"Secularity, A Christian Truth" - Again

Thesis

Secularity is a Christian Truth. Josemaria Escriva, founder of Opus Dei, said: “Secularity is not a mask. It is something that belongs to the very essence of our way.” His successor said: “Secularity is not simply a juridical from of clothing. It is not some external garb, an outfit adapted to an already existing body, or one of those mass-produced ready-made suits, which people have to adapt their bodies to as best they can. Nor is it a kind of claim to autonomy as regards God, who calls us to total self-giving. Neither does it take as its model the worldliness or the hedonistic ways of certain contemporary cultures.”[1]

He goes on: “(Secularity) is a profound truth of our being Christians, a dimension of our existence which forms one and the same thing with the divine vocation” in baptism… Secularity is something Christian, a Christian way of being and living. In other words, … Christian faith and morality – cannot be judged from the starting-point of a secularity defined a priori. Rather, secularity should be judged and valued – or rather, discovered – from the starting-point …[of baptism], and what the Christian faith reveals to us about man, about the world and about our destiny.”

“Secularity is… a Christian way of being and living.” To understand that we must understand how modernity is a yearning for the infinite, or perhaps better, for the absolute. The tragedy of modernity is that it has bequeathed us with a dictatorship of relativism that morphs into skepticism and nihilism.

Modernity

Modernity has bequeathed us subjectivity and the self – the “I.” But the “I” was misdiagnosed since the 17th century as consciousness perched on nothing but itself and “disengaged” from the material, contingent and ontological hard world of “things.”

Joseph Ratzinger presents Christianity with the true conundrum. He says: “Here is the problem: Ought we to accept modernity in full, or in part? Is there a real contribution? Can this modern way of thinking be a contribution, or offer a contribution, or not? And if there is a contribution from the modern, critical way of thinking, in line with the Enlightenment, how can it be reconciled with the great intuitions and the great gifts of the faith”
“Or ought we, in the name of the faith, to reject modernity? You see? There always seems to be this dilemma: either we must reject the whole of the tradition, all the exegesis of the Fathers, relegate it to the library as historically unsustainable, or we must reject modernity.”[2]

The Challenge

His Response: Accept the “I,” but not as consciousness. Purify it by seeing its ontological disclosure in the act of Christian faith. “And I think that the gift, the light of the faith, must be dominant, but the light of the faith has also the capacity to take up into itself the true human lights, and for this reason the struggles over exegesis and the liturgy for me must be inserted into this great, let us call it epochal struggle over how Christianity, over how the Christian responds to modernity, to the challenge of modernity.”[3]

The Task

The key is to see through consciousness to the act that produces it, and the ontological grounding of that act. He says: “(F)aith is not a system of semi-knowledge, but an existential decision… (that) resembles more an expedition up a mountain than a quiet evening spent reading in front of the fire.”[4] He sees faith as the act of conversion of the ontological “I” that is not burdened further by the hegemony of substance. He insists that substance has been superseded as the supreme category of being which resonates rather as substance and relation (not as an accident), not unlike the development of quantum physics that engages with physical reality and experiences it as resonating as wave/particle.[5] Substance/relation resonate equally and validly as wave/particle. He forcefully remarks: “Boethius’s concept of person, which prevailed in Western philosophy, must be criticized as entirely insufficient. Remaining on the level of the Greek mind, Boethius defined `person’ as Naturae rationalis individual substantia, as the individual substance of a rational nature. One sees that the concept of person stands entirely on the level of substance. This cannot clarify anything about the Trinity or about Christology; it is an affirmation that remains on the level of the Greek mind which thinks in substantialist terms.” And he points out the meaning of person in Scripture is “not a substance that closes itself in itself, but the phenomenon of complete relativity, which is, of course, realized in its entirety only in the one who is God, but which indicates the direction of all personal being. The point is thus reached here at which… there is a transition from the doctrine of God into Christology and into anthropology.”[6]

Substances cannot self-determine. But subjects can, and do. “Faith is not a system of semi-knowledge” but a consciousness that comes from the moral act of self-transcendence.[7] John Paul II says: “It is urgent to rediscover and to set forth once more the authentic reality of the Christian faith, which is not simply a set of propositions to be accepted with intellectual assent. Rather, faith is a lived knowledge of Christ, a living remembrance of his commandments, and a truth to be lived out… Faith is a decision involving one’s whole existence.”[8] It is a consciousness of having become “another Christ” by sharing the relativity of the Divine Persons. Reflecting on that consciousness, one is able to conceptualize: “You are the Christ, the Son of the living God” (Mt. 16, 16).

Self Determination

Therefore, the purification of modernity and its entrance into absolute reality and truth, is the disclosure of the “I”-as-being in the moral action of Christian faith. That disclosure takes place by doing a phenomenology of Christian faith as moral conversion or self-determination.

Once we enter the dynamic of self-determination, we enter into the empirical experience of freedom and secularity. As mentioned, a substance, as defined as thing in itself, cannot determine itself in itself, i.e. as substance. It can do so, as defined, accidentally through faculties. But once we step into the realm of experience (and not abstraction) and try to do a phenomenology of the moral act of the total self gift – say, to martyrdom as in the case of Christian faith – we are into empirical experience of the “I” as being.

Christian faith is introduces us into an ontological horizon of the subject that mirrors the ontological reality of Word Become Flesh. As Christ is the total gift of Self to us in the Incarnation and on the Cross, so also the act of faith is total gift of self asked of us. Here the very “I” is asked to be given as gift. This could only be accounted for if there were such a dynamic as “self-determination” to get self-possession and self-governance to make the gift. It is asked and experienced in spousal love as well as in martyrdom as the final act of faith.

Self-determination is the most profound meaning of human freedom, because only where the self is subdued, possessed and governed can there be this imaging of the Trinitarian and Christological freedom of self-transcendence/self gift. For example, Veritatis Splendor #85 offers the Crucified Christ as “the authentic meaning of freedom; he lives it fully in the total gift of himself and calls his disciples to share in his freedom.”

Christology, as proposed in Gaudium et spes #22[9], is prototype and sacramental ground of anthropology. Christ is the meaning of man.

This grounding of the meaning of the autonomy of the human person is the state of the human will in Christ. Benedict forcefully insists on the completion of the Council of Chalcedon by the Council of Constantinople III. There, says Ratzinger, the human will of Jesus is not “parallel” to the divine will. Rather, it is “compenetrated” in that it is the human will of the very Son of God Himself. Therefore, the “Yes” of Christ to the Father is the one personal “Yes” of the Divine “I” with two ontologically distinct wills.[10] Wills don’t will, persons do.

Believer/Citizen

The act of faith in the believer is the mirror image of this Christology of “compenetration” and self-gift. As Christ becomes self-gift as man, this self-revelation calls forth the self from the believer. As Christ experiences the dignity of the divine Self in his humanity, so the believer, who makes a mirror image self-gift in faith, experiences a like dignity-cum-human rights. And so “When God reveals himself and faith accepts him, it is man who sees himself revealed to himself and confirmed in his being as man and person.”[11] We could add to this: “and as citizen.” That is, as the self becomes conscious of its dignity and rights as another Christ, it also becomes conscious of being citizen with sacramentally derivative dignity and human rights. Historically in the United States, after 150 years of lived Christian faith, we are witnesses and beneficiaries of these “self evident truths” “that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights.”

This consciousness that came from lived Christian faith became the very same evident truths that grounded the American Revolution and civic establishment. Benedict is sensitive to this reality of the United States as he remarked to the Roman Curia last December: “the modern age had also experienced developments. People came to realize that the American Revolution was offering a model of a modern State that differed from the theoretical model with radical tendencies that had emerged during the second phase of the French Revolution.”[12]

This insight that is at the root of American political philosophy was rendered conceptually explicit – a century later - by Leo XIII and enshrined in the major magisterial document “Dignitatis Humanae” of Vatican II. John Courtney Murray commented:

“I consider that by some manner of genius he (Leo XIII) put forth the principle of solution. It is contained in the special twist, so to speak, that he gave to the Gelasian doctrine. Consistently, he posits as the root of the necessity of an `orderly relation’ between the two powers the fact that `utriusque imperium est in eosdem,’ the rule of both is over the same one man. If therefore there is conflict and not harmony between them, the conflict is felt in the depths of the personal conscience, which knows itself to be obligated to both of the powers which are from God. Their harmony therefore is required by the unity and integrity of the human personality. The whole Gelasian doctrine is thus made to grow, from the standpoint of the finality of the diarchy [Church and State] , out of the essential datum, `civis idem et christianus,’ the same one man who is citizen and also a Christian. (underline mine).“(T)he Leonine starting point is not the Church nor are its perspectives social. Its starting point is the dualism within the human person, who is both child of God, member of the Church, and also member of the human community, citizen of a state – endowed in each capacity with a set of rights, which are of different origin but which must be organized into an organic whole. And the principle of organization is the primacy of the spiritu7al aspect of his nature, which implies the fundamental right to have the two powers to which he is subject in harmony with each other. The finality of this harmony is ot a social unity but a personal unity – the integrity of the human personality. It is only by preservation of this integrity that man is truly `free,’ empowered to be n fullness what he is – citizen and Christian. This freedom is a positive empowerment – the full faculty of obeying the law which he knows to have the primacy (the law of Christ as mediated by the Church), under due obedience to the other law to which he is also subject, the human law of the state. Unless these two obediences are in harmony, there is no freedom.

