Take a look at these two amazing catches, made by two different players on the same team (whose hats look eerily familiar to this Cincinnati Reds fan):

In the typical Catholic parish, it is likely that more energy is spent on youth ministry than any other ministry. But is it energy well-spent? In a 2005 article (but one I just found), Mike Aquila gives us a model from the early Church in which we can compare to modern attempts at youth ministry:

Scouring the Patrologia Latina and Patrologia Graeca, I found nothing to suggest that Ambrose had ever led teens on ski trips to the nearby Alps. Digging through the Eastern Fathers, I came up even drier — no junior-high dances — not even a pizza party in either Antioch or Alexandria. In fact, in all the documentary evidence from all the ancient patriarchates of the East and the West, there’s not a single bulletin announcement for a single parish youth group.

Yet the Fathers had enormous success in youth and young-adult ministry. Many of the early martyrs were teens, as were many of the Christians who took to the desert for the solitary life. There’s ample evidence that a disproportionate number of conversions, too, came from the young and youngish age groups.

How did the Fathers do it? They made wild promises.

They promised young people great things, like persecution, lower social status, public ridicule, severely limited employment opportunities, frequent fasting, a high risk of jail and torture, and maybe, just maybe, an early, violent death at the hands of their pagan rulers.

The Fathers looked young people in the eye and called them to live purely in the midst of a pornographic culture. They looked at some young men and women and boldly told them they had a calling to virginity. And it worked. Even the pagans noticed how well it worked.

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Let us also make “wild promises” to our youth today: if you follow Christ, you will be completely counter-cultural and your life will never be the same…

Quick question: have you ever met anyone who likes The New American Bible? Me neither.

The NAB, which is the official translation used during Mass in the United States, first entered this world, like me, in 1970. Also like me, it is starting to show its age. Unlike the King James or the Douay-Rheims, the NAB is unable to escape from its origins and reading it is like opening a time capsule and entering 1970 all over again. Because of this, Cistercian monk Br. Stephen makes a great suggestion: let’s retire the NAB:

The NAB, with its self-consciously contemporary prose of 1970, lacks the necessary timelessness to succeed as religious prose, possessing neither consciously sacral language that takes the reader out of the present moment nor the sort of unobtrusive good writing that allows the word of God to speak across time. With age, the idiom of the NAB has become a period piece, carrying us back two full generations to the blunt ugliness of the aesthetics of socialist realism and other ideas about language and literature that failed to win a lasting cultural berth. Today, its awkward phrasing may remind the reader not so much of the small, still voice of God as of the staccato earnestness of James T. Kirk on the bridge of the Enterprise. In attempting to be current, the translators left us with something that was already becoming dated by the time their work was in print.

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And lest anyone think that the NAB is somehow the only English version approved for liturgical use, note that in many English-speaking countries the translation used for the liturgy is the Jerusalem Bible (my personal favorite), and the Douay-Rheims is still used for the Extraordinary Form of the Mass, even in this country. So we already have approved English translations to choose from.

Along with Br. Stephen, it is my prayer that the NAB is retired before I am.

Whenever there is a debate between Christians today about some theological point, one question is sure to be fired off: “Where in the Bible is that?” Whether the topic is infant baptism, purgatory, justification by faith alone or the assumption of Mary, Scriptural support is demanded for one’s views. And for good reason; after all, the Bible is the inerrant Word of God and therefore, if a belief is found in the Bible, then surely it is true.

However, there is a false presupposition lurking behind this question, one that is commonly held by Christians today. It is the presupposition that the Bible is the source of Christian doctrine, that the Bible contains all the teachings of the Christian Faith and its purpose is to be a catechism of sorts for our teachings and beliefs. Although many Catholics have this presupposition, it is foundational to Protestantism. If you read just about any book from your local Family Bookstore (a chain of Protestant Christian bookstores), the language used in them is soaked with this presupposition: “The Bible teaches…”, “The Bible says…”, “we see from the Bible that…”.

