Praying for the Rich

A few days ago was the feast of St. Henry, a German noble who lived at the turn of the first millenium and who was elected Holy Roman Emperor. He lived a life of personal piety and encouraged holiness and moral virtue within his realm during his life, which is why the Church has recognized him as a saint.

Some of my favorite saints are those who were royalty or nobility: St. Margaret of Scotland, St. Louis of France, St. Wenceslaus, etc. I appreciate their lives because they had an extra degree of difficulty in taking the straight and narrow way. We usually envy the rich and powerful because we think they've got it easy, but we're only thinking in terms of material comforts or leisure. But when it comes to the most important matters, the state of one's soul and one's eternal destiny, all that money and power can be a hindrance.

For any of us, what keeps us from attaining eternal glory is our doing what we want instead of what God wants, or rather, refusing to make what God wants into what we want. And it's a lot easier to do whatever we want when we have the means to do whatever we want. How easy it is to take revenge on my enemies when I'm the sovereign and nobody can arrest me for it. How simple it is to take my neighbor's wife for my own pleasures when my soldiers can kill my neighbor if he objects. As I exercise my power, I begin to think that there is no power above me. "In their insolence the wicked boast, 'God does not care. There is no God.'" (Psalm 10:4) That's why Jesus said that camels get through eyes of needles before rich men enter heaven. (Matthew 19:24)

We should each thank God every day that we are not subject to the same temptations as those who are in such places of privilege. And perhaps worst of all, they must not only battle the desire to exercise their passions when it would be oh-so-easy to do, but they then face the terrible despair of realizing that all the power and pleasure in the world can't fill the God-shaped hole in their hearts. Do you ever wonder why rich countries have higher suicide rates than poor ones?

How many of those who wield power today would we consider candidates for canonization? Power of any sort: political, economic, media.... how many of the well-to-do and influential would we peg as the sort to have a halo 'round their head in pictures? These people need our prayers, not only for their own sake, but because they sit at the fountainhead of the world's affairs and affect all of our lives. We cannot have a just world without just leaders.

I've known many people in the Church who have taken their passion for and love of the poor and turned that against the rich (or even at times the middle class), casting them as irredeemable demons and losing sight of their humanity. But rich people have souls, too. Souls in need of saving.

The Origins of the Creed

In the first few centuries after the birth, death, resurrection, and ascension of Christ, the hot topics of conversation within the Church often centered on these questions: who is Jesus? What is Jesus? How do we make sense of all of the things he said and did? He healed the sick, fed multitudes from a few loaves and fish, even raised the dead, even rose from the dead himself. He was clearly a prophet, perhaps the greatest of prophets, the Messiah who was to come and restore Israel. But he also said certain things, like “I and my Father are one,” and “He who has seen me has seen the Father.” Was… was he claiming to be equal to God somehow, or to be God Himself? How could Jesus be God if there is only one God? Could God become a human being and still be God? And even if Jesus were God, how would we reconcile that with him saying things like, “Why do you call me good? No one is good but God alone,” or with the Gospels saying that Jesus grew in wisdom (does God need to learn anything)? Is Jesus a man? Is he God? Both? Neither? Something else? How do we express his identity?

Many people tried many solutions to the problem, but most of them tended to fall on one side or the other of the “God or man” equation. Docetists said that Jesus was really God, but only appeared to be human (“Docetist” from the Greek dokein meaning “to appear, to seem”); he didn’t really suffer or die, but sort of went through the motions, his human form being a mere suit of clothes or mirage. Adoptionists said that Jesus was really a human being, but was granted special favor by God and elevated or “adopted” at the moment of his baptism in the River Jordan (“This is my beloved son in whom I am well pleased”). Different Gnostic groups took some things they read in Neo-Platonic writers and constructed a whole mythos in which human souls were trapped in bodies by an evil creator god (the Demiurge), and Jesus was a spirit who had come to free them by giving them the knowledge that they were imprisoned (“Gnostic” from Greek gnosis meaning “knowledge”).

