There is a classic scene in “Life of Brian” where they say: “Why do you keep going on about women, Stan?” and Stan (after a moment’s hesitation) says: “I want to be one.”
PE wants to know why, in conversation with Protestants, we keep on going on about “the Catholic Church, the Catholic Church, the Catholic Church.” He says that this tendancy proves we Catholics make a “God” out of the Church. It all ends up with “sola ecclesia”.
Why DO we keep going on about the Catholic Church? The reason is very simple. Let’s try an analogy.
Imagine a Lutheran in conversation with a Calvinist. The Calvinist and the Lutheran will both agree on many things. They will certainly agree that justification is by faith alone and that the bible is the sole source and norm of all Christian doctrine. They might even agree on infant baptism. But they will part company on a crucial issue–the same crucial issue that Zwingli and Luther parted company on back in 1529, namely: the Lord’s Supper.
As Martin Luther did then, so today. In dispute with a Calvinist (or any other species of Reformed Christian) the real presence of Christ in the Lord’s Supper, that is, the insistance that when Christ said “This is my body” he meant that the bread of the Lord’s Supper is his true body born of the Virgin Mary etc., will be the crucial issue. Unless the Reformed/Calvinist can assent to this, they cannot be in communion with the Lutherans.
As Zwingli did then, the Calvinist/Reformed Christian will today say to the Lutheran: Why do you keep going on about the Real Presence? “The Real Presence, the Real Presence, the Real Presence.” Don’t you think that you might not be making a “God” out of the Real Presence? Aren’t you making this “sola the Real Presence”?
To which, in reply, the Lutheran can only shake his head and say “My Calvinist friend doesn’t get it. How can he say that I am “making a god” out of the Real Presence when the Real Presence IS my God in flesh and blood? How can I conceive of a Christianity without the Lord’s Supper? Without the Real Presence of Christ’s body and blood in the Lord’s Supper there is no church.”
So you see? In the Lutheran view (Catholic too, but that is irrelevant here), the Real Presence is essential to the Christian faith. But the Calvinist/Reformed Christian denies this essential element. Therefore, in the dialogue with one another, this will be the chief issue between Reformed and Lutheran Christians.
The analogy is this: in the dialogue between Catholic and Protestant Christians, the necessity of the Catholic Church per se is the point of contention. We go on and on about “the Catholic Church, the Catholic Church, the Catholic Church” because it is the point on which we differ. We could go on about “The Holy Trinity, the Holy Trinity, the Holy Trinity”, or “Baptism, baptism, baptism”, or “faith, faith, faith”, or “Christ, Christ, Christ”, but the essential necessity of these for our faith is not in dispute between us.
The essential neccesity of the Church IS. And that is why we keep banging on about it.
And don’t leave out our Common Service!
The most beloved of all!
I rejoice in the beauty of our worship!
Christine
WW, at the risk of being offensive (which I do not intend), it seems rather arbitrary to pick one thing from the Church and then use that to judge the rest. As Chesterton argues (I cite him, not because I think you haven’t read him, because he says it much better than I could, and I would be interested to know how you would respond to him):
The ordinary sensible sceptic or pagan is standing in the street (in the supreme character of the man in the street) and he sees a procession go by of the priests of some strange cult, carrying their object of worship under a canopy, some of them wearing high head-dresses and carrying symbolical staffs, others carrying scrolls and sacred records, others carrying sacred images and lighted candles before them, others sacred relics in caskets or cases, and so on. I can understand the spectator saying, “This is all hocus-pocus”; I can even understand him, in moments of irritation, breaking up the procession, throwing down the images, tearing up the scrolls, dancing on the priests and anything else that might express that general view. I can understand his saying, “Your croziers are bosh, your candles are bosh, your statues and scrolls and relics and all the rest of it are bosh.” But in what conceivable frame of mind does he rush in to select one particular scroll of the scriptures of this one particular group (a scroll which had always belonged to them and been a part of their hocus-pocus, if it was hocus-pocus); why in the world should the man in the street say that one particular scroll was not bosh, but was the one and only truth by which all the other things were to be condemned? Why should it not be as superstitious to worship the scrolls as the statues, of that one particular procession? Why should it not be as reasonable to preserve the statues as the scrolls, by the tenets of that particular creed? To say to the priests, “Your statues and scrolls are condemned by our common sense,” is sensible. To say, “Your statues are condemned by your scrolls, and we are going to worship one part of your procession and wreck the rest,” is not sensible from any standpoint, least of all that of the man in the street.
melenes: Things I dream of throwing at PE
Dear Kirion,
It is not *I* who speak this way, but the holy Fathers of the Church. As I’ve often said, we learn to value tradition from the Sacred Scriptures; we learn to value the “by Scripture alone” criterion from tradition.
Who speaks this way? Consider the words (I thought I cited them before) of our holy fathers:
“Regarding the things I say, I should supply even the proofs, so I will not seem to rely on my own opinions, but rather, prove them with Scripture, so that the matter will remain certain and steadfast.” St. John Chrysostom (Homily 8 On Repentance and the Church, p. 118, vol. 96 TFOTC)
“Let the inspired Scriptures then be our umpire, and the vote of truth will be given to those whose dogmas are found to agree with the Divine words.” St. Gregory of Nyssa (On the Holy Trinity, NPNF, p. 327).