However, this presupposition is not only false, it is illogical and contrary to history. Let us look at Salvation History for a minute and see how our Faith was passed on to us:

1. After the Fall, God raised up a nation (Israel) to be His people. He sent them prophets, kings and priests to teach them about the ways of God.
2. At the fullness of time, God sent His Son. This Son – Jesus Christ – preached, did mighty works, and suffered, died and rose again for our salvation.
3. The followers of Christ, especially the apostles, went around preaching the Gospel – which consisted of the teachings, works and passion of Christ – to the known world.
4. Some of these followers wrote down this Gospel in letters, histories and “gospels.”
5. The successors to the apostles – the bishops – continued to preach the Gospel handed on to them, guarding and protecting it from error.

We can see from this short recounting that the content of our Faith – the “Gospel” – was passed on to future generations by two methods: (oral) preaching (a.k.a. Tradition) and writings (a.k.a. Scripture). Then the college of bishops – the “Magisterium”, or teaching office of the Church – continued to preach that Gospel through time, making sure that it was not deformed or altered. But it is important to know the order of priority: the Gospel is the content of the Faith, and oral preaching and writings are the methods in which they are passed on.

(An aside: an objection might be raised that the way we know about Salvation History is through the Bible, so the Bible is “before” the Gospel. However, at this point, we are looking at the Bible as strictly a history book, not an inspired text. One would not think that a book about Socrates is the source of his life and teachings; instead, it simply recounts what we know about him.)

So if we want to know the source of the content of our Faith, we must look to the Gospel, which includes the life of ancient Israel and is fulfilled completely in the person of Jesus Christ and his life, teachings, works and passion.

This idea that there is one pre-existing Gospel and then two methods in which we receive that Gospel has been the consistent teaching of the Catholic Church since its earliest days. In the second century, St. Irenaeus, bishop of Gaul, wrote Against Heresies, which defended the Catholic Faith against the various false teachings of his day. It is a somewhat difficult work, but if you have a moment, take some time to read Book III from the Preface through Chapter 3. In that famous section, Irenaeus lays out his defense of how he knows the heretics are wrong and he is right. His logic is as follows:

1. The Gospel was given to the Church through the apostles (Preface-Chapter 1).
2. The Gospel was passed on to us through Scripture and Tradition, and the heretics contradict both of these pillars (Chapter 2).
3. The Gospel, passed on to us through Scripture and Tradition, is defended and protected by the successors to the apostles, the bishops (Chapter 3).
4. Therefore, if we follow the bishops, especially the bishop of Rome, then we can be assured that we are orthodox (Chapter 3).

And the Church today follows this same divine logic. In Dei Verbum, Vatican II’s Dogmatic Constitution on Divine Revelation, the Church beautifully and clearly articulates the relationship between the Gospel (also called “Revelation”), Scripture, Tradition and the Magisterium. Sections 1-6 discuss Revelation being given from God, and then section 7-9 note the two ways in which that Revelation is handed on to us, and finally section 10 notes the role of the Magisterium in guarding and teaching that deposit of faith.

None of this means, of course, that any part of the Gospel will contradict Scripture, Tradition or the teaching of the Magisterium. The “glue,” so to speak, which holds all these parts together in one unified whole is the Holy Spirit. The Holy Spirit is the originator of the content of the Gospel, the inspiration of the Scriptures, the guide of Tradition, and the protector from error of the Magisterium. Man would not be able to keep a consistent teaching for even a few decades under his own power, but with the Holy Spirit involved, the Church is able to pass on the authentic and saving Gospel to all generations.

So when someone asks, “where in the Bible does it say…”, you can know that if the Catholic Church teaches it, it is part of the saving Gospel, which precedes the Bible and is the source of its content.

This past weekend I attended the most important event in the life of any person: a baptism. A friend’s child was being baptized and it was wonderful to be there when this young soul was washed clean of Original Sin and transformed into a child of God.

During the actual pouring of water, I was struck with a wild thought: what if God decided not to pour His grace on this child when the water was poured over him? And of course I realized that this was impossible, because God promised us new life in baptism and He cannot break His promises. It made me realize that, in a way, God is at our beck and call: whenever a baptism is performed, no matter what the circumstances, God must cleanse the person of Original Sin and transform him into a child of God . How amazing is that?

The Catechism says that we are bound to the sacraments for our salvation, but God is not bound to them. This means that God in his mercy may save someone who has not received the sacraments. But if someone does receive the sacraments validly, then God is bound to pour grace on them because He promised He would. God the Almighty humbles Himself so much that He becomes a servant of our actions. And this is the case with every sacrament. If a priest validly says a Mass, the bread and wine must transform into the body and blood of Jesus Christ. When a priest says absolution after a worthy confession, God must forgive the penitent of his sins. If He were to not respond to the sacramental actions, He would be breaking His word, which is impossible for the One who is Truth.

