Mary and the Saints in Catholicism

This one will be in the form of a sort of dialog addressing common questions/misconceptions about Mary and the Saints. Apologetics 101 right here!

The first issue I'll address is that of the often noted complaint of many Protestants that Catholics place Mary on too high of a pedestal, despite her being a human, born of human parents. Most specifically we are often challenged on hymns or praise directed towards her, or prayer (which will have its own section, as it's quite important).

I do not disagree that Mary was human or born of human parents. In fact, I don't think you'll find any Catholic who would disagree with that, haha, though there are some crazy schismatic groups who are a bit nuts on Mary. But I would like to challenge this idea that hymns or praise of a human are out of place.

And I would like to challenge it based on the idea of glorification. Glorification in Catholic Theology is, in a sense, the last part of the process of salvation, and it is when we have died and entered into Heaven, we are glorified in addition to being justified and sanctified. You will find that Paul goes into this topic in depth in Romans chapter 8, but it is also present in other Epistles from the Apostle. I would like to examine a couple quickly in order to help illustrate an important point.

First, Galatians chapter 1, verse 24. Paul states, "And they glorified God in me." He says this while relaying his conversion experience, his missionary history, etc. and how he was called by God away from persecuting the Church to proclaiming the Church. And he says of those who heard of this remarkable conversion that they glorified God in him.

I would like to suggest that what this statement means was that in all of the Saints, in all holy men called by God, driven by the Spirit, etc., and in all who are glorified by God when they have been saved, that when we give to them glory and praise, we are also giving glory, honor and praise to the God who glorified them. For they would not be glorified without Him. If we honor them, how much more must we honor the One who made them and called them? And if we honor the One who glorifies them, is it not right and fitting for us to glorify them as well, for that is what God Himself has chosen to do?

Next, II Thessalonians, 1:10 and 1:12 in which Paul says, respectively, "When he shall come to be glorified in his saints, and to be made wonderful in all them who have believed; because our testimony was believed upon you in that day." and "That the name of our Lord Jesus may be glorified in you, and you in him, according to the grace of our God, and of the Lord Jesus Christ."

Again we see this interesting idea of God being glorified in His Saints. God being glorified in people, not just on His own, but also that in His servants His glory is also made manifest, thus making it right and proper to glorify them and through them Him. The second verse emphasizes this especially by noting, as I said before, that this is a dual property. "That the name of our Lord Jesus may be glorified in you, and you in him, according to the grace of our God, [...]." Christ's name is glorified in His servants, in all of us when we act as true Christians should. And at the same time, we are glorified in Him as a result. Again I say, to those whom God has glorified, it is only right and fitting that we also glorify them, for God has raised them up.

Now, how does this relate to Mary? In Catholic theology, all of the Saints, those whom we know to be in Heaven, they are all considered glorified by Christ, in Christ, through Christ. Mary is also a Saint, making it right and proper for us to give her honor, glory and praise, for God Himself has done so. Moreover, there is a certain added dignity to Mary's position. Mary does have a unique role in all of human history, and is really only comparable to Eve in terms of all women in the world. Eve is the daughter of God through whom disobedience entered into the world, and Mary is the daughter of God whose perfect obedience brought the new Adam, Christ the Redeemer into the world. No other woman can ever make such a claim, no other woman can ever rightly be called the Mother of God. Which means, in the final analysis, that Mary is not only a glorified Saint, but also a person with a certain added dignity due to our recognition of her vast historical importance, and most especially to her critically important obedience. Had Mary refused God's Will, which was always within her power as she had Free Will just as we do, she would've disrupted God's entire plan for our salvation. No other human born of human parents was as singularly instrumental in any work of God's, not to mention in the greatest work of God, our Redemption. Therefore, I find I must object that it is only fitting that we afford to Mary the highest respect and honor given to any human born of human parents. We do not equate her to God, of course, but we do place her above all others, for only Mary can be said to have been perfectly obedient to God's will, and only Mary as a regular human can be said to have been crucially important to God's plan for our salvation.

To delve further into the topic of respect, we also should examine the words used to describe how Catholics regard Mary, the Saints and God:

Due to the inadequacies of the English language there are often misconceptions on this point. In Greek (and Latin, I believe the terms became mingled linguistically), the words dulia, hyper-dulia and latria are the words used to apply to the Saints, Mary and God respectively. Generally they are approximately translated as Respect, Reverence and Worshipful Adoration. Notice the gap between Mary and God and the linguistic relation between Mary and the Saints. We respect Saints, and revere Mary, both things we can do to people because they are varying degrees of respect and we must respect even those who are on Earth, so obviously we must respect those God has chosen to Glorify. God has Glorified them, therefore it is fitting that we also give them proper respect, as I've said like four times now. Both are based off the word dulia, whereas to God alone the word latria is applied. Latria is true worship, true adoration and full glory given, a huge difference in degree from the other two, but one that is simply not as noticeable in the English language, I'm sad to say.

As for Mary in particular she was just a human on Earth, like us, so how did she find such favor with God? Catholics do not believe that Mary is in any way divine, she is not God, at all, never was, never will be (I think you know this, but I like to be sure). So why did God find favor in her? Clearly Mary played a special role in God's plan for us, she was the mother of Christ, a unique position in the whole of human history. But before that, what was she? Just a woman to be sure. So what was there to find favor in? We know that humans are sinful, stained creatures whom God doesn't generally find favor in. Does anyone ever receive a greeting like Mary's, "Hail Mary, full of Grace," "Hail Mary, most favored one!" in the rest of the Bible? Mary was special, but still human. Full of Grace, most favored, highly favored, what does this mean? It means that Mary, because of her special role, was preserved from sin by God. Mary, as Ark of the Covenant, from the very moment of her conception was cleansed from sin by God through Christ to be the hallowed Vessel that would carry the New Covenant, Christ Jesus. We know that on our own, we are as nothing to God, that our good deeds are like dirty rags, that our obedience is ever failing, and our humility weak and fragile. There is nothing in us to favor. Thus Mary could only have found favor with God through God Himself working to preserve her from the failings of the rest of us. By freeing her from Original Sin and pouring Grace into her, He effectively kept her from sinning at any later point in time to preserve her purity for Christ. Yes, she's just a woman. A woman who found favor with God.

Next, I'll address the misconception that Catholics do not believe Mary needed a savior.

Catholics teach that Mary was born without sin, but not that she didn't need a Savior. In fact, we believe that Mary was born without sin because she had a Savior, her Son who made her specifically and especially for her role in His life, in His plan, etc. Mary is not only the new Eve, the obedient daughter who helps to remedy the flaws of the disobedient daughters, but she is also the new Ark of the Covenant, the sanctified vessel in which God Himself resided for nine months. Here is something to consider. I think you would agree that to have an intimate relationship with God, we must be sanctified, that is, we must be holy and without stain of sin. For most of us, this sanctification first occurs when we become Christians. For Mary, this sanctification occurred when she was conceived, because she would have to be sanctified to serve as the vessel for Christ who was God. And what means, exactly, were present for her sanctification outside of miraculous intervention?

If we analyze the nature of sin, and understand that sin generates a proclivity towards sinning more, it doesn't make sense to make Mary a creature suffering from the burden of Original Sin as we ourselves do. Proclivity towards sin in the Theotokos? If she were to make sacrifices for the remission of her sins in the Jewish fashion, there is still no reason that she, as a sinner then, wouldn't fall right back into sin, losing her sanctification and thus losing the special characteristic logic tells us would be needed for someone to bear God within her, intimately bound to her life. Mary must be protected from sin, and protected in such a way that her Free Will is never compromised, for to do so would be to make her a slave, which is a horrible and detestable notion to God. The only possible means for this are to create Mary without any blemish of Original sin, to ensure that she doesn't develop our proclivity towards sin, and then to shower her with Grace so that she always knows and desires the path of God instead of the path of sin. In this way, Mary can choose to follow God's Will, and thus not only retain her Free Will and not violate the divine plan for all Creation, but at the same time, set for us a perfect example of obedience to God's Will, even when we know the consequences will be dark (remember in normal circumstances Mary would've been disgraced, ostracized, even stoned for becoming pregnant with a child that wasn't her betrothed's, yet still she obeyed with no thought for herself).

And again, referencing my earlier argument, there is no other time in the Bible when any human is addressed as "Full of Grace", or as "Highly Favored One," by an angel, a messenger of God. No human who is sinful is worthy of such a greeting, and no human who is sinful ever receives one. Mary is very different, she is not sinful, she is full of Grace, and Grace is rather contrary to sin.

As I said, we certainly agree that Mary needed a Savior. But we, perhaps, disagree in the action of salvation. To use a popular Catholic analogy, most humans are like blind people who have fallen into a pit. We are trapped, stuck and buried, unable to escape on our own, basically helpless. For us, the Savior is the person who can see and comes along and pulls us out of the hole, and even brings light to our eyes that we may see for ourselves and avoid future pitfalls. But this is not the only way in which the Savior can save. For the Savior can also save by guiding the blind around the pit, preserving them from it in the first place, and saving them without them ever falling. It is in this way that Mary was saved. She was saved by a preemptive act of the Grace of God, in order to make her the perfect vessel God required for His plans, the perfect example of obedience, and the perfect mother for His Divine Begotten Son.

Catholics are often challenged on why we have need of intercessors (who we pray to) when Christ is our mediator with God. So next, I will address this issue.

This is an excellent question, and one which is, I think, based on a misunderstanding of prayer, intercession, and mediation.

Let's start with prayer to make sure we have a firm grasp of what it means in Catholicism. In Greek, there are several words for prayer, of which we will examine two, proseuchomai and deomai. Proseuchomai is prayer that carries with it the connotation of worship, it is prayer reserved for God alone. This is the word Christ uses when He teaches the Apostles the Lord's Prayer. Deomai is prayer in the form of requests for aid, entreaties, begging, etc. Deomai carries no connotation of worship, and is used throughout the Bible as people make requests of each other. The problem arises when translated from Greek into English, both words are translated as prayer. If you examine an English dictionary you will see that both definitions I have listed here have corresponding definitions for the word pray. You will also see that the etymology of the word pray comes from the Latin precari which simply means "to ask."

When Catholics pray to the Saints and Mary, we are not using proseuchomai, far from it. Catholics use deomai prayer, we ask those in Heaven to ask God for things on our behalf. In other words, we use deomai to request of the Saints and Mary that they use proseuchomai on our behalf. We also use deomai to ask of our friends and family to use proseuchomai on our behalf (which is exactly what you do if you've ever asked someone to pray for someone or something). And we of course use proseuchomai on our own behalf as well.

So in reply to the first part of the question, while we certainly have a God to pray to with Christ as our Mediator, this does not preclude in any way prayers to the Saints, for it is a different prayer altogether, and one that is not worshipful, but instead a simple request, and a request for prayers at that!

Now, this does not address why we pray to the Saints and Mary, nor does it demonstrate why there is any necessity for intercession from anyone else. There are many answers to this, many possible replies, etc. My personal favorite is the one given right below this paragraph. But one thing that I have to note before continuing is that we do not actually believe that intercession from Saints is necessary. You do not have to ask for the intercession of the Saints or of Mary as a Catholic. While we have many beautiful prayers that involve Saintly intercession, we also have many beautiful prayers that do not involve the Saints at all! And there is always free form prayer, which is the prayer I use the most. We don't claim it is absolutely necessary to ask for intercession. But we do believe it to be a very important, possibly even essential part of a strong spiritual life, because we are all part of the Mystical Body of Christ.

Like it or not, by virtue of the fact that we are Christians, even though we are currently walking around on Earth, we are connected through Christ to all the Saints who are alive in Christ in Heaven. We are still one Body, the Church, just in different states of existence. To deny a spiritual relationship with other parts of the Body is tantamount to the eye saying to the foot that it needs it not. We are not in this alone. We have our brothers and sisters walking the Earth with us now, and we have our brothers and sisters waiting for us in Heaven (we also have our brothers and sisters who are performing penance in Purgatory, but that's a whole other issue, haha). The mouth cannot say to the hand that it doesn't need it, the eye cannot cut off the foot, and we cannot say that it is wrong to have a relationship with our Saintly brethren. It is essential for a healthy body that all parts of it work together as they are meant to, if the arm ignores the brain, or the foot ignores the leg, there can only be pain and trouble for all involved, for the entire Body. And now, let's look at at another, perhaps more practical reason, why intercession is a good thing.

I ask you to consider this: Christ links our Faith and our Prayers, yes? Whatsoever you ask in my name will be given, whoever asks with faith that his request will be answered will have it granted to him, right? There is a link between our faith and our requests. And in times of great duress, it can be very difficult to have perfect faith in God, to see past our doubts and distress and rely on Him and know He will aid us. We are, after all, only people, people with imperfect bodies and minds. It is to be expected of us that at times doubts seep into our hearts and cloud our faith, damaging our prayers. But those who are in Heaven, in other words those people whose Faith we know to have been so great that they are already Glorified, Perfected in Christ, do they have such doubts? Such worries? Such clouding in their hearts? Of course not, they have been Glorified. So we turn to them, knowing that these people have a Faith which can never doubt and never fail, and we know then that even if we doubt and fail, we have those supporting us who will never. That is one reason why we pray to the Saints, and even more so to Mary for Mary was one whose faith never wavered even in life.

