A Reader Asks: Are Christians Entitled?

Recently I shared an article commenting on the recent mini-controversy about a tweet from Sen. Ted Cruz's campaign and the response by one pundit that appeared to betray a serious lack of knowledge of the basics of Christianity. Sen. Cruz's campaign tweeted that "we have to awaken and energize the body of Christ," which Ms. Parker interpreted as a call for Jesus to rise from his grave and serve Ted Cruz--nevermind that Christ's tomb is empty, and that the central claim of Christianity is that Jesus Christ is risen from the dead.

A reader raised a concern about jumping on this gaffe:

I am, however, a bit conflicted about the first link. It seems to take an unkind view of an admittedly ignorant pundit. It sounds rather like 'everybody point and laugh at the moron who doesn't know the first thing about a faith that she probably doesn't share'. The author goes on to a laundry list of Christian themed works of art and lumps the experience of those in with both particular knowledge of Christian faith, and by analogue, basic knowledge that everyone has. 

It might be my own anecdotal experience, but I feel like Christianity as a whole is being affected by a kind of "creeping entitlement"; a feeling that because we as a group believe in these things, we're entitled to have everyone else believe them too. Therein lies my frustration with the article. The author seems to think he's entitled to a better class of pundit, who knows about Christianity, or better yet, believes the exact same way as him. The stark reality is that there a lot of people out there, and not all of them believe in or even understand Christianity. I somehow doubt that merely expecting people to have the knowledge or experience of Christianity will win many converts. 

Would it not be better to take an attitude of love and kindness toward this person who showed ignorance of something we take for granted? Use this instance to call people to live their lives as Christ would have us live, and be luminous examples that the unknowing would wish to understand or emulate.

For me, the point of bringing attention to this story was not to mock a woman for a public slip-up. Rather, it was to express surprise that a Pulitzer Prize-winning journalist, a person whom we might expect to be familiar with basic facts about core constituencies in society, apparently thought that it was the belief of Christians that the corpse of Jesus Christ lies in its grave. One might argue, as you do, that we should not expect people who are not Christian to be versed in the basics of Christianity, and that such an expectation would entail a sense of entitlement that is unwarranted. If the point at issue were a minor one, an obscure notion, or if Christianity were a minority faith in this country, or if we were not part of a western culture that had been formed by Christianity, I could agree. 

But I think that in a nation that has a supermajority of Christians, with a culture rooted in and built up by the Christian faith, we could reasonably expect that an educated person whose profession it is to know about and comment upon national affairs would be familiar with the most basic tenets of Christianity, especially the most central one: that Jesus is risen from the dead. We can expect this not out of a sense of entitlement, that this is the way things ought to be, but rather in the sense that it is a fact relevant to a large percentage of the population. One need not be a Christian to know the basics of Christianity, any more then one need be a football player to know who's playing in the Super Bowl. 

This is a pervasive problem in journalism, as journalists are disproportionately non-religious and for some reason do not feel the need to brush up on the subject before reporting on it. Such practices lead to embarrassing errors sufficient in number to warrant an entire website to covering them. Shouldn't we expect better from our so-called intelligentsia? As David Mills has pointed out,

For some reason journalists can make almost any mistake about the church or religion in general and no one says “boo.” No editor would hire a guy who said the Steelers were going to draft a point guard to help improve their relief pitching, but religion? There it’s “OK, whatever, just say something.”

I do not know if Ms. Parker is a professing Christian of any kind, or what sort of personal familiarity she has with the faith. But regardless of whether she's a Benedictine Oblate or a lifelong atheist, I would expect that a person who is not only highly educated, supposedly in the world's diverse ideas, but also living in the milieu of a Christian culture, should be familiar with the basic shape of Christianity. I agree, there is no need to be nasty or personally insulting to her, but certainly, when journalists fail to do their homework, they should be called out on it.

