"Progressive" Catholicism, Humanae Vitae and the Spirit of Vatican II

This Worth Revisiting post dates from September 26th, 2015, shortly before Pope Francis visited the United States. We'll be hearing more on this topic throughout this year as we commemorate the 50th anniversary of Pope Paul VI''s encyclical Humanae Vitae.

To enjoy the work of other faithful Catholic bloggers see Worth Revisiting Wednesday, hosted by Elizabeth Reardon at theologyisaverb.com and Allison Gingras at reconciledtoyou.com.

A Blast From The Past

   Some years ago, as part of a staff spiritual development project at a Catholic high school, I was asked to read and comment upon a number of excerpts from a book called A People Adrift: The Crisis Of The Roman Catholic Church In America, by a fellow named Peter Steinfels.  

I didn’t know much about the author at the time except that he and his wife had some connection with the leftish quasi-Catholic publication Commonweal.  I soon ascertained that he was very much of the “Spirit of Vatican II” school of Catholicism, in which the teaching and tradition of the Church often appears to serve as little more than window dressing for whatever enthusiasms are fashionable among the cultural elite.  It seems that it’s hard to maintain this stance if one is too particular about that doctrine and tradition, as I pointed out in one of my responses to the assigned reading:

Steinfels typically uses vague generalities when proposing his heterodox positions, as when he fails to cite any of the documents of Vatican II in his discussion of the council and the reform of the liturgy [literally not one citation in an entire chapter on the topic!]. Other times he simply ignores factual evidence that doesn’t fit his theses, as when he omits the scriptural background and the teaching of the Fathers in his discussion of contraception, and in his discussions of the current state of the Church he never mentions the ecclesial movements or some of the vibrant new publications spearheaded by lay Catholics.

I couldn’t possibly respond to every omission, distortion, and non-argument in his book, but still my comments grew longer and more elaborate with every chapter assigned. Finally, after reading his chapter on Humanae Vitae and contraception, I submitted a thirteen-page critique of Steinfels' argument and a defense of the Church’s centuries-old ban on contraception, with attached documentation of at least equal length.  It was an exhausting (and tiresome) exercise.

    The Catholic Left, however, never seems to tire of discussing Humanae Vitae and contraception.  Mr. Steinfels continues to opine on the topic in public, most recently just a couple weeks ago in the Washington Post [here], where he takes advantage of the publicity surrounding the Pope’s visit to the United States and next month’s Synod on the Family in Rome to renew his campaign to persuade the Catholic Church to abandon its condemnation of contraception.  

The More Things Change . . .

    As for Steinfels’ arguments, well, not much has changed over the past ten years.  To begin with, he tries to minimize the Catholic teaching on contraception with the usual red herrings and non-sequiturs:

The church’s sexual norms were woven out of the Old Testament, apostolic injunctions and classical doctrines such as Stoicism, which held passion suspect and condemned sexual acts not directed toward procreation as “against nature.”

But unlike, say, adultery or fornication or defining the conditions of a valid marriage, contraception was a relatively marginal issue until the 20th century, when reliable methods replaced a brew of folk remedies. Before that, birth control was associated with prostitution or illicit sex and decried by virtually all Christian denominations . When Anglican churches broke that pattern in 1930, followed by many Protestant denominations, Pope Pius XI reacted with a stern encyclical reasserting the condemnation. Opposition to birth control soon became a kind of identifying mark of Catholicism.

So, the implication is that a centuries-old doctrine can be done away with because 1) it’s based on the Bible, the teaching of the Early Church, and Classical moral philosophy, 2) we can accomplish the proscribed activity much more effectively now than we could in the past, 3) said activity was formerly associated with prostitutes, but now, apparently, behaving like a prostitute is no longer a big deal, and 4) the Anglicans and other Protestant bodies changed the teaching, and they’re doing just fine, aren’t they? . . .  At least the ones who are left. This last point is especially funny, given the massive decline of those ecclesial bodies after their acceptance of contraception, when the the main point of Steinfels’ essay is that banning contraception is driving decline in the Catholic Church.  As a matter of fact, along with points 1 through 3, this actually sounds more like an argument for maintaining the prohibition on contraception, doesn’t it?

