Category Archives: change in the Church

change in the Church, valid baptism

Does a valid baptism require wooden conformity?

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Note: My response to the validity of baptism when the words used are “We baptize you. . . .” has two parts:

(1) The short and simple answer and

(2) the longer and more complex answer (here below):

In June 2020, the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith  [abbr:CDF] published a Responsum to a question posed regarding the validity of baptism when the priest says, “We baptize. . . ,” instead of “I  baptize. . . .”  In the judgment of the CDF, the use of “We baptize” gives rise to a false notion of baptism.  Here are the words of the CDF:

In the specific case of the Sacrament of Baptism, not only does the minister not have the authority to modify the sacramental formula to his own liking, for the reasons of a christological and ecclesiological nature already articulated, but neither can he even declare that he is acting on behalf of the parents, godparents, relatives or friends, nor in the name of the assembly gathered for the celebration, because he acts insofar as he is the sign-presence of the same Christ that is enacted in the ritual gesture of the Church. When the minister says “I baptize you…” he does not speak as a functionary who carries out a role entrusted to him, but he enacts ministerially the sign-presence of Christ, who acts in his Body to give his grace. . . . (Source)

So the complaint of the CDF has two parts: (1) the minister does not have the right to change the words used and (2) the affirmation, “I baptize you. . . ,” affirms that, in every case, Christ is the one baptizing.

Relative to the second complaint, the CDF appeals to Augustine when he says:

Although many ministers, be they righteous or unrighteous, should baptize, the virtue of Baptism would be attributed to Him alone on whom the dove descended, and of whom it was said: ‘It is he who baptizes with the Holy Spirit’ (Jn 1:33)”. Therefore, Augustine comments: “Peter may baptize, but this is He that baptizes; Paul may baptize, yet this is He that baptizes; Judas may baptize, still this is He that baptizes»[13].  (Source)

Why the “I” cannot be Jesus

What the CDF affirms here is that, while there are many ministers of the Sacrament of Baptism, in every instance, it is Jesus Christ who imparts efficacy to the Vatican approved rites.  Hence, when a priest says, “I baptize you. . . ,” in reality the “I” is Jesus Christ who is baptizing.

This explanation is defective for various reasons:

  1. This explanation does not correctly interpret the meaning of the baptismal formula. The priest affirms, “I baptize you . . . in the name of the Son” who is Jesus Christ.  If the “I” was Jesus, then one has a confusing circularity for Jesus would effectively be saying, “I [Jesus Christ] baptize you . . . in the name of Jesus Christ.”  If Jesus is the “I,” then it is redundant for him say that “I am acting in the name of Jesus Christ.”  Thus, it must be the case that the “I” is someone else.  Here, in this rite of baptism, the baptismal formula is placed on the lips of the minister who acts “in the name of Jesus Christ.”  The fears of the CDF that the presence of Jesus would go unnoticed or that the efficacy of the rite would be due to other forces is this counteracted by the open acknowledgment that the priest acts “in the name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Spirit.”  Thus, the words of the priest make present the Creator and the Sanctifier, in addition to Jesus, our Redeemer.
  2. The inherent theology of the baptismal formula can be more easily understood by reflecting on the meaning of undertaking some activity “in the name of Jesus Christ.” This Hebraic expression of acting “in the name of x” has to do with the way that a disciple or a servant is authorized to act due to the training or mandate received from his trainer/master.  According to the Christian Scriptures, for example, the Twelve heralded the kingdom of God and apprenticed disciples “in the name of Jesus” (Acts 4:18, 5:28, 9:27, 9:29).  At other times, they are presented as baptizing (Mt 28:19; Acts 2:38, 8:16, 10:48, 19:5, 22:16), healing (Acts 3:6, 3:16, 4:7), and exorcising demons (Acts 19:13‑16) in this same name.  Contrary to a widespread misunderstanding, “there is in the New Testament no belief in the magically [or even supernaturally] potent names; in fact, there are no mysteriously dreadful words or names at all” (TDNT, p. 278).
  3. After every baptism, no one imagines that the minister of the rite would personally bring the one who was baptized to love Jesus. Nor will he be the only one who will, over a period of time, make use of the Gospels to train his new “disciple” in right thinking and right living.  Parents and grandparents will do these things.  God-parents will do these things. Teachers and role models (saints) within the church community will do these things.  Hence, one way to acknowledge this providential situation would be to say “we baptize you . . . .”  Indeed, “it takes an entire village [/congregation] to train a child.”
  4. The CDF leaves the impression that “retaining the official words” is absolutely necessary. The CDF enforces the notion, citing Vatican II, to the effect that no one, “even if he be a priest, may add, remove, or change anything in the liturgy on his own authority”[8].  Going even further, the CDF emphasizes that any change in the official words is not simple a “liturgical abuse,” it is, moreover, “a vulnus inflicted upon the ecclesial communion and the identifiability of Christ’s action.”  Vulnus is the Latin word that refers to “an ugly wound inflicted on someone’s body” or “an offense capable of destabilizing a principle or norm.”  Thus, the CDF takes the position that any liturgical change is a vulnus.  I take this as an emotionally charged attack on any and all liturgical innovators.

    In my 25 years of teaching in three different seminaries, I have known instances wherein candidates to the priesthood were taught that any inadvertent errors or deliberate changes in the rites results in committing a “sacrilege.”  As a result, many newly ordained priests were literally traumatized.  I myself witnessed a priest literally shaking when celebrating his first Mass. What should have been a joyous affair with his family and friends in attendance became a personal trial dominated by fear.  The CDF has unfortunately tried to revive an atmosphere wherein both priests and the faithful are prompted to question the validity of their infant baptism based upon a liturgical terrorism—Did the minister use the exact words?

  5. What the CDF fails to tell us is that there are two kinds of innovations: one that destroys and one that builds up. The CDF classifies all changes to the words as destructive.  The use of “we” instead of “I,” as understood by the CDF, has the effect of denying the centrality of Christ who is the unseen administrator of every baptism (as explained above).  But let’s see why the CDF does not want us to see, namely, liturgical innovations that “build up.”  Here is one such formula found in the official rites regarding the Sacraments of Initiation:

Celebrants should make full and intelligent use of the freedom given to them either in Christian Initiation, General Introduction (no.34) or in the rubrics of the rite itself. In many places the manner of acting or praying is intentionally left undetermined or two alternatives are offered, so that ministers, according to their prudent pastoral judgment, may accommodate the rite to the circumstances of the candidates and others who are present.  In all the rites the greatest freedom is left in the invitations and instructions, and the intercessions may always be shortened, changed, or even expanded with new intentions, in order to fit the circumstances or special situation of the candidates (for example, a sad or joyful event occurring in a family) or of the others present (for example, sorrow or joy common to the parish or civic community). The minister will also adapt the texts by changing the gender and number as required.

 

No tradition for the wooden recitation of memorized prayers

One finds no tradition for a wooden recitation of memorizing prayers within ancient Judaism (other than the Shema of Dt 6:4f), it would have been a remarkable “departure from tradition” had Jesus imposed upon his disciples a prayer of fixed words (“recite after me”).  The Lord’s Prayer, as a result, was seen to be a schematic summary or abstract that invited spontaneous expansion and adaptation to present circumstances on the part of the one chosen to pray on behalf of the assembled group. The thematic summary that has been understood as the Lord’s Prayer in Matthew’s Gospel is not what one finds in the Gospel of Luke or in the Didache.  If the early churches had a wooden repetition norm in praying, one can be sure that there would be only one formula (instead of three).  Needless to say, there was no movement within the early churches to suppress this “legitimate diversity” in the Lord’s Prayer. This is probably due to the fact that Jesus himself never prayed “the Lord’s Prayer” in exactly the same way on any two occasions.

This same line of reasoning applies to the eucharistic prayers.  Here, as in the Lord’s Prayer, the plural form (“we” and “our”) indicates that one is dealing with a prayer normally used in a group setting.  The one chosen to lead the prayer would be expected to know the thematic summary and to expand and adapt it to fit the special moods and concerns of the group assembled.  In the case of delayed rains, for instance, the Mishnah goes so far as to suggest that the prayer leader chosen to lead the morning prayers on the day when the fast begins ought to be “an experienced elder who has children and whose cupboard is empty so that his heart should be wholly in the prayer” (m. Taanit 2:2).  The choice of an “experienced elder” with hungry children surrounding him at home was clearly done with the expectation that his personal engagement combined with his mastery of the prayer form would allow him to weave together the standard themes with a heart-felt expansion that moved those present.

