Category: ApologeticsHow can I learn more about the early Christian Fathers?Q: Dear Dan, I saw your conversion story on EWTN’s Journey Home Program and I am very interested in learning more about the Fathers of the Church. I am a protestant and do have a personal relationship with Christ but I am trying to better understand more about the early Church. Thanks in advance for your assistance.
One of the ways I did this was through reading the early Christian Fathers. After all, it seemed absurd to ignore the perspective of those who were either direct disciples of the Apostles themselves, or the disciples of the disciples of the Apostles. Not only did they live and walk with them, many were tortured and murdered because they would recant their faith. As you might imagine it was a bit odd to me that my Evangelical friends insisted on a consistent and contextual interpretation of scripture (i.e. the analogy of faith) but they readily dismissed the context from which the bible itself emerged – the Catholic Church. The scriptures did not drop from the sky. They emerged and were preserved and assembled by the Bishops of the Catholic Church. How is it that we can trust scripture and then completely dismiss those whom God used to bring it to us? So, the best way, in my opinion, to learn about the early Church Fathers today is through two very trustworthy sources/books:
Blessings to you on your journey and exploration. I pray that whatever you learn and uncover will only serve to deepen your love for God and your relationship with Him. Christ’s Last Supper – “Take and Eat…” What did Jesus really mean?
Throughout the centuries the Church has fulfilled Jesus request at the Last Supper to “do this in remembrance of me” through the sacrifice of the Mass and the sacrament of Holy Communion. What does Jesus actually mean by his words at the Last Supper? Not every Christian or even every Catholic agrees on their meaning; however, the Catholic Church officially teaches that the Gospels mean just what they say and are literally true.
The Catholic Church teaches that Holy Communion is not merely symbolic and that in this sacrament Jesus gives us his very self to nourish us spiritually and to help us become more united to himself so that we might have “life”. Jesus said, “I am the way, the truth and the life.” The Church teaches that when we receive Holy Communion we are receiving Christ’s actual body, blood, soul and divinity.
That is why the Church teaches that “the Eucharist is ‘the source and summit of the Christian life.’ ‘The other sacraments, and indeed all ecclesiastical ministries and works of the apostolate, are bound up with the Eucharist and are oriented toward it. For in the blessed Eucharist is contained the whole spiritual good of the Church, namely Christ himself…’ ” (CCC 1324) Despite these very clear official teachings of the Catholic faith, there was a Gallup poll taken in 1992 of Catholics regarding Holy Communion of 519 U.S. Catholics and in this poll only 30% of those asked said they believed that in Holy Communion we actually do receive the Body, Blood, Soul and Divinity of Jesus Christ under the appearance of bread and wine (also known as the Real Presence). For this reason I would like to go into some logical reasons that we can accept this teaching (even though if we really understand our Catholic faith we come to understand that the Church has infallible teachings, and this is one of them, so really each Church teaching does not need to be proven, rather as the Catechism states that having the Catholic faith means that: “We believe all ‘that which is contained in the word of God, written or handed down, and which the Church proposes for belief as divinely revealed’ ” CCC 182.) So what other evidence besides Church teaching do we have that Jesus actually meant what he said literally at the Last Supper? Below are some reasons and even some miracles supporting this teaching. Many or most Christians believe the Bible is the inerrant word of God, but the question remains, what is the correct interpretation? Why do many denominations believe something different if the Bible is easy to understand? The answer is that we have other information (including Sacred Tradition) about Jesus that is not contained in the Bible and that sheds light on what he meant. To me it is reasonable to believe that Jesus would make sure through his personal instructions to his apostles and also through the Holy Spirit at Pentecost that Peter and the apostles would understand what He taught and meant so they could teach these truths to the world. So it is logical to believe that the apostles and those whom they personally instructed would understand what Jesus’ words at the Last Supper meant as well as his other teachings… and if they did not understand right away, Jesus would make sure they understood through the gift of the Holy Spirit at Pentecost and before he commissioned them to preach the Gospel to the whole world. So what did the apostles and early Christians believe about Holy Communion? We have both the Bible and early church writings to see what they meant. Below are some examples. In the Bible we see what St. Paul’s said in Corinthians:
