Why does Jesus flee?

23rd Week OT (T)

Fr. Philip Neri Powell, OP

Blackfriars, Oxford

Sometimes, he grabs a boat and rows out to sea. Other times, he heads out into the desert, fasting and praying. He usually goes alone, but occasionally he takes along a select group of disciples. This time, with a largish gang of students trailing behind, Jesus goes out into the hills. There, among the rocks and sage brush, he spends the whole night in pray to God. We might wonder what's so special about the sea, the desert, and the hills when it comes time for Jesus to pray. Surely, he could just as easily find a quiet coffee shop or nice bookstore. Maybe a side chapel or park bench. What do seas, deserts, and hills have going for them that a serviceable college library carrel doesn't? Setting aside the anachronisms loaded into this question, let's take seriously the idea that prayer needs a location, a location specific to listening. If, as Aquinas teaches, “Christ's actions are our instructions,” what do we make of Jesus' tendency to flee to remote places in order to listen to God?

First, there's the obvious advantage of silence. Being in a quiet place is a kind of fasting, a sacrifice of music and noise. Whether your preferred noise is Mozart or Moby, Johnny Cash or Johnny Rotten, filling your ears symphonically or cacophonously can push out the Word you need to hear. Patterns become familiar. Rhythms become predictable. Lyrics repeat what you already know. Silence has no pattern, no rhythm, and its lyrics never repeat. It is the surprising strangeness of no-sound-at-all that smacks us awake to the long, novel reach of every possible sound.

When it comes time to pray, the second advantage that deserts and hills have over parks and malls is solitude. Like silence, chosen solitude is a form of fasting, sacrificing the company of family and friends in order to clear a time and space to entertain the presence of God. Filling every space in our days with someone else, with just anyone else, edges God out, leaving Him aside like an unfashionable handbag or a particularly ugly hat. The presence of people in our lives, however well-meaning and precious, can become too predictable, patterned and repetitious. Their familiarity and our comfort with them can distract and disarm, leaving us unable or unwilling to risk the dangers of being alone with God. What might He ask us to do? What truth might He reveal? Without family and friends to normalize these potentially bizarre revelations, we are left to wrestle single-handedly whichever angel God chooses to send. 

Time alone with God in silence demands responsibility. Not just the moral kind, the kind where we are held morally accountable, but the kind where we are compelled to respond, seduced into answering Him. Without noise and companions to distract, disarm, normalize, and comfort, we have nothing and no one to fall back on when the weight of a decision presses in. What we say is ours alone to say. What we do is ours alone. Note well, however, Jesus always returns to the crowd; he always goes back to his disciples. He never just abandons the people he loves. He takes the silence and solitude of the deserts and hills and seas back to the madness of the crowds and to his questioning students. He shares out the fruits of his prayer, knowing that every mountain good for contemplation comes complete with level ground for preaching. Christ's actions are our instructions; therefore, pray alone in silence and then tell the Church what God has revealed to you. It just might be that the rest of us, noisy and busy, haven't been listening.

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On Catholic charities and cockroaches

Q:  Father, it seems like all the major Catholic charities are giving our money to groups that promote various sins.  Is it possible to give money to these charities and justify the donation by saying that the good they do outweighs the evil?

A:  Let me answer your question with a question.  You discover a large cockroach in your bowl of soup.  Do you just eat around the cockroach?  Or do you believe that the cockroach swimming in your soup has tainted all the soup in the bowl?  Unless and until you can conclusively prove that the cockroach's diseased presence has inflected only a small, removable portion of the soup, I say:  throw the whole thing out and start over.

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More on our new Master

In case you are one of the three Catholics in the US who do not read Whispers in the Loggia, I've reposted below Rocco's post on the new Master of the Order of Preachers, Fr. Bruno Cadore.  I'm reposting the whole thing b/c I can't figure out how to link to the post from WITL!

For the OP's, an MD

For the 290th time, one of the church's most storied religious communities convened in General Chapter last week in Rome… and early this morning saw the highlight of the Dominicans' signal gathering: the election of a new Master of the Order, the ballot going to the French provincial, Fr Bruno Cadoré, who now becomes the 86th successor of St Dominic.

A medical doctor by (secular) profession, the 56 year-old friar (shown above left after his election) succeeds the Argentinian Carlos Azpiroz Costa, who maintained the order's longstanding tradition of handing over the reins after one nine-year term [The Master's term used to be 12 yrs.]. Warmly hailed among his fans as a "stellar leader," Azpiroz's tenure was arguably overshadowed on the wider scene by the profile of his predecessor, the celebrated Englishman Timothy Radcliffe, who memorably declared on departing the post that "after nine years as a Jack of all trades and Master of the Dominican Order, I have no expertise on anything except airports and exotic foods." [Back in 2003, I once bumped into Fr. Radcliffe at 4am leaving his room here at Blackfriars with a couple of suitcases.  He was off--again!--on some whirlwind international lecture tour.  I said to him, "Remind me to never become a former Master of the Order!"]

The new Master inherits a community of some 7,000 men in 88 countries, who work in apostolates ranging from parishes to the Papal Palaces and, of course, the classroom -- its hallmark mission-field -- with the order either providing campus ministry at or operating hundreds of universities worldwide. Held every three years, the current Chapter has outlined its work in four questions on its mission, with an eye to the 800th anniversary of the order's confirmation by Pope Honorius III come 2016.

This year likewise marks the 500th anniversary of the Dominican presence in the Americas… and appropriately enough, the community's East Coast province recently made a splash by welcoming its largest novice class in almost a half-century.

Back at the Chapter, meanwhile, it's been nearly three decades since a Master of the Order hailed from French roots.

NB.  That's the Rev. Br. Lawerence Lew, OP with the new Master.  Br. Lawrence is in Rome, serving as one of the Chapter's chroniclers.

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Tea Mug Browsing

Running hard from B.O. Care:  ". . .it appears that no Democratic incumbent — in the House or in the Senate — has run a [pro-ObamaCare] TV ad since April. . ."  Heh.  I wonder why?  

Racist, sexist GOP gubernatorial candidate with Tea Party ties chooses a black woman as a running mate.  Well, she's a conservative black woman with a military background. . .so she doesn't really count, does she?

More on the Discovery Channel's Warmabomber's violent eco-terrorist rhetoric.  (Aside:  "Warmabomber"!  You gotta love the creativity of the internet's denizens).

On the rise of antisemitism in Europe. . .

Hey, they may be Zombies but they gotta follow the law just like the rest of us living, non-brain eating folks.

Is the Grand Design [i.e. The Theory of Everything] Within Our Grasp?  Probably not.  Glenn Reynolds of Instapundit quotes philosopher, J.B.S. Haldane: “Now my own suspicion is that the Universe is not only queerer than we suppose, but queerer than we can suppose.”  Sounds about right to me.

John Allen (from the execrable NCReporter) answers four common media questions about the Holy Father's visit to the UK.  

A video of me learning French

"Her hair glistened in the rain like nose hair after a sneeze". . .really bad analogies.

T-shirt quotes:  "Time flies like an arrow. Fruit flies like a banana."
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Habemus Magister!

The Capitulars of the General Chapter of the Order of Preachers have elected the 

86th Successor of Saint Dominic: Fr. Bruno CADORÉ, OP!

Fr. Cadore is a bio-ethicist.  He has served as student master and prior provincial of the Province of France.  

Please pray for him as he begins a nine-year term as our Master.

