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letters from our readers
Modesty in church
Editor: I’ve not had the good fortune of visiting the Vatican, but the information is that certain areas are restricted to all whose attire is below the standard of modesty and reverence. Furthermore, no individual or group would entertain a thought of a private or semi-private audience with the Holy Father, dressed in shorts, tank-tops, or other unsuitable apparel. In any event it would not or could not happen for obvious reasons. Similarly, one would expect that Our Lord present in the Blessed Sacrament would at least receive the same respect in our churches.
I suppose invincible ignorance could be claimed for many of the increasing numbers who approach and receive Holy Communion, even daily, dressed in the most outrageous fashion. However, if this be the cause, it appears that church-going Catholics have a lock on this affliction.
In my experience I have been approached on numerous occasions by Jehovah Witnesses. Never have I met one wearing shorts or inappropriate clothing.
I would suggest tuning in some Sunday to an Evangelical or other Protestant service. Watch as the camera scans the congregation. No one is dressed in shorts or improper apparel. And of course, they are not privileged to have the Real Presence.
You have to wonder what the reaction of a St. John Vianney or St. Alphonsus Liguori would be if they suddenly appeared in many of our Catholic churches today. Would they remain silent while Christ is being insulted, even if it is being done in ignorance; or would they insist that it is better that people come into the House of God, even if they are half undressed?
St. John Chrysostom, in the fourth century, did have something to say about this type of scandal: “You carry your snare everywhere and spread your net in all places. You allege that you never invite others to sin. You did not indeed, by your words, but you have done so by your dress and deportment and much more effectively than you could by your voice. When you have made another sin in his heart, how can you be innocent? Tell me whom does this world condemn? Whom do judges in court punish? Those who drink poison or those who prepare it and administer the fatal portion? You have prepared the abominable cup, you have given the death-dealing drink and you are more criminal than those who poison the body; you murder not the body but the soul. And it is not to enemies you do this, nor are you urged on by any imaginary necessity, nor provoked by injury, but out of foolish vanity and pride.”
John T. Hemhauser
Middletown, N.J.
The Legion of Mary creates
a truly Catholic environment
Editor: On the subject of Ministering to Single Adults (February 2000) may I put in a word for the Legion of Mary?
For over twenty years I was working among young people in south London, first as chaplain to overseas students and then as chaplain to a youth project in Brixton, at that time notorious for its crime and race riots.
In both houses we had the Legion of Mary. There was a good deal of coming and going in the membership, but we generally had about fifteen members in each house. They would go out every week, calling on addresses I gave them, and they soon discovered how quite ordinary people can help others back to God. One lad, I remember, barely practicing himself, within six weeks of coming to us had helped a friend convalidate his marriage. He was astonished at what he’d been able to do; it seemed to trigger off an appetite for the apostolate and within a year he had joined the Discalced Carmelites.
Another lad, very gifted and studying civil engineering, within six months of joining the Legion of Mary had joined the Legionaries of Christ. As he put it, “I realized that life had more to offer than just making oil platforms and building tunnels.”
We had six marriages among those legionaries and ten vocations: even priests, one Brother and two Sisters. All doing well, thank God.
However, our monthly discussion evenings were our most fruitful events. Organized by the legionaries and entitled “Patrician” meetings, they lasted just two hours. Each time we took a different article of the Creed or doctrine of the faith. Someone would open the meeting with an introduction to the subject. Then free discussion would follow. Hearing other people speak who seemed to know even less than themselves would spur the most shy to get up and have their say. Astonishing ignorance would thus be revealed. I’d be sitting all the time in silence, making notes.
After the first hour we’d stop for coffee and cake. Then we’d resume our seats and I would have 15 minutes in which to comment on and correct what had hitherto been said. After this, for the rest of the two hours we’d have more free discussion, when I’d perhaps be called on to give a ruling or fill in what I’d been saying.
Two great benefits accrued from these meetings. First, it gave the Catholics (and the meetings were for Catholics only) an accurate understanding of their faith. But also it made the dumb speak. If Catholics have never talked in public about their faith, they just do not know how to begin. Hearing their fellow-Catholics speak at these meetings would encourage them to speak themselves. I remember one young woman, who at first seemed almost pathologically shy, within six months had become a real Boadicea for the faith.
But besides all this, in even the most pagan city, the Legion of Mary can create a truly Catholic environment. On one occasion I remember we had a day out to our diocesan Marian shrine. After Mass and a picnic lunch and a game of football we came back to the chaplaincy. They had something to eat and then decided to have a disco. At 10 p.m., when they’d been enjoying themselves now for 13 hours, they were still at it. Their grace-filled joy was just another gift of Our Lady, another fruit of their legionary service.
To sum up, the Legion of Mary can create for young unmarried Catholics the truly Catholic sacramental environment that inevitably yields its fruit of chaste marriages and priestly and religious vocations.
Hugh S. Thwaites, S.J.
Bexhill-on-Sea
Sussex, England
Chesterton every day
Editor: When people ask me why I have remained a priest, I tell them that I read Chesterton every day. To read him is to see how wonderful and beautiful our faith is. How can anyone not listen to his wisdom when he writes, “The learned materialist understands everything, and everything does not seem worth understanding.” Or, “You may say, if you like that a man is free to think himself a poached egg but then he is not free to say ‘thank you.’” Or, “Materialism gradually destroys one’s humanity; I do not mean only kindness, I mean hope, courage, poetry, initiative, all that is human.”
Fr. Rawley Myers
Colorado Springs, Colo.
