"Credo Quia Impossibile"

Many people argue that the teachings of the Church cannot be believed, because they include seemingly impossible doctrines such as transubstantiation or the Trinity. The mysteries of the Church are treated as grounds for disbelief.

But the fact that we, as humans, cannot understand the full measure of the Trinity and other divine mysteries is one of the greatest signs of the truth of the Catholic Faith. In the famous (and apocryphal) words of the early Christian theologian Tertullian, “I believe because it is impossible.”

For as Christians, we believe our God is infinite. We know that He acts and moves in ways beyond our understanding. We believe He can do all things – even things seemingly contrary to physical nature, because He made physical nature.

By contrast, we, as human beings, have limited intellects. There are many things, even in the physical world, that humans cannot and will never be able to comprehend. The same is infinitely truer of the spiritual world. Indeed, it would be presumptuous for us to expect that we could understand God and the spiritual realm completely.

The veracity of the mysteries of the Faith is not destroyed by the seeming impossibility of transubstantiation or the virgin birth; indeed, it is strengthened by those divine paradoxes. It stands to reason that since God is so far beyond us, we as human beings will not be able to understand everything about God. As Isaiah says: “For as the heavens are higher than the earth, so are my ways higher than your ways, and my thoughts your thoughts.” (Is 55:9)

Could a God that humans fully understand be truly God? Or would a supposedly infinite God that limited humans could fully understand be merely a human construct and nothing more?

(By now, longtime readers should know my policy on rhetorical questions.)

The question is not whether we, with our limited intellects, can fully understand all the mysteries of the faith. The question is whether belief in a God we could fully understand with our limited intellects would even be possible.

A Call for Unity

The Church thrives under conditions of persecution, war, and oppression. Attack Her, mock Her, publicly humiliate Her, kill Her members – and She will rise stronger than before. Christ promised that “the gates of Hell would not prevail against His Church” – and His words have been proven true, through two millennia.

But although the Church has survived and even thrived under persecution, she faces a greater threat – internal division.

Disunity among Christians is nothing new. The Church has faced division since Her very inception. St. Paul’s letter to the Corinthians (1 Cor 3:4) chastises those following different preachers in the Church. Schism ripped apart the Eastern and Western Churches. The Great Western Schism produced three different men who claimed to be Popes at one time.

These divisions continue today. Dissent from clear Church teaching is common among many self-described Catholic scholars and professors. Divisions between devotees of the Extraordinary and Ordinary Forms of the Mass in the Roman rite gives rise to threatened schism. Popular preachers and priests (such as Fr. Corapi) refuse to accept Church discipline. These are only a few of the disunities that plague the modern Church.

Disunity also severs common believers with each other. Common quarrels, petty arguments, complaints, backbiting in parishes – these are all ever-present among self-professed Christians.

The end result of this disunity is chaos. Who would join a Church where the members are divided against one another?

A clear mark of the true Church is that it is one. The Church is united in faith and belief. And Her members act with one accord, using their many talents to bring others to God.  

Christ designed the Church with this end in mind. Jesus’ prayer for the apostles echoes through 2000 years: "I pray also for those who will believe in me... ...that they all may be one."

God grant that we, the members of the Church may be one.

Reflections on the Penn State Scandal

The sports world was shocked when it was discovered that Penn State assistant coach Jerry Sandusky allegedly used his position to molest young boys. It was also discovered that head coach Joe Paterno apparently knew about one allegation, but failed to report it to the police.

Paterno apparently reported the alleged incident to his bosses without notifying the police. Paterno acted rightly according to the letter of the law, but not the spirit. He himself admitted as much, saying: “With the benefit of hindsight, I wish I had done more.”

Clearly, Paterno was wrong, and people are right to condemn his inaction. But the hatred vented towards Paterno has been vitriolic and insanely hyperbolic; people have even accused him of being a supporter of child molestation himself and disgustingly compared him with the Pope.

Perhaps those people stridently calling for Paterno’s head should take a good, hard look in the mirror before they condemn him.