Here's a great Youtube vid on the Chapter.  My friend and OP brother, Fr. Alejando Croswaithe is interviewed.  He says one very funny thing. . .when describing how the Master is chosen, Fr. Croswaithe says that the friars gather and name brothers that they think should be considered.  He says that the friars "offer a short sentence" on why the brother should be chosen as Master.  Dominicans offering a short sentence?  BAWAHAHA!!! 

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Radical dispossession?

23rd Sunday OT

Fr. Philip Neri Powell, OP

Blackfriars, Oxford

Jesus is preaching on the Mount of Olives. The crowd is huge. The wind is high. It's difficult to hear him clearly. He says, “Blessed are the peacemakers.” A man in the crowd shouts out, “What did he say?” Another man, Gregory by name, responds, “I think it was 'Blessed are the cheesemakers.'” His wife asks, “Aha, what's so special about the cheesemakers?” Gregory explains, “Well, obviously it's not meant to be taken literally; it refers to any manufacturers of dairy products.” Thus do we have—from Monty Python no less—one of the first instances of Jesus' teachings being read through a hermeneutics of inclusion! Of course, this is meant to be funny; it is also meant to point out our very human tendency to take something we've heard and give it the most benign, the least personally demanding interpretation possible. Today's gospel offers us this opportunity as well. Jesus says, “If anyone comes to me without hating his father and mother, wife and children, brothers and sisters, and even his own life, he cannot be my disciple.” To add insult to this familial injury, Jesus adds, “. . .anyone of you who does not renounce all his possessions cannot be my disciple.” So, in order to follow Christ, we're to become homeless, destitute haters of our family. Unless we are willing to “mishear” this difficult teaching, and give it some milquetoast interpretation, we have to deal with it head-on. What are we to make of Jesus' rather unambiguous demand for our radical dispossession?

The first point to be made here is that hating one's family and surrendering all one's possessions are not conditions for discipleship; that is, there are no prerequisites for enrolling in the university of the Lord. There are, however, consequences. And these consequences, Jesus warns, can be and most likely will be dire. To walk willingly into the tomb with him and to rise with him on the last day entails following him on the way of sorrow, carrying one's cross, and dying on that cross when the time comes. Though there will be glories and graces along the Way, a life lived as a disciple is a life lived in self-denial, sacrificial service, and persistent witness. As one who has lost it all, Jesus knows that if we have nothing left to lose, there is everything to gain. In more contemporary terms, we might say, “No Pain, No Gain; No Guts, No Glory.” What Jesus is doing here is making it perfectly clear to those who would follow him that his Way is not about growing in self-esteem, or “being One with the universe,” or just being a nice person, or even living a quietly pious life. There is a cost to discipleship, a potentially heavy even deadly cost, a cost beyond convenience, reputations, and friendships. The cost—ultimately—is your life. Be ready to pay that bill.

To prepare us, Jesus asks, “Which of you wishing to construct a tower does not first sit down and calculate the cost to see if there is enough for its completion?” There are really two questions here. First, “Have you thought about the costs of discipleship?” and second, “Are you prepared to complete the course given the costs?” The disciples already know that the Lord came not to bring peace but a sword. His life and ministry among them will cleave families apart, setting father against son and mother against daughter. The Way is not a tranquil meditative practice leading to a blissful serenity, but a radical commitment to a tumultuous love that puts Christ first, puts Christ squarely in front of any other attachment, any other promise. To hate one's family and surrender all possessions is to set the sacrificial love of Christ on the cross as one's only frame of reference, as one's singular focus and goal. Everything else—mom, dad, kids, house, job, reputation, wealth, health, politics, religious practice—everything else is to be seen, understood, and lived out relative only to Christ and our vows to follow him. Have you thought about these costs? Are you prepared to pay this bill?

If not, have you thought about what it might mean to fail, what it might mean to pit yourself against the King of kings? Jesus asks his disciples, “. . .what king marching into battle would not first sit down and decide whether with ten thousand troops he can successfully oppose another king advancing upon him with twenty thousand troops?” A king outnumbered 2:1 on the battlefield would be foolish not to consider suing for peace! Jesus' point here is as straightforward as it is frightening: don't play the fool by siding with the Enemy and fighting against your Creator. You will lose and lose catastrophically. Isn't it more prudent, more practicable to ally yourself with the strongest and flourish whatever the costs? Besides, God's terms for our surrender are infinitely gracious and though we must submit our pride to defeat, we gain eternal life. And that bill has already been paid in full.

What will it take for you to complete the course? Jesus tells us what we must be prepared to surrender, surrender everyone we love and everything we own. Nothing and no one we love can be loved apart from or before Love Himself. We might ask the question this way: who or what are you unwilling to sacrifice for Christ's sake? Name it. Name him or her and you will know who and what stands between you and your discipleship. Is this too harsh? Too difficult? We could do our best Monty Python imitation and pretend that Jesus says that we must renounce all our obsessions or all our professions. Or that we must come to him rating or baiting our family members. We could say something like, “Oh, he doesn't mean that literally. . .what he really means is that we shouldn't be greedy; we shouldn't let our parents control us.” What he says is that we must choose him over all those we love now, over all the things we love now. This is the cost of our tuition on the Way. Why? Because one likely consequence of following him is the loss of all we love. 

Therefore, it is better to surrender to God now than to fall in defeat to the Enemy later on.

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On hating the wallet that pays you

In many conversations with Europeans in the last year or so, I've discovered that the NYT, CNN, MSNCB, ad nau have done an excellent job convincing folks over here that the Tea Party is some sort of Hillbilly Uprising or Redneck Revolution.  Mention the T.P. or Sarah Palin or Glenn Beck and you get (in order) a cringe, a purpled face, a pair of rolling eyes, and then a rant on horrors of American democracy and the need for better education, i.e. a better re-education in cultural Marxism. 

What's most exasperating to me is the unwillingness of these cultural relativists to concede that there is a cultural difference btw the US and Europe that defines the Tea Party movement as a grassroots democratic push to preserve basic natural and civil rights.  It seems that for most Europeans government is a natural good and more government is naturally better.  They simply cannot imagine what it means to have a form of government that is constitutionally prohibited from growing and growing and growing.

Ultimately, the reactions I get from my European friends and some of my brothers here are rooted in a deep misunderstanding of American culture and a fear of the bourgeoisie.  Loathing the hard-working middle class is a sacred tradition among Europe's elite, a tradition recently imported into the US.  Hating the hand that feeds you seems to me to be an odd way to live your life.

An excerpt rom Rich Lowry in NRO:

The much-analyzed speeches at the Glenn Beck Lincoln Memorial rally weren’t as notable as what the estimated 300,000 attendees did: follow instructions, listen quietly to hours of speeches, and throw out their trash. [Have you seen the vids comparing the condition of the Mall after the Beck Rally and after B.O.'s inauguration?]

Just as stunning as the tableaux of the massive throngs lining the reflecting pool were the images of the spotless grounds afterward. If someone had told attendees they were expected to mow the grass before they left, surely some of them would have hitched flatbed trailers to their vehicles for the trip to Washington and gladly brought mowers along with them.

This was the revolt of the bourgeois, of the responsible, of the orderly, of people profoundly at peace with the traditional mores of American society. The spark that lit the tea-party movement was the rant by CNBC commentator Rick Santelli, who inveighed in early 2009 against an Obama-administration program to subsidize “the losers’ mortgages.” He was speaking for people who hadn’t borrowed beyond their means or tried to get rich quick by flipping houses, for the people who, in their thrift and enterprise, “carry the water instead of drink the water.”

