Father Bergman on Sacramental Life and the Culture

At the Institute of Catholic Culture.

Pretty strong stuff. I'm not sure I know what to think about it.  I'm not sure I agree with all of it, and I certainly need to read more about Americanism.  But interesting nonetheless.

One crowd, or two?

During the Palm Sunday liturgy, we read about Jesus hailed as a king by the adoring crowds outside Jerusalem.  Then we read the Passion narrative where a crowd calls for His crucifixion.  A lot of times I hear a homily remarking that the crowd turns on Jesus like this.  On Sunday, He's a king, and by Friday the same crowd is calling for His death.  But it was never obvious to me that this is the same crowd.

Jerusalem was a big city, and in the buildup to Passover it was even bigger. The city would have been bursting at the seams with Jews coming to spend Passover. People would have been camped outside the city, perhaps (as I've read) the "city limits" would have been extended during the period of Passover so that people who were physically unable to get inside the city walls could still say that they spent Passover in Jerusalem, as commanded.  In such a place, is it impossible to imagine that there were two crowds: one that lauded Jesus and another that feared Him, and perhaps another completely unaware of the controversy.

I live in a suburb of Dallas. Dallas has a number of controversial public figures. City Councilmen and County Commissioners may be hailed as a hero by their constituents and derided as a nuisance in other districts.  Why couldn't the same be the case in Jerusalem.

In 2013, the History Channel showed a ten-episode miniseries called The Bible.  It had an interesting theory about this.  When Jesus was being tried, the Pharisees made sure only "their" people were let into Pilate's court.  I hadn't ever considered that possibility but it makes sense.

I don't know why people always assume it was the same crowd on Palm Sunday and Good Friday, and I'm not sure why it bugs me when they do.  For some reason it seems like a liberal interpretation, but I can't explain why.   

But mainly, the idea that a massive crowd could turn so suddenly on someone, to me, belies the experience of the Church.  I mentioned earlier that a city the size of Jerusalem could easily accommodate more than one crowd: one could love Jesus, one could loath Jesus and another one could be completely unaware and indifferent.  The Church lives out Jesus' life on Earth today. There's a group that loves it, another group that hates it, and another group, probably the biggest of all, that doesn't care.  People may move from one camp to another, but generally they don't all move at the same time.  Certainly the haters of the Church seem more organized and more vocal than the lovers of the Church.  That's the experience when Brenden Eich get's the ax at Mozilla, and that's the experience of the Proposition 8 kerfuffle in California and that's the experience with the current brouhaha in Indiana, and that's the likely experience of Jesus in Pilate's court.  There were people in Jerusalem who wanted to see Jesus freed, but they were too disorganized, too weak, too afraid, too few to counter the organized resistance of the rulers of society.

Isn't that more likely?  How often do your friends completely turn on you when things get tough? On the other hand, how many times do your friends stay silent instead of defending you?  The enemy has been planning this attack for a long time.  He has taken every precaution.  Your friends are completely unaware of the danger and unprepared to do anything.

Perhaps that's what Jesus meant when He told his disciples to always be on their guard.

Palm Sunday

If the Annunciation is commonly and properly called "Lady Day", I've recently been of the opinion that Palm Sunday should be called "Donkey Day."  It started a few years ago when I heard a local priest give a stirring homily about the symbolism of Palm Sunday.  Specifically, the account in Matthew 21 which describes Jesus sending His disciples to find a "donkey (ass) tied there, with her colt by her."  The homily then ran something like this:

The mystery of election is this: the ass stands for the Jewish people who are tied. That is bound by sin under the the yoke old law. and Christ gives the apostles authority to untie the ass and bring it to Him, if we remember that Gospel Our Lord sends two apostles ahead of Him to go bring the ass and colt to Him. Tradition -- this is the importance of tradition, among other things -- tradition tells us that these two apostles were Peter and John, the apostles of Faith and of Love. So by faith and love we come through the apostles, that is through the Catholic Church, to be brought to Our Lord.