Lies, Damned Lies, And Statistics

    There is also the usual unspoken assumption among the “progressive” set that Catholics can somehow vote to repeal unwelcome moral teachings.  He trots out the the notorious “600 theologians” who, in the best traditions of theological discourse, published a full-page ad in the New York Times the day after Humanae Vitae was promulgated in order to proclaim their opposition (one wonders when they found the time to study its arguments, or whether, in fact, they read it at all).  We are asked to accept uncritically the thoroughly unbiblical, uncatholic, and ahistorical notion that, on matters of faith and morals, academics in university theology departments can overrule the Successors of the Apostles.

    We also hear from the voice of the supposedly faithful laity:

Approximately 80 percent of U.S. Catholics, including the thoroughly devout, disagree with that stance [i.e. the prohibition of contraception] (support for changing the ruling is nearly as high around the world). And the vast majority ignore the teaching altogether — one study suggests that 68 percent of sexually active American Catholic women have used birth control, sterilization or IUDs.    

Blessed Paul VI, author of Humanae Vitae

This last quote is a good example of just how slippery these statistics can be: what precisely does “thoroughly devout" mean? Who gets to decide who falls into this category? How can one be “thoroughly" devout if one rejects the teaching of the Church to which one is supposedly devoted? Notice also the careful parsing of “68 percent of sexually active American Catholic women have used birth control.” First of all, I’m surprised the percentage isn’t higher, because we live in a culture where contraception is the norm, where doctors routinely prescribe birth control pills to teenaged girls without a second thought.  That makes it easy to distort the real situation: by including all women who have used birth control, Steinfels is putting in the anti-Humanae Vitae camp the growing number of women who, on the contrary, have embraced the encyclical's teaching after trying the current conventional wisdom and finding it sadly wanting.  Quite a few of the public promoters of Humanae Vitae's teachings today, in fact, are lay people who have gone this route.  More importantly, it doesn't matter how unpopular it might be, Doctrine isn't made, or unmade, by popular opinion: it's Doctrine because the Magisterial Church to which Christ gave the power of binding and loosing (Matthew 18:18) has determined that it's the truth.

The Truth

    That, finally, is the fundamental problem with the Steinfelsian approach, not only in regard to Blessed Paul VI’s encyclical, but to everything.  There is no sense of coming to terms with The Truth: everything is put in terms of a battle of opinions, as if this were a wrangling over a political platform, where whoever can concoct the more persuasive argument "wins". For instance, Steinfels writes:

At last October's Synod on the Family . . . the discussion of contraception was perfunctory.  The bishops simply called on the church [sic -lower case in original] to do a better job of propagating "the message of the encyclical Humanae Vitae." In other words, the rejection of the birth- control ban is simply a messaging problem.

Well, no, it doesn't necessarily follow that the bishops consider it a "messaging problem", which is political jargon for not “selling” your position in a way that appeals to voters. I suspect the bishops were more concerned about the fact that the Church, in the person of its bishops and priests, virtually never mentions the topic at all (for more on that point, see here).  For Steinfels, however, and for "progressive" (another political term) Catholics in general, politics seems to be the prism through which they view everything, including their faith.  Instead of the traditional definition of theology, "Faith seeking Understanding", we have merely "policy preferences seeking justification". That’s not the sort of thing that inspires ordinary people to become saints.

   And yet, sainthood is what we are all striving for, isn't it?  St. John Paul the Great used to exhort us to embrace the “Adventure of Orthodoxy”, and “Set Out Into the Deep”; Mr. Steinfels is willing to settle for “give the people what they want”.  Which one sounds like he’s talking about the Church of Jesus Christ?   

Epiphany: The Lord Made Manifest

Happy Epiphany . . . and a Merry Christmas!

