Thoughts on Reading Pope Francis' "The Name of God is Mercy"

This isn’t a book review of the Pope’s new book The Name of God Is Mercy. Rather it is a reflection on some of the points that really struck home with me and the ideas they raised in me, leading me to say, “This is amazing!” Admittedly, a large portion of the book does fall under that description, so if I wanted to quote all the excerpts that impressed me, I’d probably be posting the entire text.

Let’s just say right off that many people have wronged Pope Francis. Both those who hope he will “decriminalize” their favorite sin and those who fear he will abandon Church teaching have wronged him. The reason I say this is because the book recognizes a link that the Church has long taught: To receive mercy requires us to be sorry for our sins. That is a theme running through the book. Once a person understands this basic concept, it becomes clear that the panic within the Church over the Pope’s words and actions are wildly inaccurate. He’s not looking for ways to bring people who are at odds with the Church to Communion without a need to repent. He’s looking for ways to encourage such people to get right with God through the Church. In other words, people have spent the past 3 years rejoicing or panicking over something he never intended and missed the point of what he was calling people to.

I would describe it this way. What people misinterpret as a “liberal” Pope is actually an attempt to show mercy to those who think they are irredeemable, letting them know that Our Lord is constantly calling them back. At the same time, he is warning those who think they are fine as they are and don’t need to change that they are wrong. In one excellent passage, the Pope is asked if there can be mercy without the acknowledgement of sin. His reply is:

Mercy exists, but if you don’t want to receive it… If you don’t recognize yourself as a sinner, it means you don’t want to receive it, it means that you don’t feel the need for it. Sometimes it is hard to know exactly what happened. Sometimes you might feel skeptical and think it is impossible to get back on your feet again. Or maybe you prefer your wounds, the wounds of sin, and you behave like a dog, licking your wounds with your tongue. This is a narcissistic illness that makes people bitter. There is pleasure in feeling bitter, an unhealthy pleasure.

If we do not begin by examining our wretchedness, if we stay lost and despair that we will never be forgiven, we end up licking our wounds, and they stay open and never heal. Instead, there is medicine, there is healing, we only need take a small step toward God, or at least express the desire to take it. A tiny opening is enough. All we need to do is take our condition seriously. We need to remember and remind ourselves where

Pope Francis (2016-01-12). The Name of God Is Mercy (Kindle Locations 510-517). Random House Publishing Group. Kindle Edition.

But how many of us actually want to receive mercy instead of vindication? I think many of us want to be proven right. We want the Church to admit she has done “wrong” in teachings we run afoul of. The individual does not want to admit that they have done wrong in being divorced and remarried or in contracepting or in rejection of authority to changes the Church makes in terms of discipline. We look for flaws in the behavior of individuals in authority in order to deny the authority of the Church. If the individual Pope or bishop can be shown to have done wrong on X, we think it justifies our rejection of authority on Z (a totally unrelated subject). But when we approach the teachings of the Church this way, we’re showing we don’t want to receive forgiveness.

The Pope also deals with another aspect of mercy. He uses the imagery of the Torah and the exclusions of lepers to avoid contamination and to protect the clean. He points out that Jesus showed mercy to the lepers in healing them—He is concerned with the well-being of the leper, not just the clean. He extends this image to the concerns of the Church, with showing mercy to the sinner and avoiding having the faithful brought into sin:

This excerpt from the Gospel shows us two kinds of logic of thought and faith. On the one hand, there is the fear of losing the just and saved, the sheep that are already safely inside the pen. On the other hand, there is the desire to save the sinners, the lost, those on the other side of the fence. The first is the logic of the scholars of the law. The second is the logic of God, who welcomes, embraces, and transfigures evil into good, transforming and redeeming my sin, transmuting condemnation into salvation. Jesus enters into contact with the leper. He touches him. In so doing, he teaches us what to do, which logic to follow, when faced with people who suffer physically and spiritually. This is the example we need to follow, and in so doing we overcome prejudice and rigidity, much in the same way that the apostles did in the earliest days of the Church when they had to overcome, for example, resistance from those who insisted on unconditionally following the Law of Moses even for converted pagans.

Pope Francis (2016-01-12). The Name of God Is Mercy (Kindle Locations 588-595). Random House Publishing Group. Kindle Edition.

Of course we need to both protect the sheep inside the pen and save those outside of the pen. But it is wrong to think of one at the expense of the other. The Pope isn’t saying either-or. He’s saying do both…avoiding the danger caused by solely thinking about the protection of the clean and avoiding the concept of mercy which is devoid of turning back to God. Oh yes, contrary to the claims by people who hope or fear that the Church will change her teaching. The Pope makes clear that the Church speaks about sin because she has to speak the truth:

The Church condemns sin because it has to relay the truth: “This is a sin.” But at the same time, it embraces the sinner who recognizes himself as such, it welcomes him, it speaks to him of the infinite mercy of God. Jesus forgave even those who crucified and scorned him. We must go back to the Gospel.