How is that referring to us? Well because the ass represents the Jewish people. The colt stands for the Gentiles. That’s us. It has not felt the yoke of the law. It is bound only by the affection for it’s mother, so it’s ready to be lead by faith and love to Jesus. No one needs a rope to lead the colt, because the colt will naturally follow it’s mother. This is God’s plan to save us. Salvation came to the Jews -- the ass bound by the yoke of the law. But since the Jews rejected the savior, the Gentiles, represented by the colt replace the Jews and are the new chosen people. That’s us. So the idea is that the Gentiles when recognizing, when presented with The Truth will follow it. We see other places in the Gospels where Our Lord says exactly this, that the Jews having rejected Christ are replaced by the Gentiles, the new chosen people.

And Christ stopped before He entered Jerusalem. He got off the ass and got on the colt. Again, this we know by tradition; you won’t find that in the scripture. We are the Gentiles, we are God’s chosen people because as many have received Him, to them He gave power to become Sons of God. It is no longer according to the blood that the promise is passed on, but by faith. We follow in the faith of the children of Abraham just like the colt follows it’s mother, lead by the apostles – the Church – and so we are heirs to the promise of salvation.

That's pretty powerful.  It should be said that donkeys have a reputation for being stubborn.  But perhaps a more accurate description is that they care overly cautious: given a strange person leading them to a strange place, they might well sit down and refuse to move.  But they will trust a familiar person and follow him wherever he leads.

I'm not a member of Opus Dei, but I admire St. Escriva and I find myself drawn to their emphasis on everyday work as a method of bringing about the glory of God. I find it very similar to St Therese' Little Way and it's interesting to me that those two saints lived in the same era and region.  So another aspect of Palm Sunday that appeals to me is that the donkey just did what donkeys do. Someone throws a blanket over the donkey's back and hops on for a ride -- ho-hum! Another day in the life of a donkey.  But this time, the donkey brought the Son of God to His people in Jerusalem.  By doing his normal work, the donkey set into motion the most pivotal week in the history of the universe.

I should mention here that Josemaria Escriva himself was attracted to this image.  Apparently he referred to himself in prayer as a "mangy donkey" and a friend who'd know said that little figurines of donkeys are commonly seen in Opus Dei houses.  Apparently an angel protected St Escriva from attack one time and revealed the fact he was an angel by referring to Escriva as a "mangy donkey".

It's always a good idea to close with a quote from GK Chesterton.

The DonkeyBY G. K. CHESTERTON
When fishes flew and forests walked
And figs grew upon thorn,
Some moment when the moon was blood
Then surely I was born.

With monstrous head and sickening cry
And ears like errant wings,
The devil’s walking parody
On all four-footed things.

The tattered outlaw of the earth,
Of ancient crooked will;
Starve, scourge, deride me: I am dumb,
I keep my secret still.

Fools! For I also had my hour;
One far fierce hour and sweet:
There was a shout about my ears,
And palms before my feet.

Happy Palm Sunday!

Who Am I To Judge?

Father Longenecker has a take on this at his blog.  I cannot describe how exasperated I am by that line.  I'm besieged by it from every angle. I almost quit RCIA over it.  I will never get past that statement. It will be like the apocryphal statement "preach always and when necessary use words" in that it's utterly devoid of meaning without context, except that in the case of "who am I to judge" the quote was actually said by the person credited with it.

The thing that no one realizes is that Pope Francis is the most judgmental Pope in my lifetime. The first year of his papacy was marked by a never-ending string of invective directed towards his foes: "little monsters", "vain butterfly priests", "smarmy, idolater priest", "leprous courtier" and of course the famous "self adsorbed Promethean neo-pelagian".

I don't even know what those mean.

I get called a "Pharisee" sometimes.  Usually it goes something like this.  "You pharisaical swine!  Why can't you be open minded and nonjudgmental like me, you cold hearted, judgmental, monster!"  And that's what my friends say.

