Mary and the Living Tradition of the Church

Posted on October 2, 2013 by Joseph T. Richardson

The Immaculate Conception (ca. 1618–19), by Diego Valesquez.

[This originated as a response to a comment on my own blog, but I thought it might be worth sharing with everyone.]

Well, even the language you are using exhibits that you are misunderstanding the Church’s teachings about Mary. And I can relate, because these are some of the same misunderstandings and objections I had.

All-Holiness: “Immaculate” is not “Perfect”

You suggest that someone is “making up a whole lot of stuff … until she is not human anymore.” Let’s start there. The Church teaches that Mary was fully, absolutely human, just as human as you or me. And she was in need of a Savior just as much as you or me. There is no teaching was “she was perfect.” Only Jesus was perfect. The Church teaches that she was preserved from sin, both the stain of original sin and the wound of ever committing actual sin — but that’s no reflection on Mary. She was not “perfect.” It’s all about the power of Christ to save. Christ’s power to save is so perfect, so absolute, that He could save His mother from the very moment of her conception, to make her wholly clean and pure in preparation for His coming. That Mary did not sin does not mean that “she was perfect” — it means that Christ’s grace is perfect. It is only by that grace that she was able to resist and avoid sin. And in the same way, we who are saved, who receive that same grace, have the power to resist sin! It does not mean that God is “less able to come all the way down to [the level of imperfect beings]” — it means that, by God coming to every one of us, we all can be made perfect by His grace!

(We say that Mary is “immaculate” — which does not mean “perfect.” “Immaculate” means “without a stain.” “Perfect” means “completely finished.” And we — just as Mary — are only “perfect” when we are “completely finished” works of grace.)

Virgin and Child with Rosary, 1655 (Murillo)

Virgin and Child with Rosary (1655), by Bartolomé Esteban Murillo.

Perpetual Virginity — Mary as a Consecrated Vessel

And the idea that Mary is “anti-sexual” — I had the same objection: that the Church’s teaching on Mary’s perpetual virginity somehow implies that sexuality is “dirty” and that sex would somehow taint her all-holiness. But this is a misunderstanding. Certainly if the Church thought sexuality (especially women’s sexuality) were sinful (as many have in the history of civilization) — and if the Church were free to “make stuff up” — then it would have Jesus being born from a rock or a seashell or coming down from heaven fully-grown or some other such — not coming out of a woman’s gross lady-parts. The very act of Jesus being formed in a human womb and born by a natural human birth intrinsically makes Mary in some sense “sexual” — but the fact is that this is not “dirty.” The fact is that God did come down to her, in a miraculous and wonderful way.

But her perpetual virginity — why did she not have sex after Jesus was born? Does this not say that sex is somehow “dirty” and that for her to have sex would be a sin? No, it means that sex is something worldly — and Mary’s womb, by the very fact that it contained God Himself, is something consecrated, set aside for a higher purpose.

From the earliest Tradition — from apostolic times — the Church has hailed Mary as the “Ark of the New Covenant” — the box that contained Christ, the incarnate Word, and bore Him into the world. See, for example, Revelation 11:19–12:1. The chapter break (which was not in the original text but only added later) causes many to overlook it, but here John plainly says, “Then God’s temple in heaven was opened, and the ark of his covenant was seen within his temple…. And a great portent appeared in heaven, a woman clothed with the sun” (Revelation 11:19–12:1) — a woman from whom is born “a male child, one who is to rule all the nations” (Revelation 12:5). Certainly the child represents Jesus, and the mother Mary, and the mother is implied to be connected with the Ark of the Covenant in the heavenly temple! The Ark of the Covenant, a consecrated vessel, the very gate between Heaven and Earth — that is why Mary’s womb is held to be something that no man could touch, not because the sexual act is somehow “dirty.”

There is evidence from Scripture, even, that Mary was intended to be a consecrated virgin — as an early (mid–second century) apocryphal gospel, the Protoevangelium of James, reports. In Luke 1:34, Mary asks the angel Gabriel, “How shall this be, since I know not man” — ἄνδρα οὐ γινώσκω, present tense, a Greek phrase that translators have been struggling with for centuries. Many translations render it “since I am a virgin,” but that doesn’t quite get it; not does “since I have no husband.” It says Mary was betrothed! Certainly she had every expectation of having a husband, and unless she was not aware of the facts of life, would have fully expected having marital relations with her husband in the near future and conceiving children naturally! Why, then, did she ask this question?

Assumption (fragment) (1311), by Duccio.

Mary’s Assumption — A Sure Sign of Hope and Comfort

And regarding the Assumption — again, you are missing the point of the teaching. It is not that Mary is someone special who, “once God truly touches” her, “doesn’t have a place on planet earth anymore” — but that every one of us whom God truly touches doesn’t belong to this earth, but has a place, body and soul, in His eternal kingdom. Look to this post I made about it. Mary is the firstfruits of His inheritance to all, the assurance that every one of us who are in Him have a heavenly reward awaiting. The liturgy of the Mass for the feast of the Assumption puts it better than I ever could:

It is truly right and just, our duty and our salvation,
always and everywhere to give You thanks,
Lord, holy Father, almighty and eternal God,
through Christ our Lord.
For today the Virgin Mother of God
was assumed into heaven
as the beginning and image
of Your Church’s coming to perfection
and a sign of sure hope and comfort to Your pilgrim people;
rightly You would not allow her
to see the corruption of the tomb
since from her own body she marvelously brought forth
Your incarnate Son, the Author of all life.

God came down to touch and to save not just one, not just Mary, but every one of us.

An early Eastern tradition holds that St. Luke himself was the first iconographer and created the first icon of the Virgin and Child.

Mary In Scripture

You are right that “righteous” and “blameless” don’t mean “perfect” — something that Protestants should be reminded of, since they love to point to Paul’s quotation that “no one is righteous” (Romans 3:10) as evidence that we are all “totally depraved” and incapable of being righteous. But yes, Zechariah and Elizabeth were “righteous” — even though they sinned (for which Zechariah was stricken dumb, for doubting the angel’s words).

But regarding Mary — you suggest that “one little portion of Scripture led to a million statues.” Really? You think that the Church’s devotion to Mary is the result of a misunderstanding — of someone misinterpreting St. Luke when he says that Mary was “blessed”? Please remember that the Catholic Church is not like Protestant churches. We did not take the Bible and read it from scratch and interpret the Scriptures only for what we thought they meant. We received the Scriptures as part of a living Tradition — not just receiving the texts, but receiving teachings from those who wrote the texts, who taught us how to understand them and who gave us the fullness of revelation.

Go back to the beginning and read these words and try to put yourself in St. Luke’s mind: why did he write that “all generations would call [Mary] blessed”? Or that she was “highly favored” or “full of grace”? Was he just saying nice things about Jesus’s mother, or did he know more about her than he wrote in Scripture? By every indication, Luke knew Mary and talked to her, as one of the “eyewitnesses of the word” (cf. Luke 1:2) — or at least he talked to those who had known her very well. He had very personal and immediate knowledge of the circumstances of Jesus’s Nativity, things only Mary would have had knowledge of. Would Luke say that “all generations would call her blessed” — very high praise indeed — if there were not very good reasons why all generations would call her blessed? — if the generations of the Church were not already calling her blessed in their liturgy?

Mary and the Living Tradition

You suppose that the Church’s Marian doctrines are tradition getting out of hand, something added on later as people got carried away; and this is a common Protestant view. But from the very earliest Christian writers, we have testimony to the extraordinary things which the Church believes about Mary — that she was perpetually a virgin, that she did not sin, that she was assumed body and soul into heaven at the end of her earthly life. The Protestant view supposes that the Church, so careful to preserve intact and uncompromised the faith that had been received from the Apostles, so determined that she would condemn heretics for deviating from that Truth, would, at the same time, “make stuff up” about the mother of Jesus, and “deify” a mere human to a point that entirely departs from that Truth — and that all the same Christians who would persecute heretics for alternate understandings of the divine and human natures of Christ would be entirely okay with this. Think about whether that makes sense.