Pope Francis (2016-01-12). The Name of God Is Mercy (Kindle Locations 477-480). Random House Publishing Group. Kindle Edition.

Which makes perfect sense. As St. John put it:

⁵ Now this is the message that we have heard from him and proclaim to you: God is light, and in him there is no darkness at all. ⁶ If we say, “We have fellowship with him,” while we continue to walk in darkness, we lie and do not act in truth. ⁷ But if we walk in the light as he is in the light, then we have fellowship with one another, and the blood of his Son Jesus cleanses us from all sin. ⁸ If we say, “We are without sin,” we deceive ourselves, and the truth is not in us. ⁹ If we acknowledge our sins, he is faithful and just and will forgive our sins and cleanse us from every wrongdoing. ¹⁰ If we say, “We have not sinned,” we make him a liar, and his word is not in us. 

 

 New American Bible, Revised Edition (Washington, DC: The United States Conference of Catholic Bishops, 2011), 1 John 1:5–10.

The Church speaks about sin because, unless we recognize that we walk in darkness, we deceive ourselves and cannot act in truth. If the Church wants to be the vessel of God’s mercy, she must speak truthfully about sin. Otherwise, we’re flailing about and unable to recognize the mercy God has for us—because we will not seek it. So all the calls for “changing Church teaching” in changing from saying “X is a sin” to “X is not a sin” is not being merciful.

So, unpacking these sections of the book, I see the Pope making three important points that we all have to remember:

1. All of us have to recognize that we are sinners who are in need of mercy. We have to avoid thinking that we are good enough as we are with no need to change. If we will not repent and turn back to The Lord, we do not want to receive mercy.
2. All of us have to recognize that protecting the flock in the pen does not permit us to neglect the sheep outside of the pen.
3. The Church teaches about sin because the has to testify to the truth that sin separates us from God. If the Church will not teach about sin, she cannot testify to the truth about God.

With these three points, all of us have to ask about our relationship with God and His Church. Are we refusing the opportunity to accept mercy? Are we refusing to show mercy to others? Are we recognizing that the teaching about sin involves recognizing that which separates us from God and where we need to change? Are we refusing to accept that the teaching of the Church is not arbitrary rules, but speaking the truth so that we might accept God’s mercy?

Each one of us will have to look into their own heart and seek out where repentance is needed. Each one of us will have to seek out reconciliation with God through His Church as He established as His means of doing so. God’s love and mercy are unmerited gifts. God does not owe them to us, but He does want to give them to us, if only we will accept them.

This is something important to consider for us as we go through this Year of Mercy (and afterwards too).

Thoughts on the Purpose of the Christian Religion

In modern times, Christianity has a problem with people who choose not to follow the people who are the appointed leaders. They believe that when the Church differs with them, the personal preference is to be heeded, not the Church. Such an attitude is understandable when we deal with Non-Catholics who do not believe that the Catholic Church is the Church established by Christ, or non-Christians and non-religious people denying Christianity altogether. The point of Christianity is that it professes to have revelation from God, and that people who have been entrusted with the authority of applying that revelation have their teaching backed by this revelation. So a person who does not believe Christianity possesses any such revelation, it stands to reason that they won’t follow the teachings of that Church.

However, when it comes to Christianity, which professes to believe in the God of the Old Testament and believes Jesus Christ is the Son of God, this faith necessarily presupposes that God has given us realization—through the Law, the Prophets and finally through His Son. When the Christian falls afoul of the commandments in some way, the fact is he or she is behaving in a way which God has revealed to us to be counter to the way He wants us to live. Furthermore, when God has revealed that authority has been given to certain human beings to bind and to loose (Matthew 16:19 and Matthew 18:18) for the purpose of bring the message of salvation and teaching His commandments so that people may live as He commands (Matthew 28:19-20 and Revelation 22:11), then obedience to that human authority is a part of being faithful to that revelation of God.

Now, with the non-Catholic, the non-Christian and the non-religious, they have some excuse (if they are sincere in their error) of not obeying the authority of the Church. We do have a mission to reach out to them, but their disobedience is not based on a disregard for the truth they have been taught (see Luke 12:47-48). Their judgment will be based on what they could have learned and what effort they put into seeking the truth. It’s not for us to try to guess whether they have searched hard enough or not. Rather we are to try to give them the message of salvation and the teachings of Our Lord so that they will not have to risk that judgment (and doing so in a way which does not drive them away from the truth on account of our behavior).

However, we who profess to believe in the Catholic Church as being the Church established by Our Lord have no excuses when it comes to not being obedient to revelation and to the teaching of the Church that we profess (with our lips anyway). As Vatican II put it, in Lumen Gentium #14:

All the Church’s children should remember that their exalted status is to be attributed not to their own merits but to the special grace of Christ. If they fail moreover to respond to that grace in thought, word and deed, not only shall they not be saved but they will be the more severely judged.
 

