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letters from our readers
Mediatrix of all graces?
Editor: Mr. Robert McCarthy contends that recent papal statements on Mariology appear “to be a direct response to the idea of the extreme Mariologists that all grace must be received through and from Mary” (HPR, June 2000).
God, not our Lady, is the author of grace but he freely chooses the mode of its distribution. In Catholic theology since Our Lady gave birth to the Redeemer, who is the source of all grace, she is, at least in this sense, the channel of all graces to mankind.
Adoration is due to God alone. “We adore no saints,” wrote St. Epiphanius in the fourth century, “Let Mary then be honored but the Father, Son and Holy Ghost alone be adored” (Adv. Collyrid, I, 29).
Replying to a correspondent in the Australian Brisbane Catholic Leader a prominent theologian, Fr. William O’Shea, disputed the doctrine that Our Lady is the “mediatrix of all graces” and maintained that in the light of the position taken by the Church since the Second Vatican Council he is not even sure that “we should give the belief the status of an optional opinion” (Catholic Leader, 3 August 1995).
Fr. Garrigou-Lagrange, O.P., of the Angelicum University said that though it has not been formally defined it is the common Catholic doctrine taught by different popes and by the liturgy that no grace is granted to us without Mary’s intervention. This is contained clearly in the Mass and the Office of Mary, Mediatrix of All Graces, and it would be at least rash to deny it (The Mother of Our Saviour and Our Interior Life, p. 202).
Pope Leo XIII wrote, “She it is from whom Jesus was born, that is His true mother, and therefore worthy and acceptable mediatrix with the Mediator” (“Fidentem”).
Our Lord alone paid the price of our redemption on Calvary, but the redeeming graces due to that are mediated to us through Mary.
Elsewhere Pope Leo stated, “As no one can come to the Father except by the Son, in much the same way (ita fere) no one can come to the Son except by Mary” (“Octobri Mense”).
Pope St. Pius X designated Our Lady, “Dispensatrix of all the graces which Jesus acquired for us by His death and by His blood” (“Ad Diem Illum”).
That Our Lady is Mediatrix of all graces does not necessitate our asking every favor explicitly through her intervention or intercession, but means that every grace comes to us from Christ through her as an essentially secondary and subordinate channel of his redemptive power. Such is God’s design for our salvation.
Thus the Church sings in the hymn of Matins of the feast of Mary, Mediatrix of All Graces: “All the gifts which the Redeemer merited for us (cuncta quae nobis meruit Redemptor) are bestowed by His mother Mary. The Son gladly loads us with benefits in answer to her prayer.”
Valentine Gallagher
Arncliff, NSW, Australia
Habits and Roman Collars
Editor: Fr. Jacek Stefanski’s article, “Habits and Roman Collars,” in the July HPR explains many good reasons for priests and religious to wear clerical dress, concluding with a quotation from the Congregation for the Clergy. But there is an even more compelling guide. From the Code of Canon Law are these unequivocal — and binding? — directives:
No. 284: Clerics are to wear suitable ecclesiastical dress, in accordance with the norms established by the Episcopal Conference and legitimate local custom.
No. 669.1 As a sign of their consecration and as a witness to poverty, religious are to wear the habit of their institute, determined in accordance with the institute’s own law.
2. Religious of a clerical institute who do not have a special habit are to wear clerical dress, in accordance with Canon 284.
So yes, priests and religious ought to wear clerical dress for all the good reasons given by Fr. Stefanski. But more than that, they ought to do so in obedience to Church law.
Fr. Stefanski says that he might start asking out loud, “Father, where is your Roman collar? Sister, where is your habit?” Someone might also ask, “Why are you disobedient?”
And someone might ask the great majority of bishops why their diocesan newspapers regularly display photos of so many disobedient priests and nuns — especially nuns in positions of authority in the diocese.
Mark Swift
Westminster, Colo.
Danger to Christian living
Editor: Two letters in the August-September issue of Homiletic & Pastoral Review had special meaning for me — the one by John T. Hemhauser on modesty in church and the one by Joan C. Kelly on moral guidance from the altar.
The last two Sundays in our parish the homily centered on receiving the Blessed Eucharist. Dress, even to wearing dark glasses, the way we lined up, the way we held our hands was covered but no word was said about sin and grace. Has the rule about receiving or not receiving the Blessed Sacrament if one is in mortal sin been changed? Practically the whole church goes up to receive Communion regardless of the life being lived.
