New Evangelizin'

Audio of Council 13112's January FGO. Similar to this blogpost.

Right or Wrong

January 2014 FGO by Bro. Jason Rhoad

I have given ample space over the past couple of years to the “faith” side of “faith and morals”. I have discussed Marian doctrines, the mass, the sacraments, Papal infallibility, etc. and have attempted to explain why we believe what we do concerning these topics, ultimately tying it all back in to the teaching authority of the Church. But there is another side to the authority of the Church that I have not spent much time on in the past. So I figured we’d start the New Year off with a quick lesson on the role of the Church concerning matters of morality. Given recent events in popular culture and the fact that we as a society seem to be heading farther and farther down the path of moral relativism, now is as good of a time as any.

The question here is this: How do we know right from wrong? Some things may seem obvious to us. For instance, most would agree that it is wrong to murder someone in cold blood. (Notice I say most, as it is practically impossible to reach universal agreement on just about anything). But many things are not quite so obvious. Is it wrong to invest in a mutual fund that owns stock in companies that provide funding to the abortion industry? Is it wrong to stay in a hotel that offers adult movies as part of their television service (try to find one that doesn’t these days). There is a much larger discussion to be had here concerning formal vs. material cooperation with evil and immediate vs. remote material cooperation, etc., but while important, I don’t have the time or space to get too deep into that in this piece. Instead we’ll have to keep it a little more general. The point is these situations and others like them, raise many questions that we need to be prepared to answer. Not so much in a debate, but in our own Christian walk, trying to live each day doing the things God wants us to do and avoiding the things He wants us to avoid. So what does the Church teach concerning the morality of particular actions (or inactions)? How’s this for an answer: It depends. The fact of the matter is that the Church hasn’t, and really can’t, tell us what is right and wrong in every conceivable situation. Of course on the big things like abortion, euthanasia, etc. the Church does weigh in on specific issues, but often times in our walk, things seem to be much grayer. Therefore, the Church gives us some general guidelines to help us out. A good rule of thumb (and this is not from the CCC, just some good parenting from my Dad that stuck with me all these years) is if you have to wonder whether or not something is right or not, it’s probably not. In more formal language though, the rightness or wrongness of an action depends on both the ends and the means. Now this is counter cultural. We’ve all heard such sayings as “the ends justify the means”, or “all’s well that ends well”. What the Church teaches us is that in order for an act to be considered just or moral, both the ends and the means must be good, not just one or the other. Here is an example. St. Rose parish needs renovations that will cost $1 million dollars. Parishioner John Doe embezzles $1 million from his company and donates it to the parish. Well the end is good, but the means was not. Therefore the action is immoral. Or perhaps a more practical example. It may be possible to research and maybe even find cures for diseases by creating and destroying human embryos to harvest their stem cells (though there is no evidence for it, but for the sake of argument), therefore killing the embryo in the process. Even if a cure for some disease was found, we can’t justify the creation of life for the purpose of killing it, even if killing it might help someone else. The end cannot justify the means. The bottom line is that we can never do evil in order to do good. But even that has a caveat. There is something known as the principle of double effect. If our primary intent is good, but a secondary effect is that something bad will happen, it can still be morally justifiable because our intention is to do good. For instance, if during a pregnancy, it is discovered that the mother has uterine cancer, she can have surgery to treat that condition. A secondary effect of that surgery may be that the baby is lost. In a situation like that, the surgery is morally justifiable because the primary effect is to treat the cancer. It is not the direct, intentional, willing termination of the pregnancy.

