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Being Catholic Today
Faith, Doubt and Everyday Life
Laurence McTaggart OSB
Copyright
Element
an imprint of HarperCollinsPublishers 1 London Bridge Street London SE1 9GF
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First published in Great Britain in 2000 by Fount
Copyright © 2000 Laurence McTaggart
Laurence McTaggart asserts the moral right to be identified as the author of this work
Scripture quotations are taken from the Jerusalem Bible, © 1966 Darton, Longman and Todd Ltd and Doubleday
A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library
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Source ISBN: 9780007121793
Ebook Edition © DECEMBER 2012 ISBN: 9780007404452
Version: 2016-02-25
for Dick and Marie-Thérèse Mardon with thanks and love
Table of Contents
Cover Page
Title Page
Copyright
PREFACE
INTRODUCTION Being Catholic
PART 1 LAYING THE FOUNDATION
Chapter 1 RIGHT WAY DOWN
Chapter 2 WORD MADE FLESH
Chapter 3 WILL GOD PUNISH YOU?
Chapter 4 A BETTER IDEA
Chapter 5 THICKER THAN WATER
PART 2 THE LIFE WE LIVE
Chapter 6 GET REAL
Chapter 7 THE MISSING LINK
Chapter 8 HOW TO BE BAD AT PRAYER
Chapter 9 SHADOW BOXING
Chapter 10 EYE OF THE NEEDLE
PART 3 THE CHURCH AND US
Chapter 11 MEETING CHRIST
Chapter 12 HOW TO DISAGREE WITH THE POPE
Chapter 13 WALKING CALMLY
Chapter 14 LOST FOR EVER?
Chapter 15 OUT OF COMMUNION
Chapter 16 OTHER SHEEP
Chapter 17 INTERCOMMUNION
PART 4 ISSUES FOR TODAY
Chapter 18 THE BETTER PART
Chapter 19 WORTH A MASS?
Chapter 20 LIVING IN SIN
Chapter 21 SUICIDE
Chapter 22 BLUE PIGS
Chapter 23 ON THE SHELF
AFTERWORD Being Catholic Today
About the Publisher
PREFACE
Do not be afraid.
Isaiah 41:14
You may think this is a book, but it’s more a conversation. I’m not attempting to settle any of the problems of being a Catholic today, nor will I give any definitive account of what it means to be Catholic. Maybe those would be good things to do, but they are beyond any one person to achieve on his or her own. So, instead, I offer you one half of a conversation for you to react to as you wish. Parts you may like, and parts you may think are rubbish. Parts may even offend, in which case I ask your pardon as that was not my intention.
You may also think of things I have not talked about which matter to you very much. Treat, if you will, what follows as one Catholic trying to say what his faith is in today’s world. It is part of the human condition to be confused and challenged, by faith and by the life we lead. We also yearn for sense and for vision. To find it, we have to share with each other, without too much fear. In what follows, I am trying to share what sense I have made of life so far. Indeed, the Church is made up of a lot of very different people united by one hope, of finding God and staying with him. Let us enjoy each other’s company for a while, and then part, if not in agreement on everything, then at least having found a new friend with whom to talk.
Conversations often ramble, so feel free to move around and skip bits that don’t appeal to you. But a key point that I want to make is that the many problems we face in the Catholic Church have to be understood not just in the context of the faith, but as part of the faith. The problems are what it is to be Catholic today, part of a human community that needs the redemption of God, and that tries to celebrate it in our lives as best we can. So the first few chapters are about faith and the Catholic faith, and I hope they illuminate the later ones.
Just a word of thanks to some of the people who have encouraged me with this book: my father Andrew, Fr. Bede Leach, Madeleine Judd, Andrew and Nicola Higgins, Fr. Dominic Milroy, Mark Detre, Fr. Patrick Barry, Ed Walton, Anna Reid and Fr. Roger Barralet, to name just a few. None of us stands alone before God, and I am blessed in the people I have with me, and most of all in my mother, Violet, who has gone before to encourage.
The mistakes are all mine, of course. We all make mistakes, and that is what the Church is for: a place where we can go wrong in safety and in good company, sure of forgiveness.
INTRODUCTION Being Catholic
They have found pardon in the wilderness.
Jeremiah 21:2
A bad day
Everything seemed to be going well. The train was on time, and I had a table to myself to spread out sandwiches and books. In fact, the carriage was almost empty, and mobile phones went off less than twice a minute. So why, I wondered, did he sit next to me?
‘Which parish are you from, Father?’
‘I’m a monk, actually.’
Of course he turns out to be a Catholic, so what else can we talk about?
He wants to know about his children, two sons. One is something in the City, the other is on a long-haired traverse of the Antipodes. He is not sure which is more of a disappointment. They don’t go to Mass, you see. He did everything God could have asked of him, and even paid for an independent Catholic education. Finally, he told them that they were in danger of losing their souls unless they submitted to the tedium of weekly Sunday Mass. He was surprised to find this did not move them. ‘Now, Father,’ he asked, ‘are they not doomed to hell?’
