Sentire Cum Ecclesia

On Monday (DV), I am going to meet with the young woman who was our local Greens candidate in last Saturday’s election. Keeping in mind that there isn’t an election coming up, and looking for a positive outcome from this meeting, what do you think we should talk about? What would you consider would be a good aim for the outcome of the meeting?

In my younger days, Cardinal John Henry Newman (now Blessed) was one of the more significant personalities attracting me to the Catholic faith. Another was Thomas Merton. You may be surprised. Anyway, there it is. I still like to read his material. One of his poems especially enthralls me. It has the line in it:

The seed sleeps by the sleeping stone,
but the seed has life where the stone has none.

The same poem has in it the metaphor of his hermits caravan (his “trailer”) being like Elijah’s firey chariot – “faster and faster it stands still”. Or something like that. I don’t have the text in front of me. His Seven Storey Mountain, which was a best seller, is still a good read, as is his “Seeds of Contemplation”, which is my favourite work. He went all Buddhisty later in life, but God got him in time.

Anyway, why Merton this morning? Because my wife is doing a Spiritual Direction course and asked me to buy her “Merton’s Palace of Nowhere” by James Finley (first published in 1978). Like an early Chrissy Present, it arrived from the Book Depository this morning (don’t you just love those guys? No offence, Mary, we love you and the Central Catholic Bookshop too!).

I flicked the book open and read these lines from Merton:

A few years ago a man who was compiling a book on Success wrote and asked me to contribute a statement on how I got to be a success. I replied indigantnly that I was not able to consider myself a success in any terms that had a meaning to me. I swore I had spent my life strenuously avoiding success. If it happened that I had once written a best-seller this was a pure accident, due to inattention and naivete, and I would take very good care never to do the same thing again. If I had a message to my contemporaries, I said, it was surely this: be anything you like, be madmen, drunks, and bastards of every shape and form, but at all costs avoid one thing: success. I heard no more from him, and I am not aware that my reply was published with the other testimonials.

That’s why I love Merton. He may not have been a saint or a doctor of the church, but like the rest of us, well, like me, he was “peccator inter peccatores et insanus inter insanos”, and knew it.

The SCE commentary table has people from all over the world sharing our bottle of port and good conversation, but I was rather suprised recently to find a blog reader in Kazakhstan! Brother Gary Charles writes:

We are here with the Family Of Mary, in the Archdiocese of the Virgin Mary in Astana, Kazakhstan. We are responsible for the parish of Mary, Help of Christians, here in Scherbakty, which is about 80km to the east, and a little north, of Pavlodar, in Eastern Kazakhstan, along the 52 parallel. The parish here is not so big, about 2 to 300 people. Scherbakty itself has about 8 to 9000 people. It had about 16000 several years ago, but after the “Fall” of Communism, and Germany opening its doors to those of German descent, so many people left. It was a bit of a brain drain!
Most of our mission here is to the kids … we run a Children’s Kitchen for the kids, and they get a hot meal a day, which for some is the only meal, the other times only having bread and tea.
I myself have been here for almost ten years now, and it’s like ‘home’ for me now! Our community isn’t so big, but we have a priest, 2 brothers, and 4 sisters who are here. The priests of our community are in the “Work of Jesus the High Priest,” and the rest of the brothers and sisters are in the Family of Mary/Pro Deo et Fratribus
Good luck and God bless always in your work!!

Gary Charles

Please pray for Br Gary and his community in Kazakhstan! Gary has subscribed to Sentire Cum Ecclesia through the Email Subscription service offered by Google Feedburner (see the side bar) – so he never misses a post on SCE! Someone down that end of the table please pass him the port bottle…

Almost. According to latest news tonight, the Coalition stands poised to claim Bentleigh. That will give them the 45 seats they need to form a government with a majority of two seats.

And you know what? Not a single Green or Independant among them (in the lower house, anyway). It’s all either Blue or Red, with no Green or Grey in between. So, who’s afraid of the big bad wolf, eh?