   Yes, it is still the Christmas Season: the season officially ends tomorrow with the celebration of the Baptism of the Lord.  Today we celebrate the Great Feast of Epiphany (although many of you no doubt observed the traditional date of January 6th, which was yesterday). In the Western Church today Epiphany commemorates the visit of the Magi, whom we often call “The Three Kings”, Balthasar, Melchior, and Gaspar by name.  Scripture, however, neither crowns, nor numbers, nor names them, but simply describes them as “wise men from the East”.  The word Epiphany means “a manifestation” or “a revealing”.  In this context the name of the Feast refers to the fact that the gifts and adoration of the Magi make manifest that Jesus is the Messiah and the Son of God.  This ancient feast (which Christians were celebrating even before there was a formal observance of Christmas) has at times also been connected  to the Nativity, the Baptism of Jesus and other manifestations of his Divinity.

It is interesting how many epiphanies of “God With Us” can be found in Scripture, how many different ways he reveals himself: the examples above barely scratch the surface. And yet it’s still so hard for us to accept (a theme of my post for the 10th day as well). Mary and Joseph themselves, after visits from Angels and after what they knew full well was a Virgin Birth, “marveled at what was said about him (Luke 2:33)”  when they hear the old man Simeon prophesy over Jesus as he is presented in the Temple. A full dozen years later, they still seem to have a hard time taking it all in:

After three days they found him in the temple, sitting among the teachers, listening to them and asking them questions; and all who heard him were amazed at his understanding and his answers. And when they saw him they were astonished; and his mother said to him, "Son, why have you treated us so? Behold, your father and I have been looking for you anxiously." And he said to them, "How is it that you sought me? Did you not know that I must be in my Father's house?" And they did not understand the saying which he spoke to them.  (Luke 2:46-50)

   It is so difficult for us to grasp the reality of the Incarnation. Even the human parents of The Lord seem to struggle with it – and who could hope to have faith equal to theirs?  

    But even here, as always, the Blessed Mother is the model disciple: “his mother”, the Evangelist tells us, “kept all these things in her heart” (Luke 2:51).  She doesn’t let her initial human reactions have the last word, but patiently waits for the meaning of all these events to become manifest.  One might even say that she demonstrates the classic definition of theology: faith seeking understanding.

4th Sunday of Advent: A Still, Small Voice & The Lord of Creation

     Today, Sunday of the Fourth Week of Advent, we anticipate the Nativity of Our Lord in a few short days.  The (seemingly) unexpected appearance of the Lord of Creation in the form of a human infant in a stable reminds me of the following passage from the Old Testament, in which God comes to the prophet Elijah as he hides in a cave:

And he [the Lord] said, "Go forth, and stand upon the mount before the LORD." And behold, the LORD passed by, and a great and strong wind rent the mountains, and broke in pieces the rocks before the LORD, but the LORD was not in the wind; and after the wind an earthquake, but the LORD was not in the earthquake; and after the earthquake a fire, but the LORD was not in the fire; and after the fire a still small voice; And when Elijah heard it, he wrapped his face in his mantle and went out and stood at the entrance of the cave. And behold, there came a voice to him, and said, "What are you doing here, Elijah?"  (1 Kings: 11-13)

This, in its way, is as clear a foretaste of the Messiah as the "messianic" passages we read in Isaiah, Jeremiah, and Ezekiel throughout advent.  We may have heard that, before the coming of Christ, people lived in fear of divine power.  Encountering God was something to be avoided: the point of praying and offering sacrifice, even sacrificing one’s own flesh and blood, was so that God (more often understood as “the gods”) would leave you alone.  
     We can detect echoes of this ancient attitude in the account of Abraham as he brings  his beloved son Isaac up Mount Moriah, prepared to offer him up (Genesis 22).  At the last moment God sends an angel to stay Abraham's hand, and provides a lamb for the sacrifice. The unexpected reversal in the story of Abraham and Isaac shows us the end of Christ’s earthly ministry; the story of Elijah in the cave shows us its surprising beginning. God doesn’t show himself in any of the terrifying guises one would expect (wind, earthquake, fire), but as a “still, small, voice” (in some translations a “whisper”).  In just the same way, the second person of the Trinity comes among us in the least threatening way imaginable: a helpless little baby, cradled in a feeding trough.  No wonder, when the Angel announces Jesus’ birth to the shepherds, he first tells them not to be afraid; and then he says:

For behold, I bring you good news of a great joy which will come to all the people: for to you is born this day in the city of Davis a Savior, who is Christ the Lord.  And this will be a sign for you: you will find a babe wrapped in swaddling cloths and lying in a manger. (Luke 2:10-12).

