The Flat-Tire Fallacy

My daughter and my son were baptized at ages 10 and 8, respectively. Up until that point we had all been Protestant, and the children were educated at the Christian Academy connected with the Baptist megachurch that we attended. Like all schools, it had its good points and its bad points. Some of the teachers were superb, others less so. I was mightily pleased with the teachers in the lower grades, but one event in my daughter’s first grade class really, really upset me. I overheard the teacher telling a frightened little girl that “God will never let anything bad happen to you.”

That child was being introduced to the flat-tire fallacy, various versions of which so many Evangelical Christians buy into. God is good, right? Right! God is omnipotent, right? Right! Ergo, our perfectly good and thoroughly omnipotent God will never allow anything bad happen to one of His children! As a Christian, it has been promised to me that I will never fall victim to a scam, fail a class or get more than mildly constipated. All of my problems will be resolved to my satisfaction, and I will never, ever get a flat tire.

One version of this fallacy has developed into an entire theological outlook known as “Health and Wealth.” I have never been personally acquainted with any Health and Wealthers; although raised as an adherent of the flat-tire fallacy, I didn’t go that far. I knew that many Christians did not enjoy a privileged, upper-class lifestyle, and I could not be convinced that that was the result of a lack of faith. I did not sit around waiting for God to rig the lottery for me, nor did I believe that every gravely ill person would be restored to health if they refused to accept their illness on religious grounds. I clung to the words of Isaiah 43:2, “When you pass through the waters, I will be with you; and through the rivers, they shall not overwhelm you; when you walk through fire you shall not be burned, and the flame shall not consume you.” This I understood to mean that, yes, I would have troubles, but they would be manageable. Since dying, from my Protestant perspective, meant going straight to Heaven to spend an eternity with God, it didn’t really scare me, but I found it hard to believe that an omnipotent, loving God would allow me to suffer any serious pain for more than a day or two….

Travel was an eye-opener. After college I visited many foreign countries, and encountered Christians who had far less than I did, and yet far more. Their lack of possessions freed them from the worry over the possible loss of possessions. I began to realize that my perspective on this subject was based on self-centeredness (generally not listed as one of the fruits of the Holy Spirit). The loss of possessions was not an evil to be avoided. In fact, it might turn out to be kind of a good thing….

Despite my evolving understanding of suffering in the Christian life, I did not entirely abandon the flat-tire fallacy. While by this point I understood that God might allow a little rain to fall into my existence, I believed that the amount of rain would be carefully limited. For example, while I might experience financial difficulties, nothing as drastic as a homeless shelter loomed in my future. That was back when I still watched TV, and I watched the news in horror one evening as a dear woman recounted with a huge smile how grateful she was that when she lost her home, the homeless shelter took her in.

I turned off the TV and sat there, frozen. Could God allow His children to lose their homes? For some reason, homelessness, to me, was the dividing line between what I would accept from God’s hand and what I certainly would not accept. I was convinced, as was everyone else I knew, that God would never allow anything truly bad to happen to me.

And then it hit me: Define “bad.”

I had quite a broad definition of the word “bad.” “Bad” in my book meant inconvenient, unanticipated, unpleasant, unlovely, unlucky, unhelpful, uncouth, unattractive and unbearable all rolled into one smelly package. “Bad” was whatever I didn’t like, or whatever I thought I wouldn’t like – kind of the metaphysical equivalent of Brussels sprouts. “Bad” was basically any change to my admittedly pretty-desirable status quo. In my foolishness I thought I had tied God’s hands; He couldn’t allow anything to happen to me without me screaming bloody murder.

The flat-tire fallacy at its worst can have serious consequences. Try explaining to a flat-tirer that she contracted intestinal parasites while on a missions trip – we prayed for health and safety! How could God let this happen?? The first-grade teacher telling the little girl that God will never allow her to suffer was undoubtedly just trying to quiet the child, but the comforting message was laced with spiritual arsenic. It is all too easy to abandon one’s faith when suffering comes along, if one has been taught that suffering, for the Christian, is an impossibility.

Catholics traditionally have been preserved from the flat-tire fallacy by the concept of “offering it up,” i.e., the teaching that our suffering can and should be voluntarily united to the suffering of Christ, à la Colossians 1:24.

Now I rejoice in my sufferings for your sake, and in my flesh I am filling up what is lacking in Christ’s afflictions for the sake of his body, that is, the Church.

This verse remains obscure in a Protestant context; it really isn’t easily reconciled with most Protestant soteriologies, and is seldom discussed. I taught a Bible study at an Evangelical college in Taiwan in the 1980s, and my students asked me to explain that verse. Stymied, I searched through every Bible commentary in the library. Being Protestant commentaries, they simply had no explanation for the theological implications of that verse. Had I been Catholic at the time, John Paul II could have straightened me out:

One can say that with the Passion of Christ all human suffering has found itself in a new situation….

The Redeemer suffered in place of man and for man. Every man has his own share in the Redemption. Each one is also called to share in that suffering through which the Redemption was accomplished. He is called to share in that suffering through which all human suffering has also been redeemed. In bringing about the Redemption through suffering, Christ has also raised human suffering to the level of the Redemption. Thus each man, in his suffering, can also become a sharer in the redemptive suffering of Christ.

The texts of the New Testament express this concept in many places. In the Second Letter to the Corinthians the Apostle writes: “We are afflicted in every way, but not crushed; perplexed, but not driven to despair; persecuted, but not forsaken; struck down, but not destroyed; always carrying in the body the death of Jesus, so that the life of Jesus may also be manifested in our bodies. For while we live we are always being given up to death for Jesus’ sake, so that the life of Jesus may be manifested in our mortal flesh …. knowing that he who raised the Lord Jesus will raise us also with Jesus”.

