Pope John Paul II and the Essence of Manliness
Yesterday, I came across this article over on CNN’s website about a book recently published by a postulator of Pope John Paul II’s canonization cause. This book goes into detail on the Pope’s spiritual life and his personal holiness, using over 100 testimonies from individuals who had occasion to observe the Pope and offer insight of relevance to the canonization cause. What seems to have caught the mainstream media’s attention are the accounts of the Pope’s personal practices of mortification, notably self-flagellation with a belt, and sleep on the floor. Of course, who in their right mind who do stuff like that?
The CNN article has a combox at the bottom, and this question underpins the prevailing responses from the internet intelligentsia. Here are a few of the more interesting (and less profane) comments:
grist: Well, this just sounds crazy to me. Religion does make people do strange things!
Guest: As an Atheist, this all seems ridiculous to me.
rasputinslov: This dudes a nut. How arrogant to think you are god on earth. He’s no more important than the guy who picks up his garbage. I can’t believe people still believe in these archaic religions. A man is a man. Nothing more.
CoolGayDad: Just more proof that religion is nothing more than ancient superstition combined with mental illness. Mental Illness. Nothing More.
Scott715: [...] It is just a sad reminder of a group that is out of touch with reality and needs to admit to themselves and the world that their time and ideas have passed. It this is what it takes to become more holy I will stay an atheist. I just don’t see anything very “Christ like” about it anyway.
Capnmike: What a sick thing is religion! This is disgusting. And this wierdo was a “spiritual leader”?
Guest: I applaud the great works Catholics do around the world to aide others. But, can we expect Muslims to enter the 21st century if the Pope whips himself and opposes birth control? So many Catholics are intelligent, forward thinking and have made great advancements in culture and science. Why do these people support a Vatican so out of touch with the Western World?
Most people are simply bewildered as to why the Pope would mortify himself. Some of the other commenters do seem to understand, in a way, but the prevailing attitude is one of confusion, revulsion, ridicule, and general brow beating. It’s quite clear to me that many people in the world simply do not understand Christianity, Catholicism in particular, and religion in general. Whatever would move any man of sound mind (i.e., fully imbibed with 21st century secular Western values) to embrace religion, mysticism, and engage in self-discipline through mortification?
The first thing that occurred to me after reading through the combox was the metaphor of Jesus as a “sign of contradiction” (cf. Lk. 2:34), and “a stone of stumbling, and a rock of scandal, to them who stumble at the word, neither do believe” (1 Peter 2:8). Last night at my wife’s RCIA class we listened to our priest explain the Catholic understanding of who Jesus is. There are many things about Jesus that are literally stumbling blocks, like the hypostatic union of his Divine nature and his human nature (truly God, truly Man), his self-proclamations about being “the truth”, that nobody can have everlasting life without him. These are difficulties for anyone who would prefer to call Jesus a “great teacher”, or a “prophet”, or a “natural healer”, or some other title that tries to reduce him to being merely human. He said he was God; we can’t ignore that and say he was just an enlightened man. Either he really was God, or he was a bad man (Aut Deus, aut homo malus — either God, or a bad man).
But if he IS God, well, that changes everything. Suddenly, the world that we perceive with our five senses becomes full of mystical symbolism that speaks of Jesus, who made all things, and nothing has its existence through any means other than him (cf. Jn 1:3). The suffering of humanity and its broken nature finds meaning and repair in the God-Man who was whipped and nailed to his death on a “sign of contradiction”. Our individual lives are brought to fulfillment by the submission of our will and bodies to the service of the one who denied himself every worldly honor that was his right and due in order that he could come to us as a pauper, transform the world with only the love of his sacred heart, and then leave unnoticed by the world who mocked and shouted, “Fool!”.
The more we identify ourselves with Jesus in this way, the more transformed we become. Mortification, the denial of comforts, self-flagellation with a belt? A sign of contradiction for the world. If you do not understand who Jesus is, then you will have no understanding of how deep it can run within a man (or a woman) to wish to identify himself more fully with the Christ that suffered and died so that we might live. It is by finding that identification with Jesus, and living this mystery every day, that we can become the fullness of who we are as human beings, as men and women.