This humbling of God reminds me of Philippians 2:5-11, which is set as a model for our own attitude as Christians:

Have among yourselves the same attitude that is also yours in Christ Jesus,
Who, though he was in the form of God, did not regard equality with God something to be grasped.
Rather, he emptied himself, taking the form of a slave, coming in human likeness; and found human in appearance,
he humbled himself, becoming obedient to death, even death on a cross.
Because of this, God greatly exalted him and bestowed on him the name that is above every name,
that at the name of Jesus every knee should bend, of those in heaven and on earth and under the earth,
and every tongue confess that Jesus Christ is Lord, to the glory of God the Father.

If God is willing to humble Himself to be at our beck and call, should we not also be willing to humble ourselves for others? If we do humble ourselves, though, God one day will exalt us as well.

It is a common myth that Protestants are better at Bible studies than Catholics. I say “myth” because that view only takes into account the past twenty or so years. The truth is that the Catholic Church has been studying the Bible for almost 2,000 years now and has developed many great ways for its members to swim deeply in the Sacred Page. Marcel LeJeune over at Aggie Catholics has a great post which reviews some of those methods:

10 Ways to Study and Pray With The Bible

Check it out!

E-reading: Revolution in the making or fading fad?

Give me that ol’ fashioned paper book any day.

One of my old pastors would describe CCD in the 1970’s this way: “we were taught two things: be nice and don’t do drugs.” I thought of that when I saw this hilarious video:

H/t: Patrick Madrid

The first “communion service” planned for Twitter has been postponed:

THE first communion service on the social-networking website Twitter did not take place last Saturday, after the Methodist minister organising it was asked to postpone it, while the Methodist Church examined the idea.

The Revd Tim Ross announced plans to hold the online service last month (News, 23 July), but decided to cancel it after senior Methodist offi­cials asked for more time to consider whether a communion in cyberspace was appropriate.

Mr Ross wrote in a statement on his website: “Whilst I have not been absolutely forbidden to perform com­munion on Twitter, British Meth­odist Church authorities have strongly urged me to cancel it.”

The online service was replaced by a series of short prayers for Christian unity, which, Mr Ross said, “was the motivation for the project”.

I’m sure many Catholics are scratching their heads about this story: how exactly do you have a “communion service” via Twitter? It’s not like you can send particles of bread or wine (or grape juice, the liquid of choice in many Methodist congregations) via that Interweb thingy. It looks like it was just intended to be a bunch of people receiving communion at the same time and tweeting about it:

The assistant secretary of the Methodist Conference, the Revd Ken Howcroft, said that the Church under­stood Mr Ross’s passion for the importance of communion and of using new media in mission; but the Church needed to “reflect and pray deeply in order to discern what developments are appropriate”.

In an article for the Methodist Recorder, Mr Ross said objections to the Twitter communion had been raised by the Methodist Church Faith and Order Committee, which said it was “not a valid communion”. The idea of “remote communion”, where participants receive the bread and wine at the same time, but in different places, “conflicts with the ethos of the Conference report ‘His Presence Makes the Feast’ (2003) which talks about ‘embodied wor­ship’”.

Mr Ross said the report’s reference to “disembodied spirits” did not say that participants must be in the same physical place, but rather referred to the attitude of those present. “The issue boils down to two questions: Is remote communion a valid com­munion? Is the Christian community on the internet a valid, gathered Christian community? If the answer to both these questions is ‘Yes’, then a communion service performed by such a community of believers must be valid and may be performed.”

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At least someone in the Methodist hierarchy sees the problem with this type of service. As useful as technology can be, it is no replacement for physical interaction between people. Just like one cannot receive confession via the phone and you can’t baptize someone without physically pouring water over them, so too is the Eucharist intended to be celebrated in the context of people physically gathered together. Our Lord was incarnate in the flesh and we need to realize that even with the rise of the Internet, we still are flesh-and-blood persons whose bodies are not mere appendages to who we are, but are integral to us as persons.

Ultimately, we will be saved through our physical bodies, not in spite of them.