It might be a little early to let one’s defences down, however. I found it very instructive to peruse the counting so far published in The Age this morning. In general, the Greens polled lower than expected, but still consistently about double the percentage that voted for both “Christian” parties (DLP Catholic and Family First Protestant) thrown together. These broad preferences can be seen most clearly by looking at the upper house vote (which is generally by party rather than personality). The exceptions to this rule were the Southern Metropolitan Zone (inner city) which polled much higher to the Greens, and the South Eastern Metropolitan Zone (home to the Protestant Mega Churches) much higher to the Christian parties (but still not as many as to the Greens).

There were quite a few smaller parties trying to get a look in at this election. It was a very unusual voting experience for me. The first thing I had to decide was a question of principle: am I voting for a candidate or for a party? I didn’t quite answer that question. I was influenced by party, of course, but I was also influenced by the individual. My main concern was to vote for a party/candidate who stood for human dignity in life and death (ie. against abortion and euthanasia), and whose policies were supportive of families, ie. (and it is a mark of the current condition that I have to qualify this at all) a man and his wife and their children. Beyond that I really couldn’t care much about water, transport or other secondary issues. When we are talking about the fundamental meaning of what it is to be human, arguments about railway lines and pipe-lines seem a little trite.

All that being said, if you are interested (which you must be since you are reading this), I will let you know how I voted.

1. Democratic Labour Party (just to let them know I support their hard work and because most of the candidates are Catholics with a strong pro-life stance)
2. Family First (just to let them know I support their hard work and because most of the candidates are Protestants with a strong pro-life stance)
3. James Merlino. Nb. I emphatically did NOT vote for the Australian Labor Party. Never have, never will. The fact that James is a member of the Labor Party (and in fact a minister of the Brumby Government) was not a point in his favour. However, his voting record in Parliament AND his jolly good work in the area of Multicultural Affairs AND his good work in our electorate meant that I thought he deserved to be re-elected. It seems that he will be (on the back of preferences), but it is a bit touch and go.
4. Liberal Party. Don’t know Matt Mills from a bar of soap. I sent him my questionnaire on “Your Vote Your Values” and he asked me to send it to him electronically, which I did, but then I never heard from him again. Given that my vote would have ended up with no. 3 above (JM), it’s his loss. Perhaps. Or not. Maybe. Counting hasn’t finished yet.
5. Then the Country Alliance
6. Then the Independent (although he actually sent around a flyer saying that he opposed same sex marriage)
7. Then the Greens. Although to her credit, Jo Tenner was the most responsive to my questionnaire, and she extended an invitation to meet after the election, which I will do. I have said before, and I will say again, that I respect the Greens for the fact that they are the most ethically driven party in action today. They do what they do because they believe it. If sincerity alone was the point of the exercise, they would have my primary vote. But it isn’t. In the end it is a matter of what you believe in, what your ethics are, and what you are sincere about. I rather expect that Jo and I might agree on more than we care to admit to one another, but as I said above, nothing trumps the defence of true human dignity. Not even trees.

Probably by tomorrow night, we will know if Victoria has a government or not. I was rather appalled at the hybris of the Mr Brumby when he gave his speech last night. I could barely believe that he was speaking as if he really was going to continue as Premier in Government when his best hope (and a slim one at that) was for a perfectly hung parliament – 44 all. Barely a hope of even that now. I was also appalled at the ABC coverage. Usually a very intelligent conversation can be expected from their guests, but the two characters they had on last night were persistently goading one another, talking over one another and bickering. Virginia Trioli did nothing to help the situation. Why they brought her back from Sydney I don’t know. AND at one point they lost internet connection entirely and had not data to give us. Ah well…

Who is he? The pope whisperer.

Why is he in the news? He’s the first journalist to conduct an extended interview with a pope. The result is his book Light of the World.

Most appealing characteristic? Dogged determination to get that interview.

Least appealing characteristic? An ego that has grown with his status, former colleagues say.

