Cosmos-Liturgy-Sex

The website Catholics Come Home launched in March, is credited with bringing 3,000 Catholics in the Diocese of Phoenix back to the Church in less than three weeks. Take a look around the website and while you’re there, watch the television ad called Movie (bottom of home page) - very powerful.

For the movie of our life can be used to judge us. We will sorrowfully relive the bad times and joyfully revisit the good. (Romans 2:1-16)

It is then we will fully realize how our unkind thoughts and selfish choices wounded others, and led us away from our loving Father. (Matthew 25: 31-46)

And each time we ignored God’s voice, our conscience grew more deaf, and our heart hardened. (Matthew 24:12, Hebrews 3:8,15)

No matter what you’ve done, there is good news, since Jesus came not to condemn the world, but to save it. (Isaiah 1:18; John 3:16-17; Romans 5:8)

Jesus can heal your memories and forgive your past, if you accept His mercy. You really can be freed from the addiction of sin and find lasting peace. (Matthew 11:28)

May God abundantly bless those who love enough to humbly bring others to Christ.

H/T Catholic Education Resource Center

A brand new Web site through the Vatican Congregation for the Clergy provides open access to Biblical verses with exegesis from doctors of the Church AND cross reference liturgical texts with commentaries from Church Fathers. The site offers six categories in nine languages in addition to the option of downloading the site’s content. The nine translations of the Bible, including Hebrew and Greek, can be read side-by-side, as can the Eastern and Latin Codes of Canon Law. A down-loadable version allows us to connect Sacred Scripture to the complete works of many Doctors of the Church, Councils, Encyclicals, teachings of the Popes, Catechisms, as well as commentaries from secular literature, etc…

Might want to bookmark this one. Fair warning if you plan to down-load a version onto your hard drive, it’s excruciatingly slow.

Update: E-mail support for documents and articles of interest for Bishops and Priests.

Zenit

As quoted by the Living Church Foundation:

Regarding his move to the Roman Catholic Church, Bishop Steenson said, “I believe that the Lord now calls me in this direction. It amazes me, after all of these years, what a radical journey of faith this must necessarily be. To some it seems foolish; to others disloyal; to others an abandonment.”

Bishop Steenson will be the third bishop to convert to the Catholic faith in 2007. Bishop Dan Herzog of Albany converted shortly after his retirement and retired Bishop Clarence C. Pope returned to the Church in August.

I have been reading a bit of Archbishop Fulton Sheen lately in helping out with the immense amount of material to review for the Archbishop’s cause. In The Life of Christ, Sheen observes that after His Resurrection, Jesus still bears the marks of slaughter. Scripture attests to this truth both in the upper room when He shows them to the doubting Thomas, and in Revelation 5 when the Lamb in glory still appears as He did when He was slain. In other places, Sheen describes this as a reminder that there can be no Easter Sunday without passing through Good Friday.

Another interesting point the Archbishop raises is with the ancient tradition of Satan appearing to a saint, the latter of which confounded Satan by asking him where were his marks of crucifixion. Satan could not bear these because they are the antithesis of what Satan has made himself. In this regard, I find that Archbishop Sheen and John Paul the Great both seem to have happened upon many of the same insights, but apparently independently. In this context Sheen explains the meaning of Jesus’ Sacrifice and the meaning of these sacrificial marks in terms like that of JPTG in his Theology of the Body. The Sacrifice is a reminder of love and in His resurrected body these marks become a reminder that love is stronger than death. I would say that the Cross’s unification of Sacrifice with Love explains the reason that Satan who made himself the antithesis of love now rages at the new meaning of sacrifice. Likewise, it is the reason that the nations rage at authentic, self giving love. By nations, of course I mean New Testament gentiles—non-Christians. The Sacrifice of the Cross also reveals another truth that makes the Cross hard to look at. It reveals the great horror of sin.

This is one reason that Satan would want to avert Christian attention from the Cross but it would not explain his rage or that of those who have adopted his rejection of his Creator. I suspect that the revelation of the horror of sin then explains the rejection of the Mass as a Sacrifice by so many modern theologians. Of course this rejection had its start in that novel Reformation Soteriology–salvation by faith alone–which made meaningless the continued suffering of humanity after the Cross.

In terms of rage reacting to the manifestation of Self-giving love, one thinks of such raging atheists as Christopher Hitchens, and his copy cats Penn and Teller, who raged at Blessed Theresa of Calcutta for her daring to suggest that there is meaning to be found in suffering. This is nothing new and the inability of even believers to come to terms with it is not uncommon.

