I could not resist repeating this from pre-Francis Bergoglio: "A certainty of faith that is not ideology, exaggerated moralism, existential security... but the living and irreplaceable encounter with a person, with an event, with the living presence of Jesus of Nazareth."

"Look once and a thousand times to the Virgin Mary.  May she intercede with her Son that he might inspire the appropriate gesture and word that will allow you to make Catechesis a Good News for everyone, always keeping in mind that “the Church grows, not by proselytism but by attraction.”

"Be aware of the difficulties.  We are in a very odd moment of our history, including the history of our country.  The recent National Catechists Congress held in Morón was very realistic in pointing out the difficulties in handing on the Faith in these times of so many cultural changes.  Perhaps on more than one occasion weariness may defeat you, uncertainty may confuse you and even lead you to think that the faith cannot be presented today, and that we should be content just to transmit values....

"For this very reason, our Pope Benedict XVI invites us to enter together through the door of faith.  To renew our faith and in the faith of the Church to follow, doing what she knows how to do in the midst of lights and shadows.  This is a task that does not originate in a strategy of conservation, but rather is rooted in a command of our Lord that gives us our identity, relevance, and meaning.  Mission springs from a certainty of faith.  From that certainty which, in the form of kerygma, the Church has been handing on to human beings over the course of two thousand years.

"A certainty of faith that coexists with the thousand questions of a pilgrim.  A certainty of faith that is not ideology, exaggerated moralism, existential security... but the living and irreplaceable encounter with a person, with an event, with the living presence of Jesus of Nazareth.

"Therefore I urge you: live this ministry with passion, with enthusiasm.

"The word enthusiasm (ενθουσιασμóς) has its roots in the Greek “en-theos”, that is to say: “that bears a god within.”  This term means that, when we allow ourselves to be led by enthusiasm, a divine inspiration enters into us and makes use of our person to manifest itself.  Enthusiasm is the experience of a “God active within me” so as to be guided by his power and wisdom.  It also implies the uplifting of the mind to something that inspires interest, joy, and admiration, provoked by a strong interior motivation.  It is expressed as passion, fervor, boldness, and determination.  It is opposed to discouragement, disinterest, apathy, coldness, and disappointment.

"The “God active within” us is the gift that Jesus gave us on Pentecost, the Holy Spirit:  “I send the promise of my Father upon you; but stay in the city, until you are clothed with power from on high” (Lk 24:49).  In this way what was announced by the prophets is fulfilled: “A new heart I will give you, and a new spirit I will put within you; and I will take out of your flesh the heart of stone and give you a heart of flesh.  And I will put my spirit within you” (Ezek 36:26-27).  (Argentine Episcopal Conference, Pastor Guidelines for 2012-2015)

"We know that the enthusiasm, the fervor to which the Lord calls us cannot be the result of a movement of our will or a simple change of mind.  It is a grace ... an interior renewal, a profound transformation that is founded and relies on a Presence, who one day will call us to follow him and who today, once again, becomes for us a way, so as to transform our fears into ardor, our sadness into joy, our confinement into new visitations....

"While thanking you from my heart for all that you do as a catechist, for your time and your dedication, I ask the Lord to give you an open mind, so as to recreate dialogue and encounter among those whom God entrusts to you, and a believing heart so as to follow, exclaiming that He is alive and loves us as no one else does.  I have a picture of Mary Help of Christians that says, “You who believed, help me!”  May she help us to follow by being faithful to the Lord’s call....

"Do not stop praying for me that I may be a good catechist.  May Jesus bless you and may the Blessed Virgin take care of you."

  Affectionately,

Cardinal Jorge Mario Bergoglio, S.J.

Buenos Aires, August 21, 2012

The Act of Faith: An Act of Self-gift empowered By the Father Whereby One Becomes “Another Christ, Christ Himself.”

Here is the revolution for our day concerning the meaning of Christian faith after reducing it to propositional truths for over a millennium. The Habilitation thesis of Joseph Ratzinger distinguishes between revelation and faith.  Revelation is a Person. Faith is an act of the human person whereby he goes out of himself, converts from himself, does an about-turn and in so doing becomes, to some degree, Christ himself Who is the Revelation of the Father. Hence, Revelation as the Person of Christ cannot be identified with the printed words of Scripture but their source. He comments that you cannot put Revelation in your pocket, but you can put Scripture there. You experience Revelation by prayer, the act that mimics the Logos of the Father as pure relation and self-gift to Him.

From a short discourse by Saint Bonaventure, bishop
He who knows Jesus Christ can understand all sacred Scripture (2^nd Reading of the Office of Reading of Monday of the 5^th Week in Ordinary Time).

The source of sacred Scripture was not human research but divine revelation. This revelation comes from the Father of Light from whom the whole concept of fatherhood in heaven and on earth derives. From him, through Jesus Christ his Son, the Holy Spirit enters into us. Then, through the Holy Spirit who allots and apportions his gifts to each person as he wishes, we receive the gift of faith, and through faith Christ lives in our hearts. So we come to know Christ and this knowledge becomes the main source of a firm understanding of the truth of all sacred Scripture. It is impossible, therefore, for anyone to achieve this understanding unless he first receives the gift of faith in Christ. This faith is the foundation of the whole Bible, a lamp and a key to its understanding. As long as our earthly state keeps us from seeing the Lord, this same faith is the firm basis of all supernatural enlightenment, the light guiding us to it, and the doorway through which we enter upon it. What is more, the extent of our faith is the measure of the wisdom which God has given us. Thus, no one should overestimate his wisdom; instead, he should soberly make his assessment according to the extent of the faith which God has given him.

[Me: Notice that faith does not come from reading scripture. It comes from the Father (“No one can come to me unless the Father who sent me draw him…” Jn. 6, 44). Our earthly state, which is sin, keeps us turned back on ourselves and is, as it were, a “veil” over our intelligence. Ratzinger describes faith as an act of “conversion:” “ Man’s natural center of gravity draws him to the visible, to what he can take in his hand and hold as his own. He has to turn round inwardly in order to see how badly he is neglecting his own interests by letting himself be drawn along in this way by his natural center orf gravity. He must turn round to recognize how blind he is if he trusts only what he sees wit his eyes. Without this change of direction, iwithout this resistance to the natural center of gravity, there can be no belief. In eed belief is the con-version in which man discovers that he is following an illusion if he devotes himself only to the tangible. This is at the same time the fundamental reason why belief is not demonstrable: it is an about-turn; only he who turns about is receptive to it; and because our center of gravity does not cease to incline us in another direction it remains a turn that is new every day; only in a lifelong conversion can we become aware of what it means to say ‘I believe.’”

