A recurring theme of the pontificate of Pope Benedict XVI is the need for Catholics – all Catholics – to evangelize. In many ways, BXVI is almost sounding like a broken record with his repeated calls for the Church to evangelize the world (for you young people out there, a “record” is the way we used to listen to music thousands of years ago, and if it was broken, then it would repeat over and over). Most recently, the Holy Father stated,

The Church, each one of us, must bring the world the good news that Jesus is Lord, the One in Whom God’s closeness and love for each man and woman became flesh.

Yesterday on my radio show Catholic Matters we interviewed Fr. James Brent, O.P., and he discussed the stages of conversion, and part of our discussion focused on how we can help others move to conversion. In other words, how we can evangelize. Fr. Brent gave three main activities we can do to help our loved ones come to conversion:

1) Pray for others – and especially have Masses said for the conversion of others
Everything we do must be founded in prayer, and if we don’t pray, all our activities are worthless. But Fr. Brent especially emphasized the importance of having Masses said for our loved one’s conversion. Mass is the “secret weapon” we Catholics have, and when a Mass is said for the conversion of someone, it has a powerful impact in his life. So pray unceasingly for those outside the Church, and especially ask that Mass be offered for their conversion.

2) Tell others about your Faith, and speak the name of Jesus
I’ve mentioned before how many Catholics overemphasize the importance of deeds over words in the process of evangelization, and Fr. Brent also noted that we are all called to tell others – with words – about the saving power of Christ. Anyone can do this – you don’t need a Theology degree or be ordained to do so. There are two primary ways we can evangelize with words: (1) tell others about what Christ has done in our lives, i.e. give our personal testimony; and (2) speak the name of Jesus.

Fr. Brent mentioned that when Catholics gather, we often talk about the Church, but rarely talk about Christ. The Church, however, is the means by which we are to draw closer to the Lord – Christ is the ultimate end to which we are reaching. And his name is powerful: throughout Church history, saints have recognized the incredible power which invoking the name of Jesus has. Do not be afraid to proclaim the name of Jesus in your everyday conversations – you’ll be surprised what happens.

3) Witness to the Gospel with your deeds
Just because many overemphasize the importance of deeds over words doesn’t mean deeds are not important. In fact, our words will have little impact if we don’t back them up with our lives. We must constantly strive for holiness and beg for the graces to become saints. By doing so, we witness to the great joy and peace that comes from following Christ, which will lead others to inquire as to how they too can obtain that joy and peace (which then leads to using words…)

Pope Benedict is practically begging the Church to evangelize, and by virtue of our baptism, we have both the obligation and the grace to follow this call.

At a recent address on the liturgy, Pope Benedict said the following:

The liturgy, … lives a proper and constant relationship between sound ‘traditio’ and legitimate ‘progressio’, clearly seen by the conciliar constitution Sancrosanctum Concilium at paragraph 23. … Not infrequently are tradition and progress in awkward opposition. Actually though, the two concepts are interwoven: tradition is a living reality that, in itself, includes the principle of development, of progress.

This idea of the relationship – and tension – between tradition and progress has been a theme of Pope Benedict’s for his whole ecclesiastical career. We see it in his most recent book, Jesus of Nazareth: Holy Week, in which BXVI notes that Jesus himself was also a progressive traditionalist – adhering to the Law (“I have not come to abolish the law, but to fulfill it”), yet also taking no issue with going beyond calcified ideas of how to follow God.

This has been the great internal struggle of the past 100 years in the Church. The first half of the 20th century saw the end of an era in which the practice of the Catholic Faith had become stale and even ritualistic. Then Vatican II unleashed a host of forces which wanted “progress” simply for the sake of progress. Throughout his life, however, Pope Benedict has consistently urged a progressive traditionalism, in which we stay in continuity with the faith of our spiritual forefathers, yet develop it more deeply to address the issues of modern man. To the world, this makes him appear inconsistent: he was a “progressive” before Vatican II, and then a “traditionalist” after the Council. Yet it is BXVI who has been consistent while the world around him sways to the latest fad.

