History lesson

John Henry Cardinal Newman once wrote "To know history is to cease to be Protestant." What Newman meant was that to anyone who read the Church Fathers, who was familiar with Scripture, who knew of Roman history and the history of Europe the truth of the Tradition of the Catholic Church was obvious.

The Bible itself is primarily the story of Salvation History. As such it has depth. I've written about compenetration before. Compenetration refers to the fact that biblical prophecy has an immediate fulfillment while simultaneously having a more ultimate meaning as well. So when Jeremiah talks about the return of Israel from the Babylonian exile he is also talking about the ultimate return to God which will come though the salvation of Christ.

A different kind of depth in Scripture is the way in which ordinary objects, things and concepts in the mortal world reflect or mirror things either spiritual or Divine. The relationship between God and his people, Israel in the Old Testament and the Church in the New Testament, is mirrored in marriage. Some would even go so far as to say that marriage is a sacrament because it mirrors God's relationship to his Church. So we see in the Song of Songs the relationship of a lover as the relationship of God to his people. We see in Hosea Israel compared to an unfaithful wife, who takes other gods to the sorrow of the true God.

The Ark of the Covenant and the Holy of Holies in which it was kept was believed to mirror Heaven, or at least the Holy Throne Room of God.

Israel itself was to mirror the Heavenly Kingdom. Remember in Scripture God originally did not give Israel a king, even though Moses made allowances for a king in the Law. God was their king. As a matter of fact when the people asked the prophet Samuel to anoint a king for them Samuel was angry. He knew God was their King. But God knew what was best for the people. So he gave them their way, because he knew ultimately he would get his way.

So as God often does he wrote strait with crooked lines. He took many bad and some good kings and paved the way for the Eternal King, Himself.

Along the way he used the trappings and traditions of Jewish royalty to model his Eternal Kingdom and his Church. So a careful reading of the two Book of Kings shows that in the ancient kingdom the king ruled, but the other power in the kingdom was not his wife, for the ancient kings had many wives, but his mother. Read 2 Kings. Note that for every king there is an entry identifying the queen mother, for the queen mother had real authority in the kingdom.

In Isaiah 23 the prophet describes the office of the steward, second only to the king. In Matthew 16:18 Jesus uses the same words when appointing his steward, Peter, the first pope.

So the concept of Mary as the Theotokas and Queen of Heaven are Scriptural in origin, not some post Roman innovation. Likewise the Magisterium and the power of the Pope to bind and loose is a legal concept based on the Scriptural description of the officer of steward in the ancient kingdom of God's people, not some offshoot of Roman government or Catholic power grab.

As Christ said Let those who have ears hear, and I might add let those who have eyes read.

Franz Werfel and Bernadette

So its amazing the way sometimes things just fall into line. Today I was looking up something on Wikipedia and the article included a quote from Franz Werfel. Werfel, was a Jewish poet and play write who wrote against the Nazi's in the period prior to their take over of Austria. As the National Socialist Party came to power he fled to France, only to have to flee again when Germany invaded that country. Unable to procure the necessary documents he fled across France, finally hiding with various families around Lourdes.

While there he learned of the story of Bernadette Soubirous. Werfel made a promise to God that if he and his wife escaped to America he would write a song about Bernadette. With the help of American journalist Varian Fry he managed to escape. In 1941 he wrote Song of Bernadette, a novel about the young girl and the apparition of the Blessed Virgin which appeared to her.

Though Werfel never converted to Catholicism his book was very Catholic in tone.

Amazingly at the present time I'm doing a Lenten reflection on Mary. Today's reading was on Bernadette Soubirous and Our Lady of Lourdes.

Just moments ago someone sent me a factoid. It seems that this year Lent and Easter correspond exactly with those of 1858, the year Our Lady appeared to St Bernadette in Lourdes.

The Feast of Our Lady of Lourdes was last week, on Feb 11. Somehow that date passed without my really noticing it. For some reason today the Spirit seemed determine to bring it to my attention