The outcome or the fruit of reading holy Scripture is by no means negligible: it is the fullness of eternal happiness. For these are the books which tell us of eternal life, which were written not only that we might believe but also that we might have everlasting life. When we do live that life we shall understand fully, we shall love completely, and our desires will be totally satisfied. Then, with all our needs fulfilled, we shall truly know the love that surpasses understanding and so be filled with the fullness of God. The purpose of the Scriptures, which come to us from God, is to lead us to this fullness according to the truths contained in those sayings of the apostles to which I have referred. In order to achieve this, we must study holy Scripture carefully, and teach it and listen to it in the same way.

If we are to attain the ultimate goal of eternal happiness by the path of virtue described in the Scriptures, we have to begin at the very beginning. We must come with a pure faith to the Father of Light and acknowledge him in our hearts. We must ask him to give us, through his Son and in the Holy Spirit, a true knowledge of Jesus Christ, and along with that knowledge a love of him. Knowing and loving him in this way, confirmed in our faith and grounded in our love, we can know the length and breadth and height and depth of his sacred Scripture. Through that knowledge we can come at last to know perfectly and love completely the most blessed Trinity, whom the saints desire to know and love and in whom all that is good and true finds its meaning and fulfillment.

Notice how congenial the notion of faith as self-gift is with the Sacrament of Baptism which introduces the person into the suffering and death of Christ. That is, Baptism is the sacrament of faith whereby the person undergoes a death-event in self-giving. This is the basis of all the baptized being called to the heights of sanctity in ordinary secular life. It is the gift of self to death on the occasion of the ordinary way which is matrimony and secular work. It is the basis of matrimony being a heroic life of self gift of spouses to each other and being open to children. And since the spouses are uniquely the ministers of this sacrament, the validity of the sacrament.

                Let me put it this way: if Baptism isn’t a death event, how can ordinary life be a way of heroic and canonizable sanctity?  And the Church says it is.

5th Sunday B of Ordinary Time

Major Point: From the Gospel of the 5^th Sunday: The primary mission of Christ is to preach the Word: Himself. But before He does that, He exorcises. He drives out the demons because otherwise, the people are not able to hear. The have ears but cannot hear. They cannot understand what is being said because it is of another order. As Saint Exupery said: “It is only with the heart that one understands rightly. What is essential is invisible to the eye.” Hence, the need for prayer and the sacrament of penance in order to be able to hear the Word of God. Like is known by like. Only God knows God.

Mark 1 ,29-39: When it was evening, after sunset,
they brought to him all who were ill or possessed by demons.
The whole town was gathered at the door.
He cured many who were sick with various diseases,
and he drove out many demons,
not permitting them to speak because they knew him.

Rising very early before dawn, he left 
and went off to a deserted place, where he prayed.
Simon and those who were with him pursued him
and on finding him said, "Everyone is looking for you."
He told them, "Let us go on to the nearby villages
that I may preach there also.
For this purpose have I come."
So he went into their synagogues,
preaching and driving out demons throughout the whole of Galilee.

Consider the problem today. Consider that 90% of the women in the Church are contracepting. Consider the opinion of the pope that more than ½ of the marriages may be invalid. Consider that confessions in an average church is 45 minutes on Saturday afternoon. Consider that the majority of the men and women in the Church may be in sin.

                What does that say for the capacity to hear the Word? This is a little twist on what Pope Francis is saying, but Healing and Preaching/Preaching and Healing go together. Why is this so? Because Christ Himself is  the Word, and you must become the Word to “hear” it. Hearing and knowing are an ontological identification. A man knows his wife by becoming one flesh with her.

* * * * * *

Pope Frrancis: “Faithful to this teaching, the Church has always considered the care of the sick as an integral part of its mission."

VATICAN CITY, February 08, 2015 (Zenit.org) - Here is the translation of Pope Francis' words before and after the recitation of the Angelus prayer to the faithful gathered in St. Peter's Square.

* * *

Dear brothers and sisters,

Today's Gospel (cfr Mk. 1,29-39) presents Jesus, who, after having preached on the Sabbath at the synagogue, heals many sick people. Preach and heal: this is Jesus' main activity in his public life. Through preaching He announces the Kingdom of God and through healing He shows that it is close, that the Kingdom of God is in our midst.

Entering the house of Simon Peter, Jesus sees that his mother-in-law is in bed sick; immediately he takes her hand, heals her and makes her stand up. After the sunset, when, the Sabbath was over, when the people could leave and bring Him the sick, He heals a multitude of people afflicted by every kind of sickness: physical, mental, spiritual. Coming to the earth to announce and fulfill the salvation of the whole man and all mankind, Jesus shows a particular fondness for those wounded in body and in spirit: the poor, the sinners, the possessed, the sick, the marginalized. He thus reveals Himself has a physician of both body and soul, the good Samaritan of man. He is the true Savior! Jesus saves, Jesus cares, Jesus heals!

This reality of Jesus' healing of the sick invites us to reflect on the meaning and value of sickness. This reminds us also of the World Day of the Sick, which we will celebrate on Wednesday, February 11th, the liturgical feast of the Blessed Virgin Mary of Lourdes. I bless the initiatives that are being prepared for this Day, in particular the Vigil that will take place in Rome on the evening of February 10th. And here I pause to remember the president of the Pontifical Council for the Pastoral Care of Health Care Workers, Archbishop Zygmunt Zimowski, who is very ill in Poland. Let us say a prayer for him, for his health because it was he who prepared this World Day. And he accompanies us with his suffering in this day. Let us pray for Archbishop Zimowski.

The salvific work of Christ does not end with his person during his earthly life; it continues through the Church, sacrament of love and of the tenderness of God for mankind. Sending his disciples in mission, Jesus confers upon them a dual mandate: announce the Gospel of salvation and heal the sick (Mt.10,7-8). Faithful to this teaching, the Church has always considered the care of the sick as an integral part of its mission.

