Broken Communion

Posted on December 29, 2011 by Joseph T. Richardson

Today I’m troubled by the first major challenge from my parents to the Catholic Church: not so much, thankfully, to my personal journey, but ostensibly to the Catholic practice of closed communion.

My father feels offended to be excluded from the Catholic Eucharist. As a baptized Christian, he feels he is privileged to partake. He feels that in denying him communion, the Church is in effect saying he is not a Christian. He feels that the practice of closed communion perpetuates division in the Body of Christ. My mother is hurt that she could not come to my church and take communion with me, or I with her at her church.

Frankly, I had no expectation that this would be an issue. It had not even occurred to me that this would be upsetting to anyone until I googled and found that many Protestants were troubled by this matter. From the very first time I attended Mass some seven years ago, then a thoroughgoing Protestant, it seemed perfectly natural and reasonable to me for the Catholic Church to exclude non-Catholics from the Eucharist. I recognized, even then, that the Church held the Eucharist to be most sacred, was very protective of it, and didn’t offer it to just anybody.

Further study revealed that closed communion is nothing new; it’s one of the most ancient customs of the Church:

But let no one eat or drink of your Eucharist, but they who have been baptized into the name of the Lord; for concerning this also the Lord has said, “Give not that which is holy to the dogs” (Didache 9, ca. mid to late first century A.D.).

We call this food Eucharist, and no one else is permitted to partake of it, except one who believes our teaching to be true and who has been washed in the washing which is for the remission of sins and for regeneration and is thereby living as Christ has rejoined (St. Justin Martyr, First Apology 65, ca. A.D. 150.).

So the Eucharist was closed to non-Christians; it was only open to baptized Christians who believed the truth of catholic teaching. Certainly, in those early days, when Christianity was outlawed and persecuted, an unknown stranger could not have simply shown up at a Christian meeting, professed to be a baptized Christian, and been received into the Mysteries; no, he would have to have been a known, accepted, and approved member of that community, or else commended to it by other known, accepted, and approved Christians. The Eucharist was closed for the Church’s protection. The unbaptized were not even allowed to be present at the Eucharist, let alone to receive it.

Pope Benedict distributing the Eucharist to a child.

What says, then, that communion should be open? My dad points out that there is nothing in Scripture that says explicitly that communion should be closed; but likewise there is nothing in Scripture that says that it should be open to all without restriction. St. Paul, in 1 Corinthians, is writing to the church at Corinth, a closed communion of Christian believers. He does not recommend that the church open its doors and its table to strangers from the street; he is advising the church in the context of its own private, closed Eucharistic celebration. The Eucharist, the Communion of believers with Christ and with each other, is the most intimate and precious of all the Christian Mysteries. It was closely protected and guarded.

But this is 2012. There is no longer the need for such protection, is there? The liturgy of the Mass is no longer a closely-guarded secret; there are no longer accusations of cannibalism in Christians consuming the Lord’s Body and Blood; there are no longer persecutions unto death in our country. My parents are both baptized Christians. Shouldn’t they, known, accepted, and approved Christians, be allowed to receive the Eucharist, too?

That depends on what you believe the Eucharist to be. Evangelical Protestant communities that practice open communion by and large believe that the Lord’s Supper is merely symbolic, a memorial gesture of communion with the Lord, with no sacramental value. When I questioned my dad, this is basically what he affirmed. Christ extends the offer of grace and salvation to all; so why wouldn’t communion in His Body and Blood be extended to all? This exclusivity, this seeming denial of grace to the uninitiated, is what offends my dad.

But if you believe, as the Catholic Church believes, that the Eucharist is a real, actual, physical communion, in body and spirit, with the Body and Blood of Jesus Christ, a sacramental commingling of our elements with His Elements, then it seems to me that you would have no choice but to be protective of that communion, and selective of who partakes in it. The Early Church allowed only those who believed and affirmed the reality of that Holy Communion. Why would the modern Church allow anyone who denies that reality? Should the Church offer the most intimate communion with our Lord to just anyone who walks in off the street, who doesn’t even have faith in Him? You may be a Christian — and the Catholic Church affirms that, if you have been baptized in the name of the Father, Son, and Holy Spirit, you have a right to be called Christian (Unitatis Redintegratio I.3 § 1) — but if you deny His Real Presence in the Eucharist, it is you who are denying yourself full communion.

If you don’t share the Catholic belief in the Real Presence, why would you be offended at the closed communion? I think that is why it has never offended me: I recognized and respected that I believed differently. I think what offends my dad is the thought that since Christ’s death on the Cross was freely offered to all, why should participation in His Communion be offered to only a select few? This perception of exclusivity is in fact false. The Church has never excluded anyone from grace who sought it. She welcomes all Christians into full, Eucharistic Communion. But they must first affirm what she teaches: the reality of Christ’s presence in that Communion. What “perpetuates division” is Protestants’ continued denial of this core Catholic truth, the “source and summit of our faith.”