Apostles on Third and Main

This morning I drove by a storefront that looks like it would have been a music store in the 1970s. When I read the marquee, though, I discovered that this was in fact a church. Instead of the names of singers or bands, the names of the church leadership were emblazoned on the sign. What really caught my eye, though, was the additional title that the pastor had for himself: apostle. (That is, I'm assuming it was the title, and that it wasn't his name, like Priest Holmes or Deacon Jones.) It was a tad surprising to see. When we hear the word apostle, we think of the 12 selected by Jesus to assist in and carry on his ministry, and of men like Mathias and Barnabas and Paul who joined this effort. We don't think of Todd Smith who runs his little place on Third and Main. How do we understand this? What exactly is an apostle anyway?

The word apostle comes from the Greek word meaning "to be sent." Its Latin equivalent would be something like missionary. Now, the thing about the verb "to send" is that there's always an object--that is, there is always someone or something being sent, and there's always someone doing the sending. The identity of the sender is a crucial question. If someone approaches you and says "I have been sent to you," your immediate response will be to ask "By whom?" You are always less interested in the messenger than in the one who sent the message. So, we know right off the bat that if someone calls himself an apostle he must have been sent by someone, and it's essential that we know who that is.

To be an apostle is to be sent by Christ for the purpose of preaching the Good News and building up the Church. Christ is no longer personally present on earth to appoint more apostles, nor has he made extraordinary interventions as he did with St. Paul. So we know that, strictly speaking, there can be no one today who holds that rank, and certainly no one can seize it for themselves. Yet the gospel still needs preaching, and the church still needs building, so who is left to do it? The apostles were aware both of their own limited lifespans and of the Church's perpetual need for this ministry, and thus they provided for us in the form of those offices mentioned in the Acts of the Apostles and in the letters of St. Paul, most especially in the letters to Timothy and Titus. Those are the offices of bishop, priest, and deacon. It is to these offices that the apostles entrusted the sacred duties of teaching, governing, and sanctifying. The bishops especially are considered the successors of the apostles, not in the sense that they carry the full weight of apostleship, but in the sense that the office of bishop succeeds that of apostle and provides for the Church those essential things which the apostle provided and which need to be carried on through time.

The mandate to carry on this ministry of servant leadership comes directly from Christ himself. Christ commanded his apostles to preach, to baptize, to forgive sins, and to celebrate the Eucharist, among other things. And all of these duties are essential to the church. So, it is essential that there be an office to carry them out. Thus, bishops, priests, and deacons trace their mandate, their commissioning, their being sent, through a direct line of bishops all the way back to the apostles and to Christ himself. This is what we call apostolic succession.

To be an apostle is to have been sent directly by Christ. No one today can fit that bill. To be in apostolic succession is to be sent by those who were sent by Christ. Those unbroken lines are found in the hierarchies of the Catholic and Orthodox Churches. The bishops send men on behalf of Christ to carry out this work. If you are not sent by one who has the authority to send, you are not an apostle, nor are you apostolic. Pastors who take this title unto themselves should be very wary. Apostleship cannot be claimed or assumed; it must be given; you must be sent. Much as we might want to style ourselves after the Twelve, we can't summon apostleship by ourselves down to Third and Main.

Bigger on the Inside

If you ask a fan of Doctor Who to describe the Doctor's time machine, the TARDIS, in one sentence, they would very likely use the phrase that most characters in the show use upon first encountering it: "It's bigger on the inside." Externally inspected, it appears to be an ordinary British policeman's box from the 1960s; but, thanks to the technological feats of the people of the planet Gallifrey, inside it is nearly limitless in size, holding guest rooms and wardrobes and libraries and swimming pools and laboratories and, for an engine, an artificial black hole. It's representative of the show's whole charm: things aren't what they appear, they have a deeper secret to be uncovered--a silly little man with a blue box turns out to be a 1,200-year old Time Lord with the most powerful machine in the universe at his disposal. But to discover that, you have to trust him. You have to step through the door to learn that it's bigger on the inside.