“My point is that this Leonine restatement of the Gelasian doctrine opens in principle the way to the solution of the ancient problem in its modern position – the manner of exercise of the indirect power, the manner of maintaining the primacy of the spiritual under respect for the autonomy of the temporal. [Read here, “secular”]. Leo XIII was in advance of Pius XII in placing `the whole man in his concrete and historical reality at the center of the whole social order in its two components, Church and state, whose dualism corresponds to the dualism in man himself and whose orderly relationship is the exigence of the unity of human personality…. In the developed conditions of modern political society they are not the medieval sacerdotium and imperium, nor yet the Throne and Altar of the confessional state. The are sacerdotium and civis idem et christianus.”[12]

Secularity, a Christian Truth

This autonomy of the humanity of Christ is the large meaning of secularity. Since one becomes another Christ by the radical gift of self that is Christian faith, the metaphysics of this self-gift – the believer as person - is also the ground of being secular citizen. And as faith is self-gift to Christ, citizenship is self-gift as service to Christ and neighbor.

This ability of the self to ontologically “flex” over itself shows two dimensions: creature and image of God. As image of God, the human person tends toward self-gift and the Absolute. As creature, the person is yet-to-be-actualized gift. As image of God, he/she is both sovereign and priest in subduing the self to serve and sanctify respectively. What emerges is the “theonomous self” (sovereign-priest) as citizen, defining center of the truly secular order.

Conclusion

Secularity stands as a personalist peak between Western secularism – be it capitalist or Marxist and Islamic theocracy. The latter two are reductionist objectifications of the political reality of the human person. Concerning the former, Benedict has said that we have not seen the last of Marxism[13] since we have not yet answered its fundamental question about the reality of the transcendent God. Left unanswered, it will return.

Concerning Islam, he said: “the attempt to graft on to Islamic societies what are termed western standards cut loose from their Christian foundations misunderstands the internal logic of Islam as well as the historical logic to which these western standards belong, and hence this attempt was condemned to fail in this form. The construction of society in Islam is theocratic, and therefore monist and not dualist; dualism, which is the precondition for freedom presupposes for its part the logic of the Christian thing [read; faith]. In practice this means that it is only where the duality of Church and state, of the sacral and the political authority, remains maintained in some form or another that the fundamental pre-condition exists for freedom. Where the Church itself becomes the state freedom becomes lost. But also when the Church is done away with as a public and publicly relevant authority, then too freedom is extinguished, because there the state once again claims completely for itself the justification of morality; in the profane post-Christian world it does not admittedly do this in the form of sacral authority but as an ideological authority – that means that the state becomes the party, and since there can no longer be any other authority of the same rank it once again becomes total itself. The ideological state is totalitarian; it must become ideological if it is not balanced by a free but publicly recognized authority of conscience. When this kind of duality does not exist the totalitarian system in unavoidable.

“With this the fundamental task of the Church’s political stance, as I understand it, has been defined; its aim must be to maintain this balance of a dual system as the foundation of freedom. Hence the Church must make claims and demands on public law and cannot simply retreat into the private sphere. Hence it must also take care on the other hand that Church and State remain separated and that belonging to the Church clearly retains its voluntary character.”[14]

(readjust footnotes from 7 on)

[1] Javier Echevarria, Letter, November 28, 1995, #20.
[2] “The Spiritual Vision of Pope Benedict XVI, `Let God’s Light Shine Forth,” ed. Robert Moynihan, Doubleday [2005] 34-35).
[3] Ibid.
[4] J. Ratzinger, “Faith in the Future,” Franciscan Herald Press (1971) 50.
[5]“Therein lies concealed a revolution in man’s view of the world: the undivided sway of thinking in terms of substance is ended; relation is discovered as an equally valid primordial mode of reality. It becomes possible to surmount what we call today `objectifying thought;’ a new plane of being comes into view;” J. Ratzinger, “Introduction to Christianity,” op. cit. 132.
[6] Joseph Ratzinger, “Concerning the Notion of Person in Theology,” Communio 17 (Fall, 1990) 445.
[7] John Paul II, “Veritatis Splendor,” #88.
[8] “In reality it is only in the mystery of the Word made flesh that the mystery of man truly becomes clear. For Adam, the first man, was a type of him who was to come, Christ the Lord, Christ the new Adam, in the very revelation of the mystery of the Father and of his love, fully reveals man to himself and brings to light his most high calling. ..He who is the `image of the invisible God’ (Col. 1, 15), is himself the perfect man who has restored in the children of Adam that likeness to God which had been disfigured ever since the first sin. Human nature, by the very fact that it was assumed, not absorbed, in him, has been raised in us also to a dignity beyond compare. For, by his Incarnation, he, the son of God, has in a certain way united himself with each man. He worked with human hands, he thought with a human mind. He acted with a human will, and with a human heart he loved. Born of the Virgin Mary, he has truly been made one of us, like to us in all things but sin.”
[9] The human will of Jesus Christ is maintains its autonomy in the presence of the divine will, with the autonomy of the divine Person of the Logos. Benedict says: “the assumption of the human will into the divine will does not destroy freedom, but on the contrary generates true liberty…. We are reminded firmly that there exists a specific will of the man Jesus that is not absorbed into the divine will. But this human will follows the divine will and thus becomes a single will with it, not, however, in a forced way but by way of freedom. The metaphysic duplicity of a human will and a divine will is not eliminated, but in the personal sphere, the area of freedom there is accomplished a fusion of the two, so than this becomes not one single natural will but one personal will;” Josef Ratzinger, “Journey Towards Easter,” Crossroad, (1987) 89.
[10] Andre Frossard and John Paul II, “Be Not Afraid,” St. Martin’s Press (1984) 67.
[11] Benedict XVI, “Interpreting Vatican II,” Origins, January 26, 2006; vol. 35; No. 32, 537.

[12] “The essential problem of our times, for Europe and for the world, is that although the fallacy of the Communist economy has been recognized, its moral and religious fallacy has not been addressed. The unresolved issue of Marxism lives on: the crumbling of man’s original uncertainties about God, himself, and the universe. The decline of a moral conscience grounded in absolute values is still our problem, and left untreated, it can lead to the self-destruction of the European conscience, which we must begin to consider as a real danger – above and beyond the decline predicted by Spengler;” Benedict XVI, “Europe and Its Discontents,” First Things, January 2006, 20.
[13] Joseph Ratzinger, “Theology and the Church’s Political Stance,” Church, Ecumenism and Politics, Crossroad (1987) 162-163.

Washington's Thanksgiving Proclamation - To God

A PROCLAMATION

WHEREAS it is the duty of all nations to acknowledge the providence of Almighty God, to obey His will, to be grateful for His benefits, and humbly to implore His protection and favour; and Whereas both Houses of Congress have, by their joint committee, requested me "to recommend to the people of the United States a DAY OF PUBLICK THANSGIVING and PRAYER, to be observed by acknowledging with grateful hearts the many and signal favors of Almighty God, especially by affording them an opportunity peaceably to establish a form of government for their safety and happiness:"

NOW THEREFORE, I do recommend and assign THURSDAY, the TWENTY-SIXTH DAY of NOVEMBER next, to be devoted by the people of these States to the service of that great and glorious Being who is the beneficent author of all the good that was, that is, or that will be; that we may then all unite in rendering unto Him our sincere and humble thanks for His kind care and protection of the people of this country previous to their becoming a nation; for the signal and manifold mercies and the favorable interpositions of His providence in the course and conclusion of the late war; for the great degree of tranquility, union, and plenty which we have since enjoyed;-- for the peaceable and rational manner in which we have been enable to establish Constitutions of government for our safety and happiness, and particularly the national one now lately instituted;-- for the civil and religious liberty with which we are blessed, and the means we have of acquiring and diffusing useful knowledge;-- and, in general, for all the great and various favours which He has been pleased to confer upon us.