Prayer leaders in ancient Judaism or in the early church were not expected to memorize and recite fixed prayer formulas.  Justin Martyr (C.E. 150), for example, spoke of “the presider” at the eucharist as giving thanks “at considerable length” and “according to his ability” (First Apology 65, 67).  He surely was not thinking of a rote recitation of Did. 9-10 which would take less than two minutes.  The Apostolic Tradition (C.E. 220), in its turn, presented an elaborate set of eucharistic prayers for use by the presiding bishop on various occasions.  Following this set of prayers, however, this telling rubric was offered:

It is not at all necessary for him [the bishop] to utter the same words as we said [note oral emphasis] above, as though reciting them from memory, when giving thanks to God; but let each [bishop] pray according to his ability.  If indeed anyone has the ability to pray at length and with a solemn prayer, it is good.  But if anyone, when he prays, utters a brief prayer, do not prevent him (9).

Here again, the prayer of the celebrant was characterized as being “at length” and “solemn”–terms that could not apply to a “canned” prayer where the length and mood were fixed in advance.  The rubric, “Let each pray according to his ability,” undoubtedly prevailed in the Didache community as well.  The prophets, more especially, were prized for their ability to improvise dynamic prayers that nourished and healed the hearts of those who heard them.  Concerning this, the Didache says: “Let the prophets eucharistize as much as they wish” (Did. 10:7).  This free-flowing style of spontaneous prayer that characterized the prophets was cherished and seen as a necessary compliment to the more stylized expansion of the eucharistic prayers offered by the celebrant (Did. 9-10).

All in all, one does not find a movement to standardize public prayers prior to the mid-third century (Hanson:173-176).  Beyond this, the push to regiment prayer leaders and to require that they “read” standard prayers from a printed text only came about after the invention of the printing press.  Presumably this penchant for “reading the approved text” came about as a backlash of the Protestant Reformation where Latin prayers were simplified and translated into the common language of the people.  The Council of Trent vigorously suppressed all of the variations that had entered into the Mass especially among the religious orders of men.

For 25 years I taught in three Catholic seminaries.  During this time, I lamented the fact that future priests were “solemnly warned” never to deviate from the approved “printed” prayers under any circumstances.  This was at a time when the Catholic Charismatic Movement was in full swing. I witnessed seminarians (imbued with the Spirit) offering inspiring and forceful (free-style) prayers.  But then, in their liturgical preparation, the Spirit was shackled and they were taught NEVER to deviate from the approved text.  To this day, I consider this as the “sin against the Holy Spirit” that has served to kill the prophetic aspect of liturgical celebrations.

Where do we go from here?

The CDF is not playing with a full deck of cards.  They have presented us with bogus reasons to support the notion that Jesus formulated the words required for a valid baptism in Matt 28:19.  They have failed to notice that early baptisms were done “in the name of Jesus” and only after two generations did the trinitarian formula take its place.  They have presumed that the standard formula was used generation after generation down to the present day.  They have failed to notice that even the Didache does not have the standard formula.  In truth, the so called “standard formula” did not emerge until the late middle ages.  But they don’t want us to know this.  They want us to believe that the only way to keep the sacredness of the rite is to use the standard formula.  They give no credit that Jesus did not use standard formulas for his prayers.  Every time he prayed to the Father, he improvised using the template [= what we now call the “Our Father”].

But the CDF does not want us to notice this.  They want to imagine that God wants to commit himself to those who follow wooden memorized prayers.  Having the right words is the sole way to guarantee validity.  So they want to discredit every deviation and to breed fear in the faithful whenever their ministers deviate from the standard formula.  They are wrong in this.  They have divinized the words and acted as though the divine magic does not work unless the right words are pronounced in just the right way. They want to freeze the official words and to insure that there are no more deviations because all change is, for them, a vulnus.  They cannot allow that the rite of baptism was changing from the very beginning even during the New Testament period. In the centuries that followed the rite and the theology of the rite continued to change in order to continue to be used to address the needs of the faithful.  As Cardinal John Henry Newman said, “To live is to change; to grow perfect is to have changed often.”  He applied this to the Sacrament of Baptism and he applied this to the Church.

But the CDF wants us to distrust all innovators at all times and all places.  This is a false ideal that subverts true religion.  Jesus was a pioneer and a prophet.  He was never content with wooden conformity.  His disciples also followed this principle.  Only the CDF wants to take charge and freeze-dry the entire process.  They want to sow fear in the hearts of Catholics such that they run away from innovating priests.  Parce domine!  [Latin: “Spare us O Lord.”]

change in the Church, sins of our fathers, valid baptism

Invalid Baptisms?—How Bishop Olmsted Made a Mountain out of a Molehill

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On 14 January 2022, Thomas J. Olmsted, Bishop of Phoenix, alerted all the faithful regarding a matter of grave importance.  In his own words:

“It is with sincere pastoral concern that I inform the faithful that baptisms performed by Reverend Arango, a priest of the Diocese of Phoenix, are invalid. This determination was made after careful study by diocesan officials and through consultation with the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith [abbr: CDF] in Rome.”

Father Arango acknowledged to his bishop that, for the past fifteen years, he had been performing baptisms in four different parishes using the words, “We baptize you in the name of the Father. . . .”  Since the official rites of the Roman Catholic Church indicate that baptism is administered using the words, “I baptize you in the name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Spirit,” Bishop Olmsted judged that the use of “we” instead of “I” had the effect of invalidating thousands of baptisms.

Are we really obliged to believe that all of Father Arango’s baptisms were invalid?  Bishop Olmsted says,

“Unfortunately, we have no choice but to repair the mess made by Father Arango.”

The CDF, in an official ruling, agreed with the Bishop, “Without the right words, the Sacrament is invalid.”

Let’s step back for a moment and examine this case more closely:

#1 BIBLICAL CONSIDERATIONS

In the Acts of the Apostles, thousands of baptisms are described.  At no time does the sacred text indicate what words (if any) were used to administer the rite.  Must we then doubt the validity of these baptisms (as the CDF proposes)?  Hardly.  At this historic time, baptism was being administered by immersion in water.  The repeated use of the Greek term, βαπτίζειν (baptizein), means “to immerse in water.” The only requirement for baptism was the conversion of heart.  In a typical case Peter says: “Repent, and be baptized every one of you in the name of Jesus Christ” (Acts 2:38, 8:16, 10:48, 19:5; 1 Cor 1:13; Gal 3:27).

Matthew alone reads, “in the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit” (28:19).  Vööbus points out, however, that Eusebius (d. 340) cites the great commission of Matthew more than two dozen times as “teach all nations in my name” (1968:36).  It is quite probable, consequently, that Eusebius’ text of Matthew’s Gospel did not have a trinitarian formula and that this was later edited into copies of Matthew’s Gospel.  All in all, most scholars are in agreement that baptism “in the name of Jesus” was the earliest norm and that this norm gradually shifted toward baptism “in the name of Father, Son, and Holy Spirit” (Did 7:3) in the early second century.

Moreover, theologians generally agree that Matt 28:19 gives us a rubric without in any way implying that these are “the words that must be recited to make the immersion a valid baptism.”  No one in this period imagined that, at every baptism, divine grace does not flow unless “the required words” were said.  The judgment of the CDF, “Without the right words, the Sacrament is invalid,” is thus a ruling that finds no foundation whatsoever within early church practice.   [For more details, click here.]

#2 ECUMENICAL CONSIDERATIONS

In the Eastern Catholic Churches of the Byzantine Rite, immersion or submersion is used, and the formula is:

“The servant of God, [insert name], is baptized in the name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Spirit.”

The Eastern Churches acknowledge the validity of Roman Catholic baptisms even though they do not require full immersion or their normative words.  Roman Catholics likewise acknowledges the baptismal traditions of the Eastern Churches.  These accords  recognized that there is essentially only “one baptism” even while there is a “legitimate diversity” in how these baptisms are administered.  Is the CDF aware that insistance upon one form of baptism might effectively undercuts the “mutual recognitions” made with the Eastern Churches?   [Click here for more details.]

#3 LINGUISTIC CONSIDERATIONS

Dr. Vincent Ryan Ruggiero makes this linguistic observation:

The plural form “we” includes the singular “I”; in fact, it is impossible to use “we” in a way that excludes “I.”

If Bishop Olmsted had known this, would he have pounced upon Fr. Arango the way he did?  Did Bishop Olmsted destroy the reputation of Fr. Arango unjustly?  Did he grievously error in making a mountain out of a molehill?  Yes and yes.

