What To Do With The Catholic Church?

Holy Ambrose stopping Emperor Theodosius from entering the Church – Camillo Procaccini (1561-1629)

EWTN talk show host Raymond Arroyo is doing a great service to the Church. His last interview with Cardinal Raymond Burke is particularly worth watching. This recent scandal in PA, which exposed so much internal corruption over a period spanning decades, as well as the scandal of Cardinal Archbishop Theodore McCarrick, have not only brought to greater light the problem of homosexuality secretly networked in the hierarchical ranks of the upper-clergy, but the same light also includes the exposing of all those who are either Cardinals, Bishops, Priests, deacons, lay apologists and journalists who have thought themselves emboldened, particularly beginning with the Pontificate of Francis (but also goes way back), to defend the pampering and degradation of the moral rigor and discipline of Jesus Christ.

If the history of the 2nd half of the 20th century was insufficient to do so, the last 2 Synods on the family in 2014/15, together with their post-Synodal Apostolic Exhortation (Amoris Laetitia), have proven to us that the hierarchical leaders of the Church have been white-knuckle intent, albeit in a sneaky and gradual manner, to ambiguously soften and relativize the moral demands of Jesus Christ. And this, with particular regard to the purpose of God for human sexuality, marriage, and the 4 marks of the Church.

My hope is that recent exposure of what no one today outwardly defends (the scandals already mentioned above) will not just ruin the credibility of the current Episcoapal machinery on handling sex-abuse allegations in the Church (which seems to be hogging everyone’s attention), but more importantly ruin the credibility of the neo-Conservative face of the Church which has ongoingly defended the greater collapse from moral/disciplinary strictness as proven under Pope Francis and the group of left-leaning clergy/laity which are emboldened by him; as well as put down and shame those of us who have been mightily voicing our concerns (c.f. canon 212) against this sad example of ecclesial leadership.

Yes, I hear speak about those who have utilized blog, book, seminar, and public speaking space to defend Amoris Laetitia (and the general Reform which will prove to be tied so close to nearly every effort descent from the current Pontificate), those who have been pedal-to-the-metal critical of those of us who have decried the liturgical crisis since the 70s, those who have accused many of us decrying as “dissident” and disobedient to the Magisterium, and finally those who have even gone to the level of saying that the Clergy/Theologians who have been vigilant to offer filial corrections to the Pope, and even EWTN, are self-made unlawful “magisteriums”. I speak of those who have been disturbingly wont to cite Blessed Newman’s essay on the Development of Doctrine in order to relegate the recent collapse (since the 60s) to a mere “organic change” which is not only a good thing, but necessary. It almost always turns into an embarrassing case of mental gymnastics which puts the mind of the speaker and the listener into a pretzel. I guess if you always have 45 minutes to spare, you will always get the “scoop” of how these things all come together as one big mass of continuity. If it used to be that “few there are who will be saved” it is now “we can hope all mankind will be saved”. If it used to be that the grace of marriage was tied to the ontological bond between Husband and Wife, now the “grace of marriage” can exist in those merely living together. If it used to be that one had to join the Church in order to save your soul, now it is “Bah! Let the theologians go to an island to figure out our differences while we work together even in our divisions to foster the real sort of unity in the Spirit”. If it once was “The fool says in his heart, there is no God”, now its “Atheists can be saved! In fact, there may even be atheists who are now in heaven who can be prayed to for intercession!”. If it once was “Only those who agree with us on doctrine in faith and morals can receive communion”, now it is “well, we must look at the objective person and distinguish it from what is going on subjectively”. Even if some of these motions are not entirely incorrect, something tells me this is not right, even diabolical.

In any case, there is indeed great benefit to tackle head on the matter of legal and ecclesiastical procedure in regard to abuse allegations and adjudication, but let’s not pretend this is the root of the current crisis. Simply doing this would be akin to making sure better traps are set out in the house to catch all the hiding rats. Equal, if not more, attention should be given to rooting out the source of the rat infestation to begin with. I have shared my theory with others on what I think is the root of the problem in the 21st century Catholic Church, and have been shot down quite a number of times by prominent voices in the Church who have supposedly been sufficiently diagnosing the problems and theorizing the adequate solutions. Is that really the case? I am most definitely not confident.

