Q 1: We all know that Christ was fully Man and fully
God. Does this mean that while he was walking around Galilee he was
able to see behind his own head?
A: If by “see” you mean “properly use his
eyes,” then no. His eyes were perfectly human and one's perfectly
human eyes cannot—unaided—see behind one's own head. However, if
by “see” you mean “understand” and if by “behind his own
head” you mean “his past,” then yes. In his divinity, Christ
understood his own history. Of course, he could've picked up a pair
of those nifty mirror sunglasses in Jerusalem!
Q 2: When are you coming for steak, twice baked
potato, grilled onions, and pecan pie?
A: If my Double Secret Nefarious Plan comes to
fruition, soon, my dear. . .very, very soon. I understand that the
post office will deliver pecan pies for a nominal fee.
Q 3: Father, what is the life and role of a Dominican
helper brother?
A: Right now the Order is exploring this very
question. By our constitutions, we are a clerical order, meaning, our
principal purpose can only be carried out by ordained
friars—preaching and hearing confessions. So, historically, lay
brothers or cooperator brothers were charged with taking care of the
“worldly things” of the Order. For example, keeping the priory
grounds, cooking, cleaning, laundry, shopping, etc. The idea was
that the brothers made it possible for the priests to focus on study
and preaching. More recently, brothers have expanded their ministry
within the Order and to the world by taking up teaching and academic
work, nursing, school and hospital administration; really, almost
anything that can and needs to be done can be done by a brother!
These days, brothers usually receive the same seminary education as a
clerical student, so they also preach whenever possible, give
retreats, missions, etc. One of our cooperator brothers tells people
that he is a “boy nun.” I cringe a little at that, but in terms
of active ministry, the lay brothers and sisters of the Order take on
many of the same sorts of ministries. Because of the clerical nature
of the Order and the emphasis the Church put on sacramental ministry,
the number of brothers has dropped in modern times. Some brothers
were encouraged to petition for ordination b/c of the priest
“shortage.” Many European provinces have no cooperator brothers
at all. In the US, we are a little better at helping men explore
this vocation and encouraging its growth. We still have a lot of
learn and a long way to go before we get to where we need to be in
promoting the lay brother vocation. The danger, of course, is
defining the lay brother vocation in negative terms, that is, “He's
a Dominican friar but he's not a priest.” Their vocation is NOT a
deprivation of priestly ordination but a positive service to the
Order and the Church in it own right. When you meet a lay brother,
please don't ask him, “Why didn't you go all the way?” He did go
all the way. . .all the way to solemn vows!
Q 4: While the doctrine of Original Sin is an
excellent description of how mankind is, I believe it has big
problems as an explanation to educated 21st century people of how we
got to be this way.
A: It's helpful here to distinguish between the
reality and consequences of original sin and the historical origins
of original sin. We need to remember that not all truths are facts;
that is, all facts are true but not all truths are factual. The Adam
and Eve story tells an enduring truth about the human race. At some
point in our evolution, we came to realize that there is a difference
between Good and Evil, that our thoughts, words, deeds have
consequences that endure and that we are capable of choosing to
commit both good and evil acts. The CCC teaches, “The account of
the fall in Genesis 3 uses figurative language, but affirms a
primeval event, a deed that took place at the beginning of the
history of man. Revelation gives us the certainty of faith that
the whole of human history is marked by the original fault freely
committed by our first parents” (n. 390). One way of understanding
the Genesis story is to read the Fall as that moment in our racial
evolution when we became of aware—existentially conscious—of
death; that is, we began to experience death as Evil and the need
arose to explain the origins of this newly acquired awareness.
Unfortunately, this explanation of the Genesis story leaves out a key
element for the Christian, namely, God. However, we could hold this
explanation and note that part of the acquired existential
consciousness of death also necessarily involved an evolution in our
awareness of God as God. In other words, becoming aware of God as
Something Other (something Good) is also a consequence of the Fall.
This is not to say that Adam and Eve didn't know God before the Fall;
it's to say that they didn't know Him as Something Other, something
distinguishable and different from Evil. Remember the whole point of
keeping those two away from the Tree was to prevent them from
acquiring the knowledge of Good and Evil. The CCC notes, “The
'tree of the knowledge of good and evil' symbolically evokes the
insurmountable limits that man, being a creature, must freely
recognize and respect with trust. Man is dependent on his Creator,
and subject to the laws of creation and to the moral norms that
govern the use of freedom” (n. 396).
How to explain all of this to modernists?
