Franciscan at Home

“Have you heard something? Let it die with you. Be brave, it will not make you burst!” – Sirach 19:10

Though I tell people that I’m a theologian (which is technically true), I’m really a Church historian. I was attracted to the study of Church history starting in high school because I was interested in how people, stories, and examples from our history should inform our teaching, evangelization, interpretation, and internal Church decision-making now. The major question for the catechist is how properly to use the past in our present efforts. In the midst of the National Eucharistic Revival, this question is very relevant, as there are Eucharistic devotions, teachings, and movements that most people have never encountered and that, at first glance, might seem strange or shocking. I would like to present a guiding principle for using history to spur Eucharistic belief and devotion, followed by three examples from history that show this principle in action and that I believe can bear fruit now.

Historical Moments

The most common mistake we make when we discover something interesting or edifying from history is to say, “look what they did back then; we should do it now.” This approach, which comes from the excitement of discovering something of value, neglects the importance of cultural and social context, as well as theological development. Instead of doing that, let’s present historical episodes, ideas, and developments as what they are: unique moments when the Church, or a segment of the Church, realized something it hadn’t realized before or reacted to a new challenge. When we see a teaching or practice arising in its own context, we can learn more and be inspired by its original importance and meaning—like the background of a painting allowing you to see the outline and the details of the foreground.

There are also examples from history of things we have forgotten or have allowed to lie dormant. While it’s true that some practices or emphases should be allowed to fade with the social and cultural situations that originally housed them, others speak to ongoing realities. It takes wisdom, discernment, prayer, and patience in this area to determine the difference between the two.

Eucharistic Controversies

Eucharistic belief develops. This does not mean that we believe “new” things; rather, it means that our understanding of the full truth, which is inexhaustible in this life and always remains partially concealed, continues to grow like a tree from an acorn or an adult from an embryo. There have been moments in history when the Church first “saw” something in a new or different way. In catechesis, these moments can draw our attention to the how and why of orthodoxy and orthopraxy.  One such moment that I like to use in catechesis is the argument over the Eucharist that took place between two ninth-century monks named Ratramnus and Paschasius. The question they debated was whether Christ’s body, seated at the right hand of the Father, was identical to the Body that we receive in the Eucharist. In other words, are they exactly the same body with the same properties?

Pope St. John Paul II devoted about 30 percent of his Theology of the Body (TOB) Catechesis (TOB 24–64) to extensive reflections on Jesus’s teaching in Matthew 5:27–28 regarding the need to avoid “lust” in the recesses of the human heart. St. John Paul II did not focus so intently on this teaching simply to hammer home the evils of lust. Instead, he saw lust as an acute threat to the divine plan for human love, and that plan for love was always his greatest concern. He repeatedly presents the teaching of Jesus not so much as a condemnation of our lustful hearts but as a call to purity of heart for the sake of purified love (TOB 42–59).

St. John Paul II utilizes St. Paul’s teaching that we must “abstain from unchastity” and “keep” the body “with holiness and reverence” (1 Thes 4:3–5) to emphasize that purity of heart has a “more positive than negative” dimension (TOB 54:1–3). Purity necessarily means being free from pollutants that contaminate the heart, but it should never be misconstrued as prudishness or disdain for the sexuality of the body (TOB 44:5–45:3). Authentic purity is found in a positive orientation of the heart that heightens our sense of the dignity and beauty of human sexuality in ourselves and in others.

This whole outlook on purity corresponds with what St. John Paul II calls the “ethos of redemption” (TOB 51:5) and the “life ‘according to the Spirit’” that make the reality of purified love “a new ability of the human being in whom the gift of the Holy Spirit bears fruit” (TOB 56:1). Instead of being anything we can manufacture for ourselves, true purity is given to us “by the power of Christ himself working in man’s innermost [being] through the Holy Spirit” (TOB 51:3). Through re-creation in Christ, we can be given a supernatural outlook on sexuality and new paradigms for our sexual lives.

This installment of the series presents the TOB teachings on purity of heart and sexual modesty as guideposts on the path of re-creation within the relationship of man and woman. These teachings help us better understand how our attitudes, thoughts, and desires should be impacted by God’s grace; from there, we can formulate a kind of checklist of God’s expectations for our sexual lives.

In Jesus’ Good Shepherd discourse, he describes his and his Father’s shared omnipotence as shepherd over his flock, saying that no one can claim the sheep either in his hand or in the Father’s hand, adding that he and the Father “are one” (Jn 10:30). Many of those around him prepare to stone him to death on the spot because they perceive this claim to be blasphemous. He does not, however, respond to the raging crowd in the manner we might expect theologically.