Next up, is the idea that Catholics believe that the Saints desire glorification from us, as well as the objection that we, as Christians, are not to take glory in men, but only in God.

First point is that we are not suggesting that they desire glory. It isn't that they desire, ask for, demand, etc. any glory. It is that God has glorified them, and in accord with His will we also glorify them.

Second point is that glorifying in men is different that glorifying men who have been glorified by God. Glorifying in men means that we are glorying in things that come from men, or in things that are entirely human in origins. This doesn't mean that we cannot glorify those whom God has glorified, for that is something that is from God, not from men.

We also have the objection that Mary cannot be the Mother of God because it implies that a portion of God was "unmade" before Christ. This is really a more minor issue, and easily addressed.

The Son proceeds from the Father, or is, as better put, Eternally Begotten by the Father. But unless you are going to suggest that Christ was not God, Mary is still the mother of Christ, who was 100% God (The Son). If Christ was God, something I'd assume we agree on, then Mary was indeed the Mother of God. This doesn't mean that Mary was necessary for The Son to exist, or that the Son wasn't the Son before He was born of Mary, it merely means that God became Man, remained both God and Man, and had a mother as a result. A mother who is rightfully called the Mother of God.

A further objection is occasionally offered against Mary as being sinless in that God used sinful humans for various purposes in the Old Testament, and that God was not specific nor picky as to who He wanted for His vessel. I will here address the flaw of treating men like Moses, Samuel, David, Jonah, etc. like Mary.

God used those unworthy servants (they were not vessels at all) for very different tasks than the one He had for Mary. First of all being that Mary was a vessel, while the gentlemen listed were prophets, kings, judges or patriarchs, etc. Their roles were not that of a vessel for the object of a divine covenant, they had different jobs.

In fact, in stark contradiction to the above objection, God was very specific as to the kind of vessel He desired to carry the tablets of His first covenant.

Exodus 25: "10 Frame an ark of setim wood, the length whereof shall be of two cubits and a half: the breadth, a cubit and a half: the height, likewise, a cubit and a half.

11 And thou shalt overlay it with the purest gold within and without: and over it thou shalt make a golden crown round about: 12 And four golden rings, which thou shall put at the four corners of the ark: let two rings be on the one side, and two on the other. 13 Thou shalt make bars also of setim wood, and shalt overlay them with gold. 14 And thou shalt put them in through the rings that are in the sides of the ark, that it may be carried on them. 15 And they shall be always in the rings, neither shall they at any time be drawn out of them.

16 And thou shalt put in the ark the testimony which I will give thee. 17 Thou shalt make also a propitiatory of the purest gold: the length thereof shall be two cubits and a half, and the breadth a cubit and a half. 18 Thou shalt make also two cherubims of beaten gold, on the two sides of the oracle. 19 Let one cherub be on the one side, and the other on the other. 20 Let them cover both sides of the propitiatory, spreading their wings, and covering the oracle, and let them look one towards the other, their faces being turned towards the propitiatory wherewith the ark is to be covered."

God was very specific as to the materials and their quality that were to be employed to create the Ark of the Old Covenant. For the sake of some stone tablets and the law, God demands the purest gold, rare wood, very exact measurements and specific decorations, etc. This was for some pieces of stone and written commandments. Christ was the New Covenant. His Flesh and His Blood are consecrated things offered up for us, He Himself notes this at the Last Supper. Christ was far greater in stature and importance than the first Covenant, and as a material object, He far surpasses the stone tablets and the law. And as a result, He also requires a far superior Ark, one which is capable of carrying Him. Christ requires a hallowed and specially made Ark, just as the Tablets of the Old Covenant required a hallowed and specially made Ark.

Finally, I will address the flawed misconception that Catholic prayers to the Saints are similar to pleading with the dead for favors.

This is a misunderstanding of prayer to the Saints. We are not pleading with the dead for favors.

What we are doing is asking for those who are alive with Christ to pray to Christ with us.

The idea is neither for us to not pray to Christ, nor is it to pray to the "dead." Those who are Saints are not dead, they are living in Christ, the fulfillment of His Promise of Everlasting Life to His followers.

If one will agree that Saints in Heaven are alive in Christ, and part of His promise to His followers of Everlasting Life (He even says in the Gospels that there are those with Him who will never taste of death), then that will remedy the first misunderstanding. Then if you understand that we do not expect the Saints to have any power of their own, and that it is assumed, automatically, when we petition a Saint that the Saint will pray to God, and not work some power through him or herself, and moreover that we are not supposed to neglect praying to God ourselves, this will be completely remedied.

As a final point regarding praying to the Saints, do remember that when Paul was writing, there were not particularly many Saints to pray to. Other than Stephen and Dismas, I cannot think of many Christians of note who would've been Saints when Paul was writing. But what Paul does do is encourage people on Earth to pray for each other. Paul himself often asks the communities that he writes to to pray for him and other missionaries, etc.

What this means is that if you accept the idea that the Church transcends just those of us currently walking the Earth, and also includes the Spiritual presence of the Saints, for example, then Paul asking the Earthly members of the Church for prayers is not at all dissimilar from our asking the Spiritual members of the Church for prayers. We are still all one Body, and it is only right that the parts of the Body help each other, love each other, etc.

That Hideous Sense; Part III

2: "Why does the Bible condone slavery?

This question is quite possibly more pervasive, problematic and pernicious than the previous (why doesn't God heal amputees?), but it is still an argument based upon entitlement. The basic tenets of the slavery argument, as it will be called from here on out, is that it is always immoral to own slaves, thus Biblical allowances or dealings with slavery mean that the Bible has condoned that which is immoral, making the Bible and all which relies on it (most atheists suffer from the delusion that Christianity, like Islam, is a religion of the book, we have Sola Scripture to thank for this) faulty and immoral. The only reason I say that this argument is more dangerous for the Christian is because few people are willing to actually analyze slavery. Slavery is a taboo subject, and suggesting that a further examination of slavery's morality, or its historical continuity (or lack thereof), to determine whether it is acceptable or not is automatically rejected. It is rejected, of course, because modern entitlement has preconditioned Westerners to think that freedom is the highest good, and that if you are a slave, you have lost this most precious good, and thus slavery must be evil. This is false, as we will soon see. This mindset is prevalent amongst Christians and atheists alike, who do not wish to be viewed as supporting slavery, thus they continue to assume that slavery is immoral without inspection.

This assumption, however, does not stand up to scrutiny. In fact, just in a basic sense, we have several major problems to address within it.

The first is the most practical. It is, "How do we know that slavery is objectively immoral?" The second is almost as practical, it is, "How do we know that what we think of as slavery is the same as the slavery found in the Bible?" These two questions must be addressed before any progress can be made on this particular question. They are also very difficult questions for many atheistic challengers to the faith to answer.

Morality is always a tricky subject. To say that something is immoral, in the manner of this argument (that slavery is always immoral), requires objective knowledge of both morality and slavery. When a religion claims that some act is immoral, the religion makes this claim based on divine teachings, for only divine teachings can possibly be objective sources of authority on whether an issue is moral or immoral. But when an atheist makes recourse to claim something is good, evil, or immoral, that atheist is attempting to use an objective adjective when he or she doesn't know the objective truth of the subject in question. He or she cannot even entertain the pretense that they do, because they cannot rely upon God. They have no recourse to objective authority, and thus their claims are problematic. The atheist who can objectively define morality does not exist, and no claim concerning morality from an atheist is ever truly troublesome for the Christian. Atheists simply have no ground to stand upon in this area.

Now, there are certainly plenty of philosophers now and in the past who've attempted to construct objectively moral systems without appeals to the divine, based upon various principles and axioms that they've established. In the case of slavery, the most likely recourse would be to appeal to the idea of humans having an objective right to liberty, such that slavery must be immoral, as I stated earlier. The problem, as we know, is that this alleged right is indemonstrable, leaving the objective morality claim weakened to the point of collapse.

Should an atheist attempt to skirt this by making a relativist argument, such that slavery has become evil now, or that our morality has changed to make slavery immoral, etc. then they have (in addition to making an absurdly fallacious claim) violated the terms of their own argument. For their argument is that the Bible is wrong because it supports a practice that is always immoral. If morality changes, or if slavery's morality has changed, then the Bible didn't support an immoral thing when it was written, and any attempt to force such an interpretation upon it is mere anachronism, and fails easily. No, the question is objective. The subject is objective. And the atheist has no recourse outside of appealing to a sense of human rights.

Now, one could say that while the atheist may not have an answer, the theist cannot demonstrate that slavery is moral either, now can he? Even aside from its false shift of the burden of proof, this argument is hardly any trouble. The theist can, and this particular theist will, demonstrate that being a slave is not necessarily an objectively evil thing. Indeed, this is easy to do, as Christianity has always posited that the very nature and purpose of our existence is to exist in a relationship of perfect Agape Love with God and our fellow humans. And the nature of Agape love is such that, contrary to philia love which asks us to make brothers of all Mankind, agape demands that we make masters of all Mankind, with ourselves the slaves. This is self-sacrificing Love. Surrendering the self, one's desires, ambitions, motives, wants, needs, even one's life or will, for the sake of others' good. This is agape. And slaves, interestingly enough, have an incredible opportunity in their bondage. By virtue of the fact that they are slaves, they are presented with the opportunity to live a perfect Christian life. The slave is placed into a situation wherein obedience, humility, and self-sacrifice are not only encouraged, but demanded, just as Christianity demands them from us.

Indeed, this is precisely what I believe the Apostle Paul noted when he wrote about the relationship of slaves to masters and masters to slaves in his epistles. He reminds slaves that they are servants, and that service is neither demeaning, nor is it evil. Service is the highest and the holiest calling of human kind. It is no shame, nor is it wrong to serve others, though it is best to choose to do so instead of being forced to do so. The interesting point of slavery is that slaves do still choose. There has yet to be a system of slavery in this world where the slaves were absolutely without choice. Even in the American institution of slavery, slaves rebelled, ran away, etc. They had a choice, and they exercised that choice. And like all choices, theirs had certain intendant risks and variables that they measured before choosing. But Paul's exhortations were not to run or to fight, Paul's instructions were to recall that we can also choose to serve and be content, and that choosing to serve is what agape love is all about. How can slavery be wrong if slaves can express the greatest love of all, perhaps more than anyone else?

This has brought us to the Biblical perspectives on slavery. One obvious flaw in the argumentation of atheists regarding this subject is that their understanding of slavery is tied into, and rather rightly so, the slavery of the 16th through 19th centuries in the Western world (particularly the American institution of slavery). All of us tend to agree that the slavery practiced in the American South was immoral. It is a historical fact, even, that the Abolitionist movement grew out of Christianity, and that it was the arguments and strengths of Christianity that really brought Abolitionism to the fore in the 1800s. Now the atheist, in his ignorance of the reality of Biblical teachings on the subject, will take this to be a contradiction. To the atheist, this is like scenting blood in the water, for behold! The Christians, who believe in an objective and unchanging morality, have said that the American institution of slavery was immoral! Therefore slavery has always been immoral, and Christianity and Christians used to support it! Ahh, they rush to the attack, and headlong in their rush, they forget one or two tiny little facts.

Unfortunately for them, those tiny facts prove to be quite relevant to the argument at hand. The first fact is that the American institution of slavery was a peculiar example of slavery, and not at all the same as slavery in the ancient world, nor even close to the slavery in the Bible. These things are all quite different. Our second fact is that the Christian teachings regarding slavery found in the New Testament do more than simply describe the conduct that slaves should engage in, as I noted above. Paul also notes that there is proper moral conduct that the owner of a slave should follow. Paul says that slave teachers should not abuse their slaves, and Paul reminds all Christians that they are spiritually equals, that before the sight of God, they are all human. And let us not forget Christ's own words that in Heaven, the last shall be first and the first shall be last, said just as He washed the feet of His own Apostles, the conduct of a slave.

There is a standard of proper conduct for masters as well as for slaves in Christianity. Both groups are called to act in Christian fashion, which for the masters might mean that they release their slaves (In some cases that may well prove to be the worse alternative, as mere liberation might also result in our former slaves having no shelter, clothing, food, money, education, etc. Indeed, this is a problem still relevant in our own society, 150 years after the abolition of slavery...), but at the very least it means that masters must treat their slaves well. They are not to be abused, and they are certainly not to be treated as non-human, for in the Christian perspective, they are still HUMAN, they are spiritually equal, they are Brothers and Sisters in Christ. This is never to be forgotten in Christianity.

The problem with American slavery wasn't that the slavery itself was horrible (though to our modern sensibilities, obsessed as we are with liberty it seems that way), but that the institution of it was horrible. Christianity rejected American slavery because American slavery had rejected Christianity. Slaves in the United States were dehumanized in a way never before seen in the world. Not only were they treated strictly as property, but their very psychology was warped to reflect this. They were abused in horrific fashion, not only through physical means (like the whippings or back breaking labor) but also through psychological or emotional means. Women raped or forced to have sex with white masters, families sundered, the relationship of husbands and wives ignored, etc. etc. All of these are abuses that Christianity does not permit among its members, and it was American slavery that perfected them. Thus it was American slavery that brought down upon itself the power of Christianity and others, and in the end result it was American slavery that lost.