As for moral guidance from the altar — the only complaint I have with Vatican II is that it was indicated that the homily should be based on the readings. It apparently is not hard to elaborate on the readings with never a reference to, for instance, the Culture of Life, the Culture of Death or living a Christian Life. One would think the Ten Commandments and the Commandments of the Church have been abrogated.
The article on forming a Catholic conscience is very good but after Vatican II a whole generation of children were brought up with very little guidance along that line. We live in a culture dangerous to Christian living and need help in choosing the moral path. Adults need that help as well as children!
Since many of us have no access to adult education in religion we must depend on our pastors to be our guides.
Mrs. Eugene F. Dupuy
New Orleans, La.
Parents, pastors and home-schooling
Editor: I read with much interest Fr. Joseph Taphorn’s article of August-September 2000 titled “Home-schooling and Sacraments for Children.” Fr. Taphorn states his lack of familiarity with the home-school movement and this brings a certain objectivity to his article. However, as with many post-revolutionary movements, he doesn’t seem to understand the reasons why this movement came about.
Fr. Taphorn cites carefully and in logical progression a composite of the instruction of the Church on the role of parents in the upbringing of their children. He goes to great lengths to establish that parents are indeed the primary educators of their children, why they have this right and why they have a duty to perform it. Fr. Taphorn also provides the citations in the Code of Canon Law that support this parental authority. A welcome clarification.
Father also told us about the Church’s specific role in Catholic Education in the Code of Canon Law. The Code does devote a lot of attention to this subject. Nowhere, however, does it or Fr. Taphorn mention what happens when the local church, school, pastor or catechetical program are not teaching the complete and undiluted Faith to the children. Parents have been aware of the poor state of catechesis in their Catholic schools and catechetical programs for many years. The National Council of Catholic Bishops recently acknowledged this with its report outlining the significant areas where most textbooks are deficient in teaching the Faith. However, no significant change in textbook selection or catechetical programs has occurred since this revelation.
The Code of Canon Law and the Catechism of the Catholic Church tell us what Catholic education should be and spend a lot of time explaining what a bishop, pastor, priest and catechetical leader must provide, but they don’t give parents much recourse when that Catholic education is incomplete or compromised. It is a bureaucracy that parents cannot take the precious time to fight —lest their children grow up without learning their Faith.
Fr. Taphorn stated more than once that religious education and catechesis are a subset of education in general and therefore parents have a right and duty to educate their children. Most home-schooling parents do not treat catechesis as a subset but on the contrary, it is the primary focus of their entire education from which all the rest must be viewed.
Home-schooling has grown precisely because many brave pioneering parents showed others how to ensure their children’s faith without the help of their local Catholic school and/or parish program. Many do this at great personal sacrifice. I wish Fr. Taphorn could have better explained why there is “confusion and friction” between parents and pastors (i.e., D.R.E. or catechetical leader). Many parents are now dealing with diocesan home-schooling policies that don’t merely require a test for readiness by the pastor or his designate, but considerably restrict the freedom of the parents to choose the means and institutes to educate their children.
The trust has been breached and it would appear that the parents are the ones held in suspicion instead of those who broke the trust in the first place.
Authentic community within a parish is not found or required in the social functions or assemblies of children, but in the communal participation in the prayer and worship found in the Holy Sacrifice of the Mass and in sharing Christ’s Life in the Holy Eucharist.
Dorothy Amorella
Director of Religious Education
St. John Cantius Parish
Chicago, IL 60622
Salvation of children dying without Baptism
Editor: In the July 2000 issue of HPR, Brian Graebe takes issue with my July 1996 Living Tradition article on “Whether Aborted Children Should Be Claimed as Members of the Church.” His view is that “the lack of Divine Revelation in union with the traditions of the Church which serve as precedent leave little room for any canonical decree on this difficult issue,” seeing that “the question of the status of the aborted infants utterly surpasses the bounds of the sacramental authority of the Church and of divine revelation” (pp. 58-59). He leaves the impression that I said that there is room for a canonical decree declaring the salvation of aborted babies. The actual conclusion of my article was this: “It is, however, the sole prerogative of the Pope and of the universal Magisterium to examine the evidence and to determine whether or not aborted babies can be claimed as members of the Church.”