The tea party’s detractors want to paint it as radical, when at bottom it represents the self-reliant, industrious heart of American life. New York Times columnist David Brooks compares the tea partiers to the New Left. But there weren’t any orgiastic displays at the Beck rally, nor any attempts to levitate the Lincoln Memorial — just speeches on God and country. It was as radical as a Lee Greenwood song.

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Does Jesus save?

I want one of these!

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Tea Mug Browsing

"The humans? The planet does not need humans."  The "manifesto" of the terrorist who took hostages at the offices of the Discovery Channel.  Must have been a Tea Partier.  Save the Planet?  Check.  Stop birthing "parasitic humans"?  Check.  Human sterilization?  Check.  Religion is at the root of civilization's filth?  Check.  Mandatory education on evolution?  Check.  US economy is dangerous for the world?  Check.  Yup, he's one of those right-wing nutjobs who hates freedom. 

The terrorist killed by police while holding hostages was "enlightened" by Pope Gore I's encyclical, "An Inconvenient Truth."

Mark Hemingway discovers that this eco-terrorist shares the scholarly opinions of B.O.'s science czar, John Holdren. 

Here's another Catholic charity you should probably stop donating to:  Caritas International.

Before working in three different psych hospitals, I worked in a battered women's shelter.  I also worked as the ER-trauma chaplain in an inner-city hospital.  I've seen real domestic violence.  Using domestic violence laws to push an ideological agenda is beyond inhuman.

Fr. Z. overdoes the Mystic Monk coffee and produces a New Conspiracy Theory!

Interview with soon-to-be Archbishop Joseph Tobin. . .Fr. Tobin, a Redemptorist, was tapped by the Holy Father to serve as the secretary for the Congregation for Institutes of Consecrated Life and Societies of Apostolic Life in Rome.  Fr. Tobin was on sabbatical here at Blackfriars and we had the privilege of having dinner with him before he headed off to Rome.  He is a remarkably humble, down-to-earth kinda guy.  He told us that he got The Call from the Vatican while painting his mom's house.

A detailed plan for repealing ObamaCare. 

Satanists plan ritual to exorcise God. . .let's be frank here:  atheists and Satanists would look rather more ridiculous than they already do if it weren't for Christianity.  Both groups are constituted solely by their opposition to Christ.

A Magnificent Manifesto for the Massively Enhanced. . .I prefer the term "gravitationally enhanced."

My efforts to learn French in poster form

Ooooooooo. . .The Knife to have for the Zombie Apocalypse. . .I'll add it to the Wish List.

Funny poem about the weirdnesses of English spelling

I've only wrecked one car. . .my wreck looked nothing like these.

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Pope to beatify Newman on the bridge of the Enterprise

Folks, this is what the Holy Father will be confronted with when he beatifies John Cardinal Newman here in the U.K. . .

Fortunately, I have the perfect solution:  dynamite it, plow the site under, and salt the earth. 

Easy.

Comment from kab63 on Fr. Z's site:  "It’s a horrible mix of bouncy castle and airplane hangar."  LOL!

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On the impossibility of women's ordination in the RCC

Given that a tiny group of ecclesial dinosaurs here in the U.K. are plastering London buses with pro-WO ads, I thought it might be time to revisit the issue in some detail.

Below is a piece I posted back in 2008 at the request of a young Dominican friar who was asked about the Church's teaching on the impossibility of women's ordination to the Catholic priesthood.

It's long, but I promised detail, right?!

________________________________________________________________


First, notice the origin and ground of the objections. All of them are based on one or more of the following mistakes:

a) Priesthood is about power
b) "Access" to the priesthood is about rights and justice
c) The "exclusion" of women from the priesthood denies humanity of women. . .
d) . . .and it denies their proper place as potential "Christs for others"
e) All exercises of Church authority are excluding
f) Tradition is always about male privilege
g) Women would make better priests because of their natural empathy and compassion
h) Jesus' exclusion of women from the priesthood was culturally based and therefore reformable
i) Scripture is silent on the nature of the priesthood b/c it is a third century invention of males
j). Women report feeling called to the ordained priesthood, therefore the Church ought to ordain them.

Let's answer (briefly) each in turn.

Priesthood is about power. No, it's not. Priesthood in the Catholic Church is about service. Do priests often mistake their office of service as a privilege in the use of power? Yup. But that's an abuse of the office and in no way changes the actual nature of the office. Men are ordered to Christ, Head of the Church, to serve his people as he did: sacrificially in leadership. When supporters of women's ordination (WO) claim that women must be allowed to share in the governance of the Church as priests, they mistake the office for a political one.

"Access" to the priesthood is about rights and justice. Wrong again. The only right a Catholic has as a Catholic in the Church is the right and duty to serve others. Justice is getting what one deserves. No one--not even men--"deserve" to be ordained, to serve as ordained priests. To claim that ordination is a right is bizarre given that men are called by God and confirmed by the Church to be priests. This use of democratic rhetoric is attractive but misplaced. You cannot be the subject of an injustice if you have no right to that which you have been denied. I am not being treated unjustly b/c I cannot vote for the next Italian presidential election. 

The "exclusion" of women from the priesthood denies their humanity. In fact, the Church's teaching on ordination reaffirms the humanity of women by clearly laying out what it means to be human, male and female. To be fully human as a creature is to submit one's will to the will of our Creator and cooperate with His grace to achieve our perfection AS men and women; that is, I am perfected as a male creature. My mother is perfected as a female creature. Often this objection is rooted in a modernist notion that one's sex is socially constructed. We are MADE male and female by our Creator and not pieced together sexually by social forces.

The "exclusion of women from the priesthood denies their proper place as potential "Christs for others." This would be true if the only means of being Christs for others was to be a priest. Fortunately, our Lord had to foresight to make sure that there were other means of becoming the sons and daughters of the Father in His service for others. Ordination is one way that some men are called by God and confirmed by the Church to "work out" their salvation. No one is denied their perfection in Christ b/c they are not priests. All the baptized serve the Father by being priests, offering themselves in sacrifice for others.

All exercises of Church authority are excluding. Wrong. If an exercise of Church authority excludes, it does so in order to liberate through a declaration of the truth of the faith., thus including everyone in the knowledge of truth. To be excluded is not in and of itself an injustice or a violation of human dignity. There are many perfectly beautiful options open to all Christians to which I am excluded in virtue of my ordination, e.g. marriage and biological fatherhood. In the case of WO, the Church has used her authority to recognize a limit of her own power. In effect, the Church has recognized that she is excluded from considering the ordination of women.

Tradition is always about male privilege. Tradition has certainly been misused to prop up abusive practices that privilege males. That we have seen these abuses in no way changes the fact that Tradition is the handing on of a living faith, the "living faith of the dead." The faith of the Church never changes. It cannot change. Our understanding of the faith can and does change. However, WO is not a change in understanding but a radical revision of some of the most basic threads of the Christian narrative. To alter these threads does more than "open the priesthood," it unravels the faith whole clothe.

Women would make better priests. I concede this readily. But we have to be clear about what we mean by "better priests." The objection assumes that the vocation of the priest is simply about empathy and compassion. It's not. Sometimes what the priest must do is show firmness, rectitude, and unwavering direction. . .even if empathy and compassion seem to be set aside in doing so. If the only vocation of the priest were to be empathetic or compassionate, then women should be ordained. However, as we have seen in the Episcopal Church and the Church of England, women priests and bishops (at least for now) seem to be more inclined to the destruction of the living faith than its preservation. Each time a stone in the catholic faith has been removed by female clergy and their male supporters in these ecclesial communities, it has been removed on the grounds of justice, rights, empathy, and compassion--all understood in strictly secular terms. The results have been disastrous.