I found that rather an odd question from a parent, and not at all easy to answer. He interpreted, rightly, that my silence was temporizing. I was obviously about to say that things are not that simple: typical, liberal wool-gathering. What would you have said that might have satisfied him? I’ll tell you later what I said (see chapter 14), and you can decide if you would do any better. But for now, I would just like to log two issues for the future. First, people can say the oddest things from the best of motives. After all, the man was worried about his children. Second, nothing that matters in life and religion is ever simple.
Maybe both those ideas are totally obvious. But you try living by them. In practice, we ask questions in fear or doubt, and answer with anxiety or aggression. There is a thought too that religious matters should be fairly easy to understand. ‘Why can’t those bigoted people just read what Jesus has to say about the hypocrisy of the Pharisees?’ Or, ‘Why can’t those people for whom anything goes just keep the rules that God has given in the Church?’ The answer to both questions is that we are all people, and people are like that. If you are a person too, then read on, because we shall see that this is exactly the problem that God has faced in and through Jesus: how to redeem us without destroying what he has made us to be.
But first, the doomed journey continued. At Edinburgh station I escaped, and stood watching the departure board in a recuperative daydream. I had forgotten the bruising encounter, forgotten that I was in a clerical shirt, forgotten everything except that I was halfway home for a week’s holiday.
Not for long – the voice was loud and insistent, ‘Father, Father!’ The man was standing in front of me with his face close to mine, and it dawned on me that it was me he was talking to. His name was Ian, and his general appearance such that I was not going to be anything but polite. He wanted to know about Lazarus.
‘Who?’ Lazarus, he explained as though to an idiot, was the man Jesus raised from the dead. Had he gone to heaven on dying or not? Because if he had, and Jesus then brought him back to earth by resurrection, he must have been a bit ****ed off with Our Lord. I replied with honesty that I had not thought about the problem before. This he found hard to take. I was a priest, I had done all that study, and I could not answer an obvious question. ‘And another thing, Father …’ Several more questions followed, until Ian had to go and catch his train to get to Glasgow in time for his criminal trial for robbery with violence. He expected about ten years minimum. He wrung my hand and begged me to pray for him every day, especially to Our Lady, who always looked after him.
In our short time together I did learn that he thought the Church was a great thing, would be lost without it, and hadn’t been near a church since his marriage to a pregnant seventeen-year-old, which ended after he was sent to jail for beating her up a few months later. But he was proud to be Catholic, read his Bible and thought hard about all kinds of issues. He was also very sad about the death of Mother Teresa of Calcutta, who, he said, was his model for Christian living.
After that, I gave up, really, and was not at all surprised when a youngish man in clerical collar and neat white jacket sat next to me on the Inverness train, and struck up a conversation. We had a very pleasant talk; he was not fully informed on Lazarus either, but we agreed on many things. One exception was his vitriolic opposition to the ordination of women (I am not vitriolic). But we were one on sacraments and most of the Catholic tradition. He was a great admirer of Pope John Paul II and his strong stance on moral and doctrinal issues.
I asked him, in that case, why he did not become a Catholic. He was, you see, a member of the Anglican Communion. He replied, rather tartly, that he already was a Catholic, but that he did not feel able to become a Roman Catholic, and became rather tetchy. Further enquiry revealed that he felt he had a duty to look after his parishioners, who were largely of the same mind, and to ‘pope’ would be to abandon them. He had decided that to stay within the Anglican Church would be an effective witness to its catholic and apostolic roots.
Perhaps I should explain the problem. The Reformation in this country, starting in the sixteenth century and continuing until the late seventeenth, was not a straightforward affair, and there were always some who followed the break with Rome and papal authority, but wished to retain the Catholic doctrinal heritage: sacraments, a strong view of priesthood etc. Others wanted to adopt a fully Protestant view of the church and its life. Historically, this resulted in the compromise of a broad Anglican church, with a liturgy and structure that allowed both tendencies, ‘high’ and ‘low’, to live side by side. The more ‘catholic’ Anglicans tend to attach much weight to being catholic and apostolic, but still reject a strong papacy and, usually, more ‘modern’ doctrines, such as papal infallibility and the Immaculate Conception. At the same time, English Roman Catholics (I’ve run out of adjectives that satisfy everyone, but you know what I mean) tend, with justification, to be jealous of their identity as Catholic, kept through times of persecution, and say that you are either in communion with Rome or you are not Catholic.
Beats me
So, what does it mean to be catholic? What does it mean to be Catholic? Is there a difference? And why should it matter anyway? We have just met three people with different answers to all those questions. For the anguished clergyman, to be Catholic is to have beliefs that can be traced back to the apostolic church of the first century and to the words of Jesus. For the angry father, it is to belong to an organization established by Christ, and to keep the commandments it has given in his name. For the delinquent, it is to know that the Church is there, and that this means that God is with him somehow. The father would say that the vicar is catholic, perhaps, but not Catholic; the vicar would say that the father holds on to superstitions that have nothing to do with pure Catholicism; Ian, if he could articulate his thought, would say that both are stuck in irrelevant sidelines.