Some studies indicate that about one-sixth of boys and a quarter of girls in America are sexually abused in their lifetime. That is a staggering number of cases of sexual abuse. If those figures are correct, that means that millions of children suffered from sexual abuse at some point in their lives. Many of them suffer at the hands of abusers for years.

(On a personal level, I know several people who have confided to me they have been sexually abused, and I think it is a safe assumption that there are many more I do not know about. And chances are very good that you, dear readers, know people who have been abused as well.)

But sexual abuse does not occur in a vacuum. Is it possible that Paterno was the only person in America to fail to live up to his duty in fully reporting abuse? Not likely. Far too many "missed opportunities arise" in catching sexual abusers. And many people fail to do their part in catching suspected molesters. 

Many of those calling for Paterno’s head, if placed in the same position he was in, would have done the exact same thing he did if placed in the same position – bump the complaint up to a higher authority, and move on from there. It is the cowardly and safe thing to do. And morally, it is wrong.  

Good, honorable men and women fail to do their part – and far more often than we might like to admit. The famous quote (misattributed to Edmund Burke) holds true: "The only thing necessary for the triumph of evil is for good men to do nothing."

It seems that this was the case for Joe Paterno. A man who by all accounts was good and honorable in his personal life failed to live up to his duty - an all-too-common occurrence.  

Yes, Paterno was ethically weak, and could have done more to stop the suspected abuse. Yes, he should be criticized for his failure of judgment, and perhaps even be forced to resign.

But those calling for his head should measure their criticisms, until they are tested similarly. The Gospel of Matthew eloquently expresses why: “Judge not, lest ye be judged.” (Matthew 7:1)

Debunking Demographic Salvation

Some Catholics believe that in the long run, Catholics will eventually gain power and influence by sheer force of numbers. Since (on average) practicing Catholics have many more children than non-believers, they argue, practicing Catholics will simply in the long run outbreed non-believers. Therefore, the argument concludes, Catholics simply need to retreat from society and wait for their eventual numerical advantage to kick in.

This argument is dangerously wrong, and fails to take into account three important factors.

The first reason why it fails is numerical. There are far too few Catholic “breeders” to be able to outbreed the general population. If 95-98% of a population is not composed of practicing Catholics (and that is the percentage of Americans who support or practice birth control), that means that the massive percentage of families that have only one child will breed enough children to outnumber their few believing counterparts over one and possibly even two generations. It takes at least two, and more certainly three, generations to outbreed a population. And who knows what will happen in two or three generations?

Also, due to medical advances, people effectively live longer and longer lives. Non-believers will be able to live longer and longer lives, effectively lengthening the process of cultural replacement.

A more telling reason why the demographic argument fails is the fact that the culture of death tends to corrupt. The temptation of risk-free pleasure pushed by the prevailing culture is very strong, and one that young people find difficult to resist. If Catholics are not active in opposing this culture, many of their sons and daughters will be sucked into the vortex of the culture of death. Not all Catholics raised in the Faith remain in the Faith forever!

Finally, and most importantly, “letting people die off” reflects a fundamental misunderstanding of the Church’s mission. As Christians, we cannot let people just remain in their sins. We are called to be missionaries to those in darkness and in the shadow of death. God willing, we are called to bring Christ’s light to all people. We are called to be missionaries to those afflicted by the culture of death, converting by word and example.

So we cannot simply allow non-Catholics to destroy themselves by cultural suicide. We must vocally oppose the evils of those who promote the culture of death, in all its various incarnations, and publicly live the Christian life to the fullest, if we wish Catholicism to thrive for our descendants.

The Mystery of Suffering

Since God is all-powerful and all good, how could He allow suffering to exist? Such is the dilemma which all people face at one time or another in their lives. It is a question which the human mind may never be able to fully comprehend.

There are three common questions which are raised about suffering. The first is the question of what suffering and evil are. The second is the question of why suffering exists. The third is the question of why suffering happens to good people. The first question is one that no man has been able to answer. Many philosophers have formulated ideas as to the nature of evil, but no one has been able to adequately explain what evil is. The idea of the absence of good as a positive malignant force is one that will always elude human comprehension.