I will briefly share with my readers what I think is the problem. The issue lies not so much with respect to how to undo problems that the Church has gotten into, but more so with the Doorkeepers of the Church. By Doorkeepers, I mean those who are responsible to stand at the entrance of the Church. Who do we baptize today? Darn near everyone who asks. How many do we commune? Darn near everyone who asks. Who do we confirm? Darn near everyone who asks. And on what principle? “Mercy” , is what we are consistently told. Do we think it is much different in the seminaries or those applying for sacred orders? Compare that to how many inquirers were actually baptized in the 2nd to the early 4th centuries. Just like today, the Church then suffered from many false conversions (some coming in as spies to gather intel from the Christians on behalf of the civil government) , and she responded by paying more attention to the Door through which people came into the Church by adorning the Doorkeepers with a much stricter and elaborate process of initiation. It turned into a interview of the inquirer as to why they wish to become Christian (often which proved to the interviewer the person was not fit to be admitted as a Catechumen, even), and if proven sincere, was admitted to a 3-year Catechumenate wherein either diligence in good works, almsgiving, and service to widows/orphans/poor was looked at as proof of ones worthiness for Baptism come Easter Vigil. If we were to instill something akin to this as a response of what has been going on (not just this past century, but even prior to that), I believe we would see a massive change in the moral definition of the Catholic Church. Do not just baptize any baby. Do no just commune all inquiring. Do not just confirm all who participate, even begrudgingly. And definitely do not easily admit persons to to sacred orders. Let’s regain a sense of – “holy things for the holy”.

And that is just the tip of the iceberg.
Nothing has been said about doctrine and ecclesial discipline which is also of equal concern, but for which I have no time or space to write about currently.

Critics have told me this would be so judgmental, logistically impossible, and flat out impractical. Firstly, this may shorten the population of Catholics by half within a decade, if not a few short years. Secondly, a reduction of clergy would negatively impact those many persons needing sacraments (a terrifying ratio between clergy/laity). Third, a sub-culture turned mega-culture of Pharisaic or Donatist leadership, and will thus cripple the credibility of the Church. Fourth, human nature is evil and it will be a fools dream from the start. Fifth, that because Doctrine has developed we need not go backwards through some misguided return to “primitivism”. On and on and on. Reason after reason after the next as to why doing what we’ve been doing is the way to go, or that mild reform is what is called for. Ironically, according to Pope Benedict XVI, the Church in the near future will be forced into a small minority of the martyr-type faithful anyway. We can get there willingly or unwillingly.

I think many of us have been told this too many times , and this last time is one of far too many.

Holy Phinehas – The Death Penalty and Expiatory Satisfaction (Numbers 25)

Zeal of Phinehas

There are many discussions going on around the world concerning Pope Francis’s recent revision of the Catholic Catechism which asserts the following: “Consequently, the Church teaches, in the light of the Gospel, that “the death penalty is inadmissible because it is an attack on the inviolability and dignity of the person”. I’ve seen more than one interpretation of this, and I’m in no place to offer any satisfying clarifications. Although, I can tell you that my own interpretation is that Pope Francis *is not* saying that capital punishment is *intrinsically evil*, since the revised text admits that its use in the past was not uniformly inadmissible as the current action is disposed to do. Francis seems to think that the modern context of the criminal justice system, along with other matters (read more here), offers the common good of society a sufficient immunity from further harm from heinous offenders that it renders the level of criminal justice that is capital punishment unnecessary all the time, and thus totally inadmissible. In fact, the Pope is calling for the world-wide abolition of the death penalty. One cannot but help to see that the Pope understand the rational justification for inflicting the death penalty to be primarily, if not purely, to protect the common good of society. Modern methods accomplish this with detention centers, and thus there stands no further reason to kill the offender. Such a deed would be needless, and thus a crime against the dignity of man, i.e. an unnecessary bloodshed.

