Is Sterilization Acceptable?

I had a nice exchange with 2 of my co-workers last the other day.  Someway or another our conversation turned to pregnancies and what people can do to avoid them.  One co-worker is a non-practicing, nominal Catholic and the other was a non-denominational Christian.  

After I told them that I didn't agree with having a vasectomy.  The nominal Catholic laughed and said: “Wait, wait, lets see what the extremist has to say about this.”  When I told them that we shouldn’t ‘mutilate’ our bodies for our convenience he started giggling.  The purpose of medicine is to return our bodies to a natural state.  I said that it wasn't a natural thing to do to your body and so we shouldn't do anything to disrupt the natural functioning of our organs.   He (the nominal Catholic) just started laughing.  He thought that I'd disagree with removing a kidney stone since that was a natural thing.

My answer to that though was kinda simple.   I told him, and the other non-denominational Christian that medicine is suppose to repair or return the organs and body in general to its original purpose which is why wearing glasses is ok since it improves the functioning of the eyes and the same for the kidney stone.  The stone impedes the kidney from functioning properly hence it is ok to remove it.  The only thing he had left was to turn around and he kept smirking but he gave up the argument.  Hopefully I was able to plant a seed to both of them.  I have great hope that the other individual listening will chew on this for a while.  At least he seemed  to be receptive of this idea of the true role of medicine.  I just thought I'd share with you.  I hope they'll be more of those moments, I just hope I have a ready response when/if they do and please do not shy away from defending the Catholic position on moral issues.  Her reasons that the Church holds these positions are on very solid ground, we just need to go look them up and share them when the opportunities arise.

God Bless
Nathan

Communion of Saints, pt3

Fundamentalists often challenge the Catholic practice of asking saints and angels to pray on our behalf. But the Bible directs us to invoke those in heaven and ask them to pray with us. 

Thus, in Psalm 103 we pray, "Bless the Lord, O you his angels, you mighty ones who do his word, hearkening to the voice of his word! Bless the Lord, all his hosts, his ministers that do his will!" (Ps. 103:20–21). And in the opening verses of Psalms 148 we pray, "Praise the Lord! Praise the Lord from the heavens, praise him in the heights! Praise him, all his angels, praise him, all his host!" 

Not only do those in heaven pray with us, they also pray for us. In the book of Revelation, John sees that "the twenty-four elders [the leaders of the people of God in heaven] fell down before the Lamb, each holding a harp, and with golden bowls full of incense, which are the prayers of the saints" (Rev. 5:8). Thus the saints in heaven offer to God the prayers of the saints on earth. 

Angels do the same thing: "[An] angel came and stood at the altar [in heaven] with a golden censer; and he was given much incense to mingle with the prayers of all the saints upon the golden altar before the throne; and the smoke of the incense rose with the prayers of the saints from the hand of the angel before God" (Rev. 8:3–4). 

Jesus himself warned us not to offend small children, because their guardian angels have guaranteed intercessory access to the Father: "See that you do not despise one of these little ones; for I tell you that in heaven their angels always see the face of my Father who is in heaven" (Matt. 18:10). 

Because he is the only God-man and the Mediator of the New Covenant, Jesus is the only mediator between man and God (1 Tim. 2:5), but this in no way means we cannot or should not ask our fellow Christians to pray with us and for us (1 Tim. 2:1–4). In particular, we should ask the intercession of those Christians in heaven, who have already had their sanctification completed, for "[t]he prayer of a righteous man has great power in its effects" (Jas. 5:16). 

As the following passages show, the early Church Fathers not only clearly recognized the biblical teaching that those in heaven can and do intercede for us, but they also applied this teaching in their own daily prayer life. 

Hermas
"[The Shepherd said:] ‘But those who are weak and slothful in prayer, hesitate to ask anything from the Lord; but the Lord is full of compassion, and gives without fail to all who ask him. But you, [Hermas,] having been strengthened by the holy angel [you saw], and having obtained from him such intercession, and not being slothful, why do not you ask of the Lord understanding, and receive it from him?’" (The Shepherd 3:5:4 [A.D. 80]). 

Clement of Alexandria
"In this way is he [the true Christian] always pure for prayer. He also prays in the society of angels, as being already of angelic rank, and he is never out of their holy keeping; and though he pray alone, he has the choir of the saints standing with him [in prayer]" (Miscellanies 7:12 [A.D. 208]). 

Origen
"But not the high priest [Christ] alone prays for those who pray sincerely, but also the angels . . . as also the souls of the saints who have already fallen asleep" (Prayer 11 [A.D. 233]). 