Judith Hann assists us here in making a careful study of how Thomas Aquinas regards situations in which the minister uses alternate words.  This study was published by Cambridge University Press on behalf of Ecclesiastical Law Society in 2021.  Without going into the details, here are the conclusions that Hann brings to us:

Aquinas . . . does not adhere to a radical literalism with regard to sacramental formulas. Instead he refers to the intention [of the minister] to do what the Church does and to the meaningfulness of the sacramental act for those who participate in it. In doing so, he proves that his understanding of sacramental speech is less that of spells with a magical automatism and more that of communication. Understanding sacramental speech as communication, as acts of conveying sacramental meaning to the community, demands a greater tolerance with regard to wording.  (Source)

What does this say regarding the “radical literalism” being proposed by the CDF?  Two points: (1) The CDF judged the minister using “We beptize you . . .” too harshly.  These words, in and of themselves, do not clearly reveal an intention to deviate from what the Church intends by the rite; and (2) The CDF appeals to Aquinas, but, in so doing, the CDF mistakenly assumes that Aquinas affirms the “radical literalism” that the CDF wants to impose on all ministers of baptism.

#4 ECCLESIA SUPPLET

When I was taking my first course on the Sacraments some sixty years ago, it was pointed out that the “intention” of the minister decides the outcome.  Thus, if in case of an emergency, a young mother baptizes her infant son who has turned blue and has stopped breathing, and she uses the words, “I baptize you in the name of God and of Jesus,” this suffices as a valid baptism.  How so?  Because she intends to do what the Church has done, namely, to baptize her son.  The Church tacitly supplies what is missing.  This principle is called Ecclesia supplet, which in Latin means “the Church supplies.”  If Bishop Olmsted had remembered his first course in Sacraments, might he not have used this principle to dispel any fear that the case of Fr. Arango involved any invalid baptisms.  Bishop Olmsted declares,

“I do not believe Fr. Andres [Arango] had any intentions to harm the faithful or deprive them of the grace of baptism and the sacraments.”

That’s all that is needed.  Ecclesia supplet. All of the baptisms of Fr. Arango are valid.  There is no mess to clean up.  That’s the good news for everyone involved!  But the Bishop is unable to see this.

#5 PASTORAL CONSIDERATIONS

As things now stand, a grave danger is about to erupt.  An overly zealous and marginally incompetent bishop has set the wheels going in the direction of finding those who are the victims of “invalid baptisms” and making arrangements to have them repeat their baptism.  Then they will, in most instances, have to repeat their confirmations and marriages as well.  At this point, only one priest has his reputation ruined.  I would estimate that once Catholics come to understand that they too might be invalidly baptized, then more priests will be called on the carpet.  More reputations will be shattered.  Meanwhile, overworked priests will be required to give time and attention to thousands of Catholics who fear that their baptisms were invalid.  Many more thousands will come forward and ask to be conditionally rebaptized “in order to give themselves peace of mind that their spiritual welfare is secure.”

Meanwhile, Fr. Matthew Hood in the Archdiocese of Detroit has admitted that he discovered, upon seeing a family video of his baptism, that his own baptism was invalid.  So he was rebaptized, reconfirmed, reordained.  Now he is anxious because he is aware of the fact that he administered hundreds of Sacraments without recognizing that most of them were “invalid” because he himself was “invalidly” ordained to begin with.  Yipes!  So here is another overly zealous and marginally incompetent priest who is spreading uncertainty and fear.  How many more will come after him?  [Click here for further details and discussion regarding Fr. Hood.]

Parce Domine!  [Spare us, O Lord!]  Someone in authority needs to come forward soon and expose the false judgment of the CDF and the incompetent pastoral solution championed by Bishop Olmsted.  The faithful need to be reeducated as to why ALL THEIR BAPTISMS WERE VALID ALL ALONG.  Fr. Arango can then be reinstated.  He can undertake the new task of wiping away the tears of all those Catholics who were horrified by the false alarm and the sleepless nights.  The mountain can finally be seen again as just a molehill.

Peace and joy in the Love of our Lord,

Aaron Milavec

PS: Further analysis of wooden repetition and the theology of baptism.

change in the Church, memoirs, sins of our fathers

The case of Fr. John Wijngaards–memoirs of a priest who protested the ban on women priests

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Review of TEN COMMANDMENTS OF CHURCH REFORM: Memoirs of a Catholic Priest, by John Wijngaards (Acadian House Publishing: Lafayette, Louisiana USA, 2022) 261 pp. with an index, hardcover $22.95

 

John Wijngaards has written his memoirs detailing how he was brought to the position where “in conscience” he could no longer function as a priest within the Roman Catholic Church.  His book is entitled, Ten Commandments for Church Reform (Acadian House, 2021).  This title is misleading.  His subtitle, Memoirs of a Catholic Priest, gets closer to describing his content.  Had I been his publisher, I would have suggested, Memoirs of a Catholic Priest Bent Upon Reforming his Church.

 

I find a strong affinity with Wijngaards.  We are roughly the same age.  We both grew up in a pious Catholic family.  We were both immersed in Catholic devotions.  Reflecting on this early period in his life, Wijngaards writes, “Looking back at that time, I now recognize an element of unreality in my obsessive devotion [to Jesus]” (p. 47).  I would say the same thing, but, for me, it was “my obsessive devotion to Mary.”  The “unreality” in my own devotions consisted in my adamant conviction that my daily rosaries formed the “essential spiritual warfare” enabled the Blessed Virgin Mary to bring about the conversion of Russia.  Wijngaards says, “I had fallen in love with a phantom Jesus”—a Jesus who wanted me “to be wary of woman” as a danger to my spiritual life.  Here, too, this has a resonance in my own early spirituality.

 

As a result, Wijngaards joined the Mill Hill Missionaries. He completed his high school and college years in Mill Hill institutions.  Then, his superiors sent him to the Gregorian University in Rome to get a doctoral degree in Sacred Scripture.  My guess is that, as his studies of the Gospels began, the “phantom Jesus” of his devotional period was replaced by the Jesus of the Gospels.  Then he was ordained and sent to Hyderabad, India, where he taught Scriptural Studies to future Indian priests, 1964-1976.  These were exciting times to be a priest.  In 1962-1965, Vatican II had provided Catholics with an upbeat plan for reorienting religious and priestly life.  Religious vocations abounded everywhere.

 

It is significant, for me, that Wijngaards founded a formation center for Religious Sisters precisely because these women were routinely sent out to do pastoral work without having any substantial theological training.  Here I notice quite clearly that Wijngaards took measures to uplift the women in the Church of India who were prized for their unpaid labor, their humility, and their submissiveness.  This was not an assignment given to him.  John Wijngaards was clearly not a “yes” man waiting for someone to tell him what to do–when he saw something that was not quite right, he stepped up to the plate and began to do something by way of correcting it.  He exhibited a “can-do attitude.”  What I find significant is that, right from the very start, he exercised his talents in favor of women.

 

In the ten years following Vatican II, women were entering into all the professions that had been formerly been reserved exclusively for men.  The Women’s Rights Movement, meanwhile, was dedicated to securing for women equal access to education and employment, equality within marriage–married woman were given the right to own property, to have bank accounts, to receive wages, to have custody over her children and control over her own body.  The Society of Biblical Literature was 98% male in the early 1960s.  Year by year, this Society saw a growing influx of female theologians.  Meanwhile, Catholic Colleges and University began hiring qualified female theologians.  For a number of years, the chances of being hired by a Catholic institution was decidedly higher if you were a woman.  By the 90s, nearly 40% of the members of the Society of Biblical Literature were female.

 

During these same years, Wijngaards offers his readers (p. 121-126) a full-blown analysis of how, in Holland, Paul VI appointed bishops with the deliberate purpose of destroying the harmony and collaboration between the Dutch bishops. In 1972, Fr. Joannes Gijsen was named bishop of Roermond. In so doing, the pope entirely bypassed the honored Dutch tradition whereby episcopal candidates were drawn from a list generated by a diocesan synod. Cardinal Alfrink, Archbishop of Utrect, went to Rome to contest this “disregard” for a long-standing nomination procedure, but without success.  Fr. Gijsen had the reputation of having “a negative and destructive personality,” and, in quick order, he undid all the Vatican II reforms that had been joyfully and painstakingly embraced by the vast majority of Dutch Catholics in his diocese.  In addition, he created his own seminary since he did not trust the formation in the common seminary to be sufficiently orthodox.  Wijngaards tells his readers: “The reaction to his appointment was one of outrage” (p. 122).

 

Wijngaards gives a hint of his future decision to resign from the ministry half-way through the book.  He reports on a radio interview given by Bishop Simonis (another bad appointment by Paul VI).  The bishop was asked how he understands the CDF’s rejection of women to holy orders.  His response: “Men are active, [they] are leaders by nature. Women are passive.”