Most likely to say “Just a few minutes more, Holy Father.”

Least likely to say “About that Virgin Birth . . .”

And in case you haven’t guessed who they are talking about, see here.

I am a little loath to write about this, because I haven’t seen the full address that Cardinal Koch gave to the Pontifical Council for Promoting Christian Unity at their Plenary gathering. Usually this is published in their four-monthly journal “Information Service”, which generally is about 6 months behind when it arrives in English in Melbourne. Don’t expect to see it on the net. (Note to the new President: the PCPCU’s page on the Vatican website is not updated very regularly, and could contain a great deal more news and information.)

So we have to rely upon http://www.thetablet.co.uk/article/15558|of what he said. Note that he would not have been talking in English – he is still learning the language – and so this is either The Tablet’s translation, or an English translation provided at the Plenary which some member of the Council has made available to The Tablet. So, given that the language is a bit technical, we should perhaps be careful (remember the very recent problem on the Pope’s original German on the condom issue).

Any way, this is what The Tablet reports:

“It is decisively in this postmodern mentality characterised by pluralistic and relativistic tendencies that is found the great challenge to the search for visible unity of the Church of Jesus Christ,” the Swiss archbishop said on Monday at the opening of the PCPCU plenary assembly in Rome marking the fiftieth anniversary of the pontifical council. In a theologically dense address to his first PCPCU plenary since becoming president last July, he said this mentality was found among not only Protestants but also “many Catholics”.

The PCPCU president, who is to be made a cardinal in today’s consistory, said the current crisis of ecumenism boiled down to what he called the two “profoundly different mentalities” that shape the way Catholics and Protestants describe the nature of the Church.

“The Churches and ecclesial communities born of the Reform have renounced the ori­ginal objective of ecumenism as visible unity and have substituted it with the concept of mutual recognition as Churches,” he said.

Cardinal-elect Koch said the Churches of the Reform were marked by the “grave phenomenon of ecclesial fragmentation” and had thus adopted an “ecclesiological pluralism”. He said this sees the goal of ecumenism as “reconciled diversity” of many Churches rather than the reconstitution of visible unity (while accepting diversity) in one Church. The ­cardinal-elect claimed that Protestant ­“pluralism” among different confessional Churches “contrasts with Catholic conviction that the true Church of Jesus Christ ‘subsists’ in the Catholic Church, in other words that she is already an existing reality”. “It is clear that there is a profound difference between this Protestant view and the Catholic and Orthodox interpretation according to which the ecumenical objective cannot be inter-communion but ‘communion’, within which eucharistic communion also finds its place,” he said.

This came up on William Tighe’s email discussion list the other day, and Orthodox commentator, Chris Jones, had this to say:

Cdl Koch contrasts “the original objective of ecumenism as visible unity” with “the concept of mutual recognition as Churches.” But there is nothing “invisible” about mutual recognition as Churches; that is the ecclesiology that obtained in the first millennium and continues among the Orthodox Churches today. By contrasting an ecclesiology of “mutual recognition” with something he calls “visible unity”, the Cardinal can only mean a unity that is “visible” specifically by being in one Church body with (and, of course, under) the Pope.

The difficulty with the approach of most (if not all) of the Protestant bodies involved with the ecumenical movement is not that they envisage an ecclesiology of “mutual recognition” among Churches, but that they have a minimalist understanding of exactly what it is that is being “mutually recognized.” A genuinely Catholic mutual recognition is a recognition of full agreement in the faith, grounded in a genuinely shared tradition handed down from the Apostles, held with a true Scriptural and Patristic mind, and expressed and lived in a traditional liturgical life. That is quite different from an “agreement to disagree” but still somehow “recognize” one another; or, worse, an agreement to a set of texts to which each party assigns a wildly different interpretation.