We can also see the other side of the coin. While Christianity was working against the institution of slavery from the outside in the Abolitionist movement, it also worked to support the slaves from within. It is well known that American slaves embraced Christianity in a very real sense, identifying with the Christian message and coming to understand the Christian view of service and suffering. We must conclude, if we are to be historically unbiased, that Christianity is not only largely responsible for ending slavery, it is also largely responsible for keeping those enslaved strong and with some sense of purpose and value in their lives. Slavery did its best to turn men into mere beasts of burden (and nothing more) in the United States, and the only thing that stood in its way was Christianity, both in the minds and hearts of the slaves themselves, and also in the legal/moral battle waged over the system.

With that, we have mainly addressed the two concerns that marked our foray into the slavery argument. But so far there has only been scant reference to entitlement.

I noted earlier that it is our obsession with liberty that brings us to the conclusion that slavery is horrible, because it strips us of the liberty that we desire. This is the entitlement at the source of this complaint. While the atheist who makes this argument will fail because of the two questions already covered, the reality is that this argument isn't even truly worthy of being dealt with fully in such a manner. This argument is entirely dependent on this idea that humans are entitled to freedom, that they are entitled to liberty, and most of all that this freedom and liberty are what the libertarian philosophers say they are. But we have already seen that everything to which we previously felt entitled to is, in fact, a gift, and something we are not entitled to at all.

This slavery argument attempts to stand upon legs which it doesn't possess, there is no entitlement to freedom, there is no right to liberty, and there never has been. The only relevant right here is again the one Christianity has practiced all along. And it is that we have no right to abuse our fellow humans, but we have every right to serve them. As always, entitlement fails. And once we realize that there is no right to freedom, we are forced to admit that there is no legitimate argument against Christianity here, and there cannot be a legitimate argument against Christianity here.

Now, it is interesting to note that in the long history of the Church, there have been several Councils which spoke out against slavery, indeed, the practice of slavery virtually vanished from Europe in the Middle Ages thanks to the Church. These Councils universally decried the capture and enslavement of free Christians by pirates and slave traders from the Barbary Coast, and argued that such actions were, in fact, objectively immoral. Should anyone attempt to use these arguments to declare that slavery is always objectively immoral, I must note for them that they will have one simple problem to overcome. That the Church's actions in those cases reflect exactly what I have said all along. That no one has the right to strip another of God's gift of liberty where that gift has been given. Taking a free man and unjustly enslaving him is wrong, because it rejects a gift of God to that person. Beyond that, where is the evil?

Christian Suffering, Pt. 3

If you're Catholic, especially if you grew up Catholic, or maybe even if you know a good amount of Catholics, you are probably familiar with the expression, "offer it up."

You're also probably aware, if you've heard this expression and were even remotely curious as to what it meant, that it is an expression encouraging us to endure our suffering here and offer it up as a sacrifice for those suffering for their sins in Purgatory as they are cleansed and prepared for entrance into the Kingdom.

But what does this really mean? If you're like me, you've never thought about it beyond that point, you just know that's what it is. To me though, this now begs the question of WHY? Why offer it up? After all, wasn't Christ's pain, Christ's suffering, Christ's sacrifice enough? Wasn't THAT the sacrifice to end all sacrifices, that we may be forgiven for our sins? The answer is, of course, an emphatic yes. There are no more sacrifices necessary for our salvation, there is nothing we must do except accept the precious gift of Salvation, which comes in the form of Blood, the Blood of a New Covenant, shed for us and for all so that our sins would be forgiven.

So then why? We have the sacrifice of Christ, the pain of Christ, the Blood of Christ, the Lamb of God. Why would we offer up our own pain as a sacrifice?

The reason is simple. First, we must understand Purgatory, which is not a place where people suffer to be forgiven of the sins, it is a place where people go to experience the temporal punishment for their sins, and be purged of their effects on your soul. To enter Purgatory, you must be in a state of Grace and friendship with God, this means all your sins were forgiven, your sin was paid for by the Blood of Christ. But your temporal punishment is another matter. Consider it this way, the child who plays outside in the mud gets himself covered in dirt, and then runs home to his mother. As dirty as he is, she will not let him inside the house until he has been thoroughly scrubbed. Certainly she will forgive him for ruining his clothes, making himself dirty, and disobeying her when she said to stay out of the dirt, forgiveness isn't the problem, but the fact remains that the child must be cleaned, and scrubbed, and will later be punished for his actions.

Purgatory is where our brethren in Christ go for a period of time partly as penance for their sins, and equally as a final scrubbing of the remaining dirt of sin, while the guilt of it has long since been forgiven. Why do we sacrifice our own suffering for them?

Because we are called to be like Christ.

The final point regarding pain and the Christian path is that once we endure pain, once we forgive others for pain, and once we thank others for the gift of pain, we can finally turn and say honestly to God that this pain we accept, this suffering we GLADLY bear. And then we ask with our whole hearts that we be allowed to bear temporal suffering so that our brethrens, our beloved brothers and sisters of Christ might be released from any more suffering, that our pain be their pain.

When we can sacrifice our pain, when we can offer it up, truly, with joy, with hope, with love, we will join Christ in His example on the Cross, join Him in the second greatest act of love we can perform for our brothers and sisters (the first of course being to give up our very life for their sake), that of taking their pain upon ourselves, as Christ took our sin upon Himself. Therefore; take up your cross, and walk.

Christian Suffering, Pt. 2

When I think of the most painful things in my life, I do not think of physical injuries. I think first and foremost of the pain of emotions I have felt, bone deep sorrow and raging anger, and worst of all betrayal that makes you feel as if your heart has been ripped out from your chest, and you have become some hollow, lifeless doll. Offered the choice between having my fiancee cheat on me and being stabbed I would gladly choose to be stabbed. To me there is no comparison between them, the pain of the heart far surpasses the pain of the body. Then I think of the pain of the soul, the pain of sin. When I dwell on the sins I have committed, the pain that wells up from the wounds I have inflicted on my soul is incredible. And it too is tied into emotional pain for it is of the soul, just as our emotions are linked to the soul. Many Christians have seen the Passion, have witnessed what is supposed to be an excellent portrayal of the brutal physical pain of Christ's torture and death. But how often do we think of the other pains Christ had to endure for our sake?

What is pain to the Christian? To the person called by God to take up his cross and follow in the example of Christ? Our God suffered excruciating pain for us, both the physical pains of the nails, the thorns, the spear, the whips, the blows, etc., but also having to suffer the horror of having His best friends reject Him, the people He loves betray Him, and what seems like the totality of His existence turned upside down. And then add to that the horrible spiritual anguish of assuming all of Mankind's sins for all Time unto Himself, a being who had never known the pain of Sin, never known the alienation from God it brings. For Christ, who was God, to assume the full sum of all of humanity's rejection of God, the fullness of humanity's alienation from God, Man's rejection of Him, Man's betrayal of Him, must have been the greatest, most horribly unimaginable pain of all.

This is the God who died for us. But more than that, this is the God who accepted the betrayal of one of His chosen few for us. The God who accepted the three-fold rejection of His chief follower for us. The God who died with only His Mother, and a couple of His many followers to be there for Him. The God who bore the full brunt of humanity's pitch black sin while doing so for us. We Christians need to understand that pain is part of the Christian path. To take up our crosses and follow after Christ means not that we run from pain as Buddhists do, nor that we deny the pain and try to be strong, but instead that we embrace the pain, understand that we are weak, understand that we will be betrayed, hurt, attacked, and persecuted for our beliefs. And when we can understand that, we will truly be able to draw on the strength of God, to help us bear up in the worst times possible in our lives. It will be the truest monument of our faith, the greatest testament of our love. And when we can do that, we will know what it meant for Christ, and for the Apostles, to rise from the Dead, triumphant over sin, and forgive us our trespasses, as we forgive those who trespass against us.

When you understand the gift of pain, when you can not only forgive, but THANK the person who attacks you, when you can smile through your tears at those who hate you: Then you will have become just a little bit more Christlike. And if everyone can become just a little bit more Christlike, maybe we can remove some of that pain from the world.

Christian Suffering

I am a member of my local parishes ministry for young adults, and every week we have a meeting and discuss something, usually something we've been reading. This ranges from a Bible study to reading books of importance to the faith, such as the Theology of the Body.

Currently, we're reading G.K. Chesterton's Orthodoxy, and in the course of our most recent discussion, the issue of pain arose. While it's fresh in my memory, I'm going to take this opportunity to post three meditations on the nature of suffering in Christianity that I believe essential to a proper understanding of pain. These are somewhat old, so I may at some point update them, but I believe for now they will suffice. Today we will begin with the first, and shortest, meditation. It is on the idea of enduring pain, which is the first step on the path.

"What is pain to the Christian? Recently a fellow Christian told me he desired for Christ to come soon and end the world. His reason was because he was tired of people insulting Christ, and Christians, tired of people sinning, etc.

Beware Christians, for such attitudes reek of selfishness. The mission of the Church was, is and ever shall be to spread the Gospel to all nations and thus prepare for the Second Coming. Christians, when it comes to pain, humiliation, even our intolerable adversary and our penchant for incredible sin, we must endure. Endure the hardships of this life. For our mission is not complete, and many millions, possibly billions of people are as yet unaware of the glory of Christ. If you can endure all this world might throw at you and bring the Gospel to just one more person all of your endurance will be well worth it. And would you honestly be able to look Christ in the eye if you choose to escape your suffering but fail to bring the Good News to one of your brothers? I know I would not be able to face up to Christ were I to fail Him in such a way..."

Questions from Mrs. Kussman and others

This was a great discussion we were having on Facebook, good enough that I thought I'd repost it here for anyone who stumbles across it. The debate was still going on but has largely died down now. As always, click the title to see the original.

"Have any of your prayers ever, in actuality, been answered?"

Yes. With a high degree of accuracy to my requests and a high number of such instances.

"Is every single word written in the bible factual, truthful and unambiguous?"

No, yes, and no. The Bible is not a monolithic entity, it's a compilation of books, some of which are compilations in and of themselves. While all of it contains inspired truth, not all of it is factual. For instance, the Genesis myths of creation, or the parables of Christ, these are not meant to be factual accounts of history or science, but stories that relate moral and spiritual truths. While they may have a factual basis, in and of themselves they are not facts.

"If Mohammed, Allah's prophet, came down to earth tomorrow, would you remain a Christian?"

Yes.

"why?"

For the same reason I'm not Muslim now. Islam is illogical. It's a combination of Christian heresy and Arab pagan beliefs. If Mohammed magically appeared and told everyone he was right, I wouldn't believe him based on that, when his entire religion is already absurd. That an event is supernatural doesn't mean that it is of GOD.

We've had deceptions in Christianity too. I can recall one story of a woman who was possessed by a demon, and did miraculous stunts in church, and deceived her whole parish. She'd levitate and speak in tongues, etc. and people thought she was of God, when the reality was that she'd made a pact with a demon for power, and was using it to deceive, by her own admission.

"What are your chances of getting into heaven?"

Whatever God wishes them to be. Such a question cannot be answered by a human mind.

"Why do you think is it impossible to prove anything whatsoever of a supernatural nature?"

What it is impossible to do is prove anything whatsoever, natural or supernatural. The concept of "proof" is frankly absurd. Nothing or almost nothing is provable, as skeptic philosophy has shown numerous times. What little we can prove without any sort of doubt or challenge cannot be called either natural or supernatural, since either one reflects a presupposition in the mind, a baseless assumption without proof. If we get beyond that, then everything is provable.

The real challenge most atheists attempt is to challenge theists to prove God using empirical means, ie science. This is impossible because empiricism and science deal exclusively with observation and study of the natural universe and its properties, it cannot, by definition, reveal anything concerning the supernatural, if the supernatural exists.

"Is it possible that the devout Catholic, Adolph Hitler, could be in heaven if he had truly repented prior to his death?"

*sigh* Adolf Hitler was not a devout Catholic, Adolf Hitler was self-excommunicated, in a state of mortal sin much of his final years, and his writings were very much of a heretical and Protestant nature. He may have been raised Catholic, but he left the Church.

And yes, if he had truly repented he could be in heaven. However, he'd spend a huge amount of time in Purgatory first, so I doubt he's there yet, if he did repent. And I expect he won't be there any time soon.

"Where was your soul prior to your conception?"

Where is a question that doesn't apply to the spiritual.

"To what sorts of depravity would you descend if it were proved there was no god?"

Non-existence cannot be proven, your question is meaningless.

"Why doesn't god show himself anymore?"

Your question cannot be answered, since it precludes God showing Himself, which He does.

"When do you think Christ will come back to earth?"

When two qualifications are met:

1) The Gospel has been preached to everyone, whether they accept it or not.
2) When no one expects or predicts it.