I think, toward the end of this, you are starting to figure out for yourself where the Marian doctrines might truly be directed: “that maybe we are destined for greater things that we can imagine.” That is absolutely it! We say in the Salve Regina, my favorite Marian hymn, that Mary is “our hope.” Does that mean that we “hope” in Mary for our salvation? No — what it means is that Mary is everything we hope for, everything we hope to be. And everything we can be, by God’s grace.

I would highly recommend a book, Mary and the Fathers of the Church, by Fr. Luigi Gambero, a book that made a profound difference in my understanding of the Church’s Marian doctrines. Gambero goes through all the Church Fathers, from the very earliest writings to the medieval age (for which he has a sequel, Mary in the Middle Ages, which I don’t have yet but it’s on my list), and surveys the teachings of each regarding Mary, giving quotations that demonstrate that all the things the Church believes have been believed since the earliest times — that this Tradition isn’t just something “made up,” but something real and received. Mary is not the Gospel — but she is the demonstration of the Gospel, our living witness and assurance that all the promises of the Gospel are true.

A Scriptural Defense of the Saints in Heaven

Posted on September 15, 2013 by Joseph T. Richardson

A little something I whipped up last week for somebody — in rejection of the idea that the saints are “dead,” that praying to the saints is “communication with the dead,” and that this is an “occult” practice (one of the more bizarre anti-Catholic claims I have heard). My interlocutor was not receptive, but I thought this might be helpful to someone else.

Man is Appointed Once to Die, Then Comes Judgment

You seem to be advocating a form of the doctrine of “soul sleep” or mortalism, the belief that the soul becomes dormant between earthly death and the Final Judgment, an error the Christian Church has condemned consistently since the earliest times. Scripture reveals to us that the dead in Christ receive a particular judgment at the moment of their deaths, rather than “dying” until the Final Judgment. Hebrews 10:27–28 tells us that “it is appointed once for men to die, and then comes judgment” and that at the end of the age, “Christ will appear a second time … to save those who are eagerly awaiting Him”; that will be the Final Judgment, for which both the just and the unjust will be resurrected in body and judged (Acts 24:15, John 5:28–29, Matthew 25:31, 32, 46). Scripture shows us in more than a few places that the dead have immediate destinations, rather than entering a “holding place.” Jesus’s parable of the rich man and Lazarus (Luke 16:22) presents the living and conscious souls of both men in their respective dispositions, not dead or dormant or asleep. Jesus promised the good thief on the cross that he would be with Him in Paradise that very day (Luke 23:43).

The Four Doctors of the Western Church: Pope St. Gregory the Great, St. Ambrose, St. Augustine, and St. Jerome.

The Spirits of Just Men Made Perfect

We have every reason from Scripture to believe that there awaits a heavenly reward for righteous men and women who die in Christ. St. Paul presents that apart from his body, he might be at home with the Lord (2 Corinthians 5:6–8) — not dormant or dead until a later judgment. Given the choice between life and death, his desire was to depart and be with Christ — for to live is Christ and to die is gain — but chose to remain and serve the people of God (Philippians 1:21–24). Hebrews 12:23 presents “the assembly of the first-born who are enrolled in heaven, and … the spirits of just men made perfect” — a very clear indication of the eternal life already received by worthy Christians who have passed on.

Fra Angelico. The Forerunners of Christ with Saints and Martyrs (about 1423-24).

The Communion of Saints

And when these souls have passed from their earthly walk, what is their relation to the living Church? We know that in Baptism we all are joined to the Body of Christ (1 Corinthians 12:12–13, Galatians 3:27), and that in the Body of Christ we share an organic unity with all other believers (Romans 12:4–5, 1 Corinthians 10:17, 12:12–20, Ephesians 4:4). We know that in Christ we have eternal life, and we know that Christ, being raised from the dead, will never die again (Romans 6:9). Therefore we have no reason to believe that bodily death has cut those who have passed from this life off from Christ or off from us. Rather than dead or dormant, our dear departed are more alive now than they’ve ever been. As we have communion with Christ, we have communion with each other, with all other believers — all who are in Christ from all ages. Since the earliest times, the Church of Christ has affirmed this communion of saints, as declared in the ancient creeds.

The Day of the Dead (1859), by William-Adolphe Bouguereau.

Communicating with the Dead?

So, the idea than in praying to and with the saints — as they pray with and for us — we are “communicating with the dead,” is erroneous. The practice condemned by Isaiah (Isaiah 8:19) and the Torah (Leviticus 19:31, 20:6, 27, Deuteronomy 18:11) is explicitly the communication with the dead through “mediums and wizards” — “consulting the dead on behalf of the living” for the sake of personal gain or advantage or divine or supernatural knowledge, expecting a supernatural dialogue from beyond the grave, as Saul sought to do with the spirit of the prophet Samuel through the witch of Endor (1 Samuel 28). The “occult” — the etymology of which refers to “closed” or “hidden” or “dark” knowledge — includes specifically sorcery, witchcraft, wizardry, astrology, spiritism, and necromancy — which is not simply “communicating with the dead,” but communicating with the dead through these dark arts, by contacting spirits through rituals or spells or séances. Prayer — in and with and through the Holy Spirit — in no way resembles any of this. We pray in the light, in the open, with voices lifted to God, not through hidden or dark or arcane wisdom.

To “pray,” in the most literal sense, means to ask, to petition, to plead, to beseech — and this is all it means to “pray” to the saints: to ask for the intercession of our Christian brothers and sisters who are in and with Christ in heaven, as we also intercede for all our brothers and sisters in Christ, as St. Paul urges us to “make intercession for all men” (1 Timothy 2:1–5). Paul himself continued to intercede for his departed friend (2 Timothy 1:16–18) — showing that he did not consider those who had fallen asleep in Christ to be beyond his reach or help.

Virgin Mary (c. 1600), by El Greco. (WikiPaintings.org)

The Prayers of the Saints

And Scripture again reveals to us the reality of this heavenly intercession. The Revelation of John presents the twenty-four elders — widely interpreted as the Patriarchs and Apostles — offering up golden bowls of incense to God, “which are the prayers of the saints” (Revelation 5:8) — “saints” in this context referring to both the living and the dead in Christ (cf. Revelation 11:18, 16:6, 24) — demonstrating plainly that the prayers of Christians living on earth are heard by the holy souls in heaven, and that heavenly intercessors are involved in presenting these prayers to God. We likewise see the angels in heaven similarly offering up our prayers (Revelation 8:3). Thus, we see that though Jesus Christ is the one Mediator between man and God (1 Timothy 2:5) — that it is only by Jesus that we can reach the Father (John 14:6) — this by no means abrogates our call to intercede for one another, or of others to intercede for us — least of all those who have passed to their glorious reward.

Why I am not a “Roman” Catholic

Posted on September 10, 2013 by Joseph T. Richardson

St. Peter’s Basilica (Wikimedia). I love her, but she’s not my home church.

This is something that’s been eating at me for a while, in my conversations with Protestants: I am not a Roman Catholic.

I’m not even Roman! To the best of my knowledge, I haven’t a bit of Roman heritage within at least the past millennium. I come from good, British stock — mostly English, Scottish, and Scotch-Irish.

But when I’m talking to Protestants, they invariably refer to me as “Roman Catholic,” and my Church as the “Roman Catholic Church.” And I realize these terms are technically correct, according to popular nomenclature; but in my view, they are inappropriate, and here’s why.

I am, first and foremost, a Christian. By nativity, residence, and heritage, I am an Alabamian and a Southerner and an American; by education, I am an historian; by avocation, a blogger and would-be theologian and apologist. This is how I identify myself. I don’t generally think any clarification to my Christian identity is immediately necessary, but when it becomes relevant to conversation, I give it: I am a Catholic Christian of the Diocese of Birmingham in Alabama.

Pope Francis. He is my universal pastor, and I love him, and I am faithful to him — but I’m not a member of his diocese.

So why do people feel the need to label me as a “Roman” Catholic? There is almost always a note of unpleasantness in their tone when they say this: Dismissiveness? Incredulity? They speak as if there were more than one Catholic Church, and the “Roman” one is only one among many; or as if the “Roman” Catholic Church is only a pretender to the title “Catholic.” There is a sense in which my Church and my Christian heritage is indeed Roman, but that is seldom if ever the sense in which anyone uses the term. And so I reject the label. I am not a “Roman” Catholic.

