bearing blog

The seventh corporal work of mercy.

Philando Castile (whom I mentioned in a post the other day) was laid to rest here in the Twin Cities on Thursday. Mr. Castile's funeral was hosted by the Cathedral of St. Paul at the request of Valerie Castile, his mother. There are some moving photos taken outside the building here at this article from the St. Paul newspaper website. There you can also view photos of the program detailing the chosen readings and speakers.

At the end of the article are comments, which I in no way recommend you to read. Some of them gave me the impression that the Archdiocese has received some comments from persons identifying as Catholic who object to the Cathedral's welcoming the Castile family to bury their son at a public ecumenical service. Castile was not a Catholic, and a Baptist minister was invited to deliver a sermon, while the rector of the Cathedral delivered introductory prayers.

My impression was strengthened by the Cathedral's release of the following statement:

 

The Archdiocese was honored that Philando Castile’s mother, desiring that her son’s funeral be an opportunity for “people to come together in a new way,” thought our cathedral could be a fitting setting for an ecumenical service at which our community could unite with her family to pray for peace and reconciliation.

During his general audience on September 9, 2015, Pope Francis said “the assembly of Jesus takes the form of a family and of a hospitable family, not an exclusive, closed sect.”

At this difficult moment we feel privileged to have the opportunity to offer hospitality to the Castile family and to our hurting community.

We are praying that our cathedral might serve as a place where all might encounter a God who offers consolation and hope.

 

I endorse this wholeheartedly.

Some of the objections to Mr. Castile's burial from the Cathedral are of a character that I will not dignify with a rebuttal.

On the other hand, the question "Why can Mr. Castile, a non-Catholic, have a 'Catholic funeral?'" is a reasonable one, even if expressed--rather insensitively--during the funeral in question, to judge from the time-stamps on the various comments. So is the corollary continuation "....when my brother/dad/son/grandpa was not allowed to have one?"

Let me just offer some context for that one.

The term "Catholic funeral" is imprecise. There is such a thing as a Requiem Mass, which is the quintessential "Catholic funeral." It can only take place inside a Catholic church or Catholic chapel.

There is also among the ecclesiastical funeral rites a "Funeral Liturgy Outside Mass," which is also a type of Catholic funeral. If you have been to a "Catholic funeral" in a funeral home chapel, in a private home, or in a cemetery chapel, that is what you most likely experienced. Sometimes (for example, in families that include Catholic and non-Catholic members) this is deemed the most fitting pastoral choice regardless of the location of the funeral.

It is also permitted (in fact it is encouraged!) to hold ecumenical prayer gatherings inside Catholic churches, presided over by Catholic and non-Catholic clergy, for many different reasons. These can include funerals and memorial services. Mr. Castile's funeral would seem to fall into this category.

Finally, at any memorial service at all, at a gravesite, in another church, at a wake, in someone's home: if a Catholic priest happens to be in attendance, he might accept an invitation to offer prayers or a blessing.

The first two categories, because they belong to the ecclesiastical funeral rites, are properly called "Catholic funerals." The latter two are not.

 

The diocese and the pastor have leeway in deciding who may or may not be buried according to the ecclesiastical rites, anyway. In some dioceses, under some circumstances, a baptized non-Catholic may be buried with full funeral rites. In other dioceses and in other circumstances, it may not be allowed. It can seem as if the standards are looser for non-Catholics than for Catholics, because in some dioceses a so-called "non-practicing" Catholic might not be permitted a "Catholic funeral" while a person who never was a Catholic might be permitted one, or at least might be buried in a Catholic cemetery.

It is undoubtedly upsetting for a bereaved family, at a vulnerable time, to be told that their loved one cannot receive a requiem Mass, or that a requiem Mass cannot be held at the location and/or time that they are planning to have the funeral, or that the deceased is ineligible for the ecclesiastical rites at all. Some of the commentary and pushback probably comes from this place.

To that I can only say: This post is the short answer giving reasons why Philando Castile could be permitted a memorial service in the Cathedral. There really is no short answer as to why some particular person might not be permitted the type of funeral desired by his or her family. You would have to talk to the pastor, and listen to the explanation, and then possibly do a lot of reading, in order to understand that. No short answer. I am sorry I cannot help relieve that pain.

 

The purpose of Catholic ecumenism is to foster true Christian unity. When Valerie Castile called the Cathedral and asked that it host her son's funeral "for people to come together in a new way," this was precisely what she was asking -- and she asked it not just of the Cathedral parish, but of the whole local church, the diocese. In a sense she asked it of our universal Church.