I’m curious to know if the Holy Father knows about a particular event, out of many, in the record of the Old Testament where I think serves to show that the rationale behind a justified capital punishment is more than a pure protection of the common good, but also of an appropriate expiation and equalizing of justice. Oh, I know so many will hand-wave this and say, “That’s Old Testament! we are under the Law of Christ in the New Testament! God permitted divorce and other things which are not acceptable in the New Epoch of Salvation History, dodo head!”. Well, before we throw a party of Marcion, we should step back and ask ourselves if the following event I am about to describe, and particularly the things which God says about it, can be equally said of a divorce-event in the Old Testament.

The event which I speak about in the Old Testament  occurred during the process of Israel’s journey towards the promised land where the taking of the life of another (2 persons, in fact) was proven to be both expiatory and meritorious for God’s blessing on the sinful Israelites. Let’s read.

In Numbers 25, we have the following:

“Now Israel remained in Acacia Grove, and the people began to commit harlotry with the woman of Moab. They invited the people to the sacrifices of their gods, and the people ate and bowed down to their gods. So Israel was joined to Baal of Peor, and the anger of the Lordwas aroused against Israel.” (v 1-3)

So here we have a serious lapse into transgression of God’s holy Law against sexual immorality and idolatry, the latter of which, if not the former, surely merited the sentence of capital punishment in Israel (Ex 22:20)

Then we read of The Lord God’s reaction to this:

“Then the Lord said to Moses, “Take all the leaders of the people and hang the offenders before the Lord, out in the sun, that the fierce anger of the Lord may turn away from Israel. So Moses said to the judges of Israel, “Every one of you kill his men who were joined to Baal of Peor.”(v4)

Here, the death penalty of the offenders was prepared as a propitiation (i.e. an action which averts God’s wrath) the “fierce anger of the Lord“. The common good of Israel, though that is certainly served, is not the only object in mind. We read that such penal executions would turn God’s anger away from Israel. This was not to protect Israel from the offenders, but to protect Israel from God (!).

We read on:

 ^“And indeed, one of the children of Israel came and presented to his brethren a Midianite woman in the sight of Moses and in the sight of all the congregation of the children of Israel, who were weeping at the door of the tabernacle of meeting. ⁷ Now when Phinehas the son of Eleazar, the son of Aaron the priest, saw it, he rose from among the congregation and took a javelin in his hand; ⁸ and he went after the man of Israel into the tent and thrust both of them through, the man of Israel, and the woman through her body. So the plague was stopped among the children of Israel. ⁹ And those who died in the plague were twenty-four thousand. Then the Lord spoke to Moses, saying: ¹¹ “Phinehas the son of Eleazar, the son of Aaron the priest, has turned back My wrath from the children of Israel, because he was zealous with My zeal among them, so that I did not consume the children of Israel in My zeal. ¹² Therefore say, ‘Behold, I give to him My covenant of peace; ¹³ and it shall be to him and his descendants after him a covenant of an everlasting priesthood, because he was zealous for his God, and made ^[b]atonement for the children of Israel.’ “(v 6-13)

Phinehas averted the wrath of God by inflicting the death penalty upon the sexually immoral Israelite as well as the woman he was caught together fornicating with. One cannot escape how such said action was expiatory and propitiatory in nature. The consequence of this righteous act was that the plague against Israel came to a halt because of the zealous righteousness of Phinehas. The way in which the Lord describes this is particularly interesting. He says, “…he was zealous with My zeal among them“. The King James Version translates it , “he was zealous for my sake among them“. Not only did God approve of this action, but it was a vicarious act of righteous zeal which merited the blessing of atonement for the sins of the Israelite offenders. And not only this, but it merited for Phinehas a covenantal lineage of an everlasting priesthood. In other words, the seminal descendants of Phinehas would feel the blessing which was merited by the execution he committed.

