Franciscan at Home

In this new series Josephine Bredon looks at some of the key language we use in transmitting faith.

Command, Mandate, Precept, Authority

This is a new mini-series on words, words that have an often-forgotten richness of meaning, a richness which, once known, deepens and clarifies the meaning of the faith we thought we knew. Knowing the ‘language of faith’ is of very great benefit for catechists and is both important and fascinating for every Catholic.

The idea of the series sprang from a conversation about a phrase in the new translation of the missal. Just before the Lord’s prayer the priest says: ‘at the Saviour’s command …’. Someone asked me, ‘Why has the Church chosen the distasteful word ‘command’? Is it not out of love that Christ gave us the Lord’s prayer?’ ‘What a shame’, many say, ‘that the Church has reverted to the authoritarian word ‘command’.’

It is not common to catechize about our understanding of the human person as a microcosm of creation, but this is nevertheless what the Church teaches. The diagram opposite brings out, I hope, the main features of the Church’s teaching.

There are three clear ‘orders‘ in the created world: material beings, human beings and spiritual beings. Material beings are wholly material and spiritual beings are wholly spiritual. The material world is not the same as the spiritual world. Material beings have very different characteristics from spiritual beings. Material beings are measurable, whereas spiritual beings have no matter that can be measured. Spiritual beings are not bound by time and space as material beings are, though they do operate in time and space. People often forget that not only the material world, but the spiritual world of angels, also, is created; it is not divine. Angels and devils are created beings just as stars and cats are created. These, of course, are the ‘visible and invisible’ created by God that we speak of in the Creed.

These two ‘orders of reality’, the material and the spiritual, are easier to describe than human beings. Human beings are not half material and half spiritual; they are not matter and spirit mixed up, or stirred well together. ‘The human person, created in the image of God, is at once corporeal and material’ (CCC 362).

Study chart included with this article.

In this lead article, Sr Jane Dominic Laurel expounds the ways in which an anthropological and phenomenological approach to Catechesis can be found in the Catechism of the Catholic Church.

Recently, when traveling in an English-speaking country, I encountered some graffiti on a department store wall: it was a rather accurate re-rendering of Edward Munch’s “The Scream” with the words “insignificant existence” scratched beside it. Later, at a lovely group dinner in an Italian restaurant, a president of an American Catholic college was describing a television commercial which he found incredibly arrogant. In the commercial, there was a sea of people. Emerging from the vast crowd, one man held up a sign that read, “I AM.” Another man did the same. Then another. The president remarked, “What audacity—to claim the name of God for themselves.”

But, all the while, Gaudium et Spes had already characterized the situation of modern man so well: “But what is man? He has put forward, and continues to put forward, many views about himself, views that are divergent and even contradictory. Often, he either sets himself up as the absolute measure of all things, or debases himself to the point of despair. Hence, his doubt and his anguish. The Church is keenly sensitive to these difficulties. Enlightened by divine revelation she can offer a solution to them by which the true state of man may be outlined, his weakness explained, in such a way that at the same time his dignity and his vocation may be perceived in their true light.”[i]

The spirit of this passage of the Conciliar document can be perceived in the Catechism of the Catholic Church as well as in its Compendium. It addresses the human person by appealing to that part of his experience that speaks of his transcendence and his utter mystery. It articulates for him his very thoughts, desires, and even emotions—and then provides the most convincing and coherent explanation for their existence. Hence, we can see that this approach is anthropological; it begins with the human person, the one for whom all catechesis exists. This approach is also phenomenological; it draws upon the human person’s experiences—experiences through which, as Augustine would say to the God who fashioned and planned those experiences, “You called and cried out loud and shattered my deafness.”[ii] This catechesis invites every human person to see how God speaks and, indeed, has already been speaking through his or her experience.

As a catechist bringing the message of the God of Jesus Christ to others, perhaps it would occur to me to start with the Creed. The first words are “I believe in God.”

Following William Newton's article, in the last issue of The Sower, explaining Blessed John Paul II's encyclical, Familiaris Consortio, he now discusses the pope's understanding of the value of the person, presenting the central ideas in his theology of the body.