The particular Church of which I am a member, the Diocese of Birmingham in Alabama, is a member of the Latin Rite of Christianity. Latin, the ancient language of Rome, is our primary liturgical language, even if in practice we speak more English these days. My bishop, the Most. Rev. Robert Baker, is in communion with the bishop of Rome, Pope Francis. But I am not a member of the Church of Rome.

The Second Vatican Council, assembled in St. Peter’s Basilica. That’s a lot of bishops!

There are more than 2,000 bishops and dioceses (Latin dioceses, Greek διοίκησες, “administrations”) worldwide who, like mine, are in communion with the bishop of Rome. Collectively, these dioceses are often referred to as the Roman Catholic Church, it’s true — but the fact is, only one of those dioceses is actually Roman, the Diocese of Rome, of which Pope Francis is the ordinary. The fact is that these dioceses are distributed among every country and nation on earth, speak nearly every vernacular language, and are made up of Christians of every ethnicity and heritage and background. Only a minuscule fraction of these Christians are Roman in any way. Each diocese is a particular Church of its own. These Churches are not all part of the Latin Rite: there are twenty-three different rites represented by these Churches in communion with the bishop of Rome, some of them having little resemblance or relation to the Roman one: the Byzantine, the Melkite and Maronite, the Syro-Malabar, the Coptic and Ethiopian Catholics, just to name a few. Christians of these Churches would no doubt be offended to be called “Roman” Catholic. But when I say that I am Catholic, I mean that I am in communion — in a Christian unity — with all of these people.

Duccio, Appearance of Christ to the Apostles (1311)

Appearance of Christ to the Apostles (fragment) (1311), by Duccio. (WikiPaintings.org)

The four marks of the true Church of Christ put forward by the Nicene Creed are that she is One, Holy, Catholic, and Apostolic. There are other Christian communities in the world that claim themselves to be “catholic” — universal — but there is only One to whom the term truly applies. Speaking practically, no other Church has as many members worldwide — over 1.2 billion — in as many places, among as many groups of people. No other Church is united in oneness by such universal bonds of communion: even the next largest Christian groups, the various Orthodox Churches, and those of the Anglican Communion, are united more by association than communion; the vast majority of other Christian communities have been hopelessly splintered by schism and disunion, to the degree of some 40,000 Protestant denominations today (and that figure is not even to mention “non-denominational” Christians). No other Church manifests more fully the Apostolic faith represented by the New Testament and witnessed forward through the ages by the Church Fathers. And in an age increasingly rocked by moral disintegration, only One Church continues to consistently stand apart in holiness against the evils of abortion, euthanasia, contraception, and immoral sexuality. Only the true, historic, Catholic Church embodies the Oneness, Holiness, Catholicity, and Apostolicity of the Church founded by Jesus 2,000 years ago, which He promised would forever stand against the powers of death. And this is what I mean when I say that I am Catholic.

What Sacred Tradition Is and Is Not: 7 Answers to Common Misconceptions

Posted on September 7, 2013 by Joseph T. Richardson

Saints Peter and Paul (between 1605 and 1608), by El Greco.

This started out as a response to someone’s blog, but I got carried away. Here are some answers to some common misunderstandings regarding the Sacred Tradition of the Catholic Church, especially with reference to the Protestant doctrine of sola scriptura. Pardon me for just dumping it here with so little introduction or conclusion, but I hope it will be helpful to someone.

1. Sacred Tradition — including Sacred Scripture — started out as oral tradition.

Of course, all Christian teaching started out as oral tradition. Until the Gospels were written, decades following Christ’s Ascension, the sayings and teachings and doings of Jesus were transmitted solely by word of mouth. Over the course of the first century, that was recorded in the books of Sacred Scripture we now call the New Testament. As you admit yourself, not everything Jesus did was recorded. There’s no doubt that not everything Paul preached was recorded; he often refers in his letters to teachings he gave in person, the content of which we are left to infer. Paul was a gifted writer, but we have from him only a handful of letters written for specific purposes, handling local business or offering correction or rebuke to specific situations and problems. None of the authors of the New Testament set out to write a compendium of the Christian faith or a catechism for teaching everything there was to know.

You believe, as the Catholic Church affirms, that Sacred Scripture is the heart of Divine Revelation, the very, infallible, written Word of God. But what do you suppose happened to all the stories of the other things Jesus said and taught and did, all the other things that Paul and the Apostles taught? Did people just forget them? And did these things somehow become less valid or less real because they weren’t written down? Everything that came from the mouth of Jesus was the Word of God. Did it cease to be the Word of God, cease to be Divine Revelation, because it was among those “many other signs Jesus did”?

A leaf from Codex Vaticanus, one of the earliest extant manuscripts of the Greek New Testament.

2. Sacred Tradition is the Word of God.

No, of course it didn’t, and the early Christians did not forget. They cherished every word that issued from the mouth of God through Christ, every word taught to them by the Apostles. Did the words of Jesus cease to be Divine Revelation because it was the Apostles repeating them and teaching them? Did they cease to be Divine Revelation after the Apostles died, and their disciples taught them to the next generation of Christians? No, the Word of God spoken orally was and still is just as much the Word of God as the Word of God written in Scripture — just as much as when we memorize and recite Scripture, we are speaking the Word of God. Memorizing and reciting the teachings of Jesus taught from one generation of Christians to the next is no less the Word of God — in fact, we depend upon it. You do, too. This is how the teachings of Jesus were transmitted for the generation or two before they became Scripture. Proclaiming the Gospels as the Word of God depends on the oral tradition of Christ’s teachings being and remaining the Word of God.

You believe that at the death of the Apostle, Divine Revelation was closed. We, the Catholic Church, go even further than that: Jesus Himself, the Word spoken by God, was the ultimate revelation. The New Testament is the New Testament not just because it was written by the Apostles, not even solely because it was inspired by Holy Spirit (which it was), but because it records the words and teachings of Jesus, the words of Divine Revelation Himself. What distinguishes the documents accepted into the New Testament canon as Scripture, versus the ones from only a generation later, such as the Didache or the Epistle of Clement to the Corinthians (1 Clement) — which were both among those documents considered for inclusion in the New Testament — was the inspiration of the Holy Spirit, but also the fact that the canonical books were written by the Apostles or their associates, witnesses to the life of Christ Himself, or who were taught immediately by such witnesses — and above all that they consisted almost purely of the word and teachings of Jesus carried on and taught by the Apostles.

But did the words of the Word of God cease to be Divine Revelation because they weren’t written in Scripture? Did they cease to be the Word of God at the death of the last Apostle? Why the arbitrary cutoff at the death of the Apostles?

St. Thomas the Apostle.

3. Sacred Tradition was all most of the Apostles left us.

Most of the Apostles were too busy preaching to the ends of the earth to do much writing. That in itself, by the way, is an argument against sola scriptura: if the Apostles had any anticipation that only their written teachings would remain the Word of God after their deaths, wouldn’t you think they’d have done a lot more writing? What about St. Bartholomew, who preached in Armenia, or St. Thomas, who brought the Gospel all the way to India? Or St. James the Greater, who is traditionally held to have preached in Spain? Would they have given their lives as martyrs for the Lord so eagerly, never having written down their teachings, if they believed that all their preaching and suffering was worth smack — that after they died, their teachings would bring no one else to salvation, their deaths would turn no hearts, but that their mission fields would have to wait for someone else to write and compile and disseminate the New Testament? In any case, most of the Apostles, common men of Galilee, were probably barely literate if at all, as were the people they preached to.

But as for the rest of the Word of God — that that didn’t get written in Scripture: People didn’t just forget it, or dismiss it as no longer necessary now that they had the New Testament, which was “sufficient to lead a person to eternal life.” They didn’t decide, at the death of the last Apostle, that “nothing else was needed” and that the other teachings they had received from the Apostles and their followers were extraneous and no longer to be preserved or believed. Yeah, that story about St. Veronica wiping the bloody face of the suffering Savior? That’s not in Scripture; we don’t need that anymore. That liturgy you’ve been developing? No longer necessary; we have the New Testament now. Early Christians were even more excited than you are to preserve the Word of God, to learn and pass on the teachings of their Savior, the Son of God! They received no instruction from Scripture that they should discard and no longer believe the rest of the deposit of faith they had received. Not only did they receive no such instruction, but the fact is plain that they did not, since without a doubt these traditions continued to be transmitted by the earliest Christians. And if you suppose they had received such teaching to reject unwritten traditions about our Lord from the mouths of the Apostles themselves — then the idea of sola scriptura depends on an extrascriptural tradition and is self-contradictory.

