Washington D.C., Jan 31, 2019 / 12:13 am (CNA/EWTN News).- Following the passing of a New York law legalizing abortion up to the point of birth, pro-life leaders are calling on U.S. President Donald Trump to act on his yet-unfulfilled campaign promise … […]
Park City, Utah, Jan 30, 2019 / 11:13 pm (CNA).- The Satanic Temple shocked Catholics when it scheduled a purported black mass at Harvard University in 2014.
While the temple founders have repeatedly claimed it is a religion, not a hoax or a performan… […]
By now we’re all familiar with “Uncle Ted,” the nickname Archbishop Theodore McCarrick gave himself. We now know of the sinister association that epithet had—McCarrick would refer to the priests and seminarians who were the […]
Los Angeles, Calif., Jan 30, 2019 / 05:01 pm (CNA/EWTN News).- Christ, the Incarnate Word, is the aim of human living and all of history, Bishop Daniel Flores of Brownsville said Monday in an address about St. Thomas Aquinas’ interpretation of scripture.
“Thomas is a theological witness to a truth of Catholic Faith, namely that after the full revelation of Christ’s historical appearance, the Church has access to the aim of history. Hence, all the faithful now have the capacity by spiritual instinct and knowledge of the Gospel to see themselves figured in Christ,” Flores said Jan. 28 during his lecture for St. Thomas Day at Thomas Aquinas College in Santa Paula, Calif.
“This, together with the gift of the Spirit guiding our reception of the history of Christ, is what is new about the New Testament revelation. And this is why the Fathers of the Church, following Saint Paul, call the definitive revelation in Christ an ‘unveiling’. What is unveiled? The aim of human living and all of history.”
The college celebrates the feast of St. Thomas Aquinas with Mass, a lecture, and leisure. In addition to his lecture, Flores also delivered a homily on charity.
Flores has been Bishop of Brownsville since 2009. He earned a doctorate in theology from the Angelicum in 2000, studying Thomas’ theology.
The bishop’s lecture addressed some aspects of Thomas’ commentaries on scripture, noting that “lecturing on Scripture texts was Thomas’ main occupation,” and intending to encourage the reading of these commentaries so as better to understand the saint’s “profoundly Christological” vision.
Thomas commented on the Gospels of Matthew and John; all of the Pauline epistles, including that to the Hebrews; and the Psalms, Jeremiah, Lamentations, Isaiah, and Job.
Flores highlighted “Thomas’ intense interest in the literal sense of the Scriptures,” which he said was related to the mendicant movements of his age and their interest “in the literal following of Christ.”
He began by reflecting on the “literalness” of Christ, saying that in the Incarnation “God expressed Himself literally; Jesus is the historically literal expression of the divine wisdom. Thus, it is essential to Catholic Christology to profess that the Second Person of the Trinity literally acts and expresses himself through his sanctified humanity … He translated Himself to us, in a language we could understand. That literal language is the humanity of Christ.”
The bishop then turned to Thomas’ writing on a controversy over the literal sense of scripture, saying the saint’s interest was “directly related to protecting the literalness of Christ’s teaching and example, and to accounting for the Old Testament as primarily prophetic and intentionally preparatory in nature.”
Following the Second Council of Constantinople, Thomas was opposed to the fifth century bishop Theodore of Mopsuestia, who denied that the Old Testament prophets ever intended to say anything literally about Christ, but rather that they wrote about other things, and their words were subsequently adapted to Christ.
Theodore’s belief “undermines any understanding of the Old Testament as words from the Word, preparing for the Word’s expressed manifestation,” Flores noted.
In Theodore’s understanding, New Testament authors appropriate the words of Old Testament authors “at will”, without regard to the original authors’ intention. Thomas saw that this view “implicates [the Apostles and Evangelists] in a falsification of textual integrity.”
Thomas in fact saw that Theodore’s belief was “a Christological error,” Flores said.