After briefly pointing to the authority of the works he does as bearing witness to his divine origin from the Father, Jesus directs the crowd to the absolute authority of the Psalms, which makes the same claim, “you are gods” (Jn 10:34, cf. Ps 82:6). He interrupts himself to add a crucial point: “Scripture cannot be nullified.” Jesus here illustrates an important biblical principle: one cannot simply ignore a difficult passage, even one that seems to be calling human beings “gods.” What results is a beautiful a fortiori argument: If Scripture calls them “gods,” how much more ought no one to object that Jesus, the Son of God, claims oneness with the Father. The crowd has no word to respond to this claim.[1]

How do we understand this claim, “you are gods”? Put simply, the Holy Spirit makes gods of the worshipping faithful. This is what St. Peter illustrates in one of his epistles when he writes that we are made to be “partakers of the divine nature” (2 Pet 1:4). We know from the rest of the Gospel of John and the consequent Tradition that implied in the Son’s claim about his union with the Father is the reality that the Holy Spirit effects a similar union between believers and God. So, when we are deified, or made divine, does that mean that we cease to be human? To borrow a phrase from St. Paul, by no means! That is the good news about deification—we remain fully human when we are made divine.

So how then are we made divine without the annihilation of our humanity? To answer that question, we need to turn to the Fathers of the Church, who give us some important foundational principles. They especially help to illumine the divinization of humanity. St. Irenaeus of Lyons, whom Pope Francis named a Doctor of the Church, puts it this way: “the only true and steadfast Teacher, the Word of God, our Lord Jesus Christ, . . . did, through His transcendent love, become what we are, that He might bring us to be even what He is Himself.”[2] Athanasius formulated the same principle when he said, “He was incarnate that we might be made God.”[3] This divinization, or theosis, does not obliterate human nature. Instead, human nature is elevated and filled with divine life.[4] Taking the lead from the Fathers, our understanding of this doctrine of deification is fundamentally Christ-centered. The extent to which God became man is the extent to which man becomes God. Though our “person” never becomes God, the good news is that we are radically elevated into supernatural life through the gift of the Spirit.

The conciliar tradition helps us to see the importance of humanity’s unchanging nature, especially in light of the definition of the hypostatic union at the Council of Chalcedon of 451. In this definition, we confess that the divine and human natures of Christ are united in the Son’s one hypostasis (that is, person) “without confusion, without change, without division, without separation.” This understanding of the union between the divine and human natures in Christ is crucial for our understanding how our humanity could be filled with divine life without undergoing an essential change. For example, in the Eucharist, the bread and wine are changed substantially into the body, blood, soul, and divinity of Christ. We call this change transubstantiation because only the accidental qualities of bread and wine remain, while the essence itself is changed. We are not “transubstantiated,” so to speak, in theosis.

Pentecost, the sending of the Holy Spirit, ushered in the final stage of God’s plan of salvation.

“If we can nurture in a [person] the emergence and the victory of spiritual liberty, we have accomplished our task. If not, all is lost and the Christian life will weaken into childishness; it will harden into formalism; and finally it will disappear.”  —Jean Mouroux, From Baptism to the Act of Faith 

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Pope St. John Paul II explicitly linked his Theology of the Body (TOB) catechesis[i] with the synod that he convoked to explore “the tasks that Christ gives to marriage and to the Christian family” (TOB 1:5). In his post-synodal document, Familiaris Consortio, he states, “To bear witness to the inestimable value of the indissolubility and fidelity of marriage is one of the most precious and most urgent tasks of Christian couples in our times.” In that same section of Familiaris Consortio, he specifically mentions the modern mentality that “openly mocks the commitment of spouses to fidelity,” and he calls on the whole Church “to reconfirm the good news of the definitive nature of that conjugal love that has in Christ its foundation and strength.”[ii]

St. John Paul II sensed an urgent need to uphold the complete fidelity and absolute indissolubility of marriage because he clearly understood that the most fundamental truths of the Gospel are at stake in these issues. He understood that the inherent dignity of the human person and our vocation to sacrificial, Christlike love are at stake in these issues. Ultimately, he understood that the issues of fidelity and indissolubility ask us whether we believe the Good News that, despite our concupiscence, humans are capable of unconditional love for an entire lifetime on account of our redemption in Jesus Christ. Conversely, St. John Paul II saw temptations to infidelity and divorce as manifestations of our concupiscence, with calls to change the doctrines of our faith on these issues representing a tragic capitulation to sinfulness and human frailty in the face of life’s difficulties.

