DOCTORS OF THE CHURCH

Pretend for a moment that you have a friend in Germany named Hans, and you are going to spend a few weeks of your vacation at his home in Frankfurt.  Everything goes fine for a few days until you awaken in the middle of one night with a terrible cough and sore throat.  You knock on Hans’ bedroom door and say to him, using your inadequate German vocabulary for what you think translates the English word, “doctor” into German, as you say, “I need to see a doktor!”  Hans mumbles back to you in his sleepy German, “What kind of doktor do you want to see?  A Doktor of Philosophy,  a Doktor of Mathematics or a Doktor of Science, or some other kind of Doktor?”  Hans thinks you are talking in your sleep with your excited utterance for the need of a doktor. You in turn think Hans likewise is talking in his sleep with his “crazy questions” to you.  “What on earth are you talking about?” you ask. “I’m sick; I need to see an emergency-room physician.”  Hans has by now opened his door and says to you, “Oh, you don’t need a doktor; you need an Arzt!”

Using the German language to introduce an essay on “Doctors of the Church” demonstrates that in German, the word we use in English for “Doctor” is primarily a mis-use, whereas the Germans use their word Doktor literally and correctly.  The ordinary English use of “Doctor” is, in German, Arzt, or a “physician.” What is the principle definition, not just in German, but in English as well, of “Doctor?”  The answer is found in the number 1(first) definition of the English, “Doctor,” in Webster’s Third New International Dictionary of the English Language (Unabridged), as follows: “A religious scholar who is eminent in theological learning and personal holiness and usually an expounder and defender of established doctrine.”  Webster’s example of the correct usage of “Doctor” in a sentence is, “St. Jerome was one of the great Doctors of the church.”  Only farther down the page in Webster’s (p. 666), do we get to the number 2 definition of “doctor,” as “one skilled or specializing in healing arts: a practitioner of medicine, dentistry, or veterinary medicine.”

English has become something of a lazy language, whereas the Germans learn from elementary school on up the accurate and precise use of their words, and strictly use their language based on that principle. This is why they have so many more words in their formal vocabulary than does English (about one-third more than English).  The German use of the Latin, doctores ecclesiae, or “Doctors” of the Church,” is their word that the English Webster’s uses to define our word, “Doctor,” which in German is “Doktor.”  But enough German for one day!  Now that we know the formal definition of “Doctor” in the Catholic phrase, “Doctors of the Church,” we shall move toward answering the questions, “What is a Doctor of the Church in Catholic usage? Where does the phrase originate?  Who were (and are) the Doctors of the Church?  What did they, and what do they, contribute to our Catholic faith?

Introduction: A Catholic Theology of the Intellectual Life

The continuity of reason and faith is a central pillar in Catholic thought. One principal example of this professsion is St. Pope John Paul II's 1998 encyclical letter, Fides et Ratio (Faith and Reason). There the pope affirms the Catholic teaching that the human quest for truth, most particularly the truth that transcends us and is God, is a quest to grow in our humanity, a quest to know who we are as humans and to know our place in the natural world. What is more, the human desire to know is given to us by God, a gift that comes from God's own desire to be known. In other words, human striving toward knowledge and truth can result in the fulfillment of God's will, an assent to God's dream that we might come to know God as God is. Intellectuals clearly have a major role to play in this search, a search that is not for the benefit of themselves alone but for the benefit of all people.


The foremost group of Catholic intellectuals, that from the early church to recent times, most strongly undergirds the foundation of humanity's search to know God as God is, has been given the name "Doctors of the Church." We will explore the meaning of this phrase and come to know what they have done for the church, and further, no matter how ancient some of them are, what they are still doing for the church. They are saints and teachers, monks, priests, bishops, and nuns. They faced opposition and exile, were chased and harrassed by secular rulers, often times wanderers and hermits in hiding. They lived in periods of confusion and conflict. Yet, their teachings and insights not only brought peace and understanding to the Church of their time, but continue to anchor the Church of today.


They brought clarity to the fragments of Church knowledge, and simplicity to the complex expression of dogma. They used speeches, documents, poems, and songs to reach the people of their time -- and through their written records they reach us today. With Pope Benedict XVI, who named the last two Doctors in 2012 before he retired from the papacy, their total number comes to thirty-five as of 2012. We take an incredible journey through time to better understand these individuals who explored and explained the critical teachings of the Church. They were masters at defining the Christian understanding of that most difficult of all relationships -- the Church and the world.

First, let's make sure we understand the title "Doctors" given to these greatest of intellectuals in the Church.

Part One: Defining "Doctors of the Church" Correctly

So what is the correct definition of the English,"Doctor," in the phrase "Doctor of the Church?" The answer may surprise you as we turn to the foremost source for defining the fundamental meaning of English words. The correct English usage of "Doctor" is found in the first (i.e., primary) definition of the English word "Doctor," in Webster’s Third New International Dictionary of the English Language (Merriam-Webster, Unabridged), as follows: A Doctor is "[a] religious scholar who is eminent in theological learning and personal holiness and usually an expounder and defender of established doctrine." Webster’s example of the correct usage of "Doctor" in a sentence is: "St. Jerome was one of the great Doctors of the church." Only farther down the Dictionary's page 666, where "Doctor" is defined as above, i.e., "as a religious scholar," do we get to the second (i.e., secondary) definition of "doctor," as "one skilled or specializing in healing arts: a practitioner of medicine, dentistry, or veterinary medicine."

This essay will not misuse the English word, doctor, in its secondary definition. Instead, we will use only the primary definition ofdoctor. So let's eradicate "one skilled or specializing in healing arts" as we proceed with this study of "Doctors of the Church," and focus only on "[a] religious scholar who is eminent in theological learning and personal holiness."

Part Two: What is the Catholic History and Usage of "Doctors of the Church

We must date the four earliest Doctors of the Western Latin Church not by a particular date, because, for one thing, they themselves didn't even know they were "Doctors," and never referred to themselves and each other by that title. The first four Doctors -- addressed by this title only informally and colloquially in their own day by educated Christians, and not by the hierarchy of the organized Church -- only came to be called by that title formally and with honor by the Church's magisterium centuries after they had served as what much later came to be called "official" Doctors. As for dates of origin of the title, the average early Christians in the years when the four earliest Doctors of the Western Latin Church served the Church naturally knew their servants. These early Christians would have been the best people to answer the question of the Doctors' titles by dates of origin as servants and leaders of the early Church. However, since we don't have common records of these dates, we must approximate the dates of service of the four earliest doctors from the dates when they lived.

Setting aside the fact of their only being called Doctors formally and officially centuries after their deaths, the Church, in 1298, had eventually come to an agreed-upon recognition at the highest levels of who these first four Doctors of the Western Latin Church were, namely: (1) St. Augustine (354-430), (2) St. Ambrose (339-97) (both bishops in the Western Latin Church), (3) St. Pope Gregory I ("the Great" -- pope from 590 to 604) and the leading Catholic Scholar of Scripture, (4) St. Jerome (342-420). This first date, 1298, that we have for the recognition and naming of these earliest Doctors was the date of the first formalized recognition and selection of Doctors -- by Pope Boniface VIII (1234-1303). This date is roughly seven centuries after the dates of death of the four earliest Western Latin Doctors.
As for the application of the title Doctor, we find that at first, "Doctor" was merely a colloquial epithet or "nickname" of sorts that passed to eminent theologians from time to time by scholars and bishops of the Latin West. However, the Eastern Greek Church has never applied the phrase "Doctor of the Church" to its own eminent and universal teachers, although Rome has always used the title "Doctor" for the Greek equivalents of Western Doctors of the Church. The Greeks instead use the words "Theologian" and "Hierarchs" [The Anglican Church likewise does not use "Doctor of the Church" for its saints who also happen to be Doctors of the Catholic Church. Instead, the Anglicans refer to such men as "Teachers of the Faith."]

A second, post-1298 date for formally recognizing and naming men as Doctors of the Church in the Latin West is 1567, which was during the papacy of St. Pope Pius V (1504-72). He named St. Thomas Aquinas (1225-74) as a Doctor of the Latin West, and in the same year named the following eminent theologians of the Greek East -- calling them "Doctors" in spite of the Greeks disdain for the western title Doctor. These Greek theologians honored by St. Pope Pius V in the Latin West with the title "Doctor" in 1567 were: (1) St. John Chrysostom (347-407) (Bishop of Constantinople); (2) St. Basil the Great (330-379) (Priest, monk, preacher and heresy fighter); (3) St. Gregory Nazianzus (329-389) (Priest, monk, briefly Bishop of Constantinople before resigning and writing a theology of the Holy Spirit); (4) St. Athanasius (298-373) (Bishop of Alexandria, theological leader at the Council of Nicaea). By 1567, then, the Church had firmly decided that its Doctors were a different, higher intellectual class of Catholic prelates, and from that date onward "Doctors of the Church" became a permanent order of men honored by recognition, service and dignity within the Church, much like "The College of Cardinals" had become a permanent order of service by 1586.