“We are not entitled to such license, I mean that of affirming what we please; we make the Holy Scriptures the rule and the measure of every tenet; we necessarily fix our eyes upon that, and approve that alone which may be made to harmonize with the intention of those writings.” St. Gregory of Nyssa (On the Soul and the Resurrection NPNF II, V:439)
“What is the mark of a faithful soul? To be in these dispositions of full acceptance on the authority of the words of Scripture, not venturing to reject anything nor making additions. For, if ‘all that is not of faith is sin’ as the Apostle says, and ‘faith cometh by hearing and hearing by the Word of God,’ everything outside Holy Scripture, not being of faith, is sin.” Basil the Great (The Morals, p. 204, vol 9 TFOTC).
“For concerning the divine and holy mysteries of the Faith, not even a casual statement must be delivered without the Holy Scriptures; nor must we be drawn aside by mere plausibility and artifices of speech. Even to me, who tell you these things, give not absolute credence, unless you receive the proof of the things which I announce from the Divine Scriptures. For this salvation which we believe depends not on ingenious reasoning, but on demonstration of the Holy Scriptures.” St. Cyril of Jerusalem (Catechetical Lectures, IV:17, in NPNF, Volume VII, p. 23.)
“It is impossible either to say or fully to understand anything about God beyond what has been divinely proclaimed to us, whether told or revealed, by the sacred declarations of the Old and New Testaments.” St. John of Damascus, On the Orthodox Faith, Book I, Chapter 2
“Nevertheless, sacred doctrine makes use of these authorities as extrinsic and probable arguments; but properly uses the authority of the canonical Scriptures as an incontrovertible proof, and the authority of the doctors of the Church as one that may properly be used, yet merely as probable. For our faith rests upon the revelation made to the apostles and prophets who wrote the canonical books, and not on the revelations (if any such there are) made to other doctors. Hence Augustine says (Epis. ad Hieron. xix, 1): “Only those books of Scripture which are called canonical have I learned to hold in such honor as to believe their authors have not erred in any way in writing them. But other authors I so read as not to deem everything in their works to be true, merely on account of their having so thought and written, whatever may have been their holiness and learning.”–St. Thomas Aquinas, Summa Theologia, Part 1, Question 1, Article 8
WHO takes the sacred scrolls and subjects to them all teaching in the Church? THE FATHERS!
Pax!
Of course, as one who whenever possible attends the Traditional Latin Mass (aka – sorry, PE, please don’t go into another diatribe – the Extraordinary Form of the Roman Rite), and as one who actually prefers the Dominican Rite (very similar to the Sarum, BTW), I prefer these over the Novus Ordo (tho’ the latter celebrated in Latin ad orientem would be nice). Likewise, worshipping in the Byzantine Rite with the Russian Catholics in their Melbourne chapel of St Nicholas was heaven on earth (see my blog for late January if you wish).
I do, however, as a person keenly interested in and with no small knowledge of liturgy (do bear with a little foolishness, as the Apostle would say), find wierdly hybridized rites unpleasant. For instance, the devout and earnest TAC remnant that I visited a few weeks back had celebrated for them by their bishop a rite that was basically the traditional Roman Missal in English, but with the modern Lectionary’s readings, and sundry nice bits from the BCP inserted hither and thither – most notably, the Roman Canon wasn’t used, but the “Interim Rite” of their 1662 Prayers of Consecration and Oblation back-to-back with the 1549 Anamnesis stuck in the middle: which made, I say without wishing to offend, a real dog’s-breakfast of a liturgy. Similarly, albeit on a rather better (and a certainly valid level), the “Western Orthodox” typically have some version of the Latin Mass – but put into the vernacular, which is the Eastern practice sort-of, but which is far from the common Western tradition – yet they “ruin” it liturgically by inserting into the Roman Canon an Eastern-style epiclesis, which the Easterners never required of Rome in the first millennium, and which is an utter bastardization of the most venerable and holy Canon of the Mass.
As for the Common Service – to the extent that Luther and his descendants simply took the Western Mass and dropped the bits they thought improper (so no Offertory prayers, and no Canon, except for the Verba), they were “conservative”; but huge doses of (granted very fine) hymn-singing is in fact foreign to the Roman Rite (though in mediæval Germany some hymns were sung, just not very many and not all through the service: the Bet-sing-Messe came much later), and the rearrangement of the liturgy that all this deletion, insertion of hymns and a prefatory Protestant formula of confession and absolution and a later long formula of intercession (again paralleling the German mediæval custom), and above all putting the Lord’s Prayer before, not after the Canon now reduced to the Verba Domini, produced comes across overall as producing a service profoundly different to the Catholic Mass. (I grant that it obviously has its own self-consistent logic and beauty, else of course it would satisfy no one – but it is certainly further – again, hush, PE! – from the Roman Mass than the Novus Ordo is: for after all the new form of the Mass still has lengthy Eucharistic Prayers that contain an explicit oblation of the Body and Blood of Christ (e.g. E.P.’s IV and III), and many prayers and chants between the Consecration and the Communion, as do all the classical liturgies. Only Protestant liturgies strive for the shortest interval between Consecration and Communion, that any suggestion of adoration or oblation be removed (though of course a good Lutheran does adore the Christ he believes to be present “in, with and under”).