And also, that we may then unite in most humbly offering our prayers and supplications to the great Lord and Ruler of Nations and beseech Him to pardon our national and other transgressions;-- to enable us all, whether in publick or private stations, to perform our several and relative duties properly and punctually; to render our National Government a blessing to all the people by constantly being a Government of wife, tuft, and constitutional laws, discretely and faithfully executed and obeyed; to protect and guide all sovereigns and nations (especially such as have shewn kindness unto us); and to bless them with good governments, peace, and concord; to promote the knowledge and practice of true religion and virtue, and the increase of science among them and us; and, generally to grant unto all mankind such a degree of temporal prosperity as he alone knows to be best.

GIVEN under my hand, at the city of New-York, the third day of October, in the year of our Lord, one thousand seven hundred and eighty-nine.

(signed) G. Washington

Source: The Massachusetts Centinel, Wednesday, October 14, 1789

Christ the King 2006

What is Kingship in Christ and therefore in us? To serve!

“One element seems to stand out in the midst of all these riches: the sharing in Christ’s kingly mission, that is to say the fact of rediscovering in oneself and others the special dignity of our vocation that can be described as `kingship.’ This dignity is expressed in readiness to serve, in keeping with the example of Christ, who came not to be served but to serve.’ If, in the light of this attitude of Christ’s, `being a king’ is truly possible only by `being a servant,’ then `being a servant’ also demands so much spiritual maturity that it must really be described as `being a king.’ In order to be able to serve others worthily and effectively we must be able to master ourselves, possess the virtues that make this mastery possible. Our sharing in Christ’s kingly mission – His `kingly function’ (munus) – closely lined with every sphere of both Christian and human morality…. It is precisely the principle of the `kingly service’ that imposes on each one of us, in imitation of Christ’s example, the duty to demand of himself exactly what we have been called to, what we have personally obliged ourselves to by God’s grace, in order to respond to our vocation.”[1]

The Dynamic of Kingship must first be exercised in the self as "self-mastery.” This is Kingship. It is also freedom. Only he who can master self owns self, and is therefore capable of the gift of self, since you can’t give what you don’t have. The following is the anthropological dynamic of John Paul II:

“In Vatican II's Pastoral Constitution Gaudium et Spes, we read that "the human being, who is the only creature on earth that God willed for itself, cannot fully find himself or herself except through a disinterested gift of himself or herself" (24)….

As said elsewhere on the blog, "in the experience of self-determination the human person stands revealed before us as a distinctive structure of self-possession and self-governance. Neither the one nor the other, however, implies being closed in on oneself. On the contrary, both self-possession and self-governance imply a special disposition to make a "gift of oneself," and this a "disinterested" gift. Only if one possesses oneself can one give oneself and do this in a disinterested way. And only if one governs oneself can one make a gift of oneself, and this again a disinterested gift. The problematic of disinterestedness certainly deserves a separate analysis, which it is not my intention to present here. An understanding of the person in categories of gift, which the teaching of Vatican II reemphasizes, seems to reach even more deeply into those dimensions brought to light by the foregoing analysis. Such an understanding seems to disclose even more fully the personal structure of self-determination.

Only if one can determine oneself—as I attempted to show earlier—can one also become a gift for others. The Council's statement that "the human being...cannot fully find himself or herself except through a disinterested gift of himself or herself" allows us to conclude that it is precisely when one becomes a gift for others that one most fully becomes oneself. This "law of the gift," if it may be so designated, is inscribed deep within the dynamic structure of the person. The text of Vatican II certainly draws its inspiration from revelation, in the light of which it paints this portrait of the human being as a person. One could say that this is a portrait in which the person is depicted as a being willed by God "for itself" and, at the same time, as a being turned "toward" others. This relational portrait of the person, however, necessarily presupposes the immanent (and indirectly "substantial") portrait that unfolds before us from an analysis of the personal structure of self-determination….

I have attempted, however, even in this short presentation, to stress the very real need for a confrontation of the metaphysical view of the person that we find in St. Thomas and in the traditions of Thomistic philosophy with the comprehensive experience of the human being. Such a confrontation will throw more light on the cognitive sources from which the Angelic Doctor derived his metaphysical view. The full richness of those sources will then become visible. At the same time, perhaps we will better be able to perceive points of possible convergence with contemporary thought, as well as points of irrevocable divergence from it in the interests of the truth about reality.”[2]

In a word, one can become ipse Christus-Rex by the exercise of self-mastery whereby one exercises kingship over self and therefore freedom: “The Crucified Christ reveals the authentic meaning of freedom; he lives it fully in the total gift of himself and calls his disciples to share I his freedom."[3] It is the same dynamic that is the mediation of priesthood: mediation by self-mastery, self-possession, self-gift.

1) Christ is King: “`Art thou the king of the Jews?’” Jesus answered, `Dost thou say this of thyself, or have others told thee of me?’ Pilate answered, `Am I a Jew? Thy own people and the chief priests have delivered thee to me. What hast thou done?’ Jesus answered, `My kingdom is not of this world. If my kingdom were of this world, my followers would have fought that I might not be delivered to the Jews. But, as it is, my kingdom is not from here.’ Pilate therefore said to him, `Thou are then a king?’ Jesus answered, `Thou sayest it; I am a king. This is why I was born and why I have come into the world, to bear witness to the truth. Everyone who is of the truth hears my voice.’ Pilate said to him, `What is truth?’” (Jn. 18, 34-38).

2) His Kingdom is neither here nor there but within: “Then if anyone say to you, `Behold, here is the Christ,’ or, `There he is,’ do not believe it. For false Christs and false prophets will arise and will show great signs and wonders, so as to lead astray, if possible, even the elect. Behold, I have told it to you beforehand. If therefore they say to you, `Behold, he is in the desert,’ do not go forth; `Behold, he is in the inner chambers,’ do not believe it. For as the lightning comes forth from the east and shines even to the west, so also will the coming of the Son of Man be. Wherever the body is, there will the eagles be gathered together” (Mt. 24, 23-28).

3) Origen: “The kingdom of God, in the words of our Lord and Savor, does not come for all to see; nor shall they say: Behold, here it is, or behold, there it is; but the kingdom of God is within us, for the word of God is very near, in our mouth and in our heart. Thus it is clear that he who prays for the coming of God’s kingdom prays rightly to have it within himself, that there it may grow and bear fruit and become perfect. For God reigns in each of his holy ones. Anyone who is holy obeys the spiritual laws of God, who dwells in him as in a well-ordered city. The Father is present in the perfect soul, and with him Christ reigns, according to the words: We shall come to him and make our home with him.
“Thus the kingdom of God is within us, as we continue to make progress, will reach its highest point when the Apostle’s words are fulfilled, and Christ, having subjected all his enemies to himself, will hand over his kingdom to God the Father, that God may be all in all. Therefore, let us pray unceasingly with that disposition of soul which the Word may make divine, saying to our Father who is in heaven: Hallowed be your name; you kingdom come….
“Therefore, if we wish God to reign in us, in no way should sin reign in our mortal body; rather we should mortify our members which are upon the earth and bear fruit in the Spirit. There should be in us a kind of spiritual paradise where God may walk and be our sole ruler with his Christ. In us the Lord will sit at the right hand of that spiritual power which we wish to receive. And he will sit there until all his enemies who are within us become his footstool, and every principality, power and virtue in us is cast out.”[4]

4) St. Josemaria Escriva: August 7, 19031: “Et si exaltatus fuero a terra, omnia traham ad meipsum” (Jn. 12, 32): “Y el concept preciso: no es en el sentido en que lo dice la Escritura: te lo digo en el sentido de que me pongais en lo alto de todas las actividades humanas; que, en todos los lugares del mundo,haya cristianos, con una dedicacion personally liberrima, que sean otros Cristos.” The point: Christ reigns in all human activities by the conversion of each person – by the gift of self in the exercise of ordinary work – to become “another Christ.”

5) The Kingdom of God:

a) The Kingdom is intimately connected with the Person of Jesus Christ.

