Fathers and Sisters

In vocations circles, you will often hear priests speak about the religious sisters who inspired them to pursue joining the ranks of the presbyterate. If you listen and watch with well-attuned senses, you will notice a deep and abiding affection accompanying those stories. This is not by mere chance. It is a product of both who and what they are, and it comes from the deepest wells of self-identification.

The priest accepts, by the imposition of the bishop's hands, not just a new job or sacrament, but also the imposition of a new personal identity. The priest never needs to be introspective or searching in order to find himself; he needs only to look at the cross. He accepts the identity of an alter Christus, another Christ. The priest's personal self-realization is not in finding whom he was born as, nor even whom he was born again as, but rather in finding the deeper reality of the Great High Priest. The priest seeks out the profundity of the person who gave order to the universe and freely gave his life to reconcile sinners to God the Father. In the Son of God actively dying on the cross, gloriously Resurrected, and mercifully present to us in the Sacraments, the priest learns all he needs to know about himself. The innate gifts that the Lord has placed within him will shine forth and be all the more effective the more he allows himself to be filled with and acted through by the Life of God the Son.

The religious sister likewise has little to question when it comes to her calling. From the earliest days of the Church, young women sought to cleave to Christ as a more evangelical calling than that of Christian Matrimony, to live in that total consecration to God in which all the Church will share in the Heavenly Kingdom. Throughout the ages, from Ambrose and Augustine to Pius XII and John Paul II, the Church has called the religious sister forth with the Veni Sponsa Christi and affirmed that the consecrated virgin is a true spiritual bride to Christ. This, then, is her calling: to be about the life of the Bride of Christ, the Church. It is not surprising, then, that we find the consecrated virgin laboring in all the aspects of the life of the Church, especially in the care of God's children and in tending to the wounds within the Body of Christ. Whether in schools, hospitals, or homes for the aged, religious sisters everywhere are giving themselves devoutly to their spiritual families for the sake of their Heavenly Spouse. As the sister gains clarity from this understanding, we, the rest of the Church, gain clarity of vision as to our own identity as the Church.

We regularly parrot that the Church is not structures, hierarchies, and buildings--though She does employ them for the salvation of souls, but rather the Church is the spiritual reality of all those faithful who are united to Christ, most fully in Heaven, but also those of us below united to Him through the sacraments and ardent love. The joy, peace, and love that radiate from religious sisters is instructive to us. Though, in fidelity to our own callings, we may be bound by earthly labors, our hearts should be just as fervently devoted to the Lord.

To get back to our original topic, remember that the priest takes upon himself the identity of another Christ. Likewise, the consecrated virgin or religious sister takes upon herself the identity of another Bride of Christ. Though their deepest love and exemplar is in Heaven, the deep and abiding affection priests and sisters have for one another, collectively and individually, is logical given the personal realities that penetrate their lives. Though this chaste, vicarious love is rationally sensible, the innocence and joy with which it radiates is also profoundly beautiful and continues to stir my heart each and every time I encounter it.

20100517 Question: Celibate Priests

11: Celibate Priesthood... Why?

11. First, to define the word celibate: celibate means "unmarried." It does not simply mean "single;" rather it signifies that someone has chosen to give up the goods of marriage and all it entails in order to serve more devotedly a higher cause. When a man chooses to accept the gift of celibacy, he is choosing to love the Church as Christ loved the Church, with his whole life. There are arguments from Scripture and history that point to a married priesthood in the early centuries A.D., and they are correct. As one sees in the Eastern Churches (Orthodox and Catholic), a married priesthood has existed for centuries. What is sometimes forgotten is that, for the first several centuries A.D., if a married man were to become a priest or bishop, he and his wife would be expected to be continent, meaning abstaining from sexual relations. While this discipline lasted for a substantial period of time, the Churches saw that it was not going to be tenable in the long term. In the East, the Churches eased the practice of continence for parish priests except for Sundays and Holy Days, but transitioned to a rule of celibacy for bishops, after the pattern of monastics. In the West, the Church judged that it was best for the good of the faithful that their priests maintain that single-minded devotion; therefore, they chose to augment the rule of continence with a promise of celibacy in order to remove the obstacle of married life. Each of these paths has their own difficulties, but it should be noted that since the initial conflict over clerical celibacy, evangelization has flourished in the Latin rite (the West). In fact, the "Western" Church has now been in Russia, the Far East, India, Western and Sub-Saharan Africa, Australia, Indochina, and the South Pacific in addition to Europe and all of the Americas. Some may posit other arguments, but I think the devotion to things above that a celibate must have has been a central principle in the spreading of the Gospel to nearly every known people of the world. If you want to discuss any particular Scripture passage, just reply or comment.

20100510 Question: Mary

10: Mary...

10. Concerns regarding the relationship between Catholics and Mary generally revolve around a few key issues: 1) Do Catholics worship Mary? 2) Why do Catholics believe that Mary never sinned? 3) Is it not better to give attention to Jesus rather than Mary?

These are all very good questions. With regards to the first question, the simple answer is "No."