I think what offends my dad, even more fundamentally, is the idea that the Church has authority at all: the authority to tell anyone that they cannot celebrate the Eucharist when, where, and exactly how they wish. In the democratic and individualistic mindset that has ascended in modern evangelicalism, any individual is free to approach Christ outside and without the Church at all. It’s a misguided interpretation of the “priesthood of all believers,” taken to its furthest extreme: each believer individually is his own priest, and therefore needs no one else at all. And this gets into a whole ‘nother barrel of worms that I’ll have to deal with another time.

Suffice it to say that I am troubled. This will not stop the course I know I have been placed on; but I don’t want my parents to be offended or hurt. I don’t want them to feel excluded or rejected. But I’ve talked to my dad at length, and I don’t think there’s any getting past this; he’s unwilling to see the matter any other way.

Christmas

Posted on December 25, 2011 by Joseph T. Richardson

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

For to us a child is born,

to us a son is given;

and the government shall be upon his shoulder,

and his name shall be called

Wonderful Counselor, Mighty God,

Everlasting Father, Prince of Peace.

—Isaiah 9:6 ESV

Merry Christmas!

It’s been a busy season, though thankfully not as frantic as it has been in recent years. We are mostly staying put for once. I am home with my family, and we are having most of the family Christmas gatherings at our house. Friday night we had the extended family Christmas party, which brought the most people this house has seen in twenty years. Last night, Christmas Eve, was a quiet evening with the immediate family. I attended a vigil Mass at the local parish. This morning I opened gifts with the immediate family (way too much stuff for my liking, but I can’t complain), and my aunt and uncle and cousins are coming over for Christmas dinner and festivities with my mother’s side of the family. Tomorrow we will travel to have Christmas with my father’s side of the family.

My family is apparently still uncomfortable buying Catholic gifts for me. My dad did, however, give me an ESV Bible with Apocrypha, which I discovered only a week or two ago. The English Standard Version is my favorite Bible translation; my good (Protestant) study bible is ESV. One of these days I’m going to write about Bible translations here. The ESV wasn’t originally translated with the Apocrypha (including the Catholic Deuterocanon), and its absence was one of the main things that gave me pause about keeping the ESV my primary translation. Now (well, 2009) Oxford University Press has organized and published an ESV translation of the Apocrypha, and my translation is complete.

My Christmas Eve thrifting harvest (zoomable)!

I also had a glorious thrifting harvest yesterday! One of the local Catholic parishes, I’ve discovered, clears out their “dated” books fairly often and brings them to one particular store. And apparently there is a paucity of Catholic nerds who frequent that store: I always rack up. Among my acquisitions this time: a four-volume set of The Liturgy of the Mass by Fr. Pius Parsch, a leading figure of the Liturgical Movement; a cool illustrated catechism; a Challoner-Rheims New Testament; a pretty picture book about Fatima; a scholarly examination of devotion to the Sacred Heart of Jesus; a collection of St. Paulinus of Nola‘s poems; and books by St. Augustine, St. Alphonsus Liguori, Cardinal Newman, Fr. Merton, and more. Also, some pretty great Protestant books: a synopsis of the Gospels by Kurt Aland; a survey of Protestant thought and writings by Alister McGrath; and a defense of the Resurrection by Norman Geisler. Whew!

This parish, in my hometown, is only the second one I’ve been to as a nascent Catholic; I visited here once before a few months ago. I am not here to be critical, but I much prefer my spiritual home at school. The music here was a mess. But the Mass is still the Mass. The words of the liturgy are powerful, no matter who intones them; Christ visits us in the Eucharist, no matter what priest celebrates it and no matter where we ourselves may be visiting. This is one of the things I love about Catholicism most of all: it is not about the man at the front of the church; it’s about the Man at the Head of the Church. I go to Mass not to hear a likable preacher or enjoyable music; I go to partake in Holy Communion with Jesus Christ.

May you all have a blessed Christmas.

A Musical Journey

Posted on December 10, 2011 by Joseph T. Richardson

I’ve already written a little about my first flirtations with liturgy: how I began listening to Mozart’s Requiem as “mood music,” at a time when I was feeling morbidly depressed. I listened to it repeatedly, reflecting on failure and death and loss; recalling the sad end of Mozart’s life, and the idea that he was writing music for his own funeral — it seemed the most pained, desperate thing I could manifest. I had little concept of liturgy or what that even meant, only the sense that these words in Latin were somehow sacred and powerful. I downloaded their text; I memorized it. This fascination was one of the motives that brought me to study Latin.

Johann Sebastian Bach, a Lutheran, but someone who knew how to worship God.