Only Protestant liturgies strive for the shortest interval between Consecration and Communion, ……(though of course a good Lutheran does adore the Christ he believes to be present “in, with and under”).
An interesting observation, Joshua. Maybe it’s because they want to get on with it!
( ..receive the Gift..and understand that God is doing the giving.)
So, chants et al (words, words, words) are simply delaying the Wonder.
Did you open your Christmas presents on Boxing Day, perchance?
Dear Joshua,
The original Common Service allowed for the Our Father to come in either spot – before or after the Verba. And I, at any rate, would argue that the final and fullest and most legitimate form of the Common Service was reached in the developments of the Service Book and Hymnal. Here the Sanctus was followed with this Prayer:
Holy art Thou, Almighty and Merciful God. Holy art Thou, and great is the majesty of Thy glory.
Thou didst so love the world as to give Thine only-begotten Son, that whosoever believeth in Him should not perish, but have everlasting life; Who, having coming into the world to fulfill for us Thy holy will and to accomplish all things for our salvation, IN THE NIGHT IN WHICH HE WAS BETRAYED…
Remembering, therefore, His salutary precept, His life-giving Passion and Death, His glorious resurrection and ascension, and the promise of His coming again, we give thanks to Thee, O Lord God Almighty, not as we ought, but as are able; and we beseech Thee mercifully to accept our praise and thanksgiving, and with Thy Word and Holy Spirit to bless us, Thy servants, and these Thine own gifts of bread and wine, so that we and all who partake thereof may be filled with heavenly benediction and grace, and, receiving the remission of sins, be sanctified in soul and body, and have our portion with all Thy saints.
And unto Thee, O God, Father, Son, and Holy Spirit, be all glory and honor in Thy holy Church, world without end. Amen.
Sadly, though Missouri authorized a slight adaptation of this prayer in Worship Supplement (and thus it may still be used in our Churches), the LSB chose not to further it – though I did urge them to seriously consider it.
You criticise other Western liturgies for introducing elements or approaches foreign to the Roman rite, then defend the novus ordo, which among other things sought to extend the Roman rite beyond its parametres, most particularly in incorporating elements of the Eastern rites and, in good nouvelle theologie fashion, back to a supposed long lost patristic purity?
I did not say our Common Service — now unfortunately not our common service amid a variety of Vatican II wannabe services — was faithful to the Holy Sacrifice of the Mass. Hell no. That’s because we believe any “Holy Sacrifice of the Mass” is not mass. What I said was, the novus ordo is not the Holy Sacrifice of the Mass.
The question of whether Lutherans have what mass is right or a proper liturgy for it is not my point, at least here. The issue is that the Catholic Church has resourced itself right out of the Holy Sacrifice of the Mass, now having neither the Holy Sacrifice of the Mass nor in its cut and paste hodge-podge from other rites and its own rite in the novus ordo, though lately you can celebrate the Holy Sacrifice of the Mass as a museum piece as long as you swear fealty to the new regime thereby obliterting why one stands by what one stands in the first place as a Catholic.
One thing about Roman gag orders — you have to have a certain standing to issue them, which, as nother thread on why blog mentions, none of us has.
Shortest liturgies? The novus ordo mass at most of my neighborhood Catholic parishes lasts anywhere between 50 minutes to barely an hour, and that’s not counting the people who slip out right after receiving Communion.
Oh, I take that back — the Saturday vigil at the closest parish lasts a little longer now that they have a “praise band” in place.
By contrast, the liturgy at my Lutheran parish goes well over an hour.
It also delights me that the congregation and Pastor worship ad orientem during various parts of the liturgy. And our hymns? Yes, they are glorious, giving praise and adoration to Christ who comes to us in His Holy Supper to renew His Testament in His Body and Blood.
Just as there were no “priests” in the New Testament (show me please, Joshua, where the terms sacerdos or hiereus are used of any Christian pastor in the New Testament).
Presbuteros won’t do, it is not a sacerdotal term. The Sacrifice has been made. We don’t need to make Calvary present again in the sense that Rome does. That one Sacrifice is all sufficient to continually cleanse us from sin until we are at home with the Lord.
Christine
Well, Christine, we would say that our one High Priest in the holy mass continually offers to His people the one sacrifice which He once offered to secure their eternal redemption. Calvary is being dished out at the Eucharist, on that both we and Rome agree. What we disagree on is whether Calvary is being presented by the priest or pastor to God. It reminds me much of the question about invocation of the saints; we don’t do it, not only because it has neither command, promise or example in the Sacred Scriptures, but above all because we needn’t do it: they intercede for us anyway! Thus with the offering of the Eucharist to the Father. Christ has done the offering – fully, completely, and for all time. Now He commands the offering to be dished out that the benefits of the offering may come to live in the communicants and that their lives may become sacrifices to God in union with Him. Wouldn’t you agree?
What we disagree on is whether Calvary is being presented by the priest or pastor to God.M
Absolutely, Pastor Weedon. Just as we don’t need to invoke the saints to pray for us because they already ARE praying for us it IS Christ alone who is our High Priest. As the classic Lutheran teaching states, where there is forgiveness of sins (that we receive in the Sacrament of the Altar) there is salvation.