Catholic Church, “Dogmatic Constitution on the Church: Lumen Gentium,” in Vatican II Documents (Vatican City: Libreria Editrice Vaticana, 2011).

This leads to the problem of dissent. If we profess a belief in a God who reveals His will and who establishes a Church to teach people His ways, then what are we thinking when we decide to set aside a Church teaching in favor of our own preference? To do so is to either effectively deny God’s revelation or to effectively deny that the Church has any authority to teach in His name. In either case, it forces us to ask: For what purpose do we belong to a Church if we do not believe her claims to be true?

Of course such a rejection does not have to be total. People can (and do) choose to believe the Church is mostly right, except for that one area that he or she chooses to disagree with. Perhaps they are fine with the Social Teaching of the Church, but not the teaching on sexually. Or perhaps they profess to accept the moral teaching of the Church but refuse to acknowledge her authority when it comes to social justice or the ordinary form of the Mass. In such situations, the person reserves the right to say they will not recognize the authority of the Church.

The problem is, the fact that the Church has any authority on a favored issue requires that she has authority from God in the first place. If God has not revealed His authority, then one might be excused for making their own morality up. But, if God has revealed His authority, then the behavior which goes against His authority goes against Him (see Matthew 7:21, Luke 10:16 and John 14:15).

We certainly know that Our Lord has made revelation known to us saying that some actions are sins in His eyes. When we seek to determine right and wrong, and we profess to believe that there is a God who will come to judge the living and the dead, it certainly makes sense to listen to Him and to those whom He empowers to teach in His name. If we choose to treat this revelation as if it were not revelation, it raises the question: On what authority does this person make their claim to determine good and evil? As Frank Sheed put it, “The most brilliant moral system, constructed without the information only God can give, is brilliant guesswork,: (Is It the Same Church page 33). The person who disregards the Revelation in Scripture and Sacred Tradition in favor of his or her own guessing on what God really wants is choosing to ignore God’s commands in favor of the guesswork that “God doesn’t really still mean that."

In essence, the person who, while professing to be a Christian, chooses to deny the Scripture and Tradition or the person professing to be Catholic who chooses to disobey the Church, has a very confused concept on what they are called to be as Christians. If God has revealed that X is a sin, then how can one claim that in rejecting that revelation they are still being faithful to the God who revealed it? It can only be done through refusing to seek out what the truth is, relying instead on what feels good to the person. But Scripture warns that what seems right can lead to destruction (Proverbs 16:25). 

The fact of the matter is, in trying to put Jesus and His Church at odds, one is denying part of what God reveals, pretending it is manmade. But in doing so, the person is making Christianity meaningless. As Peter Kreeft put it:

Socrates: Furthermore, if you do that, why do you need the Bible at all?

Bertha: What do you mean?

Socrates: If it agrees with you, it's superfluous, and if it doesn't, it's wrong. Why read a book that must be either superfluous or wrong? In fact, why read or listen to anyone? They must all be superfluous or wrong.

Bertha: That's ridiculous.

Socrates: My point exactly.

Peter Kreeft. Socrates Meets Jesus: History's Greatest Questioner Confronts the Claims of Christ (Kindle Locations 532-534). Kindle Edition.

To pick and choose is to put one’s own preferences first and when it agrees, it is only useful as a piece of propaganda to justify oneself; when it disagrees, it is considered wrong. But if the Bible or the Church is wrong in your eyes in some cases, why should another not use the same way of thinking and reject what you think is important as “manmade” and promote the things you disagree with? In such cases, the revelation of God and the teaching of His Church has no meaning. There’s no point in professing to be a part of something that you reject when it pleases you. The point of professing to be a Catholic is because one believes in God and that the Church teaches with God’s authority. Deny that and religion is a social awareness group.

But as Pope Francis said:

[W]e can walk as much we want, we can build many things, but if we do not confess Jesus Christ, nothing will avail. We will become a pitiful NGO, but not the Church, the Bride of Christ. When one does not walk, one stalls. When one does not built on solid rocks, what happens? What happens is what happens to children on the beach when they make sandcastles: everything collapses, it is without consistency. When one does not profess Jesus Christ - I recall the phrase of Leon Bloy – “Whoever does not pray to God, prays to the devil.” When one does not profess Jesus Christ, one professes the worldliness of the devil.

Confessing Jesus Christ is to acknowledge what He says to be true, and when He gives the Church His authority, this means that to confess Jesus Christ is to be obedient to His Church. If we don’t choose to live in this way, then our profession to be Catholics is stripped of all meaning.

Speaking Truth and Avoiding Falsehood and Rash Judgment

Regular readers of mine probably know my favorite quotation of Aristotle, his definition of truth by heart, but it’s time to cite it again:

To say that what is is not, or that what is not is, is false; but to say that what is is, and what is not is not, is true; and therefore also he who says that a thing is or is not will say either what is true or what is false.

