Why we are involved with Pope Francis

“With my Roman Catholic upbringing, I have a set of principles that serve me well in good times and bad.”  STEVE GARVEY

By Alex P. Vidal

WE were raised by a Roman Catholic family and educated in a Roman Catholic institution.

Thus, like many Catholics in the country today, we are also, in one way or the other, involved in the presence of our supreme Pontiff, Pope Francis, in the country from January 15-19.

Being a Roman Catholic though is not enough.

In name only but not in deed?

We must know first why we are Roman Catholics and how we became Roman Catholics aside from baptism.

If we don't know how to practice the religion that brings us to the teachings of Jesus Christ, we must at least know its history and where it came from; how it evolved and why it became one of the most dominant religions in the world.

Roman Catholicism is the product of 20 centuries of history.

To understand it, we must try to understand this history.

Not only it is the product of history, but it involves a distinctive attitude toward history.

A Roman Catholic looks upon the history of the church as an organic whole; he is proud "that catholicism cannot be identified simply and wholly with primitive Christianity, nor even with the gospel of Christ, in the same way that the great oak cannot be identified with the tiny acorn."

And yet he must insist that the church is the institution of Christ, that Peter was the first pope, and that the seven sacraments all go back to the Lord himself.

ATTITUDE

This attitude toward history makes it essential that we examine the historical evolution of Roman Catholicism.

How did Christianity become Catholic?

How did it happen that from a simple message and unpretentious life of Jesus of Nazareth, as we find this described in the gospels, there came an international organization, fully equipped with priests and bishops and patriarchs, with rites and sacraments and pomp, with the power of discipline for this world and the control over grace for the next?

“Surely the contrast is a striking one, even for a person who believes that it was Jesus’ intention to establish catholic Christianity,” intones the late Jaroslav Pelikan in The Riddle of Roman Catholicism.

Catholic Christianity should mean identity plus universality.

Pelikan explains further: “By ‘identity’ I mean that which distinguishes the church from the world—its message, its uniqueness, its particularity. By ‘universality,’ on the other hand, I mean that which impels the church to embrace nothing less than all mankind in its vision and in its appeal.”

He clarifies that “’identity plus universality’ is not a logical definition, and it is not intended as one.”

“Indeed, catholic Christianity is probably as incapable of logical definition as is the taste of cheddar cheese or the music in the closing scene of Don Giovanni. One famous definition finds the essence of Catholicism in this, ‘that it does not distinguish between the church in the religious sense of the word (the church of Christ) and the church in the legal (or institutional) sense of the word.’”

DESCRIPTION

Russian theologian, Aleksieri Khomiakov has a better description:

“The church is called one, holy, universal (or catholic), and apostolic because she is one and holy; because she belongs to the whole world, and not to one particular locality; because through her all humanity and all the earth are hallowed, not one particular nation or one particular country; because her being consists in the agreement and unity of spirit and life of all her members on the whole earth, who acknowledge her; because, finally, the whole of her faith, her hope, and her love is contained in the writings and the teachings of the apostles.”

Throughout its life, then, catholic Christianity means identity plus universality.

The combination appears in catholic piety, churchmanship, theology, and liturgy; and the narrative of how the combination came into existence is the history of the rise of the catholic Christianity, according to Pelikan.

In the words of a liberal Protestant historian, “Catholicism is…as old as the Church if we include its rudimentary form; there is hardly a single one of its elements which was not present” in the first century.

Where these elements appear together, be it East or West, there is catholic Christianity, concludes Pelikan. 

Ave Maria

“What a joy to remember that she is our Mother! Since she loves us and knows our weakness, what have we to fear?”

- Saint Therese of Lisieux, Doctor of the Church

By Alex P. Vidal

“HAIL Mary, full of grace, the Lord is with thee. Blessed art thou amongst women, and blessed is the fruit of thy womb, Jesus. Holy Mary, mother of God, pray for us sinners now and at the hour of our death. Amen.”

These words of the Ave Maria, spoken daily by millions of Roman Catholics, summarize one of the most perplexing elements in the riddle of Roman Catholicism, the cult of prayers and veneration addressed to the Blessed Virgin Mary.

The late Dr. Jaroslav Pelikan, who wrote The Riddle of Roman Catholicism on the eve of the Second Vatican Council and in the early phase of the Cold War, explained that other elements in that riddle may seem strange or even fascinating, “but the cult of the Blessed Virgin is downright repugnant to many non-Roman Christians.”

Non-Catholics look upon it as “a species or vestigial remnant of pre-Christian paganism,” Pelikan explained.

He noted that “they smile intolerantly” when they see or hear the invocation of the saints by the Roman Catholics, or read notices in the “Personal” column of a metropolitan newspaper that say: “Thanks to St. Jude and the Blessed Virgin for obtaining an apartment for us.”

Pelikan observed that even those Protestants who look at the mass with respect rather than suspicion are caught short by the veneration of Mary.

OBNOXIOUS

“In the eyes of many Protestant lay people this is surely the most obnoxious feature of Roman Catholicism,” Pelikan stressed. “Here, they say, you have to draw the line beyond which Christianity dare not go.”

Protestant theology, too, sees in the cult of Mary, as it has climaxed now in the dogma of the Assumption, one of the chief barriers between Roman Catholics and Protestants.

Pelikan said even sympathetic Protestant theologians felt constrained to warn in 1950:  

While today the majority of the churches with tears of penitence confess before God that they share in the guilt of a divided Body of Christ, and in common prayer and serious scholarly effort seek to diminish the area of disagreement and increase the area of agreement…the Roman Church would increase the area of disagreement by a dogma of the Assumption. Creation of a dogma of the Assumption would be interpreted today in the midst of the efforts at closer relationships between the churches as a fundamental veto on the part of the Roman Church.

“Thus there is little sympathy for Roman Catholic Mariology outside the borders of the Roman communion,” stressed Pelikan, who died on May 13, 2006 after a battle with cancer at age 82.

HOLY MARY

Calling Mary “holy” was originally a way of speaking not about Mary herself at all, but about Jesus Christ, suggested the one-time Lutheran professor of church history at Yale Divinity School.

Almost every reference to her in the earliest Christian literature is, in point, a reference to her son.

When Paul says that Christ was “born of woman,” he is saying nothing about Mary, but is asserting that our Lord was truly human. (See Gal. 4:4.)

Pelikan pointed out that even the narratives of Matthew and Luke, which tell of her conceiving without a man, are aimed at the glorification of Christ, not of Mary.

“Whatever else may be said about the idea of the virgin birth, it is a declaration about Jesus Christ,” wrote Pelikan. “It means that even in the circumstances of his humble birth Jesus manifested God’s power and freedom over the created world and its laws.”

He added: “To that power and freedom it points as a sign. Even without the sign of the virgin birth, the gospels of Mark and John and the epistles of Paul are able to speak of the power and the freedom of God in Christ.”

Pelikan explained that the sign loses its powers as a sign, its “significance,” when it is interpreted as merely an incredible happening or when it is taken as a key to the holiness of Mary.

“Mary and Pontius Pilate are the only two ordinary people mentioned in the Apostles’ Creed,” disclosed Pelikan. “Both are there as signs pointing to Jesus Christ—one to show his lordship even in infancy, the other to show his lordship even in death.”

Pelikan believed that “neither Mary nor Pilate is important as a figure in history except for the role each of them played in the career of our Lord.”