We too must strive to be progressive traditionalists. We do not want change simply because the world demands it, yet we also should not be reactionaries who simply reject change because some want it. Instead, like Pope Benedict (and like Jesus), we embrace our traditions, yet realize that they develop over time so that we can more deeply  draw closer to our Lord.

My OSV article for Pope Benedict’s Jesus of Nazareth: Holy Week is now available online:

New ‘Jesus of Nazareth’ book is pope’s opus
In the second volume of his series on Jesus, Pope Benedict XVI shows himself a master theologian, pastor and mystic

The greatness of a great man is not always recognized in his own time. Although some figures are so incredible that everyone immediately realizes their significance, others are only later recognized for their full import. This is true for popes as well. When Pope John Paul II reigned from the chair of Peter, almost everyone realized what a world-changing man he was. But when Cardinal Joseph Ratzinger became pope, few considered him as much more than a “place-holder” pontiff. Now that he has been pope for almost six years, most pundits would still dismiss his achievements on the stage of Church history.

Yet Joseph Ratzinger — now Pope Benedict XVI — is one of the greatest theologians to ever hold the office of the papacy, and his impact on the life of the Church — especially in theological studies — can hardly be overstated. Centuries from now, his works will still be studied and examined, and will be impacting Catholic theology in ways we cannot today imagine. He is one of the great minds of our day, despite the fact that the unthinking still paint him as a hard-line “conservative” Catholic.

Continue reading…

I was honored to receive an advanced copy of Pope Benedict’s Jesus of Nazareth: Holy Week last month, so although it is just being released today, I have already completed it. I have written an article about the book for OSV which should appear shortly, but I also hope to write a few blog posts about it here as well.

It is hard to write anything about this book without sounding like a teenage girl gushing about Justin Bieber. Like the first Jesus of Nazareth book, this volume was outstanding, combining the Pope’s immense talents as a scholar, pastor and mystic. The Pope is able to stand toe-to-toe with any scholar, yet he always keeps a single-minded focus on directing his readers to a personal encounter with our Lord Jesus Christ.

I found many deep insights in this book, but perhaps the most stunning statement made by Pope Benedict is found on the very first page of the Foreword. Our Holy Father writes,

One thing is clear to me: in two hundred years of exegetical work, historical-critical exegesis has already yielded its essential fruit. (Emphasis added)

I had to read that sentence two and three times before I accepted that the Pope really wrote that. In this statement the Pope is challenging the very foundations of the biblical scholarship world. For two hundred years, there has been a race by academics to come up with the “latest” theory about Jesus, resulting in a plethora of contradictory and often ludicrous ideas about “who Jesus really was.” Yet behind this race is not a desire to really know the identity of Jesus, but to create the latest sensation in the academic world, which leads to book contracts and better jobs. If you write that Jesus is who the Church claims him to be, then your academic career will become sidetracked. But if you write (with scholarly authority) that he was a transvestite Muslim, then you are surely on your way to academic fame.

The Pope undercuts all of this. He sees the Historical-Critical Method as a tool with limited applications – and those applications have now yielded their “essential fruit.” In other words, the focus of studies of Jesus should no longer be driven by the Historical-Critical Method, but instead should be driven by a desire to know the Jesus confessed and proclaimed by the Church: the eternal Son of God who saves us from our sins.

And this is the Jesus presented to us in Jesus of Nazareth: Holy Week. He is not a figment of some scholar’s imagination, but instead the God-man who millions throughout history have lived and died for. The pope is urging us to encounter this God-man in our own lives today.

Here are some of my favorite quotes from Verbum Domini:

We can deepen our relationship with the word of God only within the “we” of the Church (VD 4).

The realist is the one who recognizes in the word of God the foundation of all things (VD 10).

Just as the word of God comes to us in the body of Christ, in his Eucharistic body and in the body of the Scriptures, through the working of the Holy Spirit, so too it can only be truly received and understood through the same Spirit (VD 16).

As the word of God became flesh by the power of the Holy Spirit in the womb of the Virgin Mary, so sacred Scripture is born from the womb of the Church by the power of the same Spirit (VD 19).