Saint Paul speaks of various sufferings and, in particular, of those in which the first Christians became sharers “for the sake of Christ.” These sufferings enable the recipients of that Letter to share in the work of the Redemption, accomplished through the suffering and death of the Redeemer. The eloquence of the Cross and death is, however, completed by the eloquence of the Resurrection. Man finds in the Resurrection a completely new light, which helps him to go forward through the thick darkness of humiliations, doubts, hopelessness and persecution. Therefore the Apostle will also write in the Second Letter to the Corinthians: “For as we share abundantly in Christ’s sufferings, so through Christ we share abundantly in comfort too”. Elsewhere he addresses to his recipients words of encouragement: “May the Lord direct your hearts to the love of God and to the steadfastness of Christ”. And in the Letter to the Romans he writes: “I appeal to you therefore, brethren, by the mercies of God, to present your bodies as a living sacrifice, holy and acceptable to God, which is your spiritual worship”.

The very participation in Christ’s suffering finds, in these apostolic expressions, as it were a twofold dimension. If one becomes a sharer in the sufferings of Christ, this happens because Christ has opened His suffering to man, because He Himself in His redemptive suffering has become, in a certain sense, a sharer in all human sufferings. Man, discovering through faith the redemptive suffering of Christ, also discovers in it his own sufferings; he rediscovers them, through faith, enriched with a new content and new meaning.

This discovery caused Saint Paul to write particularly strong words in the Letter to the Galatians: “I have been crucified with Christ, it is no longer I who live, but Christ who lives in me: and the life I now live in the flesh I live by faith in the Son of God, who loved me and gave himself for me”. Faith enables the author of these words to know that love which led Christ to the Cross. And if He loved us in this way, suffering and dying, then with this suffering and death of His He lives in the one whom He loved in this way; He lives in the man: in Paul. And living in him-to the degree that Paul, conscious of this through faith, responds to His love with love-Christ also becomes in a particular way united to the man, to Paul, through the Cross. This union caused Paul to write, in the same Letter to the Galatians, other words as well, no less strong: “But far be it from me to glory except in the Cross of our Lord Jesus Christ, by which the world has been crucified to me, and I to the world”.

In the Letter to the Colossians we read the words which constitute as it were the final stage of the spiritual journey in relation to suffering: “Now I rejoice in my sufferings for your sake, and in my flesh I complete what is lacking in Christ’s afflictions for the sake of his body, that is, the Church“. And in another Letter he asks his readers: “Do you not know that your bodies are members of Christ?”.

The next time you get a flat tire – and you will get a flat tire – remind yourself of the truth – God promised He would be with us always, and He is, to the point of being physically present, Body, Blood, Soul and Divinity in the Eucharist that we receive at each Mass. He cannot not love us, and He cannot not care for us. Flat tires have something in common with all other “bad” things: they are opportunities. We can, as Job’s wife urged, “curse God” and begin to die spiritually, or we can bless the Name of the Lord and grow in Christ, uniting our sufferings to His. As Blessed John Paul put it, “Man, discovering through faith the redemptive suffering of Christ, also discovers in it his own sufferings; he rediscovers them, through faith, enriched with a new content and new meaning.” Translation: A flat tire doesn’t mean the end of the road!

A flat tire can take you places you never thought you could go – with God at the wheel.

 

On the memorial of St. Gabriel-Taurin Dufresse

Deo omnis gloria!

Photo credits: A flat automobile tire by Ildar Sagdejev/Wikimedia Commons

Signs and Wonders

When I was in high school, my mother, a lifelong Methodist, became a fervent charismatic, something of which my father thoroughly disapproved. As a family we attended the nondenominational Scottsdale Bible Church, but during the week Mom would take me to charismatic meetings. With my mother I once attended a small gathering of charismatics to listen to the preaching of Frances and Charles Hunter, and to watch as they “healed” several of those present suffering from leg-length discrepancy. I guess no more serious ailments were afflicting those present that day. There was a great hoopla and a cacophony of tongues, and everyone went home happy.

I’m not claiming that God never used Frances to heal anyone – I simply don’t know that. But I do know that on that day no one was healed, yet we pretended that several had been. And that was not unusual, nor was it of evil intent. Our hungry hearts yearned for God to manifest His power in our sight. We simply loved God so much that pretty much everything had to be viewed as a “miracle.” To think otherwise was evidence of a lack of faith.

That wore thin after a while. I began to realize that some of the vaunted “healings” among charismatics were most likely cases of medically unsophisticated individuals being told by their doctor that he had seen “something” on an x-ray, something which might just be an artifact, but which needed further investigation because, although highly unlikely, he could not completely rule out (worst case scenario) cancer. Said individual, who heard the doctor say, “Blah, blah, blah, blah, CANCER” requests prayer for the “cancer which was found on the x-ray.” Fervent prayer ensues. Said individual returns for further tests, and it turns out that the “something” seen on the first x-ray isn’t there anymore, having been merely an artifact as the doctor suspected. Said individual, however, returns to his church utterly convinced that he has been healed of “the cancer that my doctor told me he saw on the x-ray,” and reports the “miracle” to the congregation who believe it without questioning, not wanting to be accused of a lack of faith. In my few years as a charismatic (and in my mother’s many years – she was involved right up until progressive dementia made it impossible to attend church), neither of us was ever confronted with a medically documented miracle among the “healings” reported in our midst. And that was a lotta “healings” over the course of a lotta years.

Obviously not all Protestants fall prey to this theology. In fact, some swing the other way. They are cessationists, claiming that miracles went out with the apostles. Calvinist cessationist B.B. Warfield, in his Counterfeit Miracles, sought to debunk Catholic claims of miracles, and fumed against the “exploitation” at Lourdes, inexplicably drawing into his argument the writings of the atheist French physician Émile Zola to show that the healings at Lourdes are but a fraud (Zola was actually a witness to a miracle at Lourdes, the healing of
Marie Lemarchand, yet declared, “Were I to see all the sick at Lourdes cured, I would not believe in a miracle!”). Warfield, though a Christian, was apparently of the same persuasion as Zola. “Lourdes does not register her failures,” he groused, claiming that the fact that more Catholics are left uncured after a visit to Lourdes than receive healing is somehow proof that the whole thing is a hoax – though Warfield was undoubtedly familiar with the passage in Acts 12 where Sts. Peter and James are arrested. The church prayed fervently for them both; Peter was miraculously released from prison by an angel, and James was executed. According to Warfield’s logic, that episode demonstrates a 50% failure rate on the part of the early church and its prayers, and thus by his reasoning the Good News was a hoax as well.