St. Augustine (c. 1645-1650), Philippe de Champaigne.

4. Sacred Tradition didn’t stay “oral tradition.”

Many Protestants speak of Catholic “traditions” — as you do above — as if the teachings of the Catholic Church consist of and depend solely on “oral traditions,” the kind of folklore American Indians tell around a powwow — passed down from pope to pope for 2,000 years like a tragic game of telephone. Protestant critics complain that “tradition” is something nebulous and undefined that Catholics can say is whatever they want it to be. “You made that up!” “No I didn’t, it came from tradition!”

But that is a fundamental misunderstanding. I’ve been writing about the first generations of Christians who faithfully preserved and passed down the words and teachings of Jesus, eventually recording them in Scripture. I’ve shown, I hope, that the other teachings of Jesus and the Apostles, those that were passed down (that’s all “tradition” means, by the way, is “that which is passed down”), didn’t cease to be Divine Revelation just because it was spoken and not written. They didn’t forget — it was crucial not to forget. Paul exhorted Timothy, “What you have heard from me before many witnesses entrust to faithful men who will be able to teach others also” (2 Timothy 2:2) — and that’s exactly what the early Christians did. They taught to others these teachings, and ensured that they were passed on intact, just as carefully — even more carefully — than the bards passing on the epics of Homer, who memorized the whole of those vast poems and carried them for centuries.

But unlike Homer, the Church didn’t have to carry them for centuries. Over the first few centuries, thankfully, the Christian faith found its way to learned and literate men who, bit by bit, set these remaining teachings of Jesus and the Apostles — the whole counsel of God (Acts 20:27) — to writing. We call these men the Church Fathers.

St. Cyprian of Carthage

5. Sacred Tradition is just as much Divine Revelation as Sacred Scripture — but not the same.

I’ve often heard it charged from Protestants that the Catholic Church “places Scripture and Tradition on the same level” or “equal authority.” Well, in a sense, yes. But I would dispute the claim that the two have “equal authority” — as if the two are “equal” to each other. They are not. Both Scripture and Tradition form one deposit of faith, but the two have very different characters.

Sacred Scripture is, the Catholic Church teaches and affirms just as much as any “Bible Christian,” the very written Word of God, inspired (“breathed out”) by the Holy Spirit. As such, it is infallible, inerrant, and indisputable in matters of faith, doctrine, and morals. God has spoken. We do not believe that Scripture is “perspicuous” or “self-interpreting” — a ridiculous claim to anybody who has spent time or energy laboring in scriptural translation or textual criticism or exegesis. Scripture is thousands of years old, written in languages and idioms no one speaks anymore, in ancient cultures and contexts very different than our own. The act of translation is itself an act of interpretation, so anyone claiming that their English Bible is “self-interpreting” is already mistaken.

Sacred Tradition, on the other hand — not “oral traditions” — is a very different animal. The writings of the Church Fathers are not infallible; they are not even inspired. The Church Fathers are not Sacred Tradition, but they do contain Sacred Tradition. They contain Divine Revelation not as Sacred Scripture — which is “pure silver, seven times refined” (Psalm 11:7), the pure, unadulterated Word of God — but more as unrefined silver ore — which contains pure silver, but also a lot of dirt and rock. The Church Fathers record the precious teachings of Jesus and the Apostles that they received from their teachers, who received them from their teachers, who received them from the Apostles themselves (in some cases, as with St. Clement of Rome or St. Ignatius of Antioch or St. Irenaeus of Lyons, as close as a generation away) — but they also have a lot to say that is merely their opinion or reflection. And sometimes they are plain wrong. Sometimes, many times, the Church Fathers even disagree with each other! But it is the things they agree upon, the core of apostolic teachings, that we receive as Sacred Tradition.

It is only the pure silver that is absolute and authoritative. If we could obtain the pure, undiluted Sacred Tradition in the form that came directly from the mouth of Jesus, it would be just as absolutely authoritative and divinely inspired as Scripture — since Scripture, too, originated as words from the mouth of Jesus. But the dirty ore of the Church Fathers is not that. The Sacred Tradition contained especially in the Church Fathers, but also in the ancient liturgy of the Church, in the pronouncements of Church councils, or even in the works of other writers, has to be refined in order to be authoritative. In the sense that Sacred Tradition comes from the exact same source as Scripture, the very words of Jesus — it is absolutely equal in authority. But practically speaking, since we don’t have that pure Tradition, it functions as a secondary authority — no less authoritative, but dependent on and supported by Scripture — which Tradition also supports.

Guido Reni, Assumption of the Virgin (1580)

Assumption of the Virgin (1580), by Guido Reni.

6. Sacred Tradition cannot contradict Scripture.

Protestants complain that Catholic Tradition “contradicts Scripture.” Such is, to begin with, patently impossible: if the two come from the same source, how can they contradict? Catholic teaching does not contradict Scripture. Perhaps it contradicts Protestant interpretations of Scripture — but such interpretations have little grounding in history or tradition. The fact is, even speaking practically, the Church Fathers, as the earliest recipients of Scripture and Tradition and of all Christian teaching, know how to interpret Scripture and Tradition in light of each other better than anyone else. Catholic teaching, coming both from Scripture and from the Tradition received from the Church Fathers, is in agreement with the Church Fathers: both what they believed, and how they interpreted Scripture. If these ancient interpretations contradict Protestant interpretations, then the Protestants have a much greater problem of contradiction than Catholics do.

It is the Magisterium of the Church — the teaching authority — that puts the pieces together; that reads and interprets Scripture authoritatively, and that gleans and refines from the Church Fathers and other sources the silver of Tradition. Protestants often complain that this places the Magisterium “above the authority of Scripture,” but such is also impossible. The Magisterium is constrained by what Scripture and Tradition say — what we have received in the deposit of faith. The Magisterium is not free to “make stuff up,” or pull Blessed Virgins out of hats, or any other such. Everything the Magisterium pronounces must be contained in Scripture and Tradition and in accord with both. The Magisterium cannot pronounce, say, that adultery is now perfectly moral and legal and okay in God’s sight, since such plainly contradicts the direct word of Scripture, “Thou shalt not commit adultery,” and since this contradicts the unbroken teaching of the Church for 2,000 years.

What about some of the doctrines that Protestants claim “contradict Scripture”? What about the big one, the veneration of Mary? First, Scripture plainly demonstrates the beginnings of devotion to the mother of our Lord: “My soul magnifies the Lord, / and my spirit rejoices in God my Savior, / for he has regarded the low estate of his handmaiden. / For behold, henceforth all generations will call me blessed” (Luke 1:46–48) — by all appearances an early liturgical prayer or hymn, which we today call the Magnificat. There is nothing in Scripture to demonstrate that we shouldn’t honor our Lord’s mother, for Jesus Himself loved her and honored her. And as for pulling Virgins out of hats — the tradition of honor given to Mary dates to the earliest centuries of the Church, found among the earliest Church Fathers and ecclesiastical writers. There is nothing in the Church’s doctrines regarding Jesus and Mary that isn’t well attested to in the writings of Tradition. The Church doesn’t “make stuff up.”

Pope Paul VI, who re-called the Second Vatican Council following the death of Pope John XXIII in 1963.