"The poor and the suffering you will always have with you", Jesus warns (cfr Mt. 26,11), and the Church continuously finds them on the street, considering the sick as a privileged path to encounter Christ, to welcome and serve Him. To care for a sick person, to welcome him and serve him is to serve Christ. The sick are the flesh of Christ!

This also happens in our time, when, despite the many advances in science, the interior and physical suffering of people raises serious questions on the meaning of sickness, pain and on the reasons for death. These are existential questions, to which the pastoral action of the Church should respond in the light of faith, having before our eyes the Cross, in which the entire salvific mystery of God the Father appears, who out of love for mankind did not spare his only Son (cfr Rm. 8,32). Therefore, each one of us is called to bring the light of the Gospel and the strength of grace to those who suffer and to those who assist them, family members, doctors, nurses, so that the service to the sick may be fulfilled ever more with humanity, with generous dedication, and with evangelical love, with tenderness.

The Mother Church, through our hands, caresses those sufferings, heals those wounds and does it with a mother's tenderness.

Re-Reading Love and Responsibility - "Self-Gift"

The first time I came across the phrase and meaning of "Self-Gift" was on p. 96 of "Love and Responsibility." It was in the context of spousal love and it was immediately understandable for me, but although immediately understandable, it was impossible to render metaphysically and anthropologically since "to be" has come down to us as "substance" ("thing-in-itself?). It was in the confluence of Ratzinger's rendering of the divine Persons (one God) as pure actions of generation, obedience and the Spirit as the Mutuality of the Two, and John Paul II's recovery of subjectivity as experience that matrimony is understood as imaging the divine Trinity. And what seems to be shaping up is the argument that matrimony cannot be validly matrimony when there has been a gift of self (which is the maning of faith as ("death event"). Clearly the culture does not experience or cognize marriage as self-gift, and therefore, one could easily conclude that more than 1/2 of marriages are invalid - with enormous consequences for the future in beefing up marriage to be understood as a way of holiness and not just procreation and mutual love, and annulling quickly and returning to the sacraments those who have divorced and remarried. Much is riding on the cognizance and retrieval of the phrase "self-gift" and crafting a metaphysics that will be fashioned by it. To this end, I believe, Robert Barron is doing precisely that in his thesis (1993) on Paul Tillich and St. Thomas on the notion of creation, and his work "The Priority of Christ."

RICHARD A. SPINELLO

Someone presumptuous enough to recommend some readings for those attending the 2015 Synod on the Family could undoubtedly put together an impressive list of books on marriage and sexual morality. Arguably, at the top of any such list belongs Karol Wojtyla’s classic work called Love and Responsibility. An appreciation of marriage as an indissoluble conjugal union presupposes a proper understanding of romantic or spousal love. For anyone open to the truth about such matters there is no better place to look for an exposition of love than Love and Responsibility.

This philosophical meditation was first published 55 years ago in 1960, when the cultural landscape was quite different. However, it seems to have anticipated the present code of sexual ethics which recognizes no constraints on sexual activity other than mutual consent. Love and Responsibility did not appear in English until 1981, three years after Cardinal Wojtya become Pope John Paul II. Its limited popularity is probably due to the fact that it has always been overshadowed by the Pope’s more prominent work, Theology of the Body.

Thanks to the Daughters of St. Paul, there is a new translation of Love and Responsibility that merits close attention because of its welcome precision. While the original translation was certainly competent, the new one is more consistent with the personalistic tone of Wojtyla’s provocative work. The translator, Gregorz Ignatik, has done a masterful job of capturing the subtleties of Wojtyla’s Polish prose which is not always clear or graceful. More importantly, this new translation allows the reader to see more exactly how Wojtyla’s book sheds light on the critical issues at the center of current debates about marriage and family. Karol Wojtyla meets philosophers on their own turf in order to persuade his readers that the sexual moral norms presented in Sacred Scripture can be substantiated by purely rational arguments. The result is a book that makes a lasting impression: an engaging response to the creed of absolute sexual liberation and the deconstruction of marriage.

Wojtyla’s openness to different philosophical paradigms such as phenomenology gives him a fresh context to deal with these issues even though he never loses his metaphysical gaze. Love and Responsibility begins with an account of the human person, which lays the groundwork for his moral synthesis. Thanks to his or her rational nature, the person is an embodied, self-determining moral subject. Unlike the rest of material creation, the person is someone rather than something. The person lives his or her life “from within” in a way that revolves around the pursuit of truth and goodness.

There is a temptation to use persons the way we use material objects, to regard them as a pawns under our control. However, this moral attitude is inconsistent with a person’s nature. When we use someone in this fashion we treat that individual as an object rather than a free subject. Hence, argues Wojtyla, we are obliged to treat the person as an end and never as a mere means or an instrument. This requires respect for every person’s morally reasonable, self-chosen ends, rather than use of a person merely to achieve our own ends.

Wojtyla refers to this supreme moral principle as the personalistic norm, which serves as the axis about which his discussion on sexual morality revolves. If this general principle holds, it follows that it is also morally unacceptable to use people as sexual objects purely for our own satisfaction, even if the other person consents. With this standard in place, Wojtyla articulates three themes that serve as the central pillars of his sexual morality: the existential meaning of the sexual drive, an integral view of romantic love, and a personalistic vision of chastity.

Misunderstanding about love and sexuality often begins with confusion about the nature and purpose of our sexual capacities. The sexual drive is not an irrepressible instinct but a natural orientation to a person of the opposite sex. Wojtyla insists that we should not reduce the sexual drive to a biological force at our disposal. The “liberated” man or woman of the twenty-first century tends to regard the sexual drive simply as an instinct that should be emancipated from repressive cultural norms. But Wojtyla understands this sexual drive in a completely different way.

He argues convincingly that the sexual drive has an existential meaning, because the primary end or purpose of this drive is the perpetuation of the human species.   And yet the sexual drive is also the source of spousal love that leads to marriage. Thus, the sexual drive is the foundation for both love and procreation. Thanks to sexual reciprocity, this drive opens the way for a man and woman to fully love each other, and the sexual union formed by that love is naturally open to new life. Sexual union, love, and procreation, therefore, are intrinsically linked together.