In the dynamic of Christian revelation, silence appears as an important expression of the word of God (VD 21).

The Bible is the Church’s book, and its essential place in the Church’s life gives rise to its genuine interpretation (VD 29).

Approaches to the sacred text that prescind from faith might suggest interesting elements on the level of textual structure and form, but would inevitably prove merely preliminary and structurally incomplete efforts (VD 30).

The person of Christ gives unity to all the “Scriptures” in relation to the one “Word” (VD 39).

The “literalism” championed by the fundamentalist approach actually represents a betrayal of both the literal and the spiritual sense, and opens the way to various forms of manipulation, as, for example, by disseminating anti-ecclesial interpretations of the Scriptures (VD 44).

The most profound interpretation of Scripture comes precisely from those who let themselves be shaped by the word of God through listening, reading and assiduous meditation (VD 48).

Holiness in the Church constitutes an interpretation of Scripture which cannot be overlooked. The Holy Spirit who inspired the sacred authors is the same Spirit who impels the saints to offer their lives for the Gospel (VD 49).

A faith-filled understanding of sacred Scripture must always refer back to the liturgy (VD 52).

Word and Eucharist are so deeply bound together that we cannot understand one without the other: the word of God sacramentally takes flesh in the event of the Eucharist (VD 55).

Ours is not an age which fosters recollection; at times one has the impression that people are afraid of detaching themselves, even for a moment, from the mass media. For this reason, it is necessary nowadays that the People of God be educated in the value of silence…Only in silence can the word of God find a home in us, as it did in Mary, woman of the word and, inseparably, woman of silence (VD 66).

Jesus of Nazareth is, so to speak, the “exegete” of the God whom “no one has ever seen” (VD 90).

[The proclamation of the word of God] is not a matter of preaching a word of consolation, but rather a word which disrupts, which calls to conversion and which opens the way to an encounter with the one through whom a new humanity flowers (VD 93).

We need to help young people to gain confidence and familiarity with sacred Scripture so it can become a compass pointing out the path to follow (VD 104).

The proclamation of the word creates communion and brings about joy (VD 123).

See also:

• An early Christmas gift from Pope Benedict XVI
• Verbum Domini and the challenge of Catholic Scripture interpretation
• Overview of Verbum Domini
• Major themes of Verbum Domini

Verbum Domini covers a large number of topics, but what are the major themes of this document? Broadly, I would say that there are four:

1) The life-changing reality of the “Word of God”
One of the most common misconceptions about Christianity is that is a “religion of the book”, i.e. that the Bible is the basis for our entire religion. The Catholic Church has always denied this, and does so explicitly in this document:

While in the Church we greatly venerate the sacred Scriptures, the Christian faith is not a “religion of the book”: Christianity is the ‘religion of the word of God’, not of ‘a written and mute word, but of the incarnate and living Word’ (VD 7, quoting St. Bernard of Clairvaux).

The “Word of God” cannot be limited to simply Sacred Scripture, as it encompasses far more than that. Verbum Domini breaks it into three separate – but interrelated – realities:

• Jesus Christ: First and foremost, the Word of God is the eternal Son of God who became incarnate as Jesus Christ
• Word preached by the Apostles, i.e. the Church’s living Tradition
• Sacred Scripture

This is not just an obscure theological point, but is foundational for everything the Church teaches in regard to a proper understanding of the Scriptures. We must understand that the Word we follow is Jesus Christ, and we are drawn to him by both Tradition and Scripture. Trying to isolate only one part of the multifaceted Word – like “sola scriptura” does – ends up ultimately deforming the Word and making it more susceptible to misinterpretation.

2) Scripture should lead us to an encounter with Christ
Anyone who is familiar with Pope Benedict’s pontificate knows the emphasis he has placed on “encountering Jesus Christ”. He has emphasized again and again that an encounter with Christ is the central mystery of the Christian faith – everything, literally everything, revolves around it. As Benedict wrote in Deus Caritas Est, “being Christian is not the result of an ethical choice or a lofty idea, but the encounter with an event, a person, which gives life a new horizon and a definitive direction” (DCE 1, quoted in VD 11).