Also in the Gospel of John, Chapter 6, we see that Jesus has already introduced the idea of eating his body and blood before the Last Supper: Jesus said in John 6:48-65:
If Jesus really meant what he said literally we would expect the early Christians to also believe this way (having been taught by the apostles and their successors) and we find historically that they did take Jesus’ words about Holy Commuion literally and not just symbolically as some do today. Below is a short sample of what some of the Early Church Fathers of the first few centuries said about the Eucharist. Justin Martyr: “We call this food Eucharist, and no one else is permitted to partake of it, except one who believes our teaching to be true and who has been washed in the washing which is for the remission of sins and for regeneration [i.e., has received baptism] and is thereby living as Christ enjoined. For not as common bread nor common drink do we receive these; but since Jesus Christ our Savior was made incarnate by the word of God and had both flesh and blood for our salvation, so too, as we have been taught, the food which has been made into the Eucharist by the Eucharistic prayer set down by him, and by the change of which our blood and flesh is nurtured, is both the flesh and the blood of that incarnated Jesus” (First Apology 66 [A.D. 151]). Irenaeus: “If the Lord were from other than the Father, how could he rightly take bread, which is of the same creation as our own, and confess it to be his body and affirm that the mixture in the cup is his blood?” (Against Heresies 4:33?32 [A.D. 189]). St. Augustine: “What you see is the bread and the chalice; that is what your own eyes report to you. But what your faith obliges you to accept is that the bread is the body of Christ and the chalice is the blood of Christ. This has been said very briefly, which may perhaps be sufficient for faith; yet faith does not desire instruction” (Sermons 411). “He has declared the cup, a part of creation, to be his own blood, from which he causes our blood to flow; and the bread, a part of creation, he has established as his own body, from which he gives increase unto our bodies. When, therefore, the mixed cup [wine and water] and the baked bread receives the Word of God and becomes the Eucharist, the body of Christ, and from these the substance of our flesh is increased and supported, how can they say that the flesh is not capable of receiving the gift of God, which is eternal life? flesh which is nourished by the body and blood of the Lord, and is in fact a member of him?” (ibid. 5:2). Clement of Alexandria: “?Eat my flesh,? [Jesus] says, ?and drink my blood.? The Lord supplies us with these intimate nutrients, he delivers over his flesh and pours out his blood, and nothing is lacking for the growth of his children” (The Instructor of Children 1:6:43:3 [A.D. 191]). We also have the witness of some early Christian martyrs who gave up their lives because of their believe in this teaching. Besides the official teaching of the Church, the Bible and Early Church Fathers, there have been various miracles throughout the centuries to point to the “real presence” of Jesus in the Eucharist. Some of these miracles have been scientifically validated in modern times like the one at Lanciano where in the presence of an unbelieving priest and those present the host actually took on the appearance of real human flesh. To find out more click here. To read about other Eucharistic miracles click here. Also the Saints through whom God has worked many miracles had a great devotion to Jesus in the Eucharist. Here are a few examples: St. John Vianney: “If we really understood the Mass, we would die of joy.” “There is nothing so great as the Eucharist. If God had something more precious, He would have given it to us.” St. Jerome: “Without doubt, the Lord grants all favors which are asked of Him in Mass, provided they be fitting for us; and, which is a matter of great wonder, ofttimes He also grants that also which is not demanded of Him, if we, on our part, put no obstacle in the way.” St. Leonard of Port Maurice: “Be now confounded for very wonder, reflecting that the proposition just laid down is indeed most true; a soul assisting with adequate devotion at holy Mass renders more honor to God than that which all the Angels and all the Saints put together render with all their adorations.” The above examples are just a few quotes from Church teachings, Early Church Fathers, teachings of the Saints, and also miracles associated with the Eucharist. So what is one to make of all this? Perhaps some Christians who believe in the Bible and take it literally don’t take these words of Christ literally, but upon in-depth study of the sources mentioned, if one takes the time to study them it seems most reasonable to take Jesus’ words literally remembering that God can do all things. It is just a matter as to what Jesus really meant by his teachings, not whether