From the Internet Round File: The 2014 Synod Revisited

Browsing through my Disqus backlog today, I noticed that a comment of mine on an article by William Oddie which appeared some six months ago in the Catholic Herald had been removed. After reviewing both the article and my comment, I can't quite put my finger on why it was removed - though I note that several of the comments to that article have since been banished to the digital version of Gehenna. I would perhaps word things somewhat differently today - mind you, this was just after the conclusion of the 2014 Synod, and I was apparently feeling rather spry that day - but I still stand behind the conclusion, particularly in light of David Gibson's interview with Cardinal Kasper which appeared yesterday at Crux. Therefore, I republish the comment here in full, as I think it is as appropriate now as it was six months ago.

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This is a very charitable attempt to save face for the Pope, but I, for one, am not buying it anymore.

Pope Francis was, by most level-headed and well-formed accounts, squarely behind the Kasper proposal. Have we all forgotten that Pope Francis, after being warned by loyal and faithful Cardinals that Kasper's published works contain heresy, later laughed it up to Cardinal Kasper himself, saying, "This enters one ear and goes out the other"? That Kasper was personally invited by the Pope to deliver the opening address at the Extraordinary Consistory? That he praised Kasper's proposal as "doing theology on one's knees?" Is anyone still so willfully ignorant as to not see the intent behind the Pope's homilies on this "God of Surprises" with which he alone appears able to communicate? Pope Francis, himself a former professor of theology, knows full well that the proposal is heretical: according to the Canons of Trent, even voicing the opinion that a person living in sin could receive Holy Communion should result in excommunication.

If anyone considers Pope Francis' final address to the 2014 Synod Fathers as an "emphatic defense" of Church teaching, he understands neither Church teaching nor Pope Francis' address. It was based, as is becoming a hallmark of Francis' papacy, on a false dichotomy which gives the appearance of standing over and above two extremes while serving to usher in a "moderate compromise". To speak of a split in the Church between "conservatives" and "liberals" is already itself scandalous, and was denounced as such by Pope Benedict XV in 1914. The division here is not between two political or even ideological extremes; it is between orthodoxy and heterodoxy, between the Catholic Faith and heresy. Anything less than perfect, radical orthodoxy is unacceptable for the Bride of Christ.

And please, spare me the question, "Since when is it orthodox to criticize the Pope?" We have a long and colorful history of condemning error in all its shades and forms - even and especially when it hangs like a thick fog over the one occupying the Chair of St. Peter. Pick up a book on the history of the Catholic Church and browse the 9th-12th centuries, for a start.

With that being said, I have no worries regarding the future of the Catholic Church. It's God's Church, and He will do with it as He sees fit. Of course, we should redouble our prayers for the Pope and the Cardinals. But the time has come to stop pulling pious wool over our own eyes and face the fact that the arch-heresy of Modernism is more alive now than it was when Pope St. Pius X condemned it a century ago.

Sin

Sixth in a Series on Catholic Morals

by

Fr. John H. Stapleton

The Seven Deadly Sins and the Four Last Things
Hieronymous Bosch

If the Almighty had never imposed upon His creatures a law, there would be no sin; we would be free to do as we please. But the presence of God's law restrains our liberty, and it is by using, or rather abusing, our freedom, that we come to violate the law. It is for this reason that law is said to be opposed to liberty. Liberty is a word of many meanings. Men swear by it and men juggle with it. It is the slogan in both camps of the world's warfare. It is in itself man's noblest inheritance, and yet there is no name under the sun in which more crimes are committed.

By liberty as opposed to God's law we do not understand the power to do evil as well as good. That liberty is the glory of man, but the exercise of it, in the alternative of evil, is damnable, and debases the creature in the same proportions as the free choice of good ennobles him. The law leaves that liberty untouched. We never lose it; or rather, we may lose it partially when under physical restraint, but totally, only when deprived of our senses. The law respects it. It respects it in the highest degree when in an individual it curtails or destroys it for the protection of society.