The first time Pope John Paul II ever caught my attention was when he stepped off the plane in Toronto for World Youth Day 2002. I was sitting in my aunt’s living room, just outside of Oshawa, Ontario, watching this happen live on the news. What struck me profoundly were the words used by the newscasters to describe the Pope — they said he was “a man with an iron will.” They said this because the Pope’s health had, at that time, started to decline significantly. The plan was to have the Pope lowered from his airplane by a crane, out of sight from the crowds on the far side of the plane. However, the Pope decided to scrap that plan, and walked, with assistance, down the steps facing the crowds. I pondered this for a long time. What did it mean to be “a man with an iron will”?
I had the privilege, for which I am eternally grateful, to attended the Papal Mass at Downsview Park as part of World Youth Day 2002. It was raining when the Pope arrived in his helicopter, but the rain stopped and the sun came out once he arrived on stage and told the pilgrims that “the rain reminds us of our baptism.” Again, I was struck in a very profound way to see this frail, old man slowly and painfully bring himself to say Mass, and to see him sit patiently through the whole thing. A man with an iron will.
Seeing Pope John Paul II at that World Youth Day changed my life. I owe my conversion to a few others too, but I had never seen anyone like Pope John Paul II before. I was instantly drawn to him. There was just something about him that spoke to the hidden depths of my soul, to the things that I was longing for but couldn’t put into words. Whatever that Pope had, whatever made him who he was, I wanted it. I wanted to be him, I wanted to be “a man with an iron will.”
When I was growing up in Northern Ireland, I had no good examples of manliness to follow. My father knocked my mother around, and they split up when I was six or seven. A year after that, he took off to England and I’ve never since heard anything from him or about him. I watched my brother, who is six years older than me, drop out of school because of his disinterest in learning. Then, I watched him get involved with people whom he followed in their ways of iniquity, drinking, drugs, and general life wasting activities. My poor mother, in the aftermath of her failed marriage to my father, got into the weekend binge drinking scene quite heavily. She attracted a succession of loser, live-in boyfriends who existed only for weekend drinking, creature comforts, pleasure, and self-indulgence. There were regular drunken arguments in the small hours of Sunday mornings, lots of profane language, throwing of nearby objects, and the odd punch to my mother’s face (no, I’m not saying she didn’t deserve it) — hardly the forging ground for virtues desperately needed by a young man, such as self-control and self-discipline.
My uncles never took an interest in me or my brother. Our grandfather was a hard man who used to be in the British army. He wanted only to sit in front of the TV, watch the news and read the paper while downing gallon mugs of tea and smoking 60 cigarettes a day. Us kids were to do what we were told, and stay out of his way. We understood that our aunts and uncles resented him greatly for how he conducted himself when they were growing up. Stories of his misdemeanors were often told to us: his drinking and knocking around of my grandmother, the severe beatings he gave his children, how he shacked up with some Scottish woman and was going to forever leave my grandmother until he was retrieved by family members.
In essence, I was being presented with a conception of manliness that was saying, “Chris, it’s ok to knock your wife around, to get drunk and threaten her, to be given to improprieties with other women. Ultimately, you don’t need to fulfill your responsibilities, and can leave them at any time, run away and never be heard from again. In fact, avoid any and all responsibility. Live for yourself. Indulge in creature comforts, in pleasure, in idleness. Don’t commit yourself to anything. Self-discipline, self-control, strength of will are all nonsense and worthless. You only have one life, so enjoy it. Be free! Don’t do anything challenging or difficult. Don’t deviate from those around you, but follow them so you don’t have to take responsibility for yourself. You don’t have to be your own man. It’s ok to be weak. In fact, weakness is to be expected of you.”
I never bought it. It never sounded right.
Looking back, the best example of manliness that I had growing up was my great-grandfather. He died when I was a teenager, after about 15 years of being unable to move from a hospital bed because of a stroke he’d had when I was quite young. In Ireland, we have a very strong respect for visiting the sick and tending to the graves and memory of the dead — well, at least my mum and her mother did. They would go to visit my great-grandfather every week (my grandmother would often go several times a week), and I remember getting brought along when I was young, and asking to go a few times when I was older.
My lasting impression has been the happiness and joy in my great-grandfather’s face each time he saw us arrive in his hospital ward. Let’s be clear: the man could not move from his bed. He couldn’t even talk. When I was younger, I remember he used to be in a wheelchair sometimes, and I can remember him struggle to say a word or two which always required my grandmother’s interpretation. Most of my memories, though, are of him mute, bed-ridden, and smiling his wonderful toothless smile. Joy, even in the midst of paralysis, muteness, and a long, drawn-out, thoroughly mundane existence, surrounded by strangers and having yourself tended to like an infant. I wish I had recognized the sheer heroism of my great-grandfather’s existence when I was younger. Alas, I was young, stupid, and ignorant, with no one to show me the way.