This was apparent during the release of the Passion of the Christ and the outcry of many, even some Catholics, over the “excess” of emphasis on Jesus’ suffering. In fact, many others thought that especially the scourging in The Passion also thought it a bit extreme. For example, when she was still writing for Zenit back in February 2004, Delia Gallagher expressed the belief that the suffering was overdone by Mel Gibson. She explained her thinking in an e-mail responding to my question about this assertion in her article:

Thank you for your message. I said the violence was probably exaggerated because it was the opinion of several of the Vatican officials and others with whom I saw the film and because it was my opinion. It seemed to me any man, even Jesus, flagellated to that extent - before even beginning the Via Crucis - would have died. It also seemed to me that Gibson deliberately lingered on the flagellations, to effectively bring home his point of the very real suffering of Jesus.

That being said, you are right to take me up on the statement, because the climate in which it is being released is so tense, that any description of it as an exaggeration could be misleading. It is also difficult to know just how bad flagellations were at that time, and so a difficult claim to sustain.

Best wishes, Delia Gallagher

It is not unnatural for us to recoil from the horror of sin, especially when we view it from the perspective of our personal responsibility. In fact, I heard one commentator exclaim that she was not responsible for the suffering she saw Jesus go through in the film. Theologically speaking though, because Jesus’ suffering reveals to us the horror of the sins of every person for all time, what was depicted in the film could never do justice to what He actually suffered. Add to this, the effect of Satan and his minions urging the antagonists on to a fever pitch such given that here he thinks that he has the chance to finally crush the One of whom he said non serviam. This is the One Whom he had been looking to kill since the advent of man and the One he blames for his eternal misery (see Rev. 12:1ff).

In Psalm 42 and Revelation 11, the inspired authors talk of the nations raging in anger against God and His people until the time of God’s triumph over sin. Well, until the final triumph in the eschaton we will continue to see the nations rage, fueled by Satan’s rage against everything that would remind them of Jesus’ redeeming love. Jesus’ total Self-gift—His Sacrifice—shows that authentic love conquers death. Death is the only power that pride and selfishness can muster but death is non-being and in the face of Being itself, death withers away. Any reminder that in the end death loses out to love, by necessity will bring on this rage.

Interesting article at the Catholic Exchange on eulogies and funeral Masses:

It would probably come as a surprise to most Catholics to learn that such eulogies at funeral Masses are prohibited by longstanding Church teachings.  Last year, a priest in the Diocese of Covington, Kentucky, made local news by letting his parish know that he would start enforcing that prohibition. (more)

“Adherents to many religions display their devotion with tattoos”. The Catholic perspective is here, with principles by which Catholics can discern whether it is sinful to be tattooed or have one’s body pierced in particular situations.

Amélie has posted some thoughts on this encyclical and the comments to her thread suggest that there is much interest in it.  However, some of the comments are a bit inane.  For example, one guy sees this Encyclical as an olive branch to “gays” because B16 does not explicitly limit eros to heterosexuality and limit “gays” to agape.  This sad thinking, besides being delusional, completely misunderstands the faith and the Trinitarian foundation of love.  If one reads this Encyclical closely, he will see that same-sex eros can never be purified.  One can never acheive same-sex agape (here I mean in the sense of which we call the disorder of same-sex attraction).

Part of the problem with understanding what unity in difference can mean is a lack of a proper metaphysics.  Orthodox theologian, David Bentley Hart does a masterful job in Beauty of the Infinite of showing that the errors of post-modernism reduces to monistic presuppositions about the Being of God.  This error of monism leads post-moderns to see God as in competition with creation and so in opposition to man, especially in terms of freedom.  What Msgr. Robert Sokolowski calls the Christian difference, solves this problem.  God is ontologically different than creation as His is Uncreated Being, where creatures possess created being.  Hart demonstrates that these are not at two opposite poles of the same dimension of being with the finite on one end and the Infinite at the other.  Rather created being ex-ists by participation in Uncreated Being (which sub-sists).  Infinite Being is not the sum of all beings, it is Being Itself.

This type of false opposition is at the heart of other confusions, including Trinitarian theology and the theology of love.  Eros and agape are not two different types of love in opposition to one another but two aspects of the unity which is love.  Like the distinction in Persons in the Unity of the divine nature, the distinctions of love do not eliminate love’s unity.

As the title of the Encyclical says, God is Love.  God is perfection itself and so Love, and loves distinctions into eros and agape are logical distinctions which allow understanding of the different manners in which created being participates in the simplicity of God’s Being. These distinctions are proper to created intellect, but making these distinctions shouldn’t be confused with complexity in God.