 

“How do you know this,” the interviewer prodded him.

 

“Well,” he said. “Look at what happens right at conception.  The female ovum is lying passively in the womb, the male sperm fights its way in and captures the ovum with a sting” (p. 123).

 

Besides his dubious portrait of the biology of conception, Simonis uses this mental picture to justify his bold generalization that “men are active by nature; women are passive.”  Clearly anyone who would say something like this has had little or no experience of a fierce women like Wijngaards’s mother.  Nor, for that matter, can we really believe that Simonis never met any “passive men.”  Not even the CDF would try to get away with this sort of shoddy thinking.  The bishop’s prejudice against women was showing through.  No doubt about it.

 

For Wijngaards, the 1995 attempt by John Paul II and Ratzinger to make the ban against women appear to be “infallible” was the final straw that broke his resolve to continue his official ministry.  Wijngaards specifically details how John Paul II and Cardinal Ratzinger–by permanently denying the priesthood to women–delivered a crushing blow.  As Housetop in London and even in the missionary field in India, Wijngaards was accustomed to working with women who were outstanding and competent.  Anyone who reads the opening chapters of his book will notice also that his own mother was a fierce tigress when it came time to keep her family together and alive during the period when they were sequestered in detention camps by the Japanese. In an era where humility and subservience were routinely prized as the virtues of women, Wijngaards was rescued from the jaws of death by a woman ready to face down ruthless soldiers who were accustomed to using acts of cruelty to intimidate the vast numbers of prisoners that were under their supervision.

 

Wijngaards was especially creative and visionary in the missionary field of India where he spent the better part of fourteen years.  Even after Ivan Illich (p. 115) wrote his stunning report on the failure of European priests to step aside and to give native-born priests the full responsibility for the missionary outreach in their own countries, Wijngaards immediately recognized the appropriateness of this appeal, and he began to take steps to implement the very measures that would render his own religious order as “no longer needed.”  From my reading of Wijngaards’ narrative, however, I would judge that this had little or nothing to do with his leaving the priesthood.

 

Wijngaards himself omits this when he announced his resignation in 1998.  At that point, he fingers exclusively his “conflict of conscience” as necessitating his leaving.  Here are his words:

 

Since I perceive Rome’s ban on women’s ordination (a) as not legitimately founded on Scripture or Tradition, (b) [as] not arrived at after proper consultation of the Church, (c) [as] harmful to ecumenism, and (d) [as] highly injurious to the spiritual wellbeing of the faithful, I feel bound in conscience to continue voicing my sincere opposition. . . .  Moreover, (e) I want to stand on the side of those men and women who are so casually and unjustly dismissed by the Vatican.  It is only by distancing myself now from the institutional Church that I can extract myself from the guilt of taking part in the conspiracy of silence.

 

Notice here how Wijngaards lists the four defects of Rome’s ban on ordination.  (a) and (b) deal with the failure of the CDF in doing its homework.  (c) and (d) name the chief harmful consequences.  (e) appears as an afterthought but, in reality, it is the “Here I stand. I cannot do otherwise” statement of Martin Luther when he was asked to recant his positions.  Wijngaards puts emphasis upon the “conspiracy of silence” of bishops, theologians, priests at all levels who, instead of speaking out forcefully, have retired in silence thereby deceiving the faithful and leaving the prophets to take on the brutal and inhumane treatment of the CDF alone.  This last item is extraordinary.  Wijngaards is challenging the “guilty bystanders.”  Do recall that  John Wijngaards was never interrogated by the CDF regarding his writings.  Nor was he ever silenced and prevented from teaching or publishing on the “hot button” topics that were being defined by Rome.  It would have been very easy for him to join the “guilty bystanders” who tacitly enabled the tyranny of the CDF, but he did not.

 

 

Wijngaards makes clear that his leaving ministry within his Church was a manifest protest against the “conspiracy of silence.”  This leaving, however, did not diminish his priestly mission as he saw it: “Christ wanted me to continue as a priest for those who sought my help and as a prophetic teacher in a Church so badly in need of reform” (p. 229).  Wijngaards discovered that the professional team working with Housetop Ministries (his innovative catechetical works) wanted to follow his prophetic move by creating world-wide resources whereby the issue of women’s ordination would be thoroughly researched and discussed [URL = http://womenpriests.org].  Thus, the past twenty-four years have been filled with his continued ministry on behalf of women.

 

If you go to HypeStat.com, you will discover that http://womenpriests.org has an average of 435 unique daily visitors and 1131 daily page views.  Quite clearly, http://womenpriests.org is a resource center to be reckoned with.  In the past eight  years, Housetop evolved into the world-renowned Wijngaards Institute for Catholic Research which coordinates leading academics to publish research projects on issues facing the international Catholic community.

 

For anyone who believes that the Roman Catholic Church has a future in God’s divine plan, I would strongly recommend John Wijngaards’ Memoirs.  For anyone who thinks that John Wijngaards choices are driven by pride or by the promptings of Satan, his Memoirs have much to offer you as well.  It is a positive sign that the Mission Hill Fathers published a strongly supportive review on their official website.  His hardback book can be purchased for $23 directly from Acadian House Publishing.  For a $10 Amazon Kindle version, click here.   For a review by Fr. Flannery, click here.

To sign a petition  to Pope Francis, click here.

change in the Church, facing death

Welcoming Death without an Afterlife

2 Comments

 

[My initial thoughts as I approach my personal death.]

An unexamined life is not worth living.   –Socrates

An unexamined afterlife is not worth waiting for.   –Milavec

 

Most people think that their soul survives after death.  How they come to this is very murky indeed.  Spiritualism, the practice of contacting the souls of those deceased, gives perhaps the greatest credence to such a belief.  Near-death experiences also provide some experiential glimpses of living outside one’s body.  Yet, even ordinary Christians find themselves praying for the souls in Purgatory.  The souls in Purgatory can not merit the graces necessary for their entrance into Heaven.  By praying for them and gaining papal indulgences; however, those living on earth can provide those being purified in Purgatory with the merits needed for their entrance into Heaven.

Most Christians, I dare to say, believe in some sort of conscious afterlife and, if the choice is between heaven and hell (or purgatory), the beatific vision with the saints in heaven seems naturally preferable.

 

The first thing that 99% of Christians would find strange is the fact that the older layers of the Hebrew Scriptures establish Judaism as a religion of faithful service to God and humanity without any rewards in the afterlife.  In a word, they believed that holiness was its own reward and the sight of one’s family and children living a productive life that is a blessing to those close and those far is reward enough for the good life.   [See Stanley B. Marrow, S.J., “The Road not Taken”]

Sometime during the Maccabean revolution (2nd cen. BCE), those Jews who had seen pious Jews punished with terrible torments came to the conclusion that the Lord himself remembers the injustice done to them and, on the last day, when he comes to judge the living and the dead, he would surely resurrect from the dead these holy martyrs and give them a place of honor in the earthly kingdom of God.   Initially, therefore, only the holy martyrs were resurrected; those who tortured them were told that there was no resurrection awaiting them [Milavec (2003a), 659-682].

Note here that none of these Jews believed that true bliss was to be found in a world or in a place outside of our present planet-home that God created for us.

How Belief in an Immortal Soul Came About

Starting with Socrates, the beatific vision of truth, justice, and beauty would be the overwhelming delight of those “philosophers” who spent their lives cultivating these things.  This “beatific vision” was possible only for an immortal  soul released from the body at death.  Augustine and others imported this message into the faith of our fathers; hence, Thomas Aquinas, in the 13th century, named the “beatific vision” as the greatest joy that God has planned for his beloved in heaven.

When one considers a prolonged future in heaven, the notion of living an existence as a disembodied soul in a realm where one praises God night and day (there being no necessity of sleep) would become exceedingly tedious, repetitious, and dull.  The so-called joys of heaven, accordingly, might be highly overrated.  The loss of a body and life on earth are highly underscored.  How could a violinist or a gardener or a wood-carver survive in a heaven where they could only envision (in their imagination) making something beautiful with their hands when, in fact, they would, both night and day, lament the fact that they have no hands?  How could imagined gardens or imagined musical performances give joy to those who have no ears or eyes or noses with which to feast on them?