All of a sudden, as a young man of 22, I was confronted with the inspiring witness of Pope John Paul II at World Youth Day. The essence of manliness that had been preached to me as I was growing up, and that I had always found wanting, was now brought into the light and exposed as a worthless lie. The true essence of manliness was presented to me in the form of a frail old man who, through sheer force of will, defied his ailing body, refused to give in to pain and sickness, shunned the crane and resolved himself to walk down the steps from his plane, astounded the crowd and patiently brought us Christ in the Mass. Pope John Paul the Great: a sign of contradiction for the world.
Somehow, still young and stupid as I was, I understood that this “man with an iron will” derived his strength from that which he preached: Christ crucified (cf. 1 Cor. 1:23). He really believed in Jesus, he had integrity — I didn’t see a man who said one thing and did another, but one who lived what he preached. This struck me, and it went down all the way to the very core of my being. Who am I? More to the point: who is Jesus if he can make a frail old man seem more awe-inspiring to me than Superman? I want to know!
Mortification, self-discipline, self-control, strength of will, complete submission of self to God, responsibility, integrity, commitment, courage, purity, forgoing of creature comforts, obedience, patience, humility, suffering, obscurity, love, dedication, focus, fasting, faith, prayer, unfailing resolution to put an end to not only the sin in your life but to the very movements of our soul that draw us toward sin. Jesus Christ: a sign of contradiction for the world.
Wait a minute. All that nonsense is the complete opposite of how the world defines what is is to be a man, and it just sounds crazy! But is it? Is it?
If you are a man, I ask you: what is the essence of your manliness? What does it mean to be a man? How do you define yourself as a man? Were your examples of manliness during your youth as poor as mine?
Having trouble answering? Or maybe you aren’t happy with how you’ve answered? Come, there is another way! Jesus Christ and His Church and His Saints are the answer you’re looking for. Come and see! Don’t be afraid; you have nothing to lose, only everything to gain.
The Reasonableness of the Catholic Faith
Over on my post “Hell: A Doctrine of Fear and Manipulation?”, I have been debating in the combox with a Protestant of the fundamentalist sort, and a large portion of our discussion has been revolving around the notion of “private interpretation”, and I have been trying to press the point that the personal authority Protestants claim to posses over Scripture seems to me to ultimately lead to a complete contradiction of reason. The question, then, is: why would God leave us with a Faith that does not appear to be reasonable? Isn’t reason a gift from God and therefore good? Of course, God transcends reason, but why would He ever contradict it in the manner that the Protestant scheme implies? Can truth contradict truth?
Whilst pondering these questions, I stopped by Joe Heschmeyer’s excellent blog, “Shameless Popery”, and he had published a remarkably pertinent post just this morning on the conversion of Joshua Betancourt to Catholicism. Betancourt was an evangelical Protestant, and author of the book, “Is Rome the true Church? A consideration of the Roman Catholic claim.” Anyway, Joe has all the details and an interesting analysis here:
http://catholicdefense.blogspot.com/2010/01/welcome-home-joshua-betancourt.html
St. Francis de Sales Against the Protestant Notion of Private Interpretation of Holy Scripture
Again, in the combox of my post “Hell: A Doctrine of Hell and Manipulation?”, a commenter with whom I have been talking brought up the old Protestant notion of private interpretation of the Bible by interior guidance from the Holy Spirit. As I said previously, Saint Francis de Sales in “The Catholic Controversy” does the most authoritative job of dismantling the foundation of every single Protestant fantasy, and no less is true in this particular case, as my following excerpt illustrates:
And now let us look at the rule they have for distinguishing the canonical books from the other Ecclesiastical ones. “The testimony,” they say, “and interior persuasion of the Holy Spirit.” Good heavens! what obscurity, what dense fog, what shades of night! Are we not now fully enlightened in so important and grave a difference! The question is how one can tell these canonical books; we wish to have some rule to distinguish them — and they offer us some thing that passes in the interior of the soul, which no one sees, nobody knows save the soul itself and its Creator!
(1.) Show me clearly that when you tell me that such and such an inspiration exists in your conscience, you are not telling a lie. You say that you feel this persuasion within you. But why am I bound to believe you? Is your word so powerful that I am forced under its authority to believe that you think and feel what you say. I am willing to hold you as good people enough, but when there is question of the foundations of my faith, as of receiving or rejecting the Ecclesiastical Scriptures, I find neither your ideas nor your words steady enough to serve me as a base.