Jesus' "exclusion" of women from the priest was culturally based and therefore reformable. This objection assumes as true a number of false premises. First, it assumes that Jesus was not who he clearly said he was and is: God. God is not constrained by cultural prejudices. Second, it assumes that Jesus was disinclined to break social taboos. In fact, he broke any number of cultural taboos in teaching and preaching the Good News, causing a great deal of scandal. Why not break the taboo against women as priests/rabbis? Third, this objection also assumes that cultural change should guide Church teaching. Cultural change should and often does guide our understanding and application of the faith in the world, but the world is irrelevant when it comes to determining the content of our faith. A danger for WO supporters here is that the way they understand many of the Church's cherished social justice positions are undermined by this objection to the Church's teaching. If we can alter the faith to follow cultural change and ordain women, why can't we examine many of Jesus' legitimate justice teachings in the same light and alter them as well? Maybe our modern culture and social norms should be used to override the historical Christian concern for the poor. Surely, the recent collapse of the economy can be blamed in part on a misplaced concern for the poor and homeless.

Scripture is silent on the nature of the priesthood. This is a particularly odd objection for faithful Catholics to be making. It is largely a Reformation objection and ignores volumes of Patristic teaching on the origins and development of Christian priesthood. It is simply false to say that the Catholic priesthood is an third or fourth century invention. There are elements of the priesthood as it is enacted in the world that came about in later centuries, but the core nature of the priesthood was infallibly established at the Last Supper when Christ commissioned his apostles and friends as those who would lead the community in prayer and the breaking of the bread, to "do this in memory of me." He had every opportunity to include women in this moment, but he didn't. The key here is to understand that the Last Supper was a Passover meal, a family meal, one that reinforced the bonds of paternal authority in the ancient Jewish tradition. of liberation from slavery. Even with women present at a Jewish Passover, the men are commissioned to perform the rite. Does this mean that women are excluded from the liberation Moses brought and the Passover celebrates? Hardly.

Women feel called to the priesthood. In the paragraph directly below this one I note that all of the objections to the Church's teaching on WO are rooted in modernist, feminist ideology. This objection is a perfect example. What this objection assumes is that the call to priesthood is a subjective experience immediately deserving a positive response from the Church. What can be more modernist than the triumph of personal experience over objective truth. The truth of the matter is that the call to priesthood comes from God through the Church, who is the Body of Christ. To say that a particular person (male or female) receives a call outside the Church assumes that Christ speaks to a member of his Body from outside his Body. However, all calls to serve the Body come through the Church and are therefore verifiable by the Church. Most of us believe we are called to all sorts of vocations for which we do not have the requisite gifts or authentic vocation. I feel called to be a regularly published poet, yet my poetry is regularly rejected. The poetry community (i.e., the Church of Verse) regularly rejects my claims to being a poet. Years of personal experience, strong conviction, earnest effort, and multiple academic degrees cannot make up for the lack of consent by the poetry community to my alleged call. I can call myself a poet. I can rail against the perceived injustice of not being regularly published. I can even accuse my tormenters of bias, hatred, and lack of taste. I'm still not a poet. Think for a moment of the implications if the Church bowed to the "I feel called to priesthood" objection and answered these claims positively. On what grounds could we reject anyone from the ordained ministry? My application to be made a postulant for ordination in the Episcopal Church was rejected. Had the vestry of my parish not done their job of proper discernment and oversight, I would be an Episcopalian priest right now. Thank God they listened to the Holy Spirit!

It is important for faithful Catholics to understand how many of these objections are based on modernist, feminist theories of justice, gender, the social construction of reality, and postmodern identity politics. None of which have a place in the faith of good Catholics. All are deeply rooted in 19th and 20th century liberal democratic ideas about freedom, liberty, and rights. None of them pull from the tradition of the Church or her ancient philosophy and theology. None of them are scriptural or magisterial. I have yet to read a single objection to the Church's infallible teaching against WO that does not rely exclusively on ideas and argument entirely alien to our faith. The canonical objections I've read are little more than legalistic sophistry and grounded in a "hermeneutic of suspicion" that starts with an antagonistic attitude toward truth and quickly devolves into relativism and subjectivism--little more than minute loopholes.

Probably the best book on this subject was written by Sr. Sara Butler, MSBT, The Catholic Priesthood and Women: A Guide to the Teaching of the Church, Sr. Sara started her life as a religious as a supporter of WO and has since looked carefully at the scriptural, tradition, magisterial, and archeological evidence for that position and changed her mind. This book does a much better job of defending the Church's teaching than I ever could, and I highly recommend it.

It is vitally important that women understand that the Church's lack of authority to ordain them to the priesthood is not based on the notion that they are inferior or damaged or in any way "less than men." Yes, some medieval theologians, including Thomas Aquinas, put forward certain metaphysical explanations for an all-male priesthood that few of us will applaud now. But these are merely explanations of any already existing teaching and their dubious nature in no way detracts from the truth of the faith. In other words, Aquinas, et al did not invent the all-male priesthood based on medieval notions of biology and metaphysics. They took up the question in light of the sacaramental theology then current and the already existing reality of the all-malle priesthood and attempted to explain the truth of the priesthood in the light they had. Demolishing Aquinas' argument for the all-male priesthood does not demolish the Church's infallible teaching against WO.

A note on the question of the infalliablity of Pope John Paul II's document, Ordinatio Sacerdotalis. This 1994 document was issued by the Holy Father in order to settle forever the question of whether or not the Church has the authority to ordain women. Drawing on scripture, tradition, and centuries of papal magisterial teaching, he concluded that the Church does not have the power to ordain women. It is very important to understand that the Pope did not say that the Church will not ordain women or that the Church does not feel like ordaining women. He wrote: "I declare that the Church has no authority whatsoever to confer priestly ordination on women. . ." The Church CANNOT ordain women. The Church also cannot declare that Jesus is not the Savior. The Church cannot declare that Mary was not the mother of Jesus, etc. In other words, the failure of the Church to ordain women is not based on a lack of will or inclination or patriarchal prejudice. If every bishop in the Church, including the Pope, laid hands on a woman, performing the entire sacrament of ordination on her in St Peter's Bascilica in front of the College of Cardinal with their wild applauses, she would still be a laywoman. And she would be a laywoman if every Catholic in the world believed that she was a priest.


Is this teaching infallible? Yes, it is. The Pope wrote in full: "Wherefore, in order that all doubt may be removed regarding a matter of great importance, a matter which pertains to the Church's divine constitution itself, in virtue of my ministry of confirming the brethren (cf. Luke 22:32) I declare that the Church has no authority whatsoever to confer priestly ordination on women and that this judgment is to be definitively held by all the Church's faithful."


Now, some theologians claim that this teaching is not infallible. They want to make a fine distinction between the content of the teaching and this declaration of the teaching. They want to say that OS itself is not infallible; in other words, they want us to believe that the Pope's declaration that the teaching is infallible is not itself infallible. This is typical modernist sophistry and a confusion of terms. All the Pope did in this document is repeat an ancient truth: women cannot be ordained. This is not new. Imagine the Pope issuing a document tomorrow declaring that Jesus is the Messiah. Such a document would be pointless because the Church has always believed this. There is no need for an infallible teaching on the question. How odd would it be then for some theologians to assert that the document is not infallible when it asserts that the teaching that Jesus is the Messiah is infallible. Simply bizarre.