The title "Doctor," was used in naming these men in 1298 and 1567, respectively, simply because that title had been in use by the scholarly Roman philosophers of themselves. (The Church co-opted many words from pagan Roman Latin, such as, for example,diocese.) The Church's usage of Doctor was an informal philosophical designation going back to Roman intellectuals such as Cicero, who described Plato as a Doctor. Roman philosophers thus used Doctor to describe someone who engaged in Doctrina("teaching"), which meant for them the act of instructing or training students in the higher forms of education, especially in classical Latin. Thus the Church's title "Doctor" was at first simply an analogy drawing its meaning from pagan Roman scholars who themselves, centuries before Christ, were first called "Doctors" -- not "of the Church" of course, but of "philosophy, science, mathematics and literature."

The first Christian application of the term doctor to the life of the Church was by Tertullian (160-225), an African Church Father, although a layman, who in his treatise, Objection against Heretics (c. 200), uses Doctor both to refer to priests and also to indicate how all Christian teachers depend ultimately on the Holy Spirit. Tertullian explained his rationale as follows: "If the apostles themselves, who were appointed as doctors to the nations, were to follow the Paraclete as their doctor, how much more room was there for us in the saying, 'Seek and you shall find' -- we to whom teaching comes further down through the apostles, just as the apostles had their teaching through the Holy Spirit."

Unfortunately for the Church, Tertullian in 206 joined an heretical sect, Montanism. Yet, he influenced early Latin Christianity, establishing Doctor as a generic term for all who gave instruction in the faith with the greatest degree of eminence and universality. Long after Tertullian, Doctor had come to be used routinely for the following eminent, universal and leading teachers of the faith of the Church, who now, in the present life of the Church, may be categorized as follows: Among the present 35 Doctors of the Church, and as of the year 2012, 27 are from the Western Latin Church and 8 from the Eastern Greek Church; there are 18 bishops, 12 priests, 1 deacon, 4 religious sisters; 26 come from Europe, 3 from Africa, 6 from Asia. More Doctors (12) lived during the 4th Century than any other century.
What, then, is the role within the Church's history and in its present day of a "Doctor of the Church" in Catholic usage? Who were (and are) the Doctors of the Church? What did they, and what do they, contribute to our Catholic faith? To answer these questions, let's start by imagining we are entering St. Peter's Basilica and looking toward the very back of the great church. Since at least the 1200's, an ancient wooden chair, named the cathedra Petri, or "St. Peter's Throne," has been venerated in the rear of the cathedral as the throne on which the Apostle Peter, the first Bishop of Rome, sat when he taught the faith to early Christians.

The next major date (after 1298 and 1567) leading to the further solidifying of the permanent class of Doctors in the Church was 1656. In that year, the famous sculptor, Gian Lorenzo Bernini, entered into a project assigned to him by Pope Alexander VII (1655-1667), to make the cathedra Petri into a reliquary. The pope was himself an intellectual and determined to enshrine the cathedra Petri in a manner befitting its importance as the symbol of the teaching authority of St. Peter. Alexander realized the importance of emphasizing to the faithful who visited St. Peter's Basilica, and from there throughout the Church, the growing Catholic theology of the intellectual life. Underlying the pope's desire for a reliquary was his belief that St. Peter had the first, although perhaps a primitive vision (for a fisherman Apostle) of the Catholic intellectual life. Alexander believed that St. Peter's own teaching, seated on his famous Throne, had given rise to an understaning of the importance of eminent teachers in the Church. Accordingly, he persuaded Bernini to sculpt four statues of famous Doctors of the Church -- two from the West and two from the East -- and to add his statues to the reliquary structure which the great artist was making to surround the cathedra Petri 

Bernini enclosed the cathedra Petri inside a huge structure with large marble pillars. Onto the pillars he sculpted four towering bronze figures, appearing to support St. Peter's teaching throne -- and artistically actually doing so. (Bernini later also sculpted in a side altar in St. Peter's the famous reclining figure of St. Theresa of Avila in an ecstatic mystical state. Little did the sculptor know that in fact he had added one more Doctor to the Church -- this time a woman, to be formally selected in 1970 by Pope Paul VI -- to the four males sorrounding St. Peter's Throne.) Artistically, the four figures have enormous power and expressivity, and were used by Bernini to illustrate that the Catholic intellectual tradition descended in time from the early Church, initially to support the "seat of learning," or St. Peter's Throne. The four statues added to the reliquary of the cathedra Petri were two Doctors from the Latin West -- St. Augustine and St. Ambrose -- and two from the Greek East -- St. Athanasius and St. John Chrysostom.

Part Three: An Historical Interruption -- The Schism Between Eastern and Western Churches

Naming two doctors from the Western, Latin Church, and two from the Eastern, Greek Church, as statuary symbols based on Bernini's 1656 sculpture was an ecumenical gesture on the part of Pope Alexander VII. To explain this statement, we should investigate the historical background underlying a full-scale Schism between two parts of the Church, namely, the Latin Western Church in Rome and the Greek Eastern Church in Byzantium (a city later named Constantinople). A rancorous division between Cardinals named by the Pope in Rome on the one hand, and the Patriarch of Constantinople, on the other hand, reached its climax in the year 1054. The resulting schism between West and East would come to have an influence on the selection and naming of Doctors of the Church. Greek Eastern Christians in Byzantium wanted their candidates named Doctors, and Rome wanted theirs.

The Byzantine Church did not like the Roman bishops' efforts to set Rome up as the chief center for all of Christianity, both west and east, under the Bishop of Rome. The Greek Patriarch, Archbishop Michael, advanced the claim that it was Constantinople and not Rome that infallibly preserved the ancient faith. Michaell closed all the Latin-rite churches in Constantinople. Pope Leo IX (1048-1054) responded by sending a delegation to Constantinople, headed by Cardinal Humbert, to determine if the two churches could reach some kind of accord. Humbert was not the right man to send to Constantinople on a mission of reconciliation.

He arrived in the city and began issuing orders to Byzantine bishops as if they were his servants. He proudly displayed a list of more than 90 heresies of which he proclaimed the Byzantine Church was guilty. Patriarch Michael refused to negotiate with Humbert and his team, prompting them to leave Constantinople and return to Rome, departing on July 16, 1054, but not before they went to the holiest, most important mother church of the Greek east, Hagia Sophia ("Holy Wisdom"), and placed a decree excommunicating Patriarch Michael on the main altar. Not to be outdone in hostility, Michael in turn excommunicated Humbert and St. Pope Leo IX (1002-54), the latter of whom had taken no part in the controversies other than appointing Humbert.

This digression away from the efforts to solidify further the permanence of the class of Doctors of the Church was relevant to our discussion of Doctors of the Church. It can be seen that, with both churches excommunicating theologians from the other side and insulting each other in harsh and condemnatory language for six hundred years that the notion of recognizing Doctors of the Church from either side and naming them as great and eminent teachers of the one, true faith, tended to make overly complicated the process of naming Doctors in a formal manner.

Part Four: Summarizing the Doctors of the Church from St. Augustine to St. Hildegard of Bingen: The Stunning Addition of Women As Doctors

The phrase "Doctors of the Church" was not new with in the seventeenth century with Bernini and Pope Alexander VII, nor was it invented by the bishops of Rome. However, with Bernini's masterpiece enclosing the cathedra Petri in the figures of four Doctors of the early church, and with Pope Alexander VII's personal expertise and interest in writings that were adjudged to be eminent in their sacred doctrine and scholarship, the bishops of Rome established an unbreakable bond between papal teaching authority and Christendom's most prestigious community of eminent theologians -- the Doctors of the Church. Just as the popes asserted ultimate authority over the canonization process for those persons nominated for sainthood (and as they became the leading authority figures making such nominations), so too, by the end of the sixteenth century, the popes had asserted the prerogative formally to recognize and select Doctors of the Church.