None of these seemed right. The general sense, gathered from Sacred Scripture, the apostolic tradition of the Church, and the teaching of the bishops around the world, was that Jesus had to be somehow both God and man. But how could that be? Many more made attempts. Some said that God was really one, but appeared in different forms at different times: sometimes as Father, sometimes as Son, sometimes as Spirit. Various ideas had this basic concept, and became known as monarchianism ( Greek mono + arche = “one beginning/origin/power”), or modalism (as in, “God appears in different modes: Father mode, Son mode, Spirit mode”), or patripassianism (Latin “pater” + “passio” = “The Father suffering,” meaning that though it appeared a different person, the Son, was suffering, the Son is just a mode of the Father, so it was really the Father who suffered on the cross). There were others, all falling to the same problem of not respecting both the unity of God and the distinction between the Father and the Son.

Many of these teachers began trying to make use of philosophical terms to help explain themselves, terms like substance, nature, and person. Several challenges stood in the way of this, though. One, the eastern part of the empire was largely Greek-speaking, while the west was Latin-speaking; add to this that the Greek theologians were using more terms than their Latin counterparts, and problems abound. The Latins heard ousia and physis and hypostasis and prosopon and tried to cram them into persona, natura, and substantia. It also didn’t help that the Greeks couldn’t decide what their terms meant—they had a bad habit of using these words without defining them. One person uses physis to mean “nature/essence/what-it-is,” while another uses it to mean “center of subjectivity/who-it-is.” Confusion abounded.

Then, a priest from Rome named Arius began teaching in the Egyptian city of Alexandria that the Son was distinct from the Father, but that he was a creature, the greatest of all creatures and nearly a god himself, but that “there was a time when the Son was not”: he was not eternal; he was not God. But, being that he died for our sins and was glorified by God, he was still worthy of our veneration.

This idea became very popular, especially among certain influential Roman nobles, and the Germanic barbarians living on the borders of the empire. Much of the Church in the Eastern part of the empire took to this new teaching; as St. Jerome wrote, “The world awoke and groaned to find itself Arian.” The western part of the empire still largely held to the traditional view laid out by Tertullian a century before: that Jesus was one person, but a person with two natures, one human and one divine.

Things got bad. Factions sprang up. People were persecuted. Bishops were forced into exile away from their cities.

In 325 AD, the emperor Constantine summoned all the bishops of the world to the resort town of Nicaea and asked them to settle the issue. More than 300 bishops from all over the empire attended, including two legates representing the Pope. This was the first ecumenical (“world-wide”) council in the Church’s history. The bishops discussed, and debated, even fought: St. Nicholas (yes, THAT St. Nicholas) was so furious with Arius that he punched him in the face! The bishops overwhelmingly agreed that Arius was dead wrong. They came up with a summary definition of the Church’s faith in Christ, adding to it at another council held 50 years later in Constantinople. Today we know this definition as the Nicene(-Constantinopolitan) Creed. You say it in Mass every Sunday.

(Tangential epilogue: People sometimes wonder, if the Creed is supposed to be the most basic and fundamental expression of the Christian faith, why is there no mention of the Eucharist, expressing the Church’s belief that it is truly the Body and Blood of Christ? The answer is simple: nobody disputed this point at the time. Creeds and council declarations address the points being controverted at the present time. The Eucharist as the Real Presence of Christ? That was obvious. The nature of Christ himself? That’s the hard stuff.)

Religious but Not Spiritual

Many of us know someone who claims to be "spiritual but not religious." This sort of person can come in a variety of forms. There are the people who acknowledge some sort of vague "higher power"; the people who think there's a little truth in all the world's religious traditions (though, as Chesterton pointed out, they tend to have a little bias and essentially say things like, "Christianity and Buddhism have a lot in common, especially Buddhism"); the people who think it more valuable to commune with the Divine by appreciating the wonder of nature on a Sunday morning bike ride than by sitting in a church with bad 1970s decor and design, listening to bad 1980s church-pop music, hearing a sermon that's nothing more than an inspired reading of Dr. Seuss' "Oh, the Places You Will Go!" (I actually have some slight bit of sympathy for these people); the people who think that churches need to stop blabbing on about all this "sin" business and just focus on, like, the love, man; the people who think that religions are simply man-made institutions constructed and designed to let a privileged few control the lives of the masses.