The Joys of Heaven Have Been Overrated

In fact, what joy could one give to another person in heaven?  One could not stroke their cheek or play a game of ball or trek in the snow-capped mountains.  Maybe one could (supposing that there is such a thing as soul-to-soul communication that is wordless and earless) communicate about things long gone.  Yet, this very communication would generate a great sense of loss and be more apt to evoke a sense of longing and annoyance that one’s entire past has been obliterated by death.  Let this continue for a few hundred years (since one speaks of eternal life as the natural quality of the immortal soul) and one would have a society of malcontents who found very little to live for or to communicate about.  Even singing praises to God could degrade into a tedious choir practice that, after a few short months, would surely leave bitterness and grumbling in its wake.  If one could miraculously hear the heavenly choirs, that would be one thing.  But to live in a society of disembodied souls would mean that such music would be produced without vocal cords and without musical instruments.  Thus, the music itself would evoke a great sense of longing for a body and for the things of this present world.  So, from these brief examples, one can see how soulless an eternity in heaven would be.

I thank God, therefore, that he did not give me an eternal soul and I thank him that none of those that I love have immortal souls either.  Socrates willingly embraced death because he wrongly imagined that his eternal soul would escape his body and enter into its eternal bliss.  Socrates also wrongly misinterpreted “sleep” as the time when the soul leaves the body in order to explore strange cities and strange places.  If Socrates was promoting a very inaccurate notion of “dreams” during sleep, then it might be allowed that he was also peddling a very inaccurate notion of the immortal soul as well.

What our Jewish Jesus Anticipated

Jesus, needless to say, knew nothing of “souls existing outside the body.”  Nor did he ever propose that anyone should long to die so that their soul would be released from their body in order to enjoy a “beatific vision” in heaven.  Jesus never believed that one has to go to God in order to be with him only after death.   Jesus, accordingly, firmly anticipated a future when God would be coming to earth “to wipe away all our tears” (Rev 21:4).  This same Jesus taught us to pray, “Your kingdom come, your will be done on earth. . . .” (Matt 6:9-13).  And when Jesus rose  bodily into heaven on a cloud, the two men in white [angels?] say, “Men of Galilee, why do you stand looking up toward heaven? This Jesus, who has been taken up from you into heaven will come [return to earth] in the same way as you saw him go into heaven” (Acts 1:11).   Thus, heaven is not the final resting place for Jesus.  Nor is it the place where the “beatific vision” takes place. Heaven is merely the temporary holding tank where God is preparing to send Jesus back to earth where he can be the Messiah on the Last Day (Acts 2:36, 3:20-22, 5:42).

The earth is properly our home, and what a home it is!  We were formed from the dust of the earth  [that originated in the death throes of giant red stars] billions and billions of years ago, and God saw that it was good!  Life is good.  I enjoyed seeing my daughter play her violin in the beginning strings tonight!  I also enjoyed hearing Vivaldi’s “Four Seasons” being performed by accomplished musicians in a small church in France the first night that we arrived in Paris.  I’ve enjoyed making music of my own (the guitar, the recorder, the spoons) purely as an amateur.  So, I say:

“Dear world, you are so beautiful!  Blessed be the Maker of the heavens (the stars above) and the earth (below my feet which attracts me toward its center even when I am upside down).”

Has the Resurrection Been Overrated as Well?

For a good ten years (1970-80), I persisted in believing that there would be a resurrection of the dead on the last day (even after I had abandoned any belief in a soul).  It might have made good sense for a few Jewish martyrs to be rewarded with a resurrection for offering their lives to God in the face of torturing tyrants; it is positively repellent however to imagine the chaos that would result from a general resurrection.  Our fragile planet earth has barely enough resources to support eight billion humans.  So how can one imagine the impossible situation of providing clean water, wholesome food, and shelter for fifty billion (the total of all the persons who would be raised on the Last Day).

For the pious, it would seem entirely feasible for Christians to invite six times their number to share their homes.  Modern homes in the suburbs could indeed squeak by with six times the number of inhabitants.  There would be little privacy left and no one would ever again have their own bedroom; yet, who knows, maybe the advantages of communal living would far outweigh the limitations of space.

Yet, what about those situations where a family of five share a two-room apartment in the center of Mexico or where a similar family shares a one-room shack in the slums of Calcutta.  It would be a slight bit monstrous to expect these families to welcome thirty people into their living situation.

Hospitality is a blessed virtue, to be sure.  It would work in the suburbs but never have a chance in the slums.  Just the use of the flush toilet by a world population six times our present size would quickly overtax all our current water purification systems.  Meanwhile, let’s not forget that there are so very many instances where untreated sewage is disposed of by dumping it into natural water sources.  I am thinking here not only of cruise ships and slums but of the hundreds of municipalities that routinely dump raw sewage into the Ohio River whenever their waste treatment facilities are overtaxed by incoming sewage.  You get the picture.  Increase the population of our planet by six and you get an entire planet drowning in its own shit.

Well, to save the day, there has been a lot of talk about the resurrected body being in some way “spiritualized” such that it doesn’t need to eat or to drink, ergo, not to pee or to defecate.  On the other hand, Jews like Jesus imagined eating and drinking in the Kingdom of Heaven (on earth) since, truth to say, not to have enough to eat and to drink was always considered a hardship.  On the other hand, Jesus liked to eat and drink with his friends and I’m sure he’d be mightily disappointed at finding that his resurrected friends had “spiritualized bodies” that no longer took any pleasure in or had any necessity to eat and drink.

So, to back up a bit, it might be important to examine whether resurrection from the dead is indeed what God had in mind for those who love him.  First off, it must be conceded that “spiritualized bodies” are not natural bodies and that their existence is just as problematic as that of the existence of immortal souls.  The blessing indeed is to be found in the natural condition of the human physical body that we are very familiar with.

What a piece of creation we are!  A true miracle.  Any cleaver bishop or theologian who tries to convince us (using either the bible or church dogmas) that the human condition can be improved upon and that God (since s/he can supposedly do anything) surely has an improved model ready for us in the resurrection from the dead should be shouted into silence.  What an affront to God to imagine that s/he has not already done his/her best in creating man and woman in his/her image and likeness!

A World Without Privacy

Moreover, those who imagine that our spiritualized bodies will walk through walls, transport themselves effortlessly through the skies, and never grow hungry or sick or old are talking fables and nonsense and pious gibberish.  It’s one thing to imagine a perfect situation in the future.  It’s quite another thing to denigrate some of the best aspects of the present situation in so doing.

Walking through walls (John 20:19 and 20:26), for instance, would mean a world without privacy.  People could walk in on you at any time from any direction and have no way of signaling that they were arriving.  What a problem that would be.

And what is so terrible about growing hungry, getting sick, or growing old?  Are these not the patterns within the miracle of creation that have been tried and tested and found beneficial?

The Blessings of Growing Old

Just take the last point—that of growing old.  I, for one, have found a blessing implicit in the human cycle of birth, infancy, adolescence, adulthood, old age, death.  As starters, the US situation is growing increasingly difficult because the old are living longer.  A full life, in the nineteenth century, meant living into the 60s or 70s but now, with improvements in medicine, most are anticipating living into their 80s and 90s.  Like it or not, those in their productive years are now having to work harder and longer to take care of the aging members of their immediate families.  The old now no longer want to live with their families; they prefer not to become a burden for their children so they enroll into assisted living, then nursing homes, then round-the-clock care.  This is not the best scenario for growing old; yet, the modern productive couple doesn’t have time to spend with their own children much less to spend with an aging parent.  Moreover, the young don’t want old people meddling in their lives—a thing which many aging parents do because they have the habit of taking liberties and advising their children in almost everything.

The Blessings of Dying

But this is getting off the point.  What if people never grew old?  What if people remained in their prime for an eternity?  Well, to begin with, this would lead to a great population problem.  In any given society, the number of deaths makes room for a certain number of births. Choke off one or the other and you have either a world population mushrooming out of control or moving toward human extinction.  In a word, the system of being born and dying appears to be a divinely ordained design feature originated by our wise Creator in order to keep a balance between the new and the old, the coming to be and the passing away.

Once this is realized, it appears as an offense to the Creator to even imagine that giving creatures “eternal life” would be some sort of surpassing gift; rather, it would be a surpassing mistake.

I recently read a short story that discussed a society in which aging was stopped and all sicknesses were cured.  It was a society in stagnation.  Very few new ideas were originated because those living had already made up their minds on just about everything that they were willing to accept or able to tolerate.  In a world in which not much changed, there was even less incentive to originate anything—new music, new gardens, new wood sculptures.  The repetition of human skills and crafts leads to dullness.  Hence, in the sci-fi novel that I read, the solution for stagnation was to invent a competitive game that led to the death of the loser.  Then and only then did excitement reenter into the social fabric.  And so it was that the perfect society that had achieved “eternal life” had to later reintroduce “death” in order to bring back excitement into living.