Liberty may also be the equal right to do good and evil. There are those who arrogate to themselves such liberty. No man ever possessed it; the law annihilated it forever. And although we have used the word in this sense, the fact is that no man has the right to do evil or ever will have, so long as God is God. These people talk much and loudly about freedom - the magic word! - they assert with much pomp and verbosity the rights of man, proclaim his independence, and are given to much inane vaunting and braggadocio.

We may be free in many things, but where God is concerned and He commands, we are free only to obey. His will is supreme, and when it is asserted, we purely and simply have no choice to do as we wish. This privilege is called license, not liberty. We have certain rights as men, but we have duties, too, as creatures, and it ill-becomes us to prate about our rights, or the duties of others towards us, while we ignore the obligations we are under towards others and our first duty which is to God. Our boasted independence consists precisely in this: that we owe to Him not only the origin of our nature, but even the very breath we draw, and which preserves our being, for "in Him we live, move and have our being."

The first prerogative of God towards us is authority or the right to command. Our first obligation as well as our highest honor as creatures is to obey. And until we understand this sort of liberty, we live in a world of enigmas and know not the first letter of the alphabet of creation. We are not free to sin.

Liberty rightly understood, true liberty of the children of God, is the right of choice within the law, the right to embrace what is good and to avoid what is evil. This policy no man can take from us; and far from infringing upon this right, the law aids it to a fuller development. A person reading by candlelight would not complain that his vision was obscured if an arc light were substituted for the candle. A traveler who takes notice of the signposts along his way telling the direction and distance, and pointing out pitfalls and dangers, would not consider his rights contested or his liberty restricted by these things. And the law, as it becomes more clearly known to us, defines exactly the sphere of our action and shows plainly where dangers lurk and evil is to be apprehended. And we gladly avail ourselves of this information that enables us to walk straight and secure. The law becomes a godsend to our liberty, and obedience to it, our salvation.

He who goes beyond the bounds of true moral liberty, breaks the law of God and sins. He thereby refuses to God the obedience which to Him is due. Disobedience involves contempt of authority and of him who commands. Sin is therefore an offense against God, and that offense is proportionate to the dignity of the person offended.

The sinner, by his act of disobedience, not only sets at naught the will of his Maker, but by the same act, in a greater or lesser degree, turns away from his appointed destiny; and in this he is imitated by nothing else in creation. Every other created thing obeys. The heavens follow their designated course. Beasts and birds and fish are intent upon one thing, and that is to work out the divine plan. Man alone sows disorder and confusion therein. He shows irreverence for God's presence and contempt for His friendship; ingratitude for His goodness and supreme indifference for the penalty that follows his sin as surely as the shadow follows its object. So that, taken all in all, such a creature might fitly be said to be one part criminal and two parts fool. Folly and sin are synonymous in Holy Writ. "The fool saith in his heart there is no God."

Sin is essentially an offense. But there is a difference of degree between a slight and an outrage. There are direct offenses against God, such as the refusal to believe in Him or unbelief; to hope in Him, or despair, etc. Indirect offenses attain Him through the neighbor or ourselves.

All duties to neighbor or self are not equally imperious and to fail in them all is not equally evil. Then again, not all sins are committed through pure malice, that is, with complete knowledge and full consent. Ignorance and weakness are factors to be considered in our guilt, and detract from the malice of our sins. Hence two kinds of sin: mortal and venial. These mark the extremes of offense. One severs all relation of friendship, the other chills the existing friendship. By one, we incur God's infinite hatred, by the other, His displeasure. The penalty for one is eternal; the other can be atoned for by suffering.

It is not possible in all cases to tell exactly what is mortal and what is venial in our offenses. There is a clean-cut distinction between the two, but the line of demarcation is not always discernible. There are, however, certain characteristics which enable us in the majority of cases to distinguish one from the other.

First, the matter must be grievous in fact or in intention; that is, there must be a serious breach of the law of God or the law of conscience. Then, we must know perfectly well what we are doing and give our full consent. It must therefore be a grave offense in all the plenitude of its malice. Of course, to act without sufficient reason, with a well-founded doubt as to the malice of the act, would be to violate the law of conscience and would constitute a mortal sin. There is no moral sin without the fulfillment of these conditions. All other offenses are venial.