After Pope Alexander VII's tenure as pope, and after the building of St. Peter's Basilica was completed, more recent Doctors came to be selected. Gradually three criteria emerged as essential conditions necessary for someone to be declared a Doctor: (1) eminent teaching, (2) outstanding sanctity, and, of course, (3) official declaration by the church. When a saint is declared a Doctor, criterion number (2) tends to be pushed to the forefront, so that the saint's writings don't necessarily have to be masterpieces of theology. Likewise, criterion number (1) can make up for issues related to the saint's failure to excel in saintly charisms like working miracles. For example, perhaps the greatest Doctor in the Church's listing for having achieved eminent teaching, St. Thomas Aquinas, stirred up grumblings among some in the church about his opposition to the Immaculate Conception of the Blessed Virgin Mary, tending to make his sanctity appear less outstanding.

WOMEN DOCTORS:

Until 1970, no woman was named a Doctor of the Church. There are several ways to analyze and respond to this pre-1970 vacancy of women from within the Church's major office for establishing and honoring its elite group of intellectuals, the Doctors of the Church. Why were not women called by the Church to join men -- men who from the early Church to recent times, truthfully and capably sought after the Catholic foundation of humanity's search to know God as God is? Was the Catholic theology of the intellectual life stunted and diminished by the lack of women's voices within the search by the Church's Doctors to answer God's calling for humanity to know God as fully as humanly possible? These are questions that cannot be answered, because we cannot know how the history of Doctors of the Church would have been different had women been present from earliest times. The reason for this is self-evidently persuasive. Because the history of Doctors of the Church did not include women, we have nothing with which to compare the absence of women against the selection only of men as Doctors of the Church.

Further, the exclusion of women was not a Catholic decision; rather, it was a global historical decison. Women in the Church up until the 20th Century were treated like women in every other human institution. Women simply were not given educational opportunities equal to those given to men until the beginning of the mid-20th Century. The Church did not cause this situatiion The Church simply lived in a world where women were not educated to the highest extent to be qualified as Doctors of the Church. But since 1970 and through 2012, at least as a start, the absence of women from the society of Doctors of the Church has been eliminated, just as women's rights have improved generally throughout the world in the last half-century.

Pope Paul VI, St. Pope John Paul II and Pope Benedict XVI have taken a courageous and innovative stance on including women among the Doctors of the Church. We cannot expect, nor can we require, that the four women selected as Doctors will teach, write, think and evangelize exactly as male Doctors. Women Doctors will bring fresh and invigorating visions into the community of Doctors of the Church. However their visions will not simply be a duplicates of what male Doctors do and have already done. Women will be Doctors in different ways from the ways male Doctors have been and are Doctors. Women Doctors will be just that -- Doctors as women.

The future addition of women to the rank of Doctors will contribute greatly, enormously and conclusively to the Catholic theology of the Church's intellectual life. The history of women's absence from the ranks of Doctors of the Church is over. By adding the first four women to the Doctors, the Church's eminent teaching mission has already grown in positive directions, and can only improve as more and more women are added in upcoming years. It is pointless to condemn the Church for not living in accordance with universal historical norms of past centuries in which women were excluded -- not just from being Doctors of the Church, but from nearly every human endeavor. Now history will go in a new direction. Four women are now Doctors of the Church. More will be selected. This process can only enrich the calling of Doctors of the Church and heighten the service of the male and female Doctors to come.

The Church cannot be blamed for not naming women to become Doctors of the Church until 1970. It was not the Church that should be held accountable for patterns of history restricting women from living fuller lives -- whether in the Church or in global society as a whole. The Church has lived until the 21st Century hemmed in by history, as has every other human institution. History is now changing, and the Church will change with it. This will lead to more women becoming Doctors of the Church in years ahead.

The four women who have now become Doctors of the Church are (1) St. Catherine of Siena (1347-1380), and (2) St. Teresa of Avila (a/k/a "St. Teresa of Jesus") (1515-82), both named Doctors in 1970 by Pope Paul VI (1963-1978). The third woman Doctor, named in 1997 by St. John Paul II, was (3) St. Therese of Lisieux (1873-97), popularly called "The Little Flower," which was the sub-title of her autobiography; she was also called "St. Therese of the Child Jesus." The fourth and latest woman Doctor was (4) St. Hildegard of Bingen (1098-1179), selected by Pope Benedict XVI on October 7, 2012.

[Pope Benedict, on the same day as his naming St. Hildegard a Doctor, also named St. John of Avila (1500-69), a trusted counsellor of St. Teresa of Avila, as a Doctor.]

The Holy Spirit will guide the Church in its selection of women as Doctors of the Church. Hence we have nothing to fear and everything to look forward to, as the Spirit brings new life to the Church.

Conclusion: Naming the Thirty-Five Doctors

Fourteen Doctors Already Discussed Above: (1) St. Augustine (354-430), (2) St. Ambrose (339-97), (3) St. Pope Gregory I (590 to 604); (4) St. Jerome (342-420); (5) St. John Chrysostom (347-407); (6) St. Athanasius (296-373); (7) St. Basil the Great (330-379); (7) St. Gregory Nazianzus (329-389); (8) St. Athanasius (296-373) ; (9) (St. Thomas Aquinas (1225-1274); (10) St. Catherine of Siena (1347-1380); (11) St. Teresa of Avila (1515-1582); (12) St. Therese of Lisieux (1873-1897); (13) St.Hildegard of Bingen (1098-1179); (14) St. John of Avila (1500-1569) .

The remaining twenty-one Doctors:


Doctor                              Translated Latin Title       Date Selected        Ministry as Doctor
St. Bonaventure                 Seraphic Doctor              1588                      Cardinal Bishop of Alban
St. Anselm                         Magnificent Doctor        1720                       Archbishop of Canterbury
St. Isidore of Seville          (No Title)                        1722                       Bishop of Seville
St. Peter Chrysologus        (No Title)                         1729                       Bishop of Ravenna
St. Leo the Great                (No Title)                        1754                       Pope
St. Peter Damian                (No Title)                        1828                       Cardinal Bishop of Ostia
St. Bernard of Clairvaux    (Mellifluous Doctor)       1830                       Priest, O.Cist.
St. Hilary of Poitiers          (No Title)                         1851                      Bishop of Poitiers
St. Alphonsus Liguori        (Most Zealous Doctor)    1871                      Bishop of St. Agata
St. Francis de Sales           (Doctor of Charity)           1877                      Bishop of Geneva
St. Cyril of Alexandria      (Doctor of the Incarnation) 1883                   Archbishop of Alexandria
St. Cyril of Jerusalem        (No Title)                         1883                       Archbishop of Jerusalem
St. John Damascene          (No Title)                          1890                      Theologian
St. Bede the Venerable      (NoTitle)                          1899                       Priest, Monk, O.S.B.
St. Ephrem                         (No Title)                         1920                       Deacon
St. Peter Canisius              (No Title)                          1925                       Priest, S.J.
St. John of the Cross          (Mystic Doctor)               1926                       Priest, Mystic, O.C.D.
St. Robert Bellarmine        (No Title)                         1931                       Theologian, S.J.
St. Albert the Great           (Universal Doctor)           1931                       Theologian, O.P.
St. Anthony of Padua        (Evangelical Doctor)       1946                        Priest, O.F.M.
St. Lawrence of Brindisi   (Apostlic Doctor)             1959                       Priest, O.F.M.

--Tony Gilles

This theological reflection courtesy of the parishioners of St Paul Catholic Church in Pensacola, Florida: stpaulcatholic.net

THE CHURCH WITHOUT THE TWELVE

The  Age of "Drama" in the Early Church (95 A.D. -- 600 A.D.)

       Since we will speak of a period in the church's life immediately after the apostles (called the "sub-apostolic" period), it might first be a good idea briefly to summarize the concept of "Apostle" before we plunge into the post-apostolic era. This will illuminate the difficulties the first bishops and martyrs experienced trying to figure out in untested circumstances how to step into the Apostles' shoes.  The Greek noun apostolos comes from the verb apostellein ("to send forth"). Note that Jesus himself is called an apostle (Heb 3:1: "Jesus the Apostle and high priest of our religion."). The immediate post-apostolic experience in the church might be thought of as reminiscent of the early United States government after the gigantic leaders Washington, Adams, Jefferson, Madison, Hamilton et. al. had passed away, leaving younger successors on their own in running the country.  The number 12 for the apostolic ministry seems to echo the 12 tribes of Israel, which the Twelve will judge (Mt. 19:28; Lk. 22:30).  The single greatest determinant for apostolic calling is the requirement that true apostles should first have been disciples who had personal experience with the living Christ.  Yet Paul, who had not been a disciple is accepted by the apostles who lived after the Resurrection, apparently because of his experience with Jesus on the road to Damascus and his obvious life in the Spirit as he evangelized in cities where he left functioning, new Christian communities behind him.