Today is the anniversary of the birth of one of the most influential Scripture scholars who ever lived: Rudolf Bultmann. Bultmann’s impact on the theological world cannot be underestimated; if you pick up just about any scholarly work on Scripture or Christology written in the past fifty years, there is a very good chance that Bultmann’s name will be mentioned.

Bultmann’s greatest influence was in advocating for a complete split between history and faith (see my post yesterday about this subject). He advocated “demythologizing” the New Testament by stripping it of any supernatural content, thus discovering the true history behind it. Actually, he claimed that the Gospels were not even historical documents, but merely the proclamation of the message of the early Christian community. Even though not all the specifics of Bultmann’s teachings are accepted in modern scholarship, his underlying presuppositions and assumptions still rule the world of Scripture scholarship and Christology.

One of the primary purposes of Pope Benedict’s Jesus of Nazareth series is to combat the work of Bultmann and his followers; in fact, the pope directly addresses Bultmann and his arguments numerous times in the first volume of Jesus of Nazareth. Pope Benedict recognizes that true faith and history are not in opposition, but instead that the Christian faith is founded on real historical events. Another critic of Bultmann’s false separation has been Fr. Benedict Groeschel, C.F.R. I was humbled when Fr. Benedict considered my book Who is Jesus Christ? Unlocking the Mystery in the Gospel of Matthew, which uses modern scholarship but is not a scholarly work, as one small contribution in combating the false presuppositions and conclusions of Bultmann. Fr. Benedict writes in the Foreword:

Beginning with the pope himself, the effort to present the faithful with an adequate picture of Christ is well underway. It is an effort well supported by Eric Sammons. I hope that in years to come, he will follow this book up with later volumes on the other evangelists. I also hope that we will see more and more books like this, intelligent and erudite, yet accessible, on our Divine Savior and his life and personality. It is time to reject and reverse the influence of writers like Rudolf Bultmann, who dismantled the picture of Christ, leaving us only with remnants. In the place of such destruction we now have books like Who Is Jesus Christ? Unlocking the Mystery in the Gospel of Matthew — books that rebuild or, rather, reveal anew the true picture of Christ.

We must always remember that our Christian Faith is not founded on myths in some pre-historic past, but on the historical and reliable witness of the first followers of Christ.

One of the most influential books in East-West relations is “After Nine Hundred Years,” written by Yves Congar in the 1950’s – nine hundred years after the mutual excommunications of 1054. In this book, Congar posits that the Catholic and Orthodox churches are not really in a state of schism, but of “estrangement.” By this he means that there was no formal act of schism by either side (the 1054 excommunications were not considered by anyone contemporary to them to be such an act), but instead the two churches simply grew apart over time until they finally acknowledged that they were no longer in communion with each other. Such an outlook has profound implications for how one views our current lack of communion.

I had heard about this book for years but never could get my hands on it because it is long out of print. I finally found it at a used book store about two years ago. But now, thanks to the wonders of the internet and expiring copyrights, it is available for free online. I highly recommend it.

This looks quite interesting:

And if that looks interesting to you as well, I highly recommend the movie “Ostrov,” which can be seen in its entirety on YouTube.

One of the most common positions of the scholarly community over the past one hundred years is to distinguish between the “Jesus of history” from the “Christ of faith.” The “Jesus of history” was the walking, talking historical Jesus of Nazareth who was born of Mary, preached in Galilee and Judea and was killed by the Roman authorities. The “Christ of faith,” on the other hand, is the creation of the early Christian community – especially St. Paul – and does not necessarily have any connection with Jesus of Nazareth. Any “appearances” of Jesus after his death are seen as possible apparitions and/or visions (or even hallucinations), but they are not appearances of a resurrected Jesus.

Many of the scholars who posit this theory even claim to be Christian believers. They believe that God really did work through Jesus during his life and confirmed Jesus as His messenger by giving the early Christian community these visions of a glorified, heavenly Christ. But to think that the actual physical body of Jesus of Nazareth was reanimated in some way is preposterous.

There is a major, glaring problem with this theory: the empty tomb.