Good News , indeed.  It is, in fact, a Great Joy, and not at all a bad thing when God is in our midst, for “God is Love”(1 John 4:8); and the Infinite Creator of the Universe makes himself finite, small and vulnerable . . . for us.


For more Catholic Commentary from the past week, please see the following from the blog Nisi Dominus:

God's Truth is better than anything we can imagine: “Awaiting The Arrival of the God Who is Man”

The Mass and what makes the Church ‘Catholic’ - “A Tale of Two Sundays: God’s Love is Universal”

Our worth comes from God: “What We Have vs. What We Are”

Christmas is coming . . . but not quite yet: “The Reasons for the Season of Advent”

St. Antiochus of Lyons & the Will of God

Today the Church commemorates a truly great saint, St. Theresa of Avila.  A Doctor of the Church, she was at the same time one of the great mystical writers of all time and a hard-nosed pragmatist who, along with St. John of the Cross, led a much-need reform of the Carmelite order.  Her reform efforts were not welcome to everyone: she met strong, sometimes violent, resistance from her fellow Carmelites. We can all grow in Christ through her example of total surrender to our Lord, and it comes as no surprise that there are any number of beautifully written and insightful meditations on this amazing saint today.

    One disadvantage of the large shadow casts by giants of sanctity like St. Theresa, however, is that lesser-known saints who share the same day on the liturgical calendar can go unnoticed.  I’d like to look at one of these holy men and women, St. Antiochus of Lyons, whose feast we also celebrate on October 15th.
The sources I’ve been able to locate on St. Antiochus are brief, but tell an intriguing story.  He was a 5th century priest of Lyons, in what was then still called Gaul (the modern country of France).  The bishop of Lyons, St. Justus, abdicated his office and left for Egypt to become a hermit in the desert.  The people of Lyons sent Antiochus on the long journey to Egypt to persuade their holy shepherd to return to his flock.  Justus, apparently, was unwilling or unable to comply, and Antiochus returned home, an apparent failure.  The people of the diocese, however, recognizing that “the Lord gives and the Lord takes away” (Job 1:21) saw in the failure of Antiochus’ mission a gift as well: a new bishop.  They promptly chose Antiochus to replace the departed Justus as their spiritual father.  We are told that he went about his new office “with zeal and firmness” until he was called to his final reward.

Egyptian hermitage

    St. Antiochus, very much like St. Bridget of Sweden, is one of those saints who seems to have failed in his primary mission, only to discover that his failure there really served to prepare him for a success greater than he had dared to imagine. We learn from the lives of saints like Antiochus is that the path to sanctity lies not so much in our own efforts as it does in accepting the will of God.  Even more, the failure of these holy men and women here on earth reminds us that whatever we do accomplish, or fail to do, here only matters for a little while; our true mission is not only loving and serving God in this world, as the Baltimore Catechism puts it, but enjoying eternal happiness with him in the next.
Let us all prayer for the Grace to join St. Antiochus, St. Theresa of Avila, and all their fellow saints before the Throne of God.

 

Corpus Christi: To Whom Shall We Go?

"The Savior" by Juan de Juanes

    It’s so hard for us to fully accept that the Infinite God of the Universe could fully inhabit a human body, and be both True God and True Man. I’m reminded of how thorny a problem this is for us every year when I discuss the Christological Heresies with my adolescent religion students.  The Arians could accept the human Jesus, but not his Divinity; the Docetists had no problem with Christ the Son of God, but they were sure his Humanity was just a show; the Monophysites could understand that Jesus was both man and God, but insisted that he had only one, Divine, nature . . . and so on.  

