Death still stings, even for a Christian. My nephew died suddenly and unexpectedly at age 40, and I had to make all the arrangements. I’ve had too much practice doing so; I think this is the fifth person I have buried: my parents to start, then an impoverished acquaintance who was alienated from his family, another relative, and now my nephew.

Fortunately we have a priest who is a family friend; he grew up with my mother, and then presided at her funeral. He is dignified.

At many funerals I feel more anger than grief. Some priests try to lighten the occasion by telling jokes. Even worse, eulogies give someone the opportunity to those who finally have a captive audience, and go on at length about how funny the deceased was when he was drunk, and boy he had an eye for the girls, etc. I try to make the service recognizably Christian, and I think music is the best way to do it.

At my nephew’s funeral the choir sang I Heard the Voice of Jesus Say, The King of Love My Shepherd Is, Jesus Christ the Apple Tree, the In Paradisum, and Jerusalem My Happy Home.

This fruit does make my soul to thrive, It keeps my dying faith alive

This fruit does make my soul to thrive, It keeps my dying faith alive

Which makes my soul in haste to be, With Jesus Christ the apple tree.

What other comfort have we but that the Good Shepherd will not leave us in darkness.

Perverse and foolish oft I strayed

But yet in love He sought me

And on His shoulder gently laid

And home rejoicing brought me.

And He will wipe away the tears from every eye.

Jerusalem, my happy home, God grant that I may see

Thine endless joys and of the same partaker ever be.

At the conclusion of the burial service the priest took dirt from the grave and made the sign of the cross on the coffin, saying

“I seal this grave until the day of the resurrection,”

when, I pray, we will all meet again, never more to part.

In diocesan files I came across a brief discussion by Dallas church officials as to whether they should seek to have the abuser Rudy Kos’s ordination annulled. They did not explain the grounds.

I can only guess they thought his motivation for ordination was not simple inadequate but evil, and that rendered his ordination invalid. I also guess they decided not to pursue the annulment because it would create a crisis of conscience among Catholics who had received the Eucharist or the sacrament of penance from him. Perhaps the lien of reasoning was the bishop intended to ordain a man who had presented himself as a devout Christian; but Kod was not, he was a pederast and perhaps not even a believer.

There are also sheer imposters who pretend to be priests, but I don’t think God punisher those who think they are receiving the sacraments from such imposters.

For example, the Council of Trent, I believe, taught that a spiritual communion is fully as efficacious as a sacramental communion. Protestants who communicate at their services may not receive Jesus in the elements, but their communion with Him can be as fully sanctifying as a Catholic’s. Those who receive the sacraments from imposters, I suggest, receive grace of the sacrament but not through the sacrament, which does not exist in that case.

God is not out to trick us; he desires that we be saved.

But bishops who knowingly or carelessly ordain such evil men will have much to answer for at the Judgment – although the way some bishops act, I doubt whether they believe in the Judgment or even God. It would not be the first time the Church had deistic or agnostic bishops.

Sanctifying grace is that gift (grace) of God which makes us holy, which truly transforms us into his friends, so that we have the mind and heart of Jesus Christ., becoming his brothers and sisters, sons and daughters of God, and enter into the eternal friendship of the Trinity.

It can come to us through the sacraments, but in many, many  other ways as well. God loves all that He has made and desires not the death of the sinner but that he be converted and live, so we can have a strong assurance that God wills the sanctification of all and offers to all a means of grace.

What that means is hidden in many cases, but the sacraments reveal it to us, giving us a physical connection, through water, the laying on of hands, bread and wine, to the historical, bodily Jesus.

I think that is a fair summary, although thousands of books have been written on the subject. The question is whether sacramental grace is limited exclusively to the sacraments, and today almost all theologians would say no, God is free to act outside the sacraments if He chooses, and we have good reason, based on the Scriptures, to think that he so chooses.

As  Leon Podles put it in Sacrilege (2007), his magisterial [yes!] and sickening [all too true] history of clerical sexual abuse, both “new errors” and “old errors” were at  work in the Church’s scandal – relativism and clericalism, permissiveness and authoritarianism, the worst impulses of liberalizers and traditionalists intertwining in an awful tangle of corruption.

Some people told me that they began the book but couldn’t read it – what I was describing was too awful even to think about.