Mr. Graebe maintains that the Pope and the Magisterium do not have this prerogative for the reason that “any type of extra-sacramental salvation, dependent entirely upon the Divine Mercy, presents for the Church a situation that is super Ecclesiam, or above the sacramental jurisdiction of the Church” (p. 58). If this assertion were true, the Church could never have declared that the Blessed Virgin Mary was conceived free of Original Sin or that the Holy Innocents are now martyrs in Heaven.
It was my purpose in this Living Tradition 65 article, and in a subsequent Living Tradition 71 article, not to suggest that we can do more than simply hope for the salvation of aborted infants, but rather to show how broad is the basis of that hope in terms of many general statements in Sacred Scripture and in the writings of St. Thomas Aquinas. Mr. Graebe says that he is “maintaining the traditional stance of the Church, as so beautifully voiced in the Catechism of Pope John Paul II.” But there is no traditional stance of the Church on this question. Most theologians since the time of St. Thomas Aquinas have held the opinion that babies who die without the sacrament of Baptism will spend eternity in the Limbo of Children, a conjectured place for which there is no basis at all in Sacred Scripture. The Sixteenth Provincial Council of Carthage (418 A.D.), under the leadership of St. Augustine, declared that “if anyone says . . . that in the Kingdom of Heaven there will be some middle place or some place anywhere where the blessed infants live who have departed from this life without Baptism, in the absence of which they cannot enter into the Kingdom of Heaven, which is life eternal, let him be anathema” (DS 224). This decree was not taken up into the universal teaching of the Church, but it remained the common opinion of theologians for more than eight hundred years, after which the Second Ecumenical Council of Lyons (1274 A.D.) declared that “the souls of those who die in actual mortal sin or only in Original Sin descend forthwith into the Inferno, but to undergo different punishments” (DS 858). Hence, the Catechism of the Catholic Church has taken a courageous step where it affirms that “the great mercy of God, who desires that all men should be saved, and the tenderness of Jesus towards children, . . . allow us to hope that there is a way of salvation for children who have died without Baptism” (CCC 1261). The teaching of the Church is obviously being clarified in a certain direction. An important distinction in this question is that between “children dying in the state of Original Sin” and “children dying without Baptism of water.” My article did not treat in general of children who die in the state of Original Sin but only of infants aborted from the womb, and it asked whether these do die in the state of Original Sin in the absence of any Baptism of blood through martyrdom.
Msgr. John F. McCarthy
Ponce, Puerto Rico
The nature of death
Editor: I was surprised to read Fr. Anthony Zimmerman’s criticism (August-September 2000) of my statement in the February HPR that we would have been immune from physical death had Adam not sinned.
It has been the constant teaching of the Church that man would have been given the gift of bodily immortality had original sin not been committed. Ludwig Ott rightly classifies this as de fide (Fundamentals of Catholic Dogma, book 2, section 2, chapter 2, nn. 18, 20, 24). The Catechism of the Catholic Church states: “Even though man’s nature is mortal God had destined him not to die. Death was therefore contrary to the plans of God the Creator and entered the world as a consequence of sin” (n. 1008).
Fr. Zimmerman objects that the word immune (found in both the Abbott and Flannery translations of Vatican II’s Gaudium et spes, n. 18) is not a correct translation of the Latin, which should be rendered “withdrawn from.” I would make two comments here. Firstly, the sense is correct: The Council is repeating the Catholic doctrine that man would not have died had sin not been committed. Secondly, I did not explicitly quote this text, although I used those words to express the doctrine of man’s bodily immortality.
Of course, man is naturally mortal, whether before original sin or after. Bodily immortality was a preternatural gift; and because it was preternatural the word immune is apt. So we speak of some one as immune to an illness not because he is incapable by nature of contracting that illness, but because something intervenes (for example, inoculation) to prevent the illness.
I am puzzled as to why Fr. Zimmerman thinks there is any disagreement implied between my statement that we, the descendants of Adam and Eve, would have been immune from death in the absence of original sin, and St. Thomas’s statement that their descendants could have sinned. Such a sinner would have lost sanctifying grace, but I see no reason to suppose he would have lost the preternatural gift of bodily immortality. Even if he had, the truth remains that each member of the human race would have been created with that gift.
John Young
Eastwood, NSW, Australia
Back to Homiletic & Pastoral Review Table of Contents January 2001