The danger of the mystic

We live in a society where it has become common to face the spiritual with skepticism or indifference. Even in the Church it is not uncommon to find even priests who deny the actual existence of Satan, angels, or demons. Often these same people deny, if not the existence of sin, its power to eternally separate us from the presence of God.
This has resulted in a situation where our youth are exposed to many false and dangerous beliefs. Some of these beliefs are considered harmless or even silly by secular culture, when they are in truth dangerous. Dangerous to the soul and sometimes even dangerous to the body.
Take Wicca. Basically a made up religion with its historical origins in the 19th century. Based upon vague fantasies of a non-existent ancient witchcraft Wiccans themselves do not believe that they worship the devil. However many do call upon powers from beyond this world, attempting to affect happenings in the physical world through the exercise of power.
Now there is a real spiritual world. It is a plane of existence inhabited by the angels and demons, that is fallen angels, and includes the heavens and hell to which those who die go awaiting the final coming of Christ. There is a power in this spiritual world. It is the same power that exists in the mortal plane. The power of God. But God also allows other forces to reach from that plane into the world. Some actions occur through His own power, as when God answers a prayer, or allows the Blessed Mother or a saint to appear to a mortal. Other forces God also allows to enter the world, as when Satan is allowed to tempt the living or when a demon is allowed to possess a person's body.
It has become unfashionable to talk of such things, but they are as much a part of our Catholic teaching as the Sacraments or Original Sin. It is true that not every mentally unstable or epileptic individual is "possessed." But just as most wild bears are not man eaters, that does not mean that there does not exist a man eating wild bear or two. It also means that its a bad idea to dance with the bears.
So in the present secular world its very likely that if you work with a youth group that some of the members of the group have friends who are either dabbling with Wicca or even from families where it or other pagan practices are considered the norm. It is also likely that they have been exposed to Ouija boards, tarot cards or other spiritually dangerous items.
Think this is a silly thing to worry about? Let's look at it this way. Do you believe in the efficacious power of prayer? That is, do you believe that praying to God or to the Saints or the Blessed Mother actually has the result of causing an effect in the physical world? If you do is it then unreasonable to believe that Satan and his fallen angels can also respond to "prayer." God has allowed Satan power in this world, at least until Christ's second coming. If someone is using an object or ceremony or ritual in a way to reach out to a higher power, and the intent of that individual is not directed toward God then does it not make sense that another power could respond?
Even if such a power does not manifest physically it is dangerous to soul to dabble with such things. It is especially dangerous for the young, those who are not fully formed in their faith and the weak willed, those already seeped in sin, to fool with such things.

New Media

Now I am of an age where I can say that there was a time when I had a familiarity with literally all aspects of computer and network use. There was, quite literally, no application or protocol used to communicate between computers that I did not have at least a passing relationship with. As an example, several years ago the Smithsonian had an exhibition on computer technology at which were present all kinds of computer hardware from the famous ENIAC to the more pedestrian S-100 bus based PC, Atari, Pet and of course the IBM PC. I took my son though the exhibit, who was in high school at that time and heard, "Dad, don't you have one of those?" at far more of the pieces than I would have expected, starting with the S-100 unit.
On this extensive array of computer hardware I managed to communicate with computer bulletin boards over phone modems, moved onto first AOL and CompuServe, and eventually to the Internet. Once on that world spanning network I found myself using email, Internet Relay Chat, FTP with its ARCHIE search engine, GOPHER with its equivalent VERONICA search engine, and of course Usenet.
Somewhere around the time the WWW came into existence I started to fall behind. Second Life was an environment I only heard about at a Systems Controls conference, where the other programmers had pretty much the same disinterested response I did to the presenter's enthusiastic endorsement of Linden's virtual world. I grabbed onto blogging after a fashion, though my lackadaisical update of this blog shows I'm certainly not in the league of the great Catholic bloggers who typically post a dozen times a day. I found Instant Messaging a total distraction that prevented me from getting any work done. MySpace and Facebook seem to require a much greater level of exhibitionism than I am comfortable with. Twitter? Does anybody really care where I am and what I'm doing?
So how does this great glut of social communication tools effect the ability of the catechist to carry out the mission? The Holy Father has said that it is important that the Church use the new media to evangelize, teach and proclaim the Good News. So it is incumbent on us to think and investigate how it is best to do that.
We must also remember that social media can be a two edge sword. Just as thoughtlessly placed photos on Facebook can cost you a job, it can also cost you the respect and trust of young people placed in your charge. IM or email between adults and young people must be carried on according to the highest standards of propriety.
When youth invite you to their IM buddy lists or friend you they should be made to understand that while you might indeed be their friend, you are also an adult who has a responsibility to report certain things to authorities or parents.
Any kind of relationship which could lead to scandal must be avoided. Remember any piece of information which travels through the Internet and including information which transverses the cell phone system never goes away. It is never private.
Provided that new media is used in a way that enhances human dignity and supports the commission laid on us by Christ it, like writing, radio and television before it can be used to the greater glory of God.

Is America a Christian Country?