When love is forcibly detached from procreation, it loses its “special character” and can no longer develop properly or come to fruition. Marital love must always be in harmony with the procreative purpose of this drive or mutual self-gratification begins to displace a full and fruitful union of persons. Moreover, thanks to this procreative meaning, there is nothing banal or ordinary about sexual activity. On the contrary, we must recognize the “proper greatness” associated with the sexual drive. A married couple experiences this “greatness” when they freely and conscientiously take up the task of procreation and provide a being with the gift of existence which is the source of all other perfections.

But what is the nature of this love between a man and a woman that is often set in motion by the sexual drive? Modern culture has grossly distorted the truth about love and seduced people into forgetting the link between sexuality and procreation. As a remedy, Wojtyla provides a phenomenological account of love which slowly discerns its ultimate meaning. His integral conception of love includes a metaphysical, psychological and ethical analysis. Wojtyla’s “metaphysical” analysis describes the common elements of human love which includes fondness (or attraction), longing for the other, and benevolence. Benevolence brings us close to the essence of love which is altruistic and always seeking the good of the beloved. Love must be reciprocal, and it must also include the moral union and commitment of friendship enhanced by the warmth of sympathy.

The most radical form of love is spousal love which is more than willing the good of the other but “giving oneself, giving one’s ‘I.’” This reciprocal self-giving becomes a total union of two persons, which is expressed and fortified through the sexual act. Spousal love is the pathway to the perfection of the human self that comes from the unconditional gift of oneself to another.

Love also includes a powerful psychological dimension. Spousal love is energized by sensuality and affectivity. Sensuality represents a spontaneous experience of the corporeal sexual properties of a person of the opposite sex, while affectivity is an experience of less sensuous properties such as feminine charm. While this dimension of love has a role to play, love is often falsely reduced to its psychological profile. Many people confuse sensuality and affectivity with the mature, responsible love that comes only from an intimate personal union and a caring for each other’s well-being.

Finally, love has an ethical dimension because love is a virtue as well as a passion. Authentic spousal love is distinguished from counterfeit versions by this ethical character. There is an enduring commitment as well as an assumption of responsibility for the other person’s welfare that becomes the basis for the reciprocal gift of self. Also, love must be unencumbered by sexual compulsion or obsession so that it can be freely given and received. Without freedom, the gift of self loses its authenticity and perfective powers. Spousal love, which goes beyond friendship and benevolence, must transcend sensuality, and it must be shaped by permanence, exclusivity, and a mutual belonging that allows each person to find him or herself in the other.

The third pillar of Wojtyla’s sexual morality is his personalistic vision of the virtue of chastity. Many people misconstrue chastity as prudishness, and philosophers tend to equate chastity with the virtue of temperance. But chastity is far more than the regulation of our desire for sexual pleasure. Chastity is the moral habit of being able to see a human being of the opposite sex with a certain moral depth so that one always recognizes that individual as a person rather than an object for use. Love requires the support of chastity to ensure that sexual relations are never depersonalized This virtue allows us to look beyond a person’s attractive body in order to transparently perceive the whole person as a being with an inner, spiritual life, who is not to be used simply for another’s gratification.

Only the chaste person, who affirms the dignity of the other, is free enough from lust or disordered sensuality to make a sincere gift of himself to another.  Thanks to chastity, the virtue of love is not overwhelmed by passion or emotion so that unselfish spousal love can flourish.

Wojtyla’s ultimate concern in this treatise is an ethical one: how does the human person avoid using others for pleasure and live up to the high calling of love, especially marital love? To answer this question Wojtyla turns to new sources that allow for a fresh philosophical articulation of love and chastity coherent with the Catholic tradition. For those who have not recently read this book, it may be a good occasion to take a second look with the help of this new translation. For those who are unfamiliar with Love and Responsibility, a careful reading will uncover a suitable moral framework that penetrates to the heart of what is wrong with our contemporary sexual culture.

Tagged as Love, Love and Responsibility (1960), Marriage, Pope John Paul II,procreation

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By Richard A. Spinello

Richard A. Spinello is an Associate Research Professor in the Carroll School of Management at Boston College and an adjunct faculty member at St. John's Seminary. He is the author of three books on Saint John Paul II, includingUnderstanding Love and Responsibility recently published by Pauline Books and Media.

The Clarification of Faith as “Death-Event” Through the Reclarification of Matrimony To the New Evangelization

Bonnie Mahala sent me the following quote from Cardinal Ratzinger (Provenance unknown):

"Conversion is a death event. The 'I' is not simply submerged, it must release its grip on itself in order to receive anew in a greater 'I'. There is only One bearer of the promise of conversion. It is Christ. He exists within us. Outside is the chaotic world of self-realization where men compete with one another and desire to compete with God but succeed merely in working right past their true hope. Their True Hope lies within, always within."

Pope Emeritus Benedict XVI

I respond to Bonnie Mahala:

Where did you get the Ratzinger quote on conversion? I ask because I have it from a talk he gave in '86 in Toronto, but only the first part. Yours may be earlier and original. But from where? It is important because it is the meaning of faith. Faith is not primarily propositional but performative. It is the outstretching of the self. And in the context of matrimony, it is constitutive for the validity of the sacrament. And the brouhaha is about annulment and therefore validity. And if true faith as a "death-event" is not present in the exchange of vows at the altar, then you do not have a sacrament, and therefore only need a cheap (free) and quick declaration of nullity.

The Crisis of Annulment, Remarriage and Sacraments Opens Up A New Story 

 This is not the end of the story, but its beginning - as al la Opus Dei and the universal call to holiness in ordinary life - which did not become magisterial until after the approval (Decretum Laudis) of Opus Dei (10/11/1943). This means that the whole preparation for marriage is preparation for entering a way of sanctification which is = becoming "Ipse Christus." Marriage now becomes a commitment to death not as a legal barrier but as a positive vocation - and most ordinary - way of holiness and freedom.

            This commitment to sanctity in matrimony has always been soft-spoken within the irrevocability of the marriage vows, but never with the force of a calling to be a saint. And, as we know, that vocation to sanctity was identified with the call to the state of perfection and – until the Opus Dei and Vatican II – it was understood to be the unique call to the religious life as separation from the world and the taking of vows. It took the struggle of St. Josemaria Escriva and Blessed Alvaro del Portillo to break the hegemony of the religious state and leaving the world (celibacy as no marriage) and open the way of – in our case here -  sanctity precisely in matrimony.