“Christ not only proclaimed the kingdom, but in him the kingdom itself became present and was fulfilled. This happened not only through his words and his deeds: `Above all… the kingdom is made manifest in the very person of Christ, Son of God and Son of Man, who came `to serve and to give his life as a ransom for many’ (Mk. 10, 45).’ The kingdom of God is not a concept, a doctrine, or a program subject to free interpretation, but it is before all else a person with the face and name of Jesus of Nazareth, the image of the invisible God. If the kingdom is separated from Jesus, it is no longer the kingdom of God which he revealed. The result is a distortion of the meaning of the kingdom, which runs the risk of being transformed into purely human or ideological goal, and a distortion of the identity of Christ, who no longer appears as the Lord to whom everything must one day be subjected (cf. 1 Cor. 15, 27).”[5]

b) Jesus Christ alone is not the Kingdom, but without Him, there is no Kingdom. “The mystery of the holy Church is manifest in its very foundation. The Lord Jesus set it on its course by preaching the Good News, that is, the coming of the Kingdom of God, which, for centuries, had been promised in the Scriptures: `The time is fulfilled, and the kingdom of God is at hand.’ In the word in the works, and in the presence of Christ, this kingdom was clearly open to the view of men. The Word of the Lord is compared to a seed which is sown in a field; those who hear the Word with faith and become part of the little flock of Christ, have received the Kingdom itself. The, by its own power the seed sprouts and grows until harvest time. The Miracles of Jesus also confirm that the Kingdom has already arrived on earth: `If I cast out devils by the finger of God, then the kingdom of God has come upon you.’ Before all things, however, the Kingdom is clearly visible in the very Person of Christ, the Son of God and the Son of Man, who came `to serve and to give His life as a ransom for many…. From this source the Church, equipped with the gifts of its Founder and faithfully guarding His precepts of charity, humility and self-sacrifice, receives the mission to proclaim and to spread among all peoles the Kingdom of Christ and of God and to be, on earth, the initial budding forth of that kingdom. While it slowly grows, the Church strains toward the completed Kingdom and, with al its strength, hoes and desires to be united in glory with its King’’[6]

c) The Church is not the Kingdom, but the Body of Christ who is the Head. Christ, alone, is not the Kingdom, and therefore the Church, alone, is not the Kingdom as the Body of the Whole Christ, of which the Person of Christ is the Head. However, she is the sacrament of the Kingdom.

“Likewise, one may not separate the kingdom from the Church. It is true that the Church is not an end unto herself, since she is ordered toward the kingdom of God of which she is the seed, sign and instrument. Yet, while remaining distinct from Christ and the kingdom, the Church is indissolubly united to both. Christ endowed the Church, his body, with the fullness of the benefits and means of salvation. The Holy Spirit dwells in her, enlivens her with his gifts and charisms, sanctifies, guides and constantly renews her. The result is a unique and special relationship which, while not excluding the action of Christ and the Spirit outside the Church’s visible boundaries, confers upon her a specific and necessary role; hence the Church’s special connection with the kingdom of God and of Christ, which she has `the mission of announcing and inaugurating among all peoples.”[7]

The Third Luminous Mystery: The Proclamation of the Kingdom: (the call to conversion).

“The Church is effectively and concretely at the service of the kingdom. This is seen especially I her preaching, which is a call to conversion. Preaching constitutes the Church’s first and fundamental way of serving the coming of the kingdom in individuals and in human society. Eschatological salvation begins even now in newness of life in Christ: `To all who believed in him, who believed in his name, he have power to become children of God’ (Jn. 1, 12).
“The Church then serves the kingdom by establishing communities and founding new particular churches, and by guiding them to mature faith and charity in openness toward others, in service to individuals and society, and in understanding and esteem for human institutions.
“The Church serves the kingdom by spreading throughout the world the `gospel values’ which are an expression of the kingdom and which help people to accept God’s plan. It is true that the inchoate reality of the kingdom can also be found beyond the confines of the Church among peoples everywhere, to the extent that they live `gospel values’ and are open to the working of the Spirit who breathes when and where he wills (cf. Jn. 3, 8). But it must immediately be added that this temporal dimension of the kingdom remains incomplete unless it is related to the kingdom of Christ present in the Church and straining towards eschatological fullness.”[8]

Twelfth Station of the Cross of Cardinal Ratzinger:

“In Greek and Latin, the two international languages of the time, and in Hebrew, the language of the Chosen People, a sign stood above the Cross of Jesus, indicating who he was: the King of the Jews, the promised Son of David. Pilate, the unjust judge, became a prophet despite himself. The kingship of Jesus was proclaimed before all the world. Jesus himself had not accepted the title "Messiah", because it would have suggested a mistaken, human idea of power and deliverance. Yet now the title can remain publicly displayed above the Crucified Christ. He is indeed the king of the world. Now he is truly "lifted up". In sinking to the depths he rose to the heights. Now he has radically fulfilled the commandment of love, he has completed the offering of himself, and in this way he is now the revelation of the true God, the God who is love. Now we know who God is. Now we know what true kingship is. Jesus prays Psalm 22, which begins with the words: "My God, my God, why have you forsaken me?" (Ps 22:2). He takes to himself the whole suffering people of Israel, all of suffering humanity, the drama of God's darkness, and he makes God present in the very place where he seems definitively vanquished and absent. The Cross of Jesus is a cosmic event. The world is darkened, when the Son of God is given up to death. The earth trembles. And on the Cross, the Church of the Gentiles is born. The Roman centurion understands this, and acknowledges Jesus as the Son of God. From the Cross he triumphs ­ ever anew.”

Overview

(From “Dominus Iesus:” V. The Church: Kingdom of God and Kingdom of Christ)

“The mission of the Church is `to proclaim and establish among all peoples the kingdom of Christ and of God, and she is on earth, the seed and the beginning of that kingdom.’ On the one hand, the Church is `a sacrament – that is, sign and instrument of intimate union with God and of unity of the entire human race.’ She is therefore the sign and instrument of the kingdom; she is called to announce and to establish the kingdom. On the other hand, the Church is the `people gathered by the unity of the Father, the Son and the Holy Spirit;’ she is therefore `the kingdom of Christ already present in mystery’ and constitutes it seed and beginning. The kingdom of God, in fact, has an eschatological dimension: it is a reality presenting time, but its full realization will arrive only with the completion or fulfillment of history.

“The meaning of the expressions kingdom of heaven, kingdom of God, and kingdom of Christ in Sacred Scripture and the Fathers of the Church, as well as in the documents of the Magisterium is not always exactly the same, nor is their relationship to the Church, which is a mystery that cannot be totally contained by a human concept. Therefore, there can be various theological explanations of these terms. However, none of these possible explanations can deny or empty in any way the intimate connection between Christ, the kingdom, and the Church. In fact, the kingdom of God which we know from revelation `cannot be detached either from Christ or from the Church… If the kingdom is separated from Jesus, it is no longer the kingdom of God which he revealed. The result is a distortion of the meaning of the kingdom, which runs the risk of being transformed into a purely human or ideological goal and a distortion of the identity of Christ, who no longer appears as the Lord to whom everything must one day be subjected (cf. 1 Cor. 15, 27). Likewise, one may not separate the kingdom from the Church. It is true that the Church is not an end unto herself, since she is ordered toward the kingdom of God, of which she is the seed, sign and instrument. Yet, while remaining distinct from Christ and the kingdom, the Church is indissolubly united to both.’

“19. To state the inseparable relationship between Christ and the kingdom is to overlook the fact that the kingdom of God – even if considered in its historical phase – is not identified with the Church in her visible and social reality. In fact, `the action of Christ and the Spirit outside the Church’s visible boundaries’ must not be excluded. Therefore, one must also bear in mind that `the kingdom is the concern of everyone: individuals, society and the world. Working for the kingdom means acknowledging and promoting God’s activity, which is present in human history and transforms it. Building the kingdom means working for liberation from evil in all its forms. In a word, the kingdom of God is the manifestation and the realization of God’s plan of salvation in all its fullness.’

“In considering the relationship between the kingdom of God, the kingdom of Christ, and the Church, it is necessary to avoid one-sided accentuations, as is the case with those `conceptions which deliberately emphasize the kingdom and which describe themselves as `kingdom centered.’ They stress the image of a Church which is not concerned about herself, but which is totally concerned with bearing witness to and serving the kingdom. It is a `Church for others,’ just as Christ is the `man for others’… Together with positive aspects, these conceptions often reveal negative aspects as well. First, they are silent about Christ: the kingdom of which they speak is `theocentrically’ based, since, according to them, Christ cannot be understood by those who lack Christian faith, whereas different peoples, cultures, and religions are capable of finding common ground n the one divine reality, by whatever name it is called. For the same reason, they put great stress on the mystery of creation, which is reflected in the diversity of cultures and beliefs, but they keep silent about the mystery of redemption. Furthermore, the kingdom, as they understand it, ends up either leaving very little room for the Church or undervaluing the Church in reaction to a presumed `ecclesiocentrism’ of the past and because they consider the Church herself only a sign, for that matter a sing not without ambiguity.’ These theses are contrary to Catholic faith because they deny the unicity of the relationship which Christ and the Church have with the kingdom of God.”[9]

The Kingdom of Christ Within and the Secular, Civic Order

The topic of Christ the King cuts much closer to the notion of secularity than to the notion of Christendom. Christianity, and concretely Catholicism, is not a “religion of the Book” as an ideological and conceptual character that imposes itself politically. The kingship of Christ that takes place interiorly as self-mastery, self-gift will tend to produce a consciousness of the dignity of the human person and human rights that is the ground and foundation of democratic secularity.