    These and numerous other incomplete answers to the puzzle presented to our finite minds by the Incarnate Second Person of the Trinity have been with us from the earliest days of the Church to the present day.  The Council of Chalcedon gave a definitive answer in A.D. 451, when it declared that Christ is

made known in two natures without confusion [i.e. mixture], without change, without division, without separation, the difference of the natures being by no means removed because of the union, but the property of each nature being preserved and coalescing in one prosopon [person] and one hupostasis [subsistence]--not parted or divided into two prosopa[persons], but one and the same Son, only-begotten, divine Word, the Lord Jesus Christ.

    As hard as it is to accept that Jesus Christ is both fully God and a true man with a human body, however, we are asked to accept an even harder teaching: that the same body is truly present in the Eucharistic bread and wine offered up at every Mass.  Furthermore, as Christ Himself tells us,

Truly, truly, I say to you, unless you eat the flesh of the Son of man and drink his blood, you have no life in you; he who eats my flesh and drinks my blood has eternal life, and I will raise him up at the last day.  For my flesh is food indeed, and my blood is drink indeed. (John 6:55-57)

Many of his disciples found this teaching too hard to accept, and went away.  Today’s Solemnity of The Most Holy Body and Blood of Christ reminds, however, as Peter points out (John 6:68), that we have nowhere else to go, and only by eating the Body and Drinking the Blood of the God-Become-Man can we share in his eternal life.  

    There’s the wonder.  Christ has a human body, and so the Infinite God shares in our humanity; not only that, He shares that body with us in the Eucharist, and thereby lets us participate in His divinity.  No wonder we call it “Gospel”, that is, “Good News.” Yes, it is hard to believe, but, as today’s feast reminds us, it’s The Truth.

Links For The Week

I have been doing most of my blogging at Nisi Dominus lately.  This past week saw a couple of inspiring women who gave their lives for the faith, the final installment of my series on the Liturgy of the Hours, and more.  Please feel free to explore the links below:

Monday May 23rd: The power of Christian witness - “St. Julia of Corsica: A Saint For Our Time”

Wednesday May 25th: We can find at least a few minutes during the day to pray with the whole Church - “Daytime Prayer Sanctifies Our Labors”

Thursday May 26th: With a little help from (non-Catholic) authors Henry Adams and Ursula LeGuin we consider the Church’s power of endurance: “Those Who Love Him Will Follow His Commandments”

The assault on the family is nothing new: “Blessed Margaret Pole, Martyr For Church And Marriage”

A beautiful musical celebration of the True Presence: “William Byrds’s ‘Ave Verum Corpus’”

We Won't Find God In A Test Tube

(An earlier version of the Throwback below titled "To Love God Is To Know Him" was first published 31 March 2015 on the blog Nisi Dominus)

How do we know He’s there?

     In our present skeptical age Christians are often asked: "How we can know that God is there?" What and how we know is, of course, the matter of epistemology and related branches of philosophy, and the vast majority of us don’t have the academic training to engage in high-powered epistemological debate.   Nonetheless, we all conduct our lives guided by things we know are true, and reject others as false, and we Christians stake everything on certain very definite truth claims.  How can we justify our confidence in Christian Truth in a clear but comprehensible way that does not require formal philosophical training?

How do we know at all?

 

Does "science" have all the answers?

    We need to start with the understanding that the prevailing world-view today, even among many people who don’t consciously embrace materialism, is materialistic.  It’s just assumed that we can only know about things that can be observed, measured, and be proven using what is commonly called “scientific” proof.   