   Hence, the development in Vatican II, and particularly in the document on Divine Revelation (Dei Filium), reads (#5): “By faith man freely commits his entire self to God, making ‘the full submission of his intellect and will to God who reveals….” Ratzinger did original work on this in his habilitation thesis where he comments that “the receiving subject is always also a part of the concept of ‘revelation.’ Where there is no one to perceive ‘revelation,’ no re-vel-ation has occurred because no veil has been removed. By definition, revelation requires a someone who apprehends it.”[1] He says further: “Revelation precedes Scripture and becomes deposited in Scripture but is not simply identical with it. This in turn means that revelation is always something greater than what is merely written down.” It means, what he says earlier, that revelation is “wholly Christological and that sees the dualism of word and reality reconciled in him who, as the true Logos, is at the same time the true ground of all that is real, and that consequently sees the antithesis between intellectual dogmatic faith and the yielding-up of one’s whole existence in trust as overcome through the total acceptance coming from the person, which recognizes Jesus Christ as, indissolubly, both the truth and the way. Thus the total character of faith inevitably emerges strongly here; it is expressed in the scriptural idea of obedience in faith, ‘by which man entrusts his whole self freely to God’”[2]

            This becomes diaphanous when Ratzinger describes how Simon comes to know that this physically existent man, Jesus, who is alone in prayer to the Father (Lk. 9, 18), is the Christ, the Son of the living God” (Mt. 16, 16). Simon had entered into this prayer, and began to pray with Jesus, and thus experienced in himself what Christ experienced in Himself. That is, he experienced going out of himself – the “death-event” that is Christ as pure relation to the Father. And so, Simon is able to respond to the question, “Who do you say that I am?” with: “You are the Christ, the Son of the living God.”[3] And in doing so, he becomes “Peter” (rock) as Christ is “Cornerstone.” Simon had to go through a death event, an obedience to the Word, whereby he converts away from himself to the Father and so is able to re-cognize Christ in himself because he had become Christ. He did this by way of praying with Christ. And in this context, Ratzinger shows that the very meaning of the Person of the Word is to be prayer.[4] He had not just followed Christ, or imitated Christ, or become like Christ. He had existentially become Christ by the action of prayer, that as action (faith) is obedience to death. The revelation of the Word of Christ that is Christ takes place only in the conversion from self whereby one becomes the Word. One “knows” Christ, only by becoming Christ.

            Conclusion: The clarification of faith as a “death-event”  changes the panorama not only with regard to the validity/invalidity of past marriages, but also with regard to the meaning of marriage for the future. It will change the entire meaning of evangelization from doctrine as ideology to the challenge of the Kerygma of personal sanctity. It will render the politics of same-sex union meaningless since it is incapable of mutual self-giving for enfleshed persons. To reach clarity of heart and mind on this issue of the meaning of faith and validity of matrimony is to become aware of the Kairos of the third century and to begin the new evangelization in earnest.

---

[1] J. Ratzinger “Milestones, Memoirs 1927-1977” Ignatius (1997) 108-109.

[2] J. Ratzinger, Commentary on the Documents of Vatican II “Revelation Itself,” Chapter I,  Vorgrimler,  Vol. III  (1969) Herder and Herder, Article 5, 177-179,

[3] Mt. 16, 16; Lk. 2, 21: “The Christ of God.”

[4] Cf. Thesis 1 of Ratzinger’s “Behold the Pierced One” Ignatius (1986) 15-22.

CDF Muller: “Today’s mentality is largely opposed to the Christian understanding of marriage, with regard to its indissolubility and its openness to children. Because many Christians are influenced by this, marriages nowadays are probably invalid more often than they were previously.”

I posted this a year ago. It comes up again today. Look at it again, not just to draw horrorific conclusions as to your parents, etc. and your own status but, if true, what does this mean for the future of marriage and the ascetical and then catechetical preparation for it.

“Pope says marriage annulment process should be free of charge

BY FRANCIS X. ROCCA

Catholic News Service

VATICAN CITY (CNS) January 24, 2015 — Addressing the Vatican tribunal primarily responsible for hearing requests for marriage annulments, Pope Francis said all annulment processes should be free of charge.

“The sacraments are free. The sacraments give us grace. And a matrimonial process pertains to the sacrament of matrimony. How I wish that all processes were free,” the pope said Jan. 24, at a meeting to inaugurate the Roman Rota’s judicial year.

Pope Francis also said that, because contemporary culture portrays marriage as a “mere form of emotional gratification,” people often marry without a true understanding of the sacrament, meaning many such marriages might actually be invalid.

“The judge, in pondering the validity of the consent expressed, must take into account the context of values and of faith — or their presence or absence — in which the intent to marry was formed. In fact, ignorance of the contents of the faith could lead to what the code (of canon law) calls an error conditioning the will. This eventuality is not to be considered rare as in the past, precisely because worldly thinking often prevails over the magisterium of the church,” the pope said.

The pope said judges in matrimonial cases should “determine if there was an original lack of consent, either directly because of a lack of a valid intention, or because of a grave lack of understanding of matrimony itself, such as to condition the will. The crisis of marriage is, in fact, not seldom at the root a crisis of conscience illuminated by faith.”

In August, Pope Francis established a commission to simplify and streamline the marriage-annulment process. At the October Synod of Bishops on the family, participants discussed the possibility of waiving fees. Archbishop Rino Fisichella, president of the Pontifical Council for Promoting the New Evangelization, told reporters that the purpose of such a measure would be to eliminate even the “smallest suspicion” of a profit motive in church activities relating to a sacrament.

The impact of the cultural context on the validity of marriages is not a new concern.

Cardinal Gerhard Muller, prefect of the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith, wrote in the Vatican newspaper in October 2013: “Today’s mentality is largely opposed to the Christian understanding of marriage, with regard to its indissolubility and its openness to children. Because many Christians are influenced by this, marriages nowadays are probably invalid more often than they were previously.”

In July 2013, Pope Francis suggested that as many as half of all Catholic marriages might be invalid, “because people get married lacking maturity, they get married without realizing that it is a lifelong commitment, they get married because society tells them they have to get married.”