Verbum Domini reiterates this emphasis and notes the importance of Scripture in instigating and deepening our encounter with our Lord. As the beginning of the document explains, we believe in a God who speaks a Word, and we are responsible to respond to that Word in our own lives. Scripture is a primary way to hear that Word spoken by God.

3) Scripture must be read and interpreted within the context of the Church
The key difference between Catholic and Protestant Scripture interpretation is that Catholics are insistent that the Bible can only be truly understood within the context of the living Church. The Bible was written within the Church, for the Church and was compiled by the Church, so trying to understand it outside the Church is simply infeasible. The same Spirit which inspired the Sacred writers and guided the Church to gather together those writings into one “Bible” also directs the Church in her interpretation of the Scriptures.

This is true beyond just the obvious “biblical interpretation cannot contradict Church teaching”. Another example that Verbum Domini emphasizes is the importance of the liturgy for interpreting Scripture. Many of the New Testament documents were originally written to be read within a liturgical setting (for example, Paul addressed most of his letters to “the church in…”, thus assuming that they would be read when the local church gathered, i.e. in the liturgy). As Verbum Domini notes, the liturgy is the “privileged” setting for reading the Bible. It is not just one of many settings, but should be the primary place where Scriptural interpretation takes place. This goes against most modern thought, which believes the only place to interpret the Bible is either in an academic ivory tower or in the confines of one’s own home. Like everything related to the Faith, the Church understands that Scriptural interpretation is a communal affair.

4) Scripture should inform and be foundational to all aspects of the Church’s ministry
The entire third section of this document goes into some detail of the importance of Scripture permeating every aspect of the Church’s work. This begins with evangelization, which is the preaching of the Word. I loved this description of evangelization that Verbum Domini offers:

“It is not a matter of preaching a word of consolation, but rather a word which disrupts, which calls to conversion and which opens the way to an encounter with the one through whom a new humanity flows” (VD 93).

Evangelization is not teaching the Faith or explaining the Faith or defending the Faith – it is preaching the Word and allowing that Word to lead the other to an encounter with Him who is the Word. How can the Word be preached without recourse to the written Word of God? Thus, Scripture forms a foundation for all evangelical work of the Church.

In my next post, I’ll list a few of my favorite quotes from Verbum Domini.

See also:

• An early Christmas gift from Pope Benedict XVI
• Verbum Domini and the challenge of Catholic Scripture interpretation
• Overview of Verbum Domini

I’ve finished Verbum Domini, the new papal document on Sacred Scripture, and it is quite impressive. There were no surprises in it for those who are familiar with the Church’s teaching on Scripture, but it ably reiterated and explained the proper way a Catholic must approach the Bible.

One thing to note is that this is NOT an encyclical, but a “post-synodal apostolic exhortation”. Why does that matter? Because an encyclical will usually be almost exclusively theological and leave practical applications to other forums. But this exhortation, which was written as a response to the 2008 Synod of Bishops on the Word of God, tackles both theological issues as well as practical applications of those issues. This is one reason the text is so long (over 40,000 words, or about equivalent to a 150-page book).

The document is divided into three major sections, along with an introduction and conclusion:

Part I: Verbum Dei
The first section lays the theological foundations of the Church’s understanding of the Word of God. It stresses the multiple meanings of “Word of God” (which I’ll detail in another post) and emphasizes that Scripture can only be properly understood in the context of the living Church. If you are intimidated about reading this long document, I would recommend just reading this first section – it is beautifully written and gives a great explanation of the overall context in which the Church approaches the Bible.

Part II: Verbum in Ecclesia
The second part of Verbum Domini details how Scripture is to be read, interpreted and prayed in the life of the Church. It emphasizes the role of the liturgy for a proper interpretation of the Scriptures, something that is sorely forgotten in our post-Reformation era. Most Christians think that the Bible is something to be primarily read alone in one’s home, but the Church has always emphasized that the “privileged” setting for reading and interpreting the Scriptures is in the context of the worshiping Church, i.e. the liturgy. And Scripture should infuse every liturgical action, not just the Mass.