“The Lord Jesus knows what the intentions of the Old Testament authors are, and it is his knowledge, confided to the authors of the New Testament, that sustains the propriety of New Testament citation of the Old. It is the literal historicity of the WORD made flesh (expresse manifestavit se), the One who spoke through the prophets prior to his Incarnation, that gives the Apostles (and the Church) access to Old Testament intentions.”
After discussing Thomas’ treatment of Theodore’s error, Flores turned to Thomas’ “Rule of Saint Jerome” on how some Old Testament words and deeds “have both an Old Testament historical referent and a literal sense extending to Christ.”
In cases where the words regarding an Old Testament event “exceed the condition of the histories, then the exceeded description itself extends to a literal application to later realities.” This principle both respects the immediate historical context of the Old Testament narrative, and allow the words to refer also to Christ.
For Thomas, the Christian can read the Old Testament as referring to both its immediate historical intentionality and literally to Christ because God can “accommodate history to signify his intentions. Related figurative senses are present in the thing described.”
“Thus, Theodore … lacks an understanding of the unified intentionality governing the whole of the Old Testament aimed toward Christ,” the bishop stated. “Doubtless, Thomas saw Theodore’s reading of Scripture as ultimately rooted in a Christological error. Theodore has no room for a real relation between the facta of the Old Testament and the facta of the New; he has no room for the intentional governance of history by the WORD.”
Finally, Flores turned to figuration, whereby Old Testament realities are figures of realities in the New Covenant, or even later on in Israel’s history. This principle “is on full display” at the Easter Vigil, he noted.
In his commentary on the Psalms, Thomas looks for figuration, a practice “rooted in a pre-critical theological conviction that Israel’s history was governed by a special providence, a grace that orders its signification in a way that is anticipatory of the final revelation of God’s historical intent in Christ. This serves as the basis for a Christian reading of the psalms that respects the history of the psalmists. Figuration, in this tradition, (and here I must insist Thomas is very much in the spirit of the Fathers) is rooted in history, not in words; in events understood a certain way, not in poetic allusions.”
For example, in Psalm 21, “The history narrated in the Psalm is not about David, it is about Christ. This is its literal sense,” Flores said, summarizing Thomas’ commentary.
“On this reading, David (the psalmist) has a vision of the Passion, and wrote of it. The psalmist’s own sufferings are secondarily referenced in the psalm, but only to the extent they are figured within Christ’s sufferings. David saw himself in Christ; he did not see Christ in himself.”
This underlies spiritual progress: that “it is more perfect to see oneself figured in Christ than it is to see Christ figured in oneself. This is because Christ is the supreme locus of intelligibility, and I understand myself better if I see myself figured in him.”
“This is the distinction Thomas wishes to preserve: Israel’s history pre-figures New Testament events, yet the prophets had moments of imaginative vision with understanding that saw from afar the Christian history: they read the contemporary events they lived figured within the history of Christ: Prophets and Kings longed to see what you see, but did not see it.”
Thomas’ explanation of Psalm 21 “as literally about Christ and figuratively about David (effectively reversing the ordinary way of explicating figuration)” grants David “a perspective of vision that is equivalent to ours,” Flores commented.
“We know the history of Christ as literal history, and can see ourselves in it … The eternally generated WORD in the flesh literally and historically expresses what every human life and what all history is really about.”
Flores concluded, reflecting on the structure of the Mass: “the sacramental re-presentation of the historical founding Word-event of the Passion, death and Resurrection of Christ comes after the reading of the Scriptures.”
“The Paschal Sacrifice is thus positioned to unveil the fundamental ratio through which the Scriptures just read are rightly understood. The literal body of Christ appears after the worded Scriptural explications, just as the Incarnation follows and clarifies the prior Scriptural pedagogy. And yet the Scriptures read prior to the Eucharistic Sacrifice guide our understanding of what is to be enacted, just as the Scriptural record prepared the way for faith in the Incarnation. It is a reciprocal pedagogy of grace.”
For Bishop Flores, figuration is essential to liturgy and theology.