"Why was little or no faith needed to believe in god during Old Testament times (god appeared to humans regularly) yet today christians have to rely on 100% faith for their belief?"

Your question is nonsensical. Faith is a function of belief, you cannot rely on faith for belief, because you are relying on belief in God to have faith in Him by living His commandments.

And faith has always been necessary.

"How would you prove that god exists - without using arguments that someone from another religion would use to prove their god exists, and without reference to the Bible?"

If forced to do so, since I normally don't bother attempting such things, I would argue based on the nature of movement in existence.

"What is the difference between a dream, or hallucination, and a vision from God?"

A dream is a set of images formed in the subconscious while sleeping, which were collected by your mind either as memories/vague impressions of your surroundings or as issues which your mind is unconsciously working out while you sleep.

An hallucination is a delusional vision in which the mind tricks itself into believing it perceives something with the senses which is not real, hence the delusional aspect.

A vision from God is a perception which is based on reality, it is not delusional.

"Why is your god the only valid god?"

You're mistaken. God is the only valid God. All the gods of the world are perfectly valid as gods. Don't confuse the terms.

And the reason for that is because God is that entity whose essence is equal to His existence. No other being is as such.

"By what method do you determine the difference between the voice of God, and the voice of the Devil pretending to be God?"

By being skeptical of all such voices and not trusting myself to be any sort of authority.

"If Christ did come back to earth, what would be your minimum requirement for proof of his authenticity?"

That He come back in the manner He said He would.

Questions from Mr. DeMers

"If theistic evolution is true doesn't that mean things had to die before Man was officialy cursed in the Garden of Eden with death?"

The Fall is an event that occurs essentially outside of time as we know it. Think of it this way. Imagine the entirety of reality is a computer program, all of the Earth is just a big set of data programmed to function along certain lines and according to certain rules. Initially, this program is perfect, it doesn't have any bugs or problems. But some of the variables built into the program have the ability to alter it's basic structure, such that one action can alter the entire program.

The Fall is such an action. Think of it like a patch, or an updated version of the same program. It rewrites the code for the entirety of the program, not just that moment or the following moments, but all of the program; past, present and future.

The Resurrection is another such action. It is a further update designed to remedy the problem of the Fall, and it's effects are ALSO felt throughout the program from beginning to end, simultaneously.

Now, science only studies what we can observe or piece together through empirical data. So DNA, fossils, etc. all serve to provide us with information on what came before. But the two updates of the Fall and the Resurrection have always (from our subjective perspective) been part of the mix. The nature of these alterations are such that those of us WITHIN the system never realize their effects, precisely because they're a-temporal.

Think of it this way. If someone went back in time and killed Hitler as a baby, you would grow up your whole life learning about how the Great Depression had facilitated World War II between the Soviets and the Western World, or some other such madness, because WW2 as we know it would not have happened. From WITHIN the temporal system, you would never know there was a change, because for you there never WAS a change, you're part of that same time line. So evolution involving the death of creatures is to be expected, because we have never known a reality that DIDN'T have the Fall's impact upon it. We should not expect to find immortal animals, etc., nor should we have a problem with animals dying before the Fall's temporal moment.

"Making God using death as a means to create life. Taking away from his fairness and righteousness?"

I think a lot of the problems people have with death are from a failure to understand what death is. Death is not the end of our existence.

"Do you believe Adam was a fully devoloped man or some ape descendant?"

First point, apes are NOT our ancestors, evolutionary speaking. Apes and humans SHARE an ancestor. Modern apes are just as modern as modern man.

Second point, I believe that Adam was human, not whatever preceded humanity. Now, I rather doubt he was what we'd call a homo sapien, but he was still at least a homo something or other.

"How far back do you believe evolution goes? Where we apes or fish?"

All the way back to the beginning, after life began.

"Was Eve really taken from Adam's rib? Or did she evolve seperately?"

Neither. I suspect Adam and Eve both arose out of the same tribe of hominids such that they were a unique new species, but still capable of interbreeding with their predecessors.

"Or did mankind evolve until we finally got to Adam?"

You need to remember that "Adam" and "Eve" are names that are more than just individual names. Adam means both "earth" and "Mankind." Eve means "Mother of all." Adam and Eve are as much a representation of ALL of humanity at their time as they are of two individual persons.

"Have you heard of the gap theory? That between God creating the heavens and the earth and the earth being void and formless that it was the 4.5 billion years scientists always talk about. Then after that it was literaly seven days and 6,000 years."

Yes, I've heard of the gap theory, and the accompanying God of the Gaps argument. I came up with the same idea when I was something like 10 or 12. I've since moved on.

First point, gap theory is a type of fallacy. The only time the positing of a supernatural answer is valid is when argumentum ad absurdum reasoning has demonstrated the absurdity and invalidity of all possible natural explanations. This has not occurred in regards to the gap theory.

Second point, scientists state that the Earth was not void and formless for 4.5 billion years, they say that it was the EARTH, which is a form, and not void, for 4.5 billion years. The universe has been around for something like three times that length. And it was never "literally" seven days and 6000 years. Remember, "seven" is a Biblical number indicating God's time. It doesn't have any real meaning, even within the context of the story in terms of science or history, because "day" is just a vestigial measure of time using solar cycles. Since the sun didn't even exist until the 3rd or 4th "day," it's impossible to take it literally.

"Is it possible that God just created everything at a mature state so in actuality it appears to be billions of years old, but was actually younger? Or did it go through the actual time to age."

Is God in the habit of intentionally deceiving people and getting them to believe falsehoods, or is God the God of Truth?

"6,000 years. Alot of fundamentalists claim there is no way around the fact that the bible says it is 6,000 years old. And that the earth is to.
How do we explain this in light of evolution and science?"

We explain it by noting for our fundamentalist friends that they're treating myths, which are not historical or scientific, as evidence for historical and scientific claims. The purpose of the Bible, and the purpose of those myths, is not to date the planet Earth. Their purpose is to give insight into our relationships with God.

"Also why does the Bible say in Genesis that they lived to be hundreds of years old?"

Dude, they're myths, what do you expect?

More Q&A

"4) How much authority has the Pope been given? And can the Pope still make mistakes? And if I could further extrapolate the question, how much authority have priests and bishops been given? I know that if a priest rapes a child, it is not a reflection of the Church as a whole, but how do you determine then that one thing the priest says is "of the Church" while another thing he says should be ignored?"

Haha, he's been given enough. His is the authority granted to Peter by Christ in Matthew 16:18. He is the Steward of Christ's Kingdom, and thus has the authority of the King while the King is away. He likewise has certain powers of binding and loosing.

Papal infallibility is a tricky subject.

The Pope can and does make mistakes. Popes are human, Popes sin, and Popes are held accountable for their mistakes before God. The Catholic Church does NOT teach that Popes are impeccable, ie faultless, sinless, etc.

The Pope's authority is such that it is a teaching authority. He is able to teach infallibly on matters of faith and morality, because his office as the Pope is the universal leader of the universal Church. The Church's infallible teaching authority is on matters of faith and morality, the Pope shares in that authority because of the nature of his office and the authority Christ granted it.

This authority is VERY specific in terms of how and when it can be used. The Pope is not infallible all of the time, in fact, Popes are only infallible on exceedingly rare occasions. To teach infallibly, the Pope must teach AS the Pope. If he is teaching as a bishop, or a priest, or a theologian, etc it is not infallible. The authority comes from God through the office, nothing less will suffice. Likewise, the Pope must explicitly declare that he is teaching in such a fashion, no off the cuff remarks, no maunderings, no brainstorming, no pensive thoughts, etc. are considered infallible. There's no guy with a notebook following the Pope around and copying down everything he says to turn into doctrine. The Pope cannot teach infallibly on any issue that is not an issue of faith or morality, of course. Likewise, the Pope cannot change or reverse any already held infallible teaching of the Church.

Priests and bishops serve a specific function of service within the Church. Bishops are the spiritual successors to the Apostles, having received their Ordination in direct line from the Apostles through the working of the Holy Spirit and the laying on of hands of one previously so ordained. Priests are the servants of Bishops, extensions of the Bishops authority, and further workers for Christ.

Their ministry is to the Body of Christ. They are espoused to the Church just as Christ is espoused to the Church. Their vocation is to serve as alter Christi, or in other words, they are to serve as Christ served, ministering the Sacraments and teaching the people as He did.

The Sacrament that priests and bishops under go is one of authority. Ordination leaves what we call an indelible mark upon the Soul. Once a man has been ordained, the Holy Spirit has worked upon him in such a way that only the Holy Spirit could reverse. Once you're a priest, you're always a priest, just as once you are married in Catholicism, you're married until you die or your spouse does. It is through this working of the Holy Spirit that the priest can exercise some of Christ's authority in administering the Sacraments, they serve essentially as a channel for God's Grace, as Christ did on Earth, claiming no power in and of themselves, but only through the working of God.

This is the VERY short form, you've asked a big question right there. All of these are fairly short answers, but this one I'm trying to keep as short as I can.

Priests are, of course, human, as are bishops (popes with a small p, that's where the word first came into use in the Church). They are human, they sin, they make mistakes, and none of them have any sort of infallibility. The way we know whether what they say is correct is because all Catholics have access to the explicit writings and teachings of the Church, things like the Catechism, the Councillar writings, etc. If a priest says something strange, I can look up in the Catechism or the Code of Canon law, etc. and see whether what he said lines up with Church teaching. If it does not, I can disregard it unless it has some other value.

One purpose that bishops are supposed to serve is as checks against such problems. They have more authority than priests, and thus more responsibility. It is their responsibility to ensure that their priests are not teaching heterodox or heretical ideas to their parishioners. Thus a Catholic lay person, like myself, could go to the Bishop with a worry or a complaint about one of the priests. The advantages of a hierarchy is that we have channels of authority through which to make appeals. If the bishop won't listen, we can even appeal to the Pope, like in the Latin Mass issue, when the Pope forced bishops to allow it.

If it is an issue of legality, such as a priest raping children, we can also go to the police, of course. I'd encourage such, even if the bishop is doing something about it. Such things are disgusting.

"5) What is the Church's stance on the Trinity? Do they view the Holy Spirit as an active force in this world, or more as a concept? And do they consider all Biblical phenomena as literal or some as metaphorical (with special reference to the Books of Genesis and Revelations)."

We believe in the Trinity. I'm not really sure what you're asking in that first part, lol.

Yes, the Holy Spirit is active in the world. It is through the Spirit's power that Grace is spread, the Sacraments effected, miracles occur, etc.

The Church allows for different interpretations of the Genesis myths, if that's what you're asking. It does NOT teach specifically that they are scientific history, but it allows people to believe that if they want to. Most of us don't.

The Church certainly understands that some writings of the Bible are mythical, others are poetic, some are allegorical, others are historical narratives with specific focuses and intents. The Church doesn't treat the Bible as one monolithic work, and therefore has no problem with recognizing these differences and others in the various works. And the Church does not claim any scientific authority in its teaching authority.

The Church likewise doesn't have any problem with the discoveries of science, so long as those discoveries are not used to try and alter theologically held truths. In other words, the Church has no problem with the Big Bang, so long as it is not suggested that God was not involved in the creation of the Universe. The Church has no objection to evolution save that it must recognize that Man has a specially created Soul. Due to the nature of these theological reservations, science can never actually say that they are not true. Science cannot test and experiment for the soul, nor determine if God was involved in the Big Bang. Such things lie outside of empiricism, and science only works within empirical boundaries.

Thanks to this, the Church has no problem with Catholics understanding works in the Bible that are myths in a mythical sense. We certainly still believe that Mankind is Fallen, that the myths of Genesis, for example, contain many truths, but we're not always going to treat it like a perfect historical work describing the exact events of the morning of the world. I like to think of it this way. The Church's interpretations draw out the revealed truths of these sections, without need of altering the myths. So we can read them as we'd read any other mythic poetry: However we want. Those truths will remain the same because the Church has preserved them for us. So long as we don't attempt to apply them to science, for example, there shouldn't be any problems. Poetry rarely speaks to science, haha.

The Book of Revelation, is an interesting one. It is viewed as prophetic in many ways, but it also viewed as a coded message with several underlying meanings. One is that it is an encoded letter from John to Christian churches designed to only be intelligible to Christians due to the Roman persecution. Another is that it actually shows us the nature of the Mass in a coded, poetic form. For myself, I would not be surprised if all three were true. Scriptural writing is never simple and easy to understand, and God, far from being the simplistic, one-trick-pony writer that many assume Him to be when they take everything in the Bible literally, writes on several levels at once. Christ often teaches on several levels at once, why would God do any differently when inspiring men?

I recommend Scott Hahn's book on Revelation if you want to study that one a bit further. While I haven't yet read it myself, I've heard it is an interesting examination of the work. It's entitled the Wedding Supper of the Lamb, or something along those lines.

Further questions from Mr. Laing:

"2) Ok, so it might be impossible to find contradictions between Catholic doctrine and what the Bible says based on the premise that the Bible was compiled by the RCC, but the Roman Catholic Bible has a few extra books in it (not including the Apocrypha) that my Bible does not have. When and why did this happen? And which version is closer to the original Bible compiled in the fourth century?"

