Encyclical Letter Lumen Fidei

ENCYCLICAL LETTER
LUMEN FIDEI
OF THE SUPREME PONTIFF
FRANCIS
TO THE BISHOPS PRIESTS AND DEACONS
CONSECRATED PERSONS
AND THE LAY FAITHFUL
ON FAITH

29 June 2013

1. The light of Faith: this is how the Church’s tradition speaks of the great gift brought by Jesus. In John’s Gospel, Christ says of himself: "I have come as light into the world, that whoever believes in me may not remain in darkness" (Jn 12:46). Saint Paul uses the same image: "God who said ‘Let light shine out of darkness,’ has shone in our hearts" (2 Cor 4:6). The pagan world, which hungered for light, had seen the growth of the cult of the sun god, Sol Invictus, invoked each day at sunrise. Yet though the sun was born anew each morning, it was clearly incapable of casting its light on all of human existence. The sun does not illumine all reality; its rays cannot penetrate to the shadow of death, the place where men’s eyes are closed to its light. "No one — Saint Justin Martyr writes — has ever been ready to die for his faith in the sun". Conscious of the immense horizon which their faith opened before them, Christians invoked Jesus as the true sun "whose rays bestow life". To Martha, weeping for the death of her brother Lazarus, Jesus said: "Did I not tell you that if you believed, you would see the glory of God?" (Jn 11:40). Those who believe, see; they see with a light that illumines their entire journey, for it comes from the risen Christ, the morning star which never sets.

READ THE ENTIRE ENCYCLICAL

Our need to separate how from why

This thought, prompted by an email, despite it's conciseness, is worth a blog post rather than a Facebook status update. It's something I can't wrap my mind around: How can someone seriously assert that everything happens for a reason while simultaneously denying the existence of God?

Implied by the modern atheistic assertion that there is no God is the belief that everything happens for precisely no reason, that is, everything is accidental and without an underlying "reason." The implications that flow, in turn, from that assertion are horrifying. This is true whether you move in a determinist or non-determinist direction.

In a world godlessly conceived everything happens for no reason, or, to play a bit of a semantic game, nothing happens for a reason! Either way, why are we so intent on always looking for the reasons that things happen? Such curiosity is part of the structure of human consciousness. I believe that in order to make sense of this we must separate "reason," what we might call final cause, from efficient cause. This is merely to recognize the difference between how and why.

To illustrate this point I'll use something that pops up pretty regularly on FB, which is from Aaron Sorkin's show Newsroom: "I only seem liberal because I believe that hurricanes are caused by high barometric pressure and not gay marriage." This is to confuse how with why, to make a category error. It is this kind of smugness that short-circuits our human quest every bit as much as what it seeks to refute, perhaps even more.

I, too, believe that hurricanes are naturally caused and that earthquakes are the result of plate dynamics. But when an earthquake hits Haiti, or a tsumani swamps a lowly-lying South Pacific country the day after Christmas, or endangers a nuclear power plant in Japan, my questioning goes deeper than merely "How?", but extends to "Why?" This is what makes "Why?" the most human of all questions. We might even say that our need to ask "Why?" is constitutive of our humanity.

As to the why, we need to seek answers in a deeper way, which does not mean taking it upon ourselves to inflict God's punishments on the world, but in the way David Bentley-Hart, writing from an Eastern Orthodox perspective, sought them in the wake of the 2004 tsunami in his book Doors to the Sea: Where Was God in the Tsuanmi? Bentely-Hart takes on the cognitive dissonance that follows such an event, prompting, as they do, the question, How can an all-powerful and all-loving God be reconciled with evil and natural disaster?

As Rich Mullins, who was only a ragamuffin songwriter, lamented in his song "Hard to Get": "I know it would not hurt any less/Even if it could be explained," but only after acknowledging, "I know you bore our sorrows/And I know you feel our pain." At least from a Christian perspective, the former is more important than the latter, as the sacred author of the Letter to the Hebrews passed along: "Because he himself was tested through what he suffered, he is able to help those who are being tested" (2:18).

An unfocused reflection on liberty and freedom

I have to admit that I find it difficult to wax poetic about Independence Day this year. While I don't consider myself an alarmist, I do not see the state of our union as being a good, healthy state. At a fundamental level I think this is due to the fact that we have collectively come to hold not only distorted, but destructive, views about liberty and freedom. It seems to me that we are collectively regressing to a kind of societal adolescence.

