forces in the modern world that want to eliminate Christianity. One is Marxism. Marxism turned out to be remarkably short lived. Even Marxists are beginning to think some Christianity might be useful, even in an atheist society.
The second force is an old enemy that we moderns don’t want to call an enemy, even as they kill and enslave untold thousands. After all, everything is beautiful in its own way. It is hard for polite Americans and Europeans to believe that Islam is violent. Who are we to call them immoral, when we ourselves have conducted such bloodthirsty wars and have engaged in violent imperialism for the better part of 500 years? Wait! Did I say anything about immorality? The wars of Islam are quite moral by Islamic standards. Herein lies the problem. We moderns are so narcissistic that we refuse to believe that anyone can be different from us. Islam has a different moral system than that of Christianity. In this case, to defend the faith is first to enunciate that difference clearly. So let the enunciating begin!
Read the Koran. I think everyone should. Every clergyman should be a Koranic expert. Here are some interesting excerpts. Surah (48:29) - Muhammad is the messenger of Allah. And those with him are hard (ruthless) against the disbelievers and merciful among themselves. Surah (8:12) - I will cast terror into the hearts of those who disbelieve. Therefore strike off their heads and strike off every fingertip of them. Surah (9:123) - O you who believe! Fight those of the unbelievers who are near to you and let them find in you hardness. Surah (5:33) - The punishment of those who wage war against Allah and His messenger and strive to make mischief in the land is only this, that they should be murdered or crucified or their hands and their feet should be cut off on opposite sides or they should be imprisoned; this shall be as a disgrace for them in this world, and in the hereafter they shall have a grievous chastisement. Surah (9:5) — known as "the verse of the sword" — declares "Fight and slay the pagans wherever you find them, and seize them, beleaguer them, and lie in wait for them in every stratagem.” Muhammad himself led 27 military campaigns and initiated about 38 others. “I am the prophet that laughs when killing my enemies.” (Muhammad quoted in the Hadith)
Note following contrast. Jesus said in Matt (5:38) "You have heard that it was said, 'Eye for eye, and tooth for tooth. But I tell you, Do not resist an evil person. If someone strikes you on the right cheek, turn to him the other also... Love your enemies and pray for those who persecute you.”
The Koran says: Surah (5:45) "And We prescribed to them that life is for life, and eye for eye, and nose for nose, and ear for ear, and tooth for tooth, and (that there is) reprisal for wounds.” And Surah (2.179 ) “There is life for you in (the law of) retaliation, O men of understanding, that you may guard yourselves.” Surah (5:45) also says “but he who foregoes it, it shall be an expiation for him; and whoever did not judge by what Allah revealed, those are they that are the unjust.” This does not discourage retaliation. I simply means that it is not obligatory to literally take eye for eye, though one may do so. The injured party has the option to remit or forego retaliation and instead receive compensation in money, goods or livestock. This option is known as "diya."
I am not trying to say here that one moral system is better than the other. They are just different from each other. In fact, in significant ways, they are diametrically opposed.
It is hard to estimate what this has meant over the decades. Your order was founded during the Crusades and unfortunately, we in the West are fond of feeling guilty and thus the Crusades, an attempt to defend the Christian world against violent aggression, are not very popular at the moment. We in the Christian world beat our breasts and blame ourselves for all the slaughter, but we really have no way to accurately count the bodies and know who killed how many of whom. Still, the Crusades, at least as planned, fulfilled the criteria for a just war. Remember that the Middle East was and is the heartland of the Christian faith. The overwhelming majority of it inhabitants were committed Christians at the time of the Muslim conquest.
The Crusades were a response to a century of the prohibition of Christian pilgrimage, the destruction of Christian shrines and the murder of Christians that began in earnest under the reign the mad Caliph, Abu ‘Ali al-Mansur al-Hakim (985-1021). He ordered the destruction of churches, the burning of crosses, and the seizure of Church property. He moved against the Jews with similar ferocity. Over a period of ten years, thousands of churches were destroyed. In 1009, Hakim ordered the destruction for the Church of the Holy Sepulcher in Jerusalem. The situation grew worse for Christians as the century progressed. In 1056, the Muslims forbade European Christians from entering the Church of the Holy Sepulcher. When the Muslim Turks became the dominant Islamic force in the region, they enforced new Islamic restrictions for both native Christians and pilgrims (whose pilgrimages they blocked). When in 1077, the Turks conquered Jerusalem, the Seljuk Emir Atsiz bin Uwaq promised not to harm the inhabitants of Jerusalem, but once his men had entered the city, they murdered 3,000 people. About 20 years later, after a century of anti-Christian slaughter and persecution, Pope Urban initiated the Crusades, which politically correct people now say are a barbarity perpetrated against the innocent Muslim world.