Who are we to turn her son away?

If I had been the one to take that call, I would have wept in humility before Mrs. Castile. It was she who honored our church, not the other way around, by reaching out to us.

Furthermore, everyone knows that Mr. Castile's funeral was not just a funeral. It was also a gathering to call for peace, justice (in the Christian sense), and love in the wider community.

For what the Catholic Church has said about ecumenism, I encourage you to refer to the Pontifical Council's Directory for Application of Principle and Norms on Ecumenism (link). Here is an excerpt:

108. Where appropriate, Catholics should be encouraged, in accordance with the Church's norms, to join in prayer with Christians of other Churches and ecclesial Communities. Such prayers in common are certainly a very effective means of petitioning for the grace of unity, and they are a genuine expression of the ties which still bind Catholics to these other Christians. Shared prayer is in itself a way to spiritual reconciliation.

109. Prayer in common is recommended for Catholics and other Christians so that together they may put before God the needs and problems they share—e.g., peace, social concerns, mutual charity among people, the dignity of the family, the effects of poverty, hunger and violence, etc. The same may be said of occasions when, according to circumstances, a nation, region or community wishes to make a common act of thanksgiving or petition to God, as on a national holiday, at a time of public disaster or mourning, on a day set aside for remembrance of those who have died for their country, etc. This kind of prayer is also recommended when Christians hold meetings for study or common action.

110. Shared prayer should, however, be particularly concerned with the res- toration of Christian unity. It can centre, e.g. on the mystery of the Church and its unity, on baptism as a sacramental bond of unity, or on the renewal of personal and community life as a necessary means to achieving unity. Prayer of this type is particularly recommended during the "Week of Prayer for Christian Unity" or in the period between Ascension and Pentecost.

111. Representatives of the Churches, ecclesial Communities or other groups concerned should cooperate and prepare together such prayer. They should decide among themselves the way in which each is to take part, choose the themes and select the Scripture readings, hymns and prayers.

I see no evidence at all that Mr. Castile's memorial service was not a suitable instance of the sort of ecumenism discussed in this document.

(Incidentally, paragraphs 120 and 121 of this same document explicitly grant to the local ordinary -- normally the bishop -- the discretion of offering full funeral rights as well as prayers and blessings of other types to non-Catholics.)

For a deeper examination of the role of ecumenism, one could consult two documents of the Second Vatican Council in particular, Lumen Gentium and Unitatis Redintegratio.

+ + +

I am grateful to Mrs. Castile for reaching out to our diocese, and I am glad that our Cathedral rector responded with welcome. I'm sorry that anyone calling themselves Catholic publicly objected to the rector's decision, which was entirely in accord with Catholic teachings. May Mr. Castile rest in peace, and may eternal light shine upon him.

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Self awareness.

Here is a thesis that occurred to me over the weekend as I mused about success and failure, about weakness and willpower, about competing selves:

Could it be that... once you KNOW what you should do...   moral behavior, or "good" behavior, or "healthy" behavior (take your pick) is nothing more than the setting-up of the right incentive structures for oneself? 

 Figuring out what situations, or habits, give you strong incentives to succeed and strong disincentives to fail, and staying in the success-producing ones as much as you can; creating and modifying the incentives in the pre-existing arenas where your life's story unfolds; stepping back one level and creating meta-incentives to lure your self into the places where you feel the power and  the desire to do the right thing, and away from the places where you feel weak, where you do the things you hate yourself for doing.

This is a big topic, and I need to think more about it.  But I just want to say that, as psychobabbley as that sounds, there is certainly precedent for it in Catholic moral teaching.  Remember "avoiding the near occasion of sin?"  That's the idea that you should stay away from situations that strongly tempt you to sin, or activities that have been the precursor of sin in your past.  

It's really rather remarkable that so much writing on willpower, on avoiding temptation, is framed in terms of a kind of splitting or separation of the self.... there's the "me" who wants to lose weight  keep my weight down and the "me" who wants to eat entire sleeve of saltine crackers; a college kid has a "self" who wants to get good grades and a "self" who wants to party tonight... a drinker may have a "self" who decides to go to AA and a "self" who hates every sober minute.  Last month's Atlantic had a thought-provoking article that explored this phenomenon (of one "self" deciding to tie the hands of the other, untrustworthy "self"):

We used to think that the hard part of the question “How can I be happy?” had to do with nailing down the definition of happy. But it may have more to do with the definition of I. Many researchers now believe, to varying degrees, that each of us is a community of competing selves, with the happiness of one often causing the misery of another. This theory might explain certain puzzles of everyday life, such as why addictions and compulsions are so hard to shake off, and why we insist on spending so much of our lives in worlds —like TV shows and novels and virtual-reality experiences—that don’t actually exist. And it provides a useful framework for thinking about the increasingly popular position that people would be better off if governments and businesses helped them inhibit certain gut feelings and emotional reactions....