It is easy to see how this can get a little complicated. That tends to lead to another common error that people make in regards to morality. You may have heard this one. “It is a matter of conscience.” While technically true, what people often mean is that they intend to openly defy the teaching of the Church concerning this or that issue of morality because they have to “follow their conscience” instead. It is true that we are obligated to follow our conscience. Our conscience is given to us by God to help us discern right from wrong. But what people often leave out is our responsibility to form our conscience rightly. A well-formed conscience will never lead us to do something immoral. So the key then is to form our consciences correctly. The way we do that is by listening to the teaching authority of the Church. That is what this comes down to. Our humble recognition that we do not have all the answers. That life gets complicated and messy. That we are blinded by sin. So thanks be to God that we don’t have to rely on our own subjective feelings about things. We can have confidence that God has given us the Church, with His promise of protection from error, to help to guide us in the moral and spiritual life. The same way we can know that Christ is present in the Holy Eucharist, we can know that contraception is grave matter, because the Church teaches us so. Furthermore, without the Church to guide us, to layout the principles for us, it would be hard for us when new things pop up that couldn’t have even been imagined centuries ago. Things like human cloning, embryonic stem cell research, in vitro fertilization, etc. would be up for grabs morally speaking. But by applying the Church’s teaching on the respect and dignity of all human life, we can come to know that these things are not morally justifiable. Without that compass, it is up to each individual to decide for themselves, the very definition of relativism.

The world increasingly tells us that there is no such thing as objective truth. What might be wrong for you, is right for someone else. Therefore we should live and let live, not judge or condemn, etc. While it might not be surprising to encounter this in the secular world, it is alarming when we see it inside Christianity. There are denominations out there that refuse to condemn abortion or same sex marriage. Even inside the Catholic Church, we have many Catholics who seem to think it is okay to pick and choose which moral teachings we like and pay no attention to the ones we don’t. If we’re honest, most of us are probably guilty of this in some form or another. It is part of our fallen human condition I suppose. But as we set sail in 2014, let us resolve to do a better job of not falling into that trap and instead humbly follow Jesus and his Church. In the words of St. John the Baptist, let us decrease so that Christ may increase.

Die Schutzmantel Madonna

Audio of the FGO at the December 12 Business Meeting of Council 13112.

Audio material is drawn from this post; and this one.

Multiplication vs. Transformation

Audio of the FGO from Council 13112's November business meeting, based on this text.

The Holy Souls

November 2013 FGO by Bro. Jason Rhoad:

 

 

The month of November is dedicated to the holy souls in purgatory, so I thought it would a great time to go over what the Church teaches about this doctrine. It is safe to say that purgatory is perhaps one of the most misunderstood and most often challenged teachings of the Church. Even among Catholics, it is a source of confusion.

 

Let us begin by explaining what it is not. Purgatory is not a second chance. It is not somewhere we can go after we die that gives us a second chance to be saved. At the moment of our death, we will face our particular judgment and we will know immediately what our eternal destination will be. Purgatory is also not an eternal third place where people go who are not good enough to go to heaven, but not bad enough to go to hell. At the end of time when Christ returns and time gives way to eternity, purgatory will no longer exist. Only heaven and hell will remain.

 

So what is purgatory then? The Catechism of the Catholic Church explains it this way "purification, so as to achieve the holiness necessary to enter the joy of heaven," which is experienced by those who die in God’s grace and friendship, but still imperfectly purified" (CCC 1030). This purification is necessary because scripture teaches us in Rev 21:27 that nothing unclean shall enter heaven. Yet we know that we are all sinners and sin is incompatible with heaven. Therefore we must be perfectly purified after death, but before entering heaven. The Church gives the term purgatory (from the root word purge) to explain this process of being purified after death.

 

One of the common objections against this teaching is that the Catholic Church invented the doctrine later on. The only trouble with that is that the objectors can’t agree on just when that occurred. In fact, any date that is proposed for its invention can be debunked by pointing to evidence of its teaching earlier than the proposed date. It is true that the term “purgatory” may not have appeared right away, but that has no bearing on the belief that is behind the term. The Church was teaching about final purification after death and the need to pray for the dead before the word purgatory came to be used to describe this reality. Nor does the fact that the word is not in the bible have any bearing on whether or not the teaching is present there. For instance, the words bible, trinity, and incarnation are not in the bible either. But all Christians agree that their underlying truths are all there, even if better words to describe those truths weren’t used until later.

