Sentire Cum Ecclesia

For some very strange reason, I enjoy reading other people’s letters. I hasten to add that this enjoyment is usually restricted to reading the published exchanges of deceased rather than living correspondents. That being said, I have a particular enjoyment in reading the letters of bishops. I especially enjoy it when some unwitting innocent initiates the exchange with their episcopal addressee only to receive a witty and pointed letter in response.

This all is by way of background to explain why I found such great enjoyment and edification in the brief correspondence, published just before Christmas, between Mr Peter Furness, the Acting National Convenor of Australian Marriage Equality, and the Cardinal Archbishop of Sydney, George Pell. I think you, like me, will also find it educational.

(HT to the Warden. BTW, this might be the place to mention that Cooees seems to be going through one of its “moments”. We had noticed the excitement dying down over there, but are glad that Mr Harding will be continuing to share his wit and knowledge with us).

Starting this year, we will gradually see introduced into our parishes the new translation of the Roman Missal in English. One of the changes is that from now on, instead of singing “And peace to his people on earth” in the Gloria, we will sing (in those parishes that actually DO sing it, of course) “and on earth peace to people of good will”. The new version doesn’t bop along like the old one did, and will give composers a bit more of a challenge to set it to music, but it is at least a translation of what St Jerome put in his Vulgate and what we have in the Roman Missal.

But what exactly does the Greek New Testament say? Back when I was on the Lutheran Church of Australia’s Department of Liturgy, when the ICEL texts came up, we had quite a discussion on this point. For ease of comparison, you might want to look at this page, which has Luke 2:14 in many different translations, including the King James, Douay Rheims and Luther’s German Bible (“und Friede auf Erden, den Menschen ein Wohlgefallen”). There are some variations in the Greek that don’t make the task of translating this passage any easier.

The first part is easy: literally “and upon earth peace”. Then comes an “en” with the dative “anthropois”, which might mean “among men” or “to men”. But the real difficulty is in the meaning of the genitive “eudokias”. Literally, it means “of goodwill”, but genitives are really tricky in the New Testament, especially when a theological point lies behind them. A good example is in Romans 5:5, where Paul says that “the love of God” has been poured into our hearts by the Holy Spirit. Does he mean God’s love for us? Or our love for God? Also, genitives sometimes are used as adjectives, such as when Jesus calls James and John “sons of thunder”, meaning “thundery blokes”.

In Luke 2:14, then, the genitive could mean either “men who have good will”, or “men towards whom God has goodwill”. Most commentators and English translations today take the latter as the force of the Greek, although St Jerome’s Latin genitive is usually taken as to have the force of the former.

How very interesting, then, that we get a bit of a commentary on this from our Holy Father, Pope Benedict XVI, in his Christmas Homily for 2010. And note how he gets around the theological conundrum of the genitive “eudokias”, by the characteristic Catholic “both/and”. Doubly note, however, his warning against a certain kind of moralism and his emphasis on the priority of God’s grace. Triply note how he will not allow grace and freedom to be separated into two “independent entities”:

But the angels’ message on that holy night also spoke of men: “Peace among men with whom he is pleased”. The Latin translation of the angels’ song that we use in the liturgy, taken from Saint Jerome, is slightly different: “peace to men of good will”. The expression “men of good will” has become an important part of the Church’s vocabulary in recent decades.

But which is the correct translation? We must read both texts together; only in this way do we truly understand the angels’ song.

It would be a false interpretation to see this exclusively as the action of God, as if he had not called man to a free response of love. But it would be equally mistaken to adopt a moralizing interpretation as if man were so to speak able to redeem himself by his good will.

Both elements belong together: grace and freedom, God’s prior love for us, without which we could not love him, and the response that he awaits from us, the response that he asks for so palpably through the birth of his son. We cannot divide up into independent entities the interplay of grace and freedom, or the interplay of call and response. The two are inseparably woven together.

So this part of the angels’ message is both promise and call at the same time. God has anticipated us with the gift of his Son. God anticipates us again and again in unexpected ways. He does not cease to search for us, to raise us up as often as we might need. He does not abandon the lost sheep in the wilderness into which it had strayed. God does not allow himself to be confounded by our sin. Again and again he begins afresh with us. But he is still waiting for us to join him in love. He loves us, so that we too may become people who love, so that there may be peace on earth.

There was a fine article the other day in The Australian by Christopher Pearson, in which he addresses the Euthanasia debate in the context of the Octave of Christmas, sometimes called (apparently, this is the first time I have heard it called this) “the Octave of Blood”, because it included the Feasts of St Stephen, St Thomas A’Becket and the Holy Innocents. At the end he writes:

My first prediction for the year is that a grand coalition of the major faiths, assisted by some heavy-weight moral philosophers, will see the campaign against euthanasia as one they can’t afford to lose. For a change, it will be adequately funded and professionally run.

I hope he is right.

Today’s Australian had some interesting responses that you might also like to read.