Liberty and freedom are not synonymous. Far from being an exercise in pedantry, this is an important distinction. One of the greatest problems in our society is the inability to make important distinctions. Liberty is the condition of being able to exercise one's freedom in peace without undue interference. It was precisely undue interference, which impeded freedom, that caused the colonies to declare independence from Great Britain. Our declaration was collective, not individual, which is important. One cause of destructive distortion is forgetting, or, more to the point, obstinately refusing to remember, seeking to situate ourselves always in an ahistorical moment. This is why tradition, what Chesterton dubbed the democracy of the dead, matters so much.

At the beginning of our second reading for Mass last Sunday we heard, "For freedom Christ set us free" (Gal. 5:1). Christ is our liberator, the One who makes us free by making possible the forgiveness of our sins so that we are not condemned on the basis of our own unrighteousness, that is, our inability to make ourselves righteous, but are justified by His. Nonetheless, St. Paul went on to note that we should not use freedom as an excuse to do evil and that living by the Spirit, as opposed to being subjected to the yoke of the law, does not mean doing whatever I want, whatever my flesh (not to be conflated with my body- though sins of the flesh are enacted with our bodies) bids me do. In another place Paul wrote,

"Everything is lawful for me," but not everything is beneficial. "Everything is lawful for me," but I will not let myself be dominated by anything. "Food for the stomach and the stomach for food," but God will do away with both the one and the other. The body, however, is not for immorality, but for the Lord, and the Lord is for the body; God raised the Lord and will also raise us by his power (1 Cor. 6:12-14)

True freedom is freedom for, not freedom from. Freedom for fulfilling the end for which I exist. Fulfilling the end for which we are made presumes that there is an end for which we are made, this is what is meant when we discuss the need for a transcendent conception of the human person. Otherwise, as philosopher Alasdair MacIntyre has chronicled, especially in his book After Virtue, things tend to devolve to what he termed "emotivism."

Take the word "equality" for example. As Cardinal Camillo Ruini, recently stated in an interview, "Equality understood as the negation of all difference is something that goes against reality."

Last Independence Day I re-posted something I wrote about the fact that our constitutional system is rooted in a transcendent view of the human person (see "Constitutionally transcendent redux"). This is evident at the very beginning of our nation's seminal document, which if the Constitution is the foundation, serves as the cornerstone, the Declaration of Independence: "When in the Course of human events, it becomes necessary for one people to dissolve the political bands which have connected them with another, and to assume among the powers of the earth, the separate and equal station to which the Laws of Nature and of Nature's God entitle them, a decent respect to the opinions of mankind requires that they should declare the causes which impel them to the separation."

"Nature and Nature's God" as the source of human equality strikes me, indeed, as a very Biblical, that is, a uniquely Christian idea, derived from the teachings of Christ and of His apostle St. Paul. Take this passage from Paul's Letter to the Galatians: "For all of you who were baptized into Christ have clothed yourselves with Christ. There is neither Jew nor Greek, there is neither slave nor free person, there is not male and female; for you are all one in Christ Jesus" (3:27-28). What is the apostle getting at here? Is he really saying that human beings are not different from one another? No. He is saying we are equal in dignity and status, that the baptized are all children of God through Christ. How can I say this? Look at St. Paul's Letter to Philemon, in which he urges Philemon to welcome his escaped slave Onesimus, who was also a Christian and who had run away to join Paul, back and not punish him. While this does not constitute a ringing endorsement of slavery, it is a case where Paul certainly recognizes the distinction between slave and free in one sense, even while reminding Philemon that because he and Onesimus, along with Paul, were brothers in Christ and children of the Father.

Freedom, if it is true and good, is subject to nature, which is a way of being subject to God, even without explicitly professing faith. Cardinal Ruini was absolutely correct when he observed, "We are fooling ourselves if we think we can banish nature with a personal or collective decision of our own." It is one thing to be tolerant, respecting another's freedom demands this, as does charity. It is another thing entirely, the abdication of liberty that leads to a violation of freedom at a fundamental level, to be forced to approve a recognition that is contrary to reality, especially in the name of love. I will end by letting His Eminence field that one too:

_______________________________________________________________________________
Q: The battle for equality feeds on emotional reasons. There is an idea of love that goes beyond the differences of gender, of the distinction between man and woman. It is love that makes itself an institution and a perfectly equal right. Is this an irreversible decline?