This seems to be the very phenomenon that takes place in the text of Genesis where Adam, in naming the animals, which is an exercise of mastery and kingship, crosses the threshold of being an individual to the consciousness of being “alone” in that he had entered into the experience of subjectivity. To be subject, to be king and to be alone in a world of objects is all of one piece. Hence, by exercising this kingship of self-mastery in the act of obedience that is faith will produce a civic, secular political order rather than theocracy.

[1] Redemptor Hominis #21.
[2] Karol Wojtyla, “The Personal Structure of Self-Determination “ in Person and Community Lang (1993) 193-195.This paper was presented by then-Cardinal Karol Wojtyla at an international conference on St. Thomas Aquinas in Rome and Naples, 17-24 April 1974.
[3] Veritatis Splendor #85.
[4] Origen, “On Prayer” Cap. 25; PG 11, 495-499.
[5] Redemptor Missio, #19.
[6] Lumen Gentium # 5.
[7] Redemptoris Missio #19.
[8] Ibid. #20.
[9] Dominus Iesus #18-19.

Why Give Thanks on Thanksgiving? - November 2006

What should we be giving thanks for on Thanksgiving? I suggest what seems a subtlety in epistemology but... : the self-gift to Christ, which generates an anthropology of the dignity and rights of the "subject" - the "I" -, creates the political dualism, and therefore separation of Church and State. This dualism is unique to the United States of America. John Courtney Murray, S.J. affirmed: "the United States of America (is) the first state in the history of the world that was established by the uniquely revolutionary means of a formal constitutional consent" ["Contemporary Orientations of Catholic Thought on Church and State in the Light of History," Theological Studies Vol X, June 1949, #2, 187.] It is therefore the first truly "secular" state that emerged from the lived Christian faith of 150 years of Pilgrim experience.

In Islamic experience and culture, since God is so transcendent that there can be no giving of self to an unfindable Self, that dualism is impossible. Then-Cardinal Ratzinger remarked: "The construction of society in Islam is theocratic, and therefore monist and not dualist; dualism, which is the precondition for freedom, presupposes for its part the logic of the Christian thing.

"In practice this means that it is only where the duality of Church and state, of the sacral and the political authority, remains maintained in some form or another that the fundamental pre-condition exists for freedom. Where the Church itself becomes the state freedom becomes lost. But also when the Church done away with as a public and publicly relevant authority, then too freedom is extinguished, because there the state once again claims completely for itself the justification of morality; in the profane post-Christian world it does not admittedly do this in the form of sacral authority but as an ideological authority – that means that the state becomes the party, and since there can no longer be any other authority of the same rank it once again becomes total itself. The ideological state is totalitarian; it must become ideological if it is not balanced by a free but publicly recognized authority of conscience. When this kind of duality does not exist the totalitarian system in unavoidable.

“With this the fundamental task of the Church’s political stance, as I understand it, has been defined; its aim must be to maintain this balance of a dual system as the foundation of freedom. Hence the Church must make claims and demands on public law and cannot simply retreat into the private sphere. Hence it must also take care on the other hand that Church and state remain separated and that belonging to the Church clearly retains its voluntary character.”[1]
[1] J. Ratzinger, “Church, Ecumenism and Politics – Theology and the Church’s Political Stance,” Crossroad (1988) 162-163.

Theological Epistemology Becomes Political Epistemology

(from the July 11 blog above)

But in the very nature of this epistemology, by the very act of entering into the prayer of Christ, the believer transcends himself as Christ is Self-transcendence by his very divinity. Hence, by experiencing himself to act like Christ, and therefore be Christ (since the action of relating to the Father is His very Person as Logos), the believer also experiences himself. And so, in the very act in which one experiences Christ, one experiences self. John Paul II said it this way: “When God reveals himself and faith accepts him, it is man who sees himself revealed to himself and confirmed in his being as man and person.”[11] We could add to this: “and as citizen.” And as this revelation is experiential of the self about the self, it is consciousness before it is reflectively intentional and therefore conceptual. This consciousness is the self as inviolate dignity and subject of rights and responsibilities, in a word, the Declaration of Independence. This consciousness that accrues to faith is the very consciousness that is the basis of American, and all, democratic citizenship. As Benedict said on December 22, 2005: “the modern age had also experienced developments. People came to realize that the American Revolution was offering a model of a modern State that differed from the theoretical model with radical tendencies that had emerged during the second phase of the French Revolution.”This insight that is at the root of American political philosophy was rendered conceptually explicit by Leo XIII and enshrined in the major magisterial document Dignitatis Humanae of Vatican II. I repeat the quote from John Courtney Murray, who was the “first scribe” of the third and fourth schemas of that document:“I consider that by some manner of genius he (Leo XIII) put forth the principle of solution. It is contained in the special twist, so to speak, that he gave to the Gelasian doctrine. Consistently, he posits as the root of the necessity of an `orderly relation’ between the two powers the fact that `utriusque imperium est in eosdem,’ the rule of both is over the same one man. If therefore there is conflict and not harmony between them, the conflict is felt in the depths of the personal conscience, which knows itself to be obligated to both of the powers which are from God. Their harmony therefore is required by the unity and integrity of the human personality. The whole Gelasian doctrine is thus made to grow, from the standpoint of the finality of the diarchy [Church and State] , out of the essential datum, `civis idem et christianus,’ the same one man who is citizen and also a Christian. (underline mine).“(T)he Leonine starting point is not the Church nor are its perspectives social. Its starting point is the dualism within the human person, who is both child of God, member of the Church, and also member of the human community, citizen of a state – endowed in each capacity with a set of rights, which are of different origin but which must be organized into an organic whole. And the principle of organization is the primacy of the spiritu7al aspect of his nature, which implies the fundamental right to have the two powers to which he is subject in harmony with each other. The finality of this harmony is ot a social unity but a personal unity – the integrity of the human personality. It is only by preservation of this integrity that man is truly `free,’ empowered to be n fullness what he is – citizen and Christian. This freedom is a positive empowerment – the full faculty of obeying the law which he knows to have the primacy (the law of Christ as mediated by the Church), under due obedience to the other law to which he is also subject, the human law of the state. Unless these two obediences are in harmony, there is no freedom.“My point is that this Leonine restatement of the Gelasian doctrine opens in principle the way to the solution of the ancient problem in its modern position – the manner of exercise of the indirect power, the manner of maintaining the primacy of the spiritual under respect for the autonomy of the temporal. [Read here, “secular”]. Leo XIII was in advance of Pius XII in placing `the whole man in his concrete and historical reality at the center of the whole social order in its two components, Church and state, whose dualism corresponds to the dualism in man himself and whose orderly relationship is the exigence of the unity of human personality…. In the developed conditions of modern political society they are not the medieval sacerdotium and imperium, nor yet the Throne and Altar of the confessional state. The are sacerdotium and civis idem et christianus.”[12]

Leo XIII’s “Civis idem et Christianus” Becomes “Dignitatis Humanae”

A Short History

The Epistemological Development from the "archaic" principle, “Truth Alone Has Rights” to the ontologically subjective, "Persons Have Rights." John T. Noonan, Jr. writes: “John XXIII commissioned an encyclical, Pacem in terries, which he issued in April 1963.” The scribe of the encyclical was Pietro Pavan, a thinker who was “capable of reading and taking in the American sources, of citing the Virginia Statute on Religious Freedom as the first of its kind, and of distinguishing the American concepts from those developed by the French Revolution. Over thirty times the encyclical used the phrase `the dignity of the human person’ – the phrase that was in the end to introduce the document on religious liberty. Without Pacem in terris – so Pavan later observed - `it would have been difficult to come to that conclusion [on religious liberty] to which the Council came.’”[13]“Almost simultaneously with the issue of Pacem in Terris came an official notice from Rome: Murray was designated an expert of the Council and invited to participate in its proceedings. Murray ascribed the invitation to Cardinal Spellman, who, as he put it, `pried me in.’”[14] “In November 1963, as the second session of the Council was under way, Murray appeared before the Theological Commission. The issue was whether the text prepared by the Secretariat for Christian Unity should be reviewed by another committee…. The chairman of the Theological Commission was Cardinal Ottaviani. Murray rose to speak, introduced by John Wright, bishop of Pittsburgh. `Who is that man?’ asked Ottaviana, nearly blind and not hearing the introduction. `An expert, eminence,’ he was informed. The debate went on for two and one-half hours. At its conclusion Ottaviani’s own commission voted 18 to 5 in favor of the Secretariat’s text proceeding without further review.”[15]