7. Sacred Tradition is transparent and open.

I have heard Protestants complain that the Tradition of the Church is something closed and unknown, a well-guarded secret that only the prelates of the Church are privy to, with the result that the Church can proclaim anything as “Tradition” that she wishes, and no one will be the wiser. But such, again, is patently false. Every bit of the body of material that comprises Sacred Tradition is readily available, much of it online. I have never seen an organization go to greater lengths to be open and transparent as to the content and basis of its doctrines. Front and center, the Church publishes the Catechism of the Catholic Church in a dozen or so different languages, available free on the Vatican website, which not only lays out clearly and succinctly the doctrines of the Christian faith, but gives exhaustive references to Scripture, Church documents, and the Church Fathers to locate where and on what each doctrine is based. Many if not most of those Church documents (certainly the recent ones) are available for free on the Vatican website. Many of the most important writings of the Church Fathers are readily available online, both from Catholic and Protestant websites. (For what it’s worth, even New Advent, the Catholic site, reproduces a Protestant edition of the Church Fathers, the same one as on CCEL, since that is the most extensive English edition of the Church Fathers readily available in the public domain, and it’s generally a pretty fine one.) A distillation of the doctrinal sources of most important Catholic doctrines is readily available in the Enchiridion Symbolorum or Sources of Catholic Dogma. So, no, the idea that the Tradition of the Church is closed and unknown is without foundation.

Ending abruptly, because I don’t seem able to wind this down: I hope this clears up some confusion.

The Doctrine of Justification: Augustine is Catholic

Posted on August 28, 2013 by Joseph T. Richardson

Today is the feast day of St. Augustine, and though I have a lot of other things on my plate today, I thought it was an opportune time to make a first post in a matter that’s been boiling over in my head for a while. A couple of months ago I finished reading Alister McGrath’s Iustitia Dei: A History of the Christian Doctrine of Justification, a compelling and masterful work on that subject of such importance to the ongoing schism of the Protestant Reformation. In only a few hundred pages, McGrath surveys the whole Western theological tradition, cutting to the crux of major theologians and theologies from Augustine to Barth, and digging to the root of the disagreements and controversies. He shows a thorough command of the literature, especially into the voluminous corpus of St. Augustine, but also likewise into a number of important medieval thinkers, and into Luther and Calvin. (In the second edition which I read, he was even so hardcore as to leave primary source quotations in their original Greek, Latin, and German. In the third edition, more accessible to a general audience, he does translate these quotations — which, brushing aside the vestiges of my academic snobbery, is a welcome relief. Reading it the first time was a world of brainhurt!)

McGrath is an honest and insightful historian, and so thoroughly versed in his material that this work should be considered the authority on the matter. I would like to give a full review — or even share a series of posts on some of the important points — but I think that will have to wait a little while. For today, I would like to share a few quotes from McGrath’s chapter on Augustine, whom he calls the “fountainhead” of the doctrine of justification, the first western theologian to devote his substantial energies to it, and the one in whose wake all later theologians would follow. In McGrath’s words, “All medieval theology is ‘Augustinian’, to a greater or lesser extent,” and even the Protestant Reformers attempted to stake a claim to an Augustinian heritage. But I felt vindicated as a Catholic in discovering that, by the judgment of even a Protestant scholar, Augustine’s theology is thoroughly catholic, and that the teachings of the Catholic Church on justification have been, have never ceased to be, and are still today, essentially Augustinian.

St. Augustine (c. 1645-1650), Philippe de Champaigne.

Giving only a few quotations will be difficult — since I have most of the chapter highlighted! — but I will pick out a few passages highlighted in red: those that I found to be the most piercing and profound.

In rejecting the teachings of Pelagianism — that man has the power to save himself by his own free will apart from grace — Augustine did not reject that man has free will. He was careful to distinguish between liberum arbitrium (free will) and liberum arbitrium captivatum (free will taken captive or enslaved by sin). It is only by grace that our will is freed to pursue God. “Grace, far from abolishing the free will, actually establishes it.”

In a firm rejection of the Calvinistic notion of “monergism,” and in full accord with Catholic teaching, McGrath states:

For Augustine, the human liberum arbitrium captivatum is incapable of desiring or attaining justification. How, then, does faith, the fulcrum about which justification takes place, arise in the individual? According to Augustine, the act of faith is itself a divine gift, in which God acts upon the rational soul in such a way that it comes to believe. Whether this action on the will leads to its subsequent assent to justification is a matter for humanity, rather than for God. ‘The one who created you without you will not justify you without you’ (‘Qui fecit te sine te, non te iustificat sine te’). Although God is the origin of the gift which humans are able to receive and possess, the acts of receiving and possessing themselves can be said to be the humans’.

McGrath continues:

To meet what he regarded as Pelagian evasions, Augustine drew a distinction between operative and co-operative grace. God operates to initiate humanity’s justification, in that humans are given a will capable of desiring good, and subsequently co-operate with that good will to perform good works, to bring that justification to perfection. God operates upon the bad desires of the liberum arbitrium captivatum to allow it to will good, and subsequently co-operates with the liberum arbitrium liberatum to actualise that good will in a good action.

I wonder where he ever got an idea like that?

Regarding Augustine and the doctrine of merit, McGrath quotes:

The classic Augustinian statement on the relation between eternal life, merit and grace is the celebrated dictum of Epistle 194: ‘When God crowns our merits, he crowns nothing but his own gifts.’

Concerning the “righteousness of God,” the namesake of the book, he writes:

Central to Augustine’s doctrine of justification is his understanding of the ‘righteousness of God’, iustitia Dei. The righteousness of God is not that righteousness by which he is himself righteous, but that by which he justifies sinners. The righteousness of God, veiled in the Old Testament and revealed in the New, and supremely in Jesus Christ, is so called because, by bestowing it upon humans, God make them righteous.

Finally, dealing a deathblow to any inkling that Augustine ever held a doctrine of “justification by faith alone”:

Regeneration is itself the work of the Holy Spirit. The love of God is shed abroad in our hearts by the Holy Spirit, which is given to us in justification. The appropriation of the divine love to the person of the Holy Spirit may be regarded as one of the most profound aspects of Augustine’s doctrine of the Trinity. Amare Deum, Dei donum est. [To love God is the gift of God.] The Holy Spirit enables humans to be inflamed with the love of God and the love of neighbours — indeed, the Holy Spirit is love. Faith can exist without love, on the basis of Augustine’s strongly intellectualist concept of faith, but is of no value in the sight of God. God’s other gifts, such as faith and hope, cannot bring us to God unless they are accompanied or preceded by love. The motif of amor Dei [the love of God] dominates Augustine’s theology of justification, just as that of sola fide would dominate that of one of his later interpreters. Faith without love is of no value.

But what of Paul’s references to justification by faith?

So how does Augustine understand those passages in the Pauline corpus which speak of justification by faith (e.g., Romans 5:1)? This question brings us to the classic Augustinian concept of ‘faith working through love’, fides quae per dilectionem operatur, which would dominate western Christian thinking on the nature of justifying faith for the next thousand years. The process by which Augustine arrives at this understanding of the nature of justifying faith illustrates his desire to do justice to the total biblical view on the matter, rather than a few isolated Pauline gobbets.

Ouch!

In summation to this point:

It is unacceptable to summarise Augustine’s doctrine of justification as sola fide iustificamur [we are justified by faith alone] — if any such summary is acceptable, it is sola caritate iustificamur [we are justified by love alone]. For Augustine, it is love, rather than faith, which is the power which brings about the conversion of people. Just as cupiditas is the root of all evil, so caritas is the root of all good. The personal union of individuals with the Godhead, which forms the basis of their justification, is brought about by love, and not by faith.

The word “love” is used in Scripture more than 500 times, versus about forty times the words “justifiction” or “to justify” are used. It is no accident that the greatest commandments, according to Jesus, are to “love the Lord your God with all your heart, mind, soul, and strength” and to “love your neighbor as yourself” (Luke 10:27); or that, in Paul’s teachings, “Love is the fulfilling of the law” (Romans 13:10). I think that in focusing so heavily on a “few isolated gobbets” of Paul, and fixating on the doctrine of justification to the detriment of the rest of Scripture, the Protestant Reformers may have missed the boat entirely.

(And this only gets me about halfway through the chapter! I will have to pick up the rest next time.)

Going to the source: Some light on the Assumption of Mary from Munificentissimus Deus

Posted on August 15, 2013 by Joseph T. Richardson

Assumption of the Virgin, by Pierre-Paul Prud’hon (1758-1823) (WikiPaintings)

I don’t have a lot of time for an update today, and am in no mood for argument; but this is an important day: the Solemnity of the Assumption of the Blessed Virgin Mary, the celebration of our Blessed Mother being assumed body and soul into heaven at the end of her earthly life, as a sign of the promised resurrection for each of us. For me it is especially meaningful: for on this day seven years ago, I received in my own body a foretaste of that resurrection.