Last April America's president stated in a speech given in the principally Islamic nation of Turkey, "America is not a Christian nation." This is a statement for which Barack Obama took a lot of heat, from conservatives, from Christians and even from some Democrats.
Though I personally disagree with Mr. Obama on almost everything this particular statement is one to which I must reluctantly agree. How can that be, you might ask? The United States was founded on Christian principals. The Declaration of Independence appeals to the Creator and natural law for the authority to throw off the bonds of tyranny. Freedom of Religion is enshrined in our Constitution. 76% of Americans identify themselves as Christian.
To that I would say:
How can any nation which allows over one million innocent babies to be murdered a year call itself a Christian Nation?
50 million abortions since Roe v. Wade made abortion the law of the land. To bring that number in perspective 50 million people is the combined populations of the states of California and New York. It is the population of the Union of South Africa, and greater than the population of Spain. It is nearly the population of Canada and Australia put together. It is nearly the number of people killed in every country which participated in WWII. It is greater than the number of people killed by Hitler and Stalin put together.
It is a carnage which is so great that it is in truth beyond normal human comprehension. A moral stench that is truly sickening and that will condemn us all in the minds of our descendants, when finally this Satanic inspired travesty is finally recognized for what it is and is banned as the crime against humanity which it is.
So today when we congratulate ourselves that 300,000 people have descended on Washington to speak out for life, to once again be ignored by the Supreme Court, Congress, the White House and most of the Main Stream Media, we should remember more children died in the first six months after Roe v. Wade became law than will stand in the cold in D.C. today.
It is sobering thought. I pray that God can forgive our nation, else we are surely doomed.

New Year, Same Old, Same Old.

Just before the holidays I was facilitating a bible study class for adults. One of the particular lessons of secession was obedience to God. Specifically for the Catholic this comes down to obedience to the Magisterium. Out of the blue one of the students said, " I don't believe the Church is always right. I don't believe the Church's teaching on birth control"

Now this is the catechist's greatest fear. Sometimes we know a lesson will be controversial. Plan a lesson on annulments, or abortion or even when to kneel during Mass and the astute catechist will be prepared for a lively discussion. Talk about obedience to God and one expects a discussion of the difficulty of living up to the commandments or mercy verses justice. So of course God in his infinite wisdom throws out the 1 200lbs gorilla of modernist heresy to be dealt with.

Now the speaker was a post menopausal single woman. I mention this only to point out that this was not a personally relevant belief, at least not in the conventional sense.

Now I have no doubt left to my own devices I would have felt a deep sense of panic moving in. This is the kind of rabbit hole that can derail an entire group. The rest of the lesson gets buried and half the group refuses to return, because the facilitator is not "pastoral" or "understanding."

Luckily I had prayed before the lesson, always a vital part of the preparation for a teacher or catechist before performing their ministry. So I know it was not me, but the Holy Spirit who responded with, "What part of Humanae Vitae do you believe Pope Paul got wrong?"

"I..I don't know I've never read it.."

"How about Pope John Paul's Theology of the Body?"

"No..."

"So what you're saying is that you're prepared to challenge a teaching of the Church without knowing the moral and theological underpinnings of those teachings?"

"Well when you put it like that..."

"So why not read Humanae Vitae before you decide you disagree with it?"

I pointed out that the document was easy to find with a simple Google search, and promised we'd discuss it once everyone had an opportunity to read it. We then smoothly continued with the lesson.

I don't know that everyone in that group will take the time to read Humanae Vitae before our next session, after the holidays, but I do know that I'll be rereading it, just in case.

Marry Christmas

Well Christmas has come and gone. We celebrate today the Feast of the Holy Family. In the coming days we will finish out the Octave of Christmas and move into the Christmas season.

Next year promises to be challenging for the Catechist, as we move closer to the new English translation of the Mass. Now for some of you I have no doubt that you've been told it won't happen, or that it won't effect your parish. Now based on the past forty years, I have no doubt that some priests, or even bishops, might believe that they can finesse this. Have no doubt. A new translation is coming.

The transition will be easier if the faithful are properly instructed in the reasons a new translation was necessary and how the International Commission on English in the Liturgy (ICEL) and the Vatican arrived at this new translation. Sour grapes about the quality of the translation (It is actually much better than the old translation taken from the 1975 version of the Missale Romanum,) ala Bishop Trautman is not helpful. It can be more theologically challenging for individuals who are not knowledgeable about the precepts of their faith. It contains words of more than one syllable to declare complex theological concepts that can't properly be stated without using such words. These are concepts medieval peasants understood, including quite a few of little formal education beyond catechetical instruction, and this mostly at the hands of their parents. Surely modern Americans and other English speakers, who can master the terminology of football or cricket can likewise master this special vocabulary of liturgical worship.Some instruction may be necessary, mostly account of the forty years of bad catechetical formation that has occurred in some diocese of the Church. The better the faithful are prepared for the transition the smoother it will go, and the better the liturgy will be for it. so if you haven't yet visited USCCB - Roman Missal check it out. The USCCB have made a substantial effort to support the transition. We need to also.