#10: Fundamentalism

I have a friend who attends a “non-denominational” Christian church who says that Catholics don’t believe in the literal, infallible and inerrant truth of the Bible.  Is this true?

Well, your friend is both right and wrong.   It sounds like your pal supports a fundamentalist approach to our scriptures which declares verbal inerrancy, infallibility, and literal truth of the Bible in every detail.   In this the words of the Bible are believed to be plain and simple:  their meaning is self-evident and does not need to be interpreted.   All that is required is that it be read in faith, with prayer for the guidance of the Holy Spirit. 

Now, if we take this to mean that anyone asking for an accurate interpretation will be given one without any research necessary, then the multiplicity of interpretations, even among fundamentalists themselves, should give people a gnawing sense that the Holy Spirit is not doing its job very effectively. 

We run into all sorts of problems when we read the Bible literally, that is, without trying to interpret its meaning.  Noted Catholic Scripture scholar Fr. Eugene Laverdiere once said “Fundamentalism is not a particular interpretation of the Bible, but rather the lack of any interpretation.”

As Catholics we do not adhere to the literal truth of all the words in the Bible, because we don’t believe that all of them were meant to be understood literally.  There are several literary forms other than chronological, scientific history represented in the bible: prose, poetry, religious history, prophesy, apocalyptic, fiction, myth, etc. and in each case we must know this literary genre to understand the meaning correctly, just as we would do with any other piece of literature.   There are people who spend their whole lives researching whether or not a man can live three days in the belly of the whale, entirely missing the profound spiritual truth found in the allegorical story about Jonah.

The church states that the Bible is "humankind's experience of God" written down.  We recognize that there was a long, complex process from the original inspiration to the written words found in the Bible today and if we are going to discover the meaning of our ancient sacred texts we need to be as informed as possible of their context, literary form, and the author’s historical situation and original intention.   

The church states that:

• Revelation is first and foremost God revealing God’s self in human history, and Jesus is the high point of this revelation of God to human beings. 
• Only secondarily is revelation to be understood as the written expression of and witness to God's revealing of God’s self. 

In other words, our faith is in a living God not slavish adherence to words on a page. 

So, in short, we DO believe scripture to be the "inspired" and “inerrant” revelation of God to which human beings have given expression and witnessed to in words.  Scripture is not apart from tradition but rather a privileged moment within our tradition, for truly it is the Church which gave us the Bible, and not the Bible which gave us the Church.

Our Dogmatic Constitution on Divine Revelation from 1965 reads, "Since God speaks in sacred scripture through men in human fashion, the interpreter of sacred scripture, in order to see clearly what God wanted to communicate to us, should carefully investigate what meaning the sacred writers really intended, and what God wanted to manifest by means of their words.”

The bible may indeed hold all truths, but not everything in the bible is “literally true” in our modern understanding of the word.

#9: Twins

Do you have many questions submitted each week that you choose from?
Nope. In fact nobody submitted a question for me this week, so with all the discussion about resurrection lately in our scripture readings and our recent celebrations of All Saints Day and All Souls Day, I thought this little parable (one of my favorites) might be a meaningful submission for this week’s column. It presents an interesting twist to ponder…

Once upon a time, a set of twins were conceived in the same womb. Weeks passed, and the twins developed. As their awareness grew, they laughed for joy, “Isn’t it great that we were conceived? Isn’t it great to be alive?” Together the twins explored their world. When they found their mother’s cord that gave them life they sang for joy, “How great is our mother’s love that she shares her own life with us.”

As the weeks stretched into months the twins noticed how much each was changing. “What does this mean?” asked the one. “It means that our stay in this world is drawing to an end,” said the other. “But I don’t want to go,” said the one. “I want to stay here always.” “We have no choice,” said the other, “but maybe there is life after birth!” “But how can it be?” responded the one. “Don’t we shed our life cord? How is life possible without it? Besides, we have seen evidence that others were here before us and none of them have returned to tell us that there is life after birth.”

And so the one fell into deep despair saying, “If conception ends with birth, what is the purpose of life in the womb? It is meaningless! Maybe there is no mother at all.”

“But there has to be,” protested the other. “How else did we get here? How do we remain alive?” “Have you ever seen our mother?” said the one. “Maybe she lives in our minds. Maybe we made her up because the idea made us feel good.” Thus, while one raved and despaired, the other resigned himself to birth. He placed his hands in the trust of the mother.

Hours passed into days and days fell into weeks, and it came time….both knew that their birth was at hand and both feared what they did not know.

And as the one was the first to be conceived, so he was the first to be born. The other followed after. They cried as they were born into the light. They coughed up fluid, and they gasped the dry air; and when they were sure that they had been born, they opened their eyes and they found themselves cradled in the warm love of the mother. They lay open-mouthed, awestruck at the beauty of the mother that they never could have imagined.” (Author anonymous)

#8: Resurrection

What is our understanding of the phrase, "...the resurrection of the body," in our creed?

Welp, I guess my “warm-up questions” are now over! Resurrection. Wowza! A big mystery indeed. Here are my 600 little words on this mighty subject for what they are worth. Providentially, we will touching on this topic at our next “Fermenting Faith” gathering on Thursday, Nov. 6th at 7PM. I’m sure we will all be appreciating a little wine that night when we are trying to wrap our heads around the baffling mystery of the bodily resurrection. (All are welcome. Childcare provided. Drop on by.)