Also in this part is a wonderful explanation of lectio divina (sections 86-87). “Divine reading” is considered the proper way in which a Christian should approach the biblical text when doing personal study and reflection of the Scriptures, and it would be great if more Christians – whether priests, scholars or laypeople – used this ancient method when reading the Bible.

Part III: Verbum Mundo
The final part of Verbum Domini applies everything discussed above to the “real world”, i.e. how can our interaction with the Sacred Scriptures further the Church’s mission to the world? The document applies this to every conceivable arena, from evangelization to supporting the poor to interreligious dialogue. While much in this section is worthwhile, I would also say that some of it reads like a committee bullet point document which wants to make sure it addresses every member’s pet project (a consequence of being a response to a worldwide Synod of bishops, no doubt). But the overall emphasis of this part is evangelization: one must be in constant contact with the Word of God in order to preach and proclaim that Word to the world.

In my next post, I’ll review the major themes of Verbum Domini.

See also:

• An early Christmas gift from Pope Benedict XVI
• Verbum Domini and the challenge of Catholic Scripture interpretation

I’m reading through Verbum Domini now and it is a serious challenge not to race through it. For a Scripture geek like me, this is a real page-turner. But I’m pacing myself so that I can really digest what is in this document (although I’m sure I’ll read it multiple times anyway). Yesterday I mentioned that it would be helpful to read other Papal documents on Scripture from the past century in order to better understand Verbum Domini. I think it would also be very helpful to understand the context in which all these documents were written; i.e. the current debates and challenges within the world of biblical interpretation that these documents address. I’ll give a high-level overview here.

There are two major, and opposing, currents in modern biblical interpretation (“modern” meaning the past 200 years or so). They are historical-criticism and fundamentalism.

Historical-criticism is the dominant method of biblical interpretation in the academic world. Historical-critics look at the Bible as simply a human document and study it as such. They want to answer questions such as: “Who wrote this?” “When was it written?” “What is the history of its development?” “How was the text handed on through the centuries?” They are not concerned with topics such as inspiration or inerrancy, nor do they look at how one’s life might be impacted by reading the Bible. To historical-critics, biblical interpretation is a purely scientific affair that attempts to uncover the origins of the biblical text. Anything beyond that is seen as superfluous. In the academic world, whether Protestant or Catholic or secular, this is almost the only biblical interpretation that exists.

Fundamentalism is a reaction to historical-criticism that became widespread in the early 20th century and is most commonly found among conservative Protestants. It is the viewpoint that takes every word completely literally and at face-value. For example, a fundamentalist will count the years noted in Genesis and then determine how old the earth is. Fundamentalism grew because many faithful Christians believed that the historical-critical method denied the divine authorship of the Bible and they wanted to recover that.

Unfortunately, the world of biblical interpretation has become very political and advocates of these two methodologies keep each other at a distance. Anyone in the academic world who suggests divine authorship of the biblical text is immediately branded a “fundamentalist” (the worst insult in modern academia) and any Christian who suggests that perhaps certain biblical texts are not to be read as a newspaper account is labeled by fundamentalists as a godless heathen.

But which method does the Church consider the proper method of biblical interpretation? Neither…and both. While it is willing to take whatever is true and useful in both these methods, the Church does not embrace either one wholeheartedly. Many of the methods used in the historical-critical method are accepted as helpful, but the Church does not believe that the divine Word of God is only a human text that can be examined under a microscope to fully understand it (just like putting a Eucharistic host under a microscope would not reveal its reality either). And although the Church embraces the divine authorship of the Bible and does not believe it is just a human document, but it does not embrace fundamentalism as a proper method for understanding the Scriptures’ true meaning.

Proper Catholic biblical interpretation has two main pillars it bases itself on. The first is the belief that the Bible must be read in the context in which it was written, i.e. within the Church. If a historical-critic rejects the Virgin Birth because it is not “historical”, then a Catholic can be sure that this critic’s interpretation is invalid, because the same Spirit that inspired the writing of the Bible led the Church to accept this doctrine as true. Likewise, if a fundamentalist believes the earth is only 6,000 years old and thinks that rejecting that belief is “contrary to the Bible”, then a Catholic can be sure that the fundamentalist is going beyond the text, since the Church has made clear that the age of the earth is a scientific, not theological, question.