Cyprian of Carthage
"Let us remember one another in concord and unanimity. Let us on both sides [of death] always pray for one another. Let us relieve burdens and afflictions by mutual love, that if one of us, by the swiftness of divine condescension, shall go hence first, our love may continue in the presence of the Lord, and our prayers for our brethren and sisters not cease in the presence of the Father’s mercy" (Letters 56[60]:5 [A.D. 253]). 

Anonymous
"Atticus, sleep in peace, secure in your safety, and pray anxiously for our sins" (funerary inscription near St. Sabina’s in Rome [A.D. 300]). 

"Pray for your parents, Matronata Matrona. She lived one year, fifty-two days" (ibid.). 

"Mother of God, [listen to] my petitions; do not disregard us in adversity, but rescue us from danger" (Rylands Papyrus 3 [A.D. 350]). 

Augustine
"A Christian people celebrates together in religious solemnity the memorials of the martyrs, both to encourage their being imitated and so that it can share in their merits and be aided by their prayers" (Against Faustus the Manichean [A.D. 400]). 

Adapted from: http://www.catholic.com/tracts/the-intercession-of-the-saints

God Bless
Nathan

Communion of Saints, pt2

What would be the point of asking for intercessory prayers if the people we are asking are not aware of us or of our prayers?  Well we can find that they ARE aware of us in:

Heb 12:1         “Therefore, since we are surrounded by such a great cloud of witnesses, let us throw off everything that hinders and the sin that so easily entangles, and let us run with perseverance the race marked out for us.”

Mt 17:3           Just then there appeared before them Moses and Elijah, talking with Jesus.

(If Jesus didn’t want any contact between saints on earth and saints in heaven, why did our Lord make a special point of appearing to Peter, James, and John on the Mount of Transfiguration in the company of Moses and Elijah, two ‘dead’ saints? (Patrick Madrid))

Rev 6:9-10      When he opened the fifth seal, I saw under the altar the souls of those who had been slain because of the word of God and the testimony they had maintained. They called out in a loud voice, How long, Sovereign Lord, holy and true, until you judge the inhabitants of the earth and avenge our blood?

Luke 15:10      …There is joy in the presence of the angels of God over one sinner that repenteth.

We have just learned that the ‘dead saints’ are indeed aware of earthly doings, but can they do anything about it?  Are there intercessory prayers effective?  Of course there are.  Prayers of the righteous availeth much (Jas 5:16).  Who are more righteous than those in heaven?

I feel I must make clear that Jesus alone is our mediator, John Henry Cardinal Newman pointed out:

The Catholic Church allows no…Saint, not even the Blessed Virgin herself, to come between the soul and its Creator…The devotions then to angels and saints as little interfered with the incommunicable glory of the Eternal, as the love which we bear our friends and relations, our tender human sympathies, are inconsistent with that supreme homage of the heart to the Unseen.  (Newman, Apologia Pro Vita Sua, p.284-285)

We can therefore see that asking saints to pray for us (whether they are ‘living’ or ‘dead’) is acceptable, approved by God, and availeth much.  The communion of the Saints is nothing more that the recognition that saints after death (and angels) are more alive than us, aware of happenings on earth, desirous of aiding us, and able to be asked for help and to assist us with their prayers of intercessions, always through Jesus, just as saints who are still ‘alive’ are able to do for us.

Can this practice be found in the 2,000 year history of the Christian faith?  We’ll answer that next week.

Text adapted from http://www.catholicapologetics.org/ap070100.htm

God Bless

Nathan

Communion of Saints pt1

The word in the Bible for “saint” or “saints” in the Greek texts can also be translated as “sanctified, consecrated” or “holy ones”.  It’s Paul who calls all his fellow believers “saints,” and not just the notably holy ones.  We see an example of this in Phillipians 4, verse 21 and 22.  It says: “Salute ye every saint in Christ Jesus. The brethren who are with me salute you. All the saints salute you: especially they that are of Caesar's household.”  Paul also uses the term for both those who are living and for those who are dead. We find this very clearly in 2 Thess 1:9-10 and also in Jude 14-15:

2 Thess 1says:

“These (who do not acknowledge God nor heed the good news) will pay the penalty of eternal ruin, separated from the presence of the Lord and from the glory of his power, when he comes to be glorified among his holy ones and to be marveled at on that day among all who have believed, for our testimony to you was believed.”

And Jude 14-15 says:

“Enoch, of the seventh generation from Adam, prophesied also about them when he said, ‘Behold, the Lord has come with his countless holy ones to execute judgment on all and to convict everyone for all the godless deeds that they committed…”

This practice of Paul corresponds to one of the earliest creedal statements of Christian faith: The Apostles Creed: “I believe in the communion of saints.”  Communion of saints refers to the bond of unity among all believers, both living and dead, who are or have been committed followers of Jesus Christ.  In the eyes of God, in eternity, the distinction between His People who are ‘living’ or who are ‘dead’ is not at all important.  This statement can be supported by the following Scripture verses:

Mk 9:4            “Then Elijah appeared to them along with Moses, and they were conversing with Jesus.”