The Secretariat’s text, however, was still not on the Council’s agenda. Murray wrote the presentation of the text to the Council that was delivered by Bishop De Smedt. It contained four reasons for a document by the Council: (1) The reason of Truth (only by forming and following conscience could a human person obtain the end of human life, union with God; (2) The reason of defense (atheistic materialists sought to deprive human persons of this liberty. The believers needed to assert it for all. (3) The reason of peaceful coexistence (In today’s world there were no societies so closed that their actions of religious discrimination did not have repercussions elsewhere; (4) The reason of ecumenism (Catholics were suspect of defending religious freedom as long as they were a minority; but when a majority, they would want to deny it to others). The presentation goes on to assert that religious liberty does not mean “indifferentism,” nor the relativism of truth, nor contentment with uncertainty with religious truth.“What did the term [religious freedom] mean? Two things: positively, `the right of the human person to the free exercise of religion according to the dictate of the person’s conscience;’ negatively, immunity from all external coercion in such matters. Affirming the existence of religious truth and the duty to seek it, the report asked the Council to assert the inviolability of the person in relationship to God.” [16] Noonan then asked “Could such a declaration be controversial? To the curia conservatives it was not only controversial but unthinkable.”[17]Murray then wrote a 112 page essay for the American Hierarchy entitled: “The Problem of Religious Freedom” in which he presented the two epistemological views that were competing at this critical point of the Council.The two views are those we have seen above: classicism and historical consciousness. The one belongs to the epistemology of sensible experience and abstraction that renders reality to be “object.” Noonan summarizes the “First View:” “(It) was guilty of `Fixism,’ the doctrine that the Church’s understanding could not develop; `Archaism,’ a rejection of the present age and a return to the past; and `Misplaced Abstractness,’ insistence on an ideal where there were only concrete conditions.”[18] With regard to the “Second View,” Murray began: “The problematic of religious freedom is concrete and historical. Its construction begins with a scrutiny of the `signs of the times.’ Two are decisive. The first is the growth of man’s personal consciousness; the second is the growth of man’s political consciousness… Man’s sense of personal freedom is allied with a demand for political and social freedom, that is, freedom from social or legal restraint and constraint, except in so far as these are necessary, and freedom for responsible personal decision and action in society. Freedom, not force, is the dynamism of personal and social progress.“The common consciousness of men today considers the demand for personal, social, and political freedom to be an exigency that rises from the depths of the human person. It is the expression of a sense of right approved by reason. It is therefore a demand of natural law in the present moment of history.” Hence, because of this “growth of the personal and political consciousness, the state of the ancient question concerning public care of religion has been altered. Today the question is not to be argued in medieval or post-Reformation or nineteenth-century terms, scil., the exclusive rights of truth and legal tolerance or intolerance, as the case may be, of religious dissidence. The terms of the argument today are, quite simply, religious freedom. The question is to know, first, what religious freedom means in the common consciousness today, and second, why religious freedom, in the sense of the common consciousness is to receive the authoritative approval of the Church.“The Second View addresses itself to the question in its new historical and doctrinal state.”[19]

The Key to "Secularity": The Human Person as “Theonomous[20]-Self-Determining-Freedom”

Murray reaches the key to discernment with regard to the two views when he says: “Two lines of argument converge to establish the relation between freedom of conscience and freedom of religious expression. First, a true metaphysic of the human person affirms that human existence is essentially social-historical existence. It is not permitted to introduce a dichotomy into man, to separate his personal-interior existence and his social-historical. Hence it is not permitted to recognize freedom of conscience and to deny freedom of religious expression. Both freedoms are given in the same one instance; they are coequal and coordinate, inseparable, equally constitutive of the dignity and integrity of man. A dichotomy between them would rest on a false metaphysic of the human person.” Hence “(it) is not within the competence of the public powers to consign churches to the sacristy, or to exterminate religious opinions from the public domain. The Erastian doctrine that the public powers are the arbiter of religious truth and the architect of church polity is not only contrary to Christian doctrine but also contrary to political principle. Civil law, which has no power to coerce the religious conscience, has no power to coerce the religious conscience, has not power to coerce the social expressions of the religious conscience. To bring force to bear, in restraint of freedom of religious expression is to bring force to bear on conscience itself, in restraint of its freedom.” [21]

Secularity in Magisterial Teaching

The key to the entire issue is the fact that the human person as historical and existential “I” is also the truth of Being. Freedom and truth are not separate in the “I” but one. Freedom is not truthless, and the fullness of truth is not an abstraction. The truth of freedom is the existential and historical gift of the self as image of the divine Persons. The “I” given is both truth-as-consciousness and freedom. The separation of freedom and truth after the first sin is overcome in the self-gift of Christ on the Cross. John Paul enunciates: “The Crucified Christ reveals the authentic meaning of freedom; he lives it fully in the total gift of himself and calls his disciples to share in his freedom.”[22]“Secularity” is presented as “dimension” and “characteristic” in Christifideles laici #15. “Certainly all the members of the Church are sharers in this secular dimension but in different ways. In particular the sharing of the lay faithful has its own manner of realization and function, which, according to the Council, is `properly and particularly’ theirs. Such manner is designated with the expression `secular character’" (bold mine). “In fact the Council, in describing the lay faithful’s situation in the secular world, points to it above all, as the place in which they receive their call from God: `There they are called by God.’ This `place’ is treated and presented in dynamic terms: the lay faithful `live in the world, that is, in every one of the secular professions and occupations. They live in the ordinary circumstances of family and social life, from which the very fabric of their existence is woven.’ They are persons who live an ordinary life in the world: they study, they work, they form relationships as friends, professionals, members of society, cultures, etc. However, the Council considers their condition not simply an external and environmental framework, but as a reality destined to find in Jesus Christ the fullness of its meaning…." “The `world’ thus becomes the place and the means for the lay faithful to fulfill their Christian vocation because the world itself is destined to glorify God the Father in Christ…. The lay faithful, in fact, `are called by God so that they, led by the spirit of the Gospel, might contribute to the sanctification of the world, as from within like leaven, by fulfilling their own particular duties….” Thus for the lay faithful, to be present and active in the world is not only an anthropological and sociological reality, but in a specific way, a theological and ecclesiological reality as well…“Precisely with this in mind the Synod Fathers said: `The secular character of the lay faithful is not therefore to be defined only in a sociological sense, but most especially in a theological sense. The term secular must be understood in light of the act of God the creator and redeemer, who has handed over the world to women and men, so that they may participate in the work of creation, free from the influence of sin and sanctify themselves in marriage or the celibate life, in a family, in a profession, and in the various activities of society.’”[23]The Incarnation of the Logos is the paradigm of secularity as dimension. The freedom of the Logos, now become Flesh, before the Father is the autonomy of the “world”[24] subsumed into the humanity of the Person of Christ. The Body of Christ, the Church in its totality (including the religious) is secular, with the autonomy of the divine Person of Christ before the Father. But there is also secularity as "characteristic." This means the secular world, its work and friendships, is the very occasion of the giving of the self. John Paul II described it as “the place, the environment, the means, or if you prefer, the tools and language of our response to the caring love of God.”[25]Secularity as characteristic is intrinsic to Christian anthropology, not the result of an extrinsic state. “Secularity… is not added on to our vocation from outside. On the contrary, it receives it fullest meaning from our vocation. Our vocation means that our secular state in life, our ordinary work and our situation in the world, are our only way to sanctification and apostolate. Secularity is something Christian, a Christian way of being and living. In other words, our divine vocation, our spirit – or in broader terms, Christian faith and morality – cannot be judged from the starting-point of a secularity defined a priori. Rather, secularity should be judged and valued – or rather, discovered – from the starting-point of our vocation, and what the Christian faith reveals to us about man, about the world and about our destiny" (Letter, Prelate of Opus Dei, Nov. 1995).

Contraception? No Eucharist!

“Happy Are Those Who Are Called to His Supper” - “Married Love and Gift of Life”

The bishops of the United States in Conference on November 13-14, 2006 have issued four “statements,” one dealing with the Eucharist, another with Contraception, and the other two dealing with homosexuality and Iraq.