 

The multiplicity of selves becomes more intuitive as the time span increases. Social psychologists have found certain differences in how we think of ourselves versus how we think of other people—for instance, we tend to attribute our own bad behavior to unfortunate circumstances, and the bad behavior of others to their nature. But these biases diminish when we think of distant past selves or distant future selves; we see such selves the way we see other people. Although it might be hard to think about the person who will occupy your body tomorrow morning as someone other than you, it is not hard at all to think that way about the person who will occupy your body 20 years from now. This may be one reason why many young people are indifferent about saving for retirement; they feel as if they would be giving up their money to an elderly stranger.

and then of course there's Romans 7:

What I do, I do not understand. 

 For I do not do what I want, but I do what I hate.   Now if I do what I do not want, I concur that the law is good.  So now it is no longer I who do it, but sin that dwells in me.  For I know that good does not dwell in me, that is, in my flesh. The willing is ready at hand, but doing the good is not. 

For I do not do the good I want, but I do the evil I do not want.  Now if (I) do what I do not want, it is no longer I who do it, but sin that dwells in me.  So, then, I discover the principle that when I want to do right, evil is at hand. For I take delight in the law of God, in my inner self, but I see in my members another principle at war with the law of my mind, taking me captive to the law of sin that dwells in my members.  

Miserable one that I am!   Who will deliver me from this mortal body?

Thanks be to God through Jesus Christ our Lord. Therefore, I myself, with my mind, serve the law of God but, with my flesh, the law of sin.

Boy, if that doesn't describe a sense of competing versions of the self, nothing does.

So my question is... is that all there is to it?  Is the "answer" to overcoming temptations of all kinds really for the "inner self" -- the one who "takes delight" in moral or correct or healthy or Godly behavior -- to set up the kind of structure around the "members" that cajoles them to behave?  To offer to the weak flesh, in return for good behavior, the short-term goodies it craves? 

And if so... knowing what I have done and how I did it...

...what else am I capable of overcoming?

Evangelical group carefully words a "statement of faith" specifically to exclude Catholics, and then manages to word it in a way that doesn't actually exclude Catholics.

Jimmy Akin has a post describing the conversion to Catholicism of a high-profile evangelical.  The post contains this interesting tidbit as a side note about the Evangelical Theology Society's statement of faith, which reads as follows:

"The Bible alone, and the Bible in its entirety, is the Word of God written and is therefore inerrant in the autographs. God is a Trinity, Father, Son, and Holy Spirit, each an uncreated person, one in essence, equal in power and glory."

Another evangelical blogger, James White, had written,

In 1998 I attended the national meeting of the ETS in Orlando, Florida. At one of the sessions some of the founding members were being asked questions about why they did certain things, why they wrote the statement of faith as they did, etc. A woman asked a question of the panel. "Why did you write 'the Bible alone' in the statement of faith?"

...Roger Nicole [a panel member] rose, slowly, and made his way to the podium. He looked out at the lady and said, "Because we didn't want any Roman Catholics in the group." He then turned around and went back to his seat. While most sat in stunned silence, I and a friend with me broke into wild applause.

But as Jimmy points out, any Catholic could (and should!) sign on to that statement of faith.  We do believe that there are no errors in Scripture, as do the ETS, even though the evangelicals there probably interpret many passages differently from us (and indeed from each other).  We do believe that the Bible is "the Word of God written."  We do indeed believe that there is nothing else but the Bible that is "the Word of God written."  (That word "written" is key.)  IOW, "Bible alone" in that context doesn't sway us.   And, of course, we are Trinitarians.

I wonder why the ETS thought that would exclude us?  Do they think we have some other documents that we call "the Word of God?"  (We do, of course, have a Savior whom we call by that name, but He's not "written," now, is He?)  It certainly doesn't speak well about their comprehension of the differences between them and us.  Couldn't they have found something else that was actually different to put in their statement of faith, if the intent was merely to keep us out?

