The Year of Living Catholicly

The title of this post refers to my planned New Year's Resolution. I intend to spend next year trying to truly live my Catholic faith. This could be a bigger undertaking than any I have thus far tried.

The idea sort of germinated for me from a few places. One of them being Matthew Kelly's wonderful book Rediscover Catholicism. In it Kelly declares that one of the major reasons for so much of life's problems being a largely listless, Godless world. A world seeking, but not knowing what to truly seek.

Another germination point for me was the realization that I want my kids to grow up as more than Cafeteria Catholics I want them to understand the Why's and How's of our faith.

After a recent difficult patch at work, I really turned to the Lord and the Saints. I knew I needed help to break past the things that were holding me back. I wasn't meeting my weekly production standards and didn't know where else to turn. I started a novena to the Sacred Heart, and to St. Joseph, and I started just praying to Therese of Lisieux. It worked I suddenly started exceeding my standard and doing much better at work.

I never do manage to pray nine nights in a row on my novenas, the weekends come and I am always too tired or distracted to say my prayers. That's a bad thing it is one of the things I want to fix.

So I have been developing a five point plan: Rosary, Fasting and Abstinence, Mass, Confession and Scripture.

I plan to start saying the Rosary, at least once a week for starters, with an intention to increase the number of days I say it.  I picked the Rosary because I know it is a devastating weapon in the Holy war those of us in the Church Militant are engaged in. I didn't want to just commit to a certain amount of time in daily prayer I wanted a meaningful prayer life.

I am going to return to the proper tradition of fasting and abstinence on Fridays, in honor of the Lord's Passion. I might just be an "early adopter" here as there is wind that Cardinal Dolan as head of the USCCB might just return all US Catholics to the proper Friday rules. Bully for him I hope he does.

As for Mass I don't think my work schedule will allow me to make daily Mass too often, but I need to desperately improve my overall attendance. I also am going to (for the first time ever) make it to Mass for all of the Holy Days. After all why shouldn't I pay proper reverence to my creator. Besides frequent reception of Communion will help strengthen me for the rest of my plan right.

Confession is good for the soul they say right. Well I know mine always feels better after a visit to the "Sin Bin". Confession can be a very nerve racking experience. But it is so nice to walk out afterwards, perform your penance and know that the Lord loves you and forgives your misdeeds.

And the final point in my plan, I'm going to knuckle down and read the Bible. The whole thing. I made good headway a couple years ago but this time I'm going to do it. I will also try and push through the Catechism too.

I figure if I can do all of that, not only will I be a better Catholic, I will probably be a better husband and father, too. Which isn't a bad thing since baby number three is on the way. I should probably brush up on my husbanding and fathering.

If I can find a few spare minutes each week I intend to sort of post a weekly report card as I go... Gives me a year's worth of weekly blog posts right.

Tying Up Some Loose Ends....

In recent posts I wrote a defense of  Transubstantiation and showed some writings from Ignatius of Antioch. It occurred to me today that the two dovetail nicely into a third topic. That topic being the idea that one of Catholicism's bedrock claims for Transubstantiation relies on John 6. Ignatius was a student of John's and he was so blatantly Eucharistic in his thinking so clearly a defender of the Real Presence that that should speak volumes to us about the topic.


Now if John was the last living apostle (tradition says he was), and one of his students teaching from one of his texts says that we are to take Christ literally in the account of the Bread of Life Discourse (Jn. 6:48-70); wouldn't he (John) have done something (written something against Ignatius, counseled others that he (Ignatius) was "off the reservation", something, anything).

It stands to reason it's not like the early church was free of disagreement or that the Church Father's didn't know how to call someone out for teaching what they thought was heresy. I mean I realize this was a couple hundred years later but just look at how St. Jerome hands Rufinus his ass:

"I have learned not only from your letter but from those of many others that cavils are raised against me in the school of Tyrannus, "by the tongue of my dogs from the enemies by himself" because I have translated the books Περὶ ᾿Αρχῶν into Latin. What unprecedented shamelessness is this! They accuse the physician for detecting the poison: and this in order to protect their vendor of drugs, not in obtaining the reward of innocence but in his partnership with the criminal; as if the number of the offenders diminished the crime, or as if the accusation depended on our personal feelings not on the facts. Pamphlets are written against me; they are forced on every one's attention; and yet they are not openly published, so that the hearts of the simple are disturbed, and no opportunity is given me of answering."

So clearly church fathers knew how to disagree. Now returning to the topic at hand, men of goodwill can and have disagreed mightily about the Lord's words in John's Gospel as well as other passages Catholics proclaim as teaching the Real Presence; however if a student of the last living apostle was already that far afield how can any of us proclaim the Truth, unless of course that was Truth.

After all John was (to borrow from the six degrees of separation idea) one degree from Christ; ergo Ignatius was only two. Now if someone two degrees from Christ was preaching, teaching and expounding on the idea that He was fully, truly present in the Eucharist. If that wasn't the catholic view, then when did such heresy began and take such root to be the Catholic view.