Nevertheless, by denigrating the notion of mutual recognition among diverse but genuinely Catholic Churches, Cardinal Koch makes a mockery of then-Cardinal Ratzinger’s famous dictum that Papal primacy need be accepted only as it was formulated and practiced in the first millennium; because that refers precisely to a context of mutual recognition among distinct Churches. I cannot help but wonder how Cardinal Koch’s remarks will be received among the clergy and faithful of the non-Roman sui juris Churches. Surely it will be news to them that there can be no true unity by mutual recognition among “true particular Churches.”

I responded:

Chris, I think you are obfiscating the issue here.

“Visible unity” of the Churches naturally means visible ties of communion with each local Church. Since the Bishop of Rome is a bishop of a local church, as is the Bishop of Constantinople and the Bishop of Melbourne etc., “visible unity” naturally would mean “unity with the Bishop of Rome” (and, “with the Bishop of Constantinople and the Bishop of Melbourne etc”). Such “visible unity”, which is more than a “mutual recognition” does justice to the notion of “Church” in the sense of the Una Sancta, rather than an ecclesiology which sees the universal church as a “federation” of local Churches.

In this “visible unity”, the question of communion of local churches is primary and the question of primacy of the heads of the local churches is secondary. Communion need not necessarily entail jurisdiction. There is no reason why you should interpret Cardinal Koch’s statement in contradiction to the Cardinal Ratzinger’s.

He responded

David,

“obfuscating the issue”

I think not. I have no quarrel with what you wrote, and there is no conflict between an ecclesiology of mutual recognition and a concrete visible unity — nor with a robust notion of primacy. But what you wrote was and what Cdl Koch said are two different things. He did not present mutual recognition and visible unity as complementary (as you did), but as strongly contrasting, with an ecclesiology of mutual recognition as unacceptable. In my view he spoke very sloppily. He was taking aim, of course, at the Protestants, but what he actually said would, if true, put the Orthodox Churches out of court as well. I should hope that a prelate whose portfolio is Christian unity would choose his words much more carefully.

Yours

Chris

And I responded:

Dear Chris (and others listening in)

Two observations:

1) we don’t have the original document that Cardinal Koch presented, only the Tablet report. I think we should wait until the full plenary paper is available before judging the Cardinal. We don’t want to set some sort of new precedance by taking what The Tablet says as “gospel”, do we! :-)

2) I think the problem is with the term “mutual recognition”. Remember that he is talking about protestant “churches”, not Orthodox Churches. We already “mutually recognise” the Orthodox, and in that case, “mutual recognition” and communion are complimentary. But we don’t recognise the ecclesial integrity of the protestant communities – they are not “[local particular] Churches in the proper sense” as Dominus Iesus put it. The evident protestant ecumenism presents an ecclesiology of “mutual recognition” along the lines of the many agreements in the USA, eg. between the Episcopal Church and the ELCA and the Churches of Christ. This is quite a different ecclesiology at work. As institutions these bodies intend to remain quite independant of each other, often with quite separate ministries and sacramental orders, and little agreement on the Faith. This is “mutual recognition” reduced to open house eucharistic sharing, with no corresponding unity of Faith and Order.

Does that help?

And he responded:

David,

“Does that help?”

A little bit, I guess. I certainly understand that Cdl Koch was talking about Protestant groups, not Orthodox. But in his concern to distinguish Protestant ecclesiology from Catholic, he has unwittingly (and needlessly) trashed Orthodox ecclesiology into the bargain. Perhaps, as you suggest, the full text of his remarks would allay this concern; let us hope so.

It is not quite true, BTW, to say “we already ‘mutually recognise’ the Orthodox.” You do; but they don’t. So it cannot be said to be mutual.

Chris

There are several issues here:

1) What Cardinal Koch meant by the “mutual recognition” formula of Protestant ecumenism
2) What difference he meant to imply by contrasting “intercommunion” with “communion”
3) The fact that he did not have Orthodox ecclesiology in mind (he spoke of “a profound difference between this Protestant view and the Catholic and Orthodox interpretation”)

The problem goes back, as I see it, to the definition of a Church “in the proper sense” in the 2000 document Dominus Iesus. There it was clarified that “the proper sense” of Church in Catholic/Orthodox ecclesiology is either the Church as the Una Sancta OR a true, local, particular Church. The latter is defined as a Christian ecclesial community which a valid bishop as its head, a valid priesthood, and (as follows from this) has maintained a valid eucharist.