Minds capable of great thought
Editor: I am very impressed by two articles which appeared in the April 2000 issue of Homiletic & Pastoral Review: “Incarnate Realism and the Catholic Priesthood” by Peter A. Kwasniewski and “The Plague of Scientistic Belief” by Wolfgang Smith.
Ultimately what these two articles are dealing with is reality as a fusion of the material and spiritual. Of course this does not pose a problem for the traditional Catholic of deep faith. But reality cannot be described in this way by those who are without faith, who see reality as merely material, or by those who acknowledge a spiritual realm but who also acknowledge its inexorable separation from the material.
This has interesting implications for the Catholic view of time and history which are treated in two other articles which your readers might like to read if they haven’t already. The first appeared in the Catholic World Report of June 1999 entitled “Eucharistic Affirmations” by Donald J. Keefe, S.J., and the other appeared in the March/ April 2000 issue of the Catholic Faith and is by David Meconi, S.J., entitled “A Christian View of History.” Both explain so much for the probing mind plagued by unanswered questions. If he can plow through Father Keefe’s sometimes Byzantine sentences, the reader will be rewarded by the thoughts of a clear thinker whose intellectual gifts allow him to see the implications for the broad picture in a minute reality. To quote from the article, “Denial of the Real Presence, and of the real Sacrifice of the Mass, is not just an abstract theological problem. Apart from the Eucharist, and the understanding of life it conveys, there is no adequate basis for understanding the meaning of human life, and thus no grounds for morality.” Father Meconi makes reference to Father Keefe in his article.
It’s good to know that the Jesuit order is still producing minds capable of great thought.
Wilma J. Moore
Tucson, Ariz.
Was Adam immune from physical death?
Editor:John Young (February 2000) urges preachers to include in their homilies the facts about original sin and its consequences, “including physical death, from which we would have been immune had Adam not sinned.” (Emphasis added.) It is not the fault of Mr. Young, but be advised that the word “immune” is not a correct English translation of the normative Latin “subtractus fuisset” (withdrawn from). Nor should “homo” be translated as “we.” The normative Latin reads: “Mors insuper corporalis, a qua homo si non peccasset subtractus fuisset, . . .” (GS 18, excerpted in CCC 1008).
St. Thomas, with St. Augustine, held that Adam and Eve were never, at any moment, actually “immune” from physical death. They lived in a mortal state, but, so they wrote, with special benefits from the tree of life.
Augustine: “His body, which required meat and drink to satisfy hunger and thirst, and which had no absolute and indestructible immortality, but by means of the tree of life warded off the necessity of dying, and was thus maintained in the flower of youth . . . until such time as it became spiritual in acknowledgment of his obedience” (City of God, 13, 23).
Thomas: The tree of life “did not absolutely cause immortality; for neither was the soul’s intrinsic power of preserving the body due to the tree of life, nor was it of such efficiency as to give the body a disposition to immortality, whereby it might become indissoluble. . . . Therefore, since the power of the tree of life was finite, man’s life was to be preserved for a definite time by partaking of it once; and when that time had elapsed, man was to be either transferred to a spiritual life, or had need to eat once more of the tree of life (Summa Theologica, I,97,4).
According to the two giant theologians, Adam and Eve were never immune from bodily death while in Paradise; never, even for a moment. They would have remained in the mortal state while in Paradise until the end; then in the end, if they had not sinned, they would have been transferred by an act of God to the spiritual state without the intervention of a bodily death.
John Young also states that we ourselves would have been immune from physical death had Adam not sinned. Thomas implies disagreement. He states that “even if our first parents had not sinned, any of their descendants might have done evil. . . . For the rational creature is confirmed in righteousness through the beatitude given by the clear vision of God; and when once it has seen God it cannot but cleave to Him Who is: the essence of goodness” (I,100,2). The logic of Thomas implies that we, too, would have lived as mortals all our lives, and would have been transferred to the spiritual state by an act of God, but only in reward for obedience.
The Magisterium chooses to use the term “would have been withdrawn from bodily death” rather than “would have been immune from bodily death”; and withdrawn precisely not from a hypothetical necessity of dying but from death itself. Does the Magisterium perhaps remember Hebrews 5:7 that God saved Jesus from death (ek thanatou) in response to his earnest prayer? God saved him by raising his dead body to a life of glory. Is that a possible scenario which the Magisterium may want to keep open for interpreting withdrawal from death in Paradise? For had no man sinned, all would obtain a life of glory.
Fr. Anthony Zimmerman
Nagoya, Japan
Guidance from the altar
Editor:
I know that the Sunday sermon at Mass must be related to and expand upon the readings and gospel for the day. Perhaps there could be something said at times about the multitude of moral problems facing us today, issues which are so important for our salvation.
Once children are confirmed, their formal religious education is over, and even those graduating from Catholic high schools certainly will need much more guidance in morals and values as they become adults. It’s been many years since I’ve heard priests speak from the altar about the mortal sins of extra-marital sex, couples living together outside marriage, the sins of alcohol abuse and drug abuse, the very real obligation to attend Mass on Sundays and holydays, etc. I think that it’s been so long since the words “mortal sin” have been used in homilies that younger Catholics just don’t accept or understand the concept. Millions, of all ages, certainly are living as if they don’t know or care.
God knows how very short this life is, and how infinitely long eternity is, but so many of his people don’t seem to give it a thought. I respectfully feel that we are in desperate need of help and guidance in these areas from the altar, and that the people are really longing for it.
Joan C. Kelly
North Providence, R.I.
Back to Homiletic & Pastoral Review Table of Contents August-September 2000