After all if Christ couldn't maintain His promise to lead us into all truth (Jn. 16:13) or that the Gates of Hades wouldn't prevail against His church (Matt. 16:18). Then He also failed to be with us always even unto the end of the age (Mt. 28:20).

After all Ignatius was as I said living mere decades after Christ and he taught a Real Presence. If that was false then, it would still be false today. However as we see in John 6:55. Christ promises to raise us up on the last day if we "eat His flesh and drink His blood."

ChurchFathers.org has a great selection of quotes from the Early Fathers discussing the Eucharist and the Real Presence. Some of which have been mentioned in this space before.

And if you missed Joe's recent post at Shameless Popery about the Early Church remaining silent in the face of this "heresy" check it out.

Another great post of recent vintage is this one from Brantley over at Young, Evangelical and Catholic.

So if this is such a grave heresy, where is the evidence? Has that big, evil, monolithic Catholic church merely destroyed it all in order to maintain power? Is it hidden in some wing of the Vatican Archives, or could it maybe, just maybe be that Catholics have held the same view for lo, these 2,000 years because the Apostles handed that view on and succeeding generations maintained it as part of the Deposit of Faith.

Bless Me Father, For I Have Sinned....

Even if you know nothing about the way Catholics practice reconciliation you have surely heard the title phrase in movies and TV. I didn't use to be a fan of the Sacrament of Confession, but that has changed lately. There is something to be said for the squeaky clean feeling of one's soul after receiving the grace of the sacrament.

Protestants think Catholics are almost sacrilegious in how we make our confession, but in truth the whole process is soundly rooted in the Bible. Perhaps the best one stop shopping answer as to why Catholics go to confession is found in John 20:19-23. Jesus appears to the apostles after the Resurrection and sends them forth as the Father has sent Himself. We know from Matt. 9:6 and Mark 2:5 that the Son of Man was given the power to forgive others their sins, ergo it follows that Jesus is giving the apostles that same power.

And how will they know whose sins to forgive if those sins aren't told to them? Many times in the Gospels as Jesus works his healing he starts by forgiving people's sins, often that in itself is the necessary cure for the person freeing them from their malady.

Jesus gave that same power to his apostles. In addition to commissioning them to preach the Gospel (Matt. 10:5-10), govern the church (Matt. 16:16-20, Luke 22:29-30) and make it holy through the sacraments, especially the Eucharist (John 6:54, 1st Cor. 11:24-29).

Let's take a look at some Old Testament passages that seem to contradict Catholic teaching and see how they in fact compliment it nicely. In Isaiah 43:25, we see that it is God that forgives sins, as an aside Catholics don't deny that God is the efficient cause of forgiveness we just see that he is merely working through his priests to do so. Evidence of God using a priest in the cause of forgiveness can be seen in another Old Testament passage Leviticus 19:20-22 shows a penitent sinner seeking forgiveness by the priest sanctifying his offering.

Jesus is the High Priest of the New Covenant (Heb. 7:22-27) you say. The one mediator between God and man (1st Tim. 2:5). Indeed He is those things. But are we not all called to mediate in Him to one another. When we share the Gospel are we not mediating in the one true Mediator. Now 1st Peter 2:5,9 demonstrates that we are all by virtue of our baptisms called to be "A Royal Priesthood," but that doesn't remove the ability that Jesus gave to his priests, the apostles, that they in turn handed down to others perform the sacraments.

But what about James 5:16, it merely says to confess your sins to one another, why do we need to go through a priest? First off to take just that one verse removes the context of that which came before it. Let's look at James 5:14-16 as a whole.

St. James implores his readers if they are sick to call on the elders of the church to receive laying on of hands and prayers (Extreme Unction or the Anointing of the Sick). Now he says if he has committed sins they will be forgiven. He starts verse 16 with the word therefore, linguistically tying it back to the verses preceding it and thus making the idea of confessing your sins to one another mean that you should confess them to the elders (presbyters, from which we get the word priest).

Perhaps the most interesting point regarding the sacrament of reconciliation come from St. Paul in his second letter to the Corinthians. in 2 Cor. 2:10 we see him say "What I have forgiven, if I have forgiven anything, has been for your sake, in the presence of Christ."

A packed statement to be sure. It gets even more packed when you unpack it and look to the Greek. The Greek word used for presence is prosopon, the Latin word persona comes from it. Interestingly the KJV Bible usually translates the passage as "In the person of Christ," or in Latin In Persona Christi. That is important insofar as that is how a Catholic describes the work of a priest. They act in the Person of Christ.

Now if you are Catholic you have a few days before Easter to examine your conscience and follow the Church's guidelines by confessing your sins during the Lenten season. Do it. It will make you feel better. If you need an examination of conscience to get started check this one out.

If you aren't Catholic I hope this post has helped you to see the very Biblical basis for the sacrament.