Pope Francis may be right to call someone a "modern gnostic" (I understand that one) or a "fomented of copraphagia" (eww!). But it's hard to square that with "who am I to judge?"

So why does Francis have a rep as a easy going, welcoming, nonjudgmental, guy?  Is it because he insults the same people the media want to see insulted?  Is it because his insults are incomprehensible  in English ("promoter of the poison of immanence")?

I may never know.

Catholic social teaching according to PJ O'Rourke

who wasn't Catholic yet when he wrote this

The first nine Commandments concern theological principles and social law: Thou shalt not make graven images, steal, kill, etc. Fair enough. But then there’s the Tenth Commandment: “Thou shalt not covet thy neighbor’s house, thou shalt not covet thy neighbor’s wife, nor his manservant, nor his maidservant, nor his ox, nor his ass, nor anything that is thy neighbor’s.” 

Here are God’s basic rules about how we should live, a very brief list of sacred obligations and solemn moral precepts, and right at the end of it is, “Don’t envy your buddy’s cow.” 

 What is that doing in there? Why would God, with just ten things to tell Moses, choose, as one of them, jealousy about the livestock next door? And yet, think about how important to the well-being of a community this Commandment is. If you want a donkey, if you want a pot roast, if you want a cleaning lady, don’t bitch about what the people across the street have. Go get your own.

The Tenth Commandment sends a message to socialists, to egalitarians, to people obsessed with fairness, to American presidential candidates in the year 2000—to everyone who believes that wealth should be redistributed. And the message is clear and concise: Go to hell.

(Eat The Rich, page242) 

Congratulation to our new Catholics!

2644 for the Diocese of Dallas
https://twitter.com/bishop_farrell/status/577850612693405698

Pharisees

This was my talk for the 2nd Scrutinies in Lent. The Gospel passage is Jesus curing the man born blind.

In the Gospel today we hear some more about the Pharisees. It seems they are always complaining when Jesus does something good.  In this case, Jesus cures a blind man and they even complain about that.  But who were to Pharisees?

The word “pharisee” comes from a Hebrew word which means “separate”.  The Pharisees at the time of Jesus were trying to preserve a Jewish identity separate from the secular Greco-Roman culture that surrounded them.  This was in contrast to the Sadducees, who were more accommodating to their secular rulers.  The Pharisees and Sadducees did not have much in common. The Sadducees were an elite priestly class, and their attitude towards the Romans was probably influenced by the fear that the Romans could simply shut the Temple down, in which case the Sadducees would be stripped of their power. By contrast, the Pharisees were a working-class group. Their emphasis on Jewish culture and traditions were not only designed to prevent the Jews from being swallowed up by the Romans, but also to promote holiness among the common people.  They were popular and respected.  It is important to realize that the Pharisees were well educated and devout Jews and many of Jesus’ followers were Pharisees.  So maybe we shouldn’t be so hard on them.

Today we hear about the Pharisees and we think about their adherence to the law. In fact “pharisaical” is a term still used to describe someone obsessed with small-minded rules.  In fact, one of things that marked Judaism as separate was it’s law.  In the Old Testament, the Jews were called to avoid the practices of their pagan neighbors and hold to the Commandment of God.  So the Pharisees, in fact, were very keen on following the law.  But there’s a little more to it than that, so let’s look at these law a little more, in light of today’s Gospel reading.

In Exodus, Moses received the Ten Commandments from God.  The Third Commandment (Catholic numbering) forbids work on the Sabbath.  That’s all the commandment says: don’t work, and don’t force anyone else to work.  It doesn’t define “work” though.  And in fact, nowhere else in the Old Testament is this expanded upon.  There are exhaustive laws covering all manner of activities, but this particular commandment is vague.  Does “work” refer to a person’s profession?  Or strenuous physical labor?  Or anything that occupies time away from the family?  Or anything that takes time away from prayer?