 

The fact of the matter is that prayers for the dead go back to the earliest of Christian times. The writings in the catacombs of Rome dating to the 1^st and 2^nd centuries clearly show that the early Christians were employing this practice. If the deceased were in heaven, they would need no prayers and if they were in hell, no prayers could help them. All throughout the early centuries of Christianity, we see evidence of this teaching. For instance, in the 4^th century, we see St. Monica asking her son Augustine to offer masses for her soul once she dies.

 

Another key piece of evidence that this teaching goes back to the earliest of Christian times is the fact that at no point do we ever see protests against it. We know that the early church and the church throughout the centuries certainly challenged new teachings. They wanted do know if a teaching was something that was believed by their ancestors or if it was made up later on. Was this something handed down from the Apostles? Surely purgatory would have been considered a big time change if it had not been believed from the beginning. Yet, we see no protests. It was not uncommon for councils to be called to settle disputes like this. But we see absolutely no evidence of dispute at all.

 

But what about the bible? Is purgatory scriptural? This can actually lead to a larger discussion about the fact that nowhere in the bible does it say that everything to be believed and practice has to be explicitly taught in the pages of scripture. But even so, the answer is yes, purgatory is indeed scriptural. In Mt 12:32 Jesus refers to the sinner who will not be forgiven in this age or in the age to come. This implies that one can be freed from the consequences of their sins after death. Also in Mt 5:26, Jesus refers to the sinner who will not be released until he has paid the last penny. Perhaps a clearer reference to this reality comes from Paul in 1 Cor 3:15. Here we see Paul describing the day of judgment and how ones works are tried after their death. What happens to the righteous man if his works don’t pass muster? “He will suffer loss, though he himself will be saved, but only as through fire.” This loss can’t refer to hell because no one is saved there. And he can’t be in heaven because there is no suffering (fire) there. So where is this man? The Catholic doctrine of purgatory is the only thing that explains this passage.

 

We know too that belief in prayers for the dead pre-dates Christianity. The Jews also practiced this before the time of Christ. We see in 2 Maccabees 12:43-45 a direct approval of prayer for the dead: “"In doing this he acted in a very excellent and noble way, inasmuch as he had the resurrection of the dead in view; for if he were not expecting the dead to rise again, it would have been useless and foolish to pray for them in death. But if he did this with a view to the splendid reward that awaits those who had gone to rest in godliness, it was a holy and pious thought. Thus he made atonement for the dead that they might be freed from this sin.”

 

This verse so clearly teaches the doctrine of purgatory that at the time of the reformation, the reformers removed this book of the bible from their version of scriptures in order to avoid believing in the doctrine. It is clear that purgatory was a teaching that has its roots in the OT and was believed in from the earliest of Christian times. The Catholic Church did not add this teaching at some point in its history. Rather, it was the Protestants who changed on this doctrine that had always been believed by Christians and by Jews before them. So armed with this knowledge, let us not forget our brothers and sisters in purgatory. The church triumphant in heaven, the church suffering in purgatory, and the church militant here on earth are all one church. We should always then, especially during the month of November, remember the holy souls in purgatory in our prayers and in our acts of penance. One day, if we persevere and leave this world in God’s friendship, it will be us who will want and need the prayers of those still on earth to aid in our purification. So let us never cease to offer ours for those there now.

Lazarus and the Rich Man . . . and us

October FGO by Bro. Jason Rhoad of Council 8123 in Hartsville.

A recent Sunday Gospel reading told the story of Lazarus and the rich man. We are all familiar with it. Lazarus was the poor man who was lying by the door of the rich man. The rich man ate well each day, while Lazarus would have been happy to get the scraps that fell from the rich man’s table. Lazarus dies and is carried by angels to the bosom of Abraham. When the rich man dies, he is in torment. We then see an exchange between the rich man and Abraham where the rich man pleads for mercy and then asks for help for his brothers so they don’t end up where he is.