For Christians, the answer to the second question is simple. Sin ultimately causes suffering in one form or another. St. Paul in his letter to the Romans says that “the wages of sin is death.” Sin causes infinite separation from God, for any evil is completely separated from a good and perfect being. Therefore, the effects of sin separate man from God’s good gifts; as goodness brings happiness and comfort, so also evil brings suffering.

The third and most important question to a Christian is why suffering happens to good people. If God is just, surely suffering can be parceled out by the gravity of the evil which a person commits. The Jews of Jesus’ day believed this, seeing illness, poverty, and physical maladies as the mark of sin on a person or a family. Christ, however, turns this idea on its head. He came into the world poor, associated Himself with the outcasts and mistreated members of society, and died the death of the worst criminals in the Roman Empire. If God Himself took on a human life full of suffering, then a human being’s personal association with evil cannot be the measure of that person’s suffering.

For Christians, suffering in reality is a gift that allows us to re-examine ourselves. We lose our pride in the face of being confronted with the same suffering that others experience. Suffering forces us to make important decisions, both about our current actions and our future ones. This process can bring out the best in others, prompting decisions to benefit whole groups of people or ones which will strengthen a person’s personal integrity.

The measure of a gift, however, depends on the person’s response to it. A person who takes suffering and broods over it only begets more suffering for himself. The person who uses the suffering of others as a means of manipulating people to seize power does irreparable harm not only to himself, but to others around him. All gifts, misused, bring destruction; this is true of suffering.The person who accepts suffering and resolves to be better because of it achieves fullness of life. This is what Christ means for us when He tells His disciples to take up their crosses. We cannot simply acknowledge that suffering exists; indeed, we must embrace it.

Poetry Session

The marble heart is broken,

The flaccid hand is clenched,

The narrow path is taken,

The crimson gush is stanched.

Not as I was, but will be,

Not my will, but Your plan,

Not as I am, but as You see,

Not me, Lord, but a man.

The Church and Publicity

To people deeply influenced by the major press organs of the day, the Church is a repressive institution, capable only of ruining the lives of its members (especially women and young boys).

Dissenters within the Church, sex abuse scandals in the clergy, the behavior of so-called “Catholic” politicians, and a distorted view of Catholic teaching – these elements are what the general public sees of the Church (and to a lesser extent religion in general).

By contrast, the incredible good that the Church does is ignored or belittled. How many stories do the media run about the work of Catholic Charities? How many reports do the media produce about the power of the Catholic faith to unite communities and even entire nations?  How many miracles do the media present to the general public? (And miracles still do occur. Incorruptible saints, Eucharistic miracles past and present, and miraculous cures still occur today.)

The answer to all these questions is very few, if any. The media, as an institution, focuses almost exclusively on negative stories about the Church, while burying or ignoring positive coverage.

Part of this is due to the fact that journalism focuses on negatives by design. “If it bleeds, it leads” is a depressing but true dictum of journalism. Stories of war, death, plague, and scandal naturally get an inordinate amount of coverage, simply because they are easy to report on and draw a lot of interest.

But part of the refusal to cover the good that religion does stems from a genuine hatred of what the Church stands for, on the part of many media elites.

These media elites influence others to despise the Church by spreading falsehoods about the Church and Her mission. And people, duped into believing these falsehoods, loathe the Church for what they are led to believe are Her evil ways and hypocrisies.

The famous saying of Archbishop Sheen holds true: “Hundreds of people hate the Church for what She stands for. Millions hate the Church for what they think She stands for.”

The Church is the ultimate institution for good in this world. But the incredible work of the Church is buried under an avalanche of slander from Her enemies.

To counteract these lies and slanders, Christians must practice their Faith – publicly – through their good example and prayerful lives. The lies of the enemies of the Church must be counteracted daily by the good work and holy lives of faithful Christians.

Since many people are force-fed a negative view of the Church, it is therefore the task of the Christian to provide good publicity to the Church.