My next contact with liturgy was Johann Sebastian Bach’s Mass in B Minor, BWV 232, a recording of it that came highly recommended. Honestly, at the time, I’m not sure I could have even told you what a “Mass” was, other than “something Catholics did.” At the time, it was just beautiful music to me; or so I thought.

But then, some four or five years later, something remarkable happened. It was after I had graduated with my bachelor’s. I was teaching at a small, Christian school. Preparing for class was one of the most stressful things I’d ever done. Peace was more a premium than it ever had been before. I had discovered Last.fm; I was listening, I think, to the J.S. Bach radio. And then, like a breath of fresh air, I heard this:

(The English translation on the first slide should read, “Hail, O sweetest Mary”)

Carlo Gesualdo, Prince of Venosa.

Voices so worshipful, so longing, so mournful, so penitent — the music pierced right to my soul. The composer was Carlo Gesualdo, Italian nobleman, musician, composer — and murderer. As a young man, he had murdered his wife and her lover. Later in life, wracked with depression and guilt and fearful for the fate of his eternal soul, he wrote some of his most expressive music in penance. The story of the man, and especially his music, immediately captured my heart.

And listening to Gesualdo on Last.fm led, soon, to Dufay, and Josquin, and Tallis, and Byrd, and others — my collection of early, sacred music quickly mushroomed in a matter of a few weeks. As did my obsession with it. Very soon, it was all I was listening to. It had burrowed into my soul — these sounds of so long ago, carrying such order and peace; this worship — for I understood immediately that it was worship, and worshiped God with it — so clean and bright and pure and heavenly. What affected me more than anything was the Mass settings. I felt the sense, very early, that the Mass was spiritual food.

Josquin des Prez, my current favorite composer (this frequently changes).

Prompted by the feelings of worship that the music stirred in me, I soon was devoting time every morning to daily Bible study, something I hadn’t done consistently for a very long time. I made my way through the whole New Testament in a matter of a month or two; there had been books, up until that time in my life, that I’d never read before. I played the music while I worshiped and prayed. I told myself that it “made me feel like a monk” — prayerful and contemplative and ascetic — this was a good thing. I felt I was drawing on some ancient, powerful store of spiritual power.

And I was. That store was liturgy. I was hearing the Mass every day. The music of the Mass was piercing my heart and drawing me to worship. The words of the Mass were pouring into my soul — even before I understood them or knew what was happening; though by this time my Latin was good enough that I understood them quickly. On a number of occasions I found the Roman Missal online, in Latin, and followed along. I began to practice the prayers of the Mass in my private spirituality. I had little inkling at this time that I was on the road to Catholicism; I had no intention, starting out, of ever attending an actual Mass. But the Holy Spirit was drawing me to the Church through the Mass, through liturgy.

Authority and the Magisterium

Posted on December 2, 2011 by Joseph T. Richardson

I just read a wonderful piece by Bryan Cross that Kristen shared from Called to Communion (a blog I have never read before, but which I think will now become a favorite), addressing the necessity of the Church’s Magisterium and its authority through all the ages of Christian history. It very much underscores everything I believe and why I’m so drawn to the Church, and aligns with some other trains of thought I’ve been following lately.

As I addressed a few weeks ago, one of my primary reasons for being drawn to the Catholic Church is the profound frustration, uncertainty, and confusion I’ve experienced all my life in trying to discern the correct doctrine of Christianity, the correct interpretation of Scripture, among so many competing views. The authority of the Catholic Magisterium alone has the power to definitively settle such doctrinal disputes, to dictate correct doctrine. Now, anybody can claim to have authority, but in order for that authority to have any force, it must be based on something. I am pursuing the Catholic Church not just because she claims to have authority, but because her authority was established by Christ himself.

Coming from a Pentecostal background, I have written about the disorder and confusion inherent in that tradition. The author of this piece, Bryan Cross, was also raised Pentecostal. He rejects the claim, by Mark Galli, senior managing editor of Christianity Today, that early Christianity, from the day of Pentecost, was marked by “massive confusion.” I was particularly compelled by his assertion of the inherent order of Pentecost and the ministry of the Holy Spirit: to eliminate disorder and confusion, not to foster it.

Cross demonstrates convincingly the necessity of the Church’s Magisterium, and the fallacy of rejecting its authority while affirming the orthodoxy that it established. Without the authority of the Magisterium, we orthodox Christians today — including evangelical Protestants under that umbrella — would have no standing at all to insist that our Christological views are any more correct than those of the Arians or Monophysites or any of the other ancient heresies that have fallen by the wayside, having been rejected by the Church — or for that matter, than those of modern Christological heresies such as those of the Mormons or Jehovah’s Witnesses. Without an established, ultimate authority, to claim the definitive guidance of the Holy Spirit, there is only the relativistic claim that a few people agree with each other, against everyone else — and there is enough of that in the world already.