With such “Churches in the proper sense” it is possible for true, local, Catholic Churches to seek “mutual recognition” (we already recognise the Orthodox Churches, even though, as Chris points out, this isn’t “mutual”). It is not possible for the Catholic Church as the Una Sancta to “mutually recognise” independent Christian ecclesial communions as true Churches “in the proper sense”. It IS possible – and indeed desirable – for the Catholic Church to do all it can by means of dialogue to seek “full communion” with such bodies, in which there is a mutual sharing of gifts, including the gift (from our end) of valid episcopate, priesthood and eucharist. This is, more or less, and in a particular way (although this “model” is not promoted as the ONLY way for this to happen) what has happened with the Anglicans coming into communion with the Catholic Church.

What Cardinal Koch has said is quite true, however, in my experience of ecumenism with Protestants. There does seem to be a lessening of desire to seek real communal unity among Protestants. Consider the way in which the Uniting Church formed in Australia back in the ’70’s. Then, the Methodist, Presbyterian and Congregational churches formed a new ecclesial body, united in ministry and in practice and in a single visible institution. The same thing happened in America when the ELCA was formed. That sort of thing has ceased to happen among Protestants today. Rather there has been a whole raft of agreements for “mutual recognition” and “intercommunion”. For eg., the Episcopal Church in the US and the ELCA are in “intercommunion” with each other, but the ELCA has baulked at the suggestion that all its bishops must be reordained as valid Anglican bishops. They maintain a completely separate identity. The same could be said for Australia, where the Uniting Church and the Churches of Christ have agreed upon not only “intercommunion” but a complete “sharing of ministries”. Yet the Churches of Christ have not joined the Uniting Church. They remain – in terms of governance and daily life – separate communities.

That is not the model that the Catholic Church desires to pursue as a vision of “full visible unity”. We seek “full communion” with all our brothers and sisters in Christ. This communion will still – of course – be a communion in diversity, as it is with the Eastern Churches with whom we are in full communion at this very moment. The question of governance – Chris’s concern with “jurisdiction” is a separate issue, and even now the Church is seeking appropriate ways to properly express the true particular identity of our Eastern Rites in Communion with the Bishop of Rome. If it is objected that this model necessarily includes a place for the Pope, well, the Pope is a Christian, isn’t he? And full visible communion among all Christians would have to include him. Of course, just how he would exercise the ministry proper to his office in this regard is a question that Pope John Paul II already raised in his 1995 encyclical “Ut Unum Sint”. Unfortunately, there has been a almost deafening silence in regard to his invitation for discussion on this matter.

There is and remains a gulf between the ecclesiologies of the Catholic and Orthodox Churches on the one hand and the ecclesiologies of the Protestant communions. It may not be a wide gulf, but it is a deep one.

Readers of SCE will recall that some weeks ago I sent a questionaire based on the Bishops’ statement “Your Vote Your Values” to my local candidates.

Well, in the end I only got to send it to the three major lower house candidates – our Labor member, James Merlino, the Liberal candidate, Matt Mills, and the Greens Candidate, Jo Tenner. Of the three, I received a request from Matt to send him the questions in electronic format, but didn’t hear back from him after that. James didn’t reply at all. But I did get a reply from Jo, which was in the form of a preprepared statement from the Greens in answer to the original Bishops’ statement “Your Vote Your Values”. It is a fairly straightforward answer to all the questions asked. Jo said that she believed this document had been sent to the bishops. I don’t know if it has had any wider circulation. So for your enjoyment and instruction, I have posted it on the media sharing site Media Fire, and you can download it in PDF form from here.