     Some scripture scholars doubt that Jesus himself named the Twelve "apostles."  But they do not doubt that Jesus himself chose the Twelve as those whom he "sent forth" to spread the gospel. There are somewhat mysterious figures named as apostles, namely, Barnabas (Acts 14:14), who seems to have shown up out of nowhere, and the utterly unknown figures Andronicus and Junias (Rom. 16:7, "well-known apostles" who served before Paul). The apostle's vocation is summed up as follows: He proclaims the risen Lord.  He is the bearer of Tradition.  He holds an office which pertains to the entire Church.  He appoints other officers, but not other apostles.  He is, in short, the basic constitutive element of the Church. It is obvious why such tasks and duties could not survive the Apostles on their respective deaths.  However, the apostolic office as the basic constitutive element of the Church could not end without the Church itself ending.  Hence the Church preserved apostolic power in other officers, and apostolic succession in the preaching within the Church's apostolic Tradition. 

       The first Bishop of Antioch (if the apostle Peter was not such person) was St. Ignatius of Antioch (35-107),  who called himself Theophoros ("bearer of God").  He was arrested and hauled off to Rome by ten Roman guards for martyrdom in the Colosseum.  Along the way from Antioch to Rome he both wrote letters to Christians in the cities he was carried through (or neighboring cities) and preached short sermons in seven cities, begging the congregations not to deprive him of martyrdom by intervening for him with pagan authorities. He carried forward authentic apostolic teaching by insisting on both the divinity and humanity of Jesus.  He also stressed that the life of Christ is carried forward in the Eucharist, which he called "the bread that is the flesh of Christ; this flesh which has suffered for our sins."  It was Ignatius, in the year 105, who gave the new Church its full name -- namely, the Catholic Church.  He emphasized that a key element of the Catholic Church was its preservation of Christian unity in the Empire. He preached that the safeguard of this unity was the office and person of the bishop. He proclaimed that the bishop was "as the Lord," and stressed that without a local church's submission to its bishop neither the Eucharist nor marriage could be celebrated.

       It would be true to say that the life of early Catholicism was a dramatic age, both for the surviving Apostles and after the twelve Apostles had all died.  By "drama" we mean that the life of the church was both electrifying and nerve-shattering, with early Christians constantly facing overwhelming, overpowering attacks by Roman authorities and ordinary Roman citizens. It was in the face of this force of destruction that motivated Christians in Rome to create secret catacombs as temporary hiding places, and as burial chambers for those martyred. This age of drama, as far as the church was concerned, was that non-Christian society, or the clear majority of the population, had become a serious problem for the church, beginning especially with the third pope after St. Peter, namely, St. Clement of Rome.

(First there was St. Peter, then Linus, then Cletus, then Clement, who was bishop of Rome from 80-101 A.D.). During Clement's tenure, beginning especially around 95 A.D., the church -- aside from trying to spread the gospel in the face of hideous persecutions by the Romans -- became involved in internal confrontations (i.e.,quarrels within the church) about all sorts of things that had never occupied the thoughts or actions of the twelve Apostles or of St. Paul and other early letter writers. The reason for the initial threat to the newly spreading church, insofar as its original place in Roman imperial society was viewed, could be traced to the fact that the authors of the New Testament had not intended their writings to be academic philosophy or scientific history. Yet, the ruling, elitist Roman citizenry were by and large raised and educated in an intellectualist and philosophical way of thinking and living.  Further, the powerful sense of historical authenticity acquired by the  Romans during the roughly 700 years of their existence meant that the majority of Roman citizens conducted themselves toward members of the upstart, parvenu church with murderous persecutions as well as with derisive insults and slandering of Christians and their religious practices. The average Roman citizen regarded Christian believers as if they were on the cultural level of what we might today call "carnival performers." Worse still, Christians were routinely designated as "cannibals," because of their emphasis on the Eucharist as the center of their worship and doctrine

          

       The church's bare survival in the face of this uttermost rejection by Rome's state-sanctioned and civilian abuse often created at times and in various places a great risk for Christians simply to become known publicly for their faith. This generality held true until Constantine became Emperor in 312 A.D. (more about him below). The post-apostolic bishops' developing dilemma during the first three centuries of the church's life without the Apostles' hands-on leadership produced what was a threatening, risky lifestyle for Christians, characterized by the dread and anxiety of arrest, torture and death. Christians' day-to-day existence among the majority Roman population was threatened by militant antagonism. The one saving grace of this period for Christians was that they struggled heroically -- to their deaths if need be -- to have their world-view accepted as the only valid one. Frequent martyrdom strengthened the faith of all Christians.  Martyrdom of course called forth faith from those about to be murdered, and word of the death of a Christian hastened to intensify a struggle between faith and fear for those still living. Yet, Christians nonetheless preached and practiced the singular validity of their faith.  The opportunity to do this presented itself when a small minority of Roman scholars began to write favorably on Christian practice and doctrine.  These Christian scholars began to compete with Roman scholars on their own intellectual level.

     Slowly and eventually Christians' life in this pagan Roman society -- little by little -- attracted Roman citizens to the church.  A principal reason for this was that Roman scholars and intellectuals had to confess that they were bored and cynical, sick and tired of the emptiness that pagan culture produced. They started to take a deeper look at Christianity.  With this development Christianity took on a bit of an academic air -- something which pacified many of the Church's enemies. Christian scholars came forth from Roman academia and began to write treatises in opposition to traditional Roman thinking -- treatises that were every bit as profound and erudite as the writings of the best Roman thinkers. Abstract, speculative Roman philosophy might have fed the minds of the Roman intellectuals, but this philosophy increasingly lost its hold on the intellectuals' souls. The growing prestige of the writings of Christian philosophers and intellectuals, incorporating truths of the gospel, caused a growing number of Roman scholars to succumb to the numbness created by the sterile demeanor of Roman philosophy. This was true especially as the Roman scholars began to look closely at their own life of sexual immorality and at the overwhelming corruption on the part of their leaders.

         Who were the actors in the drama of the early church?  First, strong political leaders, which in the days of the early church meant the Roman Emperors, some of whom, like Emperor Gallienus (260-268), toned down persecution of Christians, while yet others, such as Diocletian (284-305) increased it vigorously. 

Second, various Christian philosophers and theologians, some of whom were laymen and others priests or bishops, wrote and circulated treatises or letters among an increasing network of local churches summarizing how they thought particular Christian doctrines should be defined. Third, the early post-apostolic church was home to heretics, who themselves were sometimes priests and bishops. Heresy, was the formal denial or doubt by heretics of any defined doctrine of the Catholic faith. Their opponents in church offices believed the heretics cleverly discredited significant positions taken in the New Testament by apostolic writers such as the four Gospel writers, St. Paul and other scriptural letter writers. Arguments between Christian and pagan scholars, or arguments among Christian scholars, tended to become vitriolic and acrimonious,  

      As just one example of the hostility flowing back and forth from one disputing proponent of certain Christian beliefs to another, take the example of St. Jerome.  The faults of Jerome's character and temperament were many and obvious.  He was a great scholar and saint, however, not because of his tempestuous irascibility, his bitter sarcasm and self-conscious arrogance, but in spite of these things.  He tried to have himself appointed as the successor bishop of Rome, but became enraged when he was passed over by the Christians of Rome. He left the city for good for Bethlehem, where he began to translate the Bible into Latin.

However, when he quarreled with other Christian scholars he could write vitriolic letters to his opponents. One example is a letter he wrote to an opposing scholar named Rufinus, starting his letter with the cheerful salutation, "To Rufinus, not a man, but a dog that returns to its own vomit, Greetings."  Yet, no one thought Christians were free of sins and faults, especially when intellectuals like Jerome, despite his peppery disposition, nonetheless greatly advanced the cause of the gospel.  After all, he gave us the Vulgate Latin translation of the Bible that lasted into the 20th Century. "Vulgate" meant common, popular, intended for the average literate believer.  Had Jerome not spent most of his time on biblical scholarship, it is doubtful that entire generations of Christians would ever have had any contact with the pages of Scripture.  The Holy Spirit used Jerome in spite of the fault lines in his personality.