The second pillar of proper Catholic biblical interpretation is the concept of multiple “senses” of Scripture. Just as there are two authors of every biblical book – the human and the divine – so there can be two or more possible meanings of a Scriptural passage: the literal and the spiritual (often the spiritual is broken into three levels, but I’ll keep it simple for this analysis). The literal meaning is what the human author intended by the passage. Note carefully that this is not the same as the “literalism” of the fundamentalist. The human author might have intended a passage to be poetic and not a historical account. He might have intended to be making a theological point and not been reporting on events as a newspaper reporter. The literal meaning is always the first meaning of a text and it allows us to know exactly what the original author was trying to say to his original audience.

The second meaning of Scripture is the spiritual. Since the Bible has a divine author, it can have multiple layers of meaning behind each passage. For example, a Psalm which talks about the destruction of my enemies could remind us of our fight against our enemies of pride, vanity and selfishness. This might not have been what the original human author was thinking about when he wrote the Psalm, but it is a legitimate meaning, nonetheless. But the spiritual “sense” of Scripture does not give one permission to go off into flights of fancy; again, biblical interpretation – including the spiritual “sense” – must be done within the context of the Church. So if you think a bible passage’s spiritual meaning gives you permission to leave your parish and start your own church, then you have sadly misinterpreted the Bible.

This is the challenge of Catholic Scripture interpretation today: navigate the Scylla of historical-criticism and the Charybdis of fundamentalism. Verbum Domini is another notable effort by the Church’s magisterium to chart the proper course for Catholics reading the Scriptures, whether they be scholars or laypeople. Let us pray that all those who read and interpret the Bible will follow the wise counsel of the Church in this matter.

For further reading:

• Catholic Scripture Interpretation: Resting on Fundamentals, Resisting Fundamentalism
• Interpreting the Holy Bible: How the “Senses” of Scripture Provide the Foundation for a Proper Interpretive Stance

Pope Benedict has just issued a major document on Sacred Scripture titled Verbum Domini (The Word of the Lord) – the full text can be downloaded here. This document is the result of the 2008 Synod of Bishops dedicated to the Word of God.

This is huge news. Over the past century or so, there have been three major documents released by Popes on Scripture; they include:

Providentissimus Deus (Pope Leo XIII – 1893)
Spiritus Paraclitus (Pope Benedict XV – 1920)
Divino Afflante Spiritu (Pope Pius XII – 1943)

So you can see that these type of documents don’t come around every day – and there hasn’t been one in almost 70 years. For a Scripture geek like me, this is like an early Christmas.

These three documents, along with the Vatican II constitution Dei Verbum, are essential for understanding how Catholics interpret Scripture. Before reading Verbum Domini, I would recommend a paper I wrote back in the 90′s titled Catholic Scripture Interpretation: Resting on Fundamentals, Resisting Fundamentalism, which looks at some of these past documents to understand how the Church approaches Scripture. I’m sure that Verbum Domini will build upon these documents, so an understanding of them will be helpful for understanding the new document.

Thanks Pope Benedict XVI!

Pope Benedict has recently unveiled a new office to promote the “new evangelization” that both he and Pope John Paul II have called for. What does this phrase “new evangelization” mean? After all, as Catholics, we should be rightly suspicious of anything that presents itself as “new” in regard to the Faith, for we believe that the Gospel has been handed down to us through the centuries via Sacred Scripture and Sacred Tradition and that public revelation ended with the death of the last apostle. We are not Mormons and thus should not accept anything novel or recent when it comes to the content of our Faith, for Jesus Christ was the complete Word and nothing needs to be added to the deposit of Faith.

So what do the popes mean by “new evangelization”? Simply this: the Church needs to re-present the truths of our Faith to societies which were originally seeped in the Gospel but now have become adrift in secularism. We are called to evangelize the “old” Christian countries such as those in Europe and even here in the Americas. The content of the Catholic Faith has not changed – and will never changed – but how we present it must change as society changes. Beliefs that were assumed in previous generations are now challenged and ideas that were rejected a century ago are now accepted at face value.