In the document on the Reception of the Eucharist, “Happy Are Those Who Are Called to His Supper,” it says: “In order to receive Holy Communion we must be in communion with God and with the Church. Mortal sin constitutes a rejection of communion with God and destroys the life of grace within us…. If we are no longer in the state of grace because of mortal sin, we are seriously obliged to refrain from receiving Holy Communion until we are reconciled with God and the Church.”

In the document on Contraception, “Married Love and Gift of Life,” it says: “When married couples deliberately act to suppress fertility… sexual intercourse is no longer fully marital intercourse… (T)hey [the spouses] should never act to suppress or curtail the life-giving power given by ‘God… This is what the Church means by saying that every act of intercourse must remain open to life and that contraception is objectively immoral.”

Conclusion: The two documents working in tandem inexorably affirm an absolute: if one is contracepting, one should refrain from receiving the Eucharist.

Newspaper Comments:

ST. LOUIS - It has been so long since most American Catholics have even debated the moral implications of contraception (1965?) that statisticians no longer regularly ask them what they think of birth control.

Recent poll numbers are scarce, but those that do exist suggest around 90 percent of American Roman Catholics ignore their church's teaching on contraception.

"When it comes to that particular tenet of faith, it's a lost cause in America," said Tom Smith, a senior research scientist with the National Organization for Research at the University of Chicago.

But Catholic church teaching doesn't change based on statistics, even if that teaching is ignored for a couple of generations.

"The Catholic church articulates what we believe to be true and we don't stop believing what's true because it's statistically unpopular," said Belleville Bishop Edward Braxton in an interview last week at the fall meeting of the United States Conference of Catholic Bishops in Baltimore. "We are counter-cultural in that sense."

Somewhat lost in reports from the meeting was the approval of a new document from the American church's pro-life committee aimed at engaged and young married couples. Called "Married Love and the Gift of Life," the document reaffirms the church's stance that artificial contraception is immoral, even between husband and wife. Its target audience is young Catholics.

The document passed with 95 percent of bishops voting in its favor and no debate on the floor.

The bishops were as unified behind their teaching on contraception as their flock and the culture in which they live has become against it. Last week, the phrase "counter-cultural" came up repeatedly in conversations with bishops.

There is no question that Church teaching on contraception has remained the same for centuries or that American Catholics have largely ignored that teaching for the last 50 years. The real question about "Married Love and the Gift of Life" is: Why now?

Bishops in Baltimore answered that question by pointing to what they see as a trend: young Catholics are increasingly seeking out the church's ancient teachings. In this sense, the bishops' repeated use of the counter-cultural phrase has additional meaning.

The idea that a new generation of Catholics will reject the perceived sexual freedoms gained by their parents and grandparents over the last half-century and align with a theology that teaches sex for procreation is truly, as they see it, revolutionary.

"The real radical idea is not `don't use contraception,'" said Christopher West, a research fellow and faculty member of the Theology of the Body Institute in West Chester, Pa. "The real radical idea is connecting sex and God; that sex is meant to express divine love."

The new document is the first about birth control from the collective body of American bishops since 1968's "Human Life in Our Day."

Archbishop Joseph Naumann of Kansas City, Kan., a member of the bishops' pro-life committee and former St. Louis auxiliary bishop, said that was too long. American bishops, he said, have failed to properly educate Catholics about the church's teaching on contraception. "We haven't been clear enough or effective enough as teachers," he said in an interview.

Not everyone thinks American Catholics will be convinced by the bishops' renewed focus on contraception. "It seems to me extremely unlikely it will make much difference to most people," said James P. Hanigan, a professor of moral theology at Duquesne University who has studied the church's teaching on birth control. "For most people, this issue's been resolved."

The church's ancient view on contraception (the roots of its opposition can be traced back to the second century) was most famously reaffirmed by Pope Paul VI in his 1968 encyclical, Humanae Vitae, or "of human life." Most other Christian churches accept artificial contraception as a responsible method of family planning. The Catholic church teaches that since artificial contraception suppresses the possibility of procreation, and therefore violates the natural law, it is always wrong.

"Suppressing fertility by using contraception denies part of the inherent meaning of married sexuality and does harm the couple's unity," according to "Married Love and the Gift of Life." "The total giving of oneself, body and soul, to one's beloved is no time to say: `I give you everything I am - except.'"

The new document sets the church's teaching within the context Pope John Paul II's Theology of the Body, a set of 129 short talks he gave between 1979 and 1984 that reflected on sexuality and divinity. West, who is scheduled to give a talk in St. Louis at the invitation of the Archdiocese in February, said the message of Theology of the Body is that eros, or erotic love, is meant to express agape, or divine love.

"When a married couple cuts off the eros from the agape," said West, they "render the sexual act sterile . . . they won't find the sexual happiness they went in search of, instead they will find disillusionment, despair and societal chaos."

The church has come a long way since the "rhythm" or "calendar" methods it advocated as natural birth control decades ago. The new term is Natural Family Planning, which, according to the bishops' Web site, is an umbrella term for "certain methods used to achieve and avoid pregnancies based on observation of the naturally occurring signs and symptoms of the fertile and infertile phases of a woman's menstrual cycle." Only four percent of Catholic married couples use Natural Family Planning, according to the bishops conference, despite years of research, promotion and effort.

"This is a quiet revolution," said Theresa Notare, assistant director of natural family planning for the bishops' pro-life office in Washington. "For decades we've constantly been going against the grain."

Hanigan said Natural Family Planning "has some devoted advocates, but how far that reaches is hard to say."

The St. Louis Archdiocese has had a Natural Family Planning office since 1998, according to Diane Daly, a registered nurse who heads it. Daly said her office sees about 450 new couples each year. She said "Married Love and the Gift of Life" will help young couples she sees because "it explains the basis for the church's teaching. It will be beneficial for people to not just hear that this is what the church says, but to understand why."

Naumann said that the new contraception document is important because many Catholics don't realize how wrong it is, in the eyes of the church, to use contraception even within marriage. While it is "a grave matter" to use artificial contraception, and Catholics who do (and who know better), must confess their sin before receiving Holy Communion, there are many young Catholics who simply don't know the church's position.

For many Catholics, however, the teaching is simple. "If God is love and you kick him out of the bedroom, I don't know what you're doing in there, but it's not love," said West.

The National Catholic Register:


“Authored by the conference’s Pro-Life Committee, Married Love and the Gift of Life is intended to help Catholics understand God’s plan for married life and clarify why the Church cannot condone contraception.

“This is probably the most misunderstood teaching in the Church,” said Theresa Notare, assistant director for the bishops’ Natural Family Planning Program. “People think it’s a quaint little teaching that’s unrealistic, and when the Church catches up to modern times, it can change. They don’t understand that these teachings are basic truths that have been handed down since the apostolic age, and are based in Genesis.”

Notare said the document is an easy resource that priests can use in marriage preparation and other stages of married life. It has been tested in marriage prep programs by several dioceses, and feedback from couples has been very positive. Many of the couples reported that the document was engaging and clarified Church teaching.

“This document can hopefully get the conversation going again about why it’s important for Catholics to pay attention to it,” said Notare. “It’s not supposed to supplant Humanae Vitae, but it certainly is trying to get people to take a second look.”

Father Jeffrey Gubbiotti, parochial vicar at Most Holy Trinity Church in Wallingford, Conn., is looking forward to the document because, he said, it’s hard to find good resources on the subject. The challenge in talking about contraception from the pulpit is that priests are mandated to preach on the Gospel, he said, and when it is possible, they have to be sensitive to younger age groups. The biggest challenge, however, is the sheer depth of the teaching.

“We’ve so lost our sense of anthropology of how the human person is. If you don’t understand that, you don’t understand why NFP is the best way to exact stewardship when it comes to fertility,” said Father Gubbiotti. “When there’s so much groundwork that has to be laid, there’s no way you can present the entire argument for the sinfulness of contraception in the course of one homily. You can only make a few points and hope that they’ll go out on their own and discover the beauty of NFP.”

The document sprang from committee discussions on the need to inform Catholics about the abortifacient potential of chemical contraceptives, said Notare. But the discussion soon turned to why Catholics shouldn’t be using any contraception.

Root Cause

Steve Koob, director of One More Soul, an apostolate promoting God’s plan for marriage and family, thinks that’s a wise approach.

“Contraception is wrong, period, not because it’s an abortifacient,” he said. “We should be opposed to it because it’s against God’s will, nature and the fundamental sexual act. It’s clearly been demonstrated what contraception has done to the culture. Hopefully this document will be a conversation starter.”

Notare echoed that sentiment.

“Society is really trying to cling to this idea that sex can be had with no consequences. But you don’t even have to be religious at this point; a thinking person can look at how poorly we treat sexual intercourse and connect the dots to pedophilia, the gross rise in pornography, abortion, divorce, delay in age in marriage, and the number of children we’re having.”

