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.

Irreducible Part 1

Irreducibility: it's a fancy word that has serious implications (another fancy word)... Let's put it this way: Mathematics, Physics, Chemistry, and Philosophy all have this same concept: There is a point beyond which you cannot reduce a thing without changing its identity.

For example, if you remove my hair, I am still human, and I am still myself, perhaps slightly more or less handsome. No big whoop. If you remove some more essential aspect of me, say all of my lower torso, something has definitely changed. I would then be lacking some significant aspects of what it is to be a human being.

Occam's Razor, a popular tool in philosophical circles, is essentially a mental process of removing all unnecessary elements of an argument or analysis to get closer to true understanding. It is often over-simplified to the axiom: "The simplest explanation is most likely the correct one." This generalization loses the elements of completeness and accuracy and in so doing actually proves the point that one can, in the process of simplifying, remove something that in fact is essential. Occam would agree that one always must favor accuracy over simplicity.

In the sciences we learn about elements. It is possible to have great quantities of an element. Think of a zeppelin full of hydrogen. It is possible to reduce this great quantities all the way down to a single atom. However, if one tries to reduce beyond this point, a radical reaction takes place called fission: energy is released, and what remains is no longer the same element as before. For a larger scale understanding of what energy fission releases, think of the uranium-based fission device dropped on Hiroshima, Japan in 1945.

In our country right now, there is a debate ongoing as to the definition of marriage. It is incumbent upon all rational beings in a society to contribute to such discussions in the interest of truth, social order, and the continuation of the very fabric of society. The Catholic Church provides a beautiful definition for marriage: "[...] a covenant by which a man and a woman establish between themselves a partnership of the whole of life and which is ordered by its nature to the good of the spouses and the procreation and education of offspring [...]" (CIC 1055).

There are five clear elements to this definition: 1) it is a covenant - agreed upon by man and ratified by God, 2) it is between a man and a woman - it can neither be alone nor with same sex partners nor with multiple partners, 3) it is for the whole life - it is a bond of love meant to last from consummation until death and all points in between, 4) it is for the good of both spouses - it must upbuild both partners and cannot be a relationship of slavery or abuse, 5) it is meant to produce and raise children - it must not be intentionally sterile.

When any of these four elements is absent or denied, marriage itself is being abused. I'll ask you to forgive the stereotypes, but a man who beats his wife, a wife who has her eyes on moreso on the potential alimony than on growing old with her spouse, a man and wife that take no interest in one another, a spouse who insists on bringing other persons into the marital bed, a young couple who consistently put their own interests ahead of having children or raising their children well, all of these are shadow "marriages" and cry out for deliverance. But even more to the point, they are denying themselves the inherent goods of marriage which cannot be present when it is reduced beyond its simple form. Repeat: By willfully denying an essential characteristic, they are depriving themselves of the identity and goods of marriage.

If some outside entity were to recognize such a flawed relationship exists and deny the recognition of their bond as marriage, what harm has been done to them? What these men and women are seeking through marriage are certain personal, civil, and spiritual benefits. The spiritual benefits that may have been sought are not available regardless. The civil benefits are intended as support for properly formed unions and the children they raise up. If those other "marriages" are denied the civil benefits when they are violating the conditions for application of those benefits, namely contributing to the well-being of society by a healthy marriage, then they are not being wronged, but rather prevented from wronging society by drawing unjust compensation from the rest of the citizenry. The personal benefits such as recognition, personal satisfaction, deeper sense of intimacy are simply not the concern of everyone else. I truly desire that everyone have those goods, but societies must be concerned with common goods (truth, justice, peace) not private goods. Securing private goods are strictly a private matter, not governmental.

Marriage is an immense treasure. The Lord Jesus saw fit to raise it to the dignity of a sacrament. Man and woman find in marriage the motivation to draw closer to their divinely intended perfection and the sublime calling to bring about that perfection in the other. Such a creation must be treasured and defended. Hear the calling in your own lives, and remind others of it. Some or those "marriages" can still become true celebrations of Matrimony.

Please look for the second installment of this article, which deals with many arguments regarding marriage and how they hold up to scrutiny. As always, if you like it, hate it, or want to talk about it, comment below.

20100517 Question: Sexual Sin

12:It seems to me that clergy rarely falls into murder, thievery, or other sins that are primarily not carnal, but, when they do fall it is typically sin of a sexual nature. (Protestants just as often or perhaps more so than Catholics) Is this more so now than in biblical and later ages?

It doesn't seem that satan tried this temptation with our Lord, nor was there much problem that I know of in the early church or the apostles, etc. It would seem that our whole world is much like Sodom and that we must be very near the end!

12. I don't generally speculate on when the end of days will be, but we certainly do live in a degenerate time. You are correct that there is no record of the adversary tempting the Lord with lust. He did tempt Him with food, however. And generally, the spiritual doctors would say that more sins are committed in the dining hall than the bedroom. Again, I am not sure if that is still the case. What we do know is that it is certainly easier to resist temptations of the flesh in the one sense if we routinely deny ourselves in the other. I believe that one of the reasons we have such issues with sexual temptation in this day and age is because we have fallen out of the habit of regular fasting. The Church made allowance for substituting acts of charity for regular Friday fasting, and it seems we have taken to this wholesale. It is necessary to remember that, while the clergy are here to continue the personal ministry of Jesus Christ to His Church, they are still men who must strive for holiness just the same as we. When they sin, as all men in this fallen world do, they separate themselves from the Body of Christ and must seek to be reconciled to it through the sacrament of Penance.

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.