Jesus gives us a fairly hefty clue to our dilemma:
Go and learn the meaning of the words: I want mercy and not sacrifice. Indeed, I have come to call the righteous, not sinners.
Matthew 9:13
I’m sorry, I’ll read that again:
Go and learn the meaning of the words: I want mercy and not sacrifice. Indeed, I have come to call not the righteous, but sinners.
It is surely possible to assume that being Catholic is something to do with answering that call. My three acquaintances would each acknowledge that. Every catholic, or Catholic, is motivated by the call of Christ to follow him, or else they are not Catholic, or even catholic, at all. This does not mean that the call leads only into the Roman Catholic Church, and that people outside are not called, or do not respond fully to that call. Nor is it to say that, if the ‘call’ is there, it does not matter about how you act or think or what you believe, and certainly not whether you belong to any particular ‘visible’ church. Such questions lie ahead of us.
But Jesus’ words imply a set of priorities. The context of the saying is important. He has been asked by the Pharisees why he eats with ‘tax collectors and sinners’. Tax collectors were in the employ of the occupying Romans, and thus doubly unpopular as traitors to their nation and its religion. Pharisees aimed to keep the Law of Moses and the various Jewish traditions in their entirety. A sinner was, in the view of the Pharisees, anybody who was not a Pharisee. There are plenty of sinners around today, and also no lack of Pharisees. Which are you? Or are you a bit of both?
Here is a simple and relatively harmless example, but a surprisingly common one. A lady comes to confession. She doesn’t have much to mention, a few cross words and the like. But she failed to go to Mass for three Sundays in a row. She knows this is so bad, she thinks it is a mortal sin. It is tempting to comfort her: ‘Lots of people don’t go to Mass at all for years, most people miss from time to time.’ But that would be wrong because, for her, this clearly matters. So, I ask why she stayed away, and am shocked to the core by her answer. I am shocked because it reveals a far greater, more deadly fault. She missed Mass because she was confined to bed by influenza. Maybe one should laugh, tell her not to be so silly; how can you be expected to go to Mass if you are ill? After all, the sabbath was made for man, not man for the sabbath.
But that is the greater fault, and I stand indicted, along with all of you and the whole Church. This simple, obvious, common-sense message that we are only expected to attend Sunday Mass if it is physically and morally possible has been obscured. How? And why? The answer is manifold.
A ‘liberal’ might say that the Church has become full of legalistic misunderstandings. Following church rules is invested with a kind of magic: do this, and you will be all right. Jesus has some tough things to say about people who rely on external observances, and about those teachers who lay heavy burdens on the poor in spirit. It is only now, one might say, after the Second Vatican Council, that we are recovering the real intentions of Christ, losing the sterile additions, superstitions and clericalism of the Middle Ages and Counter-Reformation, and so coming to a true freedom. The hierarchy resists this, at the price of making old ladies think they will go to hell if they have the flu, and thus miss Mass.
That is an absurd overstatement, but you might know Catholics who would hold it. Nor is the position far off stating the fears of ‘conservatives’ who, after the Second Vatican Council, have seen so much bewildering change. One old priest told me that he thought John Paul II has done a fine job of teaching, that the task of the next Pope will be to enforce that teaching. ‘Enforce’ is a word of the ‘bad old days’ for some, and for others a hope of the future.
One hope I have for this book is that you as the reader will be able to see the rules and practices in context, and in proportion. If that sounds a bit too ‘liberal’ to you, then reflect that it is often easier to follow instructions when you know what they mean. So let’s start with a basic statement of what the Church is for, and from an impeccable source:
Christ…united himself with each person. The Church therefore sees its fundamental task in enabling that union to be brought about and renewed continually. The Church wishes to serve this single end: that each person may be able to find Christ, in order that Christ may walk with each person the path of life, with the power of the truth about humanity and the world that is contained in the mystery of the Incarnation and the Redemption and with the power of the love that is radiated by that truth.
John Paul II, Redemptor Hominis. 13
A bargain
‘That Christ may walk with each person the path of life.’ Let’s take this, and this alone, as a starting point for reflection and, leaving issues and worries aside, see what God has to say to us in it. We might find that some problems begin to look different. But there is a condition for reading on. If you agree, then let’s go ahead.
Let go of what you know, especially if you are a conservative or a liberal who has all the answers. If, like the rest of us, you are merely confused or curious, take a risk. Come to God, the Father revealed in Christ, with hands empty of all but fears and loves. He will grant a context. There is absolutely no point examining God as though he is a laboratory specimen. If you wish to hear his word, you have to be prepared for the consequences. And, if you do not wish to be a Pharisee, let us begin as sinners.