     When persecutions lessened after the reign of Diocletian, arguments between Christian intellectuals gradually increased. This was because with decreasing arrests and persecutions toward the year 300, Christian scholars grew stronger in publishing their writings with their names attached. In this atmosphere reciprocal heretical writings (disagreements among Christians over core Christian doctrines) at times became a central element of drama in the early church. Those leaders of the church who disputed with heretics tried to find some way to summarize in depth and detail the errors of the heretics, and turned to letter-writing to do so. Their letters often took on the character of something that came to be called "Rules of Faith," or Creeds, that is, summaries of doctrine attempting to settle conflicts between authentic Christian scholars and leaders and those who were found to be confirmed heretics. However, the problem with attempting to put Creeds into letters was that letters did not reach a wide enough audience to squelch heretical teaching throughout the entire world of the early church -- as we shall see in more detail shortly. For the moment, let us give an example of an early creedal statement by quoting from Pope Clement's "Letter to the Corinthians," in which, Clement, writing roughly around the years 96-98 A.D. corrected misbehavior among members of the church in Corinth and then closed with a mini-Creed setting forth a doctrinal summary:

 The Apostles received the gospel for us from the Lord Jesus Christ; and Jesus Christ was sent from God.  Christ, therefore, is from God, and the Apostles are from Christ.  Both of these orderly arrangements, then, are by God's will.  Receiving their instructions and being full of confidence on account of the resurrection of our Lord Jesus Christ, and confirmed in faith by the word of God, they went forth in the complete assurance of the Holy Spirit, preaching the good news that the Kingdom of God is coming.

       This creedal "canon" (as numbered paragraphs in creeds were called) in Pope Clement's letter obviously instructed the Corinthians on an important point of authentic Christian doctrine.  However, his letter was something that was intended for, and kept by, only the Corinthians. There were a number of these creedal letters sent out among the early Christian communities by bishops and theologians, but it took a major and widespread heretical movement finally to inspire an "Ecumenical Council," that is a gathering of most bishops of the church speaking as a joint body of leaders who were able to take the Council's Creed back to their local churches.  In this way, more than just a small number of local churches were instructed on a vital matter of doctrine affecting all of Christendom. To enter into the deliberations of the first and perhaps greatest early ecumenical Ecumenical Council -- namely, The Council of Nicaea of 325 A.D. -- we must now turn to the influence on church doctrine inspired by the Roman Emperor, Constantine, whose mother was St. Helena. In 312 A.D. Constantine solidified his sole grip on the Empire after defeating his rival in the western part of the empire in a battle for sole control of the entire Roman Empire. Constantine achieved this sole control after having a vision of the "Labarum," an intersecting "X" and "P," or the first two letters of "Christ" as written in Greek (Chi and Rho, XP, or in English, "ChR"). 

In his vision, Constantine also saw the Latin words, "In hoc signo vinces," meaning, "By this standard conquer."  Sure enough, Constantine, after being greatly swayed by the four words of his vision, defeated his rival and became sole emperor. From that moment on Christianity became the "favored" religion of the Empire, but not the "official" religion.  Emperor Theodosius I (379-395) in 378 created a Roman empire based on orthodox Christian doctrine as official state religion well after Constantine's death. Constantine knew nothing about the Christian gospel, although his mother continually tried to bring him to a lasting conversion and had much success, given Constantine's total ignorance of religion in general and Christianity in particular.  Constantine, having ousted his rival in the western empire, next decided to attack his rival in the eastern part of the Empire.  He was successful, and thus by 324 had joined together the two halves of the Empire under his domination. 

       As an all-important dictate for the first ecumenical council, later to be held in 325 in the important eastern city of Nicaea, Constantine decided to move his throne to the east, to the Greek city of Byzantium, which the emperor would  re-name after himself in the year 330 -- as "Constantinople."  Constantinople's name would be changed again much later, this time by the Moslems in 1453, who named the city Istanbul (as it still is today). An issue that would be vitally important for the future of church councils in the east -- which Constantine, and not bishops, presided over -- is this: Did Constantine ever actually convert to Christianity?  He was not another St. Paul, that is, he did not make a sudden life-changing acceptance of Jesus as Lord. He was a pagan through and through, and it took him twenty-five years after his military victory in 312 for him to come to a true understanding of the gospel.  Hence, in the year of his death, 337, he was baptized as a truly believing Christian.  During the quarter century leading him to his baptism there is no doubt that the emperor had become a sincere Christian.  However, before his baptism, he saw himself as the leader of the bishops who met at Nicaea to resolve the Arian heresy (as we will get to beginning in the next paragraph).  At Nicaea he announced vociferously that he was "a bishop of God," and this announcement, to his mind, meant he was a greater bishop then the ecclesiastical bishops attending and debating at the Council of Nicaea.

     It was a tricky matter for the bishops at Nicaea to put up with Constantine's imperious running of the Council.  The bishops would have been crazy had they appointed someone like Jerome to chastise the emperor for being no "bishop of God" but an outright phony. Instead it fell to the true leader of the Council, St. Athanasius (296-373), to discuss with Constantine in as humble and meek a way as possible in order to persuade the emperor to let the true bishops run the Council instead of the "bishop of God."  Whatever Athanasius said to Constantine, and however much he had to bend over backwards to avoid offending him, Constantine was somehow persuaded by Athanasius not to control the decisions made by the bishops of the Council. Actually, Constantine didn't really recognize the doctrinal controversies under discussion by the bishops at the Council . The emperor saw the Council simply as a means of bringing political unity to his eastern empire and under his firm control. Thus he never interfered in doctrinal discussions, which for him were literally written in a foreign language (Greek, instead of Constantine's mother tongue of Latin). In the eventual Nicene Creed, the bishops apparently kowtowed to Constantine by "congratulating him" on the scholarly gloss he put on the Creed. The emperor of course believed this apple-polishing foolishness, as he had literally nothing to do personally with the language of the Creed. Yet, as the "bishop of God," he apparently felt that God had led him to come to some sort of acceptance of the wording -- a very fortunate result for the church.  It is still fortunate for the church today. Through the centuries, the church has not had to call the Nicene Creed the "Creed of the Bishop of God."  Incidentally, there were probably 318 eastern bishops in attendance at the Council, but only 5 western bishops. The reason for this was twofold ; (1) It was dangerous travelling from the Latin west to the Greek east because by this time barbarians from northern Europe threatened the principal roads formerly controlled by Rome running from the west to the east.  (2)  While Pope Sylvester I (314-335) in Rome had a hazy idea of Arianism and was opposed to it, the heresy did not penetrate the Latin church in the west as it did the Greek church in the east.

       Therefore, the Council of Nicaea eliminated, for the time being a spreading and powerful heresy namely, the heresy ofArianism. Let us look now at the priest, Arius (250-336), and "his" heresy, as named after him.  Arianism inflicted on Christian dogma as held by the eastern bishops a heavy burden, as he gained many Christian followers, including bishops and priests. Arius was born probably in Libya. He was ordained a deacon of the Diocese of Alexandria, Egypt, by St. Peter, bishop of Alexandria (300-312).  However, Bishop St. Peter later excommunicated Arius for his membership in a schismatic and heretical group named the Melitians. Upon the death of Bishop St. Peter, he was succeeded by Bishop Achillas of Alexandria (312-13), who ordained Arius a priest of the Diocese of Alexandria and then made Arius pastor of Baucalis, a principal church of the diocese.  Arius was a gifted preacher (as is useful for a heretic) and also an ascetic, prompting many Christians to hold up his fasting and sacrifices as proof that his doctrinal views must be accurate. Under the next bishop, Bishop St. Alexander of Alexandria (313- 328), Arius openly championed the heresy of Subordinationism. 

This heresy taught either (1) that the Son is subordinate to the Father -- or (2) that the Holy Ghost is subordinate to both Father and Son.  Arius, and his followers who accepted Subordinationism, did so, they said, because they considered that the orthodox doctrine of the Trinity compromised monotheism.  The heretics believed that their position was backed up by Scripture, namely Jn.14:28 ("You heard me say to you, 'I go away, and I will come to you.'  If you loved me, you would have rejoiced, because I go to the Father; for the Father is greater than I.'")  Arius made many converts to his position, but he was excommunicated by Bishop St. Alexander of Alexandria in 321. Bishop St. Alexander decided to communicate what he had done to the leading theologian of the west, Bishop Hosius of Cordova (257-357), who acted as Emperor Constantine's ecclesiastical advisor. 