Father Richard Neuhaus hated the book.

George Weigel was sure I was grossly exaggerating – but it turned out it was even worse than I thought.

Archbishop Dolan was introduced to me at a reception; the name clicked, because as he turned away he said “I am familiar with your writings.” The tone, although I wouldn’t characterize it as hostile, was not exactly the friendly tone he had assumed with everyone else.

But at least Ross Douthat saw what I was trying to do.

Commonweal is unhappy with Bishop Daniel Jenky of Peoria, who gave a talk to a Catholic men’s group calling them to defend the Church, citing Obamacare as an example of an attack on the Church

The offending remarks are:

The Church will survive the entrenched corruption and sheer incompetence of our Illinois state government, and even the calculated disdain of the President of the United States, his appointed bureaucrats in HHS, and of the current majority of the federal Senate.

May God have mercy on the souls of those politicians who pretend to be Catholic in church, but in their public lives, rather like Judas Iscariot, betray Jesus Christ by how they vote and how they willingly cooperate with intrinsic evil.

As Christians we must love our enemies and pray for those who persecute us, but as Christians we must also stand up for what we believe and always be ready to fight for the Faith. The days in which we live now require heroic Catholicism, not casual Catholicism. We can no longer be Catholics by accident, but instead be Catholics by conviction.

In our own families, in our parishes, where we live and where we work – like that very first apostolic generation – we must be bold witnesses to the Lordship of Jesus Christ. We must be a fearless army of Catholic men, ready to give everything we have for the Lord, who gave everything for our salvation.

Remember that in past history other governments have tried to force Christians to huddle and hide only within the confines of their churches like the first disciples locked up in the Upper Room.

In the late 19th century, Bismarck waged his “Kulturkampf,” a Culture War, against the Roman Catholic Church, closing down every Catholic school and hospital, convent and monastery in Imperial Germany.

Clemenceau, nicknamed “the priest eater,” tried the same thing in France in the first decade of the 20th Century.

Hitler and Stalin, at their better moments, would just barely tolerate some churches remaining open, but would not tolerate any competition with the state in education, social services, and health care.

In clear violation of our First Amendment rights, Barack Obama – with his radical, pro abortion and extreme secularist agenda, now seems intent on following a similar path.

One of the chronic problems in Christianity is how to get or keep men attached to the church. One way is to awaken the protective instinct in men. Men who perhaps care little for religion, which they leave to priests, women, and children, will nonetheless rally to the defense of their community when they feel it is threatened, like the Irish toughs who fought the Know-Nothings.

Knights were among the first to do respond to this appeal. They often behaved liked murderous thugs, but responded to the call to reconquer the Holy Land and defend Christianity against the Moors. The clergy had tried to control knightly violence, without much success, and decided to send them off somewhere far away to fight the infidel. At least it made life easier for the long-suffering peasantry at home. But the results of the Crusades were not good, because crusaders  too often forgot to behave like Christians as well as warriors.

Jenky is not really comparing Obama to Hitler and Stalin, but he is correct is that all three seemed to regard religion as something that occurred in the sanctuary, and only in the sanctuary. Stalin never tried to change the Orthodox liturgy or doctrine; therefore he claimed that the USSR had freedom of religion. Liberal secularists and totalitarians seem to share a common definition of religion, a definition with which Catholics and almost all Christians would disagree. Charitable works are not extraneous to the Gospel; they are part of the Gospel.

Could anticlericalism in the U.S. ever become as aggressive as it did in Europe?

I tend to doubt it, but constant government pressure for churches to change their attitudes might have the same effect – a soft totalitarianism, and I think this is what Jenky fears.

The bishops claim that they are being denied freedom of religion by being forced to pay for something they regard as immoral.

If a legitimate government decided to use general tax revenues to fund something that Catholics regarded as immoral, Catholics could not refuse to pay their taxes, because paying taxes to a legitimate government is a matter of justice. (pay taxes to whom taxes are due; render to Caesar what belongs to Caesar – and Caesar among other things funded idolatry). One could no more refuse to pay tax than one could refuse to pay a workman for work he had done because he was going to go out and get drunk or visit a brothel.