My pope

Posted on November 30, 2011 by Joseph T. Richardson

Blessed Pope John Paul II.

John Paul II was the first pope I ever knew. I don’t remember when I first became aware of him — he was just always there, on the news, in the media. Not being Catholic, not having any Catholic friends, I never felt he had a direct impact on my life. But as I grew older, I watched him travel widely. I saw his witness, how he reached out to Jews, and Muslims, and Buddhists, and Christians of all stripes. As I began to seek, he was there to welcome. And I grew to love this man, this servant of God, who was so full of love for all humanity.

By my twenties, I had come to see Pope John Paul as a loving, wise, grandfatherly figure, a spiritual father to all Christendom and all the world. He began to grow old and feeble as my own beloved grandfather grew old and feeble. My heart ached to see him stumble and fall, to see him weaken, yet continue on his mission.

As I developed as an historian, and studied the history of the Church, I became fascinated with the popes, these leaders who claimed their mandate and descent from the Apostle Peter. I remember getting carried away for hours on Wikipedia, going down through the ages of the papacy. I am by nature drawn to lists. Lists, the putting of items into order, give me a sense of order and coherence. As a young teenager and fan of the space program, I memorized the missions and crews of the Mercury, Gemini, and Apollo programs, and the first half dozen Space Shuttle missions. At sixteen, I became enthralled by genealogy, and quickly committed a complex web of names and dates, ancestors and descendants and family relationships, to memory. And in my twenties, I was captured by yet another list: the popes of Rome.

In 2005, as Pope John Paul entered his final days on this earth, I was planning a trip to Rome with a school group. I had looked forward to seeing the pope, but then, at the beginning of April, just weeks before we were to go, the pope’s health took a turn for the worse. He was dying. During those final hours, I felt a heaviness I’ve only felt a few times since, in the final hours of close loved ones. The night before he died, I joined the world in their deathwatch, staying up on the couch and falling asleep in front of the TV, so that I would not miss the moment if it came.

Pope John Paul II's tomb in the Vatican Grottoes. I took this photo a few weeks after his death. (Since his beatification, his tomb has been moved to the floor of the basilica.)

He died on Saturday, April 2, 2005, after a papacy of twenty-six years. I felt a profound sadness, watching the mourners in St. Peter’s Square, and hearing the bells toll. That night I wrote in my blog:

Pope John Paul II died today.

I am not Catholic, so I do not feel the same profound sense of loss that many of you may feel. But I know that he was a great man, who served God and God’s children, and did a lot of good in this world. And I admire him for that, and I am saddened by his passing.

Requiescat in pace, Serve Servorum Dei.

I watched with equally rapt attention as the papal conclave began on 18 April. Not only was I watching history unfolding, but I realized that if the conclave ran long, it might impact my group’s ability to tour the Vatican and see the Sistine Chapel. (But wouldn’t that be an exciting time to be in Rome!) Thankfully, it only lasted about a day. The result was the election of Pope Benedict XVI, whom I would also come to cherish in the years to come.

But I will always feel that John Paul II was “my pope.” Even though I was not Catholic, even though I had no real claim to him, I admired him greatly and found in him a spiritual father, a light on the horizon, at a time when I was first beginning to earnestly seek. My love for John Paul has played no small part in my journey to the Church.

Cum Sancto Spiritu: The Holy Spirit Reveals Christ

Posted on November 27, 2011 by Joseph T. Richardson

Okay, so it’s increasingly clear that I won’t have time anytime soon either to research or to write a thorough, comprehensive post about the role of the Holy Spirit in the Catholic tradition. But for several reasons, I thought it important that I go ahead and move on this, if only in spurts and gasps. A dear friend who is questioning his faith recently posed some questions about the Holy Spirit that seemed timely to this post. Today at a used bookstore I picked up a second, paperback copy of the Catechism, for me to carry around and to write in. And tonight at RCIA, we had Catholic trivia night, and my team won. (We beat the team behind us by only five points. The answer that pushed us over the top was to the bonus question: What was Pope John XXIII’s family name? Roncalli.) We each won copies of the Compendium of the Catechism. I promptly dropped mine in a puddle, but I dried it quickly, and I don’t think it’s too damaged. Anyway — the Catechism is in my hand and on my mind, so now seemed a good time to take a crack at this.

Again, this won’t be comprehensive, complete, or well-studied. These writings represent my ongoing process to wrap my head around these concepts. But through working through this and refining it, from both the Catholic and Protestant positions, I hope to come up with something worth presenting.