       Constantine ordered Hosius to Alexandria to investigate the controversy between Arius and  Bishop St. Alexander. Based on Hosius' report to Emperor Constantine, the emperor summoned the Council of Nicaea in 325, and it is thought by some historians  that the emperor appointed Hosius to preside over the Council. This may have been true, but it was obvious that one western bishop, Hosius, could not sway the large number of eastern bishops in attendance to any particular theological conclusion, even if he understood their argumentation in Greek. Five years before the Council had convened, that is, in 320, Arius had written a snide and contemptuous letter to Bishop St. Alexander explaining his (Arius') conception of the Trinity and arguing for the bishop's acceptance of this conception. Arius' Trinity was made up of a Monad and a Dyad.  The Monad is the Father, while the Dyad is composed of His two most glorious creatures, the Son, who is less than the Father, and the Holy Spirit, who is less than the Son.  Further progressions of Arius' heresy made matters worse throughout the Greek church.  These subsequent developments were recorded by the Church historian Sozomen as follows:

The Son of God was created out of non-being, there was a time when he did not exist, according to his will he was capable of evil as well as virtue, and he is a creature and created.  The Son who is tempted, suffers, and dies, however exalted he may be, is not equal to the immutable Father beyond pain and death; if he is other than the Father, he is inferior. Before the Son was begotten or created or ordained or established, he did not exist.  If the Father begat the Son, he that was begotten had a beginning of existence; hence it is clear that there was when he was not.  It follows of necessity that he had his existence from the non-existent.

                        

       The bishops at the Council of Nicaea responded to Arius' heresy by attempting to produce a document, based in Scripture, that would declare without reservation, without exception, that the Son is not a creature.  But, as we all know,biblical texts are subject to multiple interpretations, and the Arian supporters were certainly not lacking in skill to present theirs. The problem for the anti-Arian bishops at Nicaea was that the Bible nowhere says "The Son of God is one in

being with the Father, and he was not created in time, but eternally begotten."  St. Athanasius, only a deacon at the Council -- later bishop of Alexandria -- argued for a Creed that clarifies what the Bible says about the Son's relationship to the Father. There were three Greek definitions considered by the bishops to produce the Creed which St. Athanasius championed: (1) They could have said the Son was homoiousious, or of like substance [or reality] with the Father, (2) that the Son washomoios, or like the Father, or finally, (3) that the Son was homoousios, of the same substance [or reality] with the Father. In the end the bishops followed St. Athanasius' lead and chose the third alternative.

       The word homoousios, i.e.,of the same substance with the Father, is a philosophical concept that is not found in the Bible, but nowhere in the Bible is there a word which so precisely defines the core Christian doctrine of the Son's equal divinity to the Father.  This was a case where philosophy came to the assistance of revelation, with the Holy Spirit continuing to clarify Church doctrine well after the Gospels were written.

Conclusion:  How is the homoousios doctrine used in Catholic liturgy? Homoousios has received various translations over the years for the time during Mass when the faithful recite the Creed or the Profession of Faith.

Originally the homoousios doctrine was used literally, that is the faithful recited in the Creed at Mass that the "one Lord Jesus Christ" is "of the same substance as the Father."  Later, the homoousios doctrine was translated so that the "one Lord Jesus Christ" was said to be "one in being with" the Father. As of this writing, the homoousios doctrine is translated for the Profession of Faith at Mass so that the "one Lord Jesus Christ"  is said to be "consubstantial" with the Father.  However the Church's magisterium chooses to translate and use the homoousios doctrine, we can be assured that the faith and insight of those bishops at Nicaea in 325 A.D. heard the Holy Spirit speak to them correctly. Today it's "consubstantial" that is used for our English Profession of Faith in stating the relationship of God the Son to God the Father.  The important thing is to reflect on what we are saying in the recitation of the Creed at Mass. As for me, I'm "consubstantial," that is of the "same reality" with what the bishops who wrote the Creed of Nicaea -- long-tested, marvelously struggled over and faithfully passed down to me -- accomplishes.  Gratefully, and in adoration to the eternal Son of God who is of the same substance as His divine Father, let us close this discussion.

--Tony Gilles

Fundamentalism -- What Every Catholic Needs to Know

Fundamentalism is a psychological distortion of various fundamental truths based on narrow, overly literal, rigid and inflexible interpretation of such truths -- whether they are religious, political, scientific, intellectual or historical in nature. A fundamentalist interpretation of the written doctrines underlying and defining these truths focuses on a purely verbatim, word-for-word construction of surface expression rather than by embracing the comprehensive, underlying, broad and universal meaning intended to be given to these doctrines by those who originally composed them.

While this essay will concern itself with religious fundamentalism, the narrow, unimaginative interpretation given by fundamentalists to any theoretical, abstract framework of ideas has, over the centuries, tended to restrain the freedom of thought and expression of many noble-minded, honorable and virtuous systems of thought. For example there have been fundamentalist politicians, whether liberal or conservative, who distort the very ideology which they claim to promote. And the case of Galileo Galilei, whose forward-looking scientific discoveries suffered at the hands of Catholic Church officials, demonstrate both scientific and religious fundamentalism.

Fundamentalism is a universal problem in all religions. Wherever die-hard and tenacious adherence to doctrine for its own sake exists, there exists a fundamentalist. This is so whether the fundamentalist is Protestant, Catholic, Jewish or Muslim. Because fundamentalism is not really a doctrine in itself so much as a way of looking at doctrine, it is not possible to make a clean distinction between "us versus them" (i.e., non-fundamentalists versus fundamentalists). Yet, we are probably accurate to say we have seen an abundance of Muslim fundamentalists in our recent age, such as the Ayatollah Khomeini, religious ruler of Iran in the late-20th Century, who literally interpreted the Koran, shaping it to his own narrow viewpoint, all in the name of God, by preaching, for example, that Islam taught a thief's hand must be cut off (or even an alleged thief's hand). However, my thrust herein will be with "Protestant Fundamentalism," which I put into quotation marks because Protestants are by no means largely fundamentalists. Yet, because my focal point will be how fundamentalism mostly affects Catholics negatively, I will make an overly broad generalization by calling such anti-Catholic fundamentalists "Protestant" fundamentalists, with apologies to the vast majority of Protestant Christians who are accepting of Catholicism.

Fundamentalist Tendencies; The Code of Slogans: Legalism: Although fundamentalists constantly reiterate their belief in salvation by faith and not by law, the essential characteristic of fundamentalism is its legalism. The Bible is used by fundamentalists as a law book, which they turn into a revised list of nothing but Scripture passages that sound good in terms of their preconceived beliefs about their superiority to other religious beliefs and their hostility toward bothersome contrary passages in the Bible that sound heretical, such as all passages favorable to Catholicism. These passages making fundamentalists superior to everyone else account for their belief about their possession of God as their personal property and everybody else's belief in biblical passages the reading of which sends roughly 90% of the rest of the world straight to hell.

This number is large because 100% of `Catholics are sent 100% straight to hell, and thus Catholics turn the damnation curve sharply upward. We shall call this fundamentalist selection of Scripture passages that give them a sense of their superiority the fundamentalist "Code of Slogans" The Code of Slogans connotes fundamentalists' concentrating on only a small portion of Bible verses and their refusal to accept all other passages in the Bible, namely, those that disturb them. An example of one of their favorite rejected passages is Mt. 16:18, where Jesus tells Peter he is the rock upon which Jesus will build his church and Peter will have "the power to bind and loose." Thus, exactly like a lawyer in a court case who picks out all the cases that -- more or less -- (actually "less)" support his client's position, hoping if he drums these cases into the jury's minds powerfully enough, using all sorts of histrionics, like pretending to cry and pointing toward heaven for support, the jurors will be absolutely convinced that cases which only "more or less" support the first lawyer's case, especially if adverse counsel, on the other hand, hasn't yet discovered cases supporting his client's position, fundamentalists treat the Bible just like actual law books. And like slick Philadelphia lawyers, fundamentalists argue to the jurors of Christianity that the Bible is absolutely unerring in every single detail, even in those details of science, geography and cosmology which everyone knows to be inaccurate.