In my final Protestant incarnation I was a Baptist, and took the middle road. I had trouble buying into cessationism. I believed that God still healed people. Didn’t the Gospel of Mark tell us that “These signs shall follow them that believe; they shall lay hands on the sick, and shall recover”? I didn’t think that charismatics were wrong to expect miracles. Miracles just didn’t, in my opinion, seem to be forthcoming among the charismatic assemblies with which I or my mother were associated. Despite my disenchantment with charismatic “healings,” I nevertheless remained convinced that God can and does work miraculously in this world. When we were regaled with occasional tales of healings on the mission field, I believed that those might not have been mere rumors and exaggerations. I knew that God the Holy Spirit was still at work in our day.

I just didn’t have any documented proof of that.

Now, consider this announcement from late last year:

Today, 20 December 2012, Pope Benedict XVI received in a private audience Angelo Cardinal Amato, S.D.B., prefect of the Congregation of the Causes of the Saints. During the audience, the Holy Father authorized the Congregation of the Causes of Saints to promulgate the following twenty-four decrees regarding [among other things]:

– A MIRACLE, attributed to the intercession of Blesseds Antonio Primaldo and 800 Companions, laypersons of the diocese of Otranto, killed in odium fidei on 13 August 1480 in Otranto (Italy); cult confirmed on 14 December 1771; martyrdom recognized on 06 July 2007

– A MIRACLE, attributed to the intercession of the Blessed MarÍa Laura de Jesus Montoya Upegui (in religion, Laura of Saint Catherine of Siena), founder of the Congregation of the Missionary Sisters of the Immaculate Virgin Mary and Saint Catherine of Siena; born on 26 May 1874 in Jericó, Antioquía (Colombia) and died on 21 October 1949 in Belencito, Medellín, Antioquía (Colombia); beatified on 25 April 2004

– A MIRACLE, attributed to the intercession of the Blessed Anastasia Guadalupe García Zavala (in religion, María Guadalupe), cofounder of the Handmaids of Saint Margaret Mary and of the Poor; born on 27 April 1878 in Zapopan, Jalisco (Mexico) and died on 24 June 1963 in Guadalajara, Jalisco (Mexico); beatified on 25 April 2004

Yeah, right – would have been my charismatic response. As a Protestant I just KNEW that those Catholic “miracles” were bogus. Obviously bogus. Since the Catholics had their theology all messed up, I reasoned, there’s no way God doesn’t work real miracles in a charismatic assembly but does work them when Catholics pray. Impossible.

Today the above-mentioned two women and one large group of men are being canonized by Pope Francis. The story of why one of them, Laura Montoya, is being declared a saint is a good illustration of the work of the Holy Spirit, the work that I as a charismatic was looking for, the work that I as a Baptist was still longing to see, in the Catholic Church today:

SANTO DOMINGO, Dominican Republic (CNS) — In early January 2005, Carlos Eduardo Restrepo, a Colombian anesthesiologist suffering from lupus and a severe infection in his thorax, faced death.

His family and friends were preparing for the worst. He was given last rites. But then an image of Blessed Mother Laura Montoya appeared to him, he said.

“I remember it very well. In the moment, I was calm. I prayed to her: Help me get through this and it will allow you to get to the altars,” he told the newspaper El Colombiano.

Restrepo survived and was cured of his disease.

“If this wasn’t a miracle, I don’t know what is,” he said.

Pope Benedict XVI recognized it as a miracle last year, making it the second miracle attributed to Mother Montoya. In 1994, a Colombian woman, Herminia Gonzalez Trujillo, who had been hemorrhaging due to uterine cancer, was cured after praying to Mother Montoya.

Mother Montoya will be the first Columbian saint, with two thoroughly impressive, modern-day, physician-documented miracles under her cinture. From a Protestant perspective, kind of hard to explain.

Since becoming a Catholic, I have REVELED in the miracles leading to the canonization of various saints. These appear from time to time in newspapers and magazines, all documenting that the cures simply cannot be explained from a medical standpoint, and that they occurred after Catholics petitioned various “servants of God” for their prayers. One of the most extraordinary recent cases was the healing of an American boy, Jake Finkbonner, leading to the canonization of St. Kateri Tekakwitha. Jake himself tells the story on his website:

We thank the doctors at Children’s Hospital for all that they did to save my life. I wouldn’t be here without them. I also thank all the people that prayed for me. Obviously, God heard their prayers. This decision to canonize Blessed Kateri is something that the Vatican and the Pope declared, based on testimonies given by parishioners, my family and my doctors. Congratulations to the Catholic Church and the Native American culture in the canonizing of the now Saint Kateri.

My scars came in 2006 when I was just 5 years old. I was playing basketball for the Boys & Girls club, it was the last game of the season and the last minute of the game. I was running down court with the ball, I stopped in front of the hoop to shoot when I was pushed from behind. I flew forward and hit my mouth on the base of the portable basketball hoop. Lurking on the surface of that base was Strep A, also known as the “flesh eating bacteria” or Necrotizing Fasciitis. When I hit my mouth, my tooth pierced the inside of my lip and from that small pierce is where the Strep A entered into my body. By the next day I was fighting for my life. I am so thankful to the doctors at Children’s Hospital in Seattle that saved my life.”

Jake’s skin was being eaten away by the bacteria, and the decision was made to invoke the prayers of then-Blessed Kateri, a Native American (Jake’s dad is a Native American) whose skin was scarred from smallpox. The necrotizing fasciitis just disappeared.

And there are more signs and wonders. One miracle is necessary for the beatification of an individual, and one for canonization, so let’s take the case of the recently canonized Australian saint, Mary MacKillop:

Miracle #1: Veronica Hopson, 1961

”I went to see [my doctor] because I was tired and lazy and because of the bad cramp I was getting, because of the transparency in my hands and because everyone kept telling me I didn’t look well,” Mrs Hopson told the Vatican when it was investigating MacKillop’s life and works.

”He arranged for me to go into hospital. At that time I did collapse and couldn’t do any work at all.” She was diagnosed with acute myeloblastic leukaemia and told ”death was the evident outcome”.

”I thought she had perhaps a month to live,” said her haematologist, Redmond Dalton.