I made a meaty post last year which expounded some of the scriptural and patristic testimonies to the Assumption; it is worth a read. Today I took a few minutes to read and reflect on Munificentissimus Deus, the Apostolic Constitution by which Pope Pius XII declared the Assumption a dogma of the Catholic Faith on 1 November 1950. If any one is doubtful or insecure about the Catholic Church’s promulgation of a dogma that is not spelled out explicitly in Scripture — if any one feels that the Magisterium of the Church is free to pull fanciful doctrines out of hats, to invent and declare to a gullible public whatever is expedient or profitable for the prelates of the age — he need only read this document, to understand the prayer, caution, and deliberation that goes into such a declaration; the certainty and unanimity in a doctrine that is required; the research and reasoning and support from the deposit of faith that must form its foundation.

Venerable Pope Pius XII.

Here I’ll give a few quotations that stood out to me in particular. I would encourage anyone who is curious to learn more to read the whole thing (it’s not a very lengthy document), and read my post from last year.

Pope Pius XII, in a 1946 encyclical letter to all the bishops of the Church, Deiparae Virginis Mariae, asked what they thought of the notion of promulgating the Assumption (which has been held since the earliest centuries of the Church) as a dogma — if it could or should be done. To this he received a nearly unanimous response in favor (§16):

But those whom “the Holy Spirit has placed as bishops to rule the Church of God” (Acts 20:28) gave an almost unanimous affirmative response to both these questions. This “outstanding agreement of the Catholic prelates and the faithful” (Pope Pius IX, Ineffabilis Deus [1854]), affirming that the bodily Assumption of God’s Mother into heaven can be defined as a dogma of faith, since it shows us the concordant teaching of the Church’s ordinary doctrinal authority and the concordant faith of the Christian people which the same doctrinal authority sustains and directs, thus by itself and in an entirely certain and infallible way, manifests this privilege [the Assumption] as a truth revealed by God and contained in that divine deposit which Christ has delivered to his Spouse to be guarded faithfully and to be taught infallibly (First Vatican Council, Dei filius [1870]).

In other words: the near-unanimous response in favor proved that the teaching authority of the Church was in agreement with the faith of the Church.

Certainly this teaching authority of the Church, not by any merely human effort but under the protection of the Spirit of Truth (John 14:26), and therefore absolutely without error, carries out the commission entrusted to it, that of preserving the revealed truths pure and entire throughout every age, in such a way that it presents them undefiled, adding nothing to them and taking nothing away from them. For, as the Vatican Council teaches, “the Holy Spirit was not promised to the successors of Peter in such a way that, by his revelation, they might manifest new doctrine, but so that, by his assistance, they might guard as sacred and might faithfully propose the revelation delivered through the apostles, or the deposit of faith.” (First Vatican Council, Pastor Aeternus [1870]).

Assumption of the Virgin (c. 1550), by Tintoretto (WikiPaintings)

This is where it leapt out at me: To the mind of the Church, to all the faithful who petitioned for the dogmatization of the Assumption, to all the bishops who affirmed it, this was not the promulgation of a “new doctrine,” but the protection of the Divine Revelation handed down by the Apostles, that had been a part of the deposit of faith for time immemorial.

Pope Pius then went on to lay out many testimonies and evidences from both Scripture and Tradition which affirm the truth of the Assumption. Noting that the Church had celebrated the Assumption in her liturgy since ancient times, he declared (§20):

However, since the liturgy of the Church does not engender the Catholic faith, but rather springs from it, in such a way that the practices of the sacred worship proceed from the faith as the fruit comes from the tree, it follows that the holy Fathers and the great Doctors, in the homilies and sermons they gave the people on this feast day, did not draw their teaching from the feast itself as from a primary source, but rather they spoke of this doctrine as something already known and accepted by Christ’s faithful. They presented it more clearly. They offered more profound explanations of its meaning and nature, bringing out into sharper light the fact that this feast shows, not only that the dead body of the Blessed Virgin Mary remained incorrupt, but that she gained a triumph out of death, her heavenly glorification after the example of her only begotten Son, Jesus Christ — truths that the liturgical books had frequently touched upon concisely and briefly.

We today are so fixated on primary sources, on declaring proofs for everything we do; but Pope Pius here makes an important point: that ancient Christians based their liturgy on the faith revealed to them, and that the Fathers who expounded on the Assumption did so from that very tradition handed down from the Apostles, not from the surviving liturgical texts which now we look to as proofs.

The Assumption of the Virgin (1650), by Nicolas Poussin (WikiPaintings).

Since the universal Church, within which dwells the Spirit of Truth who infallibly directs it toward an ever more perfect knowledge of the revealed truths, has expressed its own belief many times over the course of the centuries, and since the bishops of the entire world are almost unanimously petitioning that the truth of the bodily Assumption of the Blessed Virgin Mary into heaven should be defined as a dogma of divine and Catholic faith — this truth which is based on the Sacred Writings, which is thoroughly rooted in the minds of the faithful, which has been approved in ecclesiastical worship from the most remote times, which is completely in harmony with the other revealed truths, and which has been expounded and explained magnificently in the work, the science, and the wisdom of the theologians — we believe that the moment appointed in the plan of divine providence for the solemn proclamation of this outstanding privilege of the Virgin Mary has already arrived.

Pope Pius concluded (§41) that the overwhelming weight of evidence supports this declaration of the Assumption: not only its basis in Scripture, but the certainty in the minds of the faithful, in its celebration in liturgy since the most ancient times, in its harmony with all other revealed truths (something I wanted in particular to point out to critics), and in the extensive and learned exposition by all the theologians of the ages. This, truly, was not a case of “making stuff up”: it was a setting down of what was already known and believed.

Indulgences: Gift of the martyrs

Posted on July 20, 2013 by Joseph T. Richardson

Penitent Magdalene (c. 1597), by Caravaggio (WikiPaintings.org.

Part 2 of a series on Indulgences. Part 1.

So last time, I showed you the basic idea of indulgences: First, that sin has temporal consequences, apart from the guilt which Jesus forgives by His grace — the misery that our sin causes for us and others, called the temporal punishment, which we still must suffer even after our sins are forgiven (cf. Psalm 51). By the power of “binding and loosing” given to the Apostles (Matthew 18:18, John 20:22–23) the priests of the Church have the authority to impose penance on us — not a punishment, but a remedy designed to help us work through through that temporal punishment, to aid in the healing of our souls and our growth in grace. And because the Church imposed the penance, the Church has the power to remit it (cf. 2 Corinthians 2:6–11). And this is an indulgence at its most basic definition: the remission of a temporal penance caused by a sin whose guilt has already been forgiven.

Protestant critics suggest that Indulgences are a “medieval” doctrine, but in fact, the roots of the doctrine go back to the very dawn of the Church. And the doctrine, rather than being a late development, was formed in the crucible of the suffering and persecuted Church of the first centuries. We know that the sorrow of sin brings repentance, and repentance leads to salvation (2 Corinthians 7:10) — and the sufferings of a certain group of sinners came to be borne by the whole Church (cf. 1 Corinthians 12:24–26) — especially by those believers who gave their all, their very lives.

The order of penitents, pleading for prayer.

In the earliest centuries of the Church, the Church imposed especially harsh canonical penances for grave sins — not your common lusting with the eyes, arguing with a brother, or drinking intemperately, but major, public offenses against the moral law and against the community, like murder, adultery — or especially apostasy, which was increasingly a problem in the age of persecution. Many believers would renounce Christ when faced with arrest or bodily harm, only to repent later: these were the lapsi, those having lapsed. So the Church instituted an order of public penitents: believers who, even though the guilt of their sins had been forgiven, still had a penance to pay. These people would put on sackcloth and ashes and stand outside the church begging for the prayers of the faithful, often for a matter of years, before their debt to the community had been paid and they were allowed to return to the full communion of the Church.