“The Christological truth revealed in Scripture and enacted – made plain and made present – in the Eucharistic intervention is the basis for understanding rightly all subsequent figurative readings, be they moral, ecclesial, or eschatological. And the aim is that we see our lives figured within Christ thus plainly manifested. Of the Eucharist as of the Incarnation itself, we can truly say: Se nobis expresse manifestavit.”
Richmond, Va., Jan 30, 2019 / 04:00 pm (CNA).- A controversial Virginia bill which would permit abortion during labor will not be moving out of the subcommittee, as the latest attempt to widely expand abortion access falls short.
HB 2491, was… […]
Caracas, Venezuela, Jan 30, 2019 / 03:01 pm (ACI Prensa).- The Archbishop Emeritus of Caracas expressed his hope Tuesday that Venezuelan president Nicolas Maduro would step down from office, heeding the pope’s call for peace in the country.
Maduro was sworn in for a second term as president Jan. 10, after winning a contested election in which oppositon candidates were barred from running or imprisoned. Venezuela’s bishops have called his new term illegitimate, and opposition leader Juan Guaido has declared himself the country’s interim president.
“I hope Maduro, who always appeals to the pope’s words, heeds those calls, and steps down from office since his administration has been absolutely harmful for the Venezuelan people,” Cardinal Jorge Liberato Urosa Savino told ACI Prensa, CNA’s Spanish language sister agency, Jan. 29.
Cardinal Urosa, 76, retired as Archbishop of Caracas in July 2018.
“We Venezuelan bishops always feel the constant support of the Holy Father in our position critical of the government,” the cardinal added.
On his return flight from Panama to Rome Jan. 28 Pope Francis said he was frightened by “the shedding of blood” in Venezuela and urged reaching a just and peaceful solution to the crisis.
“What is it that scares me? The shedding of blood. And there I also ask greatness to help, to those who can help and resolve the problem,” the Holy Father said.
Since Jan. 21, at least 40 people have died and hundreds have been arrested amid protests against Maduro.
And after the praying the Angelus in Panama Jan. 27, the pope expressed his concern for the Venezuelan people and asked “the Lord that a just and peaceful solution be sought and achieved to overcome the crisis, respecting human rights and exclusively desiring the good of all the inhabitants of the country.”
Cardinal Urosa told ACI Prensa that “the numerous messages of the Holy Father Francis regarding the socio-political conflict in Venezuela, and the message in Panama, are along the lines of promoting a peaceful solution and promoting the defense of human rights and avoiding the suffering of the people.”
“And we are grateful for that constant concern of Pope Francis. It seems a very good message to me,”
the archbishop emeritus added.
Cardinal Urosa said that “for quite some time there has been almost no contact with the national government” on the part of the country’s bishops. “We are open to those contacts, but since we maintain a position critical of a government that has ruined Venezuela, and has caused so much harm to so many people, they are not approaching us.”
“I just returned from Rome, and I have no information that there have been any negotiations between the Venezuelan bishops and Maduro’s government,” the cardinal said.
He was responding to a recent Twitter post which attributed to him knowledge of an agreement by which Marduro and some of his officials could receive asylum in the Apostolic Nunciature in Caracas.
The cardinal also recalled the Venezuelan bishops’ Jan. 9 exhortation which “called the claim of Maduro and his people to continue to govern the country as morally unacceptable after the resounding failure of his administration. And we called the May 2018 elections illegitimate and false.”
Since Maduro succeeded Hugo Chávez as president of Venezuela in 2013, Venezuela has been marred by violence and social upheaval. Under the socialist government, the country has seen severe shortages and hyperinflation, and millions have emigrated.
Guaido, head of the National Assembly, has been recognized as Venezuelan president by the US, Canada, and several Latin American nations. The European Union has said that if Maduro does not call for new elections within eight days, it will also recognize Guaido.
Venezuela’s Supreme Court has banned Guaido from leaving the country, and has frozen his bank accounts.
Maduro has said he would talk to the opposition, but ruled out holding early presidential elections, which aren’t due until 2025.