(2.) Show me clearly that these inspirations and persuasions that you pretend to have are of the Holy Spirit. Who knows not that the spirit of darkness very often appears in clothing of light?
(3.) Does this spirit grant his persuasions indifferently to every one, or only to some particular persons? If to everyone, how does it happen that so many millions of Catholics have never perceived them, nor so many women, working-people, and others among yourselves? If it is to some in particular, show them me, I beg you, — and why to these rather than to others? What mark will you give me to know them; and to pick them out from the crowd of the rest of men? Must I believe in the first who shall say: here you are? This would be to put ourselves too much at a venture and at the mercy of deceivers. Show me then some infallible rule to recognise these inspired ones, these persuaded ones, or else permit me to credit none of them.
(4.) But, in conscience, do you think that the interior persuasion is a sufficient means to distinguish the Holy Scriptures, and put the nations out of doubt?
How comes it then that Luther throws off the Epistle of S. James, which Calvin receives? Try to harmonise, I pray you, this spirit and his persuasions, who persuades the one to reject what he persuades the other to receive. You will say, perhaps, that Luther is mistaken. He will say as much of you. Which is to be believed? Luther ridicules Ecclesiastes, he considers Job a fable. Will you oppose him your persuasion? he will oppose you his. So this spirit, divided against himself, will leave you no other conclusion except to grow thoroughly obstinate, each in his own opinion.
(5.) Then what reason is there that the Holy Spirit should give inspirations as to what everyone must believe to nobodies, to Luther, to Calvin, — they having abandoned without any such inspiration the Councils and the entire Church. We do not deny, to speak clearly, but that the knowledge of the true sacred books is a gift of the Holy Spirit, but we say that the Holy Spirit gives it to private individuals through the medium of the Church. Indeed if God had a thousand times revealed a thing to a private person we should not be obliged to believe it unless He stamped it so clearly that we could no longer call its validity in question. But we see nothing of this among your reformers. In a word, it is to the Church General that the Holy Spirit immediately addresses His inspirations and persuasions, then, by the preaching of the Church, He communicates them to private persons. It is the Spouse in whom the milk is produced, then the children suck it from her breasts. But you would have it, on the contrary, that God inspires private persons, and by these means the Church, that the children receive the milk and the mother is nourished at their breasts; — an absurdity.
Now if the Scripture is not violated and its majesty offended by the setting up of these interior and private inspirations, it never was nor will be violated. For by this means the door is open to everyone to receive or reject of the Scriptures what shall seem good to him. Why shall one allow Calvin to cut off Wisdom or the Machabees, and not Luther to remove the Epistle of S. James or the Apocalypse, or Castalio the Canticle of Canticles, or the Anabaptists the Gospel of S. Mark, or another person Genesis and Exodus? If all protest that they have interior revelation why shall we believe one rather than another, so that this rule supposed to be sacred on account of the Holy Spirit, will be violated by the audacity of every deceiver.
Calvin removes and erases from the canon Baruch, Tobias, Judith, Wisdom, Ecclesiasticus, Machabees; Luther takes away the Epistle of S. James, of S. Jude, the Second of S. Peter, the Second and Third of S. John, the Epistle to the Hebrews; he ridicules Ecclesiastes, and holds Job a fable. In Daniel, Calvin has erased the Canticle of the Three Children, the history of Susanna and that of the dragon of Bel; also a great part of Esther. In Exodus, at Geneva and elsewhere among these reformers, they have cut out the twenty-second verse of the second chapter, which is of such weight that neither the Seventy nor the other translators would ever have written it if it had not been in the original. Beza casts a doubt over the history of the adulteress in the Gospel of S. John (S. Augustine warns us that already the enemies of Christianity had erased it from their books; but not from all, as S. Jerome says). In the mysterious words of the Eucharist, do they not try to overthrow the authority of those words: Which shall be shed for you, because the Greek text clearly shows that what was in the chalice was not wine, but the blood of Our Saviour? As if one were to say in French: Ceci est la coupe du nouveau Testament en mon sang, laquelle sera respandue pour vous. For in this way of speaking that which is in the cup must be the true blood, not the wine; since the wine has not been shed for us but the blood, and the cup cannot be poured out except by reason of what it contains. What is the knife with which one has made so many amputations? This tenet of private inspiration. What is it that makes you reformers so bold to cut away one this piece, another that, and the other something else? The pretext of these interior persuasions of the Spirit, which makes them supreme each in his own idea, in judging as to the validity or invalidity of the Scriptures. On the contrary, gentlemen, S. Augustine protests: [Contra Ep. Fund. v] “For my part, I would not believe the Gospel unless the authority of the Catholic Church moved me thereto.” And elsewhere: [Serm. de Temp. cxcvi] “We receive the New and the Old Testament in that number of books which the authority of the Catholic Church determines.” The Holy Spirit can give His inspirations as He likes, but as to the establishment of the public and general belief of the faithful, He only directs us to the Church. It is hers to propose which are the true Scriptures and which are not.