The nurses believed she was ”beyond prayers”. Her husband, Allan, told the Vatican: ”The doctors told me not to expect anything.”

Mrs Hopson went home to die on November 17. Her marriage was confirmed in a Catholic ceremony on the same day.

A month later she was back in hospital, sicker than before and with excruciating abscesses in her left arm and right thigh.

Veronica Hopson recovered completely and went on to give birth to six children. She credits the prayers of the nuns invoking the aid of Mary MacKillop for her healing, and so does the Vatican.

Miracle #2: Kathleen Evans, 1990s

“My name is Kathleen Evans. I’m married to Barry. I’m a mother of 5 and a grandmother of 20 including 2 great grandchildren. I come from the small town of Windale in Lake Macquarie. In the 1990’s, I was diagnosed with a non small carcinoma in my right lung.

After x-rays and scans were taken, my GP sent me to a heart, lung surgeon. He put me in hospital for a biopsy. The surgeon explained that he hoped to remove my right lung as my youngest child was only 13. And by taking the lung out, it might give me 5 or 6 years to see him through high school. What he found was that the cancer was very aggressive and had spread into my glands. He was concerned that one of the glands was too close to the aorta. He also asked for an x-ray of my head to be taken. He found that a secondary had started at the bottom of my brain. This put paid to any operation.

I was then sent to a chemotherapist who gave me no hope of the chemotherapy working.

The next step was radiotherapy, only to be told that any ray treatment would help with the side effects and perhaps give me a couple more weeks at the end. For this to happen, I would have to go to the hospital for 10 consecutive days. I was too sick for that. Besides the odds were just not worth it. I was only given a couple of months at the most to live. So I said thanks, but no thanks. I went back to my doctor and asked him to see me through until the end. All this took 1 month.”

A friend gave Kathleen a relic of Mary MacKillop which she wore night and day. Family and friends asked Blessed Mary for her prayers, and Kathleen began to feel better. She was eventually declared cured by her doctors, and was alive to see the 2010 canonization of the saint whose intercession she believes led to her recovery.

Three female saints, five medically inexplicable cures. But now, to give holy men their due, the canonization miracle of St. Juan Diego:

On May 3, 1990, in Mexico City, nineteen-year-old Juan José Barragán suffered from severe depression and, wanting to commit suicide, he threw himself from the balcony of his apartment, striking his head on the concrete pavement thirty feet below, despite his mother’s frantic attempts to hold onto him as she cried out to Juan Diego for help. The young man was rushed to the nearby hospital, where the doctor there noted his serious condition and suggested that the boy’s mother pray to God. To this, the young man’s mother replied that she already had prayed for Juan Diego’s intercession. For three days, examination and intensive care continued, and physicians diagnosed a large basal fracture of the skull – a wound that normally would have killed at the moment of impact, and even now destroyed any hope of survival or repair. Given the mortal nature of the wounds, on May 6 all extraordinary medical support was ceased, and young Juan José’s death was thought to be imminent. But that same day, Juan José sat up, began to eat, and within ten days was entirely recovered, with no debilitating side-effects, not even so much as a headache. In the scans, the doctors could see clear evidence of the life-threatening fracture, but to their surprise they noticed that the bone was mended, with the arteries and veins all in place. Astonished, they requested more tests by specialists for second opinions, only to have their original assessment confirmed. Impossible, unexplainable, it was declared a miracle.

A cause for canonization very dear to American hearts is that of Venerable Fulton Sheen. Will this be the miracle that brings him to beatification?

“One year ago today I delivered my son, a stillborn. For a moment he was placed in my arms quiet, blue, and limp. The midwife and her assistant then took him from me and began CPR. They could not find a pulse. He did not breathe. Because we were at home (it was my third, planned homebirth) 911 was called.

While CPR was continued and we waited for the ambulance my husband took water and baptized him using the name we had agreed upon, James Fulton. I remember sitting on the floor saying, “Fulton Sheen, Fulton Sheen, Fulton Sheen” over and over again in my head. I suppose it was as close as I could come to a prayer; I suppose it was my way of asking Archbishop Sheen to interceded for my son.

The paramedics came and rushed James away. In route, as they tried to restart his heart, they gave him two doses of epinephrine by lines in the shin bone. Neither worked and one leaked out, turning his whole right leg – from toe tip to buttock – black and blue and purple. In the ER the doctors and nurses worked on him for another 18 minutes or so. A nurse practitioner told me she wanted James’ mother to be able to hold him alive for a little bit. Five minutes, an hour – she just wanted my son to be alive long enough for me to say good-bye.

They did a sonogram of his heart. It fluttered but it didn’t beat. A nurse held his foot; she later told me it was cold, like the expression “cold and dead”. He was intubated and getting oxygen, but there was no way that the chest compressions were adequately circulating the oxygen to the brain and other organs. Following the orders of the on-call neonatologist they stopped working on him so they could call time of death.

My little boy, James Fulton, 9lbs and 12oz, had been without a pulse for 61 minutes.

Everyone stopped working. And then his heart started.”

Although it was apparent that James Fulton would live, physicians held out no hope that his life would ever be a normal one. Both an EEG and an MRI showed brain injury from lack of oxygen. The family and everyone who knew them continued to pray, invoking Fulton Sheen’s intercession:

Eternal Father, You alone grant us every blessing in Heaven and on earth, through the redemptive mission of Your Divine Son, Jesus Christ, and by the working of the Holy Spirit. If it be according to Your Will, glorify Your servant, Fulton J. Sheen, by granting the favor I now request through his prayerful intercession – that James Fulton’s body heals and functions normally and that he is spared any brain damage. I make this prayer confidently through Jesus Christ, our Lord. Amen.

And God heard the prayers of His servant. James Fulton Engstrom is a normal, thriving toddler with no sign of brain damage.

Impossible!

But true.

Don’t get me wrong – I believe that God can and does work the occasional miracle among Protestants, and even for unbelievers who need that extra push towards Christianity. But my persistent belief that miracles must be out there despite the fakery and false hope of my past experience has been validated by the miracles of the saints. The claims of the Catholic Church are thereby validated as well.