We cannot, of course, read the soul of anybody. If, however, we suppose knowledge and consent, there are certain sins that are always mortal. Such are blasphemy, luxury, heresy, etc. When these sins are deliberate, they are always mortal offenses. Others are usually mortal, such as a sin against justice. To steal is a sin against justice. It is frequently a mortal sin, but it may happen that the amount taken be slight, in which case the offense ceases to be mortal.

Likewise, certain sins are usually venial, but in certain circumstances a venial sin may take on such malice as to be constituted mortal.

Our conscience, under God, is the best judge of our malevolence and consequently of our guilt.

Dominica Resurrectionis

The Resurrection
Carl Heinrich Bloch (1834-1890)

Christ is Risen!

The world below lies desolate.

Christ is Risen!

The spirits of evil are fallen.

Christ is Risen!

The angels of God are rejoicing.

Christ is Risen!

The tombs of the dead are empty.

Christ is Risen indeed from the dead,

the first of the sleepers!

Glory and power are his forever and ever!

St. Hippolytus (AD 190-236)

The Silence of the Bishops

I'll see Matthew Archbold's snarky agitprop and raise him one tasteless but nonetheless perversely appropriate internet meme:

Feria Sexta in Passione et Morte Domini

The Christ of the Brotherhood University of Cordoba
(based on the Shroud of Turin)

Deus, qui peccati veteris hereditarium mortem, in qua posteritatis genus omne successerat, Christi tui, Domini nostri, passione solvisti: da, ut, conformes eidem facti; sicut imaginem terrenæ naturæ necessitate portavimus, ita imaginem cælestis gratiæ sanctificatione portemus.

O God, who, by the Passion of Thy Christ, our Lord, hast loosened the bonds of death, that heritage of the first sin to which all men of later times did succeed: make us so conformed to Him that, as we must needs have borne the likeness of earthly nature, so we may by sanctification bear the likeness of heavenly grace.

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Note: The image above is of the Christ of the Brotherhood University of Cordoba, the result of an exceptionally detailed study of the Shroud of Turin. It is possibly the most accurate three-dimensional portrayal of Our Lord at the moment of His Death. I warmly invite all my readers to view the following PDF file containing a number of very powerful images of this crucifix, and to meditate deeply upon the Passion and Death of Our Lord Jesus Christ (miserere nobis): Christ of the Brotherhood University of Cordoba

Thou Knowest All Things

Fourth Conference on the Most Sacred Heart

by

Fr. Henry Brinkmeyer

We have now learned that the reason we know and love the Sacred Heart of our Lord in a special manner is because the heart is the seat of His human love and the symbol of His divine love. To study the Sacred Heart of Jesus is, therefore, to study His love. The devotion to the Sacred Heart is a devotion to love and a devotion of love; consequently, the theology of the Sacred Heart is the theology of love: in other words, the love of Jesus as manifested in Creation, in the Incarnation, in the Passion, and in the Blessed Eucharist, becomes the subject of our study and meditation, when we aim at understanding the Heart of the Man-God.

But all love presupposes knowledge. We cannot love what we do not know. We cannot love intensely what we do not know intimately. Nor can we wish the good of a friend whom we do not in some measure know and appreciate. Hence, Christ's love presupposes science, knowledge of those He loves, and a knowledge of the good He wishes them to possess, as also of the evil from which He desires to save them. We will, then, as a last preliminary to the study of the love of the Sacred Heart, endeavor to obtain a clear idea of its knowledge.