     How does one respond to the common near deification of science?  I’ve discussed a number of approaches to this problem on previous occasions (see below); here’s a more comprehensive tack.  We can start by pointing out that the materialist argument above arbitrarily limits “knowledge” to a very narrow class of things.  There is no scientific proof, for instance, for justice (an example used by St. Augustine), or for love.  Nevertheless, even strict materialists can be certain that they know when justice has been done (some of them are particularly vocal about injustices that they are convinced have been committed by the Church), or when they are loved.  Scientific knowledge (knowledge about things) is what philosophers call “propositional knowledge”, but that doesn’t apply at all to an abstract reality such as love, which is a matter of “acquaintance knowledge”. The question, then, is whether knowledge of God is a question of propositional knowledge, or knowledge of another sort.

     Before moving on, it’s worth pointing out that even scientific knowledge is not as straightforward as it may seem.  People often say things like “Science tells us that . . .”, but “science” itself can “tell” us nothing: it is simply a method by which we, with our limited and fallible intellects, interpret the phenomena of the natural world. The accuracy of our interpretation can be limited by human factors such as our incomplete knowledge, limited powers of cognition . . . or attachment to sin.  And however carefully we have formed scientific propositions, they can only be considered knowledge when they have been confirmed by repeated experiment.  Even then, scientific “truths” can be displaced by newer discoveries.  Scientific knowledge, then, is very often more a matter of evidence than of iron-clad proof.

Proof, or Evidence?

"What proof do you have of this 'God' ?"
"Why, the heavens proclaim the Glory of God!"

     We also need to recall that there are different kinds of evidence.  For instance, how can we be sure enough to convict somebody of a crime, even condemn them to long imprisonment or death, without direct physical proof?  The answer, of course, is that the evidence of witnesses, if they are known to be reliable, can secure a conviction (and it’s hard to conceive of an adequate system of criminal justice that does not admit eye-witness testimony as evidence).  We can also make reasonable conclusions about something we can’t detect directly, based on its effects on things that we can apprehend (I discuss this kind of evidence at greater length in my post “A Dark Matter: ‘Proving’ God in a Materialist World”). 

    At this point, we can consider the question of how we can have knowledge of God.  If God is the creator of nature, he cannot be part of it, just as no matter how hard we look, we will not be able to find a painter inside his painting. God is therefore necessarily outside the scope of scientific inquiry, as he necessarily is not part of the natural worild (see “Looking For God In All The Wrong Places”).  We might expect, of course, to see evidence of the artist in his work (characteristic brush strokes, a certain use of light or color, etc.), which brings us to the other, indirect, kinds of evidence we looked at above. The first converts to Christianity, for example, were convinced by the eye-witness testimony of the Apostles and other Disciples who had known Jesus personally, and were convinced of these witnesses’ reliability both by their manifest integrity, and by their willingness to suffer excruciating deaths for the Gospel (the word “martyr” itself comes from the Greek word for “witness”).  Over the intervening centuries, countless others have been drawn to the Church by the testimony of Christian witnesses to the power of the Risen Christ (often, like the Apostles, witnessing with their lives: “The blood of the martyrs is the seed of the Church”, as Tertullian said).  Having accepted Christ, they see the fulfillment of his promises in their own lives, thus gaining experiential knowledge.

     We should also consider whether the Christian explanation fits reality better than the materialist one.  The better fit is more likely to be true (see "The Geometry of Faith").  Societies and individuals who embrace the Christian worldview tend to be more successful by any number of objective measures (see “What Would Darwin Do? Random Selection Favors Religion”).  The evidence shows that Christianity is more conducive to human flourishing, and so is more likely to be true.

God is Love

  

The Holy Trinity

   There are some genuinely scientific arguments that can play a supporting role (see Fr. Robert Spitzer's Magis Center), but we should avoid trying to rely on science to prove the existence of God (notice that the discussion of Dark Matter to which I link above is an analogy, not proof).  Theological truths, as we have seen, are simply beyond the scope of scientific inquiry and an argument based only on science is unlikely to be persuasive.  We should also want to avoid conceding the false (and unscientific premise) that "scientific" proof is the only proof.     