There was recently exciting news concerning the canonization of Blessed John Paul II, who is one step away from being declared a saint. The miracle which led to his beatification was the healing of Sister Marie Simon-Pierre, a French nun suffering from Parkinson’s. A second potential miracle is apparently under consideration, and rumor has it that he may be canonized as early as October.

And when he is canonized, I’ll be grinning from ear to ear. Miracles do happen.

I knew it!

 

On Ascension Sunday

Deo omnis gloria!

Photo credit: Stained glass window in the southern section of the ambulatory, close to the Lady’s Chapel. Depicted is the raising of Dorcas by Saint Peter in the upper section with the inscription Peter said Dorcas arise and she opened her eyes, and the release of the Apostles from prison by an angle (Acts 5:19) with the inscription I was in prison & ye came unto me. Created by Heaton, Butler & Bayne in 1889. By Andreas F. Borchert

Your Chance to Influence the Election of the Next Pope!

The exterior of the Sistine Chapel

As we’ve heard repeatedly since the momentous announcement of February 11, a new pope is soon to be elected by 115 cardinals in a conclave in the Sistine Chapel. Locked outside, the world can only watch and wait for the white smoke that signals an election. Who will it be – Scola? Ouellet? Ravasi? Turkson? Tagle? Scherer? One day in March we will have the answer to that question. There is, however, another question not so easy to answer, one that is sometimes asked, the question of who actually selects the pope. Is it the cardinals who select the pope through the voting process, or is it God Himself? Put another way, does God the Holy Spirit cause the cardinals to elect the man whom God has already chosen to fill the office of Supreme Pontiff?

The latter option, truthfully, is the version I prefer. As cardinals with their own agenda cast ballots for a man whose future actions will obscure rather than magnify the Lord, the Omnipotent One stretches forth His mighty forefinger and stirs the chalice containing the ballots. Another candidate, one more worthy of the office, is elected, and the cardinals are left scratching their heads. “I could have sworn our man had a majority…” they grouse. Sorry, cardinals! Yeah, that’s the way it’s supposed to happen….

We know that the Holy Spirit is undoubtedly involved in the election. Blessed John Paul II, in his Universi Dominici Gregis (On the Vacancy of the Apostolic See and the Election of the Roman Pontiff), said as much. He decreed that the conclave should continue to be held in the Sistine Chapel, where “everything is conducive to an awareness of the presence of God, in whose sight each person will one day be judged” and where “the electors can more easily dispose themselves to accept the interior movements of the Holy Spirit.” According to this statement, God the Holy Spirit is definitely at work during the election. But the question remains: Does God Himself choose the pope?

A prominent German theologian weighed in on this back in the 1990s. A quotation from Joseph Cardinal Ratzinger has popped up on many blogs over the past two weeks. The interview from which the quote was taken took place in 1998 (not in 1997, as is floating around on the Internet) and was conducted by the late August Everding, German opera director and fervent Catholic, (you can watch the interview here – it is so good to see a much younger Ratzinger laughing and chatting with his fellow German! The passage in question begins at 37:20. The transcript is here – click on “Herunterladen” to download). The translation going around online is a paraphrase, and a very beautiful one at that. Here is my more literal translation as I understand Ratzinger’s words (take this with a grain of salt – I defer to anyone who feels he or she can translate this more competently! I just thought it would be fun to take a crack at translating this.)

Everding asked Cardinal Ratzinger if he really believed that the Holy Spirit was instrumental in the election of the pope. The cardinal answered:

I wouldn’t say that in the sense that the Holy Spirit chooses any particular pope, because there is plenty of evidence to the contrary (he laughs as he says this) – there have been many whom the Holy Spirit quite obviously would not have chosen! But, that He does not altogether relinquish control, but rather like a good trainer keeps us on a very long cord, so to speak, allowing us a great deal of freedom, but never unfastening the cord – that’s how I would put it. It needs to be taken in a very broad sense and not as if He says, “You’ve got to pick this one!” What He allows, however, is limited to that which cannot completely ruin everything.

The pithy, elegant paraphrase puts it thus:

“I would say that the Spirit does not exactly take control of the affair, but rather like a good educator, as it were, leaves us much space, much freedom, without entirely abandoning us. Thus the Spirit’s role should be understood in a much more elastic sense, not that He dictates the candidate for whom one must vote. Probably the only assurance He offers is that the thing cannot be totally ruined.”

Whichever way you like it – THIS IS HUGE. NEWS FLASH:
Fallible human beings are picking the next pope!

Lord, have mercy!

The only assurance is that the thing cannot be totally ruined? Oh, dear….

Yes, of course, the gates of Hell will not prevail, but some of those medieval popes did live as if they believed that Hell HAD prevailed. Certainly no pope, no matter how dissolute, has ever taught error – the Holy Spirit has prevented that as Jesus promised. Jesus, however, never promised that any of us would be prevented from committing sin if we insisted on it, and the sinful lifestyles of those dissolute popes helped to provoke the monumental schism that is still shaping the circumstances of our lives nearly 500 years later! With this in mind, one thing is certain: The election of the next pope matters; it matters desperately. And you, – yes, YOU! – have a role to play in that election.

What we are discussing here is the mystery of prayer. God wants us to have a holy pope, a wise pope, a courageous pope, a pope filled with the Holy Spirit Who is Love. Are we Christians just to assume that, of course, it will be done? On the contrary, God waits for us to pray for this. We have been commanded to pray that it will be done: “Thy will be done on earth as it is in Heaven.”

It isn’t automatic.

Mary, Seat of Wisdom: Note the Hand of God at the top of the picture!

Pray. Fast. Offer up your suffering, so that the electors “can more easily dispose themselves to accept the interior movements of the Holy Spirit.” Our cardinals in conclave need wisdom, they need light, they need grace. Long after they have gone to meet the One “in whose sight each person will one day be judged,” the Church will be living under the influence of the man they choose. Pray a novena to Our Lady, Seat of Wisdom, asking her to add her prayers to ours that the cardinals might be given the grace to choose wisely. Invoke the assistance of Blessed John Paul II, the saint who knows better than any other what it is like to lead the body of Christ on earth in the 21^st century!

Pray that God’s will be done in the conclave!