Reread the highlighted phrases above. Those are the words required for an infallible teaching. Period. OS as a document, OS per se does not have to be infallible, just as a document declaring Jesus as the Messiah would not have to be infallible. The content of the teaching is without error regardless of the magisterial/canonical status of the document. What the supporters of WO want us to believe is that the Pope is not interpreting the ancient teaching correctly. That he is merely repeating what has always been the case in the Church seems to be irrelevant to them. It seems odd to me that the Pope would issue this document "so that all doubt might be removed" and then have some claim that he did so in order to set the stage for future women's ordinations! We had a professor in my seminary who taught exactly that. Fortunately, none of us fell for the deception.


Fr. Joseph Fitzmeyer, quoting a supporter of WO, Rev. Herman Pottmeyer, "According to Pottmeyer, 'O.S. is an instance of ordinary (i.e., non-infallible) magisterium, declaring that the church’s unbroken tradition with regard to ordination is irreformable.' In saying this, he may be right, even though the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith subsequently explained that the doctrine about women’s ordination belongs to the deposit of faith and has been constantly held in the church’s tradition and infallibly set forth by the ordinary and universal magisterium." Fr. Fitzmeyer concludes his critique of Rev. Pottmeyer, "Pope John Paul II stated in O.S. that 'the church has no authority whatsoever to confer priestly ordination on women' (No. 4). He did not mean that 'he could not himself change tradition in this matter.' He spoke rather of Ecclesiam facultatem nullatenus habere. If it is so, that the church has no ability to change it, then the Pope cannot invite everyone to prayer and dialogue as he would summon 'a council to make a final decision.' If 'the church' cannot do it, then a council cannot do it, no matter what 'signs of the times' may be or what 'faithfulness to Jesus' might seem to call for in Pottmeyer’s estimation."


Best book on the history and theology of the Church's teaching authority: Magisterium: Teacher and Guardian of the Faith, Cardinal Avery Dulles, SJ.

This link from the USCCB helps to clarify a number of issues.

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Comment on commenting

1).  I read every comment posted on HancAquam, but I can't comment on every comment posted.

2).  If I don't comment on your post, please don't think that I'm ignoring you. . .sometimes I approve comments on the run and simply don't have time to respond.

3).  If you ask me a question in the combox and I don't respond in a day or two, don't be afraid to ask again! 

4).  I will not approve comments that are obscene, libelous, contain links to dodgy sites, or attack the Church in some truly offensive way.  Comments critical of the Church are welcomed if they are reasonable and expressed in a charitable manner. 

5).  I always appreciate corrections. . .and often need them.

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At what expense?

Excellent Berkowitz article in the WSJ on the alleged death of political conservativism . . .

An excerpt:

It is always the task for conservatives to insist that money does not grow on trees, that government programs must be paid for, and that promising unaffordable benefits is reckless, unjust and a long-term threat to maintaining free institutions.

But conservatives also combat government expansion and centralization because it can undermine the virtues upon which a free society depends. Big government tends to crowd out self-government—producing sluggish, selfish and small-minded citizens, depriving individuals of opportunities to manage their private lives and discouraging them from cooperating with fellow citizens to govern their neighborhoods, towns, cities and states. [Think here of the Catholic social justice notion of subsidiarity]

And lest we think that Berkowitz is simply being partisan, he concludes:

The Gingrich revolution fizzled, in part because congressional Republicans mistook a popular mandate for moderation as a license to undertake radical change, and in part because they grew complacent and corrupt in the corridors of power.

Perhaps this time will be different. Our holiday from history is over. The country faces threats—crippling government expansion at home and transnational Islamic extremism—that arouse conservative instincts and concentrate the conservative mind.

 

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Putting to rest the meme that the MSM has no liberal bias:  88% of network execs and personalities give to the Democrats.

Your native tongue shapes how you think. . .I didn't know that this was ever controversial.

On why America's elites fear the Unwashed Masses:  oikophobia.  As a fully recovered oikophobe, I can attest to the power of this fear. . .it's pervasive in the academy and in some portions of the Church. (Link fixed)

Drink 'til you drop!  Weight loss and the most common beverage available.

Speaking of weight loss, Mark "The Beard" Shea proposes a new movement for us fatties:  I Am Jolly!  I will no longer tolerate being called "obese" or "overweight."  From now on the P.C. term for us larger citizens is "gravitationally enhanced."

Europe's population bust.  This is what happens when we listen to Nanny State know-it-all's. 

Is kneeling to receive communion against Church law in the U.S.?  Short answer:  No.  The norm for reception is standing, but "norm" simply means "the normal way to do it" not "the only way it may be done."  The most common objection to kneeling is that it raises safety issues--someone behind you could trip.  I celebrated four or five Masses a week for three years at U.D.  Many people knelt to receive.  Not once did anyone trip.  NB.  you may NOT be refused communion if you kneel.

The link between contraception and sexual license.

If I were a security guard. . .

Cute pic of the day. . .awwwwwwwww.

Goth Zombie has a little fun

When men write advice columns

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Updates, news

Cooking burgers and fries for the brothers tonight!  Also, a low-calorie, fat-free bread pudding (BAWAHAHAHAHA!!!!).  Seriously, my bread pudding starts with a stick of butter. . .to grease the pan.  (Update:  the burgers were good. . .the pudding was OK. . .baking with ingredients you're not used to can be tricky)

My pants. . .errrrr. . .trousers came in the mail yesterday.  Surprisingly, they fit. . .at least they do now.

I've been on another insomnia jag these last two nights.  Up at 2.30am.  Good time to do laundry, I guess.

Studying French. . .from afar.  It's really kinda pretty from this distance.

Please pray for the friars meeting in Rome for the Elective Chapter.  They will elect a new Master of the Order.  I'm rooting for an American. . .but betting on an European.

I've added a few new poetry books to the WISH LIST.  Philosophy/theology all the time makes Friar Philip a very dull preacher. (NB.  I've added the poetry books from Book Depository, so there is no shipping charge.)

When I ordered the meat for tonight's burgers over the phone, I had to repeat myself a few times.  The priory's Scottish cook laughed at me and said, "Speak English!"

I gave fra. Lawrence Lew a chuckle in the sacristy yesterday.  We wear these cumbersome albs overs our habits to con-celebrate Mass.  When I pulled the thing down over my head the back of the hood was facing forward.  So, there I was with the my face covered and getting a little peeved.  

All is well here in Oxford. . .sunny days with 66 degree temps.  Lovely.

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On Liturgy: priestcraft is also soulcraft

One word best describes this piece on the new Missal: BAM!

An excerpt:

Publicly owned corporations are more accountable to their shareholders than tenured bureaucracies, which may explain why it took the Ford Motor Company only two years to cancel its Edsel, and not much longer for Coca Cola to restore its “classic” brand, while the Catholic Church has taken more than a generation of unstopped attrition to try to correct the mistakes of overheated liturgists. The dawning of the Age of Aquarius is now in its sunset repose and the bright young things who seem to be cropping up now all over the place with new information from Fortescue and Ratzinger, may either be the professional mourners for a lost civilization, or the sparks of a looming golden age.

One thing is certain to a pastor: the only parishioners fighting the old battles are old themselves, their felt banners frayed and their guitar strings broken, while a young battalion is rising, with no animus against the atrophied adolescence of their parents, and only eager to engage a real spiritual combat in a culture of death. They usually are ignorant, but bright, for ignorance is not stupidity.