In 2010, Pope Benedict XVI told an interviewer that “canon law has taken it for granted that someone who contracts a marriage knows what marriage is. Assuming the existence of this knowledge, the marriage is then valid and indissoluble. But in the present confusion of opinions, in today’s completely new situation, what people ‘know’ is rather that divorce is supposedly normal. So we have to deal with the question of how to recognize validity and where healing is possible.”

Now, continue to the 1998 opinion of Cardinal Ratzinger that considers faith as essential to all the sacraments, and without it, matrimony would not be a sacrament, and therefore, not valid (and hence, annullable):

(…) 

“Further study is required, however, concerning the question of whether non-believing Christians — baptized persons who never or who no longer believe in God — can truly enter into a sacramental marriage. In other words, it needs to be clarified whether every marriage between two baptized persons is ipso facto a sacramental marriage. In fact, the Code states that only a “valid” marriage between baptized persons is at the same time a sacrament (cf. cic, can. 1055, § 2). Faith belongs to the essence of the sacrament; what remains to be clarified is the juridical question of what evidence of the “absence of faith” would have as a consequence that the sacrament does not come into being. (3) 

3 During the meeting with clergy in the Diocese of Aosta, which took place 25 July 2005, Pope Benedict XVI spoke of this difficult question: “those who were married in the Church for the sake of tradition but were not truly believers, and who later find themselves in a new and invalid marriage and subsequently convert, discover faith and feel excluded from the Sacrament, are in a particularly painful situation. This really is a cause of great suffering and when I was Prefect of the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith, I invited various Bishops’ Conferences and experts to study this problem: a sacrament celebrated without faith. Whether, in fact, a moment of invalidity could be discovered here because the Sacrament was found to be lacking a fundamental dimension, I do not dare to say. I personally thought so, but from the discussions we had I realized that it is a highly complex problem and ought to be studied further. But given these people’s painful plight, it must be studied further”. 

[Introductory comment: “In 1998 Cardinal Joseph Ratzinger, Prefect of the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith, introduced the volume: “On the Pastoral Care of the Divorced and Remarried”, published by the Libreria Editrice Vaticana in the dicastery’s series “Documenti e Studi”, 17. Because of its interest in our day and its breadth of perspective, we reproduce the third part along with three additional notes. This text is also available on the newspaper’s website (www.osservatoreromano.va) in English, Italian, French, German, Portuguese and Spanish.”]

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Note:

Canon 1055 of the 1983 Code of Canon Law:

 1) “The marriage covenant by which a man and a woman establish between themselves a partnership of their whole life, and which of its own very nature is ordered to the well-being of the spouses [the bonum coniugum]  and to the procreation and upbringing of children, has between the baptized, been raised by Christ the Lord to the dignity of a sacrament.”

2) Consequently, a valid marriage contract cannot exist between baptized persons without its being by that very fact a sacrament.

And according to the above, there cannot be a sacrament without faith (understood as self-gift), and hence there could not be validity.

New York Times Wants to Force Nursing Homes to Starve Alzheimer’s Patients to Death

by Wesley J. Smith | New York, NY | LifeNews.com | 1/21/15 1:24 PM

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Immoral bioethical policies and practices advance toward implementation through discourse–first in professional journals, and then in elite popular media columns.

That process is now gearing up regarding what I call “VSED-by-Proxy.”

VSED stands for “voluntary stopping eating and drinking”–suicide by self-starvation–pushed for the elderly and others by those compaaaaa–ssssss–ionate death zealots at the Hemlock SocietyCompassion and Choices.

But what about mentally incompetent residents of nursing homes who willingly eat, but who years previously stated in an advance medical directive that they wanted to be made dead by starvation under such circumstances?

We see increasing advocacy in bioethics that nursing homes be required to starve such patients to death–even if they are then happy, even if they willingly eat, and even, one supposes, if they ask for food. In other words, the idea is that the demented patient is incompetent to decide to eatif he had earlier directed that he be starved to death!

And now VSED-by-Proxy has been validated by respectful reportage in the New York Times. From, “Complexities of Choosing an End Game for Dementia,” by Paula Span:

Jerome Medalie keeps his advance directive hanging in a plastic sleeve in his front hall closet, as his retirement community recommends. That’s where the paramedics will look if someone calls 911. Like many such documents, it declares that if he is terminally ill, he declines cardiopulmonary resuscitation, a ventilator and a feeding tube.

But Mr. Medalie’s directive also specifies something more unusual: If he develops Alzheimer’s disease or another form of dementia, he refuses “ordinary means of nutrition and hydration.”

A retired lawyer with a proclivity for precision, he has listed 10 triggering conditions, including “I cannot recognize my loved ones” and “I cannot articulate coherent thoughts and sentences.” If any three such disabilities persist for several weeks, he wants his health care proxy — his wife, Beth Lowd — to ensure that nobody tries to keep him alive by spoon­feeding or offering him liquids

This is an extremely dangerous culture of death aggression because it would erase the boundary between medical treatment that can be refused–and basic humane care, no different ethically from turning a patient to prevent bed sores or providing hygiene–which all patients are required to receive regardless of their condition.

Just as an advance directive instructing that a patient not be kept clean should be disregarded, so too should an order to starve the patient who willingly eats.

This too is important: VSED is suicide. Legally requiring nursing homes to commit VSED-by-proxy would be forcing them to kill—and to kill cruelly. A legal regimen that forced medical personnel to assist a patient’s suicide by starvation would drive many doctors and nurses out of medicine.

After all, most doctors and nurses want to be healers, not killers.  And how safe would we be in other areas of medicine if the professions were filled with people who would willingly starve patients to death when they happily eat.

But let’s not kid ourselves. VSED-by-proxy is a stalking horse for opening the door to lethally injecting Alzheimer’s patients, and probably doing so en masse. After all, why force anyone to undergo a slow and potentially agonizing death by VSED or VSED-by-proxy when he or she can be dispatched quickly?

Euthanasia pursuant to advance directive is already practiced in the Netherlands and Belgium. It is possible that this has been the stealth goal from the time advocacy for removing feeding tubes from incompetent patients began decades ago—and that now, with the open advocacy of VSED and VSED-by-proxy, the real agenda is finally coming out into the open.

LifeNews.com Note: Wesley J. Smith, J.D., is a special consultant to the Center for Bioethics and Culture and a bioethics attorney who blogs at Human Exeptionalism.