The Gospels assure us that, like Jesus’ birth, the resurrection was physical. Jesus’ tomb was empty, people could touch him, he ate food, he was not a ghost. The full nature of his physical body is a mystery, but in some real way the apostles related to the risen Jesus in a physical manner.

“To believe that Jesus Christ was raised from the dead, the whole of the Christian creed in a single line, is to believe that at the center of things there is a power who is Lord of the universe and fully in charge, irrespective of falling civilizations, the apparent triumph of chaos over order, and the presence of death itself. The earliest Christians used to have only a single line to their creed: Jesus is Lord. For them, that said enough. It said everything. It said that at the center of all things there is a gracious, personal God, and that this God is powerful enough and loving enough to underwrite everything.” (Ron Rolheiser)

Jesus knew this truth. In his darkest moment, when everyone was turning on him and he knew that his brutal, lonely death was imminent, he still prayed in the garden, “Father, all things are possible for you.” By all human standards, Jesus knew he was going to die a failure, and he was deeply troubled by this reality, but yet he never lost his hope in God.

#7: Prayer

I used to really enjoy prayer, but now I find it so dry and boring.  What happened?  Am I doing something wrong? 

I find it comforting that almost every saint confesses to having had a strong aversion to prayer at sometime in their life.  Even St. Teresa of Avila, known as our patron saint of prayer, after an initial deep fervor experienced 18 years of absolute boredom.  She said that sometimes she would have rather scrubbed the bathroom floor than spend a half an hour in silent prayer!   But even though she spent most of her life in the throes of the desert with only a trickle of consolation keeping her faith life alive, she still declares emphatically, “Believe me – and do not let anyone deceive you by showing you a road other than that of prayer.”  She said when it comes to prayer, we must be determined…in fact, we must be determined to be determined and allow nothing to derail us or discourage us from our determination to pray.

Mother Theresa’s journals, to the surprise of many people, recently revealed the same experience of dryness.  She says she had some sixty years of feelings of emptiness and desolation in prayer.   The pattern that we discover about prayer when we study the great saints and mystics, is that “prayer is easy only for beginners and for those who are already saints, but during all the long years in between its hard work.” (Rolheiser)  The “dark night of the soul” is a reality for most, if not all believers at one time or another.

So, if we find our prayer to be dry more often than not, we should take heart…we are in mighty good company. 

#6: Money

Why do we talk about money in church so often?

The short answer to this question is because Jesus talked about money often. Our relationship with wealth is without question one of, if not, THE most predominant subjects found in our scriptures and a central topic in most other mainline religions as well. There are over 2,400 verses in the Bible concerning finances. Jesus talked about money more than anything else except the Kingdom of God. Over half of Jesus' parables and 1 of every 7 verses in the Gospel of Luke talk about money or wealth. So, it's obviously important to our living out our faith and therefore more than fair game to talk about in church. In fact, we would be remiss if we didn't.

However, tithing is really not about money at all. God doesn't need our money. ALL things belong to God. All that we have and own is just on lend for a few years. Tithing is an issue of trust.

#5: Sign of the Cross

When did the sign of the cross originate? What does it mean? What is the significance of tracing little crosses on our forehead, lips and heart just before the Gospel is read at Mass? 

The practice of tracing the sign of the cross (right hand to forehead, heart, left and then right shoulder, sometime accompanied by the words “In the name of the Father, Son & the Holy Spirit, Amen”) is most prominent in the Roman Catholic Church (that would be us) but is also practiced in the Eastern Orthodox, Coptic, Lutheran, Anglican, and Episcopalian churches.

The history of the sign of the cross goes back as far as Tertullian, an early church father who lived between A.D. 160 and 220. Tertullian wrote, "In all our travels and movements, in all our coming in and going out, in putting off our shoes, at the bath, at the table, in lighting our candles, in lying down, in sitting down, in doing whatever occupies us, we mark our foreheads with the sign of the cross."

Originally, it was just a small cross traced with the thumb on the forehead. We don’t really know exactly when the practice changed to the full upper-body version, but we do know that the switch had occurred by the eleventh century A.D., because A Prayer Book commissioned by King Henry instructs to "mark with the holy cross the four sides of the body."

The sign of the cross can mean many things...

#4, part 2: Eucharistic Prayer

Could you explain what's going on theologically during the Eucharistic prayer? 

A friend of mine was recently telling a story about her college age son. I knew that she and her family had drifted from the church for a variety of reasons…some of them pretty good. Some of us may be wrestling with similar reasons ourselves. At one point in her story, as a sideline filler, she said very nonchalantly “and well, of course my Son doesn’t believe in Jesus.” 

I remember this comment because she really made belief in Jesus sound so passe’…so “last week.” She and her son, in her words are “spiritual, but not religious.” People who believe in God but not Jesus as God.

Now I’m all for a mature respect for people’s experience and beliefs. It is right and good that we seek and foster all that is common among the great religious traditions and promote what unites us not what divides. But, it got me thinking, what is so distinctive about being Christian anyway? Not in a judgmental, circle-the-wagons, exclusionary kind of way, but rather, concretely, how would the way I look at things and understand my purpose in life change if I didn’t believe in Jesus.