The primary role of the Holy Spirit in the Catholic understanding is to reveal Christ to the believer. The Catechism:

[The] knowledge of faith is possible only in the Holy Spirit: to be in touch with Christ, we must first have been touched by the Holy Spirit. He comes to meet us and kindles faith in us. By virtue of our Baptism, the first sacrament of the faith, the Holy Spirit in the Church communicates to us, intimately and personally, the life that originates in the Father and is offered to us in the Son. [683]

What about, though, those nonbelievers who haven’t yet received baptism? How do they receive faith? Presumably the Holy Spirit also gives them grace and faith to believe, to be converted and baptized. St. Paul says,

if you confess with your mouth that Jesus is Lord and believe in your heart that God raised him from the dead, you will be saved. . . . How then will they call on him in whom they have not believed? And how are they to believe in him of whom they have never heard? And how are they to hear without someone preaching? . . . So faith comes from hearing, and hearing through the word of Christ. (Romans 10:9-17, ESV)

And also in Ephesians, in a favorite verse of Protestants:

For by grace you have been saved through faith. And this is not your own doing; it is the gift of God, not a result of works, so that no one may boast. (Ephesians 2:8-9, ESV)

So God gives us the gift of faith, through the Holy Spirit, and it is by this faith that we believe. The Catechism continues:

Through his grace, the Holy Spirit is the first to awaken faith in us and to communicate to us the new life, which is to “know the Father and the one whom he has sent, Jesus Christ” (John 17:3). [684]

“No one comprehends the thoughts of God except the Spirit of God” (1 Corinthians 2:11). Now God’s Spirit, who reveals God, makes known to us Christ, his Word, his living Utterance, but the Spirit does not speak of himself. The Spirit who “has spoken through the prophets” makes us hear the Father’s Word, but we do not hear the Spirit himself. We know him only in the movement by which he reveals the Word to us and disposes us to welcome him in faith. The Spirit of truth who “unveils” Christ to us “will not speak on his own” (John 16:13). [687]

So we hear the Word, as revealed to us by the Holy Spirit. He disposes us to welcome Christ in faith. The Spirit grants us the gift of faith to believe. This seems to be the most essential work of the Holy Spirit, regardless of what Christian tradition you are coming from.

Advent, and the New English Translation of the Missal

Posted on November 27, 2011 by Joseph T. Richardson

Today is the beginning of Advent, the liturgical season of expectation and preparation for the Nativity of Christ on Christmas. I’ve never celebrated Advent before, that I recall. (I remember the celebration of Advent from the year or two we attended the United Methodist church when I was a child. We had an Advent wreath at home. But I don’t remember any personal participation or devotion to it.) So this will be a new experience for me, discovering the prayers and the mindset and heartset of the expectation of Christ, as I continue to be molded to Christ and to the life of the Church.

The church distributed our Little Blue Advent Books a couple of weeks ago at RCIA. I’m looking forward to its devotional guidance. Last year I followed the Little Books for Lent and Easter, and grew more as a Christian during those seasons than I think I ever have before. It was during that time that God confirmed that my path was leading into the Church.

Advent also marks the beginning of the liturgical year, and so accordingly, we moved as a whole church body into the long-heralded new English translation of the Roman Missal. We’ve been transitioning slowly for some time. As a diocese, we adopted new musical settings of the propers of the Mass in September; since October, Father Joe has been gradually introducing more and more of the new translation into our weekday daily Masses. This morning was the first time the whole church used the new translation in its entirety; it was the first time I had used the new Confiteor and Credo. By and large, it went off without a hitch. I heard some people who, all through the Mass, kept slipping up and giving the responses they knew by heart (admittedly, I slipped up right along with them). For many, these words were what they’d known all their lives.

The more I’ve gotten used to it, the more I like and prefer the new translation; the more I read about its rationale, the more I value it. As a Latinist and traditionalist, I certainly value a return to closer adherence with the Latin Mass in all its catholicity. That is, I’m a little-t traditionalist, meaning someone who is faithful to Church tradition, as opposed to a big-T Traditionalist, meaning someone who perceives rupture in the Church since Vatican II and demands reversion. Speaking of Traditionalists: I wonder how they are taking this? This new translation, as I understand it, is in fact a reversion, a turning back of many of the mistaken and misguided departures the English translation of the Mass made from the Latin. It strives to be a return to unity and catholicity, doctrinally and liturgically, with the rest of the Catholic world.

Will any of the Traditionalists be appeased? Will any of the schismatic ones return to communion with the Church? It’s times like these I wish I wasn’t so overwhelmed by the blogosphere, and was more in touch with prominent bloggers of different liturgical positions. (For that matter, I wish I wasn’t so overwhelmed by different positions. Right now, I’m still trying to bring myself to orthodoxy with the Church.) I tend to think that some who found issue with the substantial departures in the previous English translation from the Latin might find the new translation more acceptable. As much as I love Latin and value it in the Church and in the Mass, those Traditionalists who cling unyieldingly to the Latin Mass itself, rejecting any liturgical use of the vernacular at all, seem about as unreasonable to me as the Protestant King James Only adherents. I suppose there were other changes between the Tridentine Mass (the traditional Latin Mass) and the Mass of Paul VI (introduced in 1969) to which some Traditionalists object. I haven’t researched this. Can any reader key me in?