PART 1 LAYING THE FOUNDATION
Chapter 1 RIGHT WAY DOWN
Let me hear your voice; for your voice is sweet and your face is beautiful.
Song of Songs 2:14
Not long ago, my father moved into a new house, a converted steading in a rather remote Scottish valley. On holiday, I helped him with some of the unpacking and decorating. The key task was to get the kitchen done, so that we could eat. In a very short time, surprisingly short, I learnt how to assemble kitchen units from flat packs. The next lesson was how to take them apart again. It was plain to me that these things were designed by warped minds, inventing devious ways of joining bits of chipboard together, and delighting in the failure of ordinary rational people to work out what had gone wrong when there were not enough bolts and screws.
Two corner units later, the truth dawned that all the bits were shaped and arranged so as to make things easy. What had looked like a confusing array of parts fell naturally into an intelligible whole if one simply followed the instructions provided. For example, the odd L-shaped bolts, far from being menacing, took away the need to make mortice joints in the wood. They meant that even I, with no experience or expertise, could assemble the units, given time, patience and a willingness to imitate the diagrams. It was a mistake even to put the pictures into words: ‘put all the L-shaped bolts into the 8mm round holes at the top and bottom corners of the inside faces of the …’ The description lost clarity, added confusion. You just made the bits and pieces look like the picture provided.
It is this easy to be a Christian, to resolve any issue of faith or of practice. The hard part is learning to do it the easy way. How often, for example, have you heard or read the following?
Come to me all you who labour and are overburdened, and I will give you rest. Shoulder my yoke and learn from me, for I am gentle and humble in heart, and you will find rest for your souls. Yes, my yoke is easy, and my burden is light.
Matthew 11:28
If we could do that, there would be no problems we could not face. The trouble is that we tend to flounder around with partial ideas, half concepts, fears and anxieties, like somebody trying to assemble a kitchen unit who does not know what the different parts are for. The claim of the Gospel is very straightforward. In Jesus Christ we have our diagram; if we can configure ourselves so as to look like him then, in any situation, life will get better. Or, if it does not get any better, it will make more sense: you will find rest for your souls.
Such is the promise of God in Jesus. You have to decide for yourself if it is true in your life, and why it is or why it might not be. The Gospel may well be false, a delusion. But if we are to reject it, we must be sure that it is the Gospel that we reject, and not something else. If we seek to live by it, we need to know that it is truly Christ to whom we are coming. This may seem obvious, but it is important to say it, because Catholicism is so massive, so complex, and thus so misunderstood. In this chapter, let’s keep things simple, and think a little about what it means to believe the Gospel.
Waving not drowning
One of the reasons English is such a rich language is that it is an amalgam of many other languages. This is especially true of so-called American English. From the fusion of Anglo-Saxon and Norman French at the turn of the first millennium we have a dual vocabulary for many things. A rich man is also wealthy; but if bereft, he is also desolate. It can cause problems, however. In talking about God, we want to talk about faith. That comes from the Romance or Latin side. But there is also the word belief. Can these be used interchangeably? In terms of grammar, no. We can say, ‘I believe in God,’ but not, ‘I faith God.’
This draws attention to a number of meanings of the word ‘belief’ that need to be watched. You know it is raining, are of the opinion that it will stop soon. Belief tends to be seen as halfway between the two. It is not certain, but nor is it merely opinion. Opinion is for things we cannot really prove, whereas belief is not relinquished so easily. Such was the treatment of faith by the medieval theologians, and it has largely stuck.
Sometimes, though, people ask of any given doctrine if they have to believe it to be Catholics. This can be an unhelpful way of seeing faith: essentially as holding a number of statements to be true. If you believe propositions a, b, c, and so on, then you will go to heaven. We will come back to some difficulties in chapter 12, ‘How to Disagree with the Pope’. For now, it is enough to point out that religion is not the same as a bunch of views about metaphysics and history, though these are involved in it. It is about God, about you, and about how those two relate in respect to others. This may turn out to be quite good news.
For a richer idea of what faith is about, let us look at a familiar Gospel story. Like many other stories, it is not as simple as it looks. But then, that’s life.
Jesus made the disciples get into the boat and go on ahead to the other side while he would send the crowds away. After sending the crowds away he went up into the hills by himself to pray. When evening came, he was there alone, while the boat, by now far out on the lake, was battling with a heavy sea, for there was a head-wind. In the fourth watch of the night he went towards them, walking on the lake, and when the disciples saw him walking on the lake they were terrified. ‘It is a ghost,’ they said, and cried out in fear. But at once Jesus called out to them, saying, ‘Courage! It is I! Do not be afraid.’ It was Peter who answered. ‘Lord,’ he said, ‘if it is you, tell me to come to you across the water.’ ‘Come,’ said Jesus. Then Peter got out of the boat and started walking towards Jesus across the water, but as soon as he felt the force of the wind, he took fright and began to sink. ‘Lord! Save me!’ he cried. Jesus put out his hand at once and touched him. ‘Man of little faith,’ he said, ‘why did you doubt?’ And as they got into the boat, the wind dropped. The men in the boat bowed down before him and said, ‘Truly, you are the Son of God.’