Mk 12:26-27   “As for the dead being raised, have you not read in the Book of Moses, in the passage about the bush, how God told him, ‘I am the God of Abraham, (the) God of Isaac, and (the) God of Jacob’?  He is not God of the dead but of the living.  You are greatly misled.”

Rom 12:5        …so we, though many, are one body in Christ and individually parts of one another.

Rom 8:38-9     For I am convinced that neither death nor life, neither angels nor demons, neither the present nor the future, nor any powers, neither height nor depth, nor anything else in all creation, will be able to separate us from the love of God that is in Christ Jesus our Lord.

This one body in Christ is called by the Catholic Church as The Mystical Body of Christ.  This concept, as seen in the Catechism of the Catholic Church, is explained as: “The life of each of God’s children is joined in Christ and through Christ in a wonderful way to the life of all the other Christian brethren in the supernatural unity of the Mystical Body of Christ, as in a single mystical person.” (par. 1474)

Since we are “members one of another,” we can, in Christ and only in Christ, seek the prayers and help of fellow members of the Body, both here and in Heaven.  Seeing as all believers as a whole make up the one body in Christ, we are all connected to each other with Christ at the head.

Luke 15:7 points to the fact that those in heaven (the saints and angels) are aware of the happenings here on earth since they would rejoice over one sinner who repents.  James Cardinal Gibbons explains it this way:

“ The angels [and saints] are glad whenever you repent of your sins.  Now, what is repentance?  It is a change of heart.  It is an interior operation of the will.  The saints, therefore, are acquainted –we know not how – not only with your actions and words, but even with your very thoughts.”  (Gibbons, The Faith of our Fathers, p.127)

Text adapted from:  www.catholic.com/tracts

But can they hear us?  More on this next week.

God Bless

Nathan

Fruits of the Fig

Readings:
Exodus 3:1-8,13-15
Psalm 103:1-4, 6-8, 11
1 Corinthians 10:1-6, 10-12
Luke 13:1-9

---

In the Church, we are made children of the God of Abraham, Isaac and Jacob - the God who makes known His name and His ways to Moses in today's First Reading.

Mindful of His covenant with Abraham (see Exodus 2:24), God came down to rescue His people from the slave-drivers of Egypt. Faithful to that same covenant (see Luke 1:54-55, 72-73), He sent Jesus to redeem all lives from destruction, as today's Psalm tells us.

Paul says in today's Epistle that God's saving deeds in the Exodus were written down for the Church, intended as a prelude and foreshadowing of our own Baptism by water, our liberation from sin, our feeding with spiritual food and drink.

Yet the events of the Exodus were also given as a "warning" - that being children of Abraham is no guarantee that we will reach the promised land of our salvation.

At any moment, Jesus warns in today's Gospel, we could perish - not as God's punishment for being "greater sinners" - but because, like the Israelites in the wilderness, we stumble into evil desires, fall into grumbling, forget all His benefits.

Jesus calls us today to "repentance" - not a one-time change of heart, but an ongoing, daily transformation of our lives. We're called to live the life we sing about in today's Psalm - blessing His holy name, giving thanks for His kindness and mercy.

The fig tree in His parable is a familiar Old Testament symbol for Israel (see Jeremiah 8:3; 24:1-10). As the fig tree is given one last season to produce fruit before it is cut down, so too Jesus is giving Israel one final opportunity to bear good fruits as evidence of its repentance (see Luke 3:8).

Lent should be for us like the season of reprieve given to the fig tree, a grace period in which we let "the gardener," Christ, cultivate our hearts, uprooting what chokes the divine life in us, strengthening us to bear fruits that will last into eternity.

Yours in Christ,
Scott Hahn, PhD

www.salvationhistory.com

The Glory in Sight

The Glory in Sight: Scott Hahn Reflects on the Second Sunday of Lent
 

Readings:

Genesis 15:5-12, 17-18
Psalm 27:1,7-9, 13-14
Philippians 3:17-4:1
Luke 9:28-36 (see also "A 'New' Exodus")

---

In today's Gospel, we go up to the mountain with Peter, John and James. There we see Jesus "transfigured," speaking with Moses and Elijah about His "exodus."

The Greek word "exodus" means "departure." But the word is chosen deliberately here to stir our remembrance of the Israelites' flight from Egypt.

By His death and resurrection, Jesus will lead a new Exodus - liberating not only Israel but every race and people; not from bondage to Pharaoh, but from slavery to sin and death. He will lead all mankind, not to the territory promised to Abraham in today's First Reading, but to the heavenly commonwealth that Paul describes in today's Epistle.