I have a disability. It isn’t one that you can see, but it is one that occasionally gets me into trouble. This very post may be a case in point, but here goes.

My disability is that when the Church and Faith that I love and to which I have given my life is criticised, I find it very hard to shut up and just walk away. I always have to answer it. No end of often pointless arguments have resulted. To be sure, St Peter (as referenced in the header of this blog) did tell us to be ready to give a defense when called to account for our faith, and St Paul told St Timothy (2 Tim 4:2) to preach the faith both in season and out of season, but sometimes I think there may be some wisdom in saying to oneself “don’t take the bait; just walk away”. A very wise bishop once said to me “that’s what the delete button on your computer is for”.

What’s this all about? Well, its about our friend Fr Eric Hodgens. We had a bit of go at his whinge in The Swag back before Christmas. Then there was the brief blip where CathNews picked up the story, put a link to Fr Hodgens article, and (within a very short time) the article was pulled. Barney Zwartz then ran a story in The Age accusing someone high up of “censorship”. Actually, contrary to popular opinion, CathNews is not an entirely independant news agency. It is governed by Church Resources, and Church Resources has a board, and more than one person on that Board thought that Fr Hodgens whinge was not inappropriate for the medium. Censorship? Hardly. Not running a story is an editorial decision, not an act of censorship.

But in today’s paper, Fr Hodgens himself has taken up the “censorship” line. He repeats his complaints in this article, and then asserts that “the church’s leadership has lost its way but is not willing to discuss or even consider that there may be a point”. He rather brazenly compares the refusal to give airspace (or internet space) to his whinges with “the mentality that got them caught in the headlights with the paedophilia crisis”. Even more breath-taking is the comparison of the rejection of his “message” to Jesus (“Jesus had difficulty getting his message accepted”). That is just too precious.

The headline to Fr Hodgens piece today reads “Church needs to answer critics, instead it silences them”. If only it were possible to silence Fr Hodgens! One thing that I find a bit surprising about life in the Catholic Church (as compared to my former ecclesial community) is the willingness of those who belong to her community to air their “criticisms” in the public media. But no-one is obliged to answer any critic, and sometimes it is wiser just to let the ball go through to the keeper. That is especially the case when the “criticisms” are old and tired complaints that have been answered a billion times before, but when the critic simply won’t take “no” for an answer.

They’ve chopped down my tree. Well, the tree in my courtyard. Well, the tree in the courtyard outside my office under which I liked to sit and smoke a pipe on fine sunny days while reading. I loved that tree.

Before (picture taken in 2002 when I began work here – the tree had grown a little since then):

After:

I’m told that “it should have come down long ago.” Apparently it was self-seeded 15 years ago and the roots had begun to play havoc with the drainage and foundations.

There is a time to plant and a time to cut down. I know that. But at the moment I am feeling a bit like this:

when this happened:

For more, read here. HT to Tighe.

I have just begun reading N.T. Wright’s Christian Origins and the Question of God, Volume 2: Jesus and the Victory of God. On page 44 is this beautiful assessment of the work of John Dominic Crossan:

John Dominic Crossan is one of the most brilliant, engaging, learned and quick-witted New Testament scholars alive today. He has been described by one recent friendly critic as a “rather sceptical new Testament professor with the soul of a leprechaun” [fn. van Beck 1994, 97]. He seems incapable, in his recent work at least, of thinking a boring thought or writing a dull paragraph. His major work The Historical Jesus: the Life of the Mediterranean Jewish Peasant is a book to treasure for its learning, its thoroughness, its brilliant handling of multiple and complex issues, its amazing inventiveness, and above all its sheer readability. The book is based on many years of careful and painstaking research, and stands on the shoulders of previous books that won acclaim in their own right. Crossan represents, far more than Burton Mack, the high point of achievement in the new wave of the New Quest.

It is all the more frustrating, therefore, to have to conclude that the book is almost entirely wrong.

It is for passages like this that I find reading Wright such a delight! I have a system of scribbling in my books: asterisks, underlining, double underlining, wiggly lines for ideas I don’t quite agree with, question marks for ones that I need to check up on, crosses for those opinions that are just plain wrong. I also have a system, devised just for Wright’s books, of putting little smiley faces in the colums next to erudite jokes and witty asides. This one scored (for the first time ever in any book I have read) two smiley faces.

He goes on to say that the “whole direction” of Crossan’s work “is entirely different from the present one”. It is perhaps Crossan’s readability that makes his very learned (but wrong) ideas so readily absorbed by the ignorant masses who legitimately and praiseworthily seek to educate themselves by reading the works of such an accomplished scholar. I know that the number of articles entitled “Is Wright Right?” (or some such variation) are legion, but in comparison with Crossan, two things can be said:

1) He is at least if not more readable, and just as incapable of “thinking a boring thought or writing a dull paragraph”.
2) His scholarship is, as he himself intimates, entirely directed toward undoing the damage such scholarship as Crossan’s has done to the orthodox Christian faith.