Matthew 14:22–33
St Peter spends much of his time in the Gospels getting things wrong. Before Christ’s arrest, he promises to follow him even to the death, but ends up denying to the authorities that he ever knew Jesus. Most people draw some consolation from this. Peter is quite like us: a real faith, but a weak faith; a real hope, but an anxious hope; a real love of Christ, but a fearful love. Christianity looks great, and even attractive, but then so difficult as well.
But let’s be honest, and give Peter some credit. Would you have even got out of the boat? Perhaps you would not have got into the boat in the first place on such a stormy night? Peter errs almost always out of a misdirected enthusiasm, too much warmth. That is not something of which I can be accused very often. Perhaps you are better. But then, what are you warm about? Are you passionate in the cause of women’s ordination, or for the admission of remarried divorcees to communion? Do you get hot under the collar about vacuous musical moanings in church, or fired up at the thought of young people living ‘in sin’?
This is why I have laboured the point about belief not being in the first instance about propositions. None of these initially motivated Peter. To stretch the analogy, he did not engage in a rational process. He did not think anything like: ‘Jesus is the Son of God. Faith in him can move mountains. Therefore, if I believe all that he says, I will be able to walk on water. So, off I go. Oh no, but it’s very windy and the water is very wet. Surely I can’t really float. Help, Lord, I’m sinking.’
In fact, in this story at any rate, Peter did not think at all. He saw and recognized Christ, and just moved. The sight of Jesus drove all from his mind, including some quite important facts. So, then, how like Peter are you? Are you so full of joy at the sight of Jesus that you forget what lies between you, what keeps you apart from him?
What made Peter disregard the wind and the waves, as well as the obvious facts about water and heavy human beings? What gave him that joy, that attraction? It was not faith, or hope, or love, but something much more interesting. It was his need, the clarity with which he felt it, the honesty with which he acknowledged it. Peter walked on water because in Christ he found someone who could and would put out his hand and hold him. Rather than pillory Peter for his lack of faith, we should praise him for the strength of his doubt: doubt of God, doubt of himself. Because that is where we start too, and where we will stay unless we can understand that we do not believe, we do not hope, and we do not love our Lord. If you insist that you do believe, then Jesus can do nothing for you, because you do not need him. He cannot find you if you continue to insist that you are not lost.
Maybe you think that is going a bit far. But please remember our bargain. We agreed not to be Pharisees, but sinners, because we wanted to hear and understand anew the call of Christ. If we do, then something rather marvellous happens. We receive a gift, the gift of a hopeful and loving faith. If you don’t believe me, then try the Pope:
Anyone who wishes to understand themselves thoroughly – and not just in accordance with immediate, partial, superficial and even illusory standards and measures of his being – they must with their unrest, uncertainty and even their weakness and sinfulness, with their life and death, draw near to Christ …
John Paul II, Redemptor Hominis, 10
So here is the only prerequisite for coming to know Jesus as your Saviour. If you want to have faith, this is the secret. Neglect all you know or don’t know about God. Abandon attempts to reconcile the contradictions of the Alexandrian interpretation of the hypostatic union, or to understand transubstantiation. Forget everything except your unrest, your uncertainty, your weakness and your sinfulness. Dwell with them for as long as you can stand it. Then just suppose, as a hypothesis, that you are loved to a depth you cannot imagine. Your lover will die for you, lives for you. This takes us far beyond the merely intellectual. In the same passage, John Paul II says that
if this profound process takes place within you, you will bear fruit not only of adoration of God, but also of deep wonder at yourself and how precious you must be in his eyes. The name for such deep amazement at your worth and dignity is the Gospel, that is to say: the Good News. It is also called Christianity.
Redemptor Hominis, 10; slightly paraphrased
You may not find this way of working very helpful as an immediate experience. But the Pope’s point stands that faith begins in a sense of how much we need, and then astonishment at the suggestion that Jesus is prepared to fulfil that need. It is good theology as well as a way of praying. If you disagree, try living without love. Or, from God’s point of view, try compelling someone else to live without love (except don’t, of course!).
Peter fails because he stops at doubt. His need brings panic; he must cross over to Christ. He ignores the truth that Jesus is coming to him, just as he ignores the comparatively irrelevant Archimedean principle (he’ll sink). But there is no necessity to leave the boat, because when Jesus arrives the wind will drop and the waves become calm. Don’t just do something, sit there!
This is the truly amazing part of the Gospel, and the easiest to forget: that God moves long before we do. Before we can call, he is there. Before we can repent, he has forgiven. We will see this again in later chapters, so I will leave its expansion to those applications. For now, it simply means that there is no place to which Jesus cannot follow you. The reason is that, because of his love for you, there is no place where he does not want to follow you, just to be with you, and to draw you back to the Father.