Love is an act of the will in which one selflessly gives himself as a gift to others.  But this gift of self is the result of a developing process (in creatures) which is the culmination of a love of attraction.  The attraction (eros) is not annihilated but it achieves its end in the self-gift (agape).  Eros, in our fallen state, must be purified in agape.  Neither is this self-gift static.  It is an on-going act of the will; it is a decision to give oneself as a gift and to receive the other likewise, in response.

What some folks seem to miss is that eros as we experience it, can and many times is, distorted.  B16 addresses that and makes it clear that eros which is not grounded in self-gift is a distortion which strips love and the lover of dignity and humanity.  So what is and is not authentic self-gift?

Self-gift can only be rooted in Trinitarian love.  The Father’s total gift of Himself to the Son and the Son’s reciprocation are fruitful. This mutual Love is a Person . . . the Holy Spirit. Being the Source of everything that exists, this total self-giving establishes the framework for creation and so it is the interpretive key for understanding creation and most especially the human person who is created in the image of this Self-giving God.

This framework shows that love must be true to the order of creation.  This is where those who mistakenly believe that B16 is somehow now saying that same-sex genital relations are suddenly not a disorder, completely miss the Trinitarian nature of creation.  The Encyclical says that “…man is somehow incomplete, driven by nature to seek in another the part that can make him whole, the idea that only in communion with the opposite sex can he become ‘complete’” (DCE 11).  Here B16 follows JPTG’s theology of the body in which the latter shows that man is made, male and female, in the Trinitarian image.  Husband and wife are a unity in difference, made complementarily for one another.  The structure of heterosexual anatomy demonstrates their complementarity and their having been ordered to the one-flesh union which is the only genital union that has the capacity to be fruitful in a life-giving way.

B16 uses the phrase unity and difference also to describe the hylomorphic union of body and soul. Because the soul is the substantial form of the body, the body expresses something in the soul.  This includes sex differences.  Sex differences are ontological and created for the unity in difference of love, manifested in its dimensions of eros and agape. 

So no Virginia, there is no Santa Claus…there is nothing here but wishful thinking to suggest homo-eroticism can be included in anything but a “warped and destructive form” of eros (DCE 4).

Now while marital love is the most clear place to demonstrate this unity and distinction, B16 does not do this.  I suppose that JPTG’s theology of the body, to which I find unmistakeable allusions, has already done that.  Here, B16 makes these distinctions in the unity of love as the prelude to what I believe may be a new development in Church social teaching and perhaps even in ecclesiology.  I will share those next time.

The title to this song by John Michael Montgomery (though I recall that some pop group subsequently recorded it) came to mind today during the homily for the Feast of the Triumph of the Cross. Monsignor was very animated; he actually slapped the podium a couple of times at the end asking if we ever knew that God “loves us like that.” He made an interesting point. This feast does give us the opportunity to celebrate the Cross’s triumph in a way that we simply cannot during Lent and especially on Good Friday. Regardless of the season, it is important to remember that the Cross is all about love. 

You know all the hullabaloo (errr . . . maybe that sounds a little too aggie??) about The Passion of the Christ reminded me of St. Paul’s first letter to the Corinthians (1 Cor 1:23). The Cross is a scandal and folly to the world. Only to Christians is this sign of defeat and humiliation turned on its head. Only in Christ can death be turned to life. It certainly is a sign of contradiction. Death has turned into life because of Love. Love is more stern than death (Sg 8:6). Can you even imagine love like that? To die for us in such a horrible, humiliating, unimaginable way, while we were yet sinners (Rom 5:8). It is frightening; it is a love that makes demands. We cannot bear to think of it. No wonder those, even professed Christian scholars, who are so attached to the world cannot bear to hear about this kind of love. It is a love stronger than even our love for ourselves.

Why the Cross though? There are many reasons I suppose. However, this instrument of torture, par excellence, is perhaps the most fitting way for the Son to reveal the Father’s love. Trinitarian love is the total gift of Self. Jesus has to visibly reveal this love to us because we will not listen when we are simply told about it. What can He give to the Father other than everything that the Father has given Him. He has already done this in the eternal processions, now He must do it in His human nature. He can give His life, but that is not enough. He can give his obedience, but that is not enough. He must pour out every last ounce of himself for all to see, for love of the Father and so for love of us. The Cross drains Him of Himself one agonizing drop at a time. As His Precious Blood drips to the ground and He responds with “Father, forgive them . . . “ only then can we understand what it means to love. Only then do we truly understand who we are. We are called to love Him like that and so love each other like that. Could we sing the title of that song?