I was very sad to learn yesterday of the sudden and untimely death of Bishop Joe Grech of the Sandhurst (aka Bendigo) Diocese. This is the report in the Bendigo Advertiser:

VALE THE MOST REVEREND JOSEPH GRECH, BISHOP OF SANDHURST
KAREN SWEENEY & CLARE QUIRK
29 Dec, 2010 09:10 AM
THE Catholic community is mourning the sudden death of Bishop of Sandhurst Joseph Grech.
Bishop Grech died in St Vincent’s Hospital at 3pm yesterday after a short illness.

Monsignor Frank Marriott was among a group of eight Church leaders, family and community members with 62-year-old Bishop Grech when he died.

Bishop Grech became ill on Thursday afternoon and was admitted to St Vincent’s Hospital, but his condition further deteriorated yesterday morning.

“There was a little community of about eight people praying for him between 11am and 3pm and those eight people were present when he died,” Monsignor Marriott said.

Bishop Grech was born in Malta and came to Australia in 1971.

He was installed as Bishop of Sandhurst in April 2001, having previously been an

Auxiliary Bishop in Melbourne, under now Cardinal George Pell. Monsignor Marriott said Bishop Grech would be especially missed by the youth of the dioceses, who would remember him by his words.

“He had a famous saying for the young people,” he said.

“‘God doesn’t make rubbish.’ There is good in all ourselves and we have to pull up and find it.

“All the kids would know him by that saying. It’s an epitaph for him.”

Also by his side was Melbourne’s Archbishop Denis Hart, who said the bishop’s death was a great loss for the Church.

“Since his priestly ordination in 1974, he worked with great distinction as a priest in Melbourne and as a Bishop in Melbourne and Sandhurst,” he said.

“For Bishop Joe, the good news was always light and joy for humanity.”

St Kilian’s parish administrator Rom Hayes also paid tribute to Bishop Grech and said it would bring great shock and deep sadness to those who knew him. “He was known as Bishop Joe and that’s what he liked to be called,’’ he said.

“He wasn’t one to stand on ceremony and that says a lot about the sort of man he was.

“He was thoughtful, outgoing and very concerned for people. He poured himself into his work and never backed off.

“I’ll remember him as warm and caring and passionate about the things he believed in.”

Rest in Peace, “Bishop Joe”.

Of course not. It would be an act of purest optimism (as the Monty Python crowd would say) to expect it.

My family greatly enjoyed the Dr Who Christmas special for 2010 (you can probably still catch it on ABC’s IView – just google “iview”). Of course it was very silly at points (sharks pulling sleighs and opera singers changing the atmosphere) but this is entertainment, guys, not education! I loved all the “wibbly wobbly timey whimey” stuff especially. And of course the play with Dicken’s classic, “A Christmas Carol”

Nevertheless, I received the following comment from one of our commentators:

I watched the Dr Who Christmas special this year, which was based on Dickens’ “A Christmas Carol”. Among the usual Dr Who fluff and nonsense, there was a careful avoidance of anything to do with the birth of Christ. The people on the planet were celebrating the winter solstice, and of course, there was a lot of talk about Santa Claus… I’ve never read A Christmas Carol, but I would be interested to know how much Christ or Santa is mentioned by Dickens. Of course, we don’t need Dr Who to tell us about Santa taking over.

“A Christmas Carol” is my favourite Dicken’s story, and in fact, probably one of my all time favourite books. But there is precious little about Jesus and Christianity in it. Peter Craven recently wrote in an excellent article in The Age:

[T]he story of the Christ child…surfaces in us like a race memory… It can all sound pretty cheesy piped through the speakers at the supermarket amid the turkeys and hams and Christmas puddings but, wherever you come from and whatever you believe, it goes as deep as anything does in what we call our civilisation.

Nevertheless, all that cheesy stuff about Christmas in our culture is largely manufactured, and Dickens’ “A Christmas Carol” was a part of the manufacturing as much as Coca-Cola’s Santa advertising campaign was. I always find the resemblence of the Ghost of Christmas Present tantalisingly both “like” and “unlike” the picture of Father Christmas I grew up with.

I don’t have any real problem with this “cultural” Christmas stuff, but I think there are two equal and opposite errors we need to avoid. The first is when the “cheesy” fantasy Christmas is allowed to merge seemlessly with the Christian story of the birth of Christ, so that the Nativity scene ends up as just one more decoration among the Santa and reindeer lights on the front lawn. The other is when we become so anti-Santa etc. (banning Father Christmas and Christmas trees and decorations etc.) that we end up looking like a Christian version of Scrooge.

There are two narratives at work here. One is a lot of fun, and the other is the most important mystery at the heart of our existence. Telling the difference shouldn’t be hard.

But I just had to post this one. The link was sent to me by a friend in the Focolare Community (thanks, David K.!):