I replied to Jo that I was especially concerned about the Greens advocating Euthanasia, and for this reason could not support their platform. Her response was polite and very interesting. I am sure she won’t mind if I share it with you (a bit of “free press” at the last minute), and it is certainly topical to the current debate:

Thanks David,

I appreciate the position that you come from, having been raised a catholic, attending catholic schools for all my primary and most of my secondary education and having a devout Mother with whom I discuss all these issues. I chose not to continue to be a catholic on the basis of insurmountable moral issues. One of which is topical at the moment with the Pope recognising that there is a role for condoms in the prevention of the spread of diseases like AIDS. It tears at my heart to think of all the people, including millions of children who have suffered due to the power of the catholic church and its prohibition on any contraception devices. This is something I understand all too well from my work in the overseas aid sector. I wish that I could have remained a catholic, it would have been wonderful to have the a heritage that would resonate with my everyday life. Unfortunately for this and many other reasons, it was not to be the case. I do, nevertheless, credit some of my catholic upbringing with my passion for justice and concern for the welfare of others.

I would like to think that people such as ourselves, thinking and caring people, can find ways to reach beyond the stereotypes promulgated by the media, to discuss our viewpoints and see if we can find ways to reach common ground. I would be interested in doing this beyond the timeframe of the election and if you are interested, I would be happy to meet sometime.

Best regards,

Jo

I have accepted her rather gracious invitation to meet in the near future, even if she is not elected. It tears my heart (to use her phrase) that our Catholic community has been unable to use its vast resources (especially in our schools, but also in our parishes) to properly communicate our concerns. Despite being raised in the heart of the Catholic community, Jo, like many others, has had to rely on the dissemination of Church teaching via the mass media. That is a fact that we have to live with, I guess, but I would value the chance to be a personal witness for the Church’s position.

In any case, I have assured her of my prayers for her and for all candidates, and wished her well for tomorrow, even though I cannot wish her or her party “success”.

So the news is out this morning of the “clarification” that Lombardo asked for and received from the Holy Father.

“I personally asked the pope if there was a serious, important problem in the choice of the masculine over the feminine,” Lombardi said. “He told me no. The problem is this: … It’s the first step of taking responsibility, of taking into consideration the risk of the life of another with whom you have a relationship.”

“This is if you’re a man, a woman, or a transsexual. … The point is it’s a first step of taking responsibility, of avoiding passing a grave risk onto another,” Lombardi said.

Some are saying that this response shows that Cardinal Pell and Bishop Fisher (see previous post on this topic) – or even your host on this ‘ere blog, for that matter – were “wrong” or “jumped the gun” in stating that the Pope was specifically speaking about the “possibility of a male prostitute” using condoms, not male/female relationships. Were not those theologians correct who surmised that this could be extended to relationships between husbands and wives where the husband was infected with HIV?

Well, no and yes to those questions in that order. The problem of the translation has been clarified, but that doesn’t really alter the point.

Keeping in mind that none of this has been discussed or determined at the level of the magisterium (and that the author of the book, Peter Seewald, is obviously more than a little disturbed at the attention this one topic has received in the media), let us get to the “authentic heart” of what the Holy Father is saying.

The context is one of repentance and conversion, of moving away from a life in which one habitually commits acts that are intrinsically evil toward a life of moral integrity. This is, as the Pope, Seewald, Pell, Fisher and everyone else (including commentators on this ‘ere blog) a pastoral matter, it is a matter of realising, as Pope Benedict put it in Deus Caritas Est, that

“Being Christian is not the result of an ethical choice or a lofty idea, but the encounter with an event, a person, which gives life a new horizon and a decisive direction.” DCE §1

When we encounter the Lord, we are called to conversion. “The Kingdom of God has come near; repent and believe in the Gospel” (Mark 1:15). As Martin Luther expounded it in the very first of his 95 theses:

When our Lord and Master, Jesus Christ, said “Repent”, He called for the entire life of believers to be one of repentance.