A piece I heard on NPR the other day about this was food for thought. I thought it did a good job of presenting both sides without bias. But I must say I was amazed at the ignorance — or is it willful innovation? — of the dissenting positions represented. I quote:

Trautman says sometimes the new translation is not faithful to the Bible. For example, it has Jesus, a poor carpenter, sipping from a precious chalice during the Last Supper.

“Any Greek dictionary will tell you, it’s a drinking cup,” Trautman says, “It’s a vessel. It’s not a chalice.”

Trautman says even Indiana Jones got that one right; the rugged historian selected a rough cup as the Holy Grail.

This is where churchmen should not take their Bible scholarship from Hollywood. Trautman is correct that the original Greek text of the Bible uses the word ποτήριον (potērion) in the accounts of Last Supper, from the Greek verb to drink, cognate with English potable, etc., and meaning literally, according to the LSJ and BDAG, a cup or drinking vessel. But if Trautman wants to take issue with the use of the word chalice in English, he should take it up with St. Jerome, not with anyone today. Jerome’s Latin Vulgate translates ποτήριον, in all four accounts (Mark, Matthew, Luke, and 1 Corinthians), as calix, from which chalice is a direct translation. Calix also translates literally, according to Lewis and Short, as a cup or drinking vessel. It’s only in English, liturgical usage that chalice has come to connote an ornate or luxurious cup; in Latin, it was just a simple cup.

(For what it’s worth, and this is extra: Latin calix derives from a different Greek word, κύλιξ [kulix], which still means a cup, especially a wine cup. So this was certainly a defensible translation choice for St. Jerome. A more direct translation from the Greek would have been poculum, which, similar to ποτήριον, derives from the verb to drink [poto].)

But Trautman’s concerns also go beyond vocabulary to theology. He cites where the new translation says Jesus died “for you and for many.”

“In preaching, we will hear that Jesus died for all people, but at the altar we will hear it Jesus died for many,” he notes. “For whom did he not die?”

Again, I wonder if this guy has ever actually read the Bible (or spoken to a Calvinist). Matthew’s Gospel, at Matthew 26:28, and most modern translations, both Protestant and Catholic, agree, reads “this is my blood of the covenant, which will is poured out for many for the forgiveness of sins” (ESV). The Greek, without dispute, reads περὶ πολλῶν, for many. Christians can debate the theological significance of this, but that’s what the Bible says.

The Rev. Michael Ryan, the pastor of St. James Cathedral in Seattle, has similar reservations. “It seems that the Latin is more important than the theology; that’s a pity,” Ryan says.

This is the part that troubles me. The last time I checked, the Church Fathers, and churchmen of all the ages, including the pope today, have written our theology in Latin. What theology is he concerned about apart from Latin? Is not closer adherence to the Latin also closer adherence to orthodox theology?

“The Second Vatican Council talked about language that would exhibit ‘noble simplicity,’ ” Ryan says. “This is anything but that. No, it’s a total move away from the teaching of the Second Vatican Council.”

Personally, I find a lot of “noble simplicity” in this new English translation. The “noble simplicity” is inherent in the original text, and this translation grasps it even more fully than the previous one. If anything, we had lost that “noble simplicity” before for vagueness and fuzziness. If this is a “total move” away from Vatican II, it’s only from the mistaken “spirit of Vatican II” that some modernists have interpreted.

“We’re dealing with a power play on the part of certain people in Rome who wanted to make changes in order, I think, to bring under greater control people in the English-speaking world.”

If this is designed to bring anyone “back into line,” it’s because some liberals have taken the “spirit of Vatican II” and the flawed, older English translation of the Mass and taken the Church in directions she wasn’t meant to go.

Thanksgiving

Posted on November 24, 2011 by Joseph T. Richardson

A lot of people for the past month have been posting daily statuses on Facebook about what they’re thankful for. I’ve been uncomfortable doing that. I’ve been increasingly private about speaking out in such a public forum. Most of what I have to be thankful for is so deeply spiritual and personal. I thought I would try to say a few words in this, semi-anonymous that it is.

I am most of all thankful to my God for His mercy and grace and healing in sparing my life, in giving it back to me, so that I might give it back to Him.

I am thankful for being blessed with such a loving and nurturing family, who are always holding me up in love and in prayer.

