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Saints

Do Catholics Worship Saints?

Carl Olson

October 10, 2019 7:44 am October 10, 2019

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A few years ago I gave a Theology on Tap talk about the Communion of Saints. Afterward, an evangelical Protestant attending the talk asked, “But isn’t that just another form…

A few years ago I gave a Theology on Tap talk about the Communion of Saints. Afterward, an evangelical Protestant attending the talk asked, “But isn’t that just another form of necromancy?”

“No,” I replied, “because necromancy is an attempt to manipulate the spirit world in order to find out about the future.” Praying to a saint, I explained, isn’t a manipulation of the dead, nor is it aimed at foretelling the future, but rather it is about having a real relationship with our brothers and sisters in Christ who are now in the presence of God.

“Then why even bother to pray to saints?” he asked. “Why not just pray to God directly?” “If I were to ask you to pray for me,” I said, “would you do it?” “Yes, I would,” he admitted. As a former evangelical myself, I know how committed many Protestants are to praying for one another. After all, the apostle James exhorted his readers to “pray for one another, that you may be healed. The fervent prayer of a righteous person is very powerful” (Jas 5:16).

That brief exchange pointed to some of the key, underlying issues when discussing the Catholic approach to saints with Protestants — usually, evangelicals or fundamentalists who dismiss the Communion of Saints. These issues are summarized well by Father Josef Neuner, S.J., and Father Heinrich Roos, S.J., in their book “The Teaching of the Catholic Church” (Alba House, 1967). It is a “historical fact,” they wrote, “that the loss of sense of ecclesiality, the dissolution as it were of the Communion of Saints, and the preaching of a purely interior religion have always led to a protest against the Church’s veneration of the saints.”

In other words, those who hold an anemic understanding of the nature of the Church will end up misunderstanding the devotion and veneration shown to the saints by Catholics and Eastern Orthodox (as well as some Anglicans and other Protestants). The Church, rightly understood, is a Communion of Saints — not just here on earth, but also in heaven and purgatory. The Church is not only earthly, but also divine, just as Jesus is fully human and fully God. And while those who make up the Body of Christ, the Church, are individuals, they are also members (see 1 Cor 12:27), having a relationship with the Head of the Church, and also with one another. The saints are, wrote Father Hans Urs von Balthasar, like “open treasure-houses accessible to all, like flowing fountains at which everyone can drink. Nothing in the Communion of Saints is private, although everything is personal.”

Put another way, the saints in heaven are just as real and immediate to us as those sitting beside us at Mass. In fact, they are even closer, as they are able to relate to us perfectly, being holy and complete, freed from sin and the distractions of this world. They are alive — truly alive, filled with divine life and enjoying perfect union with God. They are, in the words of the Letter to the Hebrews, “a cloud of witnesses” (12:1) surrounding us, helping us and encouraging us.

Many Protestants reject outward (and even inward) expressions of devotion to saints because they fear it smacks of idolatry. But the Church has always been very mindful of this concern. For example, the Second Council of Nicaea, in 787, carefully distinguished between “respectful veneration” shown to saints and “true adoration” which, “according to our faith, is due to God alone.” It also noted that veneration shown to an image (or statue) is veneration given to “the person represented by it.” The author of Hebrews wrote of running the race — that is, living the Christian life — by looking to “Jesus, the leader and perfecter of faith” (12:2). Likewise, the Second Vatican Council noted that by “celebrating the passage of these saints from earth to heaven the Church proclaims the paschal mystery” and “proposes them to the faithful as examples drawing all to the Father through Christ” (Sacrosanctum Concilium, No. 104). United in Christ, we are siblings by grace, the life of God (see Catechism of the Catholic Church, Nos. 1997-98). Yes, worship is due to God alone. But admiring, respecting and loving those who are true disciples of Christ is not worship. Rather, it is befitting among brothers and sisters, which we are in Jesus, by the power of the Holy Spirit, according to the will of the Father.

Carl E. Olson is the editor of Ignatius Insight (www.ignatiusinsight.com). He and his family live in Eugene, Ore.

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Scripture

Biblical Scholarship and Faith

Carl Olson

March 7, 2019 1:06 pm March 7, 2019

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Note: Pope Emeritus Benedict XVI died on Saturday, Dec. 31, 2022 at the age of 95. He served as pope from April 19, 2005, until his resignation on Feb. 28,…

Note: Pope Emeritus Benedict XVI died on Saturday, Dec. 31, 2022 at the age of 95. He served as pope from April 19, 2005, until his resignation on Feb. 28, 2013.

………….

I’ve long thought that Pope Emeritus Benedict XVI has never received full (if any) credit for something that shines through in his many splendid writings: a keen, dry sense of humor.