(And if you think that is harsh, this is actually the compromise position. There was a schism in the Church for a time over the fate of the lapsi, with many believers following Novatian, who argued that the lapsi couldn’t be restored to the communion of the Church at all.)

The Christian Martyrs’ Last Prayer (1883), by Jean-Léon Gérôme, my favorite Orientalist painter. It truly captures the drama and the agony of the first Christian persecutions, and yet the peace before God.

And from the Church’s crisis, these many lapsi longing desperately to return to the Lord’s communion, and the flowing blood of the many confessors and martyrs, a curious thing arose: The lapsi began visiting the condemned witnesses in prison before their impending martyrdoms, and obtaining from them letters or certificates pleading on their behalf — called the desideria or libelli of the martyrs — promising to offer up their sufferings on their behalf, and to intercede for them before God for their restoration when they reached heaven. And such assurance gave great comfort and grace to the fallen — and brought the bishops of the Church to credit such intercession to the cases of the lapsed.

We learn from the letter of the Churches of Vienna and Lugdunum (Lyons), dated ca. A.D. 177, possibly written by St. Irenaeus himself:

“[The witnesses] did not boast over the fallen, but helped them in their need with those things in which they themselves abounded, having the compassion of a mother, and shedding many tears on their account before the Father. They asked for life, and He gave it to them, and they shared it with their neighbors. Victorious over everything, they departed to God. Having always loved peace, and having commended peace to us, they went in peace to God, leaving no sorrow to their mother, nor division or strife to the brethren, but joy and peace and concord and love.” (quoted in Eusebius, Ecclesiastical History V.5.6–7)

St. Cyprian of Carthage

St. Cyprian, bishop of Carthage, was at the very center of this crisis in the Church. His letters record an ongoing exchange about this matter: to what degree to reckon the intercession of the martyrs to the accounts of the lapsi, and if, and when, to restore them to communion. Regarding lapsi who were at risk of death, and had one last chance for Communion before their departure, and had received the testament of a martyr:

“They who have received a certificate from the martyrs, and can be assisted by their help with the Lord in respect of their sins, if they begin to be oppressed with any sickness or risk; when they have made confession, and have received the imposition of hands on them by you in acknowledgment of their penitence, should be remitted to the Lord with the peace promised to them by the martyrs.” (Cyprian, Epistle XIII [ANF ed.; XIX in Oxford ed.], A.D. 250)

Regarding the efficacy of such heavenly help, Cyprian wrote:

“[God] can show mercy; He can turn back His judgment. He can mercifully pardon the repenting, the labouring, the beseeching sinner. He can regard as effectual whatever either martyrs have besought or priests have done on behalf of such as these.” (Cyprian, De lapsis [On the lapsed] 36, A.D. 251)

We recognize these certificates or libelli as the first written indulgences. The intercession of the martyrs — now saints in heaven — brought remission to the punishments of the lapsi; and these documents were the proof of their aid. And herein we see the truth of what Indulgences are really all about: the communion of saints — our common life as the Body of Christ.

Next time: I’ll delve deeper into the theology of Indulgences — one of the most beautiful and powerful things I’ve encountered. Many folks argue that Indulgences are an “archaic” practice that should be dismissed; but I think rather they need to be taught more and better understood.

Indulgences: It’s about healing

Posted on July 18, 2013 by Joseph T. Richardson

Penitent Magdalene (1665), by Bartolomé Esteban Murillo (WikiPaintings)

As always, this turned out to be longer and more involved than I intended. So consider this part 1 in a series on Indulgences. And no, I haven’t forgotten about Baptism.

The other day Pope Francis granted a plenary indulgence to those devoted faithful who would follow his tweets or other coverage of the World Youth Day events in Brazil — to the bemusement of the global media and the consternation and ridicule of many Protestants. It seems, to some, a crass abuse of spiritual authority for the motive of getting more “followers” — authority he doesn’t have anyway, according to Protestants: a sham and a mockery of the Gospel, I have heard. Rather than being embarrassed at a faux pas before the media and the world, I praise God for a Holy Father who humbly offers forth the truth despite ridicule. I thought this would be an ideal opportunity to share a bit about the truth of indulgences, what they really mean, and why they are important today.

Pope Francis.

Now, indulgences are a rather complicated and confusing doctrine: complicated even more by the negative baggage they carry from the age of the Protestant Reformation. When Protestant ears hear “indulgence,” they automatically think “abuse” and “corruption.” I know; I grew up a Protestant, and thought that even though I was never particularly anti-Catholic. But in truth, the doctrine of indulgences is built upon basic and biblical principles, and has roots as ancient as the Church, sprouting from the seeds of the Apostles.

I made a post almost exactly a year ago trying valiantly to tackle this difficult topic — bless my baby Catholic heart. I am still a baby Catholic, but I have grown so much in the past year and think I could do much better than that, if I had time. I think you can still learn something about what indulgences are and what they are not from that post.

Let me start with those basic building blocks: We all know that we sin (1 John 1:5–10). Everybody, including Protestants, thinks about the eternal punishment due for our sins (Romans 6:23) that we would face if not for the forgiveness of God by the atoning death of Jesus (1 John 2:2). But what Protestants tend not to talk about — but surely recognize — is that our sins have consequences in this life, on us and on those around us, on the ones we hurt by our sin and also the ones who hurt with us because of our sin. Sin is misery (Psalm 25:18, Romans 2:9).

St. Peter Penitent (c. 1600), by Guido Reni. (WikiPaintings.org)

We serve a just God, and sin being misery is how He made the world. When we sin, we suffer our just deserts of that misery, even after God forgives us. And suffering through that pain is part of God’s process of healing and teaching: to bring us to true repentance and contrition for our wrong, that we can be healed from the hurt, and purified from the stain, and that we can learn and grow and not fall again. Remember, for the classic example, King David — who, even after he was forgiven by God (2 Samuel 12:13), still had a heavy price to pay in misery (Psalm 51, etc.). This is what the Church calls the temporal punishment due for sin, and it is clearly something separate from the guilt of sin from which Christ redeems for us by His grace. And this is the whole idea of penance: the priests of the Church, having received the authority of the apostles to bind and loose (Matthew 18:18) and to remit and retain sin (John 20:22–23), have the authority to impose penance on us as a means to work through that temporal punishment. Penance is not an actual punishment so much as it is a remedy: Jesus is our spiritual physician, and through the priest, He gives us a prescription for the healing of our souls.

Ingres, Jesus Returning the Keys to Peter

Jesus Returning the Keys to Peter (1820), by Jean Auguste Dominique Ingres (WikiPaintings.org)

And the basic idea of indulgences is this: Because the Church imposed those penalties, she has the power to remit them. What is bound on earth is bound is heaven, and what is loosed on earth is loosed in heaven — and these penances, designed for our spiritual healing and growth in grace, can be released, if it seems they have served their purpose. By analogy, the penance is a big, unwieldy cast, designed to set our broken bones; and when it seems our bones have healed, the doctor removes the cast. And that’s all, in the most basic sense, an indulgence is. From the Latin indulgentia, it means literally a remission or release. We see in Scripture, for example, the case of a sinner in the Corinthian church, upon whom “punishment by the majority” had been placed — presumably excommunication (1 Corinthians 5:2) or other penitential acts. And, deciding that the sinner had had enough, that he had been restored, Paul remits the punishment:

For such a one this punishment by the majority is enough; so you should rather turn to forgive and comfort him, or he may be overwhelmed by excessive sorrow. So I beg you to reaffirm your love for him. For this is why I wrote, that I might test you and know whether you are obedient in everything. Any one whom you forgive, I also forgive. What I have forgiven, if I have forgiven anything, has been for your sake in the presence of Christ [ἐν προσώπῳ Χριστοῦ, lit. in the face of Christ — Latin in persona Christi], to keep Satan from gaining the advantage over us; for we are not ignorant of his designs. (2 Corinthians 2:6–11)

The doctrine developed a little bit from this before it came to resemble what we call indulgences today, but this is the start: the Church’s remission of a penance — a rehabilitation for the hurts of sin, for a sin already forgiven — for someone who, in the judgment of the Church, has risen above the sin, by God’s grace. Penance is the Church’s version of spiritual rehab: when you’re broken, you have to endure some painful exercises before you can properly heal. And when the doctor decides you no longer need it, you’re free to go — and that’s an indulgence.