A: Love is a beautiful word, but it can have many meanings. States cannot, evidently, command or prohibit that one person should to love another, and in this sense the laws cannot directly concern themselves with love.

They can and must, however, seek to regulate in the way most useful and most in keeping with reality the behaviors that are born from love but have a public significance.

Year C Thirteenth Sunday of Ordinary Time

Readings: 1 Kgs 19:16b.19-21; Ps. 16:1-2.5.7-11-10; Gal 5:1.13-18; Luke 9:51-62

Our readings today both pose and proceed to answer the question, What does it mean to follow Jesus, to be His disciple? We see this illustrated vividly in the our first reading, taken from 1 Kings, in which, obeying the command of God, Elijah comes to Elisha, who is at work plowing his field, and confers upon him the prophetic mantle. He does this literally by placing his cloak over the younger man’s shoulders. Quickly discerning what this meant for his life (i.e., that he had to leave everything and everyone in order to place himself completely at God’s disposal by becoming Elijah’s disciple), Elisha asks if can go and kiss his Mom and Dad goodbye. Elisha’s request is reasonable. We might even say it is a good request. Nevertheless, Elisha’s request provokes a strong rebuke from the old prophet, who, apart from Moses, figures perhaps most prominently among people from the Old Testament, appearing along with Moses at Jesus’ Transfiguration, in fulfillment of the prophecy given by Malachi that before the Messiah appeared, Elijah, who was taken up to heaven in the chariot of fire (2 Kgs 2:8-14), would return (Mal 3:23-24).

Once again, quickly discerning Elijah’s meaning (there is a reason God commanded Elijah to anoint Elisha… as prophet to succeed” him [1 Kgs 19:16b]), Elisha leaves the prophet, slaughters his twelve oxen, chops his plow to bits and uses the wood and the oxen meat to host an impromptu farewell barbecue of sorts, to which he invited his entire village. After the grand meal, “Elisha left and followed Elijah as his attendant” (1 Kgs 19:21).

I am tempted to simply leave matters there because it would be difficult to find a better illustration of what Christ calls us to do in today’s Gospel. It is always tempting to tell stories about stories in an effort to reduce Christ’s radical call to our own measure. But I think it is useful to look at our second reading, from St. Paul’s Letter to the Galatians, which helps us to see that following Jesus is the supreme act of freedom. It is important to note that our Christian conception of freedom is freedom for, not freedom from. Among other things, this means that freedom is not an end in itself, the mere multiplication of choices, but must be oriented toward the truth, otherwise our freedom enslaves and may ultimately damn us. This is what the apostle meant when he wrote, “For you were called for freedom, brothers and sisters. But do not use this freedom as an opportunity for the flesh; rather, serve one another through love” (Gal. 5:13).

It is important to note that when St. Paul wrote about “the flesh” he was not referring euphemistically to “the body.” When he wrote about the body we read the word “body.” When the apostle wrote about “the flesh,” he was referring to those sinful tendencies and habits, those dead-end alley ways we tend to keep walking down, or desiring to walk down, which often involve our bodies.

St. Paul went on to write, “if you are guided by the Spirit, you are not under the law” (Gal 5:18), which is a variation on something he wrote in his Second Letter to the Corinthians: “for the letter brings death, but the Spirit gives life” (2 Cor. 3:6b). It is important to point out that Spirit and law are not mutually exclusive, as is commonly supposed, but mutually reinforcing.

To act according to the spirit of the law is not to disregard the law, to ignore it, to dispense myself from it, or even to dispense others. When it comes to living our Christian faith, it certainly does not mean imposing it on others, or even imagining that it is imposed on us from the outside. No! Living the Spirit of the law requires discerning why it was promulgated in the first place and then it has to do with my intention, with why I obey it. The answer to both questions is love. Obeying out of love is the only way for my righteousness to exceed “that of the scribes and Pharisees” (Matt 5:20). What oppose one another, the apostle states explicitly, are Spirit and flesh, which is why even when I endeavor to live according to the Spirit “[I] may not do what[ever] [I] want” (Gal 5:17), but only what is good for me according to the teaching of Christ through His Church.