One of my favorite examples is found in his first “Jesus of Nazareth” book (Doubleday, 2007) in the chapter on the temptations of Jesus. Remarking on the second temptation proffered by the devil to Jesus, Pope Benedict notes how the devil “cites Holy Scripture in order to lure Jesus into his trap.” He points out that the “devil proves to be a Bible expert who can quote the Psalm exactly,” and then wryly observes, “The whole conversation of the second temptation takes the form of a dispute between two Bible scholars.” What a great image!

Rather unexpectly, he refers to the short story “The Antichrist” by the Russian philosopher Vladimir Soloviev, which describes the Antichrist receiving an honorary degree in theology from the University of Tübingen and being “a great Scripture scholar.” Readers familiar with Pope Benedict’s personal history know that in 1966, after serving as a theological expert at the Second Vatican Council, then-Father Joseph Ratzinger accepted a position teaching theology at Tübingen — the epicenter of the historical-critical movement of the 19th century. Historical criticism is an approach to studying Scripture with roots in the Protestant Reformation that emerged in full force in the 17th and 18th centuries; it uses various scholarly and scientific tools (source criticism, form criticism, redaction criticism, etc.) to ascertain the original, or “primitive,” meaning of an ancient text — especially biblical texts. Father Ratzinger, then, was well acquainted with scholars who used historical-critical methods. He also knows how many scholars used these methods to undermine, question and even directly attack Christianity. “The alleged findings of scholarly exegesis,” he wrote, “have been used to put together the most dreadful books that destroy the figure of Jesus and dismantle the faith.”

For example, in 1835, the polemical liberal Protestant writer David Strauss (1808-74), drawing upon the Tübingen school’s work, wrote Das Leben Jesu, kritisch bearbeitet(“The Life of Jesus, Critically Examined”), the most influential “life of Jesus” of the 19th century. He presented Jesus as a fanatical Jewish preacher with delusions of messianic grandeur and insisted the Gospels were mostly legend and folklore. The influence of his bare-bones story of an itinerate preacher who proclaimed the Kingdom can be seen in the work of the modern-day Jesus Seminar, which has rejected as unhistorical or wildly exaggerated nearly every narrative in the Gospels.

Pope Benedict gets right to the heart of the matter: “The common practice today is to measure the Bible against the so-called modern worldview, whose fundamental dogma is that God cannot act in history — that everything to do with God is to be relegated to the domain of subjectivity.”

A perfect poster theologian for this dogmatic subjectivity is the former episcopal bishop John Shelby Spong, who has authored numerous books explaining that nothing in the Gospels can be taken literally or at face value, and that Protestant and Catholic understandings of God as Triune are “heretical.” For Spong, echoing Strauss, everything is about subjective, mystical experience. Oddly enough, this doesn’t stop him from uttering endless judgments on orthodox Christianity with an authoritative arrogance that would make a pope cringe in shame. Spong insists that orthodox Christianity is, in fact, “fundamentalist.” I don’t know if Pope Benedict has read Spong, but he does state that the Antichrist, “with an air of scholarly excellence, tells us that any exegesis that reads the Bible from the perspective of faith in the living God, in order to listen to what God has to say, is fundamentalism.” This entire dispute over interpreting Scripture, he notes, is really “about who God is.” Scholarship is a good thing, of course, but reason without humble faith in the living God can lead to serious error, or ruin. After all, the devil is a Bible scholar — and “he is a liar and the father of lies” (Jn 8:44).

Carl E. Olson is the editor of Ignatius Insight (www.ignatiusinsight.com). He and his family live in Eugene, Ore.

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Science

Catholicism and Science

Carl Olson

December 10, 2018 1:53 pm December 10, 2018

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I recently perused a book with an eye-catching title: “God Revised: How Religion Must Evolve in a Scientific Age” (Palgrave Macmillan, 2013). The author, Galen Guengerich, is a Unitarian pastor…

I recently perused a book with an eye-catching title: “God Revised: How Religion Must Evolve in a Scientific Age” (Palgrave Macmillan, 2013).

The author, Galen Guengerich, is a Unitarian pastor who claims to have found a balanced, middle ground between atheism and fundamentalism. However, the theological musings in the book are about as deep as a mud puddle in Death Valley, and the history isn’t much better. At one point, Guengerich asserts, “It took five hundred years for the Roman Catholic Church to forgive Nicolaus Copernicus for looking into the night sky and reporting what he saw.”

Since Copernicus died in 1543 — less than 500 years ago — that’s quite a claim. At least Guengerich exhibited more restraint than Dan Brown did in his novel “Angels & Demons” (Pocket Books, 2000), in which one of the good guys observes: “Outspoken scientists like Copernicus … [were] murdered by the church for revealing scientific truths. Religion has always persecuted science.” However, Guengerich does insist that Galileo was “tortured,” which is only accurate if he means Galileo endured having some of his theories rejected because he could not muster the necessary proofs for them. Copernicus, by the way, died an old man, in the good graces of the Church, in which he served as a canon lawyer.