There is still more evidence of this. In Psalm 106, the Psalmist recounts the “mighty acts of the Lord” on behalf of His beloved people Israel. It begins by recounting in solidarity with the sins of the Israelites who came out of the bondage of Egypt:

“We have sinned with our fathers,
We have committed iniquity,
We have done wickedly.
⁷ Our fathers in Egypt did not understand Your wonders;
They did not remember the multitude of Your mercies,
But rebelled by the sea—the Red Sea.” (6-7)

And proceeds to go on and on with how the Lord mercifully delivered His people over and over again. Again, the sins of Israel are recounted in the worship of the golden calf, and then finally the Psalmist brings up the situation of Israel in Moab:

“They joined themselves also to Baal of Peor,
And ate sacrifices ^[h]made to the dead.
²⁹ Thus they provoked Him to anger with their deeds,
And the plague broke out among them.
³⁰ Then Phinehas stood up and intervened,
And the plague was stopped.
³¹ And that was accounted to him for righteousness
To all generations forevermore.” (v 28-31)

Notice what is said here. The Psalmist, under the holy inspiration of God, says that what Phinehas did in inflicting the death penalty was accounted to him for righteousness. Us Catholics are wont to harp on how the word “impute” means for God to calculate what is actually there in reality. In turns out that the LXX version of Psalm 106 has the very same Greek word for “account” or “impute” as used by St. Paul when he describes God’s imputation of Abraham’s faith as righteousness. “And that was accounted ( ἐλογίσθη ) to him [Phinehas] for righteousness to all generations forevermore”, and “For what saith the scripture? Abraham believed God, and it was counted (ἐλογίσθη) unto him for righteousness.” (Rom 4:3). The consequence of this is that the righteous putting to death by holy Phinehas was seen as an act of meritorious righteousness in the eyes of God, and it was not seen as a necessary evil by which the common good was necessarily protected and maintained. Rather, this was to prevent the wrath of God from pouring out more forcefully upon the Israel. The logic here is basic to the notion of sacrifice in Semitic culture. By offering the deity something of value, there can be a satisfaction made for the result of blessing and salvation. In this case, the obedience of one was the grounds upon which the corporate whole of Israel was spared from further plague from God.

Could we really picture God adorning a divorce-act with such praise and merit? I think not. On the other hand, was what Phinehas did a necessary evil which God merely tolerated in light of the deeper truth of human dignity? I can’t see how this can be a reasonable glean given the expressions and conclusions that God himself came to as a result of this intervention of Phinehas to slay the offending Israelite. Perhaps I am just not seeing something, and one can explain to me where I’m gong wrong here, but I can’t help but notice that there is something more here which is said to be praiseworthy in Phinehas and which serves both justice and the propitiation which was needed to avert further punishment from God upon Israel.

The only thing which I can think of is someone’s rebutting this by an appeal to the fact that Israel was a theocracy colonizing the Land of Canaan, killing whole people-groups in order to settle in fulfillment of God’s plan. Since this is totally inadmissible for Christians to do today (as I’d imagine they’d argue), we can say that what Phinehas did, even as a righteous act of its own which merited God’s mercy, was admissible during its time, but nothing akin to that would be admissible today. I grant this 100%. However, my point is not that we should be able to mimic what Israel did during her conquest, nor is my point that we should be able to repeat what Phinehas did to people we know who might be sexually impure. My point here is this – the “doctrinal development” in the Catechism Revision states that a “new awareness” and a “deeper understanding” of human dignity has spurred this new ruling to completely denounce capital punishment as inadmissible world-wide on the basis of the common good being served does not fully capture what the people of God, since the beginning, have understood as the rationale behind the death penalty. Just look at this situation in Israel – is what happened a necessary or tolerated evil? Did Phinehas *have to* kills the offenders? It doesn’t appear so. Sure, to protect the common good is always going to be a desired consequence, and a needed priority. However, I cannot help but see that more is in view, such as expiatory satisfaction and the equalizing of justice, irrespective of how immune the common good is from a repeat-offense from the offender.