The fact that Rome has a different understanding is plainly evident in the doctrine of purgatory. If after receiving absolution one is still required to make satisfaction for one’s sins, we have a different understanding of what the Sacrifice accomplished and accomplishes.
It is very convenient to ask for prayers and masses for the suffering souls in purgatory and it is also convenient to teach that since purgatory is outside of time no one really know how long the soul suffers in purgatory so the masses on their behalf could theoretically go on forever and requires a priestly caste to offer sacrifice on their behalf. This doesn’t reflect the all sufficient, once for all Sacrifice that is continually renewed and re-presented in the Lutheran understanding of the mass.
Christine
Methinks the lady doth protest too much.
Dear Pastor Weedon, I do not disagree that the Faith is to be submitted to the Scriptures (and Tradition, I add but this is another discussion). All I am saying is that the Scriptures are mediated to us by the Church. Without the Church, I wouldn’t know what the Scriptures are, or what they say.
Also, by your logic, why pray at all? God knows what He has in mind for us. Our telling him won’t change that. So, why pray? (And if you come back with “Jesus told us to,” likewise, He told us to represent His Sacrifice, and Paul reiterated the same command)
coider: An Australian drink on the wagon.
Christine, what about working our our salvation in fear and trembling?
bugessi: An Italian buggy
Did someone note the Nelson, by the way (with apologies {? Are these necessary? Are there Nelsons in the US} to our American friends)?
Kiran,
Where did our Lord tell us to “represent” His sacrifice? Where did the Apostle urge such a thing?
We pray to the Blessed Trinity because it is indeed something our Lord has commanded; something to which He has added particularly great and wonderful promises; and something that we have numerous examples of, not only in our Lord’s own life, but also in the Church he founded. Ecclesia orans. But her orans – at least in the Sacred Scriptures, is directed always and only to the Blessed Trinity. “Call upon me in the day of trouble, I will deliver you and you shall glorify me!”
I would still maintain the point that the fathers teach us to regard Scripture as the rule and norm of the Church’s teaching.
Kiron,
Not to answer for Christine, but I’ll take the question as addressed to me as well. I seek to work out my salvation in fear and trembling through praying the daily office with the whole Church, through faithful reception of the Eucharist, through private confession and absolution, through fasting and self-denial and through acts of service and love. What this all amounts to is seeking to grow into the holiness which has been given to me whole and entire at my Baptism so that my Savior’s life, becomes ever more my own; His joy, my joy; His peace, my peace; His love, my love. I seek to die to my fleshly passions and rise anew in union with Him through my Baptism.
Also, by your logic, why pray at all? God knows what He has in mind for us. Our telling him won’t change that.
God also knew beforehand that Mary would consent to become the Mother of God, but Mary did’nt know it until she was asked.
As for working out our salvation in fear and trembling, same thing as St. Paul saying he had to run the race faithfully too lest in preaching to others he fell himself. In other words, Lutherans do NOT believe in “once saved, always saved.” We can reject God and in the end lose our salvation.
But, too, Scripture assures us that God is working in us to His good pleasure. Even if we are unfaithful God is always faithful and will continue to call us back to Himself.
Long before the Church officially canonized the Scriptures (and even then there was the Greek canon and the Palestinian canon of the Rabbis which rejected the Apocryphal books) the various letters of the New Testament were being read and circulated in the nascent Christian communities. The Bereans search the Scriptures daily to see if Jesus was indeed the Messiah.
Nevertheless, the tradition of the Church is secure in the way that the books which were officially canonized were handed down. One need only compare the orthodox canon to some of the spurious writings floating around in the early centuries to see which were and weren’t fantastic fables that couldn’t hold up to the books inspired by the Holy Spirit.
One of the great gifts of Lutherans to the wider church is the Lutheran emphasis on an educated laity that knows Holy Writ (the second being our glorious hymns).
Christine
Yikes Pastor Weedon, seems we posted almost simultaneously (:
And I certainly second what Pastor Weedon wrote. Holy Baptism is treasured by Lutherans as something we return to daily.
Pastor Weedon, I might begin facetously by noting you spell my name differently each time. Not to register pique, only amusement. Thank you for your answers.
All of this, by the way, in a friendly rather than a rancorous spirit. I will respond to your second answer first. Ah yes. As do I, but then again, I presume that these works which represent your growth in sanctification at some level acknowledge that what was done at Calvary does forgive sin, but it has to be made my own (I abstain from certain words because I am not exactly certain as to their use in “protestant” – i.e. originating from the reformation -circles). In some sense, something additional is required from me when I sin (hence private confession and absolution). What is the problem then with purgatory, and the notion that when I sin, I need somehow not just to be forgiven for it, but to make an effort (only possible because I am moved by Grace) to reestablish in a relationship that which was there before, but which I by my sin destroyed?
And now to your first argument, I don’t follow. What is wrong with 1:Corinthians, or any of the different institution narratives?
Christine, (I think Pastor Weedon already has responded to this, and I am satisfied with his answer, though I still maintain what I do regarding interpretation: How do I know, for instance, how to interpret, say, Genesis 1-3, or the institution narratives) my question remains however: Why accept things which are in one set of books and not others?
Actually, I might append a supplementary question for my own knowledge: Do you (plural. the PNG pidgin yupella) accept 1 and 2:Maccabees?