Lest there remains any doubt in your mind that it is impossible to be an accidental disciple of Jesus Christ, let’s turn to today’s Gospel, which is chock full of relevance for the circumstances we currently face.

In the synoptic Gospels, that is, in Matthew, Mark, and Luke, from the beginning of His public ministry, Jesus only goes to Jerusalem once, which is why in our Gospel today the sacred author tells us that Jesus “resolutely determined to journey to Jerusalem” (Luke 9:51). It seems that initially instead of taking the well-trodden path from Galilee in the north, east across the river Jordan, then re-crossing it prior to reaching Jericho, which sits east of Jerusalem, at the foot of the mountain, thus avoiding contact with the unclean Samaritans, He desired to pass through Samaria. So, He sent messengers ahead to facilitate His journey. But because He was a Jew headed to Jerusalem the people of the first Samaritan village would not welcome Him.

Somewhat understandably, this caused Jesus’ disciples to take great offense. James and John, who in St. Mark’s Gospel the Lord calls bonanerges (Mark 3:17), which means “sons of thunder,” ask Jesus if He wants them to “call down fire from heaven” and destroy the unwelcoming village (Luke 9:54). Jesus not only demurs, but rebukes them for suggesting such a thing (Luke 9:55). This is followed by series of would-be disciples approaching Jesus only to be told by Him the unrelenting demands of belonging to Him, which reaches its culmination, thus bringing us back full circle to Elijah and Elisha, when someone approaches the Lord and says, “I will follow you, Lord, but first let me say farewell to my family at home” (Luke 9:61) It is very likely that Jesus had the episode of Elijah calling Elisha at the behest of God in mind when He responded by saying, “No one who sets a hand to the plow and looks to what was left behind is fit for the kingdom of God” (Luke 9:62).

My dear brothers and sisters in Christ, I presume you are here today because you have heard the Lord’s call in your own life. I urge you today to take stock and see what is calling you back, causing you to look behind the plow, and to commit to doing whatever you need to do to follow Jesus without reservation, to be His disciple, especially in a world, in a society that so badly needs prophetic witnesses to “the bright light of truth” (Collect for Thirteenth Sunday of Ordinary Time). Being a prophetic witness means living according to the Spirit and not the flesh, not using freedom as an excuse to do evil, as well as being willing to suffer for the truth.

"... And failed me in biology..."

For a lot of reasons Thomas Dolby's "Blinded Me with Science" is our Friday traditio. Besides the obvious contemporary reasons for choosing this song is the fact that summertime always puts me in mind of my formative years, the early 1980s. So, to W.O. and the all-the-rest, Cheers!

It's poetry in motion
She turned her tender eyes to me
As deep as any ocean
As sweet as any harmony
Mmm - but she blinded me with science
"She blinded me with science!"
And failed me in biology

"Pentecost is the condition of the birth of the Church"

It is not the hallmark of being a Christian to fear what comes my way by means of reality. Nevertheless, like many people, I often find myself being scared by what happens, both to me personally and in the world in general. Fear easily leads to fear-mongering, which I define as the attempt to whip-up fear in others over the same things that cause me to be afraid. This is why today and every day I must pose the question to myself, "In what, or, more specifically, in whom, do I place my hope?" This is my safeguard against becoming a victim of circumstances. I have to do this while keeping in mind the fact, which can only be learned through experience, that "perfect love casts out fear" (1 John 4:18).

Moving to the elephant in the room: How should yesterday's Supreme Court rulings shape the witness of the Church? The best answer I have seen so far is by Dr. Russell Moore, who serves as President of the Southern Baptist Convention's Ethics and Religious Liberty Commission. In a post entitled "How Should Same-sex Marriage Change the Church's Witness?," he addresses reality very forthrightly, instead of wallowing in the mire of self-pity and recrimination, by writing, "Same-sex marriage is headed for your community. This is no time for fear or outrage or politicizing. It’s a time for forgiven sinners, like us, to do what the people of Christ have always done. It’s time for us to point beyond our family values and our culture wars to the cross of Christ as we say: 'Behold, the Lamb of God who takes away the sins of the world.'" Even if you live in a state that does not grant legal status to same-sex unions, or, as in my state, one that constitutionally defines marriage as being between one man and one woman, you will still have friends, neighbors, co-workers and perhaps even fellow parishioners who are homosexual, or have people who are close to them who are, go to states that grant legal status to committed same-sex relationships and return "married" to live in their native states.