This article was originally published by our sister agency, ACI Prensa. It has been translated and adapted by CNA.
South Bend, Ind., Jan 30, 2019 / 02:00 pm (CNA).- Bishop Kevin C. Rhoades of the Diocese of Fort Wayne-South Bend has encouraged students at the University of Notre Dame to join the Knights of Columbus.
Rhodes, whose diocese includes the coll… […]
Apologies for a long post. I don’t have time to write a short one. Canonist Edward Condon has an essay at First Things wherein he calls for the excommunication of NY Gov. Andrew Cuomo, not on the ground […]
Lansing, Mich., Jan 30, 2019 / 12:14 pm (CNA).- The author of a book on Catholic teaching regarding homosexuality and chastity is accused of forming a sexual relationship with a minor about 15 years ago.
Daniel Mattson is the author of the 2017 book “Why I Don’t Call Myself Gay: How I reclaimed my sexual reality and found peace,” and a frequent speaker on the Church’s teachings on homosexuality. He is closely associated with the Courage apostolate and appeared in the 2014 documentary “Desire of the Everlasting Hills.”
On Monday, a man alleged on Twitter that he and Mattson began in the early 2000s an online relationship that eventually included sexual interaction via webcam and phone. No physical contact is alleged to have taken place.
The man said Mattson provided him with prepaid telephone callings in order to keep the phone sex a secret from his parents. The two spoke almost daily for three or four years, the man alleged.
He said that the relationship began when he was 13 and Mattson was around 30.
“He knew I was only 13,” the man tweeted Jan. 28.
Eventually, the man alleged, the relationship came to an end. He said Mattson had a relationship with a woman, and the two stopped talking.
“Dan now tweets about homosexuality being a sin. He seems kind and only wants ‘children of God’ to be treated with dignity/respect. But he still believes my relationship with my husband is a sin,” the man tweeted.
“He needs to understand that he has a responsibility. He’s hurting young kids lives.”
Mattson did not respond to a request for comment.
Mattson’s book recounts his own experience with homosexual attraction. He has said that he had his first homosexual experience at age 32, and that eventually, after dating a woman because of his desire for family life, he converted to Catholicism and embraced the Church’s teachings on homosexuality, committing to live chastely.
It is not yet clear whether Mattson will face charges in connection to the man’s allegation.
Father Philip Bochanski, executive director of Courage, said he was “devastated” to learn of the allegation against Mattson.
“The same afternoon that I learned of this very disturbing situation, I immediately reported the information I had to the Safe Environment Coordinator of the Diocese of Bridgeport (where the Courage Office is located) and to the Child Protective Services office of the State of Michigan (where Dan resides), as I am required to do by civil law and diocesan policy,” he said in a Jan. 30 statement.
Mattson has never been an employee of Courage International, but has shared his story at conferences organized by Courage, and in “Desire of the Everlasting Hills,” which Courage International produced, Bochanski said.
He noted that the alleged misconduct occurred “more than 14 years ago, years before [Mattson’s] involvement with the Courage apostolate,” and said that neither he nor his predecessor, Fr. Paul Check, had previously received sexual allegations against Mattson.
“Mattson will not be invited to speak or write, or to take any leadership positions, on behalf of Courage International for the foreseeable future. I will reserve further comment on this matter until the civil authorities have made a final determination in the case.”
“I know how painful this news will be to many people, particularly those who are survivors of abuse in their own lives or in the life of a loved one,” Bochanski said.
“I am praying earnestly for a just resolution to this matter, and particularly for the needs of the man who has brought this situation to light. I urge anyone who is aware of an incident of sexual misconduct or any kind of abuse involving a child, youth or other vulnerable person, to contact civil authorities immediately.”
Vatican City, Jan 30, 2019 / 04:12 am (CNA/EWTN News).- Everyone should pray the Stations of the Cross, Pope Francis said Wednesday, revealing that he always has with him a pocket-size book of “Via Crucis” meditations to pray with when he h… […]
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