We begin with a simple and profound question: what is the purpose and meaning of human life? The answer that John Paul II gives to this question is remarkably simple. The goal of human life is to make a gift of oneself for the sake of communion. Gift and communion: these are the hermeneutical keys through which Blessed John Paul II viewed the world. In effect, he says, that at the end of your life, it will be judged to have been a success or a failure not on the basis of fame, wealth, or pleasure; but on the basis of whether you took the opportunity to make a gift of yourself to others and whether or not you achieved profound communion with others and with God.

If you are not acquainted with the thought of John Paul II, the phrase ‘gift of self’ might strike you as unusual; and even if you are, it can remain a bit nebulous. So let us look at this this.

In many ways, ‘gift of self’ is synonymous with ‘love’. Of course, the word ‘love’ is used analogously for a whole range of realities that come under the umbrella of ‘desiring the good for someone’. Here is not the place to draw all the distinctions, but in Love and Responsibility, Karol Wojtyla does just that and concludes that ‘a total gift of self’ or ‘betrothed love’ is the highest possible form of love.

What is the secret to living the Christian life? The Christian life – the ‘moral life’, as it is often called – is simply a participation in the life of Christ himself. Morality and spirituality are never to be separated. As St Paul put it, ‘For to me, to live is Christ’ (Phil 1:21).

The Catechism leads us to this answer in three stunning paragraphs (1693-1695) that present the overview to Part 3, Life in Christ. The secret, it indicates, is to enjoy a living relationship with each of the Three Divine Persons of the Trinity. It is in this relationship that all of our actions find their authentic source, and it is from this clear spring that the heart is purified so that our thoughts, words, and acts might flow pure and clean.

It is to live in the sight of the Father who sees in secret (CCC 1693). We do not come to fulfilment in our lives in isolation. We live alongside others. We look at others and are looked at in our turn. And the eyes that look upon us can be eyes of love or disdain. The gaze of others affects us profoundly. This paragraph in the Catechism reminds us that the Christian life prioritises interiority, fostering a contemplative receptivity, because it wants us to allow ourselves to be ‘seen’ and be ‘gazed’ upon by the infinitely loving eyes of the Father who made us and who has created us for one thing only – to have the joy of knowing that our identity, our secret name, flows from that gaze and, knowing this, to echo this back as a friend of God. The person who allows himself to be seen by infinite Love and knows himself as an image of that Love can become ‘perfect as your heavenly Father is perfect’. The Christian life, then, prioritises this interiority. Being precedes doing. We all know this truth instinctively: we call ourselves ‘human beings’, not ‘human actions’.

'On the Spot' aims to highlight some of the complex positions, questions and comments experienced by Catechists, teachers and parents. It tries to outline the knowledge necessary to be faithful to Church teaching and which will best help those we teach who call us to account for the hope that is in us. [cf I Peter 3:15] Here we look at the challenge faced by those who try to present the faith in a hostile and aggressive environment.

‘Christianity: The belief that a cosmic Jewish zombie who was his own father can make you live forever if you symbolically eat his flesh and telepathically tell him you accept him as your master, so he can remove an evil force from your soul that is present in humanity because a rib-woman was convinced by a talking snake to eat from ...a magical tree...yeah, makes perfect sense.’

Of course, it makes no sense at all - and it certainly isn't Christianity, even in an extreme fringe form. Yet, quite suddenly it seems, the beliefs of Christians are no longer either quietly respected or ignored. Whatever the cause, many who do not accept Christianity, or even the existence of God, now feel able to publicly deny, ridicule and attack Christian belief in a way that would have not been accepted before, nor would it be tolerated now if directed towards other religions. This attitude now pervades our public life, our schools, homes and even parishes to an extent that would have been unthinkable even ten years ago. The parody quoted above has been passed around by those who find it very funny; it's possible those people would not have found it so amusing had their own deepest beliefs been lampooned in a similar way.[i]

Here we continue to explore the second part of Pope John Paul II’s apostolic letter on catechesis,issued in the second year of his pontificate, October 16, 1979.