Kiran,
My apologies about the spelling!!! I do tend to get irritated when my name is misspelled.
What is required of you when you sin is repentance and absolution – both of which Scripture describes as gifts from God. Just as faith is also a gift of God and yet YOU truly do believe, even so with repentance.
Purgatory I have no truck with; purgation is another matter. Our God IS a consuming fire. And the way St. Paul speaks in 1 Cor. 3 suggests that purgation is order for all of us. The Lutheran Symbols note – without censure – that St. Augustine apparently so understood it. So not a place, but the final purification that burns out of us all that is not love – and that we rejoice in. An ouch before the “ah” as a friend used to put it. But an ouch to which we cry: Burn, baby! Burn! Destroy in me all that is not the love of God!
Such purgation, I might note, begins long before our death. It is to start at the moment of our Baptism and will be complete when our Baptism is completed in passing through death.
Lutherans read and accept 1 and 2 Macc. and all the Apocrypha as good to read, but not on the same level as canonical Scripture. We’d rather agree with St. Gregory of Nazianzus as he lists out the authentic Biblical books. Historically, Lutheran Bibles always included them.
Oh, and what do you find in the institution narratives or 1 Corinthians that speak of representation of the sacrifice?
Request to Schutz: This seems to be developing in a very interesting direction, but is getting rather long. Would you start a new thread, please? I can blink my eyes rapidly if that will make a difference….
Pastor Weedon, no, I was being serious (Do I contradict myself. Very well. I contradict myself. I contain multitudes…) when I said I found it amusing. I am used to my name being misspelt, since it is an unusual spelling of a common name.
I don’t see anything in what you say though with which I disagree. What do you (yupella again) think Catholics believe?
“Do this in memory of me.” Cf. Trent on this (Again not that you haven’t read it already). How would you regard Trent on the Eucharist as sacrifice?
stsundsq: A holy person of obscure European origin.
Christine – that old canard about purgatory being a money-grubbing invention of the church to support a priestly caste is an example of prejudice.
Also, just because sacerdos and hiereus aren’t terms used of Christian ministers in the New Testament doesn’t mean that they can’t be: we believe it to be entirely consonant with Scripture that, as Christ is the One Priest, and His ministers are ordained to act in His Name and His Person in celebrating the Eucharist, in absolving, etc., so they are sacramental icons of Christ the High Priest, and are named priests.
PW – yes, as I recall Bouyer commented favourably upon that eucharistic prayer, which is indeed well-phrased insofar as it goes, though of course a Catholic theologian would regard it as missing certain elements such as oblation and intercession.
Furthermore, if, as you so rightly say, the saints are always praying for us, and if, as I’m sure you’d agree, we Christians should likewise be ever praying for each other (as we do every time we repeat the Lord’s Prayer or any other prayer in the plural), yet why is it good to nonetheless ask each other here on earth to pray for us, despite our obvious belief that our fellows are praying for us, while it is wrong to ask the saints to pray for us – as they are not dead, but very much alive in Christ, and in Him (through Whom alone we are able to pray) are aware of us weak members of His Body?
I don’t see why Lutherans can’t accept the invocation of saints.
On this feast of SS Perpetua and Felicity, why not celebrate their memory by humbly asking their prayers, just as I humbly ask your prayers, PW, when I reflect upon your kindliness and goodness, and my own wretched sinfulness?
After all, it is not contrary to Scripture, but in fact consonant with it: as you have noted, the saints do in fact intercede for us. So why not ask them jointly or severally to intercede for us? In Christ, they will hear us, and in Him they will pray for us.
So we gonna do that on 6 March or 7 March? These two holy martyrs have had a hell of a time of it. The feast is 7 March. Was for centuries. Then, Aquinas inconveniently dies on 7 March, so when he got put in Rome’s calendar coming out of Trent the good women got booted, ain’t even in the calendar, though they remained commemorated in the Commemoration of the Dead in the Roman Canon. Then Pius X sticks them back in in 1908 on the day before, 6 March.
Comes the Revolution, Thomas gets booted out of 7 March to 28 January, the day they moved his remains to Toulouse damn near 100 years after he died and the holy martyrs get moved back to 7 March.
Sort of. Now, in marvellous harmony with the liturgical history of the church, there is both an ordinary and an extraordinary form of the same thing, so it’s 6 March in the latter and 7 March in the former — but in the former, they are among the now parenthetical dead to be mentioned, or not, in the Commemoration of the Dead at Mass.
A long long way from “humbly ask”.
PE,
Your memory is playing tricks on you.
The memento defunctorum occurs directly before the “Nobis quoque peccatoribus”, and it is in the latter that Perpetua and Felicity are listed as among those saints named with whom we beg God to grant us some part and fellowship, not weighing our just deserts, but pardoning our offences. Of course, if Eucharistic Prayer III is used then they can be named as well; in most of the other Eucharistic Prayers only the Blessed Virgin is mentioned by name, then the Apostles, Martyrs, and all the saints in general. It is evident in all the prayers that the saints, whom we venerate and commemorate, whose examples we would follow and whose prayers we implore, are in a different category than the faithful departed, who, their sins being forgiven, we pray may rest in peace.
*****
Fingxght – a placename in the Netherlands (just hack up a blob of mucus and you’ll pronounce the second syllable perfectly).