Well, a slight correction to that first part. The Catholic Bible doesn't have a few extra books in it, many (not all) Protestant Bibles are MISSING some books, generally the Deutero-Canonicals.

This happened at the time of the Protestant Revolution, and was performed by Martin Luther. Here's the basic run down.

Martin Luther translated the Bible from Latin to German. The Church strictly controlled the translating of the Bible because it is a massively difficult work to translate accurately. And any inaccuracy in the Bible would be quite problematic for people's understandings. Luther, of course, needed the Bible for his premise of Sola Scriptura, and so translated it anyway (and rife with errors, some of his own intentional creation, an issue for another day).

When he translated it, he removed several books and parts of others that he believed were not Canonical, and almost removed more. Those that he did remove are called the Deutero-Canonicals, and are part of a secondary tier of Scripture in the Jewish faith. His removal was based on several variables.

Rewind to Alexander the Great. Alexander conquered much of the known world, including Palestine, and spread Hellenistic civilization and the Greek language all throughout his conquests. One of Alexander's alleged ambitions was the collecting of all the world's religious manuscripts and writings into his library in Alexandria, Egypt. To this end, the translation of the Hebrew Scriptures into Greek was commissioned for 70 scholars to work on. What they produced is called the Septuagint.

Fast forward to Jesus Christ. It is widely thought, based on internal evidence from the Scriptures and supported, I believe, by archaeological findings, that in Christ's time, both the Septuagint, Hebrew versions of the Scriptures, and possibly Aramaic language scriptures were in use. Without a doubt, Hebrew and Septuagint language Scriptures were.

At Christ's time, there was no set Old Testament canon. The Jews had never developed a set canon, and instead just had varied Scriptures, much like the Christians later did. They had different translations, and those translations might have different works. For example, the Septuagint had the Deutero-Canonicals, but not every set of Hebrew Scriptures did (archaeological evidence used to suggest that NO set of Hebrew Scriptures did, but I believe they've now found some that do, so nix that, haha).

Christians largely made use of the Septuagint, particularly because, after the initial converts were all Jewish (and used the Septuagint themselves anyway), the Church had a huge influx of Gentile converts, most of whom spoke Greek (as Greek was the popular language of much of the Eastern Roman Empire, thanks again to Alex the Great). They had further support in doing so, because we know from the Gospels that Christ Himself used the Septuagint, or at least we know that Christ used the Deutero-Canonical books which the Septuagint contains.

The problem came in that the Christians were very effective at using the Deutero-Canonical books to influence Jews to convert to Christianity, a perceived threat by the leaders of Judaism at the time. So the Jews, for the first time ever, had their own Canonical "Council," the Council of Jamnia in about AD 70. There, they decided that they would not use the Septuagint, and used only those Hebrew Scriptures without the Deutero-Canons. Now, Jews could simply reject any argument from the Deutero-Canon made by a Christian on the basis of those books not being part of their Scriptures.

Likewise, at the Canonical Councils of the Church in the 4th century, the Church decided that as Christ and most of Christianity used the Septuagint and the books it contained, they kept them, and those are the books they had translated into Latin, published, promulgated, etc.

Back to Martin Luther. Martin Luther had a similar problem to the Jews. The Deutero-Canonical books contained evidence that supported several teachings of the Church that Martin Luther rejected. Of course, Martin Luther thought only Scripture was authoritative, but here in Scripture was evidence for those beliefs. Problem. So Martin Luther reasoned that because the Jews didn't accept those books, they weren't a legitimate part of Scripture, and so he excised them. Problem solved. Most other Protestant sects also removed them, though the King James Versions of the Bible kept them, but removed them to a separate section labeled, "the Apocrypha." That's why some Protestant Bible have them, and others do not.

Of course, that brings us to a whole new issue of authority, and Martin Luther's lack thereof, but I'll try to avoid that.

The Catholic Church, when it responded in Council to the Protestant Movement, re-affirmed the Canon of the Bible that it declared was inspired. This was the Council of Trent, and all Catholic Bibles must contain the Canon decided by this Council. I would argue that it is the superior compilation. But that's hardly a surprise, lol!

"3) What is the Virgin Mary's significance? Is she divinity, sort of a goddess? Or just some highly respected figure? And why do Catholics pray to her? I thought you only pray to God? And where the Bible says that Jesus is the Way the Truth and the Life, no one comes to the Father except through Him, why do Catholics pray to saints and the Virgin Mary instead of directly to Jesus?"

Mary is a very complicated subject, haha. Her significance is that she is the Mother of Christ, who is God, and thus the Theotokos. She has several distinct roles, in more symbolic and theological language, such as being the New Eve, as Christ as the New Adam. She is the Queen of Heaven (logical result of being the Mother of the King of Heaven, especially in the Davidic tradition). She is the Ark of the New Covenant, a hallowed vessel specially created to carry Christ. As a result she is believed to be ever-Virgin, born without Original Sin through a pre-emptive working of Christ's Grace, and preserved as sinless throughout her life by God's Grace and her own will working in perfect harmony. Etc., etc.

No, she is not a divinity. We believe in One God, the Father the almighty, maker of Heaven and of Earth, etc. etc. etc. Mary is not God, nor is she a goddess.

She is the most respected figure in Catholicism short of God. Catholics have three words they use for reverence and adoration. Unfortunately, they don't translate well into English, which is what causes a lot of these misunderstandings. In Latin they are dulia, hyper-dulia, and latria.

Dulia is the type of respect given to the Saints. Hyper-dulia is the reverence given to Mary. Latria is the worship and adoration given to God alone. But in English, these words could all be translated much the same way, as English often doesn't allow for nuanced meanings in translations.

You can see, just by looking at the form of the Latin that the reverence for the Saints and Mary is of the same type, but different in degree. Mary gets the hyper form of that reverence, while God's adoration is singular in type and degree.

As for why we pray to her (and to the Saints, let's not forget), this is easily answered. First, the word pray.

In English, this word simply means, "to ask." Over time, it gained the specific connotation of being for God. But if you read Shakespeare, for instance, you'll see them go, "I pray thee, tell me...." and other things like that, because that's all pray means. So, again, we have a translation problem. In Greek, we have two words for prayer which are used in the New Testament. One is deomai, the other is proseuchomai. Deomai is the kind of pray which means "to ask" the way you might ask a friend for money, or a cousin for a favor. Proseuchomai is the specific kind of prayer that is reserved for requests of the divine. So when Christ teaches the disciples how to pray to God? He uses the word proseuchomai, and teaches them the Lord's Prayer.

Catholics maintain this distinction in the types of prayer that are possible, and thus understand that we can pray to anyone in the sense that we can ask others for anything, and that we also pray to God, in a way that it unique to Him alone.

Mary and the Saints act as mediators of a sort. When we pray to Mary or to the Saints, we are not praying to them with the expectation that through their own magical powers they will aid us. Nope. Nothing like that. What we ARE doing is asking them for their intercession on our behalf.

Intercessory prayer is a powerful theme in the New Testament. Paul writes in almost every letter asking for the prayers of the Christian communities on his behalf, and offers his prayers on theirs. One of the greatest acts of Christian love is offering our prayers for others, and the Church teaches that the Saints and Mary, as glorified and perfected Christians now alive as part of and through Christ's Heavenly Communion, pray for us just as we pray for each other.

When we pray to them, we are asking for those prayers to be directed to a specific end. We don't expect any action through any power of their own, we expect that they will ask God on our behalf, and join their voices to our own, with the added bonus that they are not distracted by the problems and doubts that afflict us here, and are that much closer to Christ. It is still God who answers these supplications, and still God's power at work, and we don't consider anyone else to be divine.

You are correct that Jesus is the Way, the Truth and the Life, no doubt about that. And no one can come to the Father save through Him. Likewise, none can come to Him without the Father's calling to them, the initial spark of Grace in all conversions.

But Christ never tells us that we have to be limited in how we approach Him, and how we come to Him. Mary and the Saints help us in that task, offering us examples of humans who lived lives of amazing virtue, serving as role models who are a little closer to the humanity we know so well. Trying to live exactly as Christ lived can be a very daunting prospect, even though it must be our goal. The Saints show us various ways to achieve that, and highlight God's Grace working in their lives, so we know that it can and will work in ours. Likewise, their prayers and intercessions help to bring us closer to God in the spiritual realm as well. For Catholics, we are never alone, we are always part of God's Community, Christ's Body. We're the Communion of Souls, and I could be the only Catholic alive on Earth and still be part of a greater Body and linked to Christ.

One more thing I would like to note is that Catholics are not supposed to pray to the Saints and Mary without praying to God directly. It is not "instead of" praying to Christ, it is "in addition to" praying to Christ. ;-)

Questions from Mr. Laing

"1) You said something about the Protestant Church having changed or altered their doctrine before, implying that they were either wrong before or that they are wrong now. But according to my knowledge, the Catholic Church has changed in minor respects too. Maybe not in terms of doctrine, but there were things that they felt rather strongly about and don't anymore."

Yes, the Protestant sects altered their teachings on the morality of contraception about 100 years ago or so.

The Catholic Church has changed in minor respects, absolutely. And this is to be expected of any Institution that is alive and able to aid us. An institution that must be able to adapt to certain changes in the people it serves must be alive to do so. So yes, the Church does change in very minor aspects. It alters the form of some rituals, but it doesn't alter the substance, and we'll go into that more later.

But there are two crucial aspects in any religion that the Catholic Church will not reverse its teachings on, and those two things are Faith and Morality. Those are the two areas where the Church claims to be capable of teaching infallibly, and any such infallible teaching cannot and will not ever be reversed. Such teachings are, on occasion, added to, of course. This is because at times, actions that are new in terms of their morality appear in human history, and we must address them. Or because new questions or issues arise in issues of faith.

The Church functions rather like science. It builds upon a stable foundation of infallible doctrines drawn from Revelation. It does so slowly, and only when confident of the truth of those teachings. And it cannot simply change any of them on a whim or with the times, etc. just as a scientist cannot decide he doesn't approve of the laws of gravity, and try to change those. And just like science, we do add new doctrines when we discover them or learn of them.

"For example (and I don't know any of the details, this is just some vague memory of a history class during high school) they used to do all their services in Latin and pray in Latin too, a 'rule' which they strictly abided to. But now they don't do the whole Latin thing anymore. Why did they change? The Church should not need to change because of popular demand, should it?"

Great question!

Ok, short lesson on the Rites of the Church. The Catholic Church is composed of just over 20 Rites. In the Early Church, Christianity was more locally based, each community developed largely on its own because of the difficulties of travel, especially within an empire that was hostile to one's religion, made it difficult for total unity. Doctrinally, each of these early Churches stayed together for the most part. Some heresies, like Arianism, were problematic, which is why the Church used Councils, like Nicaea, to bring together the Bishops of those local communities and address those differences.

As time went on and the Church became much more united and communication became easier, those Churches kept a lot of their cultural identity and traditions, especially in terms of their language, and the trappings of the Mass. This is when they evolved into the various Rites of the Catholic Church. Each Rite is an entity within the Church that is fully Catholic, but also has a distinct set of cultural traditions and language all its own. The Eastern Churches also have various Rites, the Eastern Orthodox foremost among them.

What most people think of as the Catholic Church is actually the Latin Rite or Roman Rite, which is why many people call it the "Roman Catholic Church." That name, however, is an insult from Anglicans, and serves to alienate the non-Latin Rite members of the Church, the Church has never called itself that.

The Latin Rite is the Rite to which I belong, and it is the largest of any Rite in the world, due to its missionary workings and origins. While in the East many Rites developed in separate communities and cultures, the Western Church was dominated by the Latin Rite from the beginning, such that France, Spain, Germany, England, Ireland, Italy, etc. were all part of that Rite from the earliest part of the Middle Ages. And as most evangelical efforts from Catholicism stemmed from those countries and their globalization efforts, that is the Rite that spread and grew the most. The other Rites in the Catholic Church are Churches that returned to the Catholic Church AFTER the Great Schism, when the Eastern and Western Churches divided over authority. Some Rites that left, then came back.

The Latin Rite, of course, had its own cultural elements and language, as you've noticed. And yes, it used to be that Latin was the language of the Mass, and Latin still IS the language of my Rite, and the Western Church. What changed some of that was a movement in the 60s and 70s towards "modernizing" some of the rituals of the Church, which culminated in the Second Vatican Council. This Council effected some changes, nothing doctrinal, but there were those in the Church who took it too far, and misinterpreted what the Council called for.

What happened was this. At one time, all throughout the world, if you went to a Latin Rite Mass, you'd have the exact same Mass in substance and form throughout the world. You could be in Portugal, the Philippines, Japan, India, South Africa, the United States, Chile, wherever. Other than the sermon, which the priest writes himself, it would be EXACTLY the same. It was a truly universal language for the universal Church, and it meant that a Catholic of the Latin Rite could be at home anywhere in the world.