Repentance can happen in two ways (and an infinite number of ways in between): it can be sudden and decisive for a change of life, OR it can involve a process, a progress toward turning one’s life away from evil and toward good.

Now it would seem to me – and I am sure to those who have the pastoral care of souls – that the latter is more common than the former. That is, the encounter with the Lord results in a call to repentance which then takes time and effort to work itself out in life. Often (almost always?) it is a case of moving from a disordered life to a life less disordered.

This throws light on the celebrated “lesser of two evils” question. The question is usually answered along the lines of “It is better to do a lesser evil than to do a greater evil”. But even answered in this way, the idea is that the doing of “less evil” has the goal of doing “no evil”. Viewed in a more personalist way – keeping in mind that that Christian life is about the encounter with Christ and the transformation that comes as a result of that encounter – the question of the “lesser of two evils” would be answered along the lines of the process of repentance, that is of answering Christ’s continual call to conversion by habitually practicing doing “less evil” with the aim of seeking a full conversion of life in which one habitually does “no evil”.

Let’s see how that would work in the case of a man infected with HIV having sex with his wife. We keep in mind that artificial limitation of natural conception is a grave evil. But so is doing an action that might result in the death of another person. (Actually, I believe it is against the law in this country for a man who knows he is HIV infected to have sex with another person in a way that risks infection of the other person). The truly moral thing for such a person to do would be to refrain from sexual intercourse all together. Let us imagine that the man in this case is a man who has encountered the Lord and has heard the call to repentance. He should begin to move from a situation where he has relations with his wife that could kill her to a situation where he does not pose any threat to her at all – ie. abstinence. Like the pope’s case of the prostitute, however, this man may find that – though he has heard the call to repentance – he is nevertheless unable to act with a firm will against the drives of concupiscence. In the context his active and aware attempts to answer the call to repentance and live a life that is morally integral, it would be a step forward on the road of conversion to commit less rather than more evil. In this circumstance, the responsible use of a condom to prevent disease transmission would actually signify a step along the road to moral improvement.

The important thing here is context. What path is the man following? Is he in fact following the path of conversion, and is his condom use “a step along the way”? Or does he mis-hear what the Pope and the Church are saying and say to himself: “Hey, condom use is okay. I can now have sexual relations with my wife without any qualms of conscience”? Hardly. His sexual relations with his wife are still disordered, not only (in fact, very secondarily) because the condom acts as an artificial limitation of conception, but far more because, with his illness, he is still exposing his wife to danger by having sexual intercourse (sex with an infected person using a condom is less dangerous than sex without a condom, but still not as safe as abstinence). The argument may be put up that abstinence is un-natural and therefore wrong. No, that is never true. Under normal circumstances it would be wrong for a husband to deny his wife the pleasure she seeks in his body – as a withdrawal of conjugal love, for example – but in this abnormal (and already distorted) situation where he has a deadly disease that sexual intercourse might transmit to his wife – abstinence is the most loving action, the action to which the encounter with the Lord calls him.

Now all of that is likely to be far too subtle for the average newspaper. But it should not be beyond us. This sheds light on why the Church does not say “condoms are the solution to the AIDS crisis”. The Pope is quite clear in the book that one must not speak in abstract terms.

Concentrating only on the condom means trivializing sexuality, and this trivialization represents precisely the dangerous reason why so many people no longer see sexuality as an expression of their love, but only as a sort of drug, which one administers on one’s own. This is why the struggle against the trivialization of sexuality is also part of the great effort so that sexuality may be valued positively, and may exercise its positive effect on the human being in his totality. There may be a basis in the case of some individuals, as perhaps when a prostitute uses a condom, where this can be a first step in the direction of a moralization, a first assumption of responsibility, on the way toward recovering an awareness that not everything is allowed and that one cannot do whatever one wants. But it is not really the way to deal with the evil of HIV infection. That can really lie only in a humanization of sexuality.