The previous installment of this series presented the interpersonal meaning of the unitive aspect of marriage embedded in St. John Paul II’s reflections on marital consent. Interpreted through the lens of TOB, marital consent uniquely affirms the worth of the person by declaring, “I acknowledge you as my spouse and give myself to you fully and unconditionally all the days of my life. Being with you in this way is worth the gift of my whole life because you are worth the gift of my whole life. I renounce all others to be with you and you alone in this way because you are utterly unique and irreplaceable and worth sacrificing all others.”

To continue that theme, this installment of the series focuses on the fidelity (“I renounce all others to be with you and you alone”) and indissolubility (“all the days of my life”) required to live out this proclamation of worth in the daily life of the couple. We will also consider the spiritual truths at stake in these issues.

The General Directory for Catechesis (1997) and the National Directory for Catechesis (2005)

General Directory for Catechesis (1997)

In light of the publication of the Catechism, it was decided that the General Catechetical Directory (GCD) was in need of revision. A portion of the task was given to the Congregation for the Clergy’s International Catechetical Commission (COINCAT). Even before the members and experts of COINCAT gathered, a thorough, international consultation on the proposed revision of the GCD had been conducted. The presidents of episcopal conference catechetical commissions, representatives of catechetical institutes and organizations throughout the world, and the members of COINCAT were asked to respond to a series of specific questions relating to a proposed revision of the GCD. Those responses were collated by the staff of the Congregation for the Clergy and woven into the Instrumentum Laboris, a document over seventy pages in length. The Instrumentum Laboris reflected three fundamental perspectives on the proposed revision of the GCD. The first seemed to advise only a slight revision, the second a moderate revision, and the third a more substantial rewrite.

The Ninth Plenary Session of COINCAT was held in Rome in September of 1994. Jose Cardinal Sanchez, prefect of the Congregation for the Clergy and president of COINCAT, called upon Archbishop Sepe, the Congregation’s secretary, to provide the more specific outline of COINCAT’s work for the week. In this outline, Archbishop Sepe first addressed the necessity for the revision of the GCD. He noted that it had been almost twenty-five years since its publication, that several important magisterial documents had been issued, and that much renewal had been undertaken within the ministry of the Word. He also pointed out that the pope had issued the call for a “New Evangelization,” that there had been significant development in the catechetical sciences, and that the Catechism had been recently published. Quoting Pope John Paul II in Catechesi Tradendae, Archbishop Sepe underscored the importance of the GCD and the need for its revision: “a Directory remains a fundamental document for the stimulation and orientation of the renewal of catechesis in the whole Church . . . it remains the norm of reference.”[1]

Archbishop Sepe then provided the parameters for the revision of the GCD. Based on the findings of the surveys, a moderate revision was indicated. That meant that all material that remained useful and relevant would be included in the revision; the universal character of the document would be preserved; and the information contained in magisterial documents published after the GCD would be incorporated where possible. Also, the Catechism would thoroughly inform the revision.[2]

The provisional scheme for the revised GCD has an introduction, five parts, and a conclusion. The general outline is as follows:

Introduction: The Purpose of the General Catechetical Directory

Part One: The Ministry of the Word of God

Part Two: The Christian Message

Part Three: The Pedagogy of the Faith

Part Four: Those to Whom the Catechesis Is Directed

Part Five: Catechesis in the Pastoral Action of the Church

Conclusion: Catechesis: The Work of the Holy Spirit[3]

The work of revising the GCD was divided into three main segments: Part One and the conclusion, Parts Two and Three, and Parts Four and Five, with one day of COINCAT’s plenary session spent on each. The last day would be spent formulating a table of contents for the revised Directory and suggesting the next steps to take for the timely completion of the project.

To this provisional scheme the working group added some criteria for redaction of the GCD. These criteria did not have the benefit of revision within the working group because there simply was not enough time to do so. Therefore, the criteria were understood as a provisional first draft subject to later revision. They were as follows:

1. Continuity and enrichment. The present General Catechetical Directory comes with valuable elements. We should seek improvement by adding that which seems to be necessary.
2. Be mindful of events that followed the publication of the General Catechetical Directory in 1971: the two synods regarding catechesis; the apostolic exhortations Evangelii Nuntiandi and Catechesi Tradendae; the 1983 Code of Canon Law; the encyclicals Redemptoris Missio and Veritatis Splendor; and finally, the publication of the Catechism.
3. In the new structure of the General Catechetical Directory there are elements that should be replaced in view of a new synthetic ordering.
4. Literal citations of the documents of the Magisterium should be placed in the new text.
5. The four parts should be presented as criteria of the unity of life in Christ, the aim of catechesis.[4]