But at the same time, fewer people were learning Latin, and many bishops felt that Latin was becoming a barrier to people understanding the Mass and Catholicism, because so few spoke it (never mind the fact that each Mass had a Missal book with Latin and the native language's translation so people could follow along if they didn't know Latin). So they effected a change from Latin into whatever language was the popular language in their community. In America this is generally English or Spanish. In Italy, Italian. In Spain, Spanish. In Brazil, Portuguese, and so on and so forth. With this alteration, came some other minor alterations in the FORM of the Mass, certain things said in different ways because of the differences of language, movement of one part of the Mass to another area, etc.

What did NOT change is the SUBSTANCE of the Mass. The Mass is still the Sacrifice of Christ, the Eucharist is still His Body, Blood, Soul and Divinity. Only the language and cultural trappings presenting this Sacrifice changed. And are slowly being changed back.

After these changes, in many areas, several problems arose. Mass attendance declined drastically, sometimes as much as 75%. And vocations to the priesthood also dipped dramatically, resulting in us now experiencing a priest shortage. And at the same time, a movement began to grow in the Church to "bring back" the Latin Mass. As I said before, some bishops went beyond Vatican II in what they did, and outright forbade the Latin Mass, even though NOTHING said there could not be Latin masses, and nowhere was it decided to end the Latin Mass entirely. Some bishops simply refused to allow it.

That's why, about a year ago or more, Pope Benedict XVI issued a proclamation expressly denying Bishops the ability to deny those in their dioceses who want to have the Latin Mass.

So, thankfully, it's on its way back in.

So in summation, they changed those trappings because of a perceived communication barrier, and are now bringing it back because of the way it hurt the Church. And no, the Church should never change its teachings on faith and morals to appease popular demands. Faith and Morality are absolutes, they don't change. But again, when something new appears, like stem cell research, that humanity has never encountered, we DO have to provide the moral guidance on that issue, and thus the Church, as a living Institution, must develop teachings on those issues with its infallible authority.

Apologies

So I've been out of my writing habit lately. Just as I was attempting an ambitious writing project, a series of works on the Sacraments, I lost all my inspiration to write. Frankly, I'm disappointed in myself. Anyways, this block continues, at least in regards to my intended pieces. My ability to answer questions and so forth remains though, so for now I'll post some Q&A segments from people who've contacted me.

The First Crusade: Just War?

Yes, I know, I've only posted on article on the Sacraments. I've had a form of writer's block for much of the week, they'll come when they come, I suppose. Until then, I've decided to continue posting arguments and debates I've written for other purposes and places. Enjoy!

Ok, let's start with Just War theory in Catholicism. The Catechism, paragraph 2309 states:

"The strict conditions for legitimate defense by military force require rigorous consideration. The gravity of such a decision makes it subject to rigorous conditions of moral legitimacy. At one and the same time:

* the damage inflicted by the aggressor on the nation or community of nations must be lasting, grave, and certain;
* all other means of putting an end to it must have been shown to be impractical or ineffective;
* there must be serious prospects of success;
* the use of arms must not produce evils and disorders graver than the evil to be eliminated. The power of modern means of destruction weighs very heavily in evaluating this condition.

These are the traditional elements enumerated in what is called the "just war" doctrine. The evaluation of these conditions for moral legitimacy belongs to the prudential judgment of those who have responsibility for the common good."

Now let's examine the history of what happened.

A brief overview would show us that the Holy Land was up to the Arabic invasions, part of the Byzantine Roman Empire for almost a millennium. A good 700 years at least, the Caesars had ruled Palestine. This is historical fact.

Now, Mohammed and the Arab tribes he united, waged a lot of war. The expansion of the first caliphate's empire was impressive in speed and scope. From the conquest of Mecca, Mohammed and his followers turned to the rest of Arabia, made inroads up the Palestinian coast, along the North African coast, and into Persia.

Since we're dealing with the Crusades, we'll address specifically the wars between the Arabs and the Byzantines. What we have is pretty clearly a war of aggression on the part of the Arab nomadic tribes and a defensive war on the part of the Byzantines, indeed, the Byzantines were on the defensive for almost the entirety of the time between about 700 AD and 1453, when Constantinople finally fell to the Turks.

As this war progressed, Byzantine possessions were falling everywhere, Byzantine works of art, culture, religion etc. were being destroyed, Byzantine subjects mistreated, etc. all the usual turmoil of a war not just between empires but between cultures. Remember that the battle was at least partially religious in nature, and partially commercial and territorial. That the Arabs were the aggressors in all senses cannot be denied, they were previously nomadic tribes living in the Arabian desert, continually raiding one another, and trading amongst themselves. As much as they were fighting to spread Islam and control the Dome of the Rock, they were also fighting to gain access to lucrative trade routes, and more civilized territory.

And the Byzantines were, of course, no less self-interested. They were fighting to survive and hold onto their possessions and their trade, and their culture and ways of life.

Entering into this already twisted tangle were the Turks, who worked at conquering both the Arabs and the Byzantines, and who converted to Sunni Islam. It was under the Turks that things really got interesting, as they came to dominate the aggression against the Byzantines.

So what happened? Well, as things worsened for the Byzantines, as the Arabs and Turks were proving dramatically more effective on the field than the traditional Byzantine armies, the Byzantine emperor appealed to the Pope for aid. At this point, the Schism of 1054 had already occurred, and the West and East sections of the Church had already fallen out over authority and the Filoque clause. The Byzantine Emperor appealed anyway, a significant step, given the estrangement. The Pope then appealed to the Kings and Nobles of Western Europe, asking them to send aid to the Byzantines. The possible reasons for this call to aid are many, from establishing Catholic authority in the East, to protecting a brother Christian nation, to protecting Western Christian caravans and convoys of pilgrims (the fighting between the Turks and Arabs was as much of a problem in this instance as anything else), to a fear that Muslim invasions into Europe would only grow worse if the Byzantines fell (recall that at this point, the Muslims had already invaded into Spain, Sicily, France, etc., and had only truly been turned back at Tours). They still held much of Spain, particularly in the south, and controlled a lot of the Mediterranean, and it's entirely possible the Pope was worried about further invasions. A still further possibility was the desire to send Europe's knights off to do something other than kill each other, as the collapse of the Carolinian dynasty had led to internecine warfare.

My own belief on the subject is that it was a combination of all of these factors, and no single one was likely particularly dominant. But that's speculation, of course.

So, the Crusade itself. Armed pilgrims and warriors from Europe depart for the Byzantine Empire, which, incidentally, promised aid and supplies for those soldiers, and then reneged on its arrangement (they had some cause, since a group of peasants and lesser knights had already caused massive problems for the Byzantines in terms of supply). The cooperation lasted through the siege of Nicaea, and ended after Antioch.

Finally Jerusalem, and the siege which ended when Genoese ships were dismantled to be used as siege engines. The accounts of slaughter in Jerusalem are hard to substantiate. Several are riddled with liftings of language from the Bible, and others are accounts from non-eyewitnesses. And it certainly wasn't a "kill all Muslims" sort of situation, either, there are numerous references to living Muslims, to accepted surrenders, etc. Certainly it was a bloody end to the siege, assaults on walled cities always are.

So we return at least to the prominent question: "Was this a justifiable war?"

Certainly the damage to the Byzantine's by the Seljuk Turks and the Arab caliphates before them was lasting, certain and grave. The conquests were continual, and the only respite the Byzantine's knew was through the Crusade's efforts. And equally certain is that the Byzantines were on the defensive, fighting for their provinces which had been conquered or were being conquered. And finally, it is certain that the Crusade was a response on the part of Western Europe, particularly the Frankish kingdoms, to a call for aid from the Byzantines.

As to whether other means were tried, or effective, in ending the fighting, I do not know. I suspect, however, that they were certainly not effective, if tried, that much is obvious. Whether diplomatic means would be taken seriously by anyone at the time, given the unceasing aggression against the Byzantines I find quite doubtful.

As for the serious prospect of success, the First Crusade could hardly be called a doomed effort. It succeeded in relieving the Byzantines, capturing Jerusalem, etc.

The final aspect is the most interesting. Did the use of arms promote or create a greater evil than the one being defended against? In the first Crusade, most of the war was a series of battles and sieges progressing through Anatolia and into Palestine. Did they promote or incur a graver evil than the wars already raging? No. They were typical of any war of that period in their scope and means, thus they didn't use excessive force nor involve some graver evil.

Now, if there was a whole sale slaughter of Muslim citizens in Jerusalem analogous to a genocide, then there'd be a problem. But even the most colorful accounts which revel in bloody "glory" recall stories of Muslims being allowed to surrender and live and leave, etc. I would argue that it was a siege, like any other, and the city was pillaged, but that there was no whole sale slaughter of all Muslims or anything like it.

So yes, I'd say the First Crusade represents a possibly just war.

Excuses....

So Tuesday was a waste of a day. Hoping to get to some serious writing Wednesday. Night all...

The Sacrament of Penance

Catholic teachings are so inter-related that, while I may only want to go into Confession, doing so requires an explanation of Catholic teaching on the Graces, Justification, Sanctification, Salvation, Sin, Purgatory, Contrition, Penance, etc. In other words, any attempt to explain a Catholic position on one issue requires at least some understanding of several others to grasp it. Yet another reason why we're so misunderstood I expect.

With that being said, I will now attempt to begin outlining some important points concerning the above concepts as they relate to Catholic Confession. This will be done in an expository fashion,

As previously noted, I have to explain several topics that relate to Confession before I can get into Confession itself. We'll start with Faith.

I have seen many varied definitions of Faith before. I will here provide mine, which I do not believe specifically contradicts or conflicts with anyone else's, but which I do think will illuminate a particular difficulty many have with Catholicism.

Faith is something that is believed/trusted/accepted and acted upon. I add the final part regarding action, because we are told, for example, that even the Devil believes. Yet the Devil is not saved. Moreover, we are told that Faith without "works," or in other words, Faith without action based upon it, is dead in the Letter of St. James. In my personal opinion, Faith is something that changes us, and I have yet to meet the Christian who actually disagrees with me on this. As part of that change, Faith inspires us to act in a manner different to the manner we acted before we had it. In fact, I will go so far as to say that even the act of willing to have Faith, the very choice to have Faith, is the first act of Faith. I believe it is utterly impossible to have Faith divorced from action. They necessarily go hand in hand for Faith to be legitimate, or for it to be living, as St. James says. Keeping that in mind, let us progress to the concept of Grace.

Catholics actually have several names for Grace, and understand it to work in various ways in different situations, which is why we have the seperate terminology. Here we will treat with one form in particular, that called Sanctifying Grace (not to be confused with Actual Grace, a common problem).

Sanctifying Grace is the Grace we receive in Baptism, it is the gift of God that results in our salvation. We receive it because we choose to repent and turn to God. Thus we have Faith, that Faith is what allows us access to Grace, for without both belief and acceptance of Christ's redeeming Sacrifice, we cannot access His Grace. When we perform the act of Faith and are Baptized into the Church, that is when Sanctifying Grace is poured out upon us by God, and we are freed from the power of Sin and cleansed for God. Our Faith, and our choice, are inspired by God, to turn us away from sin and towards Him. We must then choose to accept His prompting and come to Him. This is how we first receive Sanctifying Grace.

Please note that water Baptism is only one of three forms of Baptism, and is called the ordinary form. Sacraments in general are the ordinary means of receiving Grace. By ordinary we mean that they are the normal ways, but we do not say that Grace cannot be received through any other means. It's all up to God. Therefore, let's have no one taking my comments regarding any of the sacraments out of context. If someone dies on his or her way to baptism, for example, we do not believe such a person was not baptized, we consider him or her to have been baptized by desire instead of water. Likewise, if someone is martyred for his or her faith in Christ before they can be baptized, they are considered to be baptized in blood.

However, because of the above outlined understanding that Faith and Action (works, fruits, etc.) are inseparable, we do not divorce Faith from the action that the Faith prompts. Someone who says "I have faith" and doesn't act upon it to be baptized in any way (see John 3 and Matthew 28 as to why baptizing is considered so important), we would question whether they truly had Faith at all, as per James' letter. A person who claims Faith, yet chooses to not engage in the rite by which all Christians become Christians, a rite commanded by Christ, and a rite that is a visible act of Faith (at the very least) to all of us, would be suspect as a result.

Progressing onwards, then, we must now tackle the issue of sin. Sin is, in essence, a rejection of God to one degree or another. It is also an inherently criminal action, for it violates the law of God, and is evil. Catholics have an understanding of difference in degree of sin as well. Catholics do not subscribe to the idea that all sin is equivalent, and for the following reasons:

For Catholics, there are mortal sins and venial sins. Mortal sins are sins that involve Grave matter (something important, usually outlined for us in Scripture as sinful), willful rejection of God, and knowledge that what you're doing is sinful. To further go into this, let us consider the following hypothetical examples (these will be somewhat extreme, their extremity is meant to highlight the principles involved, not because I have some realistic expectation of these things happening).