Josemaria Escriva as “Ipse Christus,” and Therefore, All of Us.

St. Josemaria Escriva experienced himself to be not only another Christ, but Ipse Christus, Christ Himself. The experience did not consist in having Christ within him, or of imitating Christ, or of following Christ, or being like Christ. He experienced being Christ, and heard the words, “you are my Son; you are Christ.” It seems that we are talking about an ontological identity of really becoming Christ. But this sets of an alarm that we are talking about man becoming God, and if that is the case, how do we not fall into pantheism?

There were two audible experiences (locutions) that he had in 1931: One was during Mass on August 7 when he heard the words: "And I, when I am lifted up from the earth, will draw all things to myself" and "You are my son (Psalm 2, 7), you are Christ." 

            With regard to the first, Escriva commented years later that he understood Christ saying those words "not in the sense in which in which Scripture says them. I say [them] to you in the sense that you are to raise me  up in all human activities, in the sense that all over the world there should be Christians with a personal and most free dedication, that they be other Christs."

            With regard to the second, he recounted later: “the Lord was giving me those blows around the year 31, and I did not understand. And suddenly (de pronto), in the midst of that great bitterness, these words: 'You are my Son (Psalm 2, 7), you are Christ.' And I could only stammer: 'Abba, Pater! Abba, Pater! Abba! Abba! Abba!'  Now I see it with new light, like a new discovery, just as one sees, after years have passed, that hand of God, of divine Wisdom, of the All-Powerful One. You've led me, Lord, to understand that to find the Cross is to find happiness, joy. And I see the reason with greater clarity than ever: to find the Cross is to identify oneself with Christ, to be Christ, and therefore to be a son of God.”

                        These two locutions (charisms) with reference to Christians as "other Christs" and himself as "my Son, you are Christ," gave him the clarity of mind to persistently repeat throughout his life that the vocation of every man as image of God, and not just the Christian via the sacrament of Baptism, is to be "no ya alter Christus, sino ipse Christus, !el mismo Cristo!" (not just another Christ, but Christ Himself) ^[1]

Two authors, Burkhart and Lopez[2], add here that the novelty is not so much that Escriva affirms that being created in the image of God, or being baptized into Christ will bring about an identification with Christ Himself (which is already deep in Christian Tradition), but that this identification with Christ has an ontological character to it, and it is accessible to all in ordinary secular life. It is not new to say that one can have a vocation to be Christ Himself, but it is new to say that all are called to actually become Christ Himself by living out ordinary life.^[3]

            And so let's note that Escriva did not experience or hear within him that he had become like Christ, that he was imitating Christ, that he was following Christ, that he had identified himself with Christ, that he was sharing with Christ, that he belonged to Christ, that he was tending toward the fullness of the humanity of Christ, or even that he was another Christ. Rather, these two authors commented that: “he saw and felt that to be a son of God was “to be Christ' and therefore God the Father treated him as he treated Christ when giving him these physical and moral pains: the cross. It was the evident proof of his filiation, because as the  Father had wanted the passion and death of His incarnate Son for the redemption of men, so those contradictions of his were the way to fulfill the mission which He has given him to  share in the redemptive work of Christ.  God the Father had not only treated him 'as Christ' but when inviting him to embrace the cross, he said to him: 'you are Christ' 'you are my son.'”(?)

            The texts of our Father are unambiguous: “To have the Cross is to be identified with Christ, it is to be Christ, and therefore, to be a son of God.” In the same meditation, our Father said: “There is only one way to live on earth: to die with Christ in order to rise with Him, until we may be able to say with the Apostle: 'It is not I who live, but Christ who lives in me' (Gal 2, 20)” Burkhart and Lopez comment: “St. Josemaria understands that Gal. 2, 20 speaks of a presence of the life of Christ in the Christian not only in an intentional sense (as the known is in the one who knows, and the beloved in the one who loves) but ontologically” (my underline). Removing any lingering ambiguity, our Father writes” “Each Christian is not simply alter Christus; another Christ, but ipse Christus: Christ himself!”

            Burkart and Lopez attempt to give a theological account of this ontological identification of the human person with Christ by assuming the theology that had been crafted in the Council of Chalcedon (451) of the one Person, two natures and applying the notion of participation of the human nature in the divine nature.

            It should be noted that the affirmations of St. Josemaria point to a radical ontological identity that the Christian “is” and the presence of the Cross is the patent, existential and experiential confirmation that, indeed, one has become “another Christ, Christ Himself.” The two authors affirm that the identity with Christ is ontological, and that it cannot be reduced to abstract thought or doctrine.[4] They go on to say that we are not dealing here in St. Josemaria with a “confusion between Christ and the Christian,” but rather with an “identification.” And the “identification” does not mean the “disappearance of one’s own identity” but a “compenetration.” And the only adequate analogy for this is the union between the Trinitarian Father and the Son when Jesus says “As the living Father has sent me, and as I live because of the Father, so he who eats me, he also shall live because of me” (Jn. 6, 58), and “I in them and You in me” (Jn. 17, 23). But we must remember what was heard, and what, therefore, was said by St. Josemaria: “you are my Son; you are Christ,” and Escriva could not stop saying Abba, Abba which is the unique language of the Ipse Christus.

   The question, then, is Christ in Escriva? Or is Escriva Christ?, and what could we possibly mean by that?

            Burkhart and Lopez, once they reach the point of giving a theological, conceptual explanation, slide into a more reasonable Christ is in Escriva. And they do it in the more conventional metaphysical / terms of participation.