UPDATE:  Predictably, the comment boxes over there have begun to devolve into an argument about grammar.  What do they teach them in these schools?

UPDATE II:  Ah, I see.  The problem was that the founders of the ETS wrote a text that later got misinterpreted.  Father Al Kimel thinks maybe they need a magisterium.

That Document.

On Priesthood and Those with Homosexual Tendencies, that is.  Here's my translation of what the document says, for those of you who don't feel like reading the whole thing (which is pretty short).

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Introduction:  We have already taught plenty about homosexuality.  This document answers only one question:  "whether to admit to the seminary and to holy orders candidates who have deep-seated homosexual tendencies."

I.  Only men can be priests.  The priest represents Christ as "head, shepherd, and spouse" to the Church.  The priest makes a gift of his whole personhood to the Church.  Therefore only mature men who can relate correctly to both men and women may be ordained.

II.  Homosexual acts and homosexual tendencies are different.  Homosexual acts are inherently wrong.  Homosexual tendencies are disorders which are difficult for many who suffer them.  Today we must state clearly that men who have sexual contact with other men, who have deep-seated homosexual tendencies, or who "support the so-called 'gay culture'" cannot enter the seminary or be ordained.

This is because men who have sexual contact with other men, who have deep-seated homosexual tendencies, or who support the so-called "gay culture" are hindered from relating correctly to men and women.  Bad things can happen if men with deep-seated homosexual tendencies are ordained. 

Not all homosexual tendencies are deep-seated.  Some are the expression of a transitory problem, for example, of immaturity.  Such tendencies must be overcome at least three years before ordination to the diaconate [which is a prerequisite for ordination as a priest].

III.   Desire alone doesn't give a man the right to be a priest.  The Church gets to decide, from among the candidates, who enters the seminary, how seminarians are formed, and who gets to be ordained.  It's the bishop's or the superior's responsibility, and if he has a serious doubt about a candidate, he mustn't admit him to Holy Orders.   The rector of the seminary must tell the bishop or superior what he thinks of each candidate.  The spiritual director is bound by secrecy, but he has the duty to try to dissuade an unsuitable candidate from seeking ordination.  The candidate has the most responsibility and he has to be honest and trust the judgment of his superiors.  Dishonesty does not characterize someone who believes he is called to serve Christ and his Church.

Conclusion:  Bishops, bishops' conferences, and superiors must observe this document for the good of the candidates and to make sure that we always have good priests.

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OK, so what here is new?  Only a clarification: 

   --- Homosexual tendencies (by which I think they mean same-sex attraction, or SSA) and homosexual contact in the past do not automatically exclude a man from ordination.  If a man has not had sexual contact with other males for three years; and if he can show that his SSA is insignificant, or that it has been outgrown, or that it does not prevent him from relating correctly to men and to women; and if the latter has been true for at least three years --- then he may be admitted to the diaconate.

  --- But if the candidate has "deep-seated homosexual tendencies," or is currently sexually active as a homosexual, or "supports the so-called 'gay culture'" at this time, he may not be ordained.  Period.

On first reading, I thought that there were two serious flaws in the document:  a failure to define the term "deep-seated," and a failure to define "the so-called 'gay culture.'"  Surely these definitions are necessary to make the appropriate distinctions? 

But on further thought, I decided that given the other content of the document, the terms are clear enough.   

What is deep-seated?  If a candidate can overcome his homosexual tendencies and remain victorious over them for three years, then they're not deep-seated and he can be ordained, assuming he meets other qualifications.  If he hasn't done that yet, they might be, and he shouldn't be ordained.

And what is the "support of gay culture" that makes otherwise suitable candidates unsuitable?  At minimum, to "support" something is to believe in it.  It might also mean political support. What sort of beliefs and politics would render an otherwise suitable person unsuitable for the priesthood?  Only heretical beliefs; only politics contrary to Church moral teachings.  Therefore, the document must mean that those who contradict Church teaching in their beliefs and politics, relative to homosexuality and homosexual persons, can't be ordained. 

So what this comes down to is:  To be ordained a priest, you have to be faithful to Church teachings, and you can't be currently struggling with homosexuality or permanently self-identified as a homosexual.

This isn't so hard, folks

Christoph Cardinal Schonborn, archbishop of Vienna, wrote an op-ed in the NYT stating that evolution driven by random processes is incompatible with truth:

Evolution in the sense of common ancestry might be true, but evolution in the neo-Darwinian sense - an unguided, unplanned process of random variation and natural selection - is not. Any system of thought that denies or seeks to explain away the overwhelming evidence for design in biology is ideology, not science.