#1: Let us say that I am somehow forced to commit murder, and forced in such a way that I have no way to stop myself (maybe some kind of drug, or mind control device). I have committed a gravely evil deed, that being murder, the killing of an innocent person for no justifiable reason (like self-defense). But I did not choose to commit the evil deed. Because choice is always linked to culpability, we cannot say that I am fully culpable for this action. In other words, we cannot reasonably say that God would truly be Good and Just were He to condemn me for a deed that I did not choose to commit. And likewise, I have not voluntarily separated myself from communion with Him through this act, as it was not an act I choose to do.

#2: Let us say again that I have murdered someone. But in this scenario, I come from a culture in which murder is not considered wrong, a society which teaches from birth that murder is perfectly normal and fine, warping the conscience. In other words, I do not know that murder is wrong, nor do I know that I will be punished for it, that there is a moral rule against it, etc. I am utterly unaware of the fact that killing some random person for no reason is morally wrong. In this case, we Catholics again believe that some of the guilt of this action, evil as it is, is exculpated because of the offender's ignorance of the evil nature of the act. One must wonder, if the person knew it was evil, would the person still have done it? We believe that a Just and Good God would not necessarily condemn someone who was unaware that what they were doing was wrong. In like fashion we might consider a child who does something wrong without knowing it. Do we kill this child for the offense, lock him in his room, or beat him bloody? Of course not. We teach the child, perhaps scold him a bit, etc. but the punishment is far less severe than it would be for a child who knew it was wrong to do something and did it anyway.

#3: The last situation is the most difficult. Because it involves the gravity of a particular matter, I have saved it for the end. Gravity of sin is very difficult to judge. We are very certain that some sins, namely theft, rape, adultery, murder, idolatry, blasphemy, and aposticization, are objectively grave. They are, by their very nature, objectively and totally evil as a complete rejection of God's gift of goodness, and to perform them (willfully and with an awareness of that evil nature) is tantamount to a total rejection of God, who is Good. There are more sins than those lifted above that are considered grave matter, of course. The question, however, is what sins are not considered Grave matter.

When Protestants and Catholics fight about the Catholic gradation of sin (this happens occasionally) it has been my experience that what we're really fighting about is the idea of gravity of sin, and not whether a sin might be less or worse based on our knowledge or free choice of it. So I will attempt to provide an example of an action that is not gravely sinful.

Let us say that I am being mugged, and my attacker draws a knife on me. And as a result, I break his wrist and elbow in rapid succession to prevent him killing or injuring me. I am fully aware that the techniques I would use on him (after years of martial arts training) will hurt him severely, and I am also well aware that causing physical injury to another person is bad, even with the intention that I am only protecting myself (the fact remains that I have hurt someone to an excruciating degree). Catholics would consider my sin here to not be grave matter, for several reasons. First is that my action is not, in and of itself (at least as far as I am aware), objectively and totally evil. Hurting someone is not on par with taking a person's life. Moreover, Catholics, like most Christians, understand morality to work in terms of intentions, means and ends. My intentions here were to hurt the mugger, but for the purpose of defending myself, not out of pleasure or superiority, etc. My actions were wrong in that they hurt someone, whereas the perfect Christian might gladly surrender to a mugger (turning the other cheek), and the means are physical techniques that leave our mugger severely injured, and hopefully myself unharmed. This is not an action that I believe can be seen as gravely sinful, and thus I do not think it would qualify as a mortal sin.

And so we continue to the other kind of sin in Catholic theology, known as Venial sin. Sometimes our sins are small, or unwilling, or unrealized (as illustrated in hypothetical form above), thus they cannot qualify as mortal sin, and may not qualify as sin at all. In those cases where they do qualify as sin, though they damage your relationship with God and with those against whom you sinned (if against someone other than God alone). While these smaller sins won't kill the Grace inside you, they will do other things. They will attack the charity/love in your soul for God, as well as damage your relationships, etc. And by committing many of these lesser sins you can still do so much damage that you deteriorate into a state of mortal sin as well.

Mortal sin is so great a rejection of God (again, due to it being willful, knowledgeable and grave) that it will not just damage or offend the charity/love in our souls, but kill it entirely. It does this because sin is contrary to the Will of God. By knowing something is terribly wrong, and choosing to do it anyway, you have set yourself in total opposition to God's Will, which is a Will always oriented towards Love of God and Love of Mankind, Good, and Justice. If you have rejected God's Will, you have also rejected your acceptance of God's Salvation, which is naturally part of His Will for us, I think we Christians all agree, and it is that Will which allowed us to receive Grace in the first place. By rejecting God's Will, and God's Salvation, you have cut off that force which connected you to God's Grace. You have assaulted and mortally wounded your faith. This is how we destroy our connection to Sanctifying Grace, and in so doing, place ourselves under the power of sin again.

In a nut shell, this demonstrates the Catholic understanding of salvation as a process, not as a moment. Catholics believe that our initial Faith Justifies and Sanctifies us, generally through the baptismal act, whatever form it takes. The justification of our Faith is accompanied by the pouring out of God's Sanctifying Grace upon us, this is what makes Baptism a Sacrament. It is, and this is what is meant by "Sacrament," a visible outpouring of God's Grace upon us. We believe that mortal sin, because it demonstrates that we are rejecting completely the Will of God, corrupts our souls again, removing our initial Justification and Sanctification, necessarily, as a being who sins cannot be sanctified (holy) or justified (you have sinned and not yet repented, your actions have not demonstrated faith, they have demonstrated an antagonism towards God, thus the Faith that justified you is no longer even present). To remedy the problem of mortal sin, then, we finally arrive at the Sacrament of Confession, the ordinary means by which God's Grace and forgiveness is received by a Catholic.

First and foremost, let us address a couple of things that Confession involves, its history, and then make some clarifications as to what Confession is not. Both are extremely essential to properly understanding Confession, and both result in confusion, misunderstandings and arguments on the subject.

First, the Sacrament itself generally consists of going into a small room with a screen of some kind between you and the priest. The priest recites ritual phrases, and you first express that you are repentant for your sins and wish to confess, asking for forgiveness. You tell the priest how long it has been since your last confession, and you tell the priest the sins that you've committed (I've found it's best to write them down before hand, because it can be difficult to remember once you're there). Upon telling the priest your sins, you say the prayer called the Act of Contrition, and the priest absolves you of your sins in the name of the Holy Trinity and with the authority of Christ (John 20). That is the end of the Sacrament of Confession itself. After the Sacrament, the priest usually assigns a penance for you to undertake, often some prayers said for a specific intention. This penance is voluntary, no one can or will make you do it, it is left to you to do as an individual, and it serves a several specific purposes which I will go into soon. Failure to complete the penance, however, qualifies as a further mortal sin, nullifying the Grace you've just received. Understand that the voluntary assent to penance is implicit in going to Confession in the first place, and soon we'll see why.

Before that, however, I want to address several misconceptions and the history of the Sacrament itself. First off, for some common misconceptions.

Misconception #1) It is through some power of the priest that we are forgiven, and not the power of God. This is absolutely false. In Confession we are confessing to Christ, and the priest is only there to act as a physical stand in for Christ whose physical body is in Heaven. The priest in and of himself has no special or magical powers, he merely has a special authority, vested in him by Christ through the Sacrament of Holy Orders. This is Scripturally traceable to John 20:23, where Christ tells His Apostles that He is giving them the authority to forgive people their sins. The power for this action comes from God, it is His Grace that works in us in the Sacraments, and it is on Christ's authority that priests are able to transmit this Grace.

Misconception #2) It is our act of penance that results in forgiveness or absolution, or in other words, that we are only forgiven once we've said a certain number of Our Fathers and Hail Marys. This, too, is absolutely false. As noted above, the Sacrament of Confession results in absolution for the penitent Christian, before penance is assigned, let alone completed. Penance exists for an entirely seperate purpose, and is unrelated, utterly, to our forgiveness. I wish to say this again, absolution is not dependent upon penance, though failure to complete penance just results in further sin. I am most emphatic on this subject because this is the source of several accusation towards Catholics that we think we can "earn" forgiveness. This could not be farther from the Truth, I assure you.

Misconception #3) That it doesn't matter if we are truly repentant or not, we are still absolved. This, again, is false. Contrition is necessary for the Sacrament to be valid. The priest may pronounce the words of absolution, but the power of it, the grace, comes from God, and is only going to be effective on someone who is truly penitent and sorrowful for his or her sins. Period. If you make a false confession with no actual remorse or repentance, you have only worsened your sin by lying to God about your penitence.

Misconception #4) That Confession is a license to sin and then just confess again. Of course, false. Part of the Act of Contrition, the prayer that closes the Sacrament is a solemn promise to go, and with the aid of Christ, sin no more. Part of the purpose of repentance, which as you recall is necessary for the Sacrament to be effective, is that a repentant person does not intend to just go and sin again. Such an attitude is obviously not penitent, and would render the Sacrament invalid. So no, Confession is not a license to sin, for to treat it as such would mean that a person was not repentant, in which case the Sacrament doesn't result in absolution.

And now that we've addressed some of the biggest misunderstandings surrounding Confession, let's look at the history. Catholics are often attacked on the subject of Confession, because it is allegedly not Biblically based. Or more specifically, confessing to a priest by yourself isn't Biblically commanded. And this is true, in so far as it goes. Leaving aside arguments about the validity of relying solely on Scripture, let us look at exactly how the form of the Sacrament of Confession evolved in the Church.

The Rite I described above is the "modern" form of the Sacrament. In other words, private confession with you and the priest is the newer form of the Sacrament. But by newer it should be understood that it is at least 1500 years old. Moreover, private confession with a priest has always been allowed in the Church. And for certain more public sins, like apostasy, early Christian writings are very clear that people would confess publicly before the entire church community (including the priest, of course). Moreover, the confessing of sins in general is Scripturally backed and even commanded. James 5:16 says, for example, "Confess therefore your sins one to another: and pray one for another, that you may be saved. For the continual prayer of a just man availeth much." And I John 1:9, "If we confess our sins, he is faithful and just, to forgive us our sins, and to cleanse us from all iniquity." Note that in both of these examples, they are epistles (letters) written to Christian communities. In other words, these are instructions from the Apostles, in the Bible, to Christians who have already been Baptized, to confess their sins, in one the injunction is made to confess to each other, in the other, to simply confess, it does not specific as to whom. Moreover, early Christian writings like the Didache, the Letter of Barnabas, Ignatius of Antioch's writings, Irenaeus's writings, along with Tertullian, Hippolytus, Origen, and more support the confessing of sins. The practice of confessing our sins goes all the way back to the Apostles (who wrote the Didache) their earliest successors (like Ignatius of Antioch), etc. The history of Confession, thus, runs throughout the history of the Church, though the form of the practice has changed from being more public to being more private.

Why change from the often communal confession of the past to the more private confession of the present? Why confess to the priest still and not just to God? Why is confession to each other, important enough that James specifically commands it? What is the value in Confession, aside from the claim that it brings absolution for our sins? Well that's next, so stay tuned.

In Catholicism, Confession is considered extremely important. I like to argue that while most of the Sacraments are not considered "necessary" for salvation, they are considered "essential." Confession is not strictly necessary, in that someone may very well be baptized and not mortally sin afterwards, and then die, in which case Confession wouldn't be necessary, as Baptism cleanses us of sin. But most of us do sin, even mortally, and for us, having a means of receiving forgiveness and sanctifying Grace that we can easily access is vitally important, and thus essential to our faith lives, essential to the point of being necessary for our forgiveness in ordinary circumstances. Let's look again, in brief, at the Sacrament....

The first step, and most important part of Confession is repentance. Obviously, as without repentance, the Sacrament has no effect.

Next is the action of confessing. Again, for Catholics, Faith and Action are undeniably and unalterably linked. It is action that demonstrates and breathes life into Faith, it is action that shows that our Faith as altered us. When a person has mortally sinned, that person has willfully and knowingly rejected to follow God's Will on some gravely important matter, thus demonstrating that they do not have living Faith. The act of repenting, the act of confessing is the action that demonstrates that a person's Faith has begun to rejuvenate at the behest of God, even under the strain of his or her sin. Moreover, the act of confessing is very important in that it requires of us and allows for us to experience several critical things.

First, it lets us face them in their entirety. To confess our sins means that we must honestly and contritely examine our consciences and our past deeds, identify our sins, and vocally admit them to another person (we're drawing closer to the why of confession to another), and at the same time to God. This is an incredibly powerful experience, and it requires not only a great courage from the Christian penitent, but also an amazing quality of Faith, to look our sin in the eye, confess to it, freely admit to our guilt, and trust that Christ has forgiven us for even our most horrible actions. It brings us quite literally face to face with our own worst selves, and even better, reminds us of the ever present, and all powerful grace of God that can forgive anything we have done.