Broadly, then, we can say that these are people who are willing to admit there's more to reality than what physics can tell us, but going too far beyond that just leads to oppression and one person imposing their opinions on others. Yeah, we know these people. But they're not the focus of my thought today. Rather, I want to talk about their opposite counterparts: the people who are religious but not spiritual.

Now, this may seem an odd category, because I doubt you've ever encountered someone who described themselves as "religious but not spiritual," but they exist. And it's just as much of a problem.

What do I mean by this term? The "religious but not spiritual" person is one who adheres to religious observances but whose inner spiritual life is lacking. It's the person who goes to Mass on Sunday but doesn't talk to God any other day of the week (or perhaps even on Sunday). It's the person who gets all worked up about the liturgy being conducted according to the rubrics, but cares nothing for what the liturgical actions signify or effect. It's the person who says the Rosary but doesn't pray the Rosary. It's the person who likes to receive ashes on their forehead at the beginning of Lent but makes no attempt at penance during those 40 days. They give the external appearance of religiosity but lack the internal spiritual fervor that should animate it.

This applies not only to what we feel, but also to what we think, for our faith includes a worldview, a set of propositions about the nature of reality--a Catholic spirituality is one with substance and content. The "religious but not spiritual" person, then, is also the person who says they are Catholic and marks the seasons of their life by participating in the Church's rites (e.g. has their wedding in the church, has their children baptized, have Catholic funerals for themselves and their loved ones) but disbelieves in or dissents from Church teaching, so that they are Catholic in name only. They marry while accepting divorce or same-sex marriage; they baptize while disbelieving in sin; they hold a funeral without any thought to praying for the dead or hoping in the Resurrection. They give the external appearance of religiosity but lack the internal conviction that should animate it.

My purpose here is not to attack or demonize or denigrate these people, merely to point out their existence--most of all because they may not even realize they themselves fall into this category.

In both of the cases described above, where there is a disparity between spirituality and religiosity, we can see the problem: one seems to lack shape, the other lacking substance. It's like two people trying to drink a cup of water, but one person saying, "I'll just take the cup, thanks," and the other saying, "Just give me the water, I don't need the cup." Neither is going to quench their thirst.

It's not good for us to do one thing and think another. It creates a disconnect. When our thoughts and actions are not integrated, we lack integrity. A house divided against itself cannot stand: sooner or later, it falls apart. It does us little good to go through the motions. I'd invite all of my readers to examine themselves, their actions, their thoughts, their dispositions, their motivations, to see if they sync up. Don't panic if you find a disparity, either momentary or habitual. Pray to God for a more ardent faith, for a faithful heart, for a receptive intellect. Pray to God for wholeness.

Q&A: Patristics

When people ask me what I'm studying, or what area of theology I'd like to concentrate in, and I tell them "patristics," I sometimes get a cocked eyebrow or a blank stare in response. So, as an aid to those folks, here's a little Q&A on said subject.

So what's this you're doing?

Well, since theology is an awfully big field, and you have to specialize somehow, I'd like to focus on patristics.

Huh? What does that word mean?

"Patristics" is the study of the Church Fathers.

The Church Fathers? Like my pastor, Father X?

Not quite.

Who are the Church Fathers, then? And why am I capitalizing that term?

The Church Fathers are those men who were most influential in developing Christian doctrine, and whose writings are considered to have a certain amount of authority. They're kind of a big deal, which is why you capitalize the term--think "Founding Fathers."

So is St. Thomas Aquinas a Church Father? He's a pretty big deal.