I am thankful for the few, dear friends I have. It is so easy for me to feel alone, and so hard to feel I am making connections, but when I step back and survey all the people whom I love and who love me, I know that I am truly blessed.

I am thankful for all the material comforts in my life — a secure home, a soft bed, warm clothing, ample food. I know there are so many people in the world who don’t have these blessings. I have so much “stuff” — so many things that I don’t need, and need to share.

I am thankful for all the opportunities I’ve been blessed with in pursuing an education — all of the teachers and professors who have shown mercy and understanding toward me; all of the grace and patience and forgiveness I have received; all of the many more chances I’ve been given than I deserved. Most of all I am thankful for the opportunity to live and teach and learn in a rich and nurturing university and department.

I am thankful for the myriad beauties and blessings of this earth and this cosmos: for the wonders of nature, the sun and the moon and stars and trees and animals; for so many places to go and see and experience; for the delights of food and drink, and especially for coffee.

I am thankful for the rich world of knowledge I’ve been given to partake in: especially in our rich history and culture; for so many sources and artifacts preserved and passed down; for so many fascinating people and events and ideas; so many questions unanswered and mysteries unexplored.

I am thankful for this magnificent heights and depths of this Christian tradition to which I’ve been drawn all my life; for the gently guiding hand of God in leading me here; and most of all for His love and mercy and grace toward humanity in Christ laying down His life so that we might be saved and might know God.

“Coming out”

Posted on November 24, 2011 by Joseph T. Richardson

I apologize to all of my reader(s) for having fallen off the blogosphere. School and research and paper-writing has swept me away entirely. I have posts burning holes in my head that I have wanted to share, but I’ve been unable to justify taking the time away from work to write them. The second part of the Holy Spirit post is one that’s going to require a good bit of research and thought — because, honestly, I don’t know all that well how to describe the Holy Spirit’s role in Catholic doctrine. The Holy Spirit reveals Christ to us; that’s the summation of what I know. I need to sit down with my Bible and my Catechism and study it out. I also have been thinking a lot lately about assurance of salvation. I also began the next post in my autobiography series, on Pope John Paul II, a few weeks ago, but never finished it.

Today I drove home to my parents’ for Thanksgiving. My aunt and uncle and cousins came over to spend the day with us. It was a good day, but draining, as most prolonged social contact is for me. At the dinner table the topic of religion came up — especially, a fairly heated discussion about grace. My aunt and uncle go to a Presbyterian (PCA) church, but are not themselves hard-core Calvinists. Their new pastor has been emphasizing grace by faith alone, at the expense of other important aspects of Christ’s Gospel — repentance, charity, forgiveness, to name a few. The conversation turned to the role of faith and works in salvation — my dad speaking of salvation by grace through faith apart from works, and I reminding everyone of St. James’ admonition that faith without works is dead. I had been on the verge of “coming out” of the Catholic closet to them, when my aunt said that their pastor is a former Catholic. I never did tell them. I wanted to tell them — I wanted to discuss it with them — but I didn’t really feel like stirring up a heated debate.

My parents and brother have been mostly very supportive of my journey. They have asked questions, but have not discouraged or disparaged. Tonight I explained the Rosary to them. They haven’t, it seems, told anyone else of my conversion. I’m not sure whether to feel grateful for their privacy and discretion or concerned that they are ashamed of me.

I am gradually “coming out” on Facebook. Anyone who pays any attention to me (which should include my grandmother) ought to have noticed that I “like” a lot of what the pope says and does, I “share” more and more Catholic links, and all of the “people who inspire me” are saints and popes. I guess a part of me wants everyone to know. I have striven to be humble and not showy, but I want to share this joy and hope I have found.

I guess, too, a part of me is insecure and needs to feel that my family and friends and loved ones will accept me. If they have questions or concerns or challenges, I want to hear them. I don’t want to feel I am hiding this. I don’t want to feel alone.

Cum Sancto Spiritu: A First Look

Posted on November 11, 2011 by Joseph T. Richardson

In the liturgy of the Mass, where it reads Cum Sancto Spiritu — at the end of the Gloria, where “You alone are the Most High Jesus Christ, with the Holy Spirit, in the glory of God the Father” — I have sometimes gotten the sense, from both the Latin and the English, that the tone of this is “and the Holy Spirit, too!” — as if the Holy Spirit were a tag-along, there gratuitously as a part of the Trinity, without a clear idea of what He’s doing there. Coming into the Catholic tradition, it often seemed as if the Holy Spirit was downplayed, a less important figure than in the tradition I’m coming out of. So I’m searching for the role of the Holy Spirit in the Catholic tradition, trying to understand who he is and what he does in the Catholic understanding. It seems rather more complex, and less visible, but nonetheless important.

The Descent of the Holy Spirit at Pentecost.