Prior the foregoing remarks Dr. Moore commented on the Church's often inadequate witness:

Following Jesus will mean taking up a cross and following a hard narrow way. It always does.

If we’re going to preach that sort of gospel, we must make it clear that this cross-bearing self-denial isn’t just for homosexually-tempted Christians. It is for all of us, because that’s what the gospel is. If your church has been preaching the American Dream, with eternal life at the end and Jesus as the means you use to get all that, you don’t have a gospel that can reach your gay and lesbian neighbors—or anyone else for that matter

Beyond all of that, I want to get a bit more fundamental and look at the nature of the Church, which is often reduced to an institution with competing existential interests, a player among worldly players. In his address to open the Synod of Bishops last Fall on the New Evangelization, Pope Benedict noted, "the Church is the method with which Christ communicates Himself in time and space, analogously to the fact that Christ is the method with which God chose to communicate Himself to men for their salvation." Hence, in my view, any Christian response to circumstances must be firmly rooted in this reality, which means it cannot be a fearful reaction. In the same address, Pope Benedict went on to speak of how belonging to the Church means being just fine with always beginning anew:

we cannot make the Church, we can only announce what he has done. The Church does not begin with our “making”, but with the “making” and “speaking” of God. In the same way, the Apostles did not say, after a few meetings: now we want to make a Church, and that by means of a constituent assembly they were going to draft a constitution. No, they prayed and in prayer they waited, because they knew that only God himself can create his Church, that God is the first agent: if God does not act, our things are only ours and are insufficient; only God can testify that it is he who speaks and has spoken. Pentecost is the condition of the birth of the Church:... God has spoken and this “has spoken” is the perfection of faith but it is also always a present: the perfection of God is not only a past, because it is a true past that always carries in itself the present and the future

In the West we live in what has been described as a post-secular society, which is most certainly an increasingly post-Christian society. The Church has, for better or for worse (in my view there are elements of both), lost its privileged place. In "secular" times the Church and state were separate, but there was enough of a societal consensus on matters, like marriage and sexuality, that the Church spoke with a voice to which most had to pay heed. Further, it seems that when the Church Herself began to be unfaithful to the Truth, which began to occur during the societal revolution that shook the West in the late-1960s, it squandered its credibility, which squandering has led to things like the HHS mandate and now the beginning of the radical re-definition of marriage. In light of this, it seems that perhaps the most important question is, Can I bear witness to the Truth living in a society and culture that is indifferent at best and hostile at worst? Having lived through some of this already as a bishop, I think Pope Francis is well-equipped to show us the way.

Marriage: seeking to ecclesially clarify

This is a slightly updated and even corrected version of a previous post I put up back towards the end of May. In light of today's two Supreme Court rulings I read back over it. As I did so, I noticed that I did not make a clear enough distinction between natural and sacramental marriage, or make an attempt at explaining how the two relate to what the Catholic Church is able to consider as a marriage. My hope in posting this is not to add to the already disheartening and poisonous invective, driven by emotion, being engaged in by people on both sides of this debate, sadly this includes even Christians who hold differing views concerning today's rulings.

About a month ago I read something written by a Catholic who made the following argument: Since the Catholic Church is not opposed to the civil marriages of non-Catholic men and women (Examples: two Methodists, a Presbyterian and an atheist, a Baptist and a Sikh, perhaps not exhaustive, but you get my point), which, according to the person making the argument, the Catholic Church does not recognize as sacramental and so are not legitimate marriages, the Church should not be opposed to the civil union, contracted under the auspices of the state, but not recognized by the Church, of two people of the same sex.

If this were the case, it would be a fairly compelling argument, as well as the misguided and uncharitable denial of "marriage equality" that the author asserts it is. While I firmly believe that the argument was made it good faith, as with the Pope Francis redemption flap, it reveals an incomplete understanding of how the Church expresses Her understanding of marriage.