1) Catholics do not worship Mary. All aspects of religion are not necessarily worship. Many Christians, for example, choose to abstain from work on Sunday in order to observe the Lord's command to keep the Sabbath holy. Also, studying Scripture and leading a moral life are aspects of Christian life that are not worship per se. For many Protestant communities, the meaning of worship has been distorted so as to be roughly equivalent to prayer, singing, or listening to a sermon. Catholics remember the history of our Salvation from the beginning of time and what Christ showed us upon the Cross: "worship" means "sacrifice." The word "prayer" bears the meaning "asking for a favor," which does not of itself entail worship, otherwise, we would be worshiping our neighbors whenever we are in need of a cup of sugar. Singing does not of itself entail worship; otherwise we would be worshiping every child to whom we ever sung "Happy Birthday." Study or listening to lectures certainly does not of itself entail worship; otherwise most of us would have spent a fair portion of our lives worshiping dinosaurs or ponies. We, as Catholic Christians, ask Mary to pray for us to God, to join us in worshiping Him, and to lead us into a deeper imitation of His Ways. We sing of the holiness and virtue of Mary because, as the first and most loyal disciple of Jesus, she provided for us such a great example. We study and seek to know more of Mary because, after all, it is from her that Our Lord drew His sacred humanity. For us Catholic Christians, no matter how much we may admire Mary, we offer spiritual sacrifice to one God alone--the Father, Son, and Holy Spirit.

2) God the Son received His human nature from Mary. That nature needed to be without stain of sin, Original or personal. We know that the merits of Christ's sacrifice (i.e. forgiveness of sin) could be applied to points earlier in history because we saw just such a thing with the prophets Isaiah, who was purified from sin by a heavenly ember, and Elijah, who was assumed into Heaven. Given the angel's greeting to Mary in the Gospel according to Luke, "Hail, she-who-has-been-graced," which is absent her name and wholly unique in all of Biblical history, we are led to see that she must have been blessed in some way that separates her from the rest of humanity. What might this singular grace have been that she had even before conceiving the Lord? Once we recognize that Mary was uniquely blessed among all humanity and remember that she is the source of Jesus' sinless human nature, it becomes obvious that the two are related and that that singular blessing is that the forgiveness won by Christ on the Cross was applied to Mary at her conception that she might be forever without sin, a new Eve who can remain sinless next to the new Adam who would die for our sins rather than sin Himself.

3) Lastly, of course, worshiping Jesus the Christ is better than speaking about Mary. The real question is, "Why do you have to choose?" Worshiping God is better than hugging your Grandma, but that doesn't mean it's not good to do both. Like it or not, if Christ is the head of the Church and we are members of His Body, Mary is also our mother. While she can never replace Our Lord, not by a long shot, she does deserve a great deal of respect and love, and we would be doing wrong by her and by Jesus to ignore her or speak ill of her.

20100503 Question: Catholic Missal

8: What is a Catholic Missal? (It was on Jeopardy: which president was sworn in with his hand NOT on a Bible, but on a Catholic Missal. Lyndon B. Johnson was the answer, on Air Force One after JFK’s assassination.)

8. The Catholic Missal was a book commonly used at the time by Catholics to pray along with the Mass. It would have the Scripture readings and the prayers in both Latin and English in a side-by-side fashion. "Praying the Mass with Missals" was something of a rallying cry for Catholics in the United States in the fifties and early sixties. It was encouraging Catholics to, rather than be occupied with other prayers, be more fully engaged in the Mass itself, what the Second Ecumenical Vatican Council would call "full, conscious, and active participation." LBJ remains the only president known to have been sworn into office on a book other than a Bible, though we do not have records of precisely on what many of the earlier presidents were sworn in. It is worth pointing out that Daily Roman Missals for post-Vatican II Mass (generally called the Novus Ordo Mass) are also available for use nowadays and can be very useful for praying the Mass. http://www.bookschristian.com/books/james-socias/daily-roman-missal/319085 is just one place they may be found. If you are interested in one, I would recommend shopping around as prices may vary.

20100426 Question: Seven Deadly Sins

6: Why do many Catholics refer to the 7 deadly sins when they aren't mentioned in the Bible directly and were compiled by a man who had nothing to do with the Bible?

6. Yeah, one thing to get used to with Christianity: there are lots of things we do, talk about, etc. that are not expressly in the Bible. Nowhere in the Bible does it tell us how to build a synagogue or a Christian church. Nowhere in the Bible does it tell us how Christian ministers should dress. Nowhere in the Bible does it tell us what books belong in the Bible! The comfort we have in Catholic Christianity is found in the fact that we grew organically from our Hebrew roots in the revelation of Jesus the Christ, through the ministry of the Apostles, and shepherded through history by their successors, the popes and bishops. Protestant communities are generally defined by what they deny of the Catholic Faith (though they would never admit it). Many of them are not even aware of this historically obvious distinction.
The "Seven Deadly Sins" are just one articulation of a common practice among Christian spiritual leaders of the early Middle Ages to identify the common causes of spiritual failing. Many other spiritual doctors refer to the "Eight Vices" including vainglory, pride that arises after having conquered other temptations (see Evagrius Ponticus and John Cassian). The effort was partially based on passages from Proverbs and Galatians that list offenses to God. Pope St. Gregory the Great really just made a very publicly published list to be of use to the people of God.