It may be hard to know the numbers when looking at the Crusades, but it is possible to get a more realistic idea by looking at the history of India. An estimate of the number of people killed, based on the Muslim chronicles and demographic calculations, was done by the author K.S. Lal in his book “Growth of Muslim Population in Medieval India.” It seems that between 1000 CE and 1500 CE, the population of Hindus decreased by 80 million. This is disputed by some, but it is known that the conquest of Afghanistan in the year 1000 was followed by the annihilation of the Hindu population. The region is still called the Hindu Kush, i.e. Hindu slaughter. The Bahmani sultans (1347-1480) in central India made it a rule to kill 100,000 captives in a single day, and many more on other occasions. This seems unbelievable but it is enlightening to look at some well documented modern sources.
Ever heard of the Hindu Genocide in East Pakistan? Nandan Vyas ("Hindu Genocide in East Pakistan", Young India, January 1995) has argued convincingly that the number of Hindu victims in the 1971 genocide was approximately 2.4 million. Most were Hindus, but it is thought that 1,250,000 may have been Christians.
That was not ancient history. That was 1971. If in 1971 the Pakistani Muslim Army killed millions of Indians whom they regarded as pagans could Will Durant be correct in his statement, “The Mohammedan Conquest of India is probably the bloodiest story in history."? Are you familiar with the slaughter of 2 million Christians in the Sudan in the second half of the twentieth century? (Oh, that must be exaggerated. Perhaps it was only one million.) Some Assyrian friends just told me about three busloads of Christian university students that were bombed a few weeks ago as the students returned home from school in Mosul. Our town is filling up with Assyrian refugees from Muslim violence. (It is important to remember that most Arab speakers in the U.S. are Christians and to welcome them as our friends and brothers in the Lord.)
The story in the West is the same. According to Rev. Archimandrite Nektarios Serfes: 1.8 million Armenian Christians, including over 4,000 bishops and priests, were killed by the Turks along with 1,750,000 Greek Christians from 1914-1922.
So, to initiate religious war is not immoral by Islamic standards. It is an act of virtue. Remember the hundreds, perhaps thousands of Iranian children, many as young as ten to twelve, whose mission was to detonate mines and draw fire in preparation for full-scale attacks against Iraqi lines during the Iran-Iraq war (1980-1988)? The boys carried plastic keys to heaven. They were told by their leader, Ayatollah Khomeini, that if they were killed on the battlefield they would go directly to paradise. "The purest joy in Islam," Khomeini said "is to kill and be killed for Allah.”
Aggressive religion is only immoral by Christian standards, certainly not by Islamic standards. Does that mean we must always be passive witnesses, i.e. martyrs? I don’t think so. We can and should defend, first by a clear statement of truth, whether that truth is politically correct or not. To pretend that Islam is non-violent is wishful thinking.
So, keep defending the truth by enunciating it clearly. Let people make an honest decision. Do they want the world to be ruled by “...the prophet who laughs as he slaughters his enemies,” or would they prefer the Prince of Peace, even though some of His followers are not always on their best behavior?
Rev. Know-it-all
Tuesday, May 11, 2010
Don't you like the Mass of Vatican II?
Dear Rev. Know it all,
Reverend Know-it-all
Boy, am I glad you are not my pastor. You sound like a joyless puritan with all this stuff about Mass not being Catholic enough. What’s wrong with “the consolation and instruction of the people,” even if Luther said it? The Second Vatican Council gave us the new liturgy. Or wasn’t the Council Catholic enough for you?
Yours,
Kent Zingwell
Dear Kent,
I did hear something about a council that was held perhaps forty-five or fifty years ago (1962-1965). In fact, I have actually read some of the documents that the Council produced. Allow me to quote one in particular, the Constitution on the Sacred Liturgy “SACROSANCTUM CONCILIUM” published on Dec. 4, 1963;
Article 116. The Church acknowledges Gregorian chant as specially suited to the Roman liturgy: therefore, other things being equal, it should be given pride of place in liturgical services. But other kinds of sacred music, especially polyphony, are by no means excluded from liturgical celebrations, so long as they accord with the spirit of the liturgical action, as laid down in Art. 30.
Well then, let’s look Article 30. To promote active participation, the people should be encouraged to take part by means of acclamations, responses, psalmody, antiphons, and songs, as well as by actions, gestures, and bodily attitudes. And at the proper times all should observe a reverent silence.
Here’s some more interesting reading from the Council.: Article 120. In the Latin Church the pipe organ is to be held in high esteem, for it is the traditional musical instrument which adds a wonderful splendor to the Church's ceremonies and powerfully lifts up man's mind to God and to higher things. But other instruments also may be admitted for use in divine worship, with the knowledge and consent of the competent territorial authority, as laid down in Art. 22, 52, 37, and 40. This may be done, however, only on condition that the instruments are suitable, or can be made suitable, for sacred use, accord with the dignity of the temple, and truly contribute to the edification of the faithful. And here’s some more interesting stuff: Article 36. Particular law remaining in force, the use of the Latin language is to be preserved in the Latin rites.