[...]
For Calvin and the very bibles of Geneva, and the Lutherans, receive several books as holy, sacred, and canonical which have not been acknowledged by all the Ancients as such, and about which there has been a doubt. If there has been a doubt formerly, what reason can they have to make them assured and certain nowadays, except that which S. Augustine had [as we said above]: “I would not believe the Gospel unless the authority of the Catholic Church moved me;” and “We receive the New and the Old Testament in that number of books which the authority of the Holy Catholic Church determines.” Truly we should be very ill assured if we were to rest our faith on these particular interior inspirations, of which we only know that they exist or ever did exist, by the testimony of some private persons. And granted that they are or have been, we do not know whether they are from the false or of the true spirit; and supposing they are of the true spirit, we do not know whether they who relate them, relate them faithfully or not; since they have no mark of infallibility whatever. We should deserve to be wrecked if we were to cast ourselves out of the ship of the public judgment of the Church, to sail in the miserable skiff of these new discordant private inspirations. Our faith would not be Catholic, but private.
But before I quit this subject, I pray you, reformers, tell me whence you have taken the canon of the Scriptures which you follow? You have not taken it from the Jews, for the books of the Gospels would not be there; nor from the Council of Laodicea, for the Apocalypse would not be in it; nor from the Councils of Carthage or of Florence, for Ecclesiasticus and the Machabees would be there. Whence, then, have you taken it? In good sooth, like canon was never spoken of before your time. The Church never saw canon of the Scriptures in which there was not either more or less than in yours. What likelihood is there that the Holy Spirit has hidden Himself from all antiquity, and that after 1500 years He has disclosed to certain private persons the list of the true Scriptures? For our part we follow exactly the list of the Council of Laodicea, with the addition made at the Councils of Carthage and Florence. Never will a man of judgment leave these Councils to follow the persuasions of private individuals. [1]
Footnotes
[1] St. Francis de Sales, “The Catholic Controversy” (TAN Books and Publishers Inc., 1989), P. II, A. I, Ch. V-VI
St. Francis de Sales Against the Protestant Interpretation of 2 Tim. 3:16-17
In the combox on my post “Hell: A Doctrine of Hell and Manipulation?”, a commenter employs 2 Tim. 3:16-17 against the Catholic idea of Scripture and Tradition together.
As I said in my reply to him, since having read Saint Francis de Sales’ collection of tracts published as “The Catholic Controversy”, I am unprepared to engage with any Protestant’s theological argument that’s based on a warped, personal interpretation of the Bible unless the Protestant first clarifies the source of the authority upon which he relies to authenticate his interpretation of the Bible, and how he reconciles his authority with the undeniable Biblical fact that Jesus Christ started a Church upon which he bestowed his authority, guarantee, and protection, and that that Church was (and is) a visible, hierarchical structure which the Apostle calls the “pillar and foundation of the truth” (1 Tim. 3:15). Otherwise, the Protestant’s interpretation of the Bible is worthless to me.
To that end, here is a quote from “The Catholic Controversy”, where St. Francis takes on the Protestant argument against Tradition based on 2 Tim. 3:16-17, and pulls no punches in pointing just out how absurd it is. By the way, I can wholly recommend St. Francis’s book to every Catholic who wishes to know how to refute Protestants — I have read many Protestant-oriented Catholic apologetics books, and “The Catholic Controversy” is absolutely unequaled in its clarity, conciseness, and sheer power in refuting the very foundations of the Protestant scheme.