What does this mean practically? Let me use an example I recently encountered. My daughter is being confirmed this year and I am teaching a class to her and some of her friends to prepare them for this sacrament. In my research, I was reading a book published in 1922 on the Sacraments of Initiation. At one point the book was referring to the practice of bishops administering this rite as opposed to priests, and the main argument given for this was, in so many words, “because the pope says so.” Now it is true that the pope has authority to make the bishop the ordinary minister of confirmation, but an answer such as “because the pope says so” is simply not going to be accepted in today’s world. A Catholic from a century ago might have accepted this, but most will not today. Some might lament this fact, but it doesn’t change the reality of it. When defending and explaining the teachings and practices of the Church, we must first understand the presuppositions of those we are encountering; if we don’t, we risk speaking past each other or even alienating the person to the Catholic Faith. This often means that before we can even present the Gospel we must first lay the groundwork by explaining the natural law and the truths about the human person.

Of course, the “new evangelization” has the same foundations as the “old” evangelization: prayer, fasting and personal sanctity. I don’t care how you present the Faith, if you don’t base it in a life of prayer, fasting and striving for holiness, your efforts will be fruitless. People of every age are attracted to authenticity, and living the faith is still the best preparation for sharing it with others.

St. Paul, pray for us!

One of the most common refrains of modern Evangelical preaching is that “Christianity is not a religion, but a relationship.” By this, Evangelicals emphasize that following Christ is not simply following a set of rules and rituals, but is a deep personal relationship – even friendship – with Jesus Christ.

And Pope Benedict agrees with them – to a point. Speaking recently about St. Gertrude, the pope said that “the center of a happy life, a true life, is friendship with Jesus.” In his book Jesus of Nazareth, Benedict wrote that friendship with Jesus is that “on which everything depends.” Someone who claims to be Christian yet does not have a deep friendship with the Lord is either lying or self-deceived.

Yet many Evangelicals take this concept too far. For example, a pastor of a megachurch in California is currently preaching a series of sermons called “Why Jesus Hates Religion.” This pastor states that Jesus believed religion to be worthless and that it “contaminates everything with hypocrisy”. Using the common example of the Pharisees, he preached that Jesus rejected religious practices completely.

So is Christianity a relationship and not a religion? The Catholic answer, in typical Catholic fashion, is “it is both”. If we look at the actions of Christ and his first disciples, we’ll see that there is no dichotomy between religion and relationship – they in fact each strengthen the other.

First we should note that Jesus himself followed the rituals of the Jewish religion. He was circumscribed, he was raised in a practicing Jewish home, and he attended synagogue services and made pilgrimages to the Temple – all “religious” activities. After his Ascension, his followers continued to follow the rituals of the Jewish faith. Over time, these followers did abandon those rituals, but only because they had replaced them with new rituals of Christianity, first and foremost among them the Eucharistic liturgy.

If Christ “hated religion”, then surely he and his closest followers would not have continued to follow religious ceremonies, would they?

But it is also important to remember that Christ emphasized the importance of keeping himself as the center of the Christian faith. When he declared himself as “Lord of the Sabbath”, for example, he was declaring that he was greater than the Sabbath regulations of the time and that they all must be subservient to him. His constant condemnation of the Pharisees were for being hypocritical, and the only way to be hypocritical is to live in a way that you proclaim is false – thus the problem is not in the proclamation, but in the life attached to it.

Man is essentially a religious creature – we are homo religiosus. We were created to be religious, and to deny that is to deny our very nature. The rituals and practices of the Catholic religion are wonderfully suited to lead us into a deep relationship with Christ, and a deep relationship with Christ strengthens our practice of those rituals. As just one example, take the practice of receiving communion. This is, after all, a religious ritual. But by receiving our Lord in the Eucharist, one can be more intimate with Christ than is possible any other way on this side of heaven. Yet if we receive the Eucharist coldly and without love, then we are in danger of making it a means of our condemnation. So again, religion and a loving relationship work together to foster a true devotion to our Lord.