this is possible or even probable, because the Bible says that “with God all things are possible.” (Matt. 19:26) Our Catholic faith teaches us when we go to Mass that Jesus is not only there in spirit but is actually physically present in Holy Communion and that we can be united to Jesus in this special way by receiving him. After all it is Jesus himself who said in the Gospel of John, Chapter 6, that we must eat his body if we want life within us. The disciples didn’t understand what Jesus could mean when he first said this and some of them left, but we find out at his last supper what he meant. Jesus was referring to Holy Communion and repeated this teaching at the Last Supper when he said, “Take and eat; this is my body.” (Matt 26:26) and said to do this in remembrance of him which we do at each Mass. We can be united to Jesus in a very special way here on earth through the reception of Holy Communion. This is what Jesus desired. I can see no other way we can be closer to Jesus on this earth both physically and spiritually than receiving him with devotion and love in Holy Communion. There is so much to say about Holy Communion that a short article like this cannot cover. I would invite everyone to read what the Catechism of the Catholic Church says about the Sacrament of the Eucharist. It is online here at: http://www.scborromeo.org/ccc/p2s2c1a3.htm At my website at www.catholicspiritualdirection.org there is a page with links to Church documents and writings of the saints here. There are also some very good talks and books on the Mass and Eucharist such as Scott Hahn’s The Lamb’s Supper. If we want to really know our faith we need to take time to study. If you are not sure if Jesus really meant what he said at the Last Supper to be taken literally and/or about any other Catholic teachings, I invite you to study the actual teachings of the Church (i.e. the Catechism, papal encyclicals, teachings of the saints, writings of the Early Church Fathers, and solidly Catholic books on the subject), and also to ask Jesus in prayer with an open heart to show you his desire and the truth regarding this and other teachings. For those of us who do believe, let us have a greater devotion and reverence to Jesus in this Sacrament and faithfully attend Mass at least each Sunday. Mary, Mother of the Son – Book Recommendation
With that as a backdrop, in August of this year I had the divinely orchestrated opportunity to resolve some of my struggles by spending a number of hours (driving and getting lost together) with Mark Shea on the way to a Catholic New Media conference in Boston. The insights he shared were compelling and deeply beneficial. When we arrived at the event, he generously provided me a copy of his three volume work, Mary, Mother of the Son. I began reading the first volume that night in my room. By the time I arrived back home from the trip a few days later I was surprised to find myself on the last page of volume one. Frankly, I couldn’t put the book down. In this complete and compelling work, Mark offers a rare combination of readability, scholarship, and wit that will keep you riveted to every page. His goal in writing the series was to provide one place where the average Catholic could find and understand all the important teachings on Marian doctrine and devotion. He has achieved that goal in grand fashion. Here’s a brief summary of each volume: In Modern Myths and Ancient Truth you will discover the fascinating way in which Mary emerges with profundity, beauty, and love from the pages of Scripture in the light of apostolic teaching. You will probe how the gospel of Christ crowns and perfects, not only the Old Testament, but the deepest insights of the great non-Christian philosophies, religions, and myths. You can also learn how to read the Bible as the earliest Christians did and find out how Mary safeguards the deepest truths about Christ and his Church. In First Guardian of the Faith you will learn about the biblical and apostolic roots of Mary’s title as Theotokos; as well as her Perpetual Virginity, Immaculate Conception, and Assumption into heaven. In addition, you will discover the astonishing relevance each of these teachings has, not only for the Christian believer, but for the twenty-first century as it comes to grips with such questions as the dignity, origin, and destiny of the human person. In Miracles, Devotion, and Motherhood you will explore the devotional life of the Church: a life which includes the communion of saints, the holy rosary, the mysteries of private revelation and Mary’s God-given role as mother of all who believe in Christ. This is a rare work that I believe every serious Catholic, without exception, must read. As for you, I suggest you buy it as a Christmas present for someone you love, or, for yourself! Seek Him – Find Him – Follow Him, Dan PS: As always, please click here and purchase Mark’s books through this site so we will build credit to purchase and review other great books for you! Is “Catholic guilt” bad? What about those who use it to criticize the Church?