If the first Christians had simply claimed to see visions of Jesus, but one could find his body rotting in the tomb, then all would realize that they mean purely heavenly visions. But one of the central themes of the early Christian preaching was that the tomb was empty and that they had seen the Lord and even touched him and ate with him. Every Gospel account emphasizes the empty tomb (Matt. 28:1-9, Mark 16:1-8, Luke 24:1-8, John 20:1-9), and Matthew even tells us that a common attack against the early Christians was that they had stolen the body of Jesus (Matt. 28:11-15), again focusing on the historical fact that the tomb was empty. If the Gospel writers or first Christians were lying about the empty tomb, then it would have been easy enough to call their bluff and prove them wrong: just check the tomb.

But perhaps they did steal the body? Perhaps this was all an elaborate ruse foisted on the public by distraught followers of a disgraced would-be Messiah. This brings us to another striking feature of the early accounts of Christ’s resurrection: they don’t actually recount his resurrection. All of the accounts follow this pattern: (1) Jesus died on the cross; (2) his dead body was placed in a tomb; (3) three days later his tomb was empty; and (4) after that some people encountered Jesus in a physical, yet different, body.

If the first Christians had stolen the body and invented tales of resurrection, surely they would have included actual tales of resurrection, wouldn’t they? But instead they are silent about the most vital part of the story: the rising of his dead body to life. This indicates veracity, for an invented tale is much more likely to fill in an important detail like that. But if it actually happened as they claimed, then the first Christians would be unable to recount the actual resurrection, as there was no eyewitness to that event. They would have been bound to be truthful about what really happened.

Ultimately, the theory that there is no direct connection between the “Jesus of history” and the “Christ of faith” needs to be buried in its own tomb. All of the evidence points to the fact that the first Christians believed wholeheartedly – and enough to give their lives for the belief – that the historical Jesus of Nazareth was raised from the dead and is the Christ in which they trust for their salvation.

…or, at least Huldrych Zwingli claimed it was.

On August 17, 1525, Zwingli, a leader in the Swiss Protestant Reformation, published the book “Subsidium sive coronis de eucharistia” in which he defended his novel belief that the bread and wine of the Eucharist were only symbols. He also rejected the idea that the Eucharistic liturgy was a sacrifice, relegating it to merely a “remembrance.” The reverberations of this book cannot be underestimated: today, the vast majority of Protestants accept Zwingli’s view, often not even realizing that it was not the view of Luther or even Calvin.

Reducing the Eucharist to a mere symbol has had profound effects, but the greatest is the disunity that has prevailed in Western Christendom since the Reformation. As I wrote in Who is Jesus Christ? Unlocking the Mystery in the Gospel of Matthew in the chapter entitled “Shepherd”:

[U]nity in the Church is not the result of theological conformity; rather, theological agreement is the result of a preexisting unity founded upon the Eucharist. It is not coincidental that the greatest case of disunity in the Church — the sixteenth-century Protestant Reformation — included a denigration of the Eucharist to merely a symbol of Christ rather than His real Presence. No longer bound by the Eucharist, the leaders of the Reformation began a never-ending proliferation of new denominations and Christian bodies.
The Church is not united based on the desires and strengths of men, but because of the unifying grace of the Eucharist. Without it, our fallen race is guaranteed to be divided. Thus, those who are still united through the Eucharist should not look upon these sad events in a spirit of pride or triumphalism; it is not of man’s power that the Church remains united. Only — only — by the presence of the Shepherd in the Eucharist can it hope to remain one flock. Without Him as the source of unity, his followers will truly be a flock that is scattered.

Let us pray that one day all Christians will be united in the one Eucharistic Body of the Lord, which is no mere symbol, but is truly the Real Presence of Christ among us.

Today it is common for “sophisticated” Catholics as well as non-Catholics to scoff at pious practices of the past, such as asking St. Anthony’s intercession in finding lost objects. But I for one think such practices are completely legitimate and well within our Faith.

Yesterday I was trying to find our checkbook before Mass. My wife and I had looked everywhere for it during the past week, but could not find it anywhere. I was about to give up and break into a new set of checks when I remembered St. Anthony. I said a quick prayer asking him to help me find it before Mass. A few minutes later I was talking to my wife and she remembered then that the checkbook was in the pool bag. Thank you St. Anthony!

Then I figured I had his attention, so I asked him for help in finding my son’s belt. It had been missing for over a month. I walk into his room, look under his bed (which I had looked under numerous times in the past month), and voila! there it was! St. Anthony was on a roll!

I might be unsophisticated, but at least I don’t lose things for very long.

St. Anthony, pray for us!