   Not that any purely intellectual argument is going convert many people. Let’s go back to our discussion above about kinds of knowledge.  As Christians we understand that God is a Trinity of Persons, that God is Love (1 John 4:8): knowledge of God, therefore,  is  “relational knowledge” , and we know him through the God/Man Jesus Christ, Second Person of the Holy Trinity.  Father Larry Richards is known to wind up discussions of this sort by saying that he knows that God is there because he knows him.  For every one of us, that’s the only kind of “proof” that will lead to real faith.  We can show through our arguments that belief in God is reasonable, but we can only really “know” when we return his loving embrace.

                

Our Eternal Destiny: Armed Robbery, or A Warm Place By The Fire?

Today is Ascension Thursday; click here for my Ascension Thursday post on the blog Nisi Dominus. The throwback below, which first appeared on Nisi Dominus April 19th 2015, examines the (apparently) vexing question as to how Eternal Salvation differs from a mugging.. 

  Analogical thinking, it would appear, is a dying art.  I recently heard Catholic apologist and scholar Peter Kreeft on Catholic radio, and he was pointing out that brains which spend a lot of time interacting with video games and various other electronic devices simply don’t develop in the same way as those formed by extensive reading.  Among the those things that are undernourished are linear and analogical thinking.  Professor Kreeft has found that this makes it difficult to teach a subject like Theology that requires dealing with a lot of difficult and abstract ideas.

Is this your image of God?

     Over my own nearly 30 years of teaching high school students I’ve observed the same trend.  Fortunately, we still have a long way to go: while many people, especially young people, may not be as quick to grasp them as they might have been several decades ago, analogies are still the most effective way to communicate many ideas.  They have always been a preferred way of explaining Christian Doctrine: think of the parables of Jesus, or St. Paul's comparison in 1st Corinthians of the Church to a body, with all the members working together at their own assigned tasks; not only that, but one of the four traditional Levels of Meaning in scripture, the Allegorical, relies very heavily on analogical thinking.  Analogy is often the only reliable way for us who are composed of both spirit and matter to understand spiritual realities.

     Not surprisingly, analogies are also an essential tool in any dialogue with atheists and agnostics.  I recently became aware of the following analogy, which is appears to be in vogue in atheist circles: God, as we Christians envision Him, is like an armed robber with a gun to our heads, and he is offering a choice between giving him all our money (i.e., living according to the Gospel and spending eternity in Heaven), or having our brains blown out (which is spending eternity in Hell).

     Now, clearly, there are some very obvious problems with this analogy.  The vast majority of people, even many non-Christians, will have a hard time seeing going to Heaven as equivalent to getting mugged, even if we accept the premise that living a Christian life “robs” us of pleasures we might otherwise enjoy: Heaven promises something infinitely better than anything available here, whereas an armed robber does not even pretend to make our life better than it was before we met him.  And of course there is quite a lot of secular, sociological evidence that following God’s law actually makes us happier in the here-and-now.  Also, the robber analogy depicts Hell as something that God imposes on us, in which we take no initiative at all, when in fact the Catholic conception of Hell is that it is something that we choose for ourselves, contrary to God’s wish, by our rejection of his freely offered love.

Wouldn't you rather be inside?

     I propose a better analogy to communicate the eternal choice which God presents to us.  Imagine that we are standing outdoors on a cold, rainy night.  Somebody opens a door and invites us to come inside with them, where it is warm and dry (although, of course, we need to take off our wet muddy boots and our wet, dripping coats).  That’s God’s offer of eternal salvation.  We can say yes, although we are equally free to say no.  In fact, we can say “No, you can’t tell me what to do! Besides, can you prove it’s really warm and dry in there before I go in?”  and remain out in cold, wet darkness.  That’s Hell, the product of nothing but our own pride and stubbornness.

     The second analogy presents a much more accurate image of the Catholic view of our eternal destiny.  Not only that, when juxtaposed to the “armed robber” scenario, it also casts light behind it, as it were, giving observers a vivid illustration of the different worldviews that have generated each analogy: the atheist worldview which is concerned with power, force, and will, and in which one party must be the loser, and the Christian perspective, which envisions a reality in which love can triumph, and everyone can win.  Which is likely to appeal to more people in the end?