Science, it turns out, is a convenient stick for many of those who dislike and wish to dismiss the Church. The famous, misunderstood case of Galileo has long been the centerpiece exhibit for those claiming, as Brown’s character does, that religion hates science. Yet Galileo was a devout (if rather arrogant) Catholic who enjoyed support by many in the Vatican, and his essential problems were hubris and impatience.

The atheist Neil deGrasse Tyson, host of the new version of the television series “Cosmos,” relies less on Galileo and more on another supposed scientific hero, Giordano Bruno (1548-1600), a Dominican friar and mathematician who was executed by the Roman Inquisition. It sounds like a slam dunk, and deGrasse Tyson spends a good chunk of time working the apparently fallow ground. But, as the Jesuit philosopher and educator Father Robert Spitzer has noted, the Dominican’s trial “had very little to do with Bruno’s beliefs about heliocentrism or scientific method; he was, after all, following Copernicus.” In fact, Bruno’s trial “centered on five theological heresies: his pantheism, denial of the Trinity, denial of the divinity of Christ, denial of transubstantiation, and denial of the Virgin Birth.” We may understandably lament execution for heresy, but we must keep in mind there were many actions punishable by execution in the 1600s.

More to the point, Bruno was not a martyr for science. Yet the myth of the “scientific revolution” eventually overcoming the Dark Ages is a popular and dramatic one, with roots in both Enlightenment-era works intent on undermining the Church, and Protestant “histories” devoted to portraying Catholicism as a crude, superstitious religion with no connection to true, pure Christianity.

In his new book, “How the West Won: The Neglected Story of the Triumph of Modernity” (ISI Books, 2014), sociologist and historian Rodney Stark (who is Lutheran), debunks this nonsense. “Just as there was no ‘Dark Ages,’” he writes, “there was no ‘Scientific Revolution.’ Rather, the notion of a Scientific Revolution was invented to discredit the medieval Church by claiming that science burst forth in full bloom (thus owing no debts to prior Scholastic scholars) only when a weakened Christianity no longer could suppress it.”

Stark focuses on 14 philosophers and scientists (there are more, of course), beginning with Robert Grosseteste (c. 1168-1253), an English bishop described by one historian as “the real founder of the tradition of scientific thought in medieval Oxford,” and concluding with Copernicus. None, he notes, were “rebel secularists” — all were devout Christians and “they all were priests or monks — even bishops and cardinals.” And all of them were educated in Scholastic universities.

Carl E. Olson is the editor of Ignatius Insight (www.ignatiusinsight.com). He and his family live in Eugene, Ore.

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Religious Life

Why Can’t Women Be Priests?

Carl Olson

November 4, 2018 12:23 am November 4, 2018

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The news stories are so commonplace in recent years I could write one in my sleep if asked… An elderly lady, perhaps a former nun, is going to be “ordained”…

The news stories are so commonplace in recent years I could write one in my sleep if asked…

An elderly lady, perhaps a former nun, is going to be “ordained” a “Catholic priest,” citing her lifelong desire while denouncing the prejudice and bigotry of “the Vatican” for saying women cannot, in fact, be ordained priests. The details vary, the essential appeals to sentiment, modernity and equality do not. Explaining the Church’s teaching about priestly ordination is difficult because supporters of women’s ordination begin with premises different from those of the Church and often in direct opposition to them. Yet those assumptions are also widespread in the dominant culture.

The Church insists she must follow the example given by Jesus Christ, who specifically selected 12 men to be His apostles. That decision was not arbitrary, nor was it directed by cultural norms or societal pressures. While women were not allowed to be priests within the Jewish religion, it was also the case that Jesus’ approach to women taking part in His ministry was unusual. Yet He chose men only to be apostles, and those apostles then chose men to be bishops and priests. Thus apostolic succession has followed the same criteria for 2,000 years.

There is an essential matter of humility and obedience for Catholics when it comes to women’s ordination. The prevalent belief among those who push for such ordination is, when push comes to shove, that the authority of Christ and His Church should submit itself to the authority of current notions about women’s rights and equality between the sexes. Some liken the Church’s supposed “sexism” to racism. Yet Christ never founded a doctrine on race or ethnicity; more importantly, the underlying assumption is that the Incarnate Word, the Second Person of the Trinity, somehow made a mistake — that is, He was not, in fact, expressing divine wisdom. The issue, in sum, is very much one of faith.