This is the reason when the world sees a crucifix they see death; when a Christian sees it, he sees life, love, and Triumph!

These two “comedians” skewered Mother Theresa for her profession of the Christian message on suffering because they are of the world and to the world, suffering is a scandal. It is the reason the Greeks and the Jews could not accept the Cross. However, there is untold suffering going on now in our country as there as been in South East Asia since the tsunami, in the Mideast for almost a century now, and in various parts of Africa for almost the same length of time. Suffering is the lot of our fallen race. We scream back at our Creator for His not stopping it and those of us who believe cannot help but wonder why.   

Suffering is an indication that things are not as they should be. It is our lot because we are east of Eden. We are not where we should be. Christ demonstrated par excellence the meaning of suffering. It is the result of man’s sinfulness. But God did not leave us alone in it. He joined us in His suffering on the Cross and He gave us the capacity to participate in His work. Our task is to join our sufferings to the sufferings of the Cross in order to undue it’s cause . . . that is to make reparations for the effects of sin.

When suffering cannot be avoided, we must embrace it . . . as Jesus told His disciples, we must take our crosses up and follow Him. St Paul tells us that suffering doesn’t separate us from Christ:

Who shall separate us from the love of Christ? Shall tribulation, or distress, or persecution, or famine, or nakedness, or peril, or sword? As it is written, “For thy sake we are being killed all the day long; we are regarded as sheep to be slaughtered.” No, in all these things we are more than conquerors through him who loved us (Rom 8:35-37)

In fact not only does it not separate us, he tells us we must suffer to be joined to and glorified with Christ:

For all who are led by the Spirit of God are sons of God. For you did not receive the spirit of slavery to fall back into fear, but you have received the spirit of sonship. When we cry, “Abba! Father!” it is the Spirit himself bearing witness with our spirit that we are children of God, and if children, then heirs, heirs of God and fellow heirs with Christ, provided we suffer with him in order that we may also be glorified with him. I consider that the sufferings of this present time are not worth comparing with the glory that is to be revealed to us (Rom 8:14-18).

St Paul actually tells us that we should take joy in our suffering if offered in union with Christ for the sake of His Church:

More than that, we rejoice in our sufferings, knowing that suffering produces endurance, and endurance produces character, and character produces hope, and hope does not disappoint us, because God’s love has been poured into our hearts through the Holy Spirit which has been given to us. (Rom 5:3-5)

and

Now I rejoice in my sufferings for your sake, and in my flesh I complete what is lacking in Christ’s afflictions for the sake of his body, that is, the church, . . . (Col 1:24).

It may seem a little difficult to understand what St Paul means by “what is lacking in Christ’s afflictions,” especially if we interpret it as suggesting that he suffered less than was necessary. But that is not what St Paul means; we know from Hebrews that Christ’s Sacrifice was perfect, once for all time. He is saying that the suffering that Christ suffered for us, we His Mystical Body (also known as the Church) also have to share in. He suffered for our sake, not so we wouldn’t have to suffer — but the suffering we experience can be joined with His suffering on the cross and it can be made an offering pleasing to God. BUT it can only be pleasing to God if we do it as part of Christ’s Body — the Church. For some this is a hard concept because it would seem that there is nothing we can do to add to Christ’s completed work on the cross; and it is true that we do not add anything. However, the following anecdotal story might show how we can be co-workers with Christ in the work of redemption (cf. 1 Cor. 3:7-10). A former Presbyterian minister (anyone recognize who this is?) tells of how he came to this realization one day when he was jogging around the perimeter of his parish trying to get into shape. He saw a young father trying to mow the lawn and his 4 year old son was trying to help with his plastic lawn mower. The next time around he saw that the son must have been getting in the way because he was sitting off to the side, obviously disappointed. The third lap around he saw that the father had now picked up his son, and now there was a look of joy on the little boy’s face, who was holding the handle bars of the lawnmower, as he and his father mowed the lawn. The son fancied himself a co-worker with his father, and in a real sense, he was. He did not add anything to the father’s work, but the father out of love for his son, raised his son’s dignity and allowed him to participate with him in his work. This is what St. Paul is referring to here; God does not need our work, but He graciously raises our dignity by joining our suffering to His, when we are joined to His Mystical Body, He allows it to be applied in the work of Redemption.