No, the term only applies to those who lived in the first several centuries of Christianity (though the Orthodox Church will use the term more broadly, e.g. calling Gregory Palamas, who lived after Aquinas, a Church Father, because he was so important).

Why only the first several centuries?

The idea is that at a certain point in the history of the Church, people sort of changed the way they did theology, moving away from certain methods of Scriptural exegesis to a more systematic approach which incorporated more frequently the authority of the Fathers themselves. Though the Fathers would refer to each other in the Patristic age (e.g. Cyril appeals to Athanasius, Maximos to Cyril, etc.), this became more commonplace later on.

When did the "Patristic age" begin and end?

Generally, we'd say it begins in the generation or two after the apostles, so that the earliest Fathers would be men like Pope St. Clement (ca. 90 AD) or St. Ignatius of Antioch (ca. 107 AD). These are the first men to be carrying on the apostolic tradition. The end of the Patristic period varies: the title "last of the Fathers" is usually given to St. John Damascene (8th century), though I've seen some people push it out as far as St. Bernard of Clairvaux (11th century).

What sort of "authority" do the Church Fathers have?

When some Johnny-come-lately heretic would crop up with a new theory on something, there would be those who stood up to say, "This is not in line with the faith we have always known and preached"--we later recognize these men as Church Fathers. The Fathers carried on the teachings of the apostles, assuring that Scripture would be read correctly and the Gospel preached in its integrity. Typically we'd say that if the Fathers agree on something, that's a pretty solid indication that it's right. It's not as though each of them were individually infallible or anything like that. But their combined witness to the Tradition of the Church carries a great deal of weight.

Who are some of the "big name" Church Fathers I might know?

Well, to start, there are eight that are usually regarded as pretty important: the "Four Great Western Fathers" St. Jerome, St. Augustine, St. Ambrose, and St. Gregory the Great; and the "Four Great Eastern Fathers" St. Athanasius, St. Basil the Great, St. Gregory Nazianzus, and St. John Chrysostom. St. Benedict, founder of the Benedictine way of monasticism, is also fairly important, I'd say. But there are sure a lot of them!

So who are some of the others I should know?

Oh man... St. Anthony of the Desert, a huge influence for monasticism; St. Irenaeus of Lyons, a great defender of the faith against the Gnostics; St. Justin Martyr; Tertullian and Origen, who both sorta became heretics later (Tertullian, definitely), but who wrote some very important and influential works in their orthodox phases; St. Cyprian of Carthage; St. Hilary of Poitiers; St. Gregory of Nyssa; St. Cyril of Jerusalem; St. Cyril of Alexandria; St. Maximos the Confessor; too many to name!

Are there any Church Mothers?

Well, being that not a ton of women were educated in that time in that part of the world, and being that the Church Fathers tend to be clergy, and the Church has only male clergy, there weren't a lot of women who gained enough influence to garner such recognition. But there are a few who have been noted for their influence and holiness, such as St. Mary of the Desert, St. Macrina, and St. Scholastica.

Why are you so big on these guys?

I like studying the Church Fathers because of their proximity to the apostles, and their consciousness that they are carrying on the faith of the apostles in Jesus Christ. I like them because they developed the most important doctrines in the Christian faith: the Triune God and the nature of Christ. I like them because they treated the faith as a unified whole: in just one patristic homily you could find theological reflection on the Trinity, the sacraments, the nature of the Church, the need to serve the poor, and the meaning of the liturgy! I like them because of the beautiful way in which they find connections between the Old and New Testament--read Origen's homily on Genesis 22, and how the sacrifice of Isaac prefigures the sacrifice of Christ.

Anything else I should know?

That seems to suffice for now. Just go read them!

Loving Your Everyday Enemies

I'd like to compare two situations in life.