The knowledge of Jesus, coming from four sources, is fourfold. He is God, equal to the Father and to the Holy Ghost, He is in fact the Word, that is, the living expression of the knowledge of the Father; consequently, He possesses an infinite, divine knowledge. But He is also man. As man, from the very moment of His conception, His human soul enjoyed what the blessed enjoy in Heaven, namely, the vision of God; it follows that He has the knowledge of what is called the Beatific Vision. As man, from the first moment of the creation of His soul, knowledge was infused into Him, just as it had been infused into Adam, and just as, to a certain degree, it was infused into the prophets and into St. John the Baptist while yet in his mother's womb. Thus, He has an infused knowledge. Finally, as man, He has all that knowledge which He acquired as other men, from seeing, hearing, feeling, thinking and suffering. We see, then, that Jesus has a fourfold knowledge: a divine knowledge, a beatific knowledge, an infused knowledge and an acquired knowledge. Each deserves a brief explanation. Let us begin with the last.

First, He has acquired knowledge. He knew all those things which man, by force of his natural reason, can master. We learn from one another, we are taught by preceptors, we instruct ourselves by reading books, we reason and deduce one truth from another; if we be learned men and studious, or possess natural genius, we penetrate into the secrets of nature, and may possibly surpass the great minds that have preceded us in the walks of science. But our Lord did not learn precisely in this way; He never went to school, nor did He read books to study, nor was He taught even by angels, much less by men. Yet He exercised His intellectual powers after the manner of rational beings. He did not see with His bodily eyes all sensible objects, nor was He in every place by His human presence, still through the medium of His sense perceptions, He drew unerring conclusions by the strength and energy of His natural intelligence. In a word, as St. Thomas says, whatever can be acquired by the natural powers of the mind, all that our Lord did acquire without being taught, by the natural power of His human intellect. Therefore, all that which the greatest philosophers, astronomers, geologists, scientists, physicians, philologists, historians, etc., can ever learn by research and study, He knew by the force of His own reason. Again, all that from which man can suffer in soul, as trials, temptations, afflictions, agonies, despair, etc., all these He knew. Not that He underwent every kind of temptation and every species of trial. He never, for example, permitted a temptation against the angelic virtue to approach Him, but, as Holy Scripture expresses it, "He learned by the things which He suffered."

Secondly, our Lord has an infused knowledge. There are many truths which the human mind, however strong and penetrating it may be, can never even suspect unless it be inspired from above, or be supernaturally taught and assisted. Such truths are, for instance, the mysteries of Faith, as the Trinity, the Incarnation, Grace, etc., or visions into the future. No human genius can infallibly know what is to come; none could have foretold the Resurrection of the Messiah, the establishment of the Church, and the persecutions assailing it. The human mind is so weak that, without Revelation, it can scarcely establish its own immortality. Now, besides the knowledge of those things which the human intellect can possibly acquire by its own efforts, our Lord had a knowledge of all things and all beings, natural and supernatural; and that knowledge was, of course, infused into His soul, for it could not be acquired naturally. By reason of this infused knowledge, He knew every truth and every mystery that had ever been revealed to man; He knew the past, the present, and the future; He knew every angel in heaven, and every man on earth; He knew every creature, animate or inanimate, that had proceeded from the hands of God, or would yet be called into existence. He knew all that would happen to the Church and to souls till the end of the world; He knew the temptations, the trials, the sins, the virtues, the thoughts and desires, the eternal salvation or perdition of each one of us: all was unfolded before Him, heaven, earth and hell, from the beginning of time, till eternity neverending. Such was His infused knowledge.