Charpentier's Te Deum - Praise the Lord!

     Last week I posted a clip of Haydn's Te Deum [here] on the Blog Nisi Dominus.  Many other composers before and since have written beautiful musical settings for this ancient hymn of praise, which probably dates back to the 4th century A.D.  
     One of the best known setting is a motet (clip below) by Marc-Antoine Charpentier, composed a century before Haydn's piece.  Well, perhaps it would be more accurate to say that the prelude to Charpentier's Te Deum is well known, as it has been used extensively by the European Broadcasting Union as intro music to broadcasts such as the Eurovision Song Contest for many decades, and has been part of several movie soundtracks.  As we are now celebrating the Resurrection of Christ during this joyful Season of Easter, I think it's a good time to hear this magnificent musical prayer in its entirety.  The Lord is truly risen, allelujah!
     

Te Deum laudamus: te Dominum confitemur. Te aeternum Patrem omnis terra veneratur.Tibi omnes Angeli; tibi caeli et universae Potestates; Tibi Cherubim et Seraphim incessabili voce proclamant: Sanctus, Sanctus, Sanctus, Dominus Deus Sabaoth. Pleni sunt caeli et terra majestatis gloriae tuae. Te gloriosus Apostolorum chorus, Te Prophetarum laudabilis numerus, Te Martyrum candidatus laudat exercitus. Te per orbem terrarum sancta confitetur Ecclesia, Patrem immensae majestatis: Venerandum tuum verum et unicum Filium; Sanctum quoque Paraclitum Spiritum. Tu Rex gloriae, Christe. Tu Patris sempiternus es Filius. Tu ad liberandum suscepturus hominem, non horruisti Virginis uterum. Tu, devicto mortis aculeo, aperuisti credentibus regna caelorum. Tu ad dexteram Dei sedes, in gloria Patris. Judex crederis esse venturus.	You O God, we praise: You, Lord, we acknowledge to be. You are the eternal Father. All the earth venerates you.To you all Angels; to you the heavens and all the Powers. To you Cherubim and Seraphim with unending voice proclaim: Holy, Holy, Holy, Lord God of Sabaoth. Full are heaven and earth with the majesty of your glory. You the glorious chorus of Apostles (praise), You the praiseworthy number of the Prophets (praise), You the white-clothed army of Martyrs praise. You throughout all the world are acknowledged by the holy Church, Father of immense Majesty: Who is to be worshiped, your true and only Son; Also the Holy Spirit, the Comforter. You are the King of Glory, O Christ. You are the everlasting Son of the Father. When you took upon yourself to deliver man, you did not abhor the Virgin’s womb. You, by overcoming the sting of death, opened to all believers the Kingdom of Heaven. You sit at the right hand of God, in the glory of the Father. Our Judge we believe that you will come to be.
Te ergo quaesumus, tuis famulis subveni: quos pretioso sanguine redemisti.	To you therefore we ask you, help your servants: whom you have redeemed with your precious blood.
Aeterna fac cum sanctis tuis in gloria numerari. [added later, adapted from Psalm verses] Salvum fac populum tuum, Domine, et benedic hereditati tuae. Et rege eos, et extolle illos usque in aeternum. Per singulos dies benedicimus te; Et laudamus Nomen tuum in saeculum, et in saeculum saeculi. Dignare, Domine, die isto sine peccato nos custodire. Miserere nostri Domine, miserere nostri. Fiat misericordia tua, Domine, super nos, quemadmodum speravimus in te.	In eternity with your saints make them in glory to be numbered. [added later, adapted from Psalm verses] Save your people, Lord, and bless your heritage. And rule them, and lift them up for ever. Every day we bless you; And we worship your Name forever, and forever for all ages. Vouchsafe, O Lord, this day without sin to keep us. Have mercy upon us, our Lord, have mercy upon us. Let your mercy be upon us, O Lord,  since we have trusted in you.
In te, Domine, speravi: non confundar in aeternum.	In you, O Lord, I have trusted: may I not be confounded forever