Bishop Gumbleton has been lauded by the Catholic left for his dissent from this He said:

Here in the U.S. we are in the season where Americans are told to pay their taxes. My work over four decades grew increasingly focused on changing the priorities of our government from being a leader in war to a leader of peace and justice. I know I share that conviction with you, and I honor the work of the National War Tax Resistance Coordinating Committee in its support for people who take the step of reversing those priorities with their own money.

We are in an age when we must actively oppose the violence that U.S. tax dollars promote with weapons around the world while stealing resources that could bring people out of poverty here at home. War tax refusal is an honest and bold response to the inequities of our day and a powerful way to show that we are not cowed by the unjust demands of our own government. Let us continue to work together in as many ways as we can to turn this country in a new direction.

So Gumbleton thinks that it is right to refuse to pay taxes that the government will use for an immoral purpose. He should a fortiori believe that a more direct involvement in immoral action, such as the direct or indirect payment of money through private, contractual means (health insurance) should be resisted.

But is being forced to support, through taxes or through direct payments, an action that one regards as immoral a denial of freedom of religion and a violation of the First Amendment guarantee of free exercise of relgion?

What is religion? For Jews and Moslems it is the whole of life. For Christians too, but in principle they recognize a distinction between God and Caesar, who can make legitimate demands.

The framers of the American Constitution lived in a society  that accepted uniform moral principles. By “religion” they meant that doctrines and practices and the internal government of various churches. The federal government would not require anyone to believe anything, nor would it interfere in the internal workings of the churches.

The federal government was limited in its scope; there was a common morality; taxes (almost all customs duties) were a matter of justice. Therefore it was unimaginable that there should be a conflict because the federal government would require anyone to do anything that his religion taught was immoral.

Conflicts did arise over the fugitive slave laws and later over the draft; and the federal government felt no qualms about forbidding polygamy.

The Catholic hierarchy, especially in Europe, finds statist solutions to social problems very congenial, probably because of the centuries in which Christ and Caesar worked hand in glove. However, in a society which lacks a moral consensus, an expanding state role will lead to more and more conflicts between the requirements of the state and the requirements of Christian morality. The bishops are unhappy that Catholic institutions are required to fund contraceptives fearing that this would be an opening to require Catholic institutions to fund or perform abortion and euthanasia,

I think they are correct that this is the intent. People who claim to see nothing wrong with abortion and euthanasia are made uneasy by the horror in which such actions are regarded by Catholics and other Christians. If Catholics could be persuaded, cajoled, pressured, or forced into accepting these actions, it would demonstrate that they really don’t regard them with horror. In Texas a Catholic hospital doesn’t perform abortions; it mere leases a section of the hospital to doctors who do.

It is unwise of a government to force citizens to act contrary to their deep moral conviction, convictions reinforced by religion. The draft therefore exempted conscientious objectors; the Amish are exempted from the school laws. But these are not precisely a matter of freedom of religion, but of legislative grace. The government sometimes exempts from religiously neutral laws those who have a strong religion-based objection to observing them.

This was the intent of the Religious Freedom Exemption Act of 1993, Wikepedia explains:

This  law reinstated the Sherbert Test, which was set forth by Sherbert v. Verner, and Wisconsin v. Yoder, mandating that strict scrutiny be used when determining if the Free Exercise Clause of the First Amendment to the United States Constitution, guaranteeing religious freedom, has been violated. In the Religious Freedom Restoration Act, Congress states in its findings that a religiously neutral law can burden a religion just as much as one that was intended to interfere with religion; therefore the Act states that the “Government shall not substantially burden a person’s exercise of religion even if the burden results from a rule of general applicability.” The law provided an exception if two conditions are both met. First, if the burden is necessary for the “furtherance of a compelling government interest.” Under strict scrutiny, a government interest is compelling when it is more than routine and does more than simply improve government efficiency. A compelling interest relates directly with core constitutional issues.^] The second condition is that the rule must be the least restrictive way in which to further the government interest. The law, in conjunction with President Bill Clinton’s Executive Order in 1996, provided more security for sacred sites for Native American religious rites.

Congress, if it deems contraception essential to health insurance, could fund it through general tax revenue rather than requiring religious institutions to pay for it directly or indirectly. Those who object to such finding could try to change the law, but they still (pace Bishop Gumbleton) would have to pay their taxes, just as pacifists have to pay their taxes.