I always thought that phrase sounded familiar. Then I remembered I'd heard it before! In two places, actually. One is in C.S. Lewis' book The Last Battle, from the Chronicles of Narnia series. The book's characters come to a walled garden, but once they enter its gates they find it's an endlessly expansive world in itself, "bigger on the inside." From the outside the boundaries of the garden could be clearly seen; but from the inside, the characters discover they can forever go "further up and further in." Lucy notes that once, in our own world, there was a cave that was bigger on the inside, too--meaning the cave in Bethlehem where Christ was born, where a little manger held a tiny babe who was the infinite God. With both the garden and the cave, you have to enter to discover it's bigger on the inside.

The other place I had encountered this phrase was in G.K. Chesterton's book The Catholic Church and Conversion. Chesterton says that the non-believer or non-Catholic will look at the Church and see an admittedly large and old human organization, but nothing more--no different from the nation of China, for example. But if you enter its doors you step into 2,000 years of tradition and belief, and a spiritual history that stretches back to the Garden of Eden; you step into the heavenly liturgy itself through the bridge of the Holy Mass; you come into the very presence of God in the Blessed Sacrament, itself an example of an apparently small thing holding an infinite reality within it. When you approach the Church and its mysteries with the eyes of faith, you are able to perceive it in all its glory and majesty and wonder. Thus, "when the convert has entered the Church, he finds that the Church is much larger inside than it is outside."

A madman with a blue box. A lion with a gated garden. A babe in a cave. A small wafer of bread. Each contains a secret: they're bigger on the inside. But to see it, you have to trust them.

Keep the Mass in Christmas

I notice the occasional post on Facebook where someone puts up same variation of a "Keep the 'Christ' in Christmas" meme. It is a response against the term "X-mas," feared to be a black mark redacting the title of Our Lord and Savior Jesus Christ from one of His most august feasts--the verbal equivalent of a brown paper bag covering a bottle of booze or a dirty magazine. And people protest against such an affront, and say that we ought not separate Christ from Christmas.

Except that "X-mas" doesn't take Christ out of Christmas, it just abbreviates it.

"X" in this case is not a crossing-out of something. It's the Greek letter chi, which is the first letter in the Greek word Christos [Χριστός], and you don't have to be a scholar of ancient languages to figure out that Christos means "Christ," "anointed one." Perhaps you've seem this symbol in church:



That's the chi-rho, the first two letters of Christos, which the Emperor Constantine famously had his soldiers place on their shields before the Battle of the Milvian Bridge in 313 AD after he had a vision in which God said to him: "In hoc signo vinces," or "In this sign you will be victorious." Constantine won the battle over his rival, and within a dozen years established Christianity as the official religion of the Roman Empire. All of which is to say: this has a long history as an explicitly Christian symbol.

I've read that "X-mas" came about because advertisers wanted a way to save precious space in their ads, so they began abbreviating it with the well-known Greek letter. It doesn't take Christ out of Christmas; it just shortens it.

Now, I can very well see the argument that says, "Nick, how many people are going to make that connection? Who knows Greek? If the link were so obvious, people wouldn't make this mistake! Besides which, technically it does take the word 'Christ' out of Christmas--that word ain't there no more."

Fair point. I'd prefer to use "Christmas" over "X-mas" any day. My point is to say it wasn't intended or invented as some plot to excise the Jesus from his own nativity.

I propose stressing a different point, though: how about keeping the "mas" in Christmas?

"Christmas" is short for "Christ's Mass." Yes, my non-Catholic friends, when you celebrate Christmas, you are at least nominally honoring the Catholic Mass. Thanks! This usage was more widely used in previous times. Maybe you've heard the term "Candlemas" for the feast of the Presentation, on which traditionally liturgical candles for the year are blessed?

So, whaddya say we keep the Mass in Christmas, and remember that, in the midst of the buying and the feasting and all the secular hub-bub and hoopla that fills this time of year, we are celebrating a religious holiday, a holy-day, in which we commemorate the day God Himself came forth from a virgin's womb and entered our world to save it. Let's keep the Mass in Christmas!