Go read the whole thing and give thanks to God!

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U.D. students will be happy to know this:  Odysseus was real!

AP's predictable "reporting" on the new Missal translation ripped to shreds.

If you live in the U.K., make sure your doctor is a believer. . .that is, if Nanny allows you to choose your doctor.

How expansive court interpretations of the Commerce Clause are destroying the republic.

CCHD is under some pretty close scrutiny. . .might be time to contact your bishop and let him know that your donations to the Church should not be going to support radical leftist political organizations.

How to [Effectively] Repeal the First Amendment. . .hint:  use "codes of professional ethics" to push for "diversity" and "equality" and then punish anyone who disagrees with your definition of these two vague terms.

Once again:  B.O. is NOT a Muslim.  Why does this question persist?  Obvious answer:  his political opponents see it as a way to smear him.  Less obvious:  B.O.'s political base is mostly anti-Christian/anti-religious, so he doesn't play up the fact that he is a Christian.

Religious joke from Emo Phillips.

Melville's Bartleby the Scrivener in less than ten seconds.

The Seven Deadly Sins graph. . .as if you really need these charted, right?

Bury her in Israel?!  Why take the chance. . .?

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Twenty-something's and the "failure to launch"--why can't they grow up? 

Global hubs and megacities threaten the supremacy of the state when it comes to who rules the roost.

Memory lane & double standards:  how did the lefty MSM treat G.W.B.'s religious beliefs? 

FINALLY!  The new English translation of the Roman Missal will be launched First Sunday of Advent 2011.  No more "May this Eucharist have an effect in our lives". . .shudder.

Should we tolerate intolerance?  On tolerating Islam. . .until it has the power to merely tolerate us.

If you can look at this pic w/o laughing, you should see a doctor.

Very, very sexist pic with caption.  Don't blame me. . .

Chuck Norris vs. Zombie!

Ah, THIS should wake you up. 

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Among the freaks and lunatics (need feedback!)

HELP!  Immediate feedback needed on this one.  Does it make sense?  Where does it go wrong?   

UPDATE:  Just goes to show ya. . .not only do I not like this homily, I think it is incoherent. Despite my dislike, I couldn't revise it, couldn't think of anything else to say.  Nothing.  After Mass tonight, a young couple approached me and told me that they were returning to the Church after years of being away.  They said that they had heard that the preaching at Blackfriars was intelligent and worth a listen.   They said that the homily had touched them right where they needed it and that they were deeply appreciative.  Go figure.  One day I'll learn. . .maybe.

21st Sunday OT

Fr. Philip Neri Powell, OP

Sisters of Notre Dame/Blackfriars, Oxford

Some see it as a door. Others see it as a path. Jesus says it's a gate, a narrow gate.  Flannery O'Connor's creation, that paragon of 1950's white rural middle-class Protestant respectability, Mrs. Turpin, saw it as a bridge. She stands at the fence of her hog pen, the pigs have gathered themselves around an old sow: “A red glow suffused them. They appeared to pant with a secret life.” She watches them 'til sunset, “her gaze bent to them as if she were absorbing some abysmal life-giving knowledge.” Finally, ready for the revelation, Mrs. Turpin raises her hands and “a visionary light settles in her eyes.” A purple-crimson dusk streaks the sky, connecting the fields with the highway: “She saw the streak as a vast swinging bridge extending upward from the earth through a field of living fire. Upon it a vast horde of souls were rumbling toward heaven.” Mrs. Turpin is surprised to see not only poor white trash on that bridge but black folks too. And among the “battalions of freaks and lunatics,” she sees her own tribe of scrubbed-clean, property-owning, church-going people—singing on key, orderly marching, being responsible as they always have been. We might imagine that it was a distant relative of Mrs Turpin who asked Jesus that day, “Lord, will only a few people be saved?” 

Some say it is a door or a path. Some think of it as a key or a tabernacle. Jesus says that it is a Narrow Gate, a gate so narrow that most won't have the strength to push themselves through. There will be some on this side of the gate and some on the other side. Most of us imagine that we will be on the right side of the gate when the master of the house comes to lock the door. We will be on the inside listening to those on the outside plea for mercy, shout out their faithfulness, and cry for just one more chance. We will be on the inside when the master shouts at those on the outside, “I do not know where you are from. Depart from me, all you evildoers!” When we hear this brutal rebuke, do we flinch? Do we beg mercy for those left outside? Do we try to rejoin them in a show of solidarity? 

These questions matter only if we have gathered the strength necessary to squeeze ourselves through the gate. If we are weak, exhausted, apathetic, or if we really are evildoers, then staying on this side of the gate, away from the table of the kingdom, probably seems more attractive, easier to accomplish, not so much sweat and tears. Do we really want to be part of a banquet that excludes so many? Do we want to lend our support to a homeowner who crafts a narrow gate for his front door, knowing that most will not be able to enter? We may be lazy or stupid or just plain evil, but we would rather suffer righteously with sinners than party self-righteously with the saints! 

Mrs. Turpin's distant cousin is insistent, however: “Lord, will only a few people be saved?” Jesus never answers the question. Rather than giving a straightforward yes, no, or about one-third, he moves the question away from the number of those to be saved toward the method by which they will be saved. Those who are saved are saved b/c they have used their strength to push through the Narrow Gate just before the Master locks the door. How many are saved? Don't know. Who are these people? Don't know that either. What happens to those who didn't make it through? Wailing, grinding teeth, and being cast out. Despite all their pleas, they are cast out. 

Is there anything for us to do now in order to build up our strength for that final push through the Narrow Gate? Anything for us to do to fortify ourselves for that last surge, that last run at the battlement's gate? We read in the letter to the Hebrews: “. . .strengthen your drooping hands and your weak knees. Make straight paths for your feet, that what is lame may not be disjointed but healed.” This is a call to righteousness, not just the sort of uprightness that comes from following the rules, but the righteousness that comes from calling on God to correct our infirmities—our drooping hands and weak knees—so that what is lame is healed and not made worse by time and trial, not left to become disjointed. Our rush through the Narrow Gate is not a test of physical strength, nor is it a marathon of virtue. The narrowness of the gate is a test of our determination, a trial against a tepid heart and irresolute mind. The narrowness of the gate challenges the sharpness of our focus on being among the blessed who will be called upon to sacrifice everything for Christ's sake, everything for the love of just one friend. It is not enough that we have been to dinner with the Lord; that we have shouted his name from a crowd; that we have witnessed his miracles, praised his preaching, memorized his teaching, or invited ourselves to recline at his table. It is not enough that we are respectable, well-educated, middle-class, religious, worthy citizens of a civilized nation. We might manage to squeeze our respectability, our diplomas, our tax forms and churches and passports through that Narrow Gate, but none of these will assist in the squeezing. Yes, we will likely end up on Mrs Turpin's bridge, heading into the clouds with all the other freaks and lunatics, but we will end up there b/c we have placed ourselves at the mercy of God to forgive us the sins that impede us, that slow us down, and all but guarantee that we do not make the gate in time. 

Mrs Turpin sees her own people on that bridge. Somewhat bewildered by the strange company of white trash and black folks, her tribe of middle-class church-goers nonetheless sing on key: “Yet she could see by their shocked and altered faces that even their virtues were being burned away.” Perhaps what will get us through that Narrow Gate is the willingness to have everything that seems so vital, so necessary, so absolutely true. . .to have all of it burned away.