This rationale is not just rooted in ancient times such as the Old Testament (Gen 9), but all throughout history and as understood by the Council of Trent, St. Augustine, St. Thomas Aquinas, and more than one Papal decree. Moreover, there are examples even in the New Testament where the death penalty is inflicted. See, for example, Ananias and Sapphira in Acts 5:1-11. The consequence of this was, as recorded by St. Luke: “…great fear came upon all the church and upon all who heard these things.” (v11). Fear? I thought the gospel of Jesus Christ came to drive out fear? Well, there is certainly truth to that, but we have to have proper distinctions in place. There is no doubt that God should be feared if we choose to disobey him willingly and impenitently.  In a discussion elsewhere I had mentioned that I believe that our Lord Jesus is the one who killed Ananias and Sapphira, and someone responded to me and said, “That just sounds impious” (words to that effect). Well,  in response to this I cited St. Thomas Aquinas who wrote the following:

“…..when Abraham consented to slay his son, he did not consent to murder, because his son was due to be slain by the command of God, Who is Lord of life and death: for He it is Who inflicts the punishment of death on all men, both godly and ungodly, on account of the sin of our first parent, and if a man be the executor of that sentence by Divine authority, he will be no murderer any more than God would be.” (ST Question 100)

Our doctrine of the consubstantiality of the eternal Son with the eternal Father also entails that they share one absolute will, power, and operation, and that no distinction between them in this regard exists. If that is true, then we can also properly say that our Lord Jesus killed the whole of mankind in the Flood-even, except for 8 souls (Noah and his family).

We also get this sort of speak from Christ Himself in the Apocolypse of St. John the Divine when he records the threat of Jesus Christ to the Jezebel-woman who was corrupting the Church in Thyatira:

“I will kill her children with death, and all the churches shall know that I am He who searches[p] the minds and hearts. And I will give to each one of you according to your works” (Rev 2:23)

Notice the rationale here? “To give each one of your according to your works”. This is retributive justice, and it stands behind the rationale for the death penalty, whether directly by God, or by an agent of God, as said well by Aquinas in the citation above. And it is this idea of retributive justice which is prematurely represented in the new Catechism revision. How so? Because it says that if the common good is protected by sufficient detention systems, then there is left no sufficient reason to take the life of the offender. Consequently, to take the life of such an offender would be a sin, because it attacks the inviolable dignity of the human person! What does that say about our God who, as Aquinas said, executes the death sentence even through the human minister.

Those defenders of this Catechism revision are telling us that there is no change in the doctrine of the Church’s faith and morals., but that the social doctrine of the Church is the only thing which has been revised, and which is based on the contingent circumstances of today’s world strategies in handling heinous criminals. Thus, they say, that the death penalty was admissible back in the day, but today it is entirely inadmissible. They miss the fact that a crime can be so heinous, and the offender can be so deserving of punishment, that nothing less than the loss of life is appropriate, and that it would not be a sin to do so.

Even with this being said, I fear that we won’t ever cease from hearing how the new “light of the Gospel” has given new eyesight to the dignity of man, rendering all of these former ideas null and void.

God help us.

 

Holy Ephrem the Syrian on The Blessed Virgin Mary, 306-373 AD

St. Ephrem [ܡܪܝ ܐܦܪܝܡ ܣܘܪܝܝܐ, literally “fruitful”] was a 4th-century Deacon, Hymnographer, Poet, and Theologian whose beautiful encomiums to the Blessed Virgin Mary continue to draw the admiration of catholic Christians all over the world. He is venerated by the Coptic Orthodox, Syriac Christians, Nestorian Church of the East, Chalcedonian Orthodox, the Roman Catholic Church, and even attracts the veneration of the Anglican Communion.