Man of little faith, why did you doubt? Doubt everything you like – yourself, your strength, your worthiness, even God and his love. Faith does not erase those doubts, because they are truth, truth about us. Faith adds another, contradictory fact, a fact about God: the Lord is coming to save.
What about the creed?
If this is what faith is about, then it shows us how important the Creed is, and what the teaching of the Church’s magisterium is for. Doctrines are vital because they attempt to encapsulate and apply the content of the Gospel. They derive their significance from the personal contact with Christ which is that content; the wonder or amazement of which John Paul II has spoken. This can be demonstrated from the simple experience of the Church’s history and life. For example, as we will see below, the only way to express adequately in human language the intensity with which Jesus gives himself to us in the Eucharist is to talk of eating his Body and drinking his Blood; and to mean that, literally. Less controversially, when discussing the nature of Christ, the early theologians insisted that Christ was fully human, because ‘what was not assumed by God in Christ was not saved’, and the Christian hope is of salvation of the whole human person.
The Pope and the bishops have the task of interpreting human need and divine response in each age and all circumstances. This is a sufficiently daunting commission to encourage one to have sympathy with them. Even more so, when one realizes that they do so, and can do so, only in union with the whole Body of Christ; including you and me.
This tells us, further, how to interpret the Church’s teaching. Any given doctrine is not the result of speculation, but is forced on us to express our faith. So, in turn, we say that we believe the doctrine, that is, say it is true, because the doctrine says what we mean by putting our faith in God, revealed in Christ. Conversely, pick a doctrine, and we can try to work out what it really means in the light of the Gospel it expresses. Take murder. The Church agrees with many others that in most instances it is wrong to kill. Why? Because each human life has an equal value in God’s sight. Conversely, I am loved by God in and for myself, regardless of how tall I am or what I do. Hence, you are too. So it would not be consistent with the good news of my own life to take yours.
If only life were that simple all the time. We are nearly ready to tackle some real problems. But first, we need a few doctrines to provide ammunition, protection and shorthand. In the next few chapters, we shall look more closely at the figure approaching across the storm-tossed waters. Who is he, and what does he have to do with us?
Chapter 2 WORD MADE FLESH
Our God comes, he keeps silence no longer.
Psalm 50:3. Grail translation
In this chapter, we are going to look at the central doctrine of the Christian faith, the doctrine of the Incarnation. The essential idea is that Jesus Christ was both truly God and truly Man. As we approach this doctrine we are faced with a number of difficulties. One is the seeming contradiction in saying that the same person can be omnipotent (divine) and hungry (human). Another has arisen more recently but is just as acute – that Jesus was (or should I say ‘is’; that’s another problem!) a man and not a woman. The Incarnation seems to feed into Christian chauvinism, the devaluing of women, and, historically, probably has done so.
Once again, I ask you to take it on trust that these issues have resolutions, and suggest that the way forward is not to keep banging our heads on intractables or waving a number of political flags in either direction. Let’s try to get to the heart of the matter, and then see. Having put down any weapons, let’s listen to a story from the Mass, slightly edited.
You formed us in your own likeness, and set us over the whole world, to serve you, our Creator, and to rule over all creatures. Even when we disobeyed you and lost your friendship, you did not abandon us to the power of death, but helped us all to seek and find you. Again and again, you offered us a covenant, and through the prophets taught us to hope for salvation.
Roman Missal, n. 118, Eucharistic Prayer IV
We can read this in a number of ways. One approach is to take it personally. We all have in us a sense of being and of reason and love, which is the likeness to God. We also have a sense of difference from plants and other animals, a sense of understanding and control. We also have the sad knowledge of what we have done with that sense and the power that comes with it. You also know in yourself, if you are honest, ways and examples of lost love and friendship, instances in which you are not what you could be, best intentions frustrated.
But there is also hope, which gets you up in the morning, makes you try again; possibilities of reform, of forgiveness. Either of these senses, of sin and of grace, can be to the fore or fade out of sight from time to time, but recognizing the idea of them is enough for now. A very good way of praying is to take that text above, put it in the first person singular, ‘I’, and the present tense: you do not abandon me to the power of death.
The story is also a history. It is told, mostly, in the documents that make up the Old Testament, the first, and longer, half of the Christian Bible. On the face of it, some may think that there’s little point in having the Old Testament. If you open it at random, there is a fair chance you will find something incomprehensible or irrelevant. Some of it is downright irreligious, or even shocking; for example, the ethnic cleansing of Palestine in the name of God, described in the books of Joshua and Judges. There were quite influential movements in the first years of Christianity which said the Old Testament should be ditched. Not only was it disedifying and even scandalous in parts, but with the coming of Christ it had become, literally, history, to be replaced by the New. The main group were called Marcionites, after their leader, and they failed because they were discredited by a far bigger mistake, of which more in a moment.