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Two new podcasts

Homily podcasts:

No Place for Self-appointed Martyrs

Stop Counting and Forgive

P.S.  I put the Wish List button back up.  The shipping address is Rome, so I won't actually get any books sent until I get back to Rome in early Oct.

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The Wrong Questions

20th Week OT (Tues)

Fr. Philip N. Powell, OP

Priory of the Holy Spirit (Blackfriars, Oxford)

When you ask Christ the wrong question, you still get the right answer. A wealthy young man asks Jesus, “What good work must I do to enter heaven?” To answer, Jesus reels off a laundry list of conditions, including with the deal-killing requirement of abject poverty, and concludes by saying, “Follow me.” The disciples ask, upon hearing Jesus say that a camel will gallop through the eye of a needle before a rich man enters heaven, “Who can be saved, then?” Jesus responds, “For men, this is impossible, for God everything is possible.” Wrong questions, right answers. But why are these the wrong questions to ask? What's so wrong about wanting to know who will be saved, and how one goes about being among those saved? Let's say that you are possessed by a holy curiosity, a truly inspired need to explore the mysteries of salvation. If you understand anything that Jesus teaches about the possibility of enjoying the Beatific Vision, you know that to ask what must be done to enter heaven reveals a deep misunderstanding of the Good News. To ask who can be saved, implies an even deeper misunderstanding. There is nothing to be done. And the invitation to live with God eternally, an invitation made by the cross and the empty tomb, is delivered to everyone without conditions. The young man and the disciples do not yet understand what Jesus means when he teaches that salvation is a gift, eternal life freely given.

That the young man and the disciples see their entrance into heaven in terms of What Must Be Done and Who Can Do It should not surprise us. They were born and raised in a religious tradition that made salvation contingent on the completion of specific works completed by specific people during specific times of the year. Jesus regularly claims that he is fulfilling the Law not abolishing it, so it is only sensible to wonder exactly what requirements of the Law has he fulfilled and how his potential followers are to do their part in following along behind. The answer that Jesus gives the young man mirrors the young man's expectations regarding the work to be done for salvation: keep the commandments, sell all you have, give the money to the poor, and then follow me. 

The answer he gives to the disciples, however, is not what the disciples expected, “. . .for God everything is possible.” Peter, obviously dismayed, pipes up, “Oh really? Well, what about us? We've left it all behind for your sake. What are we to have, then?” Jesus says, “For all that you have forsaken you will be repaid one hundred times over and you will inherit eternal life.” Then, just to make sure that his students get the lesson, he adds, “Many who are first will be last, and the last, first.” In other words, young man, disciples, what you count as sacrifice and treasure here do not count as sacrifice and treasure in heaven. It is not your own power—or treasure or sacrifice or good works—that wins the victory but the grace of God that snatches you from the final defeat. 

The Good News—for the young man, the disciples, for all of us—is that all things are possible for God and He desires our salvation. Left to ourselves we might or might not follow the all commandments, make all the right sacrifices, pray all the right prayers, and give away all our treasures. However, none of this really matters when it comes to whether or not we will dine at the heavenly feast. We have the invitation. So let's not waste our time asking the wrong questions. We have the only answer we need: “. . .for God everything is possible.”

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As an itinerant friar, I travel a lot.  Mostly by airplane. My experiences are almost always good ones.  There have been times, however, when I wish the plane had an on-board disciplinarian empowered to smack selfish passengers. . .particularly those who jump up and grab their overhead baggage and stand in the aisle.  I always want to ask, "Do you think the plane is going to take off again with you on it?"  SMACK!

Hmmmm. . .maybe the flight attendant in question here is not the folk hero he is made out to be.  

What's good for the iman is good for the. . .um. . .drag queen?  I dunno.  This point of this seems to be to show up the hypocrisy of insisting on building a mosque next door to the 9/11 memorial in the name of tolerance and moderation.  Is this a serious suggestion?

A mighty good suggestion:  work for a few years out of high school before going to college.  Or do some volunteer work, or join the military. . .I went straight from high school to college to grad school.  Big mistake.  When your whole world from age 18 to 30 is nothing but university life, you get a very skewed notion of reality. 

This is not a problem I face!  However, my problem is more insidious:  students consistently confuse "Fr. Philip" with "Dr. Powell."  There seems to be an expectation that Dr. Powell will function as a professor in the same way that Fr. Philip functions as a priest--merciful, understanding, forgiving, "easy,"etc.  The realization that this is an illusion is not always pretty.

A future President of the U.S.?  How quickly would MSM heads explode if the Tea Partiers/GOP nominated and the voters elected a black conservative to the White House. 

A conservative defense of the judge who voided Prop 8 in CA.

Border security tech. . .

This guy hits the B.O, meltdown on the nose. . .ten times in a row.  Excellent.

Can a suffering atheist find God?  Yup.  NB.  the author of this piece assumes that only non-believers are capable of rational, objective deliberation.  How?  By distancing themselves from most of what makes us human.  Very sad.

On political civility and our Elitist Betters. . .when they see the torches and pitchforks coming up to the castle gates, our self-anointed rulers turn up the music, pop the bubbly, and ramp up the rhetoric that marks them as fundamentally anti-democratic.  NB.  R-rated content.

Even the Brits seem to get it. . .and they really know elitism when they see it!

From the tar pits of 1972, mewling ecclesial dinosaur mewls some more.  Bless her heart.

Zen quotes (sorta). . .I've experienced #4.

A conspiracy theory generator.  My guess is that the author of this program needs help providing CNN with fresh material.

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Stop counting and forgive

19th Week OT (R)

Fr. Philip Neri Powell, OP

Church of the Incarnation, Univ of Dallas

Podcast

You may be surprised to learn that most pumpkins in the U.S. are naturalized citizens. That the soul is located in a gland found in the brain. And that monkeys are usually politically libertarian. Are you surprised? You should be. You should be surprised not because these fascinating facts are in fact false, but because they pretend to tell us something about the world that they cannot tell us. Pumpkins are not subject to the citizen naturalization process. The soul is not a physical entity that can be located in a body part. And monkeys are not the sorts of creatures that have political opinions. When we say things like, “I've visited every building on campus, but I've yet to see the university,” we are making what philosophers call a “category mistake.” The university is not a building that can visited. The mistake occurs when we believe that the non-physical entity (the university) can be visited as if it were a physical entity (a building). Peter makes this same sort of mistake when he asks Jesus, “How many times must I forgive my brother?” Jesus' answer is a bit more poetic than, “Peter, you are making a category mistake.” He says, “You must forgive from the heart.”

Peter's mistake is understandable and easily forgivable. The Law under which he carried out his religious duties was stacked with accountable obligations; discreet, countable practices. The proper kind and number of animals for sacrifice. The proper number of days for fasting. Ten Commandments. Twelve tribes. Seventy judges. His question is not a devious attempt to avoid Jesus' teaching on forgiveness. Rather he is trying to learn—within his religious tradition—what his obligation to forgive others means in practical terms. We Catholics are prone to making our own category mistakes. “Father, do I get more grace if I attend Mass twice a day?” Or “Aren't my sins better forgiven if I confess them twice?” Grace and forgiveness are not the sorts of things that can be numbered, measured, or intensified. There is no such thing as “more grace” or “better forgiveness.” There is grace and there is forgiveness. Both are superlative, always excellent in themselves, and achieved once for all through Christ.