And it goes without saying that moving the feasts and commemorations of saints about is fairly common practice, and is an accidental not an essential feature – I seem to note that the LCMS has rejigged its own calendar of commemorations…
Sorry pal, the nobis quoque is part of the commemoration of the dead, corresponing to the commemoration of the living on the other side of the consecration, and ending before the minor elevation.
Did I say they were listed in an imploration for prayers? No. I said they were listed in the commemoration of the dead, named, well used to be named, as among those with whom we hope to enjoy heaven. Oh well, happens all the time here.
Yeah right, wholesale revisions of the calendar happen every few decades or so along with wholesale revisions of theology, no different than the isolated relocations in an organic growth of the same calendar. Right.
You are right, however, that LCMS has descended into one of its fits of Vatican II wannabeism with two calendars, one “historic” (the real one) and one revisionist. At least we didn’t have to wait for the synod’s president to say it’s OK after 40 years of suppressing it.
As to praying that those whose sins are firgiven may rest in peace — that’s what it is to rest in peace, having your sins forgiven. Oh well.
Gott hilf mir, 130 entries !! Unmoeglich!! Sorry, my decidely Prussian and Bavarian (not Barossa) German roots kick in early in the morning.
Pastor Weedon, I might begin facetously by noting you spell my name differently each time. Not to register pique, only amusement. Thank you for your answers.
Just as it took you a while to address Pastor using his proper title.
Heh, Trent on sacrifice. Lutherans don’t consider Trent, Vatican I or Vatican II to accurately represent what happened at that first Eucharist.
I don’t see why Lutherans can’t accept the invocation of saints.
Very simple Joshua. The saints now live in eternity and outside of time. But we are still CREATURES of God and do not have omniscience, even in the glorified state of heaven. In order for any saint to hear the simultaneous prayers of millions of people at one time they would need the attributes of divinity. There is absolutely no encouragement to invoke the saints in the New Testament. Nichts, nada, none. Jesus alone is the author and perfecter of our faith. The “surplus merits” of the saints (whom one wag once quipped are often holier than any human being has a right to be) is pure fiction.
Christine – that old canard about purgatory being a money-grubbing invention of the church to support a priestly caste is an example of prejudice.
I said not one word about “money grubbing.” What I said was the erroneous teaching of purgatory keeps people in a constant state of uncertainty in that they never have the assurance of Christ’s full and complete forgiveness in this life and the next and thereby requires a priestly caste to keep the doctrine going by offering “sacrifice” to release them from their intermediate state.
I believe that when Jesus said from the cross “It is finished” and the temple curtain was torn in two the old way of approaching God was done forever. For those who live trusting (and that is far more then intellectual “assent”) in Christ and what he has done for us, connected to Him in the Word which every Christian needs to grow into the fullness and stature of Christ and the Holy Sacrament, given as assurance of our forgiveness, there is no need for purgatory. His holiness becomes ours and gives us entrance to life eternal.
Also, just because sacerdos and hiereus aren’t terms used of Christian ministers in the New Testament doesn’t mean that they can’t be: we believe it to be entirely consonant with Scripture that, as Christ is the One Priest, and His ministers are ordained to act in His Name and His Person in celebrating the Eucharist, in absolving, etc., so they are sacramental icons of Christ the High Priest, and are named priests.
If I remember correctly, in the Greek New Testament “hiereus” is used to refer to the Old Testament priesthood. If it were to apply in the New Testament period there is no reason it should not have been used. But then, Rome has always found a way to proclaim something and then backtrack to make it fit.
Gott hilf mir auch — my Bavarian roots wound up in Minnesota to avoid those Prussian roots!
First 48ers and then to avoid being sent to take French bullets for the Prussians in the Franco-Prussian War.
Hah! Your Bavarian roots will be assimilated my friend! Resistance is futile! Prussian efficiency rules!
Well, they sure knew when to dump Chrysler — which I always thought they should have renamed Kreisler when they bought it.
No more commercials with Dieter, though. Drag.
Yeah, I miss Dieter too. He made some rockin’ commercials!
Christine
PE, I’d not ever read that the Nobis quoque is considered part of the memento defunctorum – normally, that name is restricted to the Memento etiam, which early manuscripts shew to have been an optional insert only read at Masses for the dead (and so only on weekdays, not on Sundays). And of course, as the Memento etiam ends with Per Christum Dominum nostrum, all the mediæval commentators took it that the Canon of the Mass consisted of five prayers, of which this was the fourth, and the Nobis quoque down to the end was the fifth.
But I do thank you for elucidating this point: of course, the two do neatly flow into one another, and illustrate the truth that, once purgation is past, the saints who have died in Christ do indeed enter a paradise of light, rest and peace (cf. the vision of heaven recorded in the account of the martyrdom of SS Perpetua and Felicity). The whole two prayers are so beautiful, and, I would hope, so acceptable to Lutherans and others as well as to Catholics, that they may be worthy of use even in private devotion:
Meménto étiam, Dómine, famulórum famularúmque tuárum N. et N. qui nos præcessérunt cum signo fídei, et dórmiunt in somno pacis. Ipsis, Dómine, et ómnibus in Christo quiescéntibus, locum refrigérii, lucis et pacis, ut indúlgeas, deprecámur. Per eúmdem Christum Dóminum nostrum. Amen.