But the ultimate intent, I think the bishops are correct in discerning, is not to make contraception covered by health insurance, but to compromise Catholic institutions.

Those Catholics who disagree with the teachings on contraception and are content to see the state force the Church into compromises that manifest a grudging accepting of contraception may find that future governments may force the Church to compromise on abortion, euthanasia, and other practices that they do not like.

Every year our friend Father Al Rose comes to bless our Easter food, and every year I read this homily to my children, and now to my grandchild. As the years pass, and I approach my own death, I hope to hear that Voice that called to Adam:

Something strange is happening — there is a great silence on earth today, a great silence and stillness. The whole earth keeps silence because the King is asleep. The earth trembled and is still because God has fallen asleep in the flesh and he has raised up all who have slept ever since the world began. God has died in the flesh and hell trembles with fear.

He has gone to search for our first parent, as for a lost sheep. Greatly desiring to visit those who live in darkness and in the shadow of death, he has gone to free from sorrow the captives Adam and Eve. The Lord approached them bearing the Cross, the weapon that had won him the victory. At the sight of him Adam, the first man he had created, struck his breast in terror and cried out to everyone: ‘My Lord be with you all.’ Christ answered him: ‘And with your spirit.’ He took him by the hand and raised him up, saying: ‘Awake, o sleeper, and rise from the dead, and Christ will give you light.’

I am your God, who for your sake have become your son. Out of love for you and your descendants I now by my own authority command all who are held in bondage to come forth, all who are in darkness to be enlightened, all who are sleeping to arise. I order you, O sleeper, to awake. I did not create you to be held a prisoner in Hell. Rise from the dead, for I am the life of the dead. Rise up, work of my hands, you who were created in my image. Rise, let us leave this place, for you are in Me and I in you; together we form one person and cannot be separated.

For your sake I, your God, became your son; I, the Lord, took the form of a slave; I, Whose home is above the heavens, descended to the earth and beneath the earth. For your sake, for the sake of man, I became like a man without help, free among the dead. For the sake of you, who left a garden, I was betrayed to the Jews in a garden, and I was crucified in a garden.

See on My Face the spittle I received in order to restore to you the life I once breathed into you. See there the marks of the blows I received in order to refashion your warped nature in my image. On My back see the marks of the scourging I endured to remove the burden of sin that weighs upon your back. See My hands, nailed firmly to a tree, for you who once wickedly stretched out your hand to a tree.

I slept on the cross and a sword pierced My side for you who slept in paradise and brought forth Eve from your side. My side has healed the pain in yours. My sleep will rouse you from your sleep in Hell. The sword that pierced Me has sheathed the sword that was turned against you.

Rise. Let us leave this place. The enemy led you out of the earthly paradise. I will not restore you to that paradise, but will enthrone you in heaven. I forbade you the tree that was only a symbol of life, but see, I who am life itself am now one with you. I appointed cherubim to guard you as slaves are guarded, but now I make them worship you as God. The throne formed by cherubim awaits you, its bearers swift and eager. The bridal chamber is adorned, the banquet is ready, the eternal dwelling places are prepared, the treasure houses of all good things lie open. The kingdom of heaven has been prepared for you from all eternity.

]]> http://www.podles.org/dialogue/anastasis-2-565.htm/feed http://www.podles.org/dialogue/the-harrowing-of-hell-564.htm http://www.podles.org/dialogue/the-harrowing-of-hell-564.htm#comments Fri, 06 Apr 2012 14:43:25 +0000 admin http://www.podles.org/dialogue/?p=564

The phrase in the Apostles Creed he descended into Hell has long troubled Christians. Commonweal has a blog on it with some interesting comments.

The general (although not universal) view is that Christ descended into the limbo of the patriarchs to free all the just who had died before the Crucifixion. Dante is in the tradition.

But Augustine somewhere refers to the common belief in the North African church of his time that by His descent and resurrection Christ emptied Hell.

Hans Urs von Balthasar makes the Descent the cornerstone of his theology, because he sees Christ’s descent into the hell of the damned as the uttermost proof of God’s love. Therefore he also sees the possibility of the hope of universal salvation.

Many disagree with von Balthasar, and I get the impression that some people would be disappointed if all were saved – they take the Elder Brother in the story of the Prodigal Son as their model.