 

 Aristotle, Aristotle in 23 Volumes, Vols.17, 18, Translated by Hugh Tredennick. (Medford, MA: Cambridge, MA, Harvard University Press; London, William Heinemann Ltd., 1933, 1989).

What brings up this citation this time is my seeing a growing number of people on the internet willing to impute motives to people based on their own interpretation of the quoted words, without concern as to whether the author intends those interpretations or not. It’s an important thing to keep in mind. If we want to speak truthfully about a person, we must make sure that our interpretation of his or her words are what the author intends before we praise or criticize the author/speaker in question. If we don’t do this, then we speak falsely about the person and our criticism is either wrong or, if it’s right, it’s only right by coincidence. 

This is especially a problem when personal preferences and beliefs color the meaning of words. For example, I have had to defend St. John Paul II when he used the word “feminism” from detractors who assumed he was using it in the sense of the American meaning of radical feminism. From this interpretation, his detractors accused him of being faithless to the Church. Or for a more recent example, millions of people still think that Pope Francis was endorsing “same sex marriage” on account of an out of context quote, “Who am I to judge.” (See HERE for context). Such people do not speak the truth when they claim/accuse the Pope of changing Church teaching.

Catholic philosopher Peter Kreeft demonstrated why this is a problem in one of his Socratic dialogues he wrote (they’re all worth reading):

Socrates: I think you are confusing belief with interpretation.

Flatland: No, I'm just saying we have to interpret a book in light of our beliefs.

Socrates: And I'm saying we must not do that.

Flatland: Why not?

Socrates: If you wrote a book to tell other people what your beliefs were, and I read it and interpreted it in light of my beliefs, which were different from yours, would you be happy?

Flatland: If you disagreed with me? Why not? You're free to make up your own mind.

Socrates: No, I said interpreted the book in light of my beliefs. For instance, if you wrote a book against miracles and I believed in miracles, and I interpreted your book as a defense of miracles, would you be happy?

Flatland: Of course not. That's misinterpretation.

Socrates: Even if it were my honest belief?

Flatland: Oh, I see. We have to interpret a book in light of the author's beliefs, and criticize it in light of our own.

Socrates: Precisely. Otherwise we are imposing our views on another. And that is certainly not charitable, but arrogant.

Peter Kreeft. Socrates Meets Jesus: History's Greatest Questioner Confronts the Claims of Christ (Kindle Locations 749-755). Kindle Edition.

So if I interpret the meaning of something based on my personal beliefs, and not according to the intention the speaker/author had, then I miss the point. Moreover, if my criticism is based on this misinterpretation, I do injustice and quite possibly do moral wrong to the person I criticize. Speaking falsely can be a sin if we know it is false, or if we can research the statement and see the true content, but simply don’t bother to (vincible ignorance). But even in a case where the person who speaks falsely has no way of learning that his/her criticism is false (invincible ignorance), wrong is still done. Invincible ignorance simply means that the person has no way of finding out that they speak or act wrongly.

Nor can we hide our speaking rashly behind the excuse of “So-and-so needs to speak more clearly” (which is an excuse which is very popular among the detractors of Pope Francis). If you think a person speaks unclearly, then you have the obligation to act on that belief to be extra careful in avoiding misinterpretation and false accusation.

All of us have the moral obligation to speak truthfully. If we know we speak falsely when we speak against someone, then we outright lie. If we just assume that an accusation must be true without verifying that the speaker/writer intended to say what we accuse them of, then we are guilty of rash judgment.

This doesn’t apply only to other people committing rash judgment against Popes. It also applies to the people we dislike. A person can find Obama, Bush, Clinton, Trump, Nancy Pelosi, Wayne LaPierre (among others, I’m just culling the boogeymen most hated by Left and Right) to be offensive and supporting offensive policies. But that offense we take does not give us leave to spread whatever hostile interpretations we think sound good. We still have the same obligation to make sure that what we say is true and that we have made an accurate interpretation of our foes. In other words, even if the person that you oppose is a total bastard, that doesn’t give you the right to speak falsely against him or her.

I think this is especially important in an election year. Issues will be thrust forward, and candidates will take both sides. There will be attempts made to put the preferred idea in a positive light, and claim bad will for the opposed idea. We are not allowed to take part in misrepresentation, whether this misrepresentation tries to make an evil plan sound good or morally neutral, or to make a good or morally neutral idea seem evil. If we speak in favor of something or someone, we must do so honestly, and if we speak in opposition to some person or policy, we must be sure we accurately understand it first, and not distort it.

Otherwise we bear false witness and do wrong, whether we do so deliberately or through careless indifference.

Is This Really the Hill You Want to Die On?