Consider a simple example:  let’s say I was employed as a gardener.  A week long I worked in the gardens of the king, pulling weeds and pruning bushes.  On the Sabbath, can I work in my own garden?  Can my neighbor, who’s a bricklayer, work in his garden?  Can he work in mine?  What if my neighbor enjoys gardening, and it’s a form of relaxation for him.  Does it count as “work” because it’s something people are paid to do?

Ancient rabbis, after careful examination of the scriptures, realized that the Hebrew word that we translate as “work” is also used to describe the building of the Tabernacle in the desert.  After further consideration, they devised thirty-nine categories of activities related to the construction of the Tabernacle that would count as “work” and which were therefore forbidden on the Sabbath. So things like carpentry, weaving, baking and so on were forbidden.  After further study, the rabbis realized that these activities were all of a creative nature. That is, they all involved either creating or destroying something. They involved mastery of the physical elements and so were, in a sense, sharing in the God’s creative nature.  But in this discussion it’s important to note that the Jews were not only allowed to violate the Sabbath if it was necessary to save a life: they were commanded to by their leaders.

This list is readily available online.  At this point, we may think that this, literally, sounds a little pharisaical. After all, God gave one commandment to rest on the Sabbath, and now we have 39 categories of banned activity plus at least one condition where the commandment didn’t apply.  And we might find fault with their list of forbidden activities.  However appropriate they might be for a group of nomads traveling through the desert, they seem to lose their applicability to residents of a metropolis like Jerusalem and are even less applicable to sailors or merchants.

But there’s nothing intrinsically wrong with interpreting the law.  The commandment says “Thou shalt not work!” and so it’s important to understand what that means to the commandment can be followed.  That’s simply the natural course of events in any lawful society.  We still do it today. The US has been around for over 200 years, yet every year Congress decides there aren’t enough laws on the books yet and they pass more.  And then the regulators get ahold of those laws and derive from them an even greater number of regulations.  Then the courts argue about whether the regulations are legal and whether the laws are constitutional.  So while we might quibble over their interpretation of the law, the process of interpreting the law is normal and necessary.

So we come to today’s Gospel.  Jesus takes pity on a man born blind and heals him by making clay with this spittle and putting it on the man’s eyes.  The Pharisees saw this as a violation of the Sabbath.  Actually, the lists of things forbidden on the Sabbath that I’ve seen don’t include making clay, but it seems logical that it would be there: it is, after all, changing dirt into a building material.

There are at least three reasons by which Jesus was not violating the Sabbath.  First of all, as God, He is the author of the law and so a better interpreter of the law than the Jewish leaders of the day. If they think that what Jesus did violated the Sabbath and He disagreed, then the Pharisees were simply mistaken and the next step would be to update their understanding of the law.  Secondly, Jesus cured the man’s physical blindness and in the process removed his spiritual blindness and, presumably, the man continued to follow Jesus to eternal life.  Therefore, one could argue that Jesus was saving this man’s life which would override any Sabbath restrictions.  However, the biggest reason is that there’s nothing in the Bible about making clay on the Sabbath.

The commandment says “Thou shalt not work on the Sabbath”, it doesn’t way “Thou shalt not make clay” or “Thou shalt not make fire” or “Thou shalt not” any of the other 39 banned activities.  Those are human interpretations of the law and, necessary as they are, they are still of human origin and subject to review and repeal.  The essential crime of the Jewish leaders in the New Testament is equating human law with Divine law.  

The Pharisees also promoted an interpretation of the law that let people out of inconvenient moral obligations.  In Jesus’ time, there was no Social Security. Your family was your Social Security. One of the benefits of a big family was that you had plenty of people to take care of you when you were too old to work.  There’s a commandment that says “Honor your father” and Jews were strictly expected to take care of their parents.  But we all know that relationships between the generations can be complicated.  What if you don’t like your parents? What if they were mean to you? What if you don’t want to take care of them?  The Pharisees encouraged an interpretation of the law that allowed a person to dedicate all of his property to the Temple upon his death.  While he was alive he, and only he, had full use of his property, but it actually belonged to the Temple. So when his deadbeat dad showed up looking for help, he could honestly say he didn’t have anything. Jesus condemns this in Mark 7.