Here’s the quote:
In a similar way they bring against us what S. Paul said to his good Timothy (2 Tim. 3:16-17): All Scripture Divinely inspired is profitable to teach, to reprove, to correct, to instruct in justice, that the man of God may be perfect, furnished unto every good work. Whom are they angry with? This is to force a quarrel. Who denies the most excellent profitableness of the Scriptures, except the Huguenots who take away as good for nothing some of its finest pieces? The Scriptures are indeed most useful, and it is no little favour which God has done us to preserve them for us through so many persecutions; but the utility of Scripture does not make holy Traditions useless, any more than the use of one eye, of one leg, of one ear, of one hand, makes the other useless. The Council [of Trent] says: it “receives and honours with an equal affectionate piety and reverence all the books as well of the Old as of the New Testament, and also these Traditions.” It would be a fine way of reasoning — faith profits, therefore works are good for nothing! Similarly, — Many other things also did Jesus, which are not written in this book. But these are written that you may believe that Jesus is the Son of God, and that believing you may have life in his name (Jn, 20:30-31): therefore there is nothing to believe except this! — excellent consequence! We well know that whatever is written is witten for our edification (Rom. 15:4), but shall this hinder the Apostles from preaching? These things are written that you may believe that Jesus is the Son of God: but that is not enough; for how shall they believe without a preacher (Rom. 10:14)? The Scriptures are given for our salvation, but not the Scriptures alone; Traditions also have their place. Birds have a right wing to fly with; is the left wing therefore of no use? The one does not move without the other. I leave on one side the exact answers: for S. John is speaking only of the miracles which he had to record, of which he considers he has given enough to prove the divinity of the Son of God.
When they adduce these words: — You shall not add to the word that I speak to you, neither shall you take away from it (Deut. 4:2); But though we or an angel from Heaven preach a gospel to you besides that which we have preached to you, let him be anathema (Gal. 1:8): they say nothing against the Council [of Trent], which expressly declares that this Gospel teaching consists not only in the Scriptures, but also in Traditions; the Scripture then is the Gospel, but it is not the whole Gospel, for Traditions form the other part. He then who shall teach against what the Apostles have taught, let him be accursed; but the Apostles have taught by writing and by Tradition, and the whole is the Gospel.
And if you closely consider how the Council [of Trent] compares Traditions with the Scriptures you will see that it does not receive a Tradition contrary to Scripture: for it receives Tradition and Scripture with equal honour, because both the one and the other are most sweet and pure streams, which spring from one same mouth of our Lord, as from a living fountain of wisdom, and therefore cannot be contrary, but are of the same taste and quality; and uniting together happily water this tree of Christianity which shall give its fruit in due season.
We call then Apostolic Tradition the doctrine, whether it regard faith or morals, which our Lord has taught with his own mouth or by the mouth of the Apostles, which without having been written in the Canonical books have been preserved till our time, passing from hand to hand by continual succession of the Church. In a word, it is the Word of the living God, witnessed not on paper but on the heart. And there is not merely Tradition of ceremonies and of a certain exterior order which is arbitrary and of mere propriety, but as the holy Council [of Trent] says, of doctrine, which belongs to faith itself and to morals; — though as regards Traditions of morals there are some which lay us under a most strict obligation, and others which are only proposed to us by way of counsel and becomingness; and the non-observance of these latter does not make us guilty, provided that they are aprroved and esteemed as holy, and are not despised. [1]
Footnotes
[1] St. Francis de Sales, “The Catholic Controversy” (TAN Books and Publishers Inc., 1989), P. II, A. II, Ch. I
Regensburg: Pope Benedict XVI Against Scientism
Continuing from my last post, my attention was drawn to Pope Benedict XVI’s 2006 address at the University at Regensburg. Of course, those who keep up with the news will remember the scandal that arose out of this address because of the Pope’s references to Islam which were taken out of context, thus allowing most people to completely miss the Pope’s whole point, namely, that scientism has led to a self-imposed limitation of human reason, which poses a danger to Western culture and the rest of the world:
While we rejoice in the new possibilities open to humanity [that have arisen from the positive aspects of modernity], we also see the dangers arising from these possibilities and we must ask ourselves how we can overcome them. We will succeed in doing so only if reason and faith come together in a new way, if we overcome the self-imposed limitation of reason to the empirically falsifiable, and if we once more disclose its vast horizons. In this sense theology rightly belongs in the university and within the wide-ranging dialogue of sciences, not merely as a historical discipline and one of the human sciences, but precisely as theology, as inquiry into the rationality of faith.
[...]