The Most Important Thing in the World

Today is the most important day of the year, for the central fact of human history is that Jesus Christ is risen from the dead, and today we commemorate it.

God became man to make the ultimate offering of self-emptying love, for no greater love hath a man than to lay down his life for his brother (John 15:13). By becoming man in the person of Jesus, God becomes our brother; he is then able on our behalf to take onto Himself the punishment due for our sins. As man, Jesus makes this offering to God the Father on behalf of all men; as God the Son, Jesus makes this offering of infinite worth, able to cover the sins of all mankind. And by his sufferings, we were saved; by his wounds we were healed (1 Peter 2:24; cf. Isaiah 53:5). But this was not the end.

For on the third day, the stone was rolled away, the shroud was found folded and set aside; the tomb was empty. And Jesus appeared, to Mary Magdalene, to Peter and the other apostles, to the disciples on the road to Emmaus: truly alive, eating and drinking, present to the senses, real to the touch. He is risen indeed!

I would draw your attention to the present tense used in that statement: Jesus Christ IS risen from the dead. He didn't rise from the dead only to die again later, as did Lazarus or Jairus' daughter. He didn't rise from the dead in some metaphorical or mythological sense, in a story set long ago which is now ended. Jesus rose from the dead permanently and definitively. And he did not merely return to life as he lived it before; he was not resuscitated. He was resurrected. He lives never to die again. His body is glorified, in a state beyond that which our bodies are now. He is now what we will be at the end of time. He is the first fruits of the harvest to come (1 Corinthians 15:20).

With his rising, he has conquered death, and the sinfulness of the world which occasioned it. We need no longer fear suffering and death, for suffering and death and sin do not have the last say. The final word is had by the Word Incarnate. He has overcome, and we can, too, if we put our trust in him and do as he bids us: to believe in him, to love our neighbor and God whole-heartedly, to be baptized for the forgiveness of our sins, to follow his teachings and those of his Church, the pillar and foundation of truth (1 Timothy 3:15).

On this most holy day of days, let us thank God for the gift of our salvation, won through the sacrifice of love of our Lord and Savior, Jesus Christ, to whom be glory now and forever and unto the ages of ages.

Holy Thursday

Today begins the great celebration of the Easter Triduum: Maundy Thursday, Good Friday, Holy Saturday. All in preparation for that great feast of our redemption, Easter Sunday, when Christ rose from the dead, conquering sin and death and bringing life and salvation to the world. Let us consider the events commemorated today.

We hear of the central event of this day at every Mass. On the night he was betrayed, Jesus took bread, said the blessing, broke it, and gave it to his disciples, saying: "Take this, all of you, and eat of it; this is my body, which will be given up for you." When the meal was ended, he took the cup, said the blessing, gave it to his disciples and said: "Take this, all of you, and drink from it; this is the cup of my blood, the blood of the new and everlasting covenant. It will be shed for you and for many for the forgiveness of sins. Do this in memory of me."

Jesus had told the crowds, "Unless you eat my flesh and drink my blood, you have no life within you." Many wondered what this could mean -- "How could this man give us his flesh and blood to drink?"-- and as he insisted further, "Unless you gnaw on my flesh and drink my blood, you have no life within you," many turned away. The Gospels tell us it was at this moment that Judas decided to betray Jesus. He could not accept his teaching on this matter. Peter, on the other hand, though he may not have understood at the time, did not leave, did not turn away. When Jesus asked if he, too, would go, Peter responded: "Lord, to whom shall we go? You have the words of eternal life." That of which Jesus speaks is that which brings eternal life.