This was Jesus’ primary complaint against the Pharisees. Not that they were avid followers of the law, but that they were avid followers of human law making it equal to, if not superior to, divine law when it was convenient to do so.  But as G.K. Chesterton once said, “When you get rid of the big laws, you don’t end up with no laws, you get the small laws.”   God’s commandments are relatively few in number and designed to promote the seven virtues: Prudence, Justice, Temperance, Fortitude, Faith, Hope and Love.  But those can get in a way of having fun, so we replace them an endless list of rules meant to promote secular virtues like “tolerance”, “diversity”, “empowerment” and “equality.”

The Church today has rules. Anyone who goes against the popular culture is accused of being a Pharisee.  The temptation is real: the Church has a clear doctrine that is binding on Catholics. Some of these are disciplines which can change over time – like the Eucharistic fast, eating meat on Friday and so on.  Some are doctrinal or dogmatic teachings that never change, like the nature of God or the inerrancy of scripture.  But there are other customs and traditions that are not binding on Catholics, like wearing ashes on Ash Wednesday, believing in Marian Apparitions, praying before meals when in public.  It’s OK to advocate for or against these customs, but it’s tempting to lump these in with the doctrines of the Church in order to categorize your friends as “good Catholics” and your enemies as “bad Catholics”.  On the other hand, when controversial subjects come up, it’s tempting to reclassify the Divine Law, those things revealed by scripture and Sacred Tradition, as pious traditions or customs.  In either case we follow our own dogmas instead of the Church’s dogma.  Fighting over customs may make Thanksgiving dinner more memorable (and there is a certain enjoyment in that), but our efforts would be better spent promoting and living out the Divine law given in scripture and Sacred Tradition.  St Augustine summed it up well: “In essentials Unity, In non-essentials Liberty, in all things Charity.”

The Church speaks for Christ today.  The blind man asked Jesus to open his eyes. In curing the man, Jesus also cured his spiritual blindness and lead him to eternal life.  We can find ourselves blinded by our material concerns and social pressure.  We often think we know exactly how to save the world, and if Church would just go along with it, everything would be great.  But we need to be like the blind man and ask the Church in humility to open our eyes so we can see God and follow Him.

Closing Prayer

From a treatise on John by Saint Augustine, bishop

Christ is the way to the light, the truth and the life

The Lord tells us: I am the light of the world; he who follows me will not walk in darkness, but will have the light of life. In these few words he gives a command and makes a promise. Let us do what he commands so that we may not blush to covet what he promises and to hear him say on the day of judgement: “I laid down certain conditions for obtaining my promises. Have you fulfilled them?” If you say: “What did you command, Lord our God?” he will tell you: “I commanded you to follow me. You asked for advice on how to enter into life. ...”

 Let us do now what he commands. Let us follow in the footsteps of the Lord. Let us throw off the chains that prevent us from following him. Who can throw off these shackles without the aid of the one addressed in these words: You have broken my chains? Another psalm says of him: The Lord frees those in chains, the Lord raises up the downcast.

 Those who have been freed and raised up follow the light. The light they follow speaks to them: I am the light of the world; he who follows me will not walk in darkness. The Lord gives light to the blind. Brethren, that light shines on us now, for we have had our eyes anointed with the eye-salve of faith. His saliva was mixed with earth to anoint the man born blind. We are of Adam’s stock, blind from our birth; we need him to give us light. He mixed saliva with earth, and so it was prophesied: Truth has sprung up from the earth. He himself has said: I am the way, the truth and the life.

Let us pray.

Lord God, in your surpassing wisdom

 you reconcile man to yourself through your Word.

Grant that your Christian people may come with eager faith and ready will

 to celebrate the Easter festival.

Through our Lord Jesus Christ, your Son,

 who lives and reigns with you and the Holy Spirit,

 one God, for ever and ever.

Amen.