A: This is not uncommon, and I think your instinct is right; their joking about “Catholic guilt” may actually be a providential opportunity. I will share some thoughts, hoping that you can use them to spark a fruitful, healing conversation the next time one of your friends takes refuge behind this rhetorical shield. A Critique of the Critique Some people who have left the Church (actively or passively) use the concept of Catholic guilt to help justify their exit. They explain that as they grew up in the Catholic Church, they were constantly badgered about sin, and were taught that God is angry and vindictive, watching over our every move, just waiting for a chance to catch us doing wrong and condemn us. This negative view of God and religion stifled their spiritual growth, they go on to say. They didn’t think it was healthy, or fair, and they didn’t like it, so one Sunday they walked out the doors of their parish Church after Mass and simply didn’t come back. In one sense, this evaluation of the Church’s view on sin is correct: the Catholic Church is energetically against sin. We believe that sin is real, destructive, and to be avoided at all costs. Jesus even said we should cut off our hand or gouge out our eye if they caused us to sin (see Mark 9:38-50). (By the way, he didn’t mean that literally – after all, how can our hand or eye “cause” us to sin? Sin is always a free choice of our will against God’s will, and those choices stem from our heart.) Sin is the number one enemy of God and the human race, and so it is also the number one enemy of each one of our lives, the biggest obstacle to the happiness and fulfillment we crave. But the next part of the fallen away Catholic’s critique isn’t so obvious – the part about God being constantly angry and our spiritual lives being stunted by guilt. In fact, that critique comes from a misunderstanding of what the Church teaches about guilt. If we can have in our minds the right understanding of guilt, we may be able to avoid straying off the good path ourselves, and help our wandering brethren come back into friendship with Christ. Good Guilt Basically, there are two kinds of guilt: good guilt and bad guilt. To use a rather clumsy analogy, good guilt is like a spiritual nervous system. Our physical nervous system is designed (at least in part) to help us recognize and avoid physical danger. So, for example, when we touch a hot piece of metal, our immediate reaction is to pull away, so we don’t get burned or damaged by it. Or, to take another example, if smoke from a fire seeps into a room, we start finding it hard to breathe; we start coughing. These are signs from our physical nervous system that we better get out of that room before we suffocate. Imagine if your nervous system was malfunctioning, and it wasn’t able to warn you about these kinds of bodily threats – you would be in an extremely dangerous situation. Well, good guilt, healthy guilt, performs this same function for our souls. Physical health is good for our bodies in the same way as moral health is good for our souls. And moral health means doing good actions and avoiding evil actions. If our conscience is in good condition, it will register guilt when we commit, or toy with committing, evil actions. That guilt is a warning against performing or persisting in evil actions, because committing evil strains or breaks our friendship with God and damages our interior peace and integrity, just as a hot piece of metal will damage our skin and breathing smoke will damage our lungs. In this sense, the Bible’s and the Church’s warnings against sin are not the expressions of an angry and vindictive God. On the contrary, they are a sign of God’s infinite love; he knows that committing evil, even though it sometimes appears to give us a short term benefit, is destructive, both for ourselves and for others. In fact, the “punishment” for sin isn’t something that God adds on, the way a judge in a court of law sentences a criminal. Rather, it consists precisely in the pain and misery caused by the sin itself; it is the result of the sin – just as the child who plays with knives even when his parents warn him not to suffers pain and misery when he cuts himself. It would be a mean and selfish God that didn’t warn us about the destructive consequences of evil actions. But it is a good and wise God who has given us the gift of a conscience, which helps us experience good guilt to warn us against committing sins, and to move us to repent if we have committed them. Bad Guilt The second kind of guilt is bad guilt. This occurs when we feel guilty without having done anything wrong. This is the kind of unhealthy guilt that can stifle our spiritual and emotional maturity by leading to moral confusion. Unhealthy guilt makes us blame ourselves for things that are not blameworthy, or for things outside the purview of our responsibility. When we do that, we become emotionally and spiritually tangled up, almost paralyzed, because escape from this feeling of false guilt is impossible: we cannot be forgiven for something we were not responsible for, or for something that wasn’t a sin. Bad guilt becomes like a cul-de-sac; we go round and round in our minds trying to find mercy and a fresh start, but we can’t. It drains our energy and inhibits us from growing in our friendship with God and others, because we don’t feel worthy of their love, and so we keep them at a distance. Bad guilt can come from at least two sources. First, it can come from not distinguishing between sins and simple mistakes. For example, if I sincerely forget to send my mom a mother’s day card, I may have strong feelings of regret, but I shouldn’t feel morally guilty about it (even if she tries to make me feel guilty) – it was just a mistake, an oversight, not a morally evil act. If, on the other hand, I purposely avoid calling my mom on her birthday because I’m nursing resentment about something she said five years ago and I actually want to make her suffer, then I should to feel guilty; Christians honor their parents, they don’t hold grudges against them. Second, bad guilt can result from experiencing a defective authority figure (authority figures are supposed to help form our consciences, our ability to identify moral good and evil). This happens often in families that go through a divorce. The pain and conflict between the