I would correct the Cardinal on one minor point:  an attempt to explain (rather than to explain away) the complete set of evidence technically does count as science.    All rational attempts to explain the complete set of physical evidence ---all theorizing---are part of science.   Some of it will turn out to be right, and most of it will turn out to be wrong, of course. 

And I wonder about this:

In an unfortunate new twist on this old controversy, neo-Darwinists recently have sought to portray our new pope, Benedict XVI, as a satisfied evolutionist. They have quoted a sentence about common ancestry from a 2004 document of the International Theological Commission, pointed out that Benedict was at the time head of the commission, and concluded that the Catholic Church has no problem with the notion of "evolution" as used by mainstream biologists - that is, synonymous with neo-Darwinism.

I'm just wondering which neo-Darwinists he means, and where this quote and conclusion appeared. 

Setting that aside, though, nothing the Cardinal has written about the church's teaching is new.  You wouldn't know it, though, from reading this analysis piece in the NYT:

LEADING CARDINAL REDEFINES CHURCH'S VIEW ON EVOLUTION

An influential cardinal in the Roman Catholic Church, which has long been regarded as an ally of the theory of evolution, is now suggesting that belief in evolution as accepted by science today may be incompatible with Catholic faith...

Darwinian evolution is the foundation of modern biology. While researchers may debate details of how the mechanism of evolution plays out, there is no credible scientific challenge to the underlying theory.

Assuming (as always) that the evolutionary evidence is responsibly gathered, catalogued, and analyzed, there are exactly two points that the Church makes about it:   (1) No theory that excludes the creative action of God can be true.  (2) No theory that claims the human soul evolved naturally can be true. 

All that is necessary for teachers of evolutionary biology to remain in good graces, so to speak,  is to make judicious use of the word "appears," as in "This process appears to be random."  Assuming, of course, that this is what the evidence (ahem) appears to support.

That's it.

And then, of course, any evolutionary biologists who think that the sequence of mutations, the changes in environmental pressures,  and the probabilities of survival are not random can write, "This process appears to be guided by the following mechanisms..."

Randomness is a tricky thing to determine.  Given a sequence of events, what is the probability that it was a random sequence?    When I was working on my thesis, I looked at dozens of electron microscope images of close-packed colloidal spheres, and judged whether the packings---all a mix of two different kinds of crystal structures---were likely random stackings or not.  I never wrote of any stacking, "This crystal exhibits random stacking."  I might have written "This crystal appears to be random stacking."   On occasion I would write "This crystal exhibits non-random stacking."

And of course, non-random doesn't mean "this crystal could not have arisen except by the direct action of a designer."  It means "some mechanism, some underlying law, caused the particles in this crystal to prefer a particular arrangement."

Here's a quick quiz.  I have a quarter before me.  Is this sequence of heads and tails random?  How could you tell?  What does it mean that it isn't?

htht ttttth httthhhhtt   

How about this one?

htht hhhtht hthhthhhtt

How about this one?

hthh hthtth tthtttthht

I'll answer below.  My point is this: Even with these simple sequences, you cannot know.  You can only guess.  You know that each sequence, if random, should be roughly half heads and half tails; but you also know that there is no guarantee that a random sequence of only twenty binary choices will divide evenly into half.   You intuitively would reject the idea that a recognizable pattern, such as "hthththt..." or "hhhhhhh...." or "hhthhthhthht...." is random; but you also know that these sequences are just as likely as any others of the same length.   It has famously been proved that all numbers are interesting; a necessary corollary is that all sequences of twenty binary choices are interesting.

The first sequence (40% h) is random; I flipped the quarter twenty times.

The second sequence (60% h) is designed.  Each entry in the sequence is determined by the corresponding letter in my full name:  if the letter in my name is from the first thirteen letters of the alphabet, the entry is "h," and otherwise the entry is "t."

The third sequence (50% h) was produced in the following way:  I flipped the coin four times to produce the first four entries.  Then I put an "h" in the fifth part of the sequence, because I felt like it.  Then I flipped the coin fifteen more times to produce the rest of the entries.

Make whatever conclusions you want from this.  The cardinal is right:  Science can never say with certainty that anything is random---period.  Any given scientist can, however, make the claim that something appears random.  And other scientists can contradict him or her.  And that's okay.