Because when they make that declaration that we’re all waiting for: “HABEMUS PAPUM!” – it isn’t over!

It is just beginning!

On the memorial of St.
Gabriel of Our Lady of Sorrows

Deo omnis gloria!

Photo credits: Exterior of the Sistine Chapel by Maus-Trauden

His Story

The Reverend Billy Graham is undeniably a great man. Born in North Carolina in 1918, the son of a farmer, Graham became a pastor while in college. He was told as a youth that he had a voice that God could use mightily, and that is one modern-day prophecy that certainly came to pass.

Dr. Graham became a radio preacher, then president of a Bible college, but he found his real calling as an itinerant evangelist in the late 1940s. He had little theological background, and he kept his message simple. As media coverage increased, the crowds grew. Billy Graham became a household name, and his “crusades,” as he called them, began to attract thousands. He became known as the “friend of presidents,” garnered a slew of awards, and has for decades been on lists of the “most admired” people in the world. There has been criticism, of course: Graham was heard expressing anti-Semitic views on the Nixon tapes, and his missions trip to the Soviet Union in the early 1980’s was widely viewed as a propaganda bonanza for the USSR. He sadly was not a leader in the rethinking of Southern Baptist morality on the subject of abortion, as that denomination’s position evolved in the 1970s from support of abortion in cases of fetal deformity and potential harm to the emotional, mental, and physical health of the mother to its present-day recognition of abortion as gravely evil. But as a historical figure, his influence cannot be denied. Hundreds of thousands have gone forward at Billy Graham crusades to pray the “sinner’s prayer,” get saved, and be advised to begin “attending the Bible-believing church of your choice.”

As Evangelicals we often spoke of all of history being “His-Story,” and men like Dr. Graham figured large in the telling of that story, along with the Reformers and 19^th– and 20^th-century Protestant missionaries like Hudson Taylor and Jim Elliott. What was remarkable, though, was how readily we overlooked certain other His-storical figures, like John Paul II. John Paul was Pope for 27 years of my life, and he merited barely a blip on my Protestant radar. I lived in Europe in the 1980s when he was shot by a would-be assassin – I do not recall even praying for his recovery. Those were the years of Solidarność and of the pope’s multiple trips to his homeland, to which I paid minimal attention. John Paul II traveled the world, drawing some of the biggest crowds in human history. Former Soviet leader Mikhail Gorbachev claimed that “The collapse of the Iron Curtain would have been impossible without John Paul II.” For me, as an Evangelical Protestant, it all might as well have happened on another planet.

Imagine, though, IMAGINE if Billy Graham had done any one of those things – it would have been proof – PROOF! – that God is working through His servants in this world today. As Evangelicals, we were strangely indifferent to all this evidence of God’s hand on the Holy Roman Pontiff. When John Paul died in 2005, Evangelicals in my area turned a blind eye to the His-storical significance of his life; the conversation centered on whether the poor old guy was in Heaven or in hell. Since he hadn’t, to the best of anyone’s knowledge, repudiated Catholic teaching before his death, consensus leaned towards the second option.

It was all, to a certain extent, part of our Protestant policy of “downplaying, denigrating, distorting and denying” the argument for Catholicism. Had Mikhail Gorbachev told us that Billy Graham had been instrumental in bringing down the Soviet system, we would have recognized God at work immediately. But, the Pope? How could God work through someone who embodies the system that the Reformers sought to disassemble? So what if the man prayed, “Let Thy Spirit descend and renew the face of the land, this land!” when he visited his homeland in 1979, and 10 years later saw the fall of communism in Poland? Sheer coincidence! Who gives a rip if God used him to miraculously heal the sick? Catholic “miracles” are a dime a dozen. Why should I care if God protected him through three assassination attempts? Let’s not blow things out of proportion!

We had our list of Christians through whom we believed God had worked since the Apostles died. It was a very selective list that began with the Reformers and then encompassed certain 19^th– and 20^th-century Protestant missionaries and evangelists – the vast majority of those being speakers of the English language. It was an odd, lop-sided, limited list, one which most of us knew by heart and never tired of enthusing over. And while many of the people on that list were deserving of the reverence in which we held them, the sad thing was that the list was so pinched. One had to wear big, thick blinders to avoid seeing what God had been and was currently doing through the Catholic Church.

For God, you see, has had His hand on Catholic individuals for 2,000 years now. From the earliest Christian martyrs (all CATHOLIC – read their writings!) whose blood was the seed of the Church, to the Christian bishops at the First Council of Nicaea (all CATHOLIC – look up the proceedings of the Council!) who declared Christ “God from God,” to the Christian bishops at the Councils of Hippo and Carthage (all CATHOLIC – check out the canon they produced!) who discerned which books belong in our Bible, we have example after example of God continuing His work in His-story – His-story which we Protestants roundly ignored. It was through Catholic clergy and monastics that God preserved not just the cultural heritage of Greece and Rome, but the Bible itself, copying manuscripts and teaching literacy in Latin – one historian calls the Benedictines “the Fathers of European civilization.” Catholic missionaries traveled to the ends of the known earth, proclaiming the Gospel of our Lord, Christianizing the nations, educating them, stamping out their barbaric practices, fostering charitable works, and encouraging their spiritual, moral and cultural development. Medieval Catholics developed the university system. A multitude of the scientists participating in the 16^th-century Scientific Revolution were Catholic, and many of those were priests. The Father of International Law was a priest (Francisco de Vitoria). Pope Saint Leo turning back Attila’s forces, Pope Saint Pius V and the Holy League fighting for Christian civilization at Lepanto… had Billy Graham, or his medieval counterparts, been involved in any of this, we never would have heard the end of it. All of these His-storically significant events took place during the 1500 years between the death of the Apostle John and the emergence of Reformation theology – an incredibly noteworthy period of time considering how mightily God worked through faithful Catholics – a period of time concerning which I as an Evangelical had no real education or interest. It was all “the Dark Ages” as far as I was concerned, a dim historical twilight which caught the Almighty in an uncharacteristic snooze….