In addition, the ordained priesthood is viewed by many as a profession, or a position of temporal power. They fail to recognize, as Orthodox theologian and bishop Kallistos Ware has insightfully observed, these three intertwined truths: just One is one priest; all are priests; and only some are priests. In other words, Jesus alone is the high priest of the New Covenant. All those who are baptized form a “royal priesthood” (1 Pt 2:9) and share in a “common priesthood” (see Catechism of the Catholic Church, Nos. 1141-1143, 1546-1547). And the ordained, or ministerial, priesthood is at the service of the common priesthood of the faithful, and is conferred on certain men who receive the Sacrament of Holy Orders.

While the common priesthood is a real sharing in the work of Christ, especially through growth in holiness, the ministerial priesthood partakes in the work of Christ in a unique way, and only a priest, who acts in persona Christi (“in the person of Christ”), is able to celebrate Mass, consecrate the Eucharist and hear confessions. He is a “sign,” or “icon,” of Christ, and “his priesthood exists solely,” as Bishop Ware states, “in order to make Christ present.” Such a sacred sign must be readily understood and perceptible; a female priest would cause confusion and make light of the fact that Christ was, is and always will be a man.

Finally, the Church believes — contrary to faddish trends — that men and women are truly different and complimentary. There is a covenantal, nuptial reality built into creation, reflected in God’s covenants with humanity. In the Old Testament, God is described as a husband married to His chosen people. In Ephesians, Christ is described as the groom and the Church as His bride (see 5:21-32). The entire Church is feminine in character, responsive to her head and groom. The 1976 document Inter Insigniores (from the Vatican’s Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith) pointed out that no one — including a man — has a “right” to the priesthood; the priesthood “stems from the economy of the mystery of Christ and the Church.” The priesthood is not a pawn in social experiments or political conflicts. Besides, that document emphasized, the “greatest in the kingdom of heaven are not the ministers but the saints.”

Carl E. Olson is the editor of Ignatius Insight (www.ignatiusinsight.com). He and his family live in Eugene, Ore.

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Lent

Pray your way through Lent: Year B

Carl Olson

October 7, 2018 9:03 am October 7, 2018

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When you think of Lent, what comes to mind? I think it is safe to say many of us immediately think of giving up something. And that “something” usually involves…

When you think of Lent, what comes to mind?

I think it is safe to say many of us immediately think of giving up something. And that “something” usually involves food, which is in keeping with the emphasis on fasting during the Lenten season. But we all know fasting is just one of three acts we are called to focus on during Lent. “In the Lenten period,” said Pope Emeritus Benedict XVI in his 2008 Lenten message, “the Church makes it her duty to propose some specific tasks that accompany the faithful concretely in this process of interior renewal: these are prayer, fasting and almsgiving.”

Each of these involve some sort of giving. In fasting, we give up certain foods. In almsgiving, we give money and aid to those who are in need. But what about prayer? What are we giving when we pray?

St. Paul, in his first letter to the Thessalonians, exhorted his readers: “Pray without ceasing. In all circumstances give thanks, for this is the will of God for you in Christ Jesus” (1 Thes 5:17-18; cf. Eph 5:20). The Catechism of the Catholic Church says, “‘we have not been commanded to work, to keep watch and to fast constantly, but it has been laid down that we are to pray without ceasing.’ This tireless fervor can come only from love. Against our dullness and laziness, the battle of prayer is that of humble, trusting, and persevering love” (No. 2742). Lent is a journey in love, and prayer is an essential part of both that journey and that growth in love.

The journey of Lent is a pilgrimage toward the profound and joyful mystery of the passion, death and resurrection of Jesus Christ. That journey begins in the wilderness. As the catechism says, “By the solemn forty days of Lent the Church unites herself each year to the mystery of Jesus in the desert” (No. 540). As Pope Benedict stated in his first Lenten message in 2006: “Lent is a privileged time of interior pilgrimage toward Him who is the fount of mercy. It is a pilgrimage in which He himself accompanies us through the desert of our poverty, sustaining us on our way toward the intense joy of Easter.”

With this in mind, what follows is a Scripture-focused guide to praying during Lent. It is meant for personal reflection and prayer, and to accompany the public, communal and liturgical prayers of the Church, all of which are ultimately focused upon and find their deepest meaning in the Eucharist: “the source and summit of the Christian life” (CCC, No. 1324). Key themes and ideas from each week of Lent are given, drawn from the Mass readings, and a particular focus is given to the “Our Father,” for it “‘is truly the summary of the whole gospel,’ the ‘most perfect of prayers.’ It is at the center of the Scriptures” (CCC, No. 2774). In addition, each section contains a prayer selected from Church tradition that can be prayed during that specific week.

Carl E. Olson is the editor of Catholic World Report.

See the full version of the Lenten calendar here.

This article originally appeared in Our Sunday Visitor.

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