There is a rhetorical question out there, derived from the military, which goes: Is this the hill you want to die on? The meaning of the question was “Is this objective worth the cost?” (i.e. is this objective worth dying over?). The question has a wider usage now, but the basic meaning is the same: Is this fight worth the effort? It’s certainly a question we need to ask ourselves, keeping in mind the ultimate goals of our life on Earth. It’s especially worth asking ourselves as we seek to understand whether a task is a part of our life as a Christian or a distraction from it.

The world is full of disputes, and the Christian has to determine whether a dispute is one about his Christian values or about one’s preferences over how they would like things to be. When it comes to the former, the Christian of course needs to take a stand for his beliefs. But if it does not concern the Christian values dieectfy or actually reflects a worldly or aesthetic concern, then the Christian needs to consider well the importance—or lack thereof—when it comes to making a dispute over it. They especially need to consider this well when they are willing to indict those who disagree with their views.

Now, this is not to say that we should be indifferent about real problems. When The Faith is being attacked, we need to respond (though in a manner which is moral and compatible with our faith), and when we have been wronged in a secular matter, we have the right to seek redress. But sometimes the situations we get worked up about is neither an attack on the faith or a redress of grievances. Rather, we want people to acknowledge our ideas as authentic, and attack people who disagree with our opinions.

Consider Social Justice. We as Catholics cannot ignore our obligations in this matter. But some conservatives equate the term with “Socialism” and reject the teaching that is at odds with their political preferences. On the other hand, some liberals think that Social Justice means the embracing of liberal policies on government regulation or taxation. Both end up attacking people who disagree with them as not behaving in a Christian manner. The Pope is labeled a Marxist, and bishops are accused of going against the teaching of Christ. But in reality, they are picking a battle that is senseless to fight. Catholic Social Teaching does not bind us to one political platform. It tells us what sort of things we must acknowledge and avoid, calling us to work together to find a solution that actually helps people.

Or consider the issue of gun violence in America. Of course it is deplorable, especially when it comes to the issue of mass shootings. The Church condemns such things. However, the issue of gun ownership in relationship to gun violence is not as cut and dried as some would lead you to believe. The Church allows for self-defense (see the Catechism ¶ 2263-2264). However, it also recognizes that the state has the responsibility to ensure the safety of the citizens, which may prevent a laissez faire approach to firearms. The people who invoke the authority of the Church to say total banning of firearms is required or to say that infringing on the right to own a bazooka is required are both staking out a position that is not defensible in the name of the Church. A Google search on the subject finds many opinion pieces on the subject (pro- and anti-gun). But the actual statements made by those in authority within the Church do not stake out either position. Consider the 2012 USCCB statement on the subject. It does not demand the total disarmament some Catholic bloggers are calling for. It calls for reasonable restrictions aimed at keeping guns out of the hands of those who would abuse them. Yes, it is not well defined, allowing people to have disputes on what a “reasonable” restriction is. Also of interest is a Vatican statement [*] on small arms trafficking:

Unfortunately, however, it is impossible to ban all kinds of small arms and light weapons. "In a world marked by evil ... the right of legitimate defence by means of arms exists. This right can become a serious duty for those who are responsible for the lives of others, for the common good of the family or of the civil community. This right alone can justify the possession or transfer of arms". (Pontifical Council for Justice and Peace, "The International Arms Trade: an Ethical Reflection" in Origins 8 (24), 7 July 1994, p. 144).

This is not an absolute right, since there are specific conditions placed on the licitness of the production, possession and acquisition of arms. Nonetheless, in our meeting today the topic is fairly limited. Here we are discussing illicit trade in small arms and light weapons. This is, in a manner of speaking, a negative statement of the fundamental question of the legitimacy of the international arms trade.

In other words, there can be a legitimate use of small arms for self defense, but not an absolute right. Like the discussion of Social Justice, the Church does not say that one political position is endorsed. Rather she calls on people to work together to find a solution using the teaching of the Church as a basis.

I could mention many other issues of political and economic concern that people stake out as a hill to die on, and I’m sure that in each case the person who supports a certain position would label me as being unchristian and a tool for the other side for not supporting their position. But, that would miss the point. I don’t write this to endorse a specific position (liberal or conservative) on Social Justice or Gun ownership. Rather I write this to point out that the hill to die on is the Church position, and we should be working together to find a good solution.

The “hill to die on,” the things we fight about to defend should be the actual Catholic teaching. In such a case, defending that “hill” done according to Our Lord’s commands may lead people to hate us (see John 15:18-21), but we cannot yield here. However, the things where we can have legitimate differences of opinion as Catholics should not be that hill where we leave people hating us because of our own behavior (see 1 Peter 2:19-20).

So keep this in mind as we discuss issues in blogs or on Facebook. Defend the faith with charity, but don’t fight flame wars over things where there are legitimate grounds for difference of opinion.

___________________________

[*] Being an address to the United Nations, this document is of course not a magisterial document. But it does raise a point on how the Church views self defense and firearms.