In the Pentecostal tradition, the Holy Spirit takes a central role in Christian life. Prayers are offered to the Holy Spirit, asking him to “fill this place” or “move in this place.” My feeling has always been that in this context, the Holy Spirit is an atmosphere of fervency and emotion that spreads and envelops. The Holy Spirit is said to have moved, for instance, after a service in which the congregation “gets lost” in emotional worship. But the Holy Spirit also fills, and overflows. He manifests himself in miracles and miraculous spiritual gifts, such as healing, prophecy, and especially speaking in tongues — the sine qua non of the “baptism of the Holy Spirit.” This “baptism of the Holy Spirit, as evidenced by speaking in tongues” is one of the hallmarks of the “Spirit-filled life.” This, and the moving of these spiritual gifts, define the Christian life for Pentecostals, who call themselves “Spirit-filled Christians.”

This understanding of the Holy Spirit is based primarily in the Book of Acts (especially Acts 2, Acts 10:44-46 and Acts 19) and Paul’s First Epistle to the Corinthians (1 Corinthians 12 and 14). Being “baptized” or “filled with the Holy Spirit” is something that takes place separate from believing in Christ or “being saved,” as seems to be the case in Acts 19, in which “disciples” had “believed” and been baptized (in water) but had not yet “received the Holy Spirit.” (Another way to read this, as my ESV Study Bible notes suggest, is that these people clearly didn’t know very much about Jesus or his teachings if they had never heard of the Holy Spirit, and had only been baptized with John the Baptist’s baptism. So receiving the Holy Spirit was merely the product of receiving the fullness of Christ’s message and being baptized in his name.) Certainly 1 Corinthians 12 lists spiritual gifts, and 1 Corinthians 14 speaks at length about the gifts of prophecy and tongues. But these are the only places they are mentioned in the New Testament.

The Catholic Church, and most non-Charismatic Christians, believe that these miraculous spiritual gifts ceased with the passing of the Apostolic Age — this view is called Cessationism; the opposite view, that the gifts continued, is Continuationism. I have never read much in the way of this theological debate — like most theological debates, I’ve found it dizzying and threatening and detrimental to my spiritual health. I have a book on the debate I’ve never gotten through; perhaps I should try again. I feel that it, like most doctrinal debates, is a rabbit trail that distracts believers from more important issues of Christian life — but I am curious about the reasoning here. I wonder if there are any Catholic books on this issue?

Anyway, I’ve gotten completely off the track of the well-meaning, and I thought well-settled, outline I set for this post a couple of weeks ago. I’m tempted to delete all of the above distraction, but I think I will leave it just to illustrate how confusing an issue this is for me, and to hope that some helpful reader might stumble upon it and offer me book recommendations. It’s nearly midnight, but I will leave you with what I meant to reach: a summary of what I understood, in the Pentecostal tradition, to be the roles and functions of the Holy Spirit. (I would give Scripture references, but I’m tired and it’s late. Consequently, this list may be flawed or incomplete. So this does not represent a studied effort, just my off-the-cuff understanding.)

The Holy Spirit enters the heart and life of all believers, as part of “asking Jesus into your heart” or “getting saved” — but this is different than the “baptism of the Holy Spirit.”
The Holy Spirit, indwelling in one’s heart, is a Counselor. He leads the believer to decisions or courses of action, and urges him to act.
The Holy Spirit is a Comforter, consoling and assuaging the heart of the believer.
The Holy Spirit also convicts the believer of sin and guides him to repentance.
The Holy Spirit spoke through the prophets and inspired the writers of Scripture of the New Testament also.
The Holy Spirit illuminates Scripture for the believer, leading him to a correct understanding of it and allowing the Bible to function as the living Word of God and a continuing revelation.
The Holy Spirit gives the believer words to say in ministry, speaking for him or through him.
The Holy Spirit bears the virtuous fruits of the Spirit in the believer who walks by the Spirit (Galatians 5:13-22).
The Holy Spirit moves one to zeal, joy, or other high emotion, leading one into worship.
The Holy Spirit baptizes or fills a believer, granting a more intimate connection and manifesting in miraculous gifts, especially speaking in tongues.
The other gifts of the Holy Spirit (all of which Pentecostals believe continue), as enumerated by Paul in 1 Corinthians 12, are:

Word of wisdom.
Word of knowledge.
Miraculous faith.
Gift of healing.
Working of miracles.
Prophecy.
Discerning of spirits.
Speaking in tongues.
Interpretation of tongues.

Next time, I’ll attempt to tackle Catholic doctrine about the Holy Spirit. But that’s requiring a good bit of studying of the Catechism, and I’ve been busy with school. So this post has been delayed, and will probably continue to be.

The Lonely Pilgrim

A Christian's Road Home to Rome and Journey Onward

Tag Archives: Catholicism