Situation #1: Drivers here in the Bay Area (pardon the impending pun) drive me crazy. They treat the highway like a stunt course. They dodge between cars like a pickpocket weaving through a crowd to evade the police. And, the one that really chafes my backside, they rarely signal when changing lanes. Those who know me to be a mild-mannered fellow may be surprised at my reactions: I swear at them; I question their intelligence and their parentage, and compare them to the less reputable parts of the human body; I have a strong desire to run them off the road and put them out of my misery. Some of you may be reading this nodding your heads and recalling similar feelings in yourselves. 

Situation #2: When Osama bin Laden was killed, part of me was glad that SOB had finally been taken out, but another part of me knew I ought not rejoice in another person's death. As a Christian I am compelled by the Lord's command to love my enemies, and difficult as it may be to will the good for someone who would have gladly killed me given the chance, I know I must do the right thing and pray that God have mercy on his soul.

Question: Where is all my noble benevolence in situation #1? Why do I not pray for my enemies as they're endangering my life on the road?

It seems much easier to be forgiving and compassionate (or at the very least to think you're being those things) toward an enemy who is far away, nearly mythic in stature, and already dead, than toward one who is nearby, ordinary, and still living. It seems much easier to conjure up an attitude of holiness in a grand situation than in the ordinary and everyday. But the ordinary and everyday situations are the ones we face most often. Our habits are formed by how we react to situations; those repeated reactions form the shape of our character. It's like a path or a trail developing by repeated usage, like ruts in the road caused by the wheels going over the same spots. If we react in ways that are of God, that are responses to His grace, we will form a heavenly character; if we do the opposite, we will form a hellish character. In a real way, our eternal destiny will be determined by how we react to the mundane happenings in life. So what good does it do me to say "I forgive you" of Saddam Hussein or Joseph Goebbels yet revile the lady in the grocery store who brings 17 items to the "15 items or fewer" line?

G.K. Chesterton put it well once, as he tended to put all things well: "The Bible tells us to love our neighbors, and also to love our enemies; probably because they are generally the same people" (Illustrated London News - July 16, 1910). If I want my life to be such that it is Christ who lives in me (Galatians 2:20), I need to have a loving disposition when someone repeatedly sniffles instead of blowing his nose; when people say "ekkspecially" instead of "especially"; and yes, even when people change lanes without signalling. Even though that really, really bugs me.

Divine Logic

Catholics are very familiar with addressing the Blessed Virgin Mary as "Mother of God," just as we do in the Haily Mary: "Holy Mary, Mother of God, pray for us sinners." This is an ancient title for Mary, which was officially approved and sanctioned by the Church at the third Ecumenical Council, at Ephesus, in 431 AD. Some people objected to it then because they had a distorted view of the nature of Christ, but this should be an easy one, right? It's simple logic:

Jesus is God.
Mary is the mother of Jesus.
Therefore, Mary is the mother of God.

But did you know that some Evangelical Christians object to this title today? They say it gives Mary too much honor to be called the Mother of God--to that I would respond, "If the shoe fits, wear it." I also heard one Evangelical in a debate try to show that calling Mary the Mother of God is absurd by making this counter-argument:

God is Trinity.
Mary is the mother of God.
Therefore, Mary is the mother of the Trinity.

"But this is absurd! No Christian believes Mary is the mother of the Trinity! See, Catholic, your logic is flawed!"

Indeed it is absurd, 'cause your logic is flawed.

There are two problems here. One is a formal problem, which may be a little complex to get into here (i.e. I'm not sure I understand it well enough to explain it), but suffice it to say that the way that syllogism is set up renders it invalid. I think it can be demonstrated with another example:

God is Trinity.
The Father is God.
Therefore, the Father is Trinity.

Well, that didn't work, did it? So the first issue is the form of the argument.

The other problem is called the fallacy of four terms. This is when a logical proposition uses one word in two different ways, so that the word does not mean the same thing every time it is used. Here is a handy example (borrowed from the Wikipedia page on the subject of this fallacy):

Major premise: Nothing is better than eternal happiness.

Minor premise: A ham sandwich is better than nothing.

Conclusion: A ham sandwich is better than eternal happiness.