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https://www.academia.edu/s/30e2b30205

Appendix #1

The biological miracle of birthing a new life; the biological advantage of dying

Paul King, a Computational Neuroscientist, came up with these reflections on “Why do living things die?”

It’s not that living things die; it’s that multicellular organisms die. But why?

Every single-celled organism alive today has been in existence since life began over 3 billion years ago. This is because individual cells do not give birth, they divide. After cell division, the two cells that result are each as old as the single cell that preceded them. The cell does not become younger by dividing. (Although this may not be exactly true, there is evidence that even in “symmetric” cell division, one child cell may be slightly “younger” (less prone to death) than the other. See: Stewert EJ, et al (2005). Aging and death in an organism that reproduces by morphologically symmetric division. PLoS Biology. URL = <http://www.plosbiology.org/article/info%3Adoi%2F10.1371%2Fjournal.pbio.0030045>)

Thus, every cell in your body is over 3 billion years old.

The strategy that multicellular organisms such as humans use to project themselves into the future is to create new cell colonies from a single undifferentiated cell rather than maintaining existing colonies indefinitely. The main reason is that reproduction is more flexible and robust than maintenance, and it provides a way of starting over with a “clean slate” and slightly different genes.

Complex organisms accumulate billions of errors and problems over their lifetime. Most of these errors are fixed as fast as they happen, but life takes a toll and not all problems are reversible. Just as reinstalling Microsoft Windows every so often fixes accumulated system issues, so does generating a new organism every so often from a single cell [serve the same purpose].

Given that biology has selected this strategy, evolution has [been] optimized for producing the most successful offspring. Once the individual has reproduced, its only evolutionary role is to support the [formation and the] success of its offspring.

Aging longer is just not something evolution has had a reason to optimize. And, given limited environmental resources, the offspring often do better if the older generation doesn’t stay around forever competing with younger generations for scarce resources.

In terms of what happens physiologically, there are two main contributors to aging.

The first is the accumulation of biological defects. Viruses and disease take a toll even after healing; UV rays slowly but inevitably damage DNA; and proteins, cell structure, and the neurons which hold memories all degrade over time due to thermodynamic molecular disruptions and invasions by other species.

The second is the aging process itself. The organism develops to maturity and ages in stages according to a genetically determined life plan. Muscles atrophy, bones brittle, and metabolism changes. But the life plan has never run more than 80 years until recently, and evolution only ever optimized the first 40 years or so. So, humans [bent upon extending their lives beyond 80] are in new territory that is poorly understood, and which evolution has never had a reason to fine tune.

It may be possible to slow or stop some of the genetically determined aging processes. While this may not be good for an overpopulated planet, it is sure to be popular with those that can afford the medical intervention[s necessary to live to a hundred]. Let’s just hope the social security system holds out!

PS1: Paul King notices that physical perfection of the human species was achieved by designing “aging” as a critical ingredient. This supports my earlier suspicion that “eternal life” may be a selfish aspiration that has disastrous consequences for the social and moral perfection of the human species.

PS2: Paul King also notices that, if one generation of humans would somehow gain “eternal life,” this would have disastrous consequences–evolutionary biology would come to a halt. Again, this supports my earlier suspicion that “eternal life” may be a selfish aspiration that has disastrous consequences for the social and moral perfection of the human species.

PS3: According to the Jewish theology of Genesis 2-3, Adam is created mortal and God intends to keep him mortal. Let me explain. . . .

The classical Christian theology of “the fall” assumes that Adam and Eve were created with the gift of immortality. They lost this gift, however, when they chose to “sin” by eating the forbidden fruit. According to this interpretation, Eve and later Adam are deceived by the serpent (who is Satan in disguise) into disobeying God and, as a result, they fall from “grace” into sin and ignorance and disease. “Death” thus enters their lives ONLY as a result of their disobedience.

When Gen 2-3 is examined in detail, however, the keynote in the narrative is that the special tree in the center of the garden is significant because it is able to confer a special divine power: “your eyes will be opened, and you will be like God, knowing good and evil” (Gen 3:5).

Moreover, the serpent may be crafty but he is assuredly not a deceiver (See Matt 10:16). Eve tells him: “God said, ‘You shall not eat of the fruit of the tree that is in the middle of the garden, nor shall you touch it, or you shall die.’” God had said to Adam earlier: “for in the day that you eat of it you shall die” (Gen 2:17). God said nothing about “touching.” Thus, when Eve touches the fruit, nothing happens. Thus, Eve learns that Adam has misrepresented God. Moreover, when Eve eats of the fruit, her eyes are opened, just as the serpent predicted: “You will not die; for God knows that when you eat of it your eyes will be opened, and you will be like God, knowing good and evil” (Gen 3:4-5). Thus, both Eve and the reader of Genesis have to agree (a) that the serpent is the truth-teller and (b) that Eve has to test the unfounded assumptions she has been making based on what Adam has been telling her.

Neither God nor the narrator say anything about “Satan” or “sin” or “the fall from grace” or “the immortal soul.”  When the Church Fathers introduced these “false facts” into Gen 3, they effectively opposed God’s original plan and destroyed the original blessing that the original text was meant to convey to us.

If this eating of the fruit enables Eve and Adam to become “like God,” why then does God expel them from the Garden? The text tells us why:

Then the LORD God said, “See, the man has become like one of us, knowing good and evil; and now, he might reach out his hand and take also from the tree of life, and eat, and live forever”–therefore the LORD God sent him forth from the garden of Eden (Gen 3:22-23).

Ah, so this text reveals that there are two marvelous trees planted by God in the Garden of Eden. The first enables our first parents to discern good and evil—a property that God alone possessed up until the time of the eating. The second would give our first parents eternal life—another property that God (at least at this point) alone possesses. What God makes clear is that he is not yet ready to share this second blessing. Maybe in the future, but surely not now. For God says to Adam: “You are dust, and to dust you shall return” (Gen 3:19). Being made from dust, consequently, signals that God, right from the very beginning, intended to create his creatures to be mortal. Hence, the text gives us no reason to suspect that Adam and Eve were created as immortals. If this had been the case, then it would have made no sense for God to plant the Tree of Life. Nor would it have made any sense for God to expel his children from the Garden to ensure that they did not eat of this second tree. Finally, one can understand why the text says nothing about God removing the “immortality” that had been given to Adam and Eve at some earlier point. This was a mistaken assumption that classical theologians read into the text (possibly due to their misapplication of Rom 5:12-21).

What one can understand from this is that, according to Gen 2-3, mortality does not come as a result of the first eating from the Tree of Knowledge (as classical Christian theology maintains). Mortality comes from being made from clay.

Secondly, according to Gen 2-3, exclusion from the Garden does not come as a result of the first eating from the Tree of Knowledge (as classical Christian theology maintains). Exclusion comes from God’s wish to ensure that his children remain mortal because God himself knows that, should they eat of this second tree, they would “live forever” (3:22).  God does not want this.  Hence, Gen 3:22 would effectively declare that “immortality is for God alone.”

To examine this reading of Gen 2-3 more closely, see Eve as Pioneer of Adam’s Salvation = https://payhip.com/b/FRny

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Appendix #2

THE ACCEPTANCE OF DEATH

By Charles Hartshorne

Here is the essay by Charles Hartshorne that was most helpful to me in coming to accept death as a gracious act and service to my family and friends.  I reproduce it here so that you, the reader, might come to understand how an old philosopher can be of service to the new world.

Since all of us die, it is clear that the meaning of life must be inseparable from the meaning of death. If we cannot understand death, we cannot understand life, and vice versa. Life and death are two sides of one reality.

In principle life is good while it lasts. The meaning of life is, in part at least, the simple goodness of living. Normally we are glad to be alive. We may imagine circumstances in which we would be much more intensely glad to be alive than we actually are, but still life seems better than just no life. Even when things go badly with us, I think we deceive ourselves if we think that we derive no satisfaction from the activities of the living. The person who proclaims her or his misery derives some value merely from breathing and eating, some value from choosing the words in which the self is expressed, some value from making one’s troubles an object of attention and observing the way other people react to them. I believe that living is essentially voluntary, and that no one can be compelled to exist, unless on a largely unconscious level. If the will to live really dies, then we are already virtually dead. The person who decides to commit suicide gets some satisfaction out of thinking, “now it will soon be over.” This satisfaction is what keeps the person still among the living until performing some physical action which ends life, but then the bullet or poison, not directly the will to die, is what ends the life. Willing to live and finding life better than nothing are, I hold, the same things.

Take the person who stays alive because of fear of hell. Then what sustains the will to live is the thought, “I am better as I am than I might be in hell; I don’t have to be in hell, at least not yet.” Thinking thus gives present life some value. Or, if a mother lives for the sake of her children, the interest in the children and approval of herself as living for them make it possible for her to achieve at least some mild satisfaction in her own activities.