When you are suffering watching the suffering that is going on right now . . . perhaps you even suffer because a loved one is in the after effects of the storm, do not waste it. Offer it up for those who do not know to. Offer it up for those who have died. Offer it up for the reparations for the sins that plague us so, here east of Eden.

B16 uses this phrase to describe the process by which Christians are sanctified through carrying their crosses. It is the mystery of Christian personhood that our unity with Christ in His mystical body is such that our works, joys, and sufferings become His work of the Cross. Even more, that His destiny of the Cross is ours as well. Contemplate the awesome brilliance of the plan of salvation by which the suffering caused by the sin which enters the world actually becomes the vehicle by which sin and suffering are healed (cf. Rom 5:20). Benedict’s words are directed toward the crisis of faith the Church is experiencing today, primarily in the Western World.   

It is both sobering and comforting to know that we, through our own efforts, will not solve the crisis. Rather, it will be solved by Christ making use of our sufferings joined to His. Benedict makes it clear that we should suffer when we see our attempts at evangelization seem to fall on deaf ears. B16 says that failure to suffer when the truth seems to be disregarded (I would add by believers and unbelievers alike) would be a lack of faith and a lack of commitment to the gospel. Nevertheless, with this suffering comes the comfort in knowing that God is in charge.

John Paul the Great used the phrase from Gaudium et spes over and over again in his anthropology. Christ reveals man to himself. Thus, we know that we will only fully perfect ourselves by joining ourselves to the Cross. B16 is right, the way to holiness is through tormented transformation.

As I was reading Walker Percy’s, Lost in the Cosmos a couple of weeks ago, his discussion of semiotics and the triadic character of symbol use brought this question to mind. How, you might ask? You more probably would ask what I am talking about with the mouthful: “the triadic character of symbol.” Essentially, that means only one creature, man, uses a sign/signifier to convey meaning about something else—the referent (I would recommend Percy’s book to learn more about this but I would warn that his measured use of profane sexual material to get his point across could legitimately offend some sensibilities which are aimed at purity). I don’t recall if Percy discusses the point but up until William of Ockham introduced the cancer of Nominalism in the 14th century, it was pretty much accepted that there was a real ontological (which means “the being” of something) relationship between the sign and its referent. Ockham insisted that what we called things is completely arbitrary. There is no deeper connection. This Nominalism, having been enhanced by Immanuel Kant at the beginning of the 19th century, is pretty much common thinking today. So how did I get to the topic of sex?

It occurred to me that this Nominalism goes well beyond words and their referents. For anything which we symbolize, we do not think of the symbol as having a very deep, and certainly not an ontological, relationship to its referent. This is the case even for some Catholics with the Sacraments. For them, the sacramental symbols are just material reminders of something spiritual (for other confused souls they function purely on the psychological level). Well, that is not what Christians ever believed prior to Ockham. The Sacraments are symbols par excellence. They are what they symbolize and they convey what they symbolize. That is the case with the priest as a symbol of Christ, the Bridegroom, in Holy Orders. The dissenters against the Church’s dogmatic teaching that only men can be priests suffer from two problems. The first is this rejection of the idea that symbols have a real ontological relationship to their referents. The other is that they do not accept that sex differences are something ontological, that these differences go to the very heart of who the person really is. We are either a female or male person forever; we cannot change our sex without annihilating ourselves as persons (transgender operations are simply surface mutilations of the body and cannot change the sex of the person). This relationship between sex and symbol is cosmological. Sex is a form of relation; it establishes the structure by which we relate to others. What we see as sex differences in creatures is simply a biological (and spiritual) manifestation of the way God relates to His creation and the way other aspects of creation relate to one another and to God.

Peter Kreeft has a masterful article (reading him I sometimes wonder why I bother writing anything) on sexual symbolism which explains this much more profoundly than I ever could. I would recommend reading this article before reading John Paul the Great’s theology of the body catecheses because in it Kreeft summarizes much of what JP the Great presupposes in his anthropology.

So how about the answer to the question? You probably can figure out by now that it is yes and no. No, if you are thinking of corporal copulation. However, there will be sex differences in heaven. Our masculinity and femininity remain with us forever as part of who we are. Furthermore, if one recognizes that sexual copulation is intended not only as a way to reproduce the species but as a foretaste of the universal intersubjective unity we will have with God and every other person in heaven, then I suppose that one might consider that sex—though I restate that it will not be corporal! However, I for one would not use the term because this heavenly unity is so far beyond the intimacy of marital sexual union that using the term would mislead and distort the unimaginable joys which God has prepared for those who love Him.