The conversation is starting to ripple through the pro-life community, which Koob said is a welcome sign because the abortion issue won’t be solved until contraception is addressed.
Many pro-life leaders, especially evangelicals, have maintained that contraception is not their issue, but they’re coming to see that it leads to abortion, said Ruben Obregon, co-founder of No Room for Contraception, a website that addresses the personal and cultural consequences of contraception.

“With contraception, abortion is skyrocketing, and non-Catholics are starting to see that it’s an inseparable issue that has to be dealt with,” he said.

As an example, Obregon posted an article on the website by Albert Mohler, president of the Southern Baptist Theological Seminary, called “Can Christians Use Birth Control?” In it he wrote: “The effective separation of sex from procreation may be one of the most important defining marks of our age — and one of the most ominous. This awareness is spreading among American evangelicals, and it threatens to set loose a firestorm. … Most evangelicals responded with disregard to Pope Paul VI’s famous encyclical Humanae Vitae and became devoted users of birth control technologies.” But a growing number “are rethinking the issue of birth control and facing the hard questions posed by reproductive technologies. … The most important of these is the abortion revolution.”

Pro-Life Action Ministries decided to address contraception at its national conference in September. Director Joe Scheidler said they wanted to bring people from all areas of the pro-life movement together to see if they could come to a meeting of the minds on the root cause of the anti-life/anti-family mentality — contraception.

“We were told by other pro-life groups that we were committing suicide by even bringing it up, but we can’t dodge it anymore, and we don’t intend to,” he said. “It was hard to reason against the proof presented by people at the conference who aren’t even on the same wavelength as us.”

Presenters included Lionel Tiger, a professor of anthropology from Rutgers University and an atheist, who showed how the contraceptive mentality has affected men and possibly led to the rise in homosexuality. Allan Carlson of the Howard Center for Family, Religion and Society gave a history of how Protestant churches came to embrace contraception, and acknowledged that Pope Paul VI was prophetic.
“They can see that contraception is a plague,” said Scheidler. “We have to get to the root cause of this anti-life mentality. We’re using God’s gift for pleasure and not for what it was intended” [emphasis mine]. Barb Ernster - Fridley, Minnesota.

My Note

Observe in the above the specific references of the intrinsic connection between artificial contraception and all of the life issues, not least of which is homosexuality. At the root, it is because contraception undermines the ontological orientation of the person as gift, made in the image of the divine Persons.

This has always been difficult to see and as difficult to explain. It moves the perception of reality from “nature” as object (and with it the argument from “natural law” presuming an anthropology of man as substantial rational animal) to person. The explanation of “Humanae Vitae” with the intrinsic connection between love-making and life-giving cannot be explained adequately on the level of nature as object with primary and secondary ends, but on the level – or “horizon” – of person as subject. It is calling for a revamping of a metaphysics of being from substance-object (an abstraction) to person-subject, not unlike the tension that the homoousios introduced into the Greek metaphysics of substance. In a word, to be = to be for. The meaning of the being of the human person can only be understood by the meaning of the Being of Christ as “one in substance with the Father” (Nicene Creed). Human sexuality – and therefore the human person - cannot be adequately understood on the level of substance since it abstracts from the constitutive reference-to-the-other. Contraception is the praxis of this abstraction, and therefore the existential undermining which appear in the consequences listed above.



[Amy Welborn commented "Some bishops thought both topics [?] should have been included, and also wanted to add contraceptive use to a list of reasons that Catholics should refrain from communion. An earlier report indicated that only 4 percent of Catholic married couples of child-bearing age practice the church-recommended natural family planning.

Bishop Arthur Serratelli of Paterson, N.J., said that the drafters did not include contraception because it was not intended to be a comprehensive list of sins and there was a concern that this "particularly difficult pastoral problem" would distract from everything else in the document. Bishop Salvatore Cordileone, auxiliary of San Diego, argued that not mentioning it would draw even more attention.

"If we are silent on this issue, perhaps people won't go so far as to say we are winking at it, but at least we would easily create the misperception that this is not an issue involving grave matter." "Grave matter," along with informed reflection and willful intent, constitutes mortal sin.

The move to name contraception as a reason to refrain from communion failed 148-75 ."
The list of sins of the document was the following:

• Believing in or honoring as divine anyone or anything other than the God of the Holy Scriptures
• Swearing a false oath while invoking God as a witness
• Failing to worship God by missing Mass on Sundays and holy days of obligation
without a serious reason, such as sickness or the absence of a priest1
• Acting in serious disobedience against proper authority; dishonoring one’s parents by neglecting them in their need and infirmity
• Committing murder, including abortion and euthanasia; harboring deliberate hatred of others; sexual abuse of another, especially of a minor or vulnerable adult; physical or verbal abuse of others that causes grave physical or psychological harm
• Engaging in sexual activity outside the bonds of a valid marriage1
• Stealing in a gravely injurious way, such as robbery, burglary, serious fraud, or other immoral business practices
• Speaking maliciously or slandering people in a way that seriously undermines their good name
• Producing, marketing, or indulging in pornography
• Engaging in envy that leads one to wish grave harm to someone else

However, in spite of the non-inclusion of contraception or homosexual activity to the list of sins rendering reception of the Eucharist unworthy, the final vote on “Married Love and Gift of Life” that explicitly named contraception as “objectively immoral” was virtually unanimous: 220-11 with one abstention.

* * * * * * * * * * * *

From the Document: “Happy Are Those Who Are Called to His Supper”

“It is most desirable that we receive the Lord’s Body and Blood, so that Holy Communion stands out clearly as a participation in the sacrifice actually being celebrated. Indeed, we should all cherish the grace given to us in the Eucharist. We should strive to receive Holy Communion regularly, gratefully, and worthily. We may find ourselves in situations, however, where an examination of our conscience before God reveals to us that we should refrain from partaking of the Body and Blood of Christ. Moreover, we should be cautious when making judgments about whether or not someone else should receive Holy Communion.

“Lack of Sanctifying Grace:

“In order to receive Holy Communion we must be in communion with God and with the Church. Mortal sin constitutes a rejection of communion with God and destroys the life of grace within us. Mortal sin is an act violating God’s law that involves grave matter and that is performed with both full knowledge and complete consent of the will. If we are no longer in the state of grace because of mortal sin, we are seriously obliged to refrain from receiving Holy Communion until we are reconciled with God and the Church. While we remain members of the body of Christ and continue to be part of the Catholic Church, we have become lifeless or dead members. We no longer share in the common bond of the divine life of the Holy Spirit. Because our sin has separated us from God and from our brothers and sisters in Christ, we have forfeited our right to receive Holy Communion, for the Eucharist, by its very nature, expresses and nurtures this life-giving unity that the sinner has now lost. St. Paul warned the Corinthians that `whoever eats the bread and drinks the cup of the Lord unworthily will have to answer for the body and blood of the Lord’ (1 Cor. 11, 27). Manifesting the Father’s mercy, Jesus instituted the Sacrament of Penance precisely to allow us to confess our sins in repentance, receive absolution from the priest, and so receive again the grace of the Holy Spirit, who once more makes us living members of Christ’s body, the Church.[1]

“Objectively, certain thoughts, actions, and omissions entail grave sinful matter. As Catholics, we are obliged to form our consciences regarding what constitutes grave matter in accordance with the Church’s teaching. While it is not possible to make a complete list of thoughts and actions that involve grave matter [here they chose not to include homosexual activity and contraception] , they would all be serious violations of the law of love of God and of neighbor. If we follow the order of the Ten Commandments, some examples of such thoughts and actions would be:” [Thus, the non-comprehensive list that is given above. This also makes clear the remark of Bishop Serratelli, paraphrased by Amy Welborn: “the drafters did not include contraception because it was not intended to be a comprehensive list of sins and there was a concern that this `particularly difficult pastoral problem’ would distract from everything else in the document.”].


[1] See Pope John Paul II, Encyclical Letter On the Eucharist (Ecclesia de Eucharistia), no. 37: `The two sacraments of the Eucharist and Penance are very closely connected. Because the Eucharist makes present the redeeming sacrifice of the Cross, perpetuating it sacramentally, it naturally gives rise to a continuous need for conversion, for a personal response to the appeal made by Saint Paul to the Christians of Corinth: `We beseech you on behalf of Christ, be reconciled to God’ (2 Cor. 5, 20). If a Christian’s conscience is burdened by serious sin, then the path of penance through the sacrament of Reconciliation becomes necessary for full participation in the Eucharistic Sacrifice.’”