Though living is always more or less voluntary, dying can be either with or without our choice, not only because, on the one hand, external forces in action ourselves, but also because we can will not to live beyond a certain point of time. Or at least, we can be entirely content with the thought of not living forever or much beyond some specified point in our individual careers. We can choose to stop trying particularly to live, accepting death as coming from old age or terminal illness; we can be on the side of the physical forces that tend toward our death.

There are three principal ways of trying to make death as such acceptable. We can believe, or try to believe, in personal immortality in the conventional sense, meaning that after death we are to become conscious again; somewhat as we do in waking from a deep sleep, but this time in some supernatural heaven or hell, or on some other planet or in some other animal body. This may or may not be with memory of our previous earthly career. In either case this is a view which cannot appeal to any definite well-documented or scientific evidence to support it. I think that the appeal of this view is largely a consequence of misconceptions about the nature of life as such, no matter where or when.

Another way of arguing that death is good, or at least not too bad, is that it is like going into a dreamless sleep and never waking up again. Thus, there is no suffering in being dead, though there may be in dying, and so we escape from the evils of life once and for all. Note, however, that only for the others, the spectators, can it be “better” that we are no longer suffering. The suicide who reasons, “I shall be better off dead” will not be better or worse off, not yet just the same: simply he or she will not be in any state whatsoever, good, bad, or neutral. Into no future will the person survive to benefit since the future after death will not be hers or his at all. The suicide must act whether for personal satisfaction in the moments before death, or else for the benefit of those who survive. My conclusion is that the comparison of death to dreamless sleep is not enough to show that death is a good thing for the individual who dies.

The third way of making death acceptable is that of transcending self-interest as our final concern. If, and only if, we can regard our entire lives as contributing to the good of those who will survive us and if we can find part of our present satisfaction in the thought of such contribution to the future of life beyond ourselves, can we find death positively acceptable. I call this doctrine “contributionism.” It includes, but is more than, what is sometimes called “service” to others, for that is too much confined to things we do for others, actions from which others may benefit, like giving lectures. By “contributionism” I mean more than this. I mean that simply by being what we are in ourselves we contribute to the future of life. Our present happiness is a central factor in this contribution.

Miserable people, even if they are useful, contribute less than happy people who are also useful. By giving posterity our misery to look back upon, we do them no special favor. It is joys one wants to recall, more than sufferings. Even admitting the truth in the poet’s phrase, “our sweetest songs are those that tell of saddest thought,” still, in the composing and singing of these songs, there is more than misery; there is satisfaction in the beauty of the expression of grief.

To accept death as ending our personal career is to regard that career as a finite or bounded thing. We are finite in space and time; indeed, we are mere fragments of reality spatially and temporally, but then any work of art or beautiful thing is such a fragment, apart from the entire universe throughout time. Contentment with mortality is contentment with the finitude of our ultimate contribution to the whole of life. Should our careers have a last episode? Should a book have a last chapter? A poem, a last verse? Without beginning and end a work of art has no definite form or meaning. I personally regard a life as, with normal luck and good management, having something of the qualities of a work of art, and I see no reason why it should be endless; rather the contrary, it ought not to be endless.

Part of the interest of life is that it has a beginning, a middle, and an end. There are dramatic contrasts between infancy and youth, youth and maturity, maturity and elderliness, and these contrasts are spanned by certain life purposes, finite in scope, that bind them together. What more does one wish? If going to sleep is nothing dreadful, why is it dreadful to think of a sleep without waking? For the sleeper the fact that he or she does not awaken is as nothing. There is no pain or joy.  There is endless dreamless sleep.  Only the friends and family of the dead person wake in the morning and are prone to mourning because the one who has died is no more.

What bothers people is perhaps the idea that death is the mere absence of life, but my death is only the absence of my continued living, it is not the absence of all living. New lives make their finite contributions to the future of life as a whole.  [My death makes room for others to live life differently-–more generously, more boldly and more securely.]

 

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Appendix #3

The Hazards of Believing that Death is not the End

#3a  Ecology Gone Amuck in anticipation of the Apocalypse

When the Lord-God comes, should we actually believe that he will provide everyone with a new suburban home complete with a washer and dryer in every basement and a brand-new fuel-efficient automobile in every garage?  Should we actually believe that God will miraculously fill thousands of dry oil wells so that these engines can burn gasoline for another hundred years?  What?  If God has already said a resounding “No” to Western Culture and its notion of development and well-being, will he/she suddenly change his/her mind on the last day.  More importantly, however, even supposing that God did (for some crazy reason) decide to play Sugar Daddy, how would the Lord teach ecological responsibility if he/she used miraculous powers to overcome the results of our greed and waste?  The same thing, of course, can be said of modern-day parents who lavish so many clothes and toys upon their children that they promote their thoughtless use and the throw-away mentality that goes with it.  Will God, in the world to come, then have to continually save us from our garbage?  [Milavec, The Didache, 2003a, pp. 908-909]

#3b Celibacy Now In Anticipation of a Sexually-Charged Afterlife

One of my early students at St. Leonard’s College, GF, OFM, once told me that he was going to be lavishly generous in accepting God’s calling to the religious life in order that, in the afterlife, God would  be lavishly generous is satisfying his sexual intimacy desires with “the perfect wife.”  This formula for “delayed gratification” may be very unhealthy and very wrong-headed (esp. since Thomas Aquinas never anticipated any need for “sexual gratification” in the world to come).   Did Jesus mean to include eating and drinking but to exclude sexual intimacy in the world to come?  I would not think so!  Sexual intimacy has been such a creative and endearing art for me, how could the Lord omit this when planning our future Earth?

#3c  Allow Me to Die: Euthanasia in Belgium

Simone, a Belgium woman in good health has chosen euthanasia because she has no compelling reason to live and she wants to meet her daughter in the hereafter.  This comes up four times in her 44-minute video [URL = <https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uTpmQI0VoSI>].  She says goodbye to others with the expectation that she will see them in heaven.   Her vision of the afterlife as promoted by her Catholic Church thus promotes, like it or not, voluntary euthanasia.  By law, physician assisted suicides have been accepted in Belgium.  Yet, Simone may be entirely disappointed with going to Heaven.  No one  has told Simone that not having eyes and ears means that one cannot see or hear the “souls” of our friends and  families.  According to the Catholic Church, “souls” in Heaven can only expect to communicate with God and his angels.

#3d Fear of Death for those over 70

After living through my 70s and into my mid-80s, I noticed that I gradually lost all fear and anxiety in the face of my impending death.  When I investigated this experience using Quora.com, I discovered that it is quite natural for most aging adults to feel very comfortable with the prospect of dying.

When my Grandma Skedel asked me to pray to God that “Grandpa would die soon such that she could safely die herself.”  When I explored this prayer request, what I came to understand is that Grandpa Skedel’s health has been slowly declining.  He was then 88 years old.  Grandma was 86.  Here are her words to me:

“Grandpa could not live a single day without my help.  He has no idea how to use an electric washer and dryer.  He has no idea how to boil an egg and to serve it on toast.”

What I understood from my Grandma was that declining health made death desirable for both Grandpa and herself.  Should she die first, however, this would create an impossible situation for Grandpa.  He could not live alone.  Hence, I prayed as my Grandma asked of me.

Grandpa died nine months later at the age of 98.  Grandma died two months after that.  Her prayer was answered.

When I did a literature search, I quickly learned that the diminution of death anxiety takes place for those in their 70s and 80s across national and religious boundaries.   Even professed atheists do not show any significant deviation from Southern Baptists or Roman Catholics.

This deserves further study.  Does belief in an immortal soul gradually lose importance due to the natural (divinely approved) diminution of death anxiety with ageing?  Does my own sense of having a divine calling to rectify the five errors named in LET THE TRUTH BE TOLD come to me at this point in my life when my fear of death is almost nonexistent?  If the fear of death peaks at the age of 50 (as the literature concludes), does that mean that my most avid opponents will come from those 45-55 years of age?

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Appendix #4

How Christianity has massively distorted Gen 2-3

When Gen 2-3 is examined in detail, the keynote in the narrative is that the special tree in the center of the garden is significent because it is able to confer a special divine power: “your eyes will be opened, and you will be like God, knowing good and evil” (Gen 3:5).