Others think that all good people will be saved. But what about the bad? God’s heart reaches out to the worst sinner.

I don’t know the secrets of the universe. But God has said that He loves all that He has made, and He has promised that He will make all things new and wipe away the tears from every eye.

What does this mean? Can we hope that all will be saved, that sin and death will be utterly defeated and God will reign in and through love over every creature? I do not know. All I can do is look at the Cross and hope and trust in Him.

Scott Thybony writes about his journey around the Four Corners in search of a place that was once on a map: Burntwater. Within the story of that journey he tells the story of his other journeys, his search for the Hopi Sun Chief, his visit to a kiva during a kachina dance, his Good Friday pilgrimage from Santa Fe to Chimayo, his search for the spot in the Grand Canyon where his brother had died when the helicopter he was piloting was hit by a small plane.

Like the desert landscape, Burntwater deals with the elemental facts: love and suffering and survival and death. The desert is spirit haunted and is heartbreakingly beautiful – the beauty of the desert, like the beauty of life, will break your heart. Beauty is not for the weak; the most beautiful thing in the world is the Cross, the utter-self emptying of the Creator, who tasted death for all his creatures.

I don’t know the status of Thybony’s beliefs, but he senses that his life is being shaped so that it manifests hozho, the Navaho concept of beauty, but a beauty that incorporates suffering and death. I would call it Providence or the Holy Spirit, the sacred fire from which all reality springs and to which all returns. But the name is less important than the reality.

“Only later did I learn about the Navajo idea of beauty and how it moves through life like a wind. It’s not the beauty of surfaces alone, but an indwelling beauty that enfolds and completes, a life-restoring beauty. Only later did I learn about beauty and how it can be lost.”

The Hopi know that life is like this, the Navajo know it, the Penitentes know it – but so much of modern Christianity is sentimental and vacuous and superficial.

If you still need reading for Passion Week, I would recommend Burntwater.

Chimayó

In the blog, Terry Mattingly says

Consider, for example, this passage:

While Lori is known for his orthodoxy on doctrine and social issues, he was praised by many for taking a hard line in dealing with abusive priests, and in dealing with subsequent financial scandals that emerged.

Catch that? It’s all about that crucial word “while.”

Even though Lori is theologically orthodox, he was also willing to take a hard line against abusive priests who did everything they could to shatter both their vows and the church’s doctrines, on multiple levels. Why is it hard to believe that someone can be orthodox and, well, just?

Terry  points out that this implies an opposition, and that in my book Sacrilege, I, who am doctrinally and liturgically and politically conservative, am scathing in my comments on the abusers and their enables.

Most of the people who comment on the sexual abuse crisis try to adopt it to their narrative:

Liberals say that sexual abuse is the product of a patriarchal, hierarchal, obscurantist, hidebound corrupt Vatican-loyalists church that at least since Constantine’s day (or maybe St Paul’s) has gone astray from the feminist, sexual liberationist gospel that Jesus really proclaimed

Conservatives it is the result of amoral loosey-goosey feel-good liberalism which scarcely believes in God and has clown masses and doesn’t say the rosary and pals around with Democrats and that if we all just obeyed every jot and tittle of canon law all would be well.

Both try to fit the news to their version of what is happening in the Church. There is in fact evidence to support both sides: Maciel vs. Shanley, Law vs. Weakland.

What has happened is much more subtle. Abusers and their enablers are masters of manipulation: they know how to adopt their message to the narratives of their audience, narratives that have weaknesses.

It could be simple: “I am a dear old Irish priest who is kind and gentle with children and that is why I want to spend so much time alone with theme,”  “O, Isn’t Faaather wonderful!” (Geoghan)

Or it could be: “You need to overcome your sexual hang-ups, o 15 year old boy. Look in this book, see, theologians now say that there is nothing wrong with homosexual acts, and that they can be ways of growing in sexual maturity.” (Shanley and Gordon MacRae)

All the segments of the church should realize that their narratives, their ways of interpreting what has happened and is happening, can be exploited for destructive and immoral purposes, and not just in regard to sexual matters. Concern for the poor can be manipulated into toleration of leftist thuggery; concern for order can be manipulated into toleration of fascist thuggery.

We should always be aware of how we can be manipulated by those whose intentions are not good.