A reason which is deaf to the divine and which relegates religion into the realm of subcultures is incapable of entering into the dialogue of cultures. At the same time, as I have attempted to show, modern scientific reason with its intrinsically Platonic element bears within itself a question which points beyond itself and beyond the possibilities of its methodology. Modern scientific reason quite simply has to accept the rational structure of matter and the correspondence between our spirit and the prevailing rational structures of nature as a given, on which its methodology has to be based. Yet the question why this has to be so is a real question, and one which has to be remanded by the natural sciences to other modes and planes of thought – to philosophy and theology. For philosophy and, albeit in a different way, for theology, listening to the great experiences and insights of the religious traditions of humanity, and those of the Christian faith in particular, is a source of knowledge, and to ignore it would be an unacceptable restriction of our listening and responding. Here I am reminded of something Socrates said to Phaedo. In their earlier conversations, many false philosophical opinions had been raised, and so Socrates says: “It would be easily understandable if someone became so annoyed at all these false notions that for the rest of his life he despised and mocked all talk about being – but in this way he would be deprived of the truth of existence and would suffer a great loss”. The West has long been endangered by this aversion to the questions which underlie its rationality, and can only suffer great harm thereby. The courage to engage the whole breadth of reason, and not the denial of its grandeur – this is the programme with which a theology grounded in Biblical faith enters into the debates of our time.”
I also like the finger-wagging aimed squarely at Protestantism earlier in the address, when the Pope was discussing the history of the dehellenization of Christianity that has ultimately led to this self-imposed limitation of reason which is now modern scientific dogma. Yes, indeed, Belloc was right: the Protestant Reformation has much to answer for with respect to what ails modern society (cf. “The Crisis of Civilization”).
Hell: A Doctrine of Fear and Manipulation?
One accusation often thrown at Christianity by atheists, and those who are otherwise anti-Christian or anti-Any-Religion, is that the Christian doctrine of Hell serves solely as a mechanism to manipulate and indoctrinate people into the Christian religion through fear, and to keep them there, subjugated by the “baseless” idea that a reality of eternal fire and torment awaits them should they ever depart from Christian beliefs.
In its essence, this criticism is a mixture of a literalist interpretation of religious metaphors pertaining to Hell, and a warped understanding of the doctrine that is widely propagated by Protestant fundamentalists who often believe that God not only sends people to Hell for the slightest infraction, or if they haven’t recited the “Sinner’s Prayer”, but that He even predestines some people to Hell out of eternity thus removing any individual choice in the matter. I think it is wrong to conflate Christianity with Protestant fundamentalism — anyone who wishes to seriously criticize Christianity as a whole needs to make the necessary distinctions between the different species of Christians within the genus of Christianity because we don’t all believe the same things, and that’s part of what I would like to illustrate in this post by presenting the Catholic Church’s view of Hell.
Those who say that Christians do not have any rational basis on which to claim that Hell actually exists ought to consider that, within the scope of Catholic Christianity, the doctrine of Hell necessarily follows from two rather simple theological premises: 1.) God is love, and 2.) man has free-will. If God loves us, and we freely choose to reject His love, then what is to happen to us when we die and pass over into eternity? Will we go to be with God? The Catechism of the Catholic Church puts it this way:
We cannot be united with God unless we freely choose to love him. But we cannot love God if we sin gravely against him, against our neighbor or against ourselves: “He who does not love remains in death. Anyone who hates his brother is a murderer, and you know that no murderer has eternal life abiding in him.” Our Lord warns us that we shall be separated from him if we fail to meet the serious needs of the poor and the little ones who are his brethren. To die in mortal sin without repenting and accepting God’s merciful love means remaining separated from him for ever by our own free choice. This state of definitive self-exclusion from communion with God and the blessed is called “hell.” [1]
So, contrary to the Protestant fundamentalist conception of Hell that most people are acquainted with, the Catholic Church teaches not that Hell is a place where God sends you in a harsh way, but that Hell is more like a place where you send yourself by your own free choices and actions. We are free creatures — God eternally predestines nobody to Hell, and desires that all of us be saved. Therefore, Hell, in the Catholic tradition, is not an irrational doctrine that we are required to believe in blindly and without question, but it is a doctrine that we cannot reject or deny because it necessarily flows from the fundamental precepts of our Faith.
What of the claim that Hell is used as a whip to scare people into Christianity and keep them there? If the God that Catholics worship truly exists, then the possibility of Hell demands our complete attention because actions have consequences, even eternal ones. At the same time, there must be no compulsion in religion, and the Catholic Church recognizes that coercion in faith is so gravely wrong that it is expressly forbidden by Canon Law:
All persons are bound to seek the truth in those things which regard God and his Church and by virtue of divine law are bound by the obligation and possess the right of embracing and observing the truth which they have come to know.