Back to Basics: Learning the What and Why of Church Teaching

When it comes to moral obligation members of the Church can suddenly become very pharisaical in the sense of setting aside God’s commandment and the teaching of His Church in favor of their own thoughts on how things should be done. We see people trotting out fragments of what Popes, Councils and Saints have said on a subject and using those fragments to justify their behavior against what the Church actually teaches. The result is that we see some people arguing that a Church teaching concerning rare circumstances like the Pauline Privilege justifies divorce and remarriage in the case of a Sacramental marriage, or that the Church teaching on Double Effect and hysterectomies and ectopic pregnancies justifies sterilization and abortion. When the Church responds to that argument with an emphatic “No,” people accuse the Church of hypocrisy, contradiction, and double standards.

Or (so people won’t think this error is only committed by people on the political “Left”), we can see people scandalized when it appears that the Church has said for the longest time that people must abstain from meat on Fridays and now they don’t, or that the Mass must be celebrated in Latin, but now it doesn’t. They accuse the Church of “changing” her teachings and falling into error.

Basically, people see the Church as “changing her teachings” in one area and either demand (or fear) that this means the Church can change her teaching in any other area.

But nowhere do we see people actually seek to understand why the Church offers X as a general teaching and then appears to say “not-X” when it comes to certain cases. That’s the problem and why people go afoul of Church teaching. They think that their perceptions of Church teaching is correct and that their personal preference in relation to the Church teaching is correct and when the Church tells them they are in error, the response is to accuse the Church of being in opposition to Our Lord or in contradiction to the Popes, Councils, and Saints of past centuries.

That’s the problem. When it comes to two teachings alleged to be in contradiction, nobody actually bothers to see what the actual Church teaching is and why she considers certain cases to be in keeping with the basic teaching. But this mindset is not practiced in other fields. Nobody thinks it is a contradiction when the law looks at cutting a person open to be attempted or actual murder, but makes an exception for the surgeon performing open heart surgery. That’s because the law understands there is a difference between a qualified surgeon performing a legitimate and authorized operation and a crazed man in an alley wielding a knife.

People need to remember two things:

1. What God binds, the Church cannot loose and what God looses, the Church cannot bind.
2. What the Church binds, the Church can loose and what the Church looses, the Church can bind.

These two statements are not contradictory. Rather they make the distinction between God’s ultimate authority over creation and the Church’s authority to decide how to best teach what God has commanded. They also recognize that while the essence of God's teaching can never be denied, certain ways of calling the faithful to practice the teaching can be changed if the magisterium sees fit.

Take the case of compulsory abstinence from meat on Fridays before Vatican II. The basis of the discipline ordered by the Church seems to be based on the commandment to honor God. Meat is not evil in itself. We’re not gnostics here that think matter is corrupt. But before Vatican II, the Church decided that all Catholics should abstain from meat on Friday because it is a sacrifice to remember the Passion of Our Lord on Good Friday. For a Catholic to knowingly disobey this command would be to refuse to honor God in the manner prescribed by the Church as binding.

But, as a theology professor I once had put it, “What if you love fish? Is that really a sacrifice then?” What we ultimately had was that some people were missing the point, thinking that “Fish on Friday” was the real moral command as opposed to “offer a meaningful sacrifice on Friday.” So, if "Lobster on Friday because we can’t have hamburger” begins to be the way people start to approach this discipline, then the Church can decide to change the discipline to make the intended meaning more clear. In each case where this happens, the Church can say “OK, to combat the abuses that have slipped in, we will change discipline X in these ways.” Because the Church has bound, the Church may loose and the person who preferred the old way has no authority to condemn the Church for implementing a new way.

However, the person who sees these changes and says, “Eating meat on Friday was once a sin but now is not, therefore the Church can change her teaching on contraception, divorce, homosexuality and women priests” (whether they say it out of hope or fear) has confused what God binds with what the Church binds. The Church believes she has no such authority to change what God has commanded. We might develop a deeper understanding of what fits in with God’s command and modify disciplines to more fully reflect God’s commands in relation to justice and mercy, but the Church can never say “X is permitted” when God says “X is not permitted."

What we must always keep in mind is that when we feel troubled by a Church teaching—especially when we find ourselves at odds with it—is that our troubled feeling is not a license to disobey or dismiss the teaching of the Church. Our obligation is to seek to understand the reason for the teaching and how the Church understands the exception to the rule and why she does not see herself as contradicting herself or God. As Catholics we believe that Our Lord Himself gave the authority to bind and loose to St. Peter, the Apostles and their successors (whom we hold to be the Pope and bishops), and as such we do not have the right to disobey what the Church teaches.