Is Christianity a religion? You bet. Is it a relationship? Absolutely. Let’s move away from the false dichotomy put between them and love and serve our Lord faithfully in the Catholic Church!

Whenever the pope arrives somewhere, it seems like every possible protester comes out of the woodwork – atheists, women priests supporters, etc. I remember having a debate with a fundamentalist Christian in Denver back in 1993 when Pope John Paul II was there for World Youth Day. Most of these protesters are hard to take seriously, because none of them seem to take the Church’s teachings seriously. But there was one papal protester in London this past weekend that I can respect (even if I don’t agree with him):

It’s not every day you see Latin on a placard protesting the Pope. When the anti-papal crowd of several thousand atheists, radical feminists and gay activists gathered in London this weekend, most of the banners were pretty simple: stuff like “Nope to the Pope” and “Papa Don’t Preach.”

But later in the afternoon, on the edges of the papal motorcade, and amidst a number of cheering fans of Benedict, there was a poster raised demanding, “DROP THE FILIOQUE.”

What? You have to know a little bit of Latin, and a lot of theology and history to get that one.

It wasn’t really a poster; it more like Magic Marker theology on a pizza box. And a young man named Toby Guise was happy to explain where, in his opinion, the Catholic Church had gone wrong.

“Filioque” means “And the Son,” and refers to a centuries-old debate between the Catholic and Orthodox Churches, about whether the Holy Spirit proceeds from the Father alone, as the Orthodox believe, or from the Father and the Son, which is the Catholic teaching.

That’s tough stuff, material for smart folks debating in a graduate school seminar. Perhaps it’s too bad the Pope didn’t see the pizza box; he would have been amused.

And in his former career as a professor and not a pontiff, he probably would have liked to talk to the young man holding it up.

H/t: Eirenikon

Phil Lawler over at Catholic Culture reports a very insightful exchange between Pope Benedict and a reporter. The reporter asked what the Church can do to be more attractive to the public. After all, the Church is about bringing in new members, right? Not according to the pope:

I would say that a Church that seeks to be particularly attractive is already on the wrong path, because the Church does not work for her own ends, she does not work to increase numbers and thus power. The Church is at the service of another: she serves, not for herself, not to be a strong body, rather she serves to make the proclamation of Jesus Christ accessible, the great truths and great forces of love, reconciling love that appeared in this figure and that always comes from the presence of Jesus Christ. (emphasis added)

How many of us have, even subconsciously, fretted about how unattractive the Church can look at times? After all, we are not going to win any popularity contests with the “right” people. We want the Church to be attractive to Hollywood, Washington, our teens, our relatives, and all those whom we love. This is natural, because we want them to see the Church for what she really is: the Body of Christ and the Ark of Salvation. We know that if people find the Church attractive, they are more likely to investigate her claims, and then might consider joining her ranks.

But Pope Benedict is reminding us that being attractive is not something we can manufacture, nor should it be a goal in our evangelistic efforts. Our attractiveness comes from being faithful to Christ, and even then we will only be attractive to those who desire the good with a sincere heart. We will never be attractive to those who reject God, and trying to make ourselves attractive to them will only lead to a watering-down of the Gospel.

But lest anyone get too carried away, let us also remember that it is not our goal to be unattractive either. I have met some people over the years who have shown no charity along with their proclamation of the truth. When challenged on this, they claim that they don’t care if they are liked, they just want to preach the Gospel. Preaching the Gospel, however, doesn’t mean being a jerk. So while we never want to put “being attractive” as the primary goal of our evangelization, that doesn’t mean we make extra efforts to offend either. We present the truth in the most loving way possible and leave it to the Holy Spirit to impact hearts.

A live webcast of the Pope’s visit to the U.K. can be found here.

Pray for Pope Benedict and pray for the U.K.!

When Pope Benedict issued his motu proprio liberalizing the use of the Extraordinary Form of the Mass, he hoped that much of the richness of the old Mass would influence how the new Mass was celebrated. I don’t think this is what he had in mind, though