As the same AP report linked to above quotes George Weigel saying:

“This is admittedly a difficult distinction to grasp… What the pontiff is saying is that someone determined to do something wrong may be showing a glimmer of moral common sense by not doing that wrong thing in the worst possible way — which is not an endorsement of anything.”

Is anyone having difficulties posting comments? I have had one report of this. If you are having difficulties too, please email me to let me know (I won’t ask you to “post a comment” to this post!).

The “famous last words” of Martin Luther were “We are beggars; this is true.” It is variously expanded upon to suggest that “we are beggars before God“, ie. dependant upon his grace. But this little scrap on the internet (reproducing the “little scrap of paper” on which these words were written) has some interesting context:

The Last Written Words of Luther:
Holy Ponderings of the Reverend Father Doctor Martin Luther
16 February 1546

[Dr. Martin Luthers Werke, (Weimar: Hermann Boehlaus Nachfolger, 1909), Band 85 (TR 5), pp. 317-318. Translated by James A. Kellerman]

1. No one can understand Vergil’s Bucolics unless he has been a shepherd for five years. No one can understand Vergil’s Georgics, unless he has been a farmer for five years.

2. No one can understand Cicero’s Letters (or so I teach), unless he has busied himself in the affairs of some prominent state for twenty years.

3. Know that no one can have indulged in the Holy Writers sufficiently, unless he has governed churches for a hundred years with the prophets, such as Elijah and Elisha, John the Baptist, Christ and the apostles.

Do not assail this divine Aeneid; nay, rather prostrate revere the ground that it treads.

We are beggars: this is true.

Notes:

1. This is a translation of WA, TR 5:168 (no. 5468) of a scrap of paper that Johannes Aurifaber (a.k.a. Johann Goldschmied) found when Luther died. Aurifaber wrote: “Luther … wrote these words in Latin on a slip of paper and put them on his table. I, Johannes Aurifaber, wrote them down and Dr. Justus Jonas, Superintendent of Halle, who was at Halle at the same time, took the slip of paper with him.” Unfortunately, this slip of paper has long since disappeared.

2. I have followed the account of the document as told by Aurifaber. There are, however, divergent accounts of what was on that scrap of paper. Since the original slip of paper has been lost, it is impossible to ascertain what Luther actually wrote. For other accounts, see WA 48:241 and TR 5:317 (no.5677). Although the wording differs slightly, the sentiment is the same.

3. The line in praise of Vergil’s A enid is composed of nine feet of dactylic hexameter, the meter in which the Aeneid is written. It is most likely an adaptation or misquotation of two lines near the end of Statius’ The Aeneid (12:816f), a poem also written in dactylic hexameter and profoundly influenced by Vergil’s epic:

Nee tu divinam Aendeida tempta,
Sed Ionge sequere et vestigia semper adora.

Luther wrote:

Hanc tu ne divinam Aeneida tenta,
Sed vestigia pronus adora.

4. “We are beggars” is written in German; the rest of the document, in Latin.

Well, could he ever have imagined that one day the Pope of Rome would echo his thoughts? In the interview/book “Light of the World” with Peter Seewald, Pope Benedict XVI has said:

As for the pope, he too is a poor beggar before God, even more so than other men. Naturally I pray above all to the Lord, to whom I am bound, so to speak, by old friendship. But I also invoke the saints. I am great friends with Augustine, Bonaventure, and Thomas Aquinas. So I say to them: “Help me!” The Mother of God, also, is always and no matter what a great point of reference. In this sense, I take my place in the communion of saints. Together with them, strengthened by them, I also speak with the good God, above all begging, but also thanking; or simply content.

Certainly here is a man who has “assail[ed the] divine Aeneid” and “indulged in the Holy Writers”, and yet acknowledges himself still a “beggar” who – at 83 years of age – has barely begun his life’s work. It is a humbling reflection. I know in my own studies (as I guess anyone ever has who has tried to prepare a doctorate any any given thesis) that no matter how much research you do or experience you have, it is never enough, never complete. If the Pope himself is a “beggar”, let us content ourselves with the same glorious title!