Explaining the origins of original sin to modernists may not be
possible in terms consistent with divine revelation. . .we can throw
in the Incarnation, the Resurrection, heaven, hell, and any number of
other events revealed by God to believers. Using the Genesis story
as a way of explaining death, violence, crime, etc. to modernists
requires that the modernists first accept that God exists and has
revealed Himself to us. Also, an essential element of the Genesis
story that must be argued for and accepted before the story makes
sense is the creaturely status of Man. Until then, all we can do is
point to the reality and consequences of original sin and argue that
the figurative language of Genesis gives us the truth of an event
that happened at the beginning of the evolution of human
consciousness and provides us with an existential explanation (not a
scientific one) for why we are the way we are.
Q 5: Before an home altar can be used does it need to
be blessed by an ordained minister? If so, would the average pastor
know the blessing?
A: I don't think that a blessing is required, but
it is a good idea. It is also a good idea to have your whole house
blessed. There are a number of approved blessings for houses, cars,
boats, etc. and any parish priest would know about these blessings.
Blessing houses is a common pastoral activity for pastors and
parochial vicars!
Q 6: Do Dominicans have a
special dispensation to wear their habits in place of an alb while
celebrating Mass or is it just a handy custom? Have they always done
that? Do they all do it?
A: Oy! I did ask for questions, didn't I? This is
a sticky questions among Dominicans. There is no dispensation for
Dominicans to forgo the alb. For all religious, “ordinary dress”
is the habit approved by their constitutions. Liturgical law requires
that all priests celebrating Mass wear an alb over their ordinary
dress and under a chasuble (even con-celebrating priests); therefore,
albs are required to be worn over a habit. When a Dominican priest
doesn't wear an alb to celebrate Mass, he gets away with it b/c his
habit tunic is almost identical to an alb. In fact, many Dominicans
argue that the habit tunic is an alb and conclude that they are not
required to wear two albs. Religious priests with brown or black
habits have a more difficult time skirting this requirement. Some
argue that the requirement is meant to prevent priests from slipping
a stole over their jeans and tee-shirt, or over a black clerical suit
to celebrate Mass. Because I am a Human Furnace, I usually strip down
to my tunic and then put on a stole and chasuble. The thought
of an extra layer of clothing makes me sweat.
Q 7: How does a Catholic respond to the philosophy of
Monism coming out of new age gurus like Eckhart Tolle?
A: If the person reading and following these New
Age gurus is Catholic, I would point them to the most recent document
from the Vatican warning Catholics away from quacks like Tolle, Jesus Christ, The Bearer of the Water of Life. Like all heresies, monism
contains just enough truth to lure you in and get you to swallow the
bigger lie. New Age gurus prey on the distance that many people feel
with God. God is remote. God is uncaring. God doesn't answer my
prays. They take this feeling of abandonment and place the blame for
it on a flawed concept of the divine. They say, “The problem here
is that your God-concept is from the Dark Ages; it's a child's
unenlightened understanding of who you are in relation to the divine.
You are divine! God is in you! Accept that and all will be well.”
The truth that lures you in here is that God is in the human person.
Catholics will know or vaguely remember some priest
telling them that we all live and move and have our being in God.
True. They will recall a retreat conference where a sister told them
that seeing God as a big man with a white beard sitting on a throne
scowling at us is something from the Dark Ages. True. They will
know from EWTN that when we take communion we are taking in the whole
Christ and becoming more like Christ. Also, true. All these truths,
however, get twisted by the lie that God is not transcendent; that
is, that God is not more than His creation. The idea that God is
identical to creation is called pantheism. The New Age gurus play on
the false notion that a transcendent God is a distant God. “He's
transcendent! So, he must be far away. But we know that God is
within us.” Transcendence is not quantifiable by distance. God
isn't some few million miles away. Transcendence names a quality of
the divine. The Catholic Encyclopedia says that transcendence means
“that God is one simple and infinitely perfect personal Being whose
nature and action in their proper character as Divine infinitely
transcend all possible modes of the finite, and cannot, without
contradiction, be formally identified with these.” What this means
is that in no way can God be identical to His creation. God is
immanent in His creation insofar as He is Being Itself and holds all
of creation in existence, but all that creation is can never be all
that God is.
The New Age gurus love pantheism because it allows
them to dupe people into believing that they gods. Sound familiar?
It should. This is exactly the lie with which the serpent tempted
Adam and Eve. So, the New Age lie is really the Oldest Lie: “You
can be a god without God.”
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