No one is ever permitted to coerce persons to embrace the Catholic faith against their conscience. [2]
That’s not to say that, in the past, some Catholics haven’t held the doctrine of Hell over peoples’ heads, and used it to put the frighteners on them. It’s true. The distinction here is that such actions go against the teachings of Christ, which are the fundamental precepts of the Catholic Church. Christ often proclaimed the eternal consequences of a sinful life, but He never coerced anyone by force, as the Catechism rightly notes:
To be human, man’s response to God by faith must be free, and. . . therefore nobody is to be forced to embrace the faith against his will. The act of faith is of its very nature a free act. God calls men to serve him in spirit and in truth. Consequently they are bound to him in conscience, but not coerced. . . This fact received its fullest manifestation in Christ Jesus. Indeed, Christ invited people to faith and conversion, but never coerced them. For he bore witness to the truth but refused to use force to impose it on those who spoke against it. His kingdom. . . grows by the love with which Christ, lifted up on the cross, draws men to himself. [3]
I think the Catholic Church’s position stands in contrast to the way Protestant fundamentalists often use the doctrine of Hell to really scare people into being Christians and remaining so. Hell is a very scary thought, let us not be in any doubt, but to force someone to go against their conscience and remain Christian by intellectually and emotionally beating them with the doctrine of Hell is a violation of human dignity, and not what God intends. Proclaiming to someone that Hell is a grave reality that they need to consider is a completely different thing to using Hell as a cudgel with which to beat them. As always, it is important to distinguish between what a religion truly teaches, and how individuals choose to implement those teachings.
But doesn’t the Catholic Church teach that there’s no salvation for anyone who is outside of the Church (i.e., Extra Ecclesiam nulla salus)? Yes, but the Catechism of the Catholic Church, in the light of the Second Vatican Council, explains what that means:
How are we to understand this affirmation [i.e., outside the Church there is no salvation], often repeated by the Church Fathers? Re-formulated positively, it means that all salvation comes from Christ the Head through the Church which is his Body:
Basing itself on Scripture and Tradition, the [Second Vatican] Council teaches that the Church, a pilgrim now on earth, is necessary for salvation: the one Christ is the mediator and the way of salvation; he is present to us in his body which is the Church. He himself explicitly asserted the necessity of faith and Baptism, and thereby affirmed at the same time the necessity of the Church which men enter through Baptism as through a door. Hence they could not be saved who, knowing that the Catholic Church was founded as necessary by God through Christ, would refuse either to enter it or to remain in it.
This affirmation is not aimed at those who, through no fault of their own, do not know Christ and his Church:
Those who, through no fault of their own, do not know the Gospel of Christ or his Church, but who nevertheless seek God with a sincere heart, and, moved by grace, try in their actions to do his will as they know it through the dictates of their conscience – those too may achieve eternal salvation.
Although in ways known to himself God can lead those who, through no fault of their own, are ignorant of the Gospel, to that faith without which it is impossible to please him, the Church still has the obligation and also the sacred right to evangelize all men. [4]
So, what does that mean? Quite simply, the Catholic Church believes that salvation is still possible for an atheist of good will, and for the primitive tribes of the world who have never heard the Gospel. Again, Catholics do not believe that God predestines anyone to Hell. He wants all men to be saved, but we are still free to reject that salvation.
Fr. Robert Barron does an excellent job of explaining the Catholic view of Hell in one of his YouTube videos:
If you are tired or confused by the irrational and contradicting doctrines of Protestant fundamentalism, then why not give the Catholic Church a look? Our Faith is smart, rational, beautiful, and self-consistent, even though our adherents are not always so.
Footnotes
[1] The Catechism of the Catholic Church, para. 1033
[2] Code of Canon Law, canon 748
[3] The Catechism of the Catholic Church, para. 160
[4] Ibid., paras. 846-848
More on the Supposed Paganism of Christmas
I’m still interested in this notion that Christmas was the Church’s attempt to Christianize established pagan festivities. Maybe it’s true, maybe it’s not, but I hear more about it being true than about the possibility that it may be false.
To that end, I found this article over at American Thinker. It appears to be written by someone with conservative Christian leanings, so keep that in mind. Still, the author brings up some interesting points which I think are worth reading:
http://www.americanthinker.com/2009/12/pagan_propaganda_the_other_att.html