The benefits do not stop there either. Confession also encourages an amazing sense of humility, one of the most important virtues a Christian can cultivate in his or her spiritual life. Because confession demands that we admit and own up to our failings to another person and to God, there is no room for pride, no room for arrogance, no room for selfishness or conceit. You are stripped bare of all egotism and humbled before God in Confession, and then you are Justified anew and washed clean in the Blood of the Lamb. There are no excuses, and no vanities in legitimate Confession, there is only honest, humble, repentance, and the Sacrament encourages these qualities the more we partake of it. Many great Catholics, like the late John Paul II, have been known to frequent Confession monthly, weekly, or even daily. This is not because they are committing horrible atrocities every day, but because for the humble Christian, even the slightest of sins is too much, and any chance outburst of anger or lust or sin in any of its many forms demonstrates to us that we need to remain humble and loving. Confession encourages this, and those who practice it regularly are amazing examples of Christian humility in their daily lives as a result.

And now we reach the last part of this expose, that being Penance. Penance is one of the most misunderstood teachings of the Catholic Church, due mainly to its confusion with absolution by some. Penance can even be used to describe the entire Sacrament itself (it is alternately called the Sacrament of Confession, the Sacrament of Reconciliation, or the Sacrament of Penance, as in the title). When this is done, penance is used in the sense of a person being penitent, not in that the action of penance is required for absolution, as I have already noted. Penance is also the purpose of Purgatory as well as Indulgences, resulting in further misunderstandings and confusion on both subjects. I will address both here.

While our forgiveness is not dependent on performing penance, penance is important and often assigned by our confessors. Penance is oriented towards healing the damages done by sin on our lives. What damages are these that are not healed by forgiveness itself? Such problems as addiction, or family feuds are two excellent examples. While we can be forgiven for our sins by God in confession, and realign ourselves to His Will, it is indisputably true that while we are under the power of sin we develop bad habits that can easily lead us to sin again after confession. If your sins were watching pornography and masturbating, not only will you be at risk for a sexual addiction, but your psychological understanding of the beauty of sexual intercourse and the value of the opposite sex as more than just objects of lust are in danger from your sin. One purpose of penance is to repair these damages by forcing you to perform actions that are opposite to those sinful ones you were performing earlier. Thus your penance might be aimed at repairing your relationships with the opposite sex and removing from yourself your treatment of them as objects of lust.

If your sins are, for example, linked to fighting with your family members, your penance might be to ask forgiveness in person from each and every family member you've fought with, or to say prayers for them for every time you've been angry with them or upset with something they did. This is the primary purpose of voluntary penance, it is to remedy the effects of sin upon our selves, and not just our souls.

There are more purposes to penance though. The next purpose of note is that penance is indeed a form of punishment. Catholics do not deny that Christ's death on the cross removes from us the Eternal punishment of Hell that is the wage earned by our sins. However, while Christ has taken upon Himself the Eternal consequences of our sins, there are still the temporal consequences to be dealt with. That there are temporal consequences seperate from both the Eternal consequences and from forgiveness itself, we can see by looking at King David. In the case of King David, he sinned concerning Bathsheba and Uriah. When confronted by the prophet Nathan, David repented and God forgave Him. And yet, God still, despite forgiving David of his sin and not damning him to Hell, carried out the temporal punishment He had decided upon for David, that of taking his ill-begotten son from David. Scripturally, the idea that forgiveness does not relieve us of responsibility for temporal consequences for sin is quite sound. Christ takes for us the Eternal penalties of sin, that is what we know from Scripture. And we know that even when forgiven there remain temporal consequences to our actions. Penance is the action voluntarily undertaken as a form of punishment for our sins to relieve ourselves of the temporal consequences of sin while in this life.

Purgatory is, for the most part, our temporal penance for sins that remain to us from incomplete penance in our lives. While we are forgiven and we are spared from Hell, we are not spared the temporal consequences that we know from the Scriptures and reason. Penance is how we address that in life, Purgatory is how we address that in death. Thus, I hope it will be understood here that Purgatory is not performed for the forgiveness of sin. Like all forms of penance, Purgatory does not exist for absolving sins or earning forgiveness. This is a misunderstanding. One's sins are not forgiven because of completing penance, one's sins are forgiven by God in an act of Graceful forgiveness, both in this life and in Purgatory should it occur.

Indulgences, likewise, do not exist for forgiveness. You cannot buy forgiveness in indulgences (and the buying of indulgences was an abuse happily ended in the Counter-Reformation, as indulgences are supposed to be earned/worked for in some fashion). What one earns with an indulgence is a remittance of penance in Purgatory. In other words, through performing some good work or act of charity and gaining an indulgence, one has essentially done pre-emptive penance. There is no forgiveness involved, if a person has many indulgences, but dies in a state of unrepentant mortal sin, that person's indulgences are utterly meaningless. They do absolutely nothing. Period. I repeat, indulgences and Purgatory do not exist for the absolution of sin.

Now, I mentioned that it is also knowable according to reason that God requires some form of temporal punishment for our sins in addition to the Eternal punishment He Himself has relieved us of. But how can I say this? Here is the explanation:

First we must examine momentarily the Problem of Evil. We know that Evil exists as a result of human freedom (in that we choose to commit evil acts, and that is sin). I also assert that God's Love turns Evil to Good, and will soon demonstrate how and why. But right now in our examination we all perform Evil, and in doing so stain ourselves. We do wrong. God does no wrong, it is part of God's Nature. As God is Good and Just, Evil in those whom God desires a relationship with is very troublesome. While God can Love those beings (us), their ability to Love Him will always be hindered by their choices to reject Him and hurt others. Moreover, those rejections and those injurious acts to others are in some sense criminal (I believe I mentioned this before). Which means not only that humans will have a hard time returning the Love of their Creator, but they will also run afoul of their Creator's Perfect Justice. Humans reject God, and God being loving will not force humans to not reject Him. Thus humans seperate themselves from God (sin). Moreover, as perfectly Just, for our criminality against God and each other, we face Justice which coincides with our choices to spurn God and hurt others. God's Loving relationship is thus injured by us. But God loves us still, and God is also Merciful. So how do Love, Justice, and Mercy co-exist in such a tricky situation?

I submit that God, as a Loving Creator who Wills for a relationship of Agape Love with His Creation, will also Will to somehow end or take away that which threatens that relationship (sin). The question of course, is how? We already know God will not remove our wills, as that will defeat the purpose of Creation. But God can forgive sin. God can forgive the crimes we commit, the rejections and the hurts and wrongs.

As an omnipotent being, God can take away all of our faults and forgive us of all of our sins. As a Merciful God, God does just that. But God is also Just. Which means that God will not just snap His metaphorical fingers and say every thing's taken care of. Justice does not allow for crime to go unpunished, even when it forgives. We often choose to do wrong freely, knowing that such a thing, at the very least, might hurt someone else. We choose, and we choose freely, knowing that there are negative consequences for others revolving around our choices. Justice demands that we pay the consequences of our choices, it's part of the responsibility inherent in having choices.

Were God to be Just without Mercy, every single one of us would be accounted as having rejected Him. The Just thing to do would be to leave everyone of us to continue existing without Him even after we die here. This would be the very definition of Hell, existence separated from God, and is no more than the Just and logical conclusion of choosing to not Love God and not want God. Mercy without Justice would strip humanity of responsibility for its choices and destroy the very notion of a governing morality that teaches us to treat each other with love and respect. With only perfect Mercy we can do whatever we please, so long as we repent, and we never suffer any consequences for our actions. I've noticed some atheists seem to believe that Christians think there are no consequences for our actions once we ask forgiveness. This is utterly false, at least in Catholic theology, penance is always required to meet Justice. So, Justice without Mercy is not so great (kind of pointless for God to create us if we all just go to Hell anyway) and Mercy without Justice is also not so great (though perhaps better than the other) but regardless God exists as both. So how do Justice and Mercy co-exist? Justice "demands" that the natural consequences for the crime of rejecting God be mete out. And Mercy "demands" that God's Love for us is so self-less that He bring us to Him no matter how horrible we are so long as we truly repent.

The solution, is that God Himself must take on the eternal "punishment" associated with the crime of rejecting God, that being separation from God. This is not only the supreme act of selfless love (God Himself dying for the entirety of the world's sins, and taking upon Himself humanity's rejection of Himself) and satisfies God's Mercy, but it is Just, for the punishment due to humanity for its crimes is met, the eternal consequences borne, for those that let Him, by God Himself. The temporal consequences however, remain to humans themselves to satisfy through voluntary penance. Certainly no matter your sins they are not so great that God cannot forgive them (and indeed God's one sacrifice is in fact an Eternal sacrifice because He is outside time, which means your sins are already forgiven, you merely need to go to God and repent). But that doesn't mean that you will not be expected to perform penance, to work to rectify the harm you have done yourself, your neighbors and loved ones, the community and the Church and to your relationship with God through your habits and wrongs. Through our temporal penance, we also satisfy God's justice, as well as come closer to Christ in His suffering and sacrifice for us. Penance thus allows us to not only experience God's justice, but also God's merciful love to a fuller extent than we would otherwise. And so from Love in response to Evil, we find a greater Good, and Evil itself is turned to Good. It is taken away, forgiven, and we are turned towards Good and God and that relationship for which we were created.

On one final note concerning Purgatory, I would like to address the idea of a final cleansing or purification, that is actually at the root of the name Purgatory. While not expressly related to Confession, I wanted to address it while dealing with all these related concepts. Purgatory is considered, in addition to being a place for the completion of penance, it is also a place of final scrubbing of the stains of sin upon us before entering into the presence of God, where sin is inadmittable. While sin has been forgiven, Catholicism believes that it leaves a certain stain upon the soul, especially when not repented of before death (as in the case of unrepented venial sins before death). Temporal Purgatory allows us the opportunity to ask for forgiveness one last time (because it is a temporal existence, we have the ability to pray, choose, etc.) for our sins and to be scrubbed clean or purified as in fire (there is more to support this notion both Biblically and among the Fathers, but as it is merely a side note to the main issue in this essay, I will leave that aside). Hence the name Purgatory.

Returning, finally to Confession, I have one last issue to address, namely the questions of why confession to another person, especially in the Catholic case, to a priest is so important to the Sacrament. I have already noted that it increases the power of the Sacrament in terms of its effects upon us such as humility, courage, etc. (not in terms of efficacy, of course). Now I'd like to address somethings more often ignored even in Catholic apologetic writing on the subject (at least I can't recall ever having read this before I wrote it to someone else, though I believe it may be referenced in the Didache as well). And that is the difficulty, combined with the communal aspects, of Confession.

One problem often noted by critics of Confession is that confession is difficult. As already noted it requires a great deal of courage, humility and faith to properly perform. It is often described as a rather uncomfortable experience at first, and I know of many former or lapsed Catholics who never went because of this uncomfortableness. Coupled to that uncomfortableness is the idea that many people have that we're confessing our sins to some strange man, a random stranger priest, or even a familiar man. Regarding this, I have this to say: Confession certainly is difficult. And I think it should feel uncomfortable. Sin should make us feel uncomfortable! We should be ashamed of ourselves when we go into confession. I usually cry when I go to confession, I have no problem admitting, and it's the only time I can actually get myself to cry usually.

I'd like to reiterate again that we're not confessing to "a strange man." We're confessing to Christ through His Body the Church, and the representatives He gave the authority to absolve sins to. You're not telling your sins to any old man, you're telling them to Christ, and you're telling them to the Church. And therein lies the necessity of telling them to someone else. Sure it feels uncomfortable and scary and strange. But that's a good thing. If you don't feel uncomfortable confessing your sins, something is wrong! In the early Church, as I noted before, Confession often took place before the entire community. Now that would be uncomfortable! I don't say this just to make that comparison though (indeed, that'd be a waste of time). James didn't exhort the people to confess to each other just because it would make them unbearably ashamed. No, James did it because there is value in confessing, not just in prayer from yourself to God, but in confessing to the Church, to physically present oneself as sinful and sorrowful, and go to the Living Body of Christ in person to receive absolution. Part of that I noted before, in that it has personal value for us in our spiritual development, but there's more to it, and to finish the tale, we must return, again, to sin.

Sin is not just a crime against God, or against our own souls, it is a crime against the Church. It is a crime against the body of believers. Your sin affects others, hurts others, could even destroy others. When the burglar steals, certainly he offends the laws of the land and God, but it is the person he steals from who is most aggrieved and who seeks justice. When the murderer strikes, certainly he offends all society with his crime and God Himself, but it is the victim who suffers the most. And it is to the victim that the first and greatest apology should always be given.

The glory of Confession in Catholicism isn't just that it is the means appointed by Christ of receiving the Sacramental Grace of forgiveness (though that's certainly the biggest part), it's that in Confession, we do not confess just to God, we confess also to the Church, to the Body of Christ, and thus to all our brothers and sisters in faith against whom we have sinned. We are a community of believers, we're together as one body in the Church, and we must seek forgiveness from that community for our evils against it just as we seek forgiveness from God for our evils against Him and again just as we seek forgiveness from ourselves for the harm we do our own immortal souls. Thus, why confess to someone else, especially some priest? Not only because of the nature of the Sacrament, the authority granted by Christ, but also because that priest, that person, is a representative of the entire Church, the entire Body that we are a part of, and our interaction with that person, our confession and contrition, allow us to beg forgiveness not only of God, but of our Brothers and Sisters whom we have failed in our sin.

And that is the Sacrament of Penance in a formidably large nutshell.