parents inhibit them from giving proper love and discipline to the children. As a result, the children begin to feel responsible for the problems their parents are having; they blame themselves for the neglect they are experiencing. Or take the example of an unhappy, angry priest who is in charge of teaching the faith to the children of his parish. Every week he rants and raves about how sinful and evil people are, and how painful the punishments of hell will be. He never speaks about the unlimited mercy of God, which is always ready to forgive us. He never speaks about the goodness of our heavenly Father, who has prepared a place for each one of us in heaven. He never speaks about the wonderful mission that each one of us has received in this life, a mission that only we can accomplish. Instead, he focuses over and over again, week after week, on the fires of hell and the selfish tendencies of our hearts, drilling into the children a lopsided and distorted conception of God, and of themselves. Over time, that can feed bad guilt, an unhealthy feeling of guilt simply for being alive, as if our existence itself were some kind of sin. Nothing is worse for our relationship with God than that. And if someone leaves the Catholic Church because of this kind of experience, it would be unwise, but understandable. Seeking a Solution In either case, whether we are dealing with good guilt or bad guilt, the remedy is the same: returning to the loving embrace of God our Father and Christ our Lord. If we are experiencing good guilt, we need to repent and ask for forgiveness and mercy, which Jesus Christ won for us by suffering on the cross. God never runs out of mercy; he is always eager to dish it out. In fact, he invented the sacrament of confession in order to make dishing out his mercy as tangible a thing as possible. If we are experiencing bad guilt, then we need to go to God in prayer, reading and reflecting on the Bible, God’s own Word, which assures us, over and over again, that we are infinitely valuable in God’s eyes, that he is always thinking of us, that we have nothing to fear. Sin is real, and it matters; but God’s mercy is even more real, and it matters more. As the Catechism puts it, “The victory that Christ won over sin has given us greater blessings than those which sin had taken from us” (#420). I pray that the next time a friend or acquaintance jibes you about Catholic guilt, these ideas will help you speak to them about what they really need to hear: the transforming power of Christ’s saving grace. Yours in Christ, Father John Bartunek, LC The problem with “Praying to Saints.”
As a Protestant, I had the same problem when examining teachings of the Catholic Church. Even after more than a decade of study, one-hundred percent of my perceptions were framed, not by understanding how the Catholic Church defined or explained its own beliefs, but by how Protestants defined and explained them. With that as a back-drop, let’s look at a common concern with the idea of “praying” to the Saints. First of all the word “prayer” was a huge stumbling block for me. It is very important for Catholics to understand that in the Protestant world, the word “prayer” is never used for any other purpose than to describe communication with God. So to hear someone was “praying” to a Saint easily sounded like sacrilege. A similarly sized challenge for the Catholic is finding alternative words to describe this preternatural conversation. No Protestant has an issue with asking a friend to pray for them. The scenario of a prayer request to an earthly friend is easily described because the exchange happens in the natural realm. For example, “I talked with Bill and asked him to pray for me.” If a Catholic were to use natural-realm language like this to describe the expression of their needs to someone beyond this life, for obvious reasons, it would sound odd and incomprehensible. The difficulty is that aside from the word “prayer” what word could one use to describe this exchange? I can’t think of one that captures the true nature of the Catholic’s supernatural supplication. So, one is then forced into either falsely defining reality for the Catholic, or, allowing them to define what they mean by what they say. An honest inquiry reveals that the phrase “prayer to” as defined by Catholicism in this context, can be accurately translated like this, “I sought to engage Saint Catherine to intercede on my behalf.” Now, any reasonable person would find this an odd and circumlocutious utterance. Instead, a Catholic achieves the same meaning from the efficient expression, “I prayed to Saint Catherine.” To a Catholic this does not mean that Saint Catherine, any more than Bill in the example above, takes the place of God. What it does mean is that Saint Catherine loves God, is a sister in Christ, cares about the person, and will likely intercede for them effectively. No more, no less. So, if we accept a purely Protestant definition of a contextually Catholic use of a word or phrase, we end up with a contrived psuedosacrilege. If we use a Catholic definition in a Catholic context, we end up with something quite reasonable and biblically sound. Unfortunately, the errant interpretive method outlined above is very common to Protestant evaluations of Catholic doctrine. This disappointing approach is unworthy of the often helpful perspectives Protestants bring to doctrinal discourse on important issues in the Christian life. Seek Him – Find Him – Follow Him Dan |
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Q: Dear Father John, I know more than a few people who are fallen-away Catholics. They make fun the Church sometimes, or they make fun of me. But my question has to do with “Catholic guilt.” They mention this sometimes and smirk, like it’s some kind of inside joke on me. I am not sure what they mean by this, but I have a sense that it’s holding them back living their faith. I would like to be able to help them. Can you give me any direction?
At one time in my life I viewed Christians as shallow people blindly following silly rules. As I was to discover, these perceptions were not only wrong, they were worlds away from reality. The root cause of my misperception was my confident ignorance. Until I allowed Christians to speak to me and define their faith in their words, I was unable to get anywhere near the truth.