The word "nothing" in the example above has two meanings, as presented: "nothing is better" means the thing being named has the highest value possible; "better than nothing" only means that the thing being described has some value. Therefore, "nothing" acts as two different words in this example, thus creating the fallacy of four terms.

Just as the word "nothing" is being used in to mean two different things in this example, so "God" is being used to mean two different things in the Evangelical example.

The three Persons of the Trinity are each fully God, so that it can properly be said of each, "The Father is God, the Son is God, the Spirit is God." We say that "God" can be predicated of each person of the Trinity, and everything that can be predicated of God-ness can be predicated of each of them, e.g. omnipotence, omnipresence, eternity, etc. Think of it like this: Nick is human. Jim is human. That means both possess human nature. Everything that can be said of human nature can be said of Nick and Jim: they are rational, they can see humor, etc. Just so, saying "The Father is God" and "The Son is God" means both possess the divine nature, and everything that can be said of the divine nature can be said of each of them: they are all-loving, all-just, all-merciful, etc.

BUT the process does not work in reverse: just because Nick and Jim share human nature, and just because the Father and the Son share divine nature, does not mean that everything that can be predicated of one can be predicated of the other. Though Nick and Jim share human nature, that does not mean that Nick is Jim. And though the Father and Son share divine nature, that does not mean the Father is the Son. The Father's fatherhood is unique to Him, and the Son's place as Son is unique to Him. Likewise, since it is only the Son that became incarnate in the Virgin's womb, only the Son can be said to have been born of her, and thus Mary is said to be Mother of God only as it relates to the Son.

No one should make the mistake of thinking that calling Mary "Mother of God" makes her the Mother of the entire Trinity, and no one should think that this title makes Mary superior or even equal to God. The title simply acknowledges that the one to whom Mary gave birth is truly the God, and that the God to whom Mary gave birth did truly become human. The only way you can deny the title Mother of God to Mary is to either deny that Jesus is truly human or that Jesus is truly God. And I don't think any who call themselves Christian would want to do that.

On Male Modesty

Last week I read this article by Simcha Fisher humorously discussing the perils of dressing modestly in a society that does not value that particular virtue. The gist of it was: many a Catholic man will implore women to dress modestly so as to prevent the women from becoming sex objects and preserve the men from potential temptation, which is all well and good, but please recognize that this is no easy task, as this places women between the Scylla of being too hot during summer and the Charybdis of being unable to find clothing that is simultaneously sufficiently cool and sufficiently decent. The author was pleading for a little understanding from men and a little help from the fashion industry.

I heard a different sort of plea from a female friend on this same subject: as much as we hear about the need for modesty on the part of women so as to not be an occasion of temptation for men, we hear nothing about the need for modesty on the part of men so as not to be an occasion of temptation for women.

This may be a surprise to some. "Doesn't everybody know that it's men who are tempted by visuals, whereas women are tempted by... well, heck, are women even tempted at all?"

To which I respond: That's just plain silly. Now, I'm no expert on the internal workings of the feminine mind, but I hear tell that women can be tempted to lust, too. They tell me that women actually like the sight of a good-looking guy. They say that women can be tempted by the sight of a man's well-formed body.

This is the problem: a part of American Catholic culture stresses the need for modesty, but it only goes halfway--it addresses itself to women but neglects the responsibilities of men in this same area.

Now, fellas, let me ask: if you're a man with bulging biceps or panoramic pectorals, should you be wearing a tank top that would fit a 12-year old girl? If you've got legs like knotty tree trunks, should you be wearing those board shorts to the beach that cling like spandex when they get wet? Should you go jogging with no shirt on? Come on, bro, at least meet them halfway and wear a sleeveless. You might say, "Hey, not my problem if they can't handle that I look good." Great, now we're doubling up our sins: your wardrobe is not only feeding someone else's lust, but your own pride. Way to go, jackwagon.

So, gentlemen, if we are asking the ladies to dress in a way that won't be a source of temptation for us, ought we not to return the favor?