Moses, the giver of God's law, and the great prophet Elijah, were the only Old Testament figures to hear the voice and see the glory of God atop a mountain (see Exodus 24:15-18; 1 Kings 19:8-18).

Today's scene closely resembles God's revelation to Moses, who also brought along three companions and whose face also shone brilliantly (see Exodus 24:1;34:29). But when the divine cloud departs in today's Gospel, Moses and Elijah are gone. Only Jesus remains. He has revealed the glory of the Trinity - the voice of the Father, the glorified Son, and the Spirit in the shining cloud.

Jesus fulfills all that Moses and the prophets had come to teach and show us about God (see Luke 24:27). He is the "chosen One" promised by Isaiah (see Isaiah 42:1; Luke 23:35), the "prophet like me" that Moses had promised (see Deuteronomy 18:15; Acts 3:22-23; 7:37). Far and above that, He is the Son of God (see Psalm 2:7; Luke 3:21-23).

"Listen to Him,"the Voice tells us from the cloud. If, like Abraham, we put our faith in His words, one day we too will be delivered into "the land of the living" that we sing of in today's Psalm. We will share in His resurrection, as Paul promises, our lowly bodies glorified like His.

Yours in Christ,

Scott Hahn, PhD

Contracept or Not

What to do?  Is it ok to use artificial methods of contraception?  That can be a difficult question to answer honestly and objectively looking at both sides of the issue.  Many love the convenience of artificial birth control and therefore neglect to objectively evaluate the pros and cons of artificial birth control for fear of what they might find.  Today, this author will try to remedy this situation by looking at the reasons why we shouldn’t be using artificial contraception.

At first I avoided the issue of an authoritative Church because I knew what the Catholic Church taught on the subject of contraceptive use.  And in this way I could claim ignorance of Her authority, I never took the time to find out why she taught as She did.  I was fooling myself that I wasn’t doing anything wrong.  For we Catholics know that to use contraception is against the teachings of the Church on moral grounds.  God joined the aspect of unity between two married people with the aspect of procreation in a single act of marital love.  What God has joined together let no man separate.

Then, one day I took the bull by the horns and looked at why the Catholic Church taught what She did on the issue.  I could deny it no longer and told my wife that I no longer believed in artificial contraceptive use. 

There are many Scriptural reasons why using contraception is wrong, the main verse demonstrating the misuse of the mans seed making the sex act infertile (spilling it on the ground as seen in Genesis 38:9-10) was the withdrawal method and in doing so the man was killed for it.  Now some will tell you that Onan was killed because 1)he did not produce offspring for his deceased brother and that’s why God killed him.  And others will tell you that it was because 2)he did not do as Jacob, his father, had told him to do.  But that is simply not the case. 

First let us look at the passage in question:

Then Judah said to Onan (Judah’s son), Go into your brother's wife(Tamar) and do what it is right for a husband's brother to do; make her your wife and get offspring for your brother.  But Onan, seeing that the offspring would not be his, went in to his brother's wife, but let his seed go on to the earth, so that he might not get offspring for his brother.  And what he did was evil in the eyes of the Lord, so that he put him to death, like his brother. (Gen 38:8-10)

What we see here is a brothers duty to produce an offspring with the wife of a dead brother, this duty is called the levirate law.  Both in Gen 38:8-10, the Onan incident, and in Deuteronomy (hereafter Deut) 25:7-10 we find someone refusing to give offspring to their dead brothers wife.  And yet one is killed the other is not.  The difference in methods on how these men refused to give offspring will determine the reason for the difference in penalty.  The man in Deut. simply did not take the woman and therefore avoided giving offspring while Onan did take her and spilled his seed to avoid giving offspring.  The spilling of seed is the difference in the act and explains the difference in penalty.  Death instead of humiliation.

In fact any misuse of the mans seed is extremely condemned by God.  We find that any spilling of the seed in any unsuitable receptacle (ie inhospitable to the propagation of life) brings about the penalty of death.  The penalty for a man to lie with a man as with a woman is death and yet nowhere in Scripture do we see such a penalty for two women.  Levitical Law tells us that the wasting of seed with non-regenerative sexual acts warrants death, even the wasting of animal seed warrants death(Lev 18:22-23; 20:13).  That’s why there is no such death penalty anywhere in Scripture for the sexual pleasure of two women…because there is no wasted seed.

This idea of wasting seed to be sinful can be seen in mountains of Christian writings from the very beginnings of Christianity itself.  But today I’d like to ask a simple question.  Since the use of contraception was condemned as going against God’s law by Christians for over 2000 years, why would we now believe that God changed His mind on the subject? Since we know that God doesn’t change when reading Malachi 9:6 “For I am the Lord, and I change not”.  What was a truth of God revealed to man 2000 years ago will remain the same today. 

God Bless

Nathan