 There is so much in this Gospel passage. What I want to focus on is perhaps one of the main and most obvious (but perhaps most overlooked) lessons in the story. That is simply that both men died. In fact, the line that struck me the most was “the rich man also died and was buried”. It is almost an afterthought, spoken in a very matter of fact way by Jesus after he had just told what happened to Lazarus when he died. The point that is made here is that no matter what, we all die, and then comes the judgment. It doesn’t matter if we eat sumptuously each day and dress in fine linens, or if we are poor and eat scraps, we all die. One of the formulas used on Ash Wednesday helps us to keep this fact in the front of our minds, “remember man that thou art dust, and to dust you shall return”.

I’m reminded of a story from the life of St. Thomas More, the great English martyr from the 16^th century. He refused to sign the oath acknowledging King Henry VIII as the head of the Church in England. He was arrested and put in the tower of London. While imprisoned, the Chancellor Thomas Cromwell came to visit Thomas to try to convince him to sign the oath. He did so for political reasons, not because he had any interest in saving Thomas’ life. Cromwell knew how well respected More was in England and that if he would sign the oath, many in England who had reservations about the King’s newly self-ordained position would likely capitulate. Cromwell was the opposite of Thomas More. He had lied and manipulated his way to his position as Chancellor. More refuses to sign the oath of course and as a last ditch plea Cromwell tells him how foolish he is because this will cost him his life. Thomas then tells Cromwell, “the only difference between you and I, is I’ll die today, and you tomorrow”.

 To me, that this is the central message of this Gospel passage. No one gets out alive. We will all die and face judgment. Even if we are blessed with 100 years of life on this earth, it’s nothing. That is like a blink of an eye in the context of eternity. Jesus clearly teaches us in this parable that how we treat our fellow man, not how much or how little we have, has much to do with our eternal destination. This flies in the face of the message the world sends us in today’s culture. The message that says, “he who dies with the most toys wins.” Jesus clearly shows us in this parable that that is simply not the case.

 Shifting gears just a little, I always like to try to tie in Church teaching when I can. We can see in this passage some evidence in support of a doctrinal teaching of the Church concerning purgatory. We assume that Lazarus is in heaven and the rich man is in hell. But is that necessarily the case? Can souls in hell communicate w/ those in heaven? No. Yet we see the rich man conversing with Abraham. Perhaps Lazarus and Abraham are not in heaven, experiencing the beatific vision, because Christ has not yet died, opening the gates of heaven. The righteous were sometimes referred to as being “in the bosom of Abraham”, just as Jesus refers Lazarus as being in this passage. But there is still no evidence that those in hell could talk to those in the bosom of Abraham. So is it possible the rich man is somewhere other than hell? There is no Church teaching on this, so I don’t want to give the impression that the Church uses this passage as support for its teaching on purgatory, but the rich man does something rather interesting that may be a clue that he is not in hell. He makes intercession for his brothers who are still alive. Can someone who is in hell intercede on behalf of others? No. So is it possible then, that the rich man is in purgatory? We can’t say for sure, but we can say that there must be a 3^rd place. Communication can’t take place between heaven and hell, so therefore there must be a “place” or state of being in the afterlife that is neither heaven nor hell. That is clearly demonstrated in this parable from Jesus.

This is one of my favorite Gospel passages. It is so rich with lessons for us. I’d encourage you to go back and read it again to see what may be waiting there for you to discover. I love the last line, “If they will not listen to Moses and the prophets, neither will they be persuaded if someone should rise from the dead.” How many people today remain unconvinced, even though someone did rise from the dead? One day we too will rise from the dead and our resurrected bodies will join our souls in heaven or in hell. We have Moses and prophets. We have more than that as well. We have Jesus and His Apostles and all the saints throughout the ages. So we have even less excuse than the rich man. So pray then that we might persevere to the end and when our time comes we be carried by angels to join with Lazarus in the Kingdom of heaven.

Catholics on the Road to Emmaus

FGO from 13112 Business Meeting on October 8, 2013. It's based on this article, although the content is adjusted for time and an adult audience.