This amounted to willful blindness on my part. Canadian Southern Baptist pastor Henry Blackaby, in his popular course book “Experiencing God” makes the following claims: “To experience God personally, remember God has been at work in our world from the very beginning, and He still is at work…. As God’s obedient child, you are in a love relationship with Him. Because He loves you and wants to involve you in His work, He will show you where He is working so you can join Him…. Is it possible for God to be working around you and you not see it? Yes. …Unless God allows you to see where He is working, you will not see it.” Pastor Blackaby (who mentions only Biblical characters, Reformers, and 19^th– and 20^th-century English-speaking missionaries as examples of God at work) could also mention that if you have a favorite pair of leather flaps attached to your bridle and are taught to keep your head down, even if God points to what He’s doing with a flashing neon “COLLAPSE OF THE SOVIET UNION!” sign, you’re likely to miss it. The signs are everywhere, but if you refuse to look, you won’t see.

The 20^th century was a challenging time, and that is exactly when men and women of God step up to the plate. With the barbarians at civilization’s gates, a second Pope Leo the Great was to be expected, someone commissioned by God to repulse rampaging 20th-century Huns. When he came, he caught Protestants unawares. I’m Catholic now, and I’m keeping my head up and my eyes open. God willing, I’ve got a lot of good years ahead of me, and I’m still hoping to be a witness to His-Story in the making.

On the memorial of St. Juan Diego

Deo omnis gloria!

My, How Things Haven’t Changed – Part Two

In my last post we took a tour through the Middle Ages and saw that the Catholic Church has been teaching from the beginning that we are saved by grace through faith. I’ve decided to go back and examine the commonly held belief that the Church kept the faithful from reading the Bible so that they wouldn’t realize how “unbiblical” Catholic doctrine is. After all, in the words of “prophecy expert” Tim LaHaye, the Catholic Church made sure the Scriptures were “locked up in monasteries and museums” during the Middle Ages. It is simply “common knowledge” among Protestants that the Church has opposed access to the Scriptures down through the ages, something I used to believe – until I went to the trouble of doing a little research….

When I was a Protestant I KNEW that Martin Luther was the first German to translate the Holy Scriptures into the vernacular so that everyone could understand them. After all, he himself said, “”Thirty years ago, no-one read the Bible, and it was unknown to all. The prophets were not spoken of and were considered impossible to understand. And when I was twenty years old, I had never seen a Bible. I thought that the Gospels or Epistles could be found only in the postills [lectionaries] for the Sunday readings.” That’s Herr Luther’s story, and most Protestants buy into it. Let’s take another stroll down through the centuries to see how the situation looked on the ground. In 312 A.D. Constantine saw his “In Hoc Signo Vinces” vision. We’ll start there, looking for signs of devotion to God’s word…. (Don’t be shy about clicking on the links – there’s some good info there.)

St. Ambrose (330-397) “The reading of Holy Scripture is the life of the soul; Christ Himself declares it when He says: ‘The words that I have spoken to you, are spirit and life’.”

St. Gregory of Nyssa (c. 335-c.395) “We are not allowed to affirm what we please. We make Holy Scripture the rule and the measure of every tenet.”

St. John Chrysostom (347- 407) “…each of you take in hand that part of the Gospels which is to be read in your presence on the first day of the week or even on the Sabbath; and before that day comes, sit down at home and read it through; consider often and carefully its content, and examine all its parts well, noting what is clear, what is confusing…. And, in a word, when you have sounded every point, then go to hear it read. From such zeal as this there will be no small benefit both to you and to me.”

St. Jerome (347-420) “I interpret as I should, following the command of Christ: Search the Scriptures, and Seek and you shall find. Christ will not say to me what he said to the Jews: You erred, not knowing the Scriptures and not knowing the power of God. For if, as Paul says, Christ is the power of God and the wisdom of God, and if the man who does not know Scripture does not know the power and wisdom of God, then ignorance of Scripture is ignorance of Christ.”

St. Egeria (4th century) “And as he [the bishop] explained the meaning of all the Scriptures, so does he explain the meaning of the Creed; each article first literally and then spiritually. By this means all the faithful in these parts follow the Scriptures when they are read in church.”

Sounds like Christian leaders in the 4th century not only loved the word of God themselves, but also were committed to teaching it to the faithful. But the Dark Ages began in the 5th century. Perhaps that is when the Scriptures were taken from the people….

St. Mesrop Mashtots (5th century) “To know wisdom and instruction; to perceive the words of understanding” – the first words written by St. Mesrop as he translated the Scriptures into Armenian.

Unknown translators (5th century) translated the Scriptures into the Syriac, Coptic, Old Nubian, Ethiopic and Georgian languages.

St. Gregory the Great (540-604) “Those who are zealous in the work of preaching must never cease the study of the written Word of God.”

St. John Damascene (c. 645-749) “Like a tree planted by streams of water, the soul is irrigated by the Bible and acquires vigor, produces tasty fruit, namely, true faith, and is beautified with a thousand green leaves, namely, actions that please God.”

St. Bede the Venerable (c. 672- 735) “I wholly applied myself to the study of Scripture, and amidst the observance of regular discipline, and the daily care of singing in the church, I always took delight in learning, teaching and writing.” St. Bede translated the Gospel of John into English.

Unknown translator (8th century) translated the Gospel of Matthew into German.

Unknown translator (8th century) translated the Psalms into English (Vespasian Psalter).

Sts. Cyril and Methodius (9th century) translated the Scriptures into Old Church Slavonic.

Unknown translator (9th century) translated the Scriptures into Arabic (Mt. Sinai Arabic Codex 151).

Unknown translator (10th century) translated the four Gospels into Old English (Wessex or West-Saxon Gospels).

Ælfric of Eynsham (11th century) translated the first seven books of the Old Testament into English.

Benedictine missionaries (11th century) translated portions of the Scriptures into Hungarian.

Throughout the “Dark Ages,” the Bible was being read in Latin (the official language of the Church in the West. If you could read, you could read Latin!) I know people who believe that Bible reading in the Middle Ages was strictly forbidden. Certainly if that were the case, no translations would be made of the Scriptures into the vernacular languages of the faithful. What would be the point? Yet we have seen numerous examples of vernacular translations of Scripture before the turn of the first millennium!