I know that by quoting all these arcane passages I seem like some pathetic old coot who’s trying to jam the tooth paste back into the tube, but I think you miss my meaning. I may be a pathetic old coot, but not one who is opposed to the work of the Holy Spirit in the Second Vatican Council. The liturgy as we have it now has nothing to do with the Second Vatican council. In fact, the liturgy that most people assume is the “Mass of Vatican Two” is in direct defiance of that great and inspired Council. Inspired by a rebellious clergy, the better part of a billion people have ended up thumbing their noses at the work of the Council. That is my sorrow. The promise of my youth has been betrayed. Much of the Council has never been implemented. Instead, we Latin rite Catholics now have an essentially Protestant framework for the Eucharist. Four hymns written by third rate musicians have replaced psalms written by the Spirit of God.
Why did we do this? I remember it well. The council urged greater participation on the part of the congregation (Article 54 steps should be taken so that the faithful may also be able to say or to sing together in Latin those parts of the Ordinary of the Mass which pertain to them. ) The adolescents who ran seminary choirs and folk groups, most of whom were flunking Latin class anyway, were not about to obey this mandate. They also ignored another part of the document Article 50. The rite of the Mass is to be revised in such a way that the intrinsic nature and purpose of its several parts, as also the connection between them, may be more clearly manifested, and that devout and active participation by the faithful may be more easily achieved.
I can just hear you say, “There you go again. What have you got against feeling good? Haven’t you read article 48? (The Church, therefore, earnestly desires that Christ's faithful, when present at this mystery of faith, should not be there as strangers or silent spectators; on the contrary, through a good understanding of the rites and prayers they should take part in the sacred action conscious of what they are doing, with devotion and full collaboration. They should be instructed by God's word and be nourished at the table of the Lord's body; they should give thanks to God; by offering the Immaculate Victim, not only through the hands of the priest, but also with him, they should learn also to offer themselves; through Christ the Mediator [38], they should be drawn day by day into ever more perfect union with God and with each other, so that finally God may be all in all.)
When we read those words, “the faithful should take part...with...full collaboration.” Many priests thought “lay concelebrants.” This is certainly not what the Council Fathers had in mind. It was a false interpretation made by anti-clerical clergy. The above text reinforces the sacrificial understanding that makes the Catholic Mass Catholic. Read the fine print. “Not ONLY through the hands of the priest, BUT ALSO, with him they should learn to offer themselves .” The priest is not replaced. The faithful should remember that they join themselves to Christ on the cross as does the priest when he celebrates Mass. Mass is not a spectator event, nor an entertainment. It is the sacrifice in which “I make up in my own flesh what is lacking in the sufferings of Christ,” as
The heart of Catholic worship is the real presence. When we hear the phrase “real presence” we are tempted to think that it means simply that the whole Christ is really present in the form of bread and wine. It certainly means this, but, believe it or not, it means still more.
When I was a much younger man, I was at a very difficult parish. I went through seminary after the beginning of the council and was a very thoroughly “Vatican Two Catholic” by which I mean, not the council, but the council ignored. I remembered the “old” Mass from my childhood and its beautiful music, and when I heard that there was a Latin in parish not far from me, I thought it might be interesting to attend. On a hot summer day that had been unusually trying, and being in the need of a spiritual “uplift” I decided to drive down to the parish where the old Mass was offered for their 12:30 High (sung) Mass. I was quite disappointed. There was no choir, no beautiful old hymns. There was an old priest facing a wall mumbling in a language I could barely hear, much less understand. I said to the Lord, “I’m not having much of an experience here.” That small voice inside answered, “Oh, you came for an experience. I thought you came to worship Me.”Touché! Convicted of my own sinful narcissism that I had mistaken for “spirituality,” I knelt and worshiped. And then, I had an experience! I realized that God, the Son of God was REALLY present, in His body, blood, soul and divinity. That tired old priest was not responsible for my feelings. I wasn’t required to feel anything. Whether I felt it or not, it was real and I knelt and bowed my head, worshiping the God who made me, the Savior who loved me. I understood worship as I had never understood it before. It was not about my consolation and instruction. It was about my Lord. It was the Real Presence that accompanied Max Kolbe and Edith Stein to the gray death camps. It was the Real Presence that sustained Mother Teresa and Therese of Liseux when they felt nothing yet remained faithful. It was the Real Presence, not just the felt presence that sustained John on the lonely island of
Reverend Know-it-all
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