Ultimately, it means we must seek to learn the what and why of the Church teaching when we feel confused or even trapped, and not rely on our personal desires and feelings. As moral theologian Germain Grisez put it:

6. Existing desires and accepted projects must also be called into question. Indeed, a fully mature Christian conscience comes into being only when all merely assumed goals and standards have been examined in the light of faith, and faith itself has been accepted by a commitment which one confidently holds to be reasonable and right. So St. Paul urges: “Do not be conformed to this world but be transformed by the renewal of your mind, that you may prove what is the will of God, what is good and acceptable and perfect” (Rom 12:2).
 

Germain Grisez, The Way of the Lord Jesus, Volume One: Christian Moral Principles (Quincy, IL: Franciscan Press, 1997), 83.

In other words, we must form our standards of behavior according to the light of faith and look to the Church as the mother and teacher whom God has entrusted us to, using her teachings as our guide to interpret our actions and thoughts, and not seek to use her words in ways she never intended.

If I Might Interject...

So, as of today, the blog formerly known as Arnobius of Sicca has been given a new name. It’s now known as If I Might Interject… which is a name I thought better fit the purpose of my writing. Some may wonder why I chose to rename the blog. 

Well, when I first took up blogging in 2007, I simply took the name of the Patristic author I was reading at the time. His work Against the Nations was interesting and lively, compared to others in the volume. Since I didn’t know the first thing about blogging, I figured it was a nice unique name that wouldn’t be confused with someone else’s work. (I had also been considering Clement of Alexandria, St. Polycarp and St. Irenaeus for names).

My first doubts came in studying a work about Patristics when the author was being described. It seems the general consensus was that the man was a pagan who suddenly decided to become a Christian and the bishop asked him to prove that he was sincere (as opposed to jumping on a bandwagon). He did so by producing a hastily written book which some scholars say show he wasn’t entirely clear on what Catholic doctrine was. In fact, his work Against the Nations was mostly notable for the citations of Greco-Roman literature which were otherwise lost today. (Apparently they were quite crass passages. The editors of the series chose to leave certain passages untranslated in Latin on account of this). That was kind of embarrassing. I didn’t want my blog to have that sort of affiliation with the name.

In a more practical sense, I got an idea as to how practical the name was, when I mentioned to a fellow RCIA teacher in the parish that I had a blog. He asked me the name and I told him. He blinked and said, “You couldn’t come up with an easier name to remember and spell?” I had to admit he had a point. I was beginning to realize that the name I chose was not in keeping with the purpose and image of the blog that I had envisioned. The problem was, I had no idea what to change it to.

Late last year, a blog friend on Facebook sent up a trial balloon seeing how his readers might receive the name If I Might Interject. I thought it was a good one, and I actually wish I had claimed it. It seemed to fit well the purpose for my blog—to interject a Catholic perspective in the disputes of the world as something new to consider. 

However, he went with a different name for his blog rename, and when I asked him if it was all right to use this title for my own, he said it would be OK.

So, after spending several hours figuring out things like ICANN domains, and how to point the new URL to the current blog, things fell together with the help of a really on the ball individual manning the help email messages at Blogger who helped explain what needed to be done. There’s a few minor drawbacks of course. It seems that I can’t change the author name, so I guess it will continue to show up with posts by “Arnobius of Sicca.” (I guess changing that is like doing a legal name change. Difficult and not done through ordinary channels), but so far links are pointing where they need to go, so it’s a minor quibble at best.

That’s the reason for the change of name. I don’t intend to change the blog content. Just to make it more accessible.

Mercy and Misconceptions

On one of the Catholic news sites out there, I was involved in a debate with another reader about the issue of divorce and remarriage. This individual argued that the Church, in confirming that remarriage after divorce (as opposed to receiving an annulment first) is morally wrong, was ignoring the words of Our Lord concerning the parable of the lost sheep. In other words, this individual was asserting that to show mercy to the divorced and remarried, the Church had to stop teaching their actions were sinful and needed to admit them to Communion.

This kind of thinking confuses mercy with tolerating a lack of restraint, and misses the point of what mercy is. It seeks to assuage the conscience of the sinner by telling him or her that their actions are not even sins at all. The Church is accused of being merciless because she will not change herself when people demand that she stop saying things are sins. The reason she will not is because she cannot contradict God’s commands without being faithless to God. When God commands that we do X or avoid Y, the Church cannot permit us to avoid doing X or permit us to do Y. As Our Lord said, “If you love me, you will keep my commandments” (John 14:15).

For the person who seeks to know, love and serve God, we have an obligation to seek out what is right and live in accordance with it. When we find a commandment difficult, and we don’t understand why it is commanded, we are shown our task: To seek to understand why it is commanded, not to ignore it as too hard. The problem is we are used to having our way and seeking ways to justify our behavior before man, assuming that God will not punish those who choose to do what He forbade.