(Be mindful, O Lord, of thy servants and handmaids N. and N., who are gone before us, with the sign of faith, and sleep in the sleep of peace. To these, O Lord, and to all that rest in Christ, we beseech thee, grant a place of refreshment, light, and peace. Through the same Christ our Lord. Amen.)
Nobis quoque peccatóribus, fámulis tuis, de multitúdine miseratiónum tuárum sperántibus, partem áliquam et societátem donáre dignéris, cum tuis sanctis Apóstolis et Martyribus: cum Joánne, Stéphano, Mathía, Bárnaba, Ignátio, Alexándro, Marcellíno, Petro, Felicitáte, Perpétua, Ágatha, Lúcia, Agnéte, Cæcília, Anastásia, et ómnibus sanctis tuis; intra quorum nos consórtium, non æstimátor mériti, sed véniæ, quæsumus, largítor admítte. Per Christum Dóminum nostrum.
(To us sinners, also, thy servants, hoping in the multitude of thy mercies, vouchsafe to grant some part and fellowship with thy holy apostles and martyrs: with John, Stephen, Matthias, Barnabas, Ignatius, Alexander, Marcellinus, Peter, Felicity, Perpetua, Agatha, Lucy, Agnes, Cecily, Anastasia, and with all thy saints, into whose company we pray thee admit us, not considering our merit, but of thine own free pardon. Through Christ our Lord.)
Christine:
The saints now live in eternity and outside of time. But we are still CREATURES of God and do not have omniscience, even in the glorified state of heaven. In order for any saint to hear the simultaneous prayers of millions of people at one time they would need the attributes of divinity.
I am not interested in conditional Christianity. The concept of purgatory flies in the face of the Gospel message, and I’m amazed that the CC , in claiming to be The church, could have it on the books.
The parable of the rich man and Lasuras (spelling?) seems to be a strong indicator that there’s no communication ‘back and forwards’ as it were. The ‘good’? thief went straight to paradise, on no more than a statement of faith, and a request.
I wonder about the motivation to ‘invoke Saints’. They are not divine. Why not accept the promise that ‘the Spirit intercedes for us with sighs……too deep to understand.
Jesus has given us direct access to the Father (Abba).
Invoking saints seems a bit like having one of your children asking a neighbour to speak to your dad on their behalf.
A thousand apologies for posting an angry comment (which I have will delete); and I’d only just been to confession too!
These were the only parts I wish to repost:
The Holy Catholic Church teaches the communion of saints, which means that, as we on earth can and do pray for each other, so can those in heaven hear our prayers and pray for us.
And have you not read that there are some sins which shall not be forgiven either in this age nor in the age to come – implying that some sins are forgiven in the age to come, after death? and that “you shall not get out until you have paid the last farthing”? and that we shall pass through fire, which shall burn away all dross?
Since I believe that Revelation is not solely mediated to us through Scripture, but also through the Tradition of the Church (oral, then later written down and practised – e.g. prayers to the saints and for the dead, the sacrifice of the Mass, etc. etc.), then I can’t really argue with those who are sola scriptura. I hold to a hermeneutic of continuity – that the Church down all the ages has in fact and must conserve the essential truths of the Faith, else Christ’s promise was in vain. I do not exercise a hermeneutic of suspicion toward the official teachings of the Catholic Church down the ages, but read them in continuity with tradition.
Good Lord, Joshua, there is almost no end of analyses of the Roman Canon, with subdivisions spawning all sorts of mystical, or numerological, interpretation.
Pastor Weedon may be interested to know that the origin of saying the Canon silently comes from one such analysis: that whereas the earlier part of the Mass participates in Christ’s teaching with its Scripture, preaching, and prayer, the Canon participates in his suffering and death, which he endured silently, not teaching or even speaking in his own defence, therefore it is said inaudibly. The idea was not to onscure Christ but imitate him.
The classic division is in four parts of three prayers each — giving the mystics, numerologists, mystical numerologistsm numerological mystics, whatever, their favourite numbers of 3,4 and 3×4 or 12. Benedict XIV is associated with this. Memento defunctorum, nobis quoque and per quem are the three prayers of the fourth section.
That is no doubt why the two missals I maintain — one from 1950 and having the holy women on 6 March and the other from 1889 and not having them at all, btw — place all three prayers under the editorial heading “Commemoration of the Dead”.
That said, I’m with Vicci. The saints provide us with great examples and may indeed pray for us, however, no matter how well intended or even OK in itself, in practice it so easily obscures rather than magnifies Christ, as if he had to be persuaded to act beneficially on our behalf, as if in giving us himself he had not already given us everything.
An aside — the 1950 missal is the one I had as a boy, from which I learned the Mass, both how to hear it, as we used to say, and to serve as an altar boy; the 1889 one was given, in a later printing, to my dad on his conversion to Catholicism in 1941.
Both before Bugman 62.
Vicci,
You are spot on as is PE. The whole notion of purgatory completely flies in the face of the finished work of Christ and is another example that while “on the books” she claims to be the servant of Scripture her tradition often trumps it. Its another example of something is true because the Catholic church says so and the Catholic church is the Catholic church because it is true.