Jesus makes this point when he teaches Peter to forgive from his heart rather than from his counted reserves of mercy. A philosopher might say that to forgive is dispositional; that is, when you forgive you forgive because of who you are. You are disposed to forgive. A theologian would say that you forgive because you are intensely aware that you yourself have been forgiven. Forgiving others is a matter of spreading the Good News of God's boundless mercy. Counting the number of times you forgive a sin committed against you violates the very nature of mercy. Mercy flows from Mercy Himself—limitless, continuous, and innumerable. We are not charged with acting as God's accountants of merciful acts, meticulously toting up debits and credits. Rather, we are vowed to being living, unobstructed conduits of His forgiveness for others. We are able to forgive only because He has forgiven us first.

Seven times eleven is not seventy-seven in the arithmetic of forgiveness. Seventy-seven is the number given for our forgiving natures, the number that exceeds counting, exceeds all limits. We are bound in obedience to Christ to forgive the 78th, 79th, and 80th time we are sinned against. In mercy, we are forbidden to count; by divine love, we should want to.

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No place for self-appointed martyrs

Memorial of St. Clare

Fr. Philip Neri Powell, OP

Church of the Incarnation, Univ of Dallas

Podcast

Resetting a broken bone hurts. Cleaning a bloody wound hurts. Talking about past traumas hurts. Whether we are in need of physical cure or spiritual healing, treating injuries and uprighting wrongs are never a duties we take on with much gusto. Seeing the end, the healed soul and the cured wound, helps with the immediate pain, but the memory of the ordeal lingers and leaves us wary of the next time we might need the surgeon's knife or the Church's medicine. But despite this wariness, despite our deep reluctance to seek out healing and cure, we are unambiguously charged with “taking care” of our hurts—both physical and spiritual. Jesus tells his disciples that whatever they bind on earth is bound in heaven and whatever they loose on earth is loosed in heaven. When a brother or sister sins against you, you are free to bind their offense to you or let it loose. If you let it loose, it is gone. If you choose to bind it, just remember: “Lord, forgive me my sins as I forgive those who have sinned against me.” As you forgive, so you are forgiven.

It is not likely that many of us here are weighed down with truly grievous sins, really weighty offenses that have killed our love for God. God's enemies rarely show up for Mass! It is more likely the case that if any of us are in a state of sin, we are there b/c we are mired in a shallow yet complex morass of wounds caused by holding grudges, nursing hurts, seeking after petty revenge, or by practicing habitual deceit. Each cut leading to another, deeper wound; each wound bleeding out our strength and resolve to seek healing. Perhaps convinced of the righteousness of our refusal to forgive, we cling to being offended, replaying again and again the moment we were injured. I am the victim! I deserve justice! And rather than free ourselves and our assailant from the soul-killing swamp of sin, we nurture our wounds, scratch them open, and let them bleed for all to see, so that all might know how we were violated. What we bind on earth is bound in heaven and bound to drag us down.

However, what we loose on earth is loosed in heaven. Freeing those who have sinned against us is immediately repaid in our own freedom. No longer tied to our offenders by sin—theirs and ours—we are liberated, and no longer left to languish in a self-pitying mess. We can choose to loose, choose to relieve, choose to unlock. Or we can choose to remain wrapped in grudging self-righteousness and the resulting despair. If we will continue to walk with Christ, carrying our cross, and growing in holiness, the only choice for us is to live lives of forgiveness, daily living the mercy that we ourselves have been shown again and again. In fact, the most deliberate way that we can give God thanks for His mercy is to share out that mercy to others. 

Jesus says that he is with us when we gather in his name. How much more powerfully will we experience his loving presence if, when we gather in his name, we gather to loose the ties of sin that bind us, to bind ourselves in obedience to his commandment to love one another? Let's own up to a hard truth: the refusal to forgive, an unwillingness to show mercy is an act of mortal pride and deadly to the soul. We risk forsaking our heart's charity, the love we have for God. No gamble is worth those stakes. The Good News is that the choice is ours to make. Bind and be bound. Loose and be set free.

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Coffee Mug Browsing (Catholic edition)

Prof. Peter Kreeft on whether or not the CDF's 2000 document, Dominus Iesus is liberal or conservative.  The answer:  neither and both.  IOW, the document is a model for Catholic orthodoxy! One of my seminary profs, a self-avowed feminist sister, declared to our class one day, "This document will be on the trash heap of history in ten years!"  Of course, the author of DI is now Pope Benedict XVI.

Is Catholicism collapsing in Italy?  When answering questions like this one we have to take the long-view and remember that we live within a 2,000 year old history.  Mass attendance can decline for decades. . .but the Church prevails.

The federal judge who declared CA's Proposition 8 based his decision on a dangerous anti-American premise:  religion is harmful.  Few believers would deny that religion can be harmful; however, Christianity is not inherent harmful.  Like anything created, religion has its uses and abuses.

This judge pointedly included passages from a 2003 document on the family written and signed by Cardinal Ratzinger. 

Contra indifferntism:  can non-Catholic be saved?  The short answer is:  Yes.

How to talk to someone who supports same-sex "marriage"

Catholic heathcare blues

"There's a Little Black Spot on Your Head Today". . .the Catholic Weird Al.

Lots of Jesuit jokes

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Blogging Lite

Dear HancAquam Readers:

It's crunch week!  Final papers are in. . .exams are set and will need to be graded. . .last few reading assignments and classes to complete. . .then on to packing, cleaning, saying Goodbye-'til-Next Year!

So. . .blogging will likely be kinda light this week.  I have the noon Mass at U.D. on Thursday, my last this time 'round, so there will be a homily posted. 

Once I am safely nestled into the idyllic academic life of Oxford, I'll be freer to post more often.

God bless, Fr. Philip

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Coffee Mug Browsing

Lots-O-Info on St Dominic Guzman, including pics.

Boy Scouts boo B.O.'s recorded message to them. . .he skipped the BSA meeting to sit on the Fawning Couch with the harpies. . .errrrr. . .ladies of The View.   Not sure it is a good sign that Boy Scouts are booing the President.  If nothing else, the Office deserves respect.

Hope and Change for real transparency:  city gov'ts are posting public employees' salaries on-line.  Maybe this will be the first step in teaching public servants that American citizens are not simply storing the gov't's money 'til April 15th.

First Lady acting like a certain pre-Revolutionary Queen?  The story of Michelle's extravagant vacation in southern Spain isn't about the money spent. . .surely some U.S. city could have used the $375,000 she spent.  This is about the apparent inability/unwillingness of the Obama's to SEE that middle America is in desperate shape.  Whether they care or not is besides the point. . .they must appear to care.  It's what politicians are supposed to do.  

The Southern Poverty Law Center used to be one of my favorite organizations.  Lately, they have swerved into self-serving fantasy land by attacking Tea Partiers as racist.  But the question must be asked:  Who's Whiter:  the SLPC or the Tea Party?

Chris Christie for President?  I say, "Yes!  It's time for another Fat Guy in the White House!"

Bush appointee to the federal bench is accused of colluding with prosecutors in an immigration raid and then presided over the trail of those arrested.  If true, she needs to be impeached.

The environment disaster that wasn't. . .or isn't any longer.  The Worst Disaster in Natural History meme served to thump B.O.'s crisis management skills, bolster environmentalist hysteria, and expose corporate greed and irresponsibility.  Unfortunately, for those who hoped/planned to use the accident to maximum political advantage, it looks like the oil spill is little more than spilled milk now.

Um, yea. . .but no thanks.  I like the ground.

Two birds, one stone. . .the plot thickens.

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