But there is something reassuring about the realism of the Old Testament. It has three main sections: the history and law books, such as I Kings or Exodus; the Prophets, such as Isaiah or Jeremiah; and the ‘writings’, a miscellaneous collection including the Psalms, Proverbs and the Song of Songs. There is virtually no human aspiration, hope, virtue, failure, betrayal, emotion or drama that cannot be found in there somewhere. Early monks used to make the same claim of the Psalms alone. Once noticed, this fact is significant. There would be something odd about a religion that addressed only what is true and noble in us. Not just odd, but totally abstract, even useless. Think back to Peter, and his raw need for God. That need comes from sin, from weakness, from a damaging history. The Old Testament tells your story and mine in the form of the story and prayers of Israel.
That is as far as we have got up to now; the realization of doubt and emptiness, and the instinct that there is an alternative. Plus the not altogether comfortable hypothesis that we are loved by a God who is about to do something about all three. Here we have the full and richer purpose of the Old Testament in Christian scripture and life, expressed in the continuation of the prayer with which we began:
Father, you so loved the world that in the fullness of time you sent your only Son to be our Saviour. He was conceived by the power of the Holy Spirit, and born of the Virgin Mary, a man like us in all things but sin. To the poor he proclaimed the good news of salvation, to prisoners freedom, and to those in sorrow, joy.
Roman Missal, Eucharistic Prayer IV
The Old Testament tells the story of the preparation in history for this event, in the calling of Israel to be the people within which a saviour for the world could be born and reared. We can read of the slow formation and revelation of religious and other traditions from which the ‘good news of salvation’ could be derived. For, if one stops to think about it, the message of salvation could not be proclaimed without actions and words. Further, words and actions need a context, a time and a place, and an audience rooted in that context to become comprehensible. They also need a context within which to become compelling.
It is vital to recall the kind of context that is meant here. It is not simply a matter of an agreed set of words, and a grammar for what they mean in combination. Here is an example to try to indicate what the ‘extra’ element is. It is from a prayer spoken by a prophet eight centuries before Christ:
With shepherd’s crook lead your people to pasture, the flock that is your heritage, living confined in a forest with meadow land all around. Let them pasture in Bashan and Gilead as in the days of old. As in the days when you came out of Egypt grant us to see wonders … Once more have pity on us, tread down our faults, to the bottom of the sea throw all our sins.
Micah 7:14–15, 19
I defy anyone with insight into themselves not to empathize with the hope of that prayer. This is the context I mean, the gradual forming of human history to expect and receive God’s response to our plight. Jesus had a simple proclamation, that in his life the time was fulfilled, and the response had begun. ‘Today these words are being fulfilled, even as you listen’ (Luke 4:21).
Watch my lips
In the course of this chapter I have left quite a few hostages of some importance. The last extract from the Fourth Eucharistic Prayer mentions the virgin birth, the Trinity and social justice, among other things. There was also a rash promise to explain the Incarnation. The latter is really quite simple in the Old Testament context. For we have here the issue of how God can give us his message. Again and again he sends prophets, and tugs at our hope; to little avail. The issue is not just historical, since the salvation history closely mirrors our everyday experience of up and down (or, even worse, just along a flat, uninspiring road). What can he do, to tell us of his love?
An image: my attempts to build a corner unit. There is a need to assemble it so that there will be supper, and also an instinct that I can assemble the thing. It looks easy, and a muddled process of sticking things together results two times out of five in an imitation of the real thing. There is a gradual process of revelation as the various bits and planks acquire a meaning and purpose that I can understand, though much remains mysterious. Then a pattern is provided to copy. So there is the humanity of Jesus, one like us in all things but sin.
Here the analogy breaks down, and we move into the realm of faith. But it is not the open credulity or frenzied legalism kind of faith. In Christ we have our pattern and model. On its own, this just makes it worse. Already we had such things in the law and the prophets, and that did not help. In Peter’s terms (see chapter 1), Jesus is still far off across a forbidding ocean of divine demand and human failure. One uniquely good man is not enough to express God’s message; so much is proved by what we did and do to that one good man and his memory. What else is needed?
In the beginning was the Word: the Word was with God, and the Word was God … All that came to be had life in him and that life is our light, a light that shines in the dark, a light that darkness could not overpower. The Word was made flesh, he lived among us, and we saw his glory, the glory that is his as the only Son of the Father, full of grace and truth … From his fullness we have, all of us, received, grace upon grace. No one has ever seen God; it is the only Son, who is nearest to the Father’s heart, who has made him known.
John 1:1, 3–5, 14, 16–18
After centuries of trying to tell us, God the Father decided to show us. Here is the incredible fact at the centre of our faith, that God himself has come to save in Christ. It is incredible on two levels. First, theology: what is the difference between Son and Father, why is the Son called ‘Word’, how are they both God, how can God become man, etc. These are all easy compared to the second level: why would God want to become one of us, hopeless, little betraying things? What a risk, and what a failure, because we did and do not receive him, but slay him on the Cross and in ourselves and each other. Why? We already have the answer, but it is almost too deeply threatening.