St. Anthony of Padua (1195-1231) “He who does not know Scripture, knows absolutely nothing.”

St. Bonaventure (1221-1274) “We must study Holy Scripture carefully, and teach it and listen to it in the same way.”

Jaume de Montjuich (13th century) translated the Scriptures into Catalan.

Guyart des Moulins (13th century) translated the Scriptures into French.

Unknown translator (13th century) translated the Scriptures into Spanish (Biblia Alfonsina).

Unknown translator (13th century) translated the Psalms into Polish.

John Wycliffe (1320-1384) praises Anne of Bohemia (1366–1394) because she possesses copies of the Gospels in three languages, Bohemian, German, and Latin.

King Denis of Portugal (14th century) translated the first 20 chapters of Genesis into Portuguese.

John of Montecorvino, Franciscan missionary to China (14th century) translated the New Testament into Uyghur, the language of the Mongols.

Unknown translator (14th century) translated the books of Genesis through II Kings into Norwegian (Stjorn).

Unknown translator (14th century) translated the Scriptures into the Czech language.

Unknown translator (14th century) translated the book of Revelation into English.

Matthias von Beheim (14th century) commissioned the translation of the Gospels into German.

Unknown translators (14th century) translated the Psalms into Polish and German (St. Florian Psalter).

Unknown translator (14th century) translated the Old Testament into German (Wenzel Bibel).

King John I of Portugal (15th century) translated the Psalms and parts of the New Testament into Portuguese.

Andrzej z Jaszowic (15th century) translated parts of Scripture into Polish (Biblia królowej Zofii).

Unknown translator (15th century) – translated parts of Scripture into Croatian.

Unknown translator (15th century) – translated the New Testament into English.

Johannes Mentelin (1460-Strasburg) printed the first German language Bible.

Heinrich Eggestein (1466 -Strasburg) printed the Bible in German.

Jodocus Planzmann (c. 1470-Augsburg) printed the Bible in German.

Wendelin von Speyer (1471-Venice) printed the Bible in Italian.

Guenter Zainer printed two Bible editions in German, in c. 1475 and 1477 (Augsburger Bibel).

Johann Senseschmidt and Andreas Frisner (c. 1470-Nuremburg) printed the Bible in German.

Anton Sorg (1477-Augsburg) printed the Bible in German.

Barthélemy Buyer (1477-Lyons) printed the Bible in French.

Jacob Zoen and Mauritius Temants Zoem (1477-Delft) printed the Bible in Dutch (De Delfste Bijbel).

Niccolò Malermi (1477) printed the Bible in Italian.

Bonifacio Ferrera (1478-Valencia) printed the Bible in Spanish.

Heinrich Quentel (1480-Cologne) printed the Bible in German.

Anton Koburger (1483-Nuremburg) printed the Bible in German (Koburger Bibel).

Martin Luther is born (1483).

Johann Gruninger (1485-Strasburg) printed the Bible in German.

Hans Schoensperger printed two Bible editions in German, in 1487 and in 1490, in Strasburg.

Joan Ross Vercellese (1487) printed the Bible in Italian.

The Bible is printed in Bohemian (1488-Prague).

Stephan Arndes (1494-Luebeck) printed the Bible in German.

Hans Otmar (1507-Augsburg) printed the Bible in German.

Silvan Otmar (1518-Augsburg) printed the Bible in German.

When Martin Luther broke away from the Catholic Church, he began the task of translating the Scriptures into German. This was quite obviously not the ground-breaking, cutting-edge undertaking that many Protestants would like to believe. I had always thought of it as something hitherto unheard of – but look at all those German editions of Holy Scripture that came before Luther’s!

Catholics after Luther’s time continued doing what they had been doing….

St. John of the Cross (1542-1591) ” Taking Scripture as our guide we do not err, since the Holy Spirit speaks to us through it.”

St. Lawrence of Brindisi (1559-1619) “God’s word is so rich that it is a treasury of every good. From it flow faith, hope, love, and all the virtues, the many gifts of the Spirit.”

St. John Baptiste de la Salle (1651-1719) “Let your chief study be the Bible, that it may be the guiding rule of your life.”

Ignazio Arcamone (17th century) translated parts of Scripture into Konkani, a language spoken in India.

Jesuit missionaries (17th century) translated parts of the New Testament into Japanese.

Pope Leo XIII (1810-1903) “…it is well to recall how, from the beginning of Christianity, all who have been renowned for holiness of life and sacred learning have given their deep and constant attention to Holy Scripture.

Pope Benedict XV (1854- 1922) “Our one desire for all the Church’s children is that, being saturated with the Bible, they may arrive at the all-surpassing knowledge of Jesus Christ.”

Blessed Titus Brandsma (1881-1942) Particularly the reading of Holy Scripture, which is the law of God, should fill us with great joy from the fact that God lives in us by his grace, and we are able to progress like giants, carried away beyond our strict obligations by the pure love and joy which is the cause of our election.

Blessed John Paul II (1920-2005) “Theology must take its point of departure from a continual and updated return to the Scriptures read in the Church.”

Enough?

The above list of translations of Holy Scripture into various vernacular languages down through the centuries is not complete; I simply couldn’t include them all. Bear in mind that these vernacular translations are the ones that we know about. Not all translations, especially those from the first millennium, are extant.

The writings of the saints are full to bursting of quotes from Scripture. Sit down one afternoon and read St. Bernard (12th century), St. John of the Cross (15th century), or St. Alphonsus Liguori (18th century). According to the Carmelites, St. Teresa of Avila quoted from Scripture over 600 times in her writings. So many of the saints wrote commentaries on the Scriptures. You can’t seriously investigate the writings of the saints down through the ages, and then try to claim that the Church didn’t want anyone to know what the Bible said!

I’d like to re-emphasize that in the Middle Ages to be educated meant to know Latin. In other words, the Latin Scriptures were not the mystery to the educated layperson of the Middle Ages that they would be to 21st-century North Americans. IF YOU COULD READ, YOU COULD READ LATIN! On that point alone, the entire “vernacular argument” falls apart….

On the memorial of Sts. Andrew Kim Taegon and Paul Chong Hasang and companions

Deo omnis gloria!