They apply the Christology of Chalcedon in its Scholastic metaphysical terms of one Person, two natures. Obviously, they want to avoid falling into an offensive confusion of the uncreated Divinity of Christ with a created human person. They do not want to fall into pantheism. And so they apply Neo-Scholastic Christology and anthropology: the Humanity of Christ – the human nature – is the efficient “instrumental”cause of grace. That is, the Humanity of Christ, in so far as it is assumed by the divine Person of the Logos, possesses the fullness of grace (assuming grace to be the communicator of divine Life). They then assign that the Humanity of Christ is the instrumental (not principal) cause. They then say that Christ is present in the human person in so far as the action of His humanity is made present in him. That is, Christ is not in Escriva. Rather, the grace of Christ’s humanity is in Escriva which acts in him.[5]

My complaint with this is the following: if the human person has the profound ontological likeness to the divine Person because created in His image and likeness, and after Christ, baptized into His power to make the gift of Himself to death, why not apply the anthropology of Gaudium et spes 24 that is the dynamic concretion of Gaudium et spes 22.  Why take an anthropology from below (rational animal) as from Aristotle and Boethius and try to force a relational Christology into it? That is, follow the Magisterium that says that Jesus Christ is the revelation not only who God is, but who man is. That is, Christ is not an exception to man (as taken from below as rational animal) but his Prototype. Therefore the anthropology has to follow the Christology. And the Christology of Chalcedon (451) was complete and dynamized by the Christology of Constantinople III (680-681) that says that the human will of Christ becomes the human will of the divine Person of the Son, and that the human and the divine compenetrate in that both wills (divine and human) are longings of the same Person for the Father. That is, the human will is not damaged but perfected by being the will of a divine Person.

This would mean that the freedom of the human will of Christ consists in obeying the Father[6] to death on the Cross. This is made in the magisterium of Gaudium et spes #24 that says, “man, the only earthly being God has willed for itself, finds itself by the sincere gift of self.” Therefore, if man is capable of making the gift of himself in obedience to the Will of the Father, he is capable of being Christ Himself.

The theology of Jesus Christ reveals that the Person of Christ is nothing in Himself. Since the Trinity is One God, then the Persons must be subsistent Relations. Each Person is not a “substance” or “individual” in self, but a “for” the other. It is the Communio of the one Christian God.

 Hence, the ontological content of the Son is to be nothing in Self. Hear Ratzinger: “The Son as Son, and in so far as he is Son, does not proceed in any way from himself and so is completely one with the Father; since he is nothing beside him, claims no special position of his own, confronts the Father with nothing belonging only to him, retains no room for his own individuality, therefore he is completely equal to the Father. The logic is compelling: if there is nothing in which he is just he, no kind of fenced-off private ground, then he coincides with the Father, is ‘one’ with him. It is precisely this totality of interplay that the word ‘Son’ aims at expressing. To John ‘Son’ means being-from-another; thus with this word he defines the being of this man as being from another and for others, as a being that is completely open on both sides, knows no reserved area of the mere ‘I.’ When it thus becomes clear that the being of Jesus as Christ is a completely open being, a being ‘from’ and ‘towards,’ that nowhere clings to itself and nowhere stands on its own, then it is also clear at the same time that this being is pure relation (not substantiality) and, as pure relation, pure unity. This fundamental statement about Christ becomes, as we have seen, at the same time the explanation of Christian existence. To John, being a Christian means being like the Son, becoming a son; that is, not standing on one’s own and in oneself, but living completely open in the ‘from’ and ‘towards.’ In so far as the Christian is a ‘Christian,’ this is true of him. And certainly such utterances will make him aware to how small an extent he is a Christian”^[7]

And further, the person of the Son and His act cannot be distinguished. Ratzinger again: “For what faith really states is precisely that with Jesus it is not possible to distinguish office and person; with him, this differentiation simply becomes inapplicable. The person is the office, the office is the person. The two are no longer divisible. Here there is no private area reserved for an ‘I’ which remains in the background behind the deeds and actions and thus at some time or other can be4 ‘off duty;’ there is no ‘I’ separate from the work; the ‘I’ is the work and the work is the ‘I.’”[8]

And now to connect what Bl. Alvaro del Portillo, having lived 40 years with St. Josemaria and having observed him in his “first act” as founder of Opus Dei, wrote in the Osservatore Romano in May of 1992: “The identification of his very self with his foundational activity implied that Mons. Escriva perfected himself as a subject – up to the point of living the virtues to a heroic degree – in the measure in which he carried out Opus Dei, feeling the need to second God’s plans daily.” He commented that it was impossible to distinguish his persona from his vocation to found the Work.

Hence, if the Person of Christ is His action, and His Person is His teaching, then if the human person, image and baptized, is capable of this totality of self gift over a life-time, then, with this Christological anthropology, we are able to give a metaphysical account of the human person approximating his Prototype.

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[1]Josemaria Escriva “Christ is Passing By,” #104

[2] Ernst Burkhart - Javier Lopez, “Vida Cotidiana y Santidad En La Ensenagnza de San Josemaria,” Rialp, (2011) Vol. II, 85.

[3] Ernst Burkhart - Javier Lopez, “Vida Cotidiana y Santidad En La Ensenagnza de San Josemaria,” Rialp, (2011) Vol. II, 85.

[4] “La filiacion divine percibida por san Josemaria en 1931 no se agota en la doctrina – profunda, pero quiza algo abstracta – de ser ‘hijjos en el Hijo,’ sino que es una filiacion divine ‘en Cristo,’ una filiacion divina ‘encarnada’ y redentora.’

[5] “Que la cause instrumental sea causa por participacion comporta que es causa no por su ser (como la causa principal, la Divinidad) sino por su accion o ‘virtud,’ que la Humanidad de Cristo tiene de modo indefectible. Esto implica que la presencia de Cristo encuanto hombre en el Cristiano que recibe al gracia, no es como la pesencia de la causa principal, la Divinidad, que inabita en el alma in gracia, sino que es una presencia de su accion o ‘virtud.’ En este sentido se la puede llamar ‘presencia virtual,’ entendiendo este ultimo termino como presence de la accion de Cristo o de su virtus: su ‘poder’ o ‘fuerza.’ La presencia virtual de Cristo en cuanto Hombre in el Cristiano es una presencia verdadera y real, pero no sustancial; es presencia del poder o del influjo de la Humanidad de Cristo, no de su sustancia. Se trata de una presencia dinamica. Gracias a ella puede decirse que las acciones de un hijo de Dios, surgidas de su naturaleza elevada por la gracia de Cristo, son tambien acciones d Cristo a traves del Cristiano como miembro suyo: vida d Cristo en el Cristiano. Y es, ademas, una presencia permanente, que existe mientras permanence la gracia. Burkart y Lopez …. P. 99.

[6] See Veritatis Splendor#85.

[7] J. Ratzinger, “Introduction to Christianity,” Ignatius (1990) 134.

[8] Ibid. 149.