It is certainly true that any Catholic who marries outside the Church is not in a sacramental marriage due to the fact that s/he is canonically obligated to be married in the Church, unless s/he has requested and been granted a dispensation from canonical form by his/her bishop. As Archbishop Sheehan of Santa Fe noted in a pastoral letter back in April 2011, one that stirred up a lot of emotion, Catholics who are not married in the Church "cannot receive the Sacraments, with the important exception of those who agree to live chastely ('as brother and sister') until their situation is regularized. Of course, those in danger of death are presumed to be repentant."

But the marriage between two non-Catholic Christians, a man and woman, is presumed to be sacramentally valid, while a marriage between a non-Catholic Christian and a non-Christian, or between two non-Christians is presumed by the Catholic Church to be merely valid marriages, but not fully sacramental. The latter is what canon law calls "natural marriage," which is the lawful union of a man and a woman from any type of religious background, assuming there are no other impediments, like previous marriages for one or both parties, marrying within degrees of consanguinity, or affection (i.e., a woman cannot marry her daughter's husband, even if her daughter is deceased, making him a widower), etc. A natural marriage is prerequisite to entering into a sacramental marriage. In other words, not all natural marriages are sacramental marriages, but all sacramental marriages are natural marriages.

Another kind of natural marriage is when a Catholic marries a non-Christian (i.e., a non-baptized person) in the Catholic Church, such a marriage is valid, but not sacramental. Of course, a dispensation must be requested and granted prior to such a marriage taking place. If/when the non-Christian spouse receives valid Christian baptism, even if not in the Catholic Church, the marriage automatically becomes sacramental.

This is true because, according to the Church's understanding, what constitutes a marriage arises from nature and not from revelation alone. One way this is made manifest is by the fact that one of the fundamental characteristics of marriage (i.e., something that makes it what it is and not something else) is the procreation and education of children (see Canon 1055 §1).

As Ryan Anderson frequently notes in his writing about the vital importance of marriage for society (see his article "The Big Same Sex Marriage Lie"), it is the prolific nature of marriage that gives the state an interest in supporting it and extending certain privileges to married couples. As with all such privileges, the state imposes certain responsibilities. As I mentioned in my previous post, today's Supreme Court ruling with regard to DOMA simply extends these privileges to same-sex couples who were married in states that recognize these unions on par with marriage (i.e., states that have enacted laws or judicial rulings to that effect).

Even when a non-Christian who was formerly married to a non-Christian becomes a Catholic and wishes to have this marriage (which almost always has to have already been civilly dissolved by means of a divorce) declared null by the Church, it is not done by means of submitting a formal petition to the appropriate marriage tribunal, but by means of a Pauline Privilege rooted in 1 Corinthians 7:15. Hence, it is a privilege extended and so no investigation into the possible validity of the marriage is even attempted. However, if either party to the previous marriage was a baptized Christian, even though neither was a Catholic, a formal petition must be submitted.

There are also some particulars about when a married couple is received into the Church together not needing to convalidate their marriage that demonstrate this too.

Among the grounds on which an an annulment can be granted is an intention on the part of one or both spouses not to have children. As is sometimes the case, a non-Christian who was previously married to another non-Christian and who now wants to marry a Catholic, but does not desire to receive baptism, the previous marriage must be proven to be invalid before it can be declared null, thus freeing the non-Catholic party to marry. This is done by means of submitting a formal petition, which is the same procedure a Catholic who was married to another Catholic in the Catholic Church must submit to in order to be free once again to marry. Of course, such petitions are not automatically or always granted. If a marriage proves to have ever been valid, it is always valid.

I realize there is an irreducible degree of complexity involved in understanding what the Church teaches on marriage, but I hope what I have written here is clear enough to show that the argument I am seeking to refute is an invalid conclusion because it is reached on the basis of a faulty premise, namely that the Catholic Church views the civilly sanctioned unions of non-Catholic men and women as invalid (i.e., not real marriages). While it is certainly less offensive than the argument for so-called same-sex marriage on the basis of interracial marriage, it is still a bad argument.

I am not interested in debating what the Catholic Church teaches. In this post my only intention is to objectively explain it to the best of my ability and to defend it against attempts at distortion. Given the complexity of canon law, which arises from more than a millennia of jurisprudence and development, and the fact that I am not a canon lawyer, I am certainly open to correction and clarification by those who are more qualified.