More in Part 2: Indulgences: Gift of the martyrs

Saved by Faith: A Modest Proposal for Protestants

Posted on July 1, 2013 by Joseph T. Richardson

Hello brothers and sisters. I pray you were blessed on the Lord’s Day. Here’s a little something I wrote up this morning in response to a particularly hardboiled Calvinist. I recommend it for all my Protestant brethren, as a proposal of how our positions are not quite so contradictory as many seem to think. I would appreciate any responses in answer to my earnest questions.

John Calvin, by Titian (This blog). I am thrilled to find this! I had no idea Titian painted Calvin! I love it when my favorite people cross paths!

It is quite simple, really. We both believe that we are justified by faith in Christ, in His Resurrection and by His grace — do we not? Scripture consistently teaches this again and again and again, in the teachings of Christ Himself and of nearly every author of the New Testament (Matthew 9:22; Mark 5:34; Luke 7:50, 8:48, 17:19, 18:42; Acts 16:31; Romans 3:26-30, 5:1; Galatians 2:16; Ephesians 2:8-10; Hebrews 11:7; James 2:8-26, 5:15; 1 Peter 1:9; 1 John 5:4; etc.). You believe, so you claim, that we are justified “by faith alone.” The Catholic Church actually agrees with that, with a qualification: that it is only in our initial justification, our first acceptance of God’s grace, when we are still dead in our sins and unable to grasp God’s grace at all (for it is only by grace that we can even grasp grace) that the Holy Spirit acts to regenerate us by our faith alone (“When the goodness and loving kindness of God our Savior appeared, He saved us, not because of deeds done by us in righteousness, but in virtue of His own mercy, by the washing of regeneration and renewal in the Holy Spirit, which He poured out upon us richly through Jesus Christ our Savior, so that we might be justified by His grace and become heirs in hope of eternal life,” Titus 3:4–7). I believe, so you word it, that we are also “justified by works.” That is not how I would characterize the Catholic position, but okay. Despite your wording, you seem to understand the Catholic position better than most: we believe that our works are done only “in the power of the Holy Spirit by grace,” such that they are not really our works at all, but God’s (“For we are his workmanship, created in Christ Jesus for good works, which God prepared beforehand, that we should walk in them,” Ephesians 2:10), and such that all grace, our every justification and sanctification, even our every good deed, finds its source in the “merits of Christ” and in His Cross.

Now, suppose you are right, and we are justified “by faith alone.” You have faith, and are justified by that faith. I have faith, too — am I not also justified by that faith? Will not “every one who has faith be justified”? (Romans 10:4) How is your faith, by which you are saved, different than mine, by which I am damned? We both “confess with [our] lips that Jesus is Lord and believe in [our hearts] that God raised him from the dead” (Romans 10:9) — will we not both be saved? What is it about my faith that warrants damnation? Where in Scripture do you find the condition that “if you believe that anything else at all is an aid in your sanctification, you will be damned”? Is not such a requirement contrary to the very idea of justification “by faith alone”? If I believe that I am also “justified by my works,” done through God’s working in me (Philippians 2:12–13), and if I am wrong — then what? At worst, from my perspective — then I am wrong. So what? I think we both agree that it is only by the grace of God that we are able to work at all; so if I’m wrong, then at worst I’ve done a bunch of good works by His grace that will not be rewarded. Okay; my Lord and His salvation is the only reward I seek anyway. But these works that I’ve done through grace, in love (my “faith working in love,” Galatians 5:6), which I believed were the path to my sanctification, could not have hurt me, could they?; in fact, by doing good works, I seem to have been, as best as I was able, keeping His commandments (Matthew 19:17; John 14:15; Romans 13:9-10; 1 John 2:1-6; 2 John 6; Revelation 14:12, etc.) and following the precepts of the Gospel (Matthew 5:16, 25:35-40; Romans 13:10; Ephesians 2:10; James 2:8-26, 3:13; 2 Peter 1:5; etc.). At the very worst, my works cannot even be said to have done nothing — they have, no matter what I intended them to do, despite my misunderstanding, nonetheless helped to sanctify me, by my resolution to follow Christ and live His Gospel. Am I going to be damned despite my faith, because I did good works? That seems to be just as contradictory to the plain teachings of Scripture (Matthew 10:42, 16:27-28, chapter 25; Mark 9:41; Luke 6:35; Romans 2:7; 1 Corinthians 3:14; 2 Corinthians 5:10; James 2:18-26; 1 Peter 1:17; 1 John 3:11-17, etc.) as the Judaizers’ heresy that we are “[not] saved by faith, [but] by the works of Torah” (Galatians 2:16).

Saint Augustine in His Study, by Botticelli.

Saint Augustine in His Study (1480), by Botticelli (Wikipedia).

Or, on the other hand, suppose I am right, and good works done in love are necessary for salvation, following our initial justification by faith, and in concert with that saving faith (cf. Galatians 5:6, James 2:18-26, and all the rest I cited above). Having that saving faith, and striving, through His grace, to be sanctified and “to be holy as He is holy” (1 Peter 1:16) — but ever falling upon His mercy and grace for the many times that I fall (Matthew 6:7-15; Mark 11:25; 1 John 1:8-10, 2:1-6) — I have a living hope in Him for my salvation (1 Peter 1:3, 1 John 3:3, etc.), and I pray, when I stand before the throne of God, that I will not be found wanting (Daniel 5:27). Now, most Protestants, in my experience and in my understanding, believe, according to their reading of St. James (James 2:18-26), that good works, if not necessary for salvation, are the necessary fruit of salvation — that is, you cannot be “saved” and fail to produce good fruit; such is God’s grace working in the believer. If you are “saved,” then, you will produce good works in love; if you appear to be “saved,” and yet fail to produce good works, you were never really “saved” to begin with. Am I understanding you? Please correct me if I’m wrong. In any case, I hope and pray that you do have true, saving faith in Christ, brother, and I hope that you do produce good works, as the fruit of that faith. If, again, my view is correct, I believe with a firm heart and likewise living hope that you, having been justified by your faith and regenerated by Baptism (I hope and pray), and having likewise striven through God’s grace to follow Christ’s commandments and live the Gospel, will be judged worthy by our loving and merciful Lord and God. It matters not a whit that you believe that you are “justified by faith alone,” so long as you take that faith and work with it in love (Galatians 5:6), and continue to follow Him and His commandments.

This Child that you’ve delivered, will soon Deliver you

Posted on June 21, 2013 by Joseph T. Richardson

Here’s a little ditty that I composed this morning while yard-saling with my lovely mother, which I submit to you as a few words to keep my plants watered. It comes in response to our good friend Eugene, who seems to struggle with the concept of figurative speech, this time with the term for Blessed Mary, “the deliverer of the Deliverer.” He has had the good faith to delete my comment, so I will share it instead with you, dear readers. I am well prayed up and in a fine mood this morning, and will not let the short-sightedness of my dear brother steal my joy! My lumbering ogre of a thesis is still lumbering along, and with hope, I pray, he may be able to rest soon.

Gerard van Honthorst. Anbetung der Hirten (Adoration of the Shepherds). Oil on canvas, 1622. [Wikipedia]

The phrase “deliverer [note the lowercase d] of the Deliverer [note the uppercase D]” is a play on words — playing on the multiple meanings of the word “deliver.” Words sometimes mean more than one thing, no? Mary delivered (i.e. gave birth to) the Deliverer (i.e. the One who saves us). Nobody is saying that Mary did anything more than that. Christ could have entered the world any way He pleased — He could have just appeared — but He chose to humble Himself, to take on human flesh, to become a defenseless child, and to be born of a human Virgin — and for that, he needed the cooperation of the Virgin, to give herself up to God’s plan, and of her spouse Joseph, who together with Mary cared for Jesus and nourished Him and raised Him. Jesus didn’t have to do it that way — Mary and Joseph didn’t have to submit to it (God respects our free will) — but He did and they did, of their own choice and will, and that is why we honor them.

I also recall your attention to a few words of Pope St. Leo the Great, “Why Christ Was Born of a Virgin.” And to the words of another fine Christian, Mark Lowry:

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