Thirdly, He had what may be called beatific knowledge, or the knowledge obtained by the Beatific Vision. What is meant by the Beatific Vision? It is the seeing of God face to face in Heaven. We cannot see God at present; we know that He exists, we may feel at times His presence, still we never behold Him. Even after death we cannot see Him, not even an angel can naturally see Him. It is true that the blessed in Heaven see Him as really and as substantially, face to face, as we see one another, but they behold Him thus because their souls are illumined and strengthened by some special gift, which gift theologians call the light of glory. When a soul is admitted into Heaven, the light of glory first penetrates, enlightens, raises and fortifies it, and then only can it behold God as He is, just as light must enter a room before anything within becomes visible to us. In thus beholding Him, it beholds in Him, as in a mirror, an immense number of truths and existences, possible and actual. It does not see all things, for then it would comprehend God, and that is impossible, nor does it perceive truths in God with a clearness of vision equal to that possessed by every other soul, for then all would be equally happy. On earth, one mind knows more and understands more fully than another; in Heaven, also, one sees more in God and of God than does another, and what it sees it understands more clearly than another. Now, our Lord's human soul, even on earth, before His death, was enlightened, penetrated and fortified by this light of glory. Continually, even in sleep, it beheld, face to face, the Blessed Trinity, the Father, the Word and the Holy Ghost, and in thus beholding God, it saw in Him all realities, all that was, and is, and shall be, and what it saw in Him, it saw with an all-pervading vividness and not only in general, as it were, but in particular: each fact, each existence, each event stood unveiled before Him with all its intense individuality. In a word, it saw all things as God sees them. It is true that, by infused knowledge, He knew already all realities, all things existing, the past, the present, and the future; yet He knew these things as man knows them. But by the Beatific Vision He saw and knew all these things as God sees and knows them; therefore,may we not believe that He saw them with still greater comprehensiveness and intenser distinctness? For it is well said: "All other science, whatever its excellence, is unreal, superficial, shadowy, compared to the science of the Beatific Vision."

Finally, our Lord had divine knowledge, for He is God, He is the Eternal Word of the Father, He is, as St. Paul says, the brightness of His glory, and the figure of His substance; in Him all things were created in Heaven and on earth, and without Him was made nothing that was made. In Him is all light, all truth. He is God of God, light of light, truth of truth. He is, in fact, the knowledge of the Father. When we think of ourselves, we beget an idea, a thought in our minds. This idea is in us, not the mind itself; it is not a substance, it is only a form, an accident in the mind. God the Father, in thinking of Himself, of His being, also begets an idea, a thought, but in Him this idea is a substance, not a mere form, as in us, and this substance is His Son, so that in very deed, the Son is the living knowledge of the Father, He is truth itself. "O! the depth of the riches of His wisdom and of His knowledge." "O Lord! Thou knowest all things." "Let then our hearts be comforted, for in charity instructed, we know that all the riches and all the fullness of the knowledge of all the mysteries are possessed by the Heart that loves us!"

How sweet, when kneeling before the Tabernacle, to say to ourselves: He knows all - all my miseries, my failings, my trials, my sufferings, my sorrows and my desires, He can do all things, and He loves me!

Saul of Tarsus

Reading N°9 in the History of the Catholic Church

by
Fr. Fernand Mourret, S.S.

The Martyrdom of St. Stephen
Juan de Juanes (1523-1579)

Those who stoned Stephen laid down their garments at the feet of a young man whose name was Saul, and who "was consenting to his death."^[1] While Philip was evangelizing Samaria, "Saul, as yet breathing out threatenings and slaughter against the disciples of the Lord, went to the high priest and asked of him letters to Damascus, to the synagogues; that if he found any men and women of this way, he might bring them bound to Jerusalem."^[2]

He whom the Scripture here calls a young man may have been thirty years old.^[3] The world has, perhaps, never known a more ardent soul. His incredible zeal had led him to defend, with unwearied animosity and perseverance, the purest Pharisaic traditions. He was born in a Hellenist center, Tarsus of Cilicia, of a father who was a Roman citizen. Yet he had been but slightly influenced by Greece and Rome. He was a Hebrew, the son of Hebrews; "a Pharisee, the son of Pharisees."^[4] He himself said: "According to the most sure sect of our religion, I lived a Pharisee."^[5] Wholehearted as he was, he could not do things by halves. He accepted the whole system of minute prescriptions and complicated traditions which made the Pharisee's life a veritable slavery. Anyone who he thought was trying to harm that network or attenuate those traditions, he looked upon as a foe to be fought. It was probably in the synagogue of the Cilicians that he first heard the teachings of Christ and defended the cause of the Temple and the Law with that subtle argumentation which he owed to his teacher Gamaliel, in that vivacious, abrupt, impelling, incorrect, but remarkably forceful style which he seems to have acquired from life rather than from books or study, from his own soul rather than from the influence of a school or from the atmosphere of any country.^[6]