Just what is Jesus talking about? How can he give us his flesh and blood to eat and drink? He reveals the answer to us here, tonight, at the Last Supper. The Jews, in following the covenant of Moses, had offered animals in sacrifice to God in reparation for their sins. Now, Jesus would be offered as the definitive sacrifice, the one perfect, eternal sacrifice which would pay the debt for all humanity's sins for all time. He is the Lamb of God who takes away the sins of the world. Here's the key: when the Jews offered their sacrificial lambs in reparation for their sins, they would then eat the lamb that had been sacrificed. They would partake of that which had been offered to God so that they were sharing the sacrifice with God; in this, they renewed friendship with God. Just so, as Jesus was to be the Lamb sacrificed for our sins in this new and eternal covenant, in order to fulfill that which was foreshadowed and prefigured in the sacrifices of the old covenant, we had to partake in that which was being offered: we had to eat of the flesh of Jesus. And Jesus shows us how.

This bread and wine had been used as part of the Passover ritual, in which the Jews remembered that night when the angel of death smote the first-born of Egypt; but the Jews were saved by the blood of the lambs spread upon their door posts. Jesus takes these signs and brings them into the new covenant: he is the Bread of Life, his is the blood of the Lamb which saves, which fills the cup of salvation. These signs are brought together into one: the bread is the flesh of the Lamb, the Body of Christ; the blood is the blood of the Lamb, the Blood of Christ. By eating his flesh and drinking his blood, we renew our participation in the New Covenant; we renew our friendship with God by sharing in the sacrifice offered him.

And that sacrifice which is offered is God himself! God, in the person of the Divine Word Incarnate, the Second Person of the Trinity, was made man, and truly suffered, truly died, and truly rose. In Jesus Christ is both the sacrifice offered and the God who receives it. Christ is both man who is redeemed and God the redeemer. By our sins we owed God an infinite debt we could not pay; by God's justice the debt had to be paid. Only God could pay an infinite debt; but it was man who owed the debt. Thus God took flesh and became man, able to render payment on behalf of humanity, able to render infinite payment as God.

By that flesh we are saved. In eating that flesh and drinking that blood, we participate in that covenant and receive the very life of God. And it is truly the flesh and blood of Christ that we receive, for if it were not, we would not receive God. But how can God make bread and wine become his own body and blood? It seems so incredible. I ask: is it any more incredible than God becoming man? How could one believe one but doubt the other as "just too much to swallow" (no pun intended)? Just as in Jesus that which appears to be man is really God, in the Eucharist that which appears to be bread and wine is really God.

Today we remember the gift of that great sacrament by which we would perpetually remember Christ's sacrifice and re-present it to God in reparation for our sins. Tomorrow we remember the sacrifice represented by this sacrament. Today let us ask pardon for our sins, and give thanks for the sacrament of our salvation.

The Pope We Need

On Tuesday of this week, the 115 cardinal-electors will begin the process of fulfilling their most sacred office: the election of the bishop of Rome, the Supreme Pontiff, the Holy Father; that is, the Pope. The princes of the Church will pray and reflect and deliberate about which among them would best fit the Shoes of the Fisherman for this time in the life of the Church. What will they be looking for?

Were you to listen to the voices of the professional public speculators, they will tell you (based on little more information than you or I have) that the cardinals will seek to find a figure from the Third World to symbolize the Church's burgeoning population there; or that they will determine which of the Italians is most palatable, so as to return the See of Rome to the hands of a native son; or that they will desire an "ideological moderate" who can bridge the gap between the fractious and contentious camps that divide the Church. (I'm more inclined to think that the divisions in the Church are less about "conservatives vs. liberals," or "conviction Catholics vs. cafeteria Catholics," but rather "the passionate vs. the apathetic." That's a subject for another time.)

Whether this is the case, I couldn't tell you. Some news reports from fairly reliable sources indicate that many of the cardinals' top priorities include cleaning up the Vatican bureaucracy, being able to engage the secular world, and being a good exemplar of strength of character and personal holiness. These are all certainly desirable traits, and I think they relate to a larger theological vision of the pope we need.