The fundamentalist legalistic use of the Bible leads to their legalistic theology. Hence, there is a certain body of acceptable beliefs to which one must adhere, or else one is not a Christian. Paradoxically, many fundamentalist doctrines are not found in Scripture, but are part of the "Code of Slogans". For example, nowhere in the Bible does it say that you must accept Jesus as "your personal Lord and Savior." Yet, fundamentalists making Jesus one's "personal Savior," is promoted in order to stress a personal" experience of salvation, which becomes a way of cutting oneself off from organized church life of some sort and giving one bragging rights that he or she has had some higher degree of the experience of a relationship with God (which grows more impressive with each episode of the telling) than people who experience salvation through a hum-drumongoing salvation experience -- in the Body of Christ, or the Church. The next characteristic of fundamentalist legalism is the belief in how one is initiated into fundamentalist Christianity -- namely, by the altar call. Whereas in the early church and even into the 16th Century with the teachings of Protestant reformers, one was universally required to be baptized following a catechumenate of some sort or another. The fundamentalists have turned initiation into Christianity into a flood of people racing down the steps of a football stadium or auditorium to be prayed over by the preacher of the event together with his colleagues. This altar-call initiation brings a more-or less-large number of people forward, down the aisles, depending on how persuasive the preacher's histrionics are. Because of their ignorance of history, buttressed by their legalism, and helpfully persuaded by a young, physically attractive husband and wife team of preachers promising great inner personal power and the coming of wealth into the lives of the altar-call fledgling draftees, altar-call recruits respond to such an extent that they too turn Scripture into their Code of Slogans, the beliefs of which, while quoting Scriptural passages, pervert those passages into a ludicrous fundamentalist creed. For example fundamentalist inductees imitate the elders in the group to which they are directed by declaiming such remarkable nonsense as that at the Last Supper, Jesus and the apostles drank grape juice. Such beliefs violate other important Scripture passages, e.g., at the Wedding Feast at Cana, Mary told Jesus the guests were out of wine and led Jesus to work his first miracle -- by his changing water into wine, not grape juice, for the guests. One presumes the guests drank the wine, as the headwaiter exclaimed to the bridegroom, "[Y]ou have saved the best wine to the last." No doubt, both at the Wedding Feast and at the Last Supper, Jesus himself would have drunk wine, not Welch's grape juice!

The Lunatic Fringe: Here we consider such un-Christian and weird behavior as public street-corner

hollering by fundamentalist Bible Thumpers. Living in a city where the fundamentalists are a major nuisance demonstrates how fundamentalists often verge on lunacy. Consider this monthly gaggle of shouters who presumably scream out Bible passages to motorists. I say "presumably" because no one knows precisely what these bellowing howlers are in fact shouting. That's because the bellowing Bible (or whatever book) ballyhooers have the look of murder on their reddened faces, are sweaty and couldn't be less attractive to anyone, especially to a single woman or a mother with small children in her car, who become understandably anxious and frightened by the stern, uncompromising overall demeanor of the hooters. Hence motorists keep their windows rolled up tightly and stare straight ahead in order to do their best to ignore the starring actors in the overwrought street theatrical performance . The actors' only audience, therefore,are fellow caterwaulers on the next corner of the street. So the public shouting of something or other -- who knows what --- is simply a way for the brainwashed propagandists to proclaim "Look at us; we alone are the true believers, the only ones who have been saved by God, but we have to shout this all over town because we are actually fearful that we are not the only holy elite of God. The louder we scream the more our hidden fears of not being saved are driven deeper into our unconscious minds."

The Fundamentalist Anti-Catholic View of the Bible: Lets run through three common fundamentalist interpretations of Scripture that promise hell-fire, and how Catholics are its principle targets. We'll look at the fundamentalists' anti-Catholic creed and give perhaps the best response Catholics could make to the fundamentalist distortion of Scripture, should a Catholic be so unfortunate as to be button-holed on the street and repeatedly forced to swear allegiance to the Code of Slogans:

(1) First, the be-all and end-all anti-Catholic catch words are "Have you been saved?" This once-saved-always-saved position (a heresy within Catholicism) demonstrates again the fundamentalist belief in the superiority of their "personal,," "insider" position with God. The Bible knocks this mockery of Scripture's position right on its face. St. Paul urges his holy flock in Philippians2:12, to "work with anxious concern to achieve their salvation," i.e., although you may have been baptized and given your lives to Christ, there is still more growth you can make toward your ultimate, end-times salvation. And in Colossians 1:24, Paul says, "I am filling up what is lacking in the afflictions of Christ on behalf of his body, which is his church." Surely Paul had a dramatic moment of radical surrender to Jesus. Yet, he sees his continuing growth toward his ultimate, end-times salvation as requiring a continuation of sacrifice in submission to Jesus before he may be regarded as ultimately saved, with complete finality.

The linguistic tangle here is resolved if we realize that Paul preached justification as the here-and-now moment when someone accepts Christ as one's savior, i.e., justification, not final salvation, was the here-and-now result of accepting Jesus as Lord. Justification sets someone on a sure path to final, end-time salvation. This becomes clearer in Romans 5:9, where Paul says, "Now that we have been justified by his blood, it is all the more certain that we shall be saved by him from God's wrath." If Paul obviously did not believe in or preach a "one-moment-of-salvation" theology, but instead he preached salvation as an ongoing process which Christians continuously appropriate into their lives. Hence "Have you been saved?" is a bogus question for fundamentalists to ask Catholics.

(2) Next is the fundamentalist view that the Virgin Mary had other children beside Jesus. The Bible verse that the fundamentalists distort here is Mk.3:32, where a crowd tells Jesus, "Your mother and your brothers and your sisters are outside asking for you." Here the fundamentalist ignorance of the cultural history of the Jews of Jesus' time is shown. First of all, the early church unanimously preached that Mary was always a virgin. Second, the Jews practiced and believed in the extended family, where the notions of tribes and clans were important. In Jewish society a man could have dozens of brothers and sisters who were not children born of his mother.

The brothers and sisters in Mark's verses were part of Jesus' extended family, most likely his cousins. And since neither Greek nor Aramaic had words for "cousin," the writers of the New Testament relied on the Greek words for brothers and sisters (adelphos, adelphoi) to mean cousins. By this usage Jesus probably also had several uncles, whom he called "fathers" in his extended family.

(3) The preceding fallacy blends into another fundamentalist misreading of Scripture. They love to quote Mt 23:9, "Call No One on Earth Your Father," to depreciate the usage of "Father" for Catholic priests. This title for priests evolved out of the early Church's shared life, where priests called members of their flocks "My children" (1 Jn. 2:1) and where Christians in turn called their priests "Father." Matthew is merely saying that the Father in heaven is available to all of his children by a "direct line" through Jesus himself. This "son-ship" of Christians with God the Father does not depend on a rabbi, priest or minister as substitutes for the Christian's relationship with God the Father through the mediation of Jesus, which early priests as Fathers helped their flocks to facilitate.

--Tony Gilles

Are We Stuck Moving in One Direction?

Despite the sophistication of the modern aircraft carrier, it will never be known as nimble, or highly maneuverable…they just don’t turn on a dime. And that’s because of what they call inertia.

Newton’s law of inertia tells us that a body at rest tends to stay at rest, and a body in motion tends to stay in motion unless acted upon by another force. What that basically means is that it’s hard to get something moving in the first place, and that once it’s moving, it’s hard to stop it, or to change direction. While Newton’s law was meant to be applied to things that have mass and form, think of it for a moment in terms of things like beliefs, or corporations, or institutions, or behaviors…especially behaviors. Think of it in terms of friends; and of families, and of communities. Think of it in terms of relationships. God designed and built us to live in relationships…with Him, with our spouses and children, with our parents and grandparents, with the people around us. It’s no wonder, then, that since the Fall of Adam and Eve, our biggest defect is our tendency towards self-absorption…that interior inertia that makes it so difficult for us to turn away from ourselves, and towards those around us…our husbands and wives, our moms and dads, our kids and grandkids, our co-workers, our fellow parishioners, the widow and the orphan, the hungry and thirsty, the sick and the lame, the imprisoned, the homeless…so difficult to turn away from ourselves, and towards God.

The story has always been the same, and our scriptural readings today poignantly outline for us the problem…and the solution.

The prophet Isaiah was called by God during the decline of the Israelite kingdom; he lived during a time when the people of God were far from Him; unwilling, and unable to turn towards God for help. Isaiah gives us the image of the vineyard that was carefully prepared and planted with the choicest vines. While poetically evoking this image, Isaiah leaves nothing to the imagination at the end: “The vineyard of the LORD of hosts is the house of Israel, and the people of Judah are his cherished plant…” God’s relationship with the Israelites was one of recurrent episodes of betrayal and infidelity. Despite God’s careful tending to the vineyard, all they produced was wild grapes. God never turned away from his people, although at times He stood at a distance; it was Israel that turned away from God. And the harder and faster and longer they turned away, the more difficult it was to turn back…the law of inertia in relationships; and the more they turned away, the more it actually became a turning towards selfish desire. In those dire circumstances, they couldn’t even see God.