God loved the world so much that he gave his only Son, so that everyone who believes in him may not be lost but may have eternal life. For God sent his Son into the world not to condemn the world, but so that through him the world might be saved.
John 3:16–17
The Incarnation cannot be explained, because it is wholly gratuitous. There is no reason on earth for it, apart from you. But we can understand a little what it implies. Remember the Marcionites? Their key fault was to be associated with a group which could not accept that the Word had become flesh. Christ did not really hunger, sleep or suffer. He only pretended to do so, in order to teach us various things, such as the value of a noble steadfastness in the face of difficulty. He did not rise from the dead, because he did not die; he only seemed to. This suggestion is called docetism, from a Greek word meaning ‘to seem’, and the group tend to be called Gnostics, because they thought that Jesus had imparted a saving knowledge (gnosis, in Greek). This knowledge was like a set of passwords that would lead us to God past all obstacles, earthly and demonic.
What Gnostics could not stand was matter, especially bodies. Real reality, they would say, is spiritual, untainted by the flesh. There is no need to spell out the baleful influence of such thinking on Christian life, and sometimes even doctrine. Jesus said once, ‘the spirit is willing, but the flesh is weak’ (Matthew 26:42). The Gnostics went further and said that the flesh is bad, evil. Some went so far as to say that there are two powers: God, who made the soul, and a wicked demi-god who trapped us in flesh.
This is not Christian, and we shall see why in later chapters. The Incarnation affirms once and for all the Genesis message that the creation is good, is loved by God. The aim of Christ is not to free us from matter, but to free us for it. It is we who are alienated from ourselves, spirit and body. But, ‘if the Spirit of him who raised Jesus from the dead is living in you, then he who raised Jesus from the dead will give life to your mortal bodies through his Spirit living in you’ (Romans 8:11).
The reason Gnostics found the Old Testament so difficult was that it is so earthy, so everyday. Pots and pans were not just boring, but revolting to them. The Incarnation says the opposite, that God delights to be with us so much that he became one of us. The Second Vatican Council put it like this (the full passage is given at the end of the chapter):
Christ the Lord, who is the ‘image of the invisible God’, worked with human hands, he thought with a human mind. He acted with a human will, and with a human heart he loved.
Gaudium et Spes, 22; the scriptural quotation is from St Paul, Colossians 1:15
In Christ, the invisible God found an image. God was invisible because he is beyond our imagining, but also because we have forgotten what he looks like. We have lost the image in ourselves. In Jesus, the words of God took flesh, in a practical demonstration. Our assumptions tend to play this down; we assume that at any moment, the divinity was on top. But to take the Incarnation seriously is to say that Jesus could have died at the age of four from yellow fever.
Has it ever struck you how little the Gospels tell us about the life of Christ? There have been plenty of novels and films to fill the gap: most of those in the first few centuries were written by Gnostics, silly stories about Jesus zapping his childhood friends (wish I could), and so were rejected by the Church. In the genuine scriptures of the New Testament we have two nativity stories, and that is it until Jesus is about thirty. There is only one exception, in Luke’s Gospel, where Jesus goes missing on a visit to Jerusalem, and is found in the Temple, giving the learned priests a run for their money. It is a rather charming picture of an ordinary family event: a lost child, panic, reproaches and answering back. The Gospels tell us nothing of the boyhood of the Saviour because he was just another kid.
Maybe you find all this shocking. It is indeed shocking, but because it is the full revelation of God’s love, not because it is blasphemy. If Jesus was not fully man, then he did not show us what humanity could be. If he did not live as we do, then God has no interest in our lives. If he did not die, then our own deaths are the end, there will be no rising. God stands, unruffled, on the stormy lake and taunts us with advice on how to bail out the water.
But that is how we think, not how God thinks, which is just as well. So now we have the Son of God and us, all in the same boat. From this we can come to understand most of what we want to know about being Catholic.
It is only in the mystery of the Word made flesh that the mystery of man truly becomes clear. Christ the Lord, Christ the new Adam, in the very revelation of the mystery of the Father and of his love, fully reveals man to himself and brings to light his most high calling. He who is the ‘image of the invisible God’, is himself the perfect man who has restored in the children of Adam that likeness to God which had been disfigured ever since the first sin. Human nature, by the very fact that it was assumed, not absorbed, in him, has been raised in us also to a dignity beyond compare. For, by his incarnation, he, the Son of God, has in a certain way united himself with each man. He worked with human hands, he thought with a human mind. He acted with a human will, and with a human heart he loved.
Second Vatican Council, Gaudium et Spes, 22
It is time to say what that might mean for us, and for him. First, however, there is a possible apprehension that needs to be cleared up.
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