Our Lord and Savior Jesus Christ, who taught us the truth, died for our sins, rose from the dead, and brought life to the world, is the Messiah promised by God to His people Israel. The Messiah was to unite in himself the three most important duties of Israel: priest, prophet, and king. He was to offer sacrifice for the propitiation of sin, to announce God's word to humanity, and to rule over it in justice. Not only that, He Himself is the sacrifice offered, the Word that is preached, the Justice that is rendered.

Christ established a Church to carry out the continuation of this mission. He established his Twelve Apostles as the cornerstones of His Church ("as the Father has sent me, so I send you"), and St. Peter as their head, the Rock ("upon this Rock I will build my Church"). He ordained that they (and Peter especially) should be the heads of His people, teaching them true doctrine, governing them in harmony and justice, sanctifying them through the sacraments. The Apostles were to carry on these messianic offices for God's people. The Apostles, in turn, appointed the bishops and priests who would follow them, and instructed them to do likewise. So the bishops, and most especially the bishop of Rome, the successor of St. Peter, from then to do today have carried on fulfilling the prophetic, kingly, and priestly roles of teaching, governing, and sanctifying, participating in the one prophetic spirit, the one priesthood, the one kingship of Christ.

The pope we need is the man who will best teach, govern, and sanctify the Church. The pope we need will spread the Good News of salvation in Jesus Christ with passion and joy, teaching the truth with clarity and charity. The pope we need will rule the universal Church with justice, redressing wrongs and protecting rights, maintaining ordered harmony within the Body of Christ. The pope we need will be a model of holiness and devotion, fostering frequent reception of the sacraments and reverent celebration of their rites, bringing people to the fountain of God's grace and helping them to be properly disposed to their worthy reception.

Cleaning up the Curia would be a good act of governance. Encouraging the New Evangelization would be a good act of prophecy. Being an exemplar of holiness would be a good act of priestliness. Would it be nice if the man elected were from a Third World country? Sure, but only provided first, as with any potential candidate, that he fit the above description. I don't know which of the men entering the Sistine Chapel on Tuesday would best fulfill this role. I only pray that the Holy Spirit guide them into choosing him.

Addendum: On Transubstantiation

Thank you to my two colleagues who have reminded me that I am but a probie in the philosophical guild, and as such still don't understand everything perfectly. I moved too quickly in my explanation and made a mistake at the end.

I said that transubstantiation was an example of substantial change. This is not quite correct.

Matter is what individuates particular things: while my dog and your dog may both have the form of "dog," they are not the same dog because those two forms do not stand in (i.e. are not instantiated in) the same primary matter. The form and the matter together make up the substance. In any substantial change, the form (that is, that which makes the thing to be what it is) of the new substance is educed from the matter (that is, possibility of being) of the old substance. This is what allows us to say that there is some sort of continuity of being when things change, that things don't just pop into existence out of nowhere. In my attempts to explain act-potency, form-matter, and substance-accident, my examples involved just such instances of a new substance coming into being.

But because in the mystery of transubstantiation we have, not a new substance coming into being, but rather one substance becoming another, already existing substance or exisiting thing, the change does not occur in the same way, and thus cannot properly be called "substantial change." In the Mass, the bread and wine become the Body and Blood of Christ; they become Jesus. It's not that Jesus springs into being where He didn't exist before; but rather Jesus, already existing, now becomes present such that where the bread and wine once existed, He now exists--you can point to the species (appearances) and say, "That's Jesus."

The whole substance of the bread and wine becomes the whole substance of Christ: body, blood, soul, and divinity. And as we defined "substance" as "form plus matter," in order for the substance of the bread and wine to become the substance of Christ, that which was bread and wine must take on not only the form of Christ, but also the matter of Christ.

At best, we could say that transubstantiation is a very special and unique sort of substantial change that works very differently from any other instance.

Again, I reiterate that these philosophical explanations can be helpful in pointing us toward what happens in the mysteries of the faith, but they can never come close to exhausting them or wholly explaining them. Which is why it's so easy to get them wrong. :)