Christine
And have you not read that there are some sins which shall not be forgiven either in this age nor in the age to come – implying that some sins are forgiven in the age to come, after death? and that “you shall not get out until you have paid the last farthing”? and that we shall pass through fire, which shall burn away all dross?
Nothing to do with purgatory at all. Jesus is speaking about the sin of disbelief in the work of the Holy Spirit. 1 John tells us that if we confess our sins God is faithful and just and will cleanse us from ALL unrighteousness, here and now. No “stain” of sin to carry over into the next life. If a person chooses not to avail himself of the mercy of Christ in this life then he will indeed have no recourse.
Hebrews tells us that it is appointed for men ONCE to die and then the judgment which we will all face when we die or at the parousia. I’m staking my life on the merits of Jesus Christ alone.
Christine
Joshua,
I too advocate a hermeneutic of continuity, but I still recognize that there are eras of more fruitful work in theology and eras of less fruitful work. By all accounts the patristic flowering was a phenomenally fruitful time, and after the Sacred Scriptures themselves, I pay special attention to those writings from Athanasius to Augustine. Certainly the Lord gave us other fathers across the centuries too, but these men in the 4th century laid down a foundation approach to Scripture which I think the Church, in her better moments, always seeks to preserve – allowing Scripture itself to be the Rule and Norm for all she teaches and seeking to ground her every dogma in the divine words.
Sola Scriptura as a hermeneutic of suspicion might more characterize the classic approach of the Reformed communions: “If it’s not in Scripture, we don’t believe or do it!” But the Lutherans really did operate with a different approach: “we drop only what Scripture expressly forbids.”
Yes, that led to recognition of the invocation of the saints as problematic. The problem, as I understand it, was never so much the simple asking of St. so and so to pray for you (as is done ad nauseam in the litany of all saints at the Great Vigil), but with where the practice itself tended to go. There are Western examples of its abuse, but the one that has stuck in my craw from the East for sometime is a post-communion prayer that asks Mary to grant me tears of repentance and to enable to receive worthily the Eucharist all my days. Now, my Orthodox friends hasten to explain that this means she PRAYS for these things for us. But I merely note that’s not how the prayer reads, and I suspect many an Orthodox person assumes that Mary grants such things. When Lutheranism looked at what seemed the inevitable outcome, the decision to rejoice in the saints invocation without having US invoke them seems – to me at any rate – quite wise.
Christine, I don’t know why you make a point of reading querulously a comment made as a joke. People address each other in various ways online. As far as I am aware I never adressed anybody disrespectfully.
My question also was not as to whether Lutherans accept Trent, but as to what Pastor Weedon thinks of the Trent on Eucharist as Sacrifice. The reason I ask is because I was wondering what exactly it is that he believes Catholics believe, and that he disagrees with. My question still remains.
As to the invocation of the saints, why shouldn’t it be the case that Mary grants us these things. God does it through Mary, but Mary is not a mindless instrument. So, in some sense she might be spoken of as granting it. We specifically invoke specific saints no differently to specifically addressing specific people for certain good things. Having God for a Father doesn’t deprive us of the necessity to ask one’s real father for particular things. Why should our interactions with the saints be any different?
What Mary granted was, Be it done unto me according to thy word.
What she said was, Do whatever he tells you.
Yet another practice on which for the present we will continue to differ.
I do note, however, that in principle the practice is not per se wicked, only considered by you and yours to be susceptible of abuse; and of course one must recall the axiom “Abusus non tollit usum”…
I was consulting with Pastor Fraser on this and related, and he pointed out that (1) prayer for the dead is not forbidden as heretical to Lutherans in the BoC, but is left for private devotion as a tolerable practice; and that (2) a collect in which some such phrase as “may St N. pray for us” occurs is not how he is accustomed to pray, but it would not for that be intolerable, since obviously the saints do in fact pray for us, as we’ve discussed.
(Pardon, Fraser, if I’ve misrepresented you!)
No, you represent my take on it well!
Is this record of number of comments, David?
Having God for a Father doesn’t deprive us of the necessity to ask one’s real father for particular things. Why should our interactions with the saints be any different?
First of all, what PE said.
Second of all, I reiterate, even in eternity we are still creatures of God, who alone possesses divinity. Yes, we will be glorified creatures with glorified bodies but creatures none the less. In order for the saints to hear the millions of prayers expressed simultaneously they would need the attributes of divinity.
Mary would shudder at how she’s been turned into a near goddess in some quarters instead of the humble handmaiden of the Lord.
It’s just another example of Rome instituting something and then backtracking to make it fit. Your “Why shouldn’t it be” is the usual Roman answer, “God willed it, it was fitting, so God did it.”
As to the objection about how on earth a saint could hear and respond to millions of prayers a day – you forget that the saints in heaven are not in time, but in aeviternity (the same continuum as the angels), where time is not measured against external measures (the movement of the planets, etc.) but for each individual according to the succession of their acts: so what for us is a day, in heaven can be much longer or shorter for each person there. And of course in heaven we are all deified and divinized by the Divine splendour, the Beatific Vision, so that (while remaining in essence men), we are lifted up and supernaturalized to an unspeakable glory as befits the children of God.
We aren’t dunghills covered with snow.
Damn. Somebody tore the pages with detailed descriptions of the properties of aeviternity clean out of my Bible. Or was it editorial bias on the ESV.