Moreover, the serpent may be crafty but he is assuredly not a deceiver (See Matt 10:16). Eve tells him: “God said, ‘You shall not eat of the fruit of the tree that is in the middle of the garden, nor shall you touch it, or you shall die.’” God had said to Adam earlier: “for in the day that you eat of it you shall die” (Gen 2:17). God said nothing about “touching.” Thus, when Eve touches the fruit, nothing happens. Thus Eve learns that Adam has misrepresented God. Moreover, when Eve eats of the fruit, her eyes are opened, just as the serpent predicted: “You will not die; for God knows that when you eat of it your eyes will be opened, and you will be like God, knowing good and evil” (Gen 3:4-5). Thus, both Eve and the reader of Genesis have to agree (a) that the serpent is the truth-teller and (b) that Eve has to test the unfounded assumptions she has been making based on what Adam has been telling her. Neither God nor the narrator say anything about “Satan” or “sin” or “the fall from grace.”

If this eating of the fruit enables Eve and Adam to become “like God,” why then does God expel them from the Garden? The text tells us why:

Then the LORD God said, “See, the man has become like one of us, knowing good and evil; and now, he might reach out his hand and take also from the tree of life, and eat, and live forever”–therefore the LORD God sent him forth from the garden of Eden (Gen 3:22-23).

Ah, so this text reveals that there are two marvelous trees planted by God in the Garden of Eden. The first enables our first parents to discern good and evil—a property that God alone possessed up until the time of the eating. The second would give our first parents eternal life—another property that God (at least at this point) alone possesses. What God makes clear is that he is not yet ready to share this second blessing. Maybe in the future, but surely not now. For God says to Adam: “You are dust, and to dust you shall return” (Gen 3:19). Being made from dust, consequently, signals that God, right from the very beginning, intended to create his creatures mortal. Hence, the text gives us no reason to suspect that Adam and Eve were created as immortals. If this had been the case, then it would have made no sense for God to plant the Tree of Life. Nor would it have made any sense for God to expell his children from the Garden to insure that they did not eat of this second tree. Finally, one can understand why the text says nothing about God removing the “immortality” that had been given to Adam and Eve at some earlier point. This was a mistaken assumption that classical theologians read into the text (possibly due to their misapplication of Rom 5:12-21).

What one can understand from this is that, according to Gen 2-3, mortality does not come as a result of the first eating from the Tree of Knowledge (as classical Christian theology maintains). Mortality comes from being made from clay.

Secondly, according to Gen 2-3, exclusion from the Garden does not come as a result of the first eating from the Tree of Knowledge (as classical Christian theology maintains). Exclusion comes from God’s wish to insure that his children remain mortal because God himself knows that, should they eat of this second tree, they would “live forever” (3:22).

To examine this reading of Gen 2-3 more closely, see Eve as Pioneer of Adam’s Salvation = https://payhip.com/b/FRny

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change in the Church, family issues

Five reasons the synod is doomed to fail

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Five reasons the synod on the family is doomed to fail

  • Pope Francis speaks with a cardinal as he arrives for a session of the Synod of Bishops on the family at the Vatican Oct. 15. At right is Cardinal Lorenzo Baldisseri, general secretary of the Synod of Bishops. (CNS/Paul Haring)
Rev. Thomas Reese, S.J.  |  Oct. 15, 2015 Faith and Justice
Vatican City
The synod on the family has created a lot of interest in the church and spilled a lot of ink (or electrons) in the media, but there are five reasons that it was doomed to fail before the bishops even gathered in Rome Oct. 4. Perhaps Pope Francis can perform a miracle and save it, but the odds are against him.
First, the topic of the synod, “the family,” is too broad.
The family touches everything and is touched by everything. Anything bad in the world affects families, and any problems in families affect the societies in which they live.
Social and economic factors impact families: unemployment, housing, war, terrorism, climate change, interreligious differences, consumerism, social media, education, and on and on. Every problem in the world has an impact on families, from addictions to political corruption.Scores of moral issues surround the family, everything from the sexual act itself to fidelity, abortion, contraception, surrogate mothers, homosexuality, divorce, gender equality, child abuse, spousal violence, and so on.

Families are the place where one learns or does not learn the Christian faith, to say nothing of simple moral habits and virtues.

And we have not even gotten to the theological and canonical issues surrounding families: marriage as a sacrament, annulments, liturgical ceremonies, the family in the church, etc.

It is simply too much to deal with in a three-week meeting.

Second, the membership of the synod makes dealing with the topic of the family difficult.

The 270 synodal fathers come from many different cultures and as a result have very different priorities and concerns, not to mention different cultural conceptions about family life.

Bishops in the Middle East and Africa see their families facing the constant threat of violence and death that forces them to become refugees fleeing their homes. How can you have a family under these circumstances?

Many bishops in the developed world are concerned about how to respond to high divorce rates. But outside the wealthy, industrialized nations, the issues may be human trafficking, arranged marriages, interreligious marriages, child brides, polygamy, female genital mutilation, and cultural customs where marriage is seen as taking place over time, not in the instant when the couple says their vows.

Can so many people from such varied backgrounds have any common understanding of the problems facing families and how to deal with them?

The third problem facing the synod is the synodal process itself.

Synods are paper factories. They produce lots of speeches, recommendations and sometimes even a final document, but do they make a difference? In 1980, I covered an earlier synod on the family that faced almost every issue that this synod faces. Did it make any difference? If it did, I don’t see it.

The 1980 synod made many of the same recommendations that this synod will make: better marriage preparation, better formation of clergy so they can help families, better education programs, greater support from governments for families, less violence, more love.

New programs and ideas are not generated at synods. Bishops can only share what they bring. New programs are created by entrepreneurs who have an idea, experiment with it, and improve it through trial and error.

The fourth reason the synod is doomed to failure is that it is seriously divided on the question of what can and cannot change.

This clash is most obvious over the question of readmitting divorced and remarried Catholics to Communion.

One side sees only the law — the marriage contract is permanent and can be terminated only by death. The other side sees millions of people suffering from broken marriages that cannot be put back together.

One solution to this crisis is the annulment process, whereby the church declares that, even though there is a signed contract, the contract is not valid because of some failure at the time the wedding took place. There was much support at the 2014 synod for making the annulment process easier and faster, and Francis acted on this between synods.

The attitude of the bishops toward annulments is the greatest change since the 1980 synod on the family, when the American bishops were fiercely attacked by curial cardinals for making annulments too easy.

Francis has gone way beyond the American procedures by allowing bishops to declare a marriage annulled through an administrative process rather than a judicial process. Even canon lawyers are scratching their heads wondering how this will work.

But the fundamental problem faced by the synod is the same one faced by the Second Vatican Council: What can and cannot change in the church?

The pope and the bishops are constantly saying that the synod will not change church doctrine, but only pastoral practice. Bishops appear to even be afraid to talk about the development of doctrine, lest they be seen as wishy-washy on doctrine.

The conservatives see the readmission of divorced and remarried Catholics to Communion as violating a doctrine of the church — the indissolubility of marriage. To them, it would be an admission that the church was somehow wrong in its teaching in the past.

Any student of the Second Vatican Council recognizes that this was the same complaint of Cardinal Alfredo Ottaviani and his conservative colleagues who fought changes in church teaching on ecumenism, religious liberty and other matters.

So for the bishops to allow divorced and remarried Catholics — who don’t have an annulment but are civilly married — to receive Communion, they must somehow explain it as only a change in pastoral practice and not a change in doctrine.

The fifth reason the synod is doomed is the absence of theologians at the synod.

One conservative curial cardinal complained of the “schoolboy theology” being presented in episcopal speeches. There is some truth in that complaint. There is little evidence in their talks that bishops consulted theologians in order to understand contemporary thinking in Scripture, ethics or doctrine.

The bishops would have been better off spending the first week listening to theologians do an exegesis of scriptural passages on marriage, explain the concept of the development of doctrine, recount the history of the church’s treatment of marriage, and propose resolutions to controversial questions.

The reason that Vatican II was successful was because an alliance was forged between the theological periti and the council fathers that was capable of defeating the Roman Curia’s intransigence. Tragically, this alliance was broken after Humanae Vitae, when theologians were cast into the outer darkness as dissidents whom the bishops were to avoid at all costs.

The result has been disastrous for the church. It is as if the management of a major corporation is not on speaking terms with its research and development division. Would you invest in such a company?

Is there hope for the synod? Yes. Francis has begun a process; he has opened the windows closed after Vatican II. It will take more than three weeks to move the church forward, but he is moving it in the right direction.

Perhaps the synod is not doomed to fail but simply to be unfinished.

[Jesuit Fr. Thomas Reese is a senior analyst for NCR and author of Inside the Vatican: The Politics and Organization of the Catholic Church. His email address is treesesj@ncronline.org. Follow him on Twitter: @ThomasReeseSJ.]