The mercy which God shows us can be demonstrated this way. God does not exact instantaneous punishment on us for doing what is evil. Instead He warns us of the dangers of sin, encourages turning back to Him, giving us the grace to respond. If we do respond (for grace is a gift we can refuse), He welcomes us back with open arms. If we refuse to respond, He continues to call us. Our Lord's mercy is not to tell people "It is OK to sin" or to say that what was once a sin is no longer one. It is to call people back from sin and to heal the relationship with them.But the person who refuses to heal that relationship is actually refusing the mercy Our Lord offers. The Church cannot change that reality and she cannot pretend to change that reality without being faithless to God.

So why does God command us to be merciful and to forgive? The answer is that He forbids us to behave in such a way that refuses to give mercy to the penitent and refuses to be God’s means of reaching out to the sinner. He forbids us from considering any person irredeemable. Nor can we refuse to forgive the person who has wronged us or refuse to make amends with the person we have wronged. Our task is to seek the redemption of the sinner or the person who wrongs us, not their damnation. God’s laws are made to show us how to live. Ultimately, if we reject these laws, we will face His judgment. We do have until the moment of our death to repent, but none of us know the day nor the hour of our death, so now is the time of respond to His mercy, and now is the time to be vessels of His mercy.

On the other and, when being vessels of mercy, we of course need to remember that we ourselves are in need of mercy. That means showing love and compassion for our fellow sinners who may sin in different ways than we do. We need to remember that we fall every day and are in need of Our Lord’s grace and forgiveness. That should shape how we approach others. Belittling or mocking others will probably drive them away. Nobody wants to be treated in that way, and we should ask if our attempts at humor might actually be counterproductive.

To offer a personal example, consider this account of a joke told by a Protestant minister at an interfaith meeting:

“I read a story some time ago about a man who visited the Pope. He looked around and observed the splendor and wealth of the Vatican. The Pope noticed his amazement and said laughingly, ‘We cannot say anymore that we have no silver and no gold.’ And the man answered, ‘Neither can you say, “Rise up and walk!”’” There was laughter from some in the audience, and I hoped it would break the tension.

Andrew, Brother; Al Janssen (2004-09-01). Light Force: A Stirring Account of the Church Caught in the Middle East Crossfire (p. 215). Baker Publishing Group. Kindle Edition.

My response to reading this part of the book was a mental middle finger and cost him some of the respect I previously had for him. Such attempts at humor are going to turn off the people who are the butt of the joke. If one wants to offer a fraternal rebuke over what they see as wrongdoing, things like sarcasm and perceived mockery are going to drive people away. Obviously, Brother Andrew was not intending to be offensive to Catholics (though I think his writings display some casual prejudice in that area). But his tone was counterproductive to some he might have otherwise convinced in a good cause.

Now of course the offended person has to practice forgiveness as Our Lord commanded. When someone behaves badly, we have to move beyond it and seek the truth. But people are human beings with feelings that can be hurt and fears that need to be considered. So in this case, I had to work past a bad joke that implied that the Church was worldly and no longer carrying out her mission to consider the merits of his book, but his book would have been more effective if he had omitted the wisecrack.

In a similar way, we have to consider how we present our message as God’s tools to present His mercy. Do we show compassion for their fears and sufferings, even if we must say “No” to the desire to treat sin as morally acceptable? Or do we bear false witness by leading people to think “Christians are jerks”?

Unfortunately, despite the tone we take, some will just take offense simply by the fact that we say X is a sin. Americans really tend to fall for the “Either-Or” fallacy, where if we don’t support one view, we are assumed to support the opposite. So, for example, if we oppose “same sex marriage,” we are accused of supporting all of the wrongs done to persons with a same sex attraction. Or of we oppose divorce and remarriage, we are accused of wanting to trap people in an unhappy, abusive, (insert negative description here) marriage. So if we stand for the Christian definition of marriage, we are accused of “hating homosexuals” and “not caring” about the suffering of people in broken marriages.

Obviously when we defend the teaching of Our Lord as passed on by the Church, we can’t help it if one takes offense at the teaching. But we have to be sure that the way we present that teaching is not a stumbling block.

Moreover, we have to avoid being avenging angels. We’re not like the Greek “Furies” who pursued the wrongdoers with vengeance all their lives with the intent to punish. We have to make clear that our concern is one of love and wellbeing as opposed to “vanquish the heathen!” Pope Francis used the image of the Church as field hospital—we’re here to save those people who have been wounded by sin, not throw them out the door because they’re not healed.

However, just as in medicine, saving the wounded does not mean telling the man with diabetes to continue doing the things that led to the disease, saving the spiritually wounded does not mean telling the sinner to continue to sin. Jesus forgave the woman caught in adultery, but He still told her “Go, [and] from now on do not sin any more.” (John 8:11).

So it’s a balancing act. We cannot give sanction to sin, and we cannot act like jerks when reaching out to the sinner. Some may refuse to accept the mercy God offers because that mercy tells them that what they want is killing them, but we still have to love them, even when they hate us and remember that ultimately God will judge both them and us.