The Holy Father begins the fourth section of Catechesi Tradendae (henceforth CT) by noting that the content of catechesis and evangelization is the same—the Good News of salvation. However, in catechesis the Word is “probed unceasingly” through reflection, study and simply living the Faith (no. 26). The source of this Good News, of course, is Scripture and Tradition, the “single sacred deposit of the Word of God” (cf Vatican II, Dei Verbum, no. 10).

t was the Associate Pastor’s first Sunday in his new assignment. He was counseled (or cautioned) by the pastor that the congregation was somewhat unenthusiastic during Mass. The idea came to him to begin Mass with a joke or humorous story as a way of engaging them. As the choir concluded what seemed like their Broadway debut, he tapped the microphone to test its sound. Nothing! He panicked and tapped it again this time speaking apologetically to the congregation, ‘Something’s wrong with the mic.’ To which everyone dutifully responded, ‘And also with you, Father!’

Ah, the familiarity of the Mass responses! We could say them with our eyes closed - and perhaps sometimes many of us early risers do! Yet familiarity can be a good thing, for it allows us to concentrate on the symbolic gestures during Mass and to ponder the depth of their meaning. However, come November 27, 2011 when the Church begins to use the revised translation of the 2002 Roman Missal, some of this familiarity will diminish, and for many Catholics this will be a challenge. Even if priests spend the recommended year preparing their congregation for the new texts, it is most certain that for a few Sundays following November 27, 2011, some in the congregation will continue to profess proudly their faith in Christ who is ‘one in being’ with the Father, instead of ‘consubstantial.’ Habits are hard to change - especially prayerful ones.

Often our struggles with change - especially in the area of Church discipline or teaching - result from misunderstandings, which in turn can lead to camps or ‘extremist ideology.’ At one extreme we can find a certain ‘dogmatic fundamentalism’ or ‘traditionalism’ that views change, especially liturgical change, as a ‘rupture from the past.’ At the other extreme lies a kind of ‘enlightened progressivism’ that sees reality in ‘continuous flux’ and theology in a state of ‘process.’

Neither position is true, as Blessed John Henry Cardinal Neman insightfully demonstrates in his magnificent work, The Development of Doctrine. Organic growth in doctrine is always rooted in the unchanging reality of Jesus Christ and His revelation, even as it matures or develops into fuller expression.

The Lord’s Prayer can be very helpfully used as a prayerful focus for catechising in morality. One of the advantages of this is that those we teach will gain the vital perspective that how we live and act flows from our prayer and is an expression of it. One on the gravest errors of our time is the dichotomy between faith professed and the practice of lives.[ii] It will help all of us to remember, as well, that the commandments begin with God and our relationship with him.

When teaching morality, it is important to present our final ‘end’, or goal, very clearly. Then we need to present how to reach that goal, cooperating with God’s grace. Finally, we explain and discuss how to behave towards others in the light of these convictions. The structure of the Our Father lends itself very well to this approach. Our true fulfilment is to draw close to God, whom we call Abba, Father. The ‘how’ is reflected in the central part of the prayer; and the prayer closes with an appeal for help in relationships with others and in remaining faithful to the life he has in mind for us.

We cry out to our Father in heaven revering his name; life in its fullest sense consists in a loving relationship with him. We are created in his image and he has placed in us a desire for him.[iii] So in teaching morality the focus is to be on the Father, his kingdom,[iv] and our eternal destiny. When we adopt this perspective, challenges in daily life can be seen to help lead us to the very place where we learn to be our true selves, the heart of the Father.

‘On the Spot’ aims to highlight some of the complex positions, questions and comments experienced by Catechists, teachers and parents. It tries to outline the knowledge necessary to be faithful to Church teaching and which will best help those we teach who call us to account for the hope that is in us (see I Peter 3:15). This time we look at what ‘Providence’ may mean to those we teach, and we consider the distinction between Providence and the God who provides.

‘God’s Providence Is Mine Inheritance’. These words are to be found on the front of an old building in the City of Chester in the North of England. They can probably be attributed to those who lived in a previous building on the site and were spared from the plague. Others, most notably the Earl of Cork in the seventeenth century, have taken these words for their family motto, though I suspect that they may have been thinking of the words in a different light (‘Mine Inheritance is God’s Providence’), rather than expressing a trust in God to provide for the future!