Sts. Philip and James

May 3

The feast of Saints Philip and James, Apostles.  Of the two, Philip, like Peter and Andrew, was born in Bethsaida, and having become a disciple of John the Baptist, he was called by the Lord to follow him.  James, the son of Alpheus, whom the Latins hold to be the same as “the brother of the Lord,” was called “the Just”; he was the first to rule the church in Jerusalem and, when the controversy about circumcision arose, he agreed with Peter’s judgment that the old yoke should not be imposed on disciples from among the gentiles; he soon crowned his apostleship with martyrdom.

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May Holy Mary and all the saints intercede to the Lord for us, that we may merit to be helped and saved by him who lives and reigns for ever and ever.

V. Precious in the sight of the Lord

R. Is the death of his holy ones.

V. May the Lord bless us, protect us from all evil, and bring us to everlasting life.  And may the souls of the faithful departed through the mercy of God rest in pace.

R. Amen

[To learn about praying this and other Martyrology entries, see this page.]

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Kasper chapter 5: Setting the stage

As Cardinal Kasper begins his chapter on the problem of the divorced and remarried, he expresses an intention of playing by the rules:

What can the Church do in such situations?  It cannot propose a solution apart from or contrary to Jesus’ words.  The indissolubility of a sacramental marriage and the impossibility of contracting a second sacramental marriage during the lifetime of the other partner is a binding part of the Church’s faith, which one cannot repeal or water down by appealing to a superficially understood and cheapened sense of mercy.

Pointing to the Church’s development of doctrine regarding religious freedom as an example of how she can move forward without contradicting what came before, he asks:

Is not a further development possible with regard to our issue too—a development that does not repeal the binding faith tradition, but carries forward and deepens more recent traditions?

For these statements, I am grateful.  Many people in our day enter the arena with an explicit hermeneutic of rupture that makes conversation nearly impossible.  Kasper may in fact embrace what amounts to a rupture with the past, but at least one can point to these words of his and make a case.

Since his book was meant to prepare the way for the bishops’ synod on marriage, one other “rule” seems to me implicit in his task:  he should be speaking to bishops.  That is to say, this should not be a book directed at the masses, at the laity and at various constituencies, but at his fellow bishops and cardinals.  His fellow bishops are intelligent and well-read men, theologically trained, but Kasper has written lots of academic pieces in the past and certainly has the chops to do something at a high level.

From that point of view, I would have to criticize the book as it has gone to this point.  Its complexity is at about the level of the Catechism, often following the Catechism in its points and how it develops them.  I would have expected a somewhat higher level of discourse.  Not a disaster, but it causes me to wonder what audience is foremost in his mind.

Lastly, just before we get into the nitty-gritty, I would have to add that chapter 5 sticks out a bit from the rest of the book.  He began the book by saying he did not want to deal with the various well-known problems that make the news but rather to present the “gospel of the family,” the “good news,” and he pursued this intention by commenting on Scripture.  Along the way he mentioned a few aspects of the current crisis, especially the disintegration of the family and the general loss of faith among Catholics, but he did not give extended attention to any one issue.

Until now.  In a book that doesn’t set out to treat deeply of any one problem, here we have a chapter that’s all about one problem and how Kasper proposes to fix it.  It just stands out from the design of the whole book in an awkward way, and it raises questions for me:

Why not talk about all those Catholics who are practicing contraception and receiving the Eucharist in sin?  According to current discipline, they shouldn’t receive communion any more than the divorced and remarried.  Is it because preachers aren’t preaching about it and the faithful aren’t worked up about it, so it somehow isn’t a problem?

Why not focus on that amazing loss of faith he describes and talk and length about how to remedy that?  Isn’t that the root issue?

I don’t mean to imply that these are whopper-stopper, unanswerable questions.  I just mean to highlight that the design of the book comes across in some ways as a long and quickly-written introduction to chapter 5 on the divorced and remarried.  This chapter is where he’s really talking to his fellow bishops.

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Getting down to it: Two kinds of blogs

I have read up to and through the last chapter of Kasper’s The Gospel of the Family, where he famously proposed that divorced and remarried Catholics be admitted to communion.  Up to this last chapter, what I have found is that Kasper doesn’t fit the wide-eyed liberal monster image that seems to emerge from various news stories I have read about him.  He’s well grounded and, in the best sense, unoriginal when it comes to marriage.  In the last chapter, of course, there will be a lot to talk about it.

But before I get down to it, I want to say a word about how I blog.  There are two kinds of blogs on Catholic thought.  One kind is represented by Edward Feser’s brilliant blog, which presents carefully thought-out and polished pieces that are more or less short journal articles.  The other kind is what you find here:  I blog to share my thought process with people who enjoy being involved in the process.

Back in 2011, I wrote a blog for one year titled “A Year With Ratzinger“.  I read everything I could get my hands on by Ratzinger and put my impressions and thoughts up on the blog; friends left comments, and we had a conversation.  Later, I learned that a philosophy professor from Texas devoted an entire lecture at an important conference to refuting one of my Ratzinger blog posts.  I only know because an acquaintance happened to be in attendance.

The professor was probably right in his critique.  After all, I just tossed up a few thoughts to start a conversation; I didn’t research and work them through carefully.  But (a) it would have been nice if he would have left a comment on the blog sometime before he critiqued me publically, and (b) he was treating my blog as though it were Edward Feser’s.

Over the next few posts, I’m going to wade into a controversial matter and “think out loud” on this blog.  You are not getting my final, nuanced position right away; you are joining me as I get to know the issues.  Please take it in that spirit, and if you think I’ve gone off the reservation then for land’s sake leave a comment before you give a public lecture about it.

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St. Joseph the Worker and Jeremiah the Prophet

May 1

St. Joseph the Worker, who, a Nazarene carpenter, assisted Mary and Jesus in their needs by his work and introduced the Son of God to human labors.  For this reason, on the day when labor is commemorated in many parts of the world, Christian workers venerate him as an exemplar and protector.

The commemoration of Saint Jeremiah the Prophet, who, in the time of Joachim and Zedekiah, kings of Judah, warning about the overthrow of the Holy City and the deportation of the people, suffered many persecutions, for which reason the Church holds him to be a figure of the suffering Christ.  Moreover, he foretold the new and eternal covenant which would be enacted by Christ Jesus himself, by which the Father would write his law on the heart of the sons of Israel, that he might be their God and they might be his people.

***

May Holy Mary and all the saints intercede to the Lord for us, that we may merit to be helped and saved by him who lives and reigns for ever and ever.

V. Precious in the sight of the Lord

R. Is the death of his holy ones.

V. May the Lord bless us, protect us from all evil, and bring us to everlasting life.  And may the souls of the faithful departed through the mercy of God rest in pace.

R. Amen

[To learn about praying this and other Martyrology entries, see this page.]

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