Stephen's trial and execution, which Saul witnessed, unleashed his fury. In consequence of circumstances which we cannot precisely detail, but which the most elementary logic compels us to admit, Saul had not seen any of the wonderful things that occurred on Calvary, at the Resurrection, and on Pentecost. To his biased mind, the accounts which he heard of those events no doubt struck him as absurd fables and hateful inventions. In his eyes, Stephen was an impostor or a fool. At any rate, the Christians were foes of the Pharisaic tradition and therefore must be exterminated at all cost. In his own later description of his religious fury, he compares himself to a wild beast on a rampage.^[7] He is no longer satisfied merely to look on at the execution of a victim, but enters private houses and drags out the people living there, men and women, to cast them into prison. But soon, for want of victims, the persecution at Jerusalem died out. Therefore, Saul requested the high priest Caiphas^[8] to commission him officially to seek out the Christians of Damascus and put them in chains. There God's grace was waiting for the ferocious persecutor.

As he went on his journey, it came to pass that he drew nigh to Damascus. And suddenly a light from heaven shined round about him. And falling on the ground, he heard a voice saying to him: "Saul, Saul, why persecutest thou Me?" Who said: "Who art Thou, Lord?" And He: "I am Jesus, whom thou persecutest. It is hard for thee to kick against the goad." And he, trembling and astonished, said: "Lord, what wilt Thou have me to do?" And the Lord said to him: "Arise, and go into the city, and there it shall be told thee what thou must do."

The Conversion of St. Paul
Benvenuto Tisi (1481-1559)

Saul rose up, blind. He was led to Damascus, where the head of the Christian community there, Ananias, cured him, baptized him, and presented him to the asserrlbled brethren.

Ananias Restoring the Sight of St. Paul
Jaen II Restout (1692-1768)

Such was the historically undeniable event which not only gave St. Paul to the Church, but exercised a considerable influence on the great Apostle's theology, and thereby on all Catholic theology.^[9] Jesus, the crucified of Jerusalem, manifests Himself to Saul as a Being ever-living, and blames Saul for persecuting His Church: "Saul, why persecutest thou Me?" These two ideas - Christ ever-living and Christ identifying Himself with His Church - remained as two master thoughts in the Apostle's teaching and, through him, were transmitted into the teaching of the entire Church.^[10]

Footnotes

[1] Acts 7:59.

[2] Acts 9:1 f.

[3] According to the ancients, one was spoken of as a "young man" until he reached thirty years of age. Old age began at 60. Between 30 and 60 was the ripe age. Cicero speaks of Antonius as a young man (adulescens) when the latter was thirty years old. (Second Philippic, 21.)

[4] Acts 23:6.

[5] Acts 26:5.

[6] "The smiling and majestic panorama of Tarsus seems to have left no trace in Paul's imagination. [...] Inanimate nature he views only in its relations to man. His realm is psychology." (Prat, La Théologie de saint Paul, I, 19 f.)

[7] Acts 8:3.

[8] Caiphas was not deposed until the year 36 by Vitellius, the governor of Syria. St. Paul's conversion must have taken place in 33. This date can be inferred from his Epistle to the Galatians, wherein we are told that he made his second journey to Jerusalem fourteen years after his conversion; but this journey must coincide with the famine that occurred about 47. In general, the chronology of the Apostolic age - from Christ's Passion to the fall of Jerusalem - has been a subject of countless studies. A summary of those investigations may be found in an article by Prat, "La Chronologie de l'age apostolique," published in the Recherches de science religieuse, 1912, p. 372. Brassac, on the basis of a recent discovery, published an article entitled, "Une inscription de Delphes et la chronologie de saint Paul," in the Revue biblique for January and April, 1923.

[9] "It is a well-known fact that Augustine's theology, and through Augustine that of St. Thomas, and through St. Thomas all Scholasticism, are derived by direct descent from the doctrine of St. Paul." (Prat, La Théologie de saint Paul, I, 17.)

[10] Prat, op. cit. pp. 50-62.

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