In our time and space, this we have come to know as addiction…that state of being where we can’t turn back. We have done the “…oh, one more time won’t hurt anything…” line of reasoning enough times that all we can see is our own disordered desire. It’s almost ironic in a sad sort of way…only God can save us at that point, and He is the very one we have turned completely away from…and that is the experience that we are all familiar with…the experience of sin.

Our responsorial psalm gives us a sense of repentance, and hope…that first step towards recovery: “…Protect what your right hand has planted…then we will no more withdraw from you; give us new life, and we will call upon your name…”

And now in our gospel reading, the story Isaiah started is finished by Jesus. Even though Isaiah and Jesus are separated by some 750 years, the strength of the metaphor is not lost; it is completed. The landowner sent his son. Isaiah has already told us in his prophecy that the owner of the vineyard is the LORD of hosts, God himself…and now as Jesus completes the story, God sends his son. In both Isaiah’s story, and Jesus’ retelling, the landowner has sent his representatives to collect what is rightfully his. What appears to be the fruit of the harvest is actually love, the fruit of relationship. That’s what God wanted from the Israelites; that’s what God wants from us…our love. It’s bad enough that the landowner’s representatives were killed, but when the landowner’s son is killed, the insult and the injury are tragically magnified. The tenants’ depravity, their addiction to self-gratification, their sin, drove them to the point that they could not see what they were doing, or the consequences that would surely follow…and the landowner was left not only with righteous anger, but also the anguish of an unspeakable loss. What a moving description of sin, and its effect on us…and on God! What a moving description of the impact of inertia on our relationships!

“The stone that the builders rejected has become the cornerstone; by the Lord has this been done, and it is wonderful in our eyes.” The inertia of our addictions blinds us, and we reject the stone; we ignore it; we don’t even see it. But God never abandons us; through the death and glorious resurrection of his son, Jesus, he has poured out on us what we need to recover from our addictions, what we need to heal our incurable wounds, what we need to turn away from sin; he has poured out on us the answer to the inertia that impacts all of our relationships…and that is his Grace; and with Grace we can stop what we are doing; we can change our course in an instant. Inertia can only be countered by the application of force, and in the case of our relationships, that force is Grace…and not even the most sophisticated aircraft carrier afloat has access to that…only we do.

Deacon Bill Whibbs

Twenty-seventh Sunday in Ordinary Time Readings
Is 5:1-7
Ps 80: 9, 12, 13-14, 15-16, 19-20
Phil 4: 6-9
Mt 21: 33-43

Catholicism and Islam

There are a number of linkages between Catholicism and Islam. For example, in the Qur'an ("Koran" or the Islamic sacred scripture), Jesus is mentioned in over ninety verses.

There are more references to Mary in the Qur'an than in the Bible. There have been twelve Imams (charismatic leaders) in Islam, occupying virtually the same position as the Twelve Apostles in Christianity. The number seventy-two is likewise shared by the two faiths: For example, Muhammad's grandson, Husayn, led an expedition of 72 disciples into an important controversy with a rival faction, and in Luke 10:1 we find that the Lord appointed 72 disciples to go to every town he intended to visit and report back to him. And both the Virgin Mary and Muhammad's daughter, Fatima, stand as mothering female saints of a central holy family. Both women are considered immaculate and impeccable by Catholicism and Islam respectively.

An important relationship between Catholicism and Shi'i Muslims (but not Sunnis) was started on March 11, 1999, when then Pope John Paul II held an audience in his private library with Muhammad Khatami, President of the Islamic Republic of Iran, the leading Shi'i Islamic country in the world. Keep in mind that Islam is divided into two frequently warring and always hostile factions: Sunnis and Shi'i. The meeting between the Pope and President Khatami established Catholicism and the Shi'i faction as friends and partners in dialogue. The emotion of the moment was emphasized when one of the clerics accompanying Khatami, at the end of the meeting rushed to the Pope, embraced him and kissed him on both cheeks. The cordial contact was furthered when the Pope visited Damascus, Syria in May, 2001, a largely Shi'i city, and was warmly received. The division of Islam into Sunni and Shi'i occurred soon after Muhammad's death in 632, when the two factions became rigidly organized, down to the present day.

Their basic quarrel is over the leadership of Islam by a particular Imam (religious leader, or caliph), and the choice of whether Islam as a religion should adhere to philosophical and theological study or whether it should base itself strictly on law -- shari'a (meaning "the path" or divine will for Muslims). The Shi'i adherents of Islam are more "theological and philosophical" than the Sunnis. The latter depend for the guidance of divine law (shari'a) not on what they call the "weak human reason" of the Shi'i, but solely by reference to the Qur'an and to the traditional practice of Muhammad, "the Prophet" as found in the Hadith or writings.

The Sunnis might be thought of as analogous to Protestants in Christianity, while the Shi'i practice of Islam could be said to correspond to Catholicism. That is so because Christian Protestant evangelical fundamentalists, and the majority of Protestants generally tend toward mistrust of "vain philosophy" whereas the Shi'i have a well-developed philosophy, based not just on the Qur'an but also on the "Traditions", or "Hadith." Sunnis greatly outnumber the Shi'i in the Muslim world: out of 1.2 billion Muslims worldwide (the exact same population as that of Catholics), Shi'i number just 140 million, constituting 95 percent Shi'i in Iran, 70 percent Shi'i in Bahrain, 55 percent Shi'i in Iraq, and much lower percentages in other countries. Shi'i Islam overlaps frequently with Catholicism. One dramatic example was that of the life of the former chief justice of the Pakistani Supreme Court from 1951 to 1968, A.R. Cornelius a devout Catholic, who synthesized Islamic and Catholic values while playing a major role in the development of the Pakistani constitutional system.

When comparing Catholicism and Islam below (whether Sunni or Shi'i) in depth, we will juxtapose a Catholic doctrinal position against either the Qur'an (Islam's sacred scripture) or the Hadith (its traditional spiritual writings). By doing so we find that, even given similarities, there are significant and essential differences between Catholicism and Islam Let's turn to the writings of each faith and see what these material differences are. We will use the following system in comparing and contrasting Catholicism and Islam. "Sura" followed by a number refers to the chapter (one out of 114 total) in the Qur'an where the quotation is found, while "Hadith" followed by a number refers to the place in the collection of Traditions outside of the Qur'an regarding the life and sayings of the prophet Muhammad.

JESUS: (1a) God revealed his nature in Jesus in a way that could be seen and touched (Jn. 20:24-30; 1 Jn. 1-4); (1b) Qur'an Suras 4:157; 5:72-75 Jesus was only a prophet and he did not die on the cross.

(2a) Jesus is the exact representation of God's glory and God's being (Hebrews 1:3); (2b) Jesus Christ is not God and the Holy Spirit is not called God. Hadith: "The Meaning of the Holy Qur'an."

(3a) Jesus will return as king and lord to judge the living and the dead (Rev. 20:11-15); (3b) Jesus will return and judge people by the law of the Qur'an and establish Islam as the true religion (Hadith 4:658; 3:425).

(4a) Jesus died on the cross and took man's sin away (Jn, 1:29; 19:30; 19:40; Acts 13:28-30; (4b) "Peace on me the day I was born, and the day I shall be raised alive! Such was Jesus, son of Mary." (Sura 19:33-34)

(5a) Jesus intercedes for his followers. (Hebrews 7:24-25; (5b) "Let us request someone to intercede for us with our Lord...Jesus will say, I am not fit for this; go to Muhammad." Hadith 8:570.

(6a) Jesus will inflict punishment on those who do not acknowledge God. (2Th. 1:7-8) (6b) "[W]hen the son of Mary descends among you he will judge people by the law of the Qur'an not by the law of the Gospel (Hadith 4:658).

GOD: (1a) Christians believe in one God (Dt. 6:4); (1b) (Sura 5:116.) (Christians believe in God, Jesus, and Mary as three gods.)

(2a) Ananias lied to the Holy Spirit; he lied not to human beings but to God (Acts 5:3-4) (2b) The Holy Spirit is the angel of revelation, Gabriel (Sura 2:253).

(3a) All have sinned and are deprived of the glory of God (Rom 3:213) (3b) Each person is born weak but good and does not need salvation (Sura 4:28)

(4a) Our fellowship is with the Father and with his Son, Jesus Christ (1Jn1:3) (4b) Allah does not have fellowship with human beings

SIN: (1a) Cleanse me from my unknown faults (Ps.19:13) (1b) The Prophet said, If you do not feel ashamed, then do whatever you like (Hadith 4:690.

Post by Tony Gilles