#454: 10 Facts That STILL Answer: “Was Jesus Married?”

Once again the mainstream media has given wide coverage to the "new news" about the wife of Jesus, as Harvard's Karen King finally expressed her belief that the document which began the controversy is probably a fake. This induces me to revisit what I wrote 4 years ago, when the story broke. My aim is to demonstrate why this was ALWAYS much ado about nothing.

In the face of this week's ignorant media hype about a new discovery, let’s set the record straight…

Any talk of Jesus being married always stirs needless controversy, so this week’s news out of Harvard--about an ancient text in which Jesus speaks of “my wife”--poses the kind of teachable moment that calls for some serious fact checking.

Fact #1:  The belief that “Jesus never married” is not Catholic doctrine.  It is true that generations of Christians have assumed that Jesus was single, and passed on that assumption as a kind of pious tradition, part of our popular image of Jesus, like long hair and a beard.  But this popular belief is not in our creeds or our catechism; at most it is an informal, unofficial “teaching” commonly communicated to believers.  But Catholics are not required to believe this, and they never have been.

Fact #2: Believing that Jesus was married is not heresy.  The September 19 Boston Globe claimed that “The notion that Jesus may have been married” is “considered heretical by the Catholic Church.” This is just ignorant reporting.  To be heresy an idea must contradict an “orthodox” doctrine.  But since there is no official Catholic doctrine (one way or another) about Jesus’ marital status, then there is nothing to contradict. Hence heresy on this question is impossible.  Claiming Jesus married does clash with the popular tradition I mentioned above, but disagreeing with popular tradition is not heresy.

Fact #3: The Roman Catholic Church DOES allow married men to be priests.  That same Globe article claimed with similar ignorance that “These issues remain intensely relevant in Christianity today, particularly in the Roman Catholic Church, which allows only celibate men to be priests.” Not true!

Catholicism embraces five different “rites ” or worship styles, and four of the five (often refer to collectively as the “Eastern Rites”) ordain married man as priests.  Only the “Latin Rite” requires celibacy of all candidates for the priesthood--and even that is changing, since former Anglican priests may now be accepted as Latin Rite priests even if they are married. The confusion is based on numbers: more than 90% of all Catholic priests belong to the Latin Rite, so celibate priests do outnumber married priests. But the Catholic Church allows both.

Fact #4: Priestly celibacy is not a doctrine.  History rather than doctrine explains why Latin Rite priests must be celibate while Eastern Rite priests may marry in.  Long ago all priests (except members of all-male religious communities) could be married, but in the 11^th century a general rule of mandatory celibacy was adopted for Latin Rite priests. That rule was never adopted for the Eastern Rites.  So the fact here is simple: priestly celibacy is just a rule; there were married priests before this rule was adopted, they are still married priests outside that rule’s jurisdiction, and there will be married priests again whenever the rule is dropped.

Fact #5: We do not actually know if Jesus was married or single.  Our best source is the books of the New Testament, and these books are totally silent on the question.  In fact, they’re totally silent about Jesus from the age of 12 to the beginning of his public life at about 30.  We know virtually nothing of the adolescence and early adulthood of Jesus--the very period when his own culture would have expected him to marry.  If, as a hypothetical argument, Jesus had been widowed in his mid-twenties, his married life would be invisible. It would have fallen into that huge gap in the gospel narratives--a gap that no other source can fill.  The fact is, we just do not know.

Fact #6: We will probably never know.  Harvard’s Karen King, who announced the new fragment, told reporters “It’s not saying we got the smoking gun that Jesus was married.” After all, just because one person writing long after the death of Jesus puts the words “my wife” in the mouth of Jesus does not mean we have discovered a new fact, or even that many others believed it to be so.  And it certainly does not mean these were Jesus’ own words. It just means one person wrote it, true or not, for reasons we cannot know. 

The fragment probably dates from the late fourth century, and may be based on a text from the mid-too-late second century--that is, more than a century after Jesus’ death.  All of the New Testament books are closer to Jesus’ lifetime.  There is nothing in the new discovery that can penetrate the silence of the New Testament.  That silence is definitive, and I can think of no way anyone could penetrate that silence.

Fact #7: The old evidence trumps any new discoveries.  All of the other ancient texts and alternative “gospels” that have fueled books like The DaVinci Code are also further from Jesus time than the authentic Biblical texts.  Most of these alternative texts were specifically rejected as less than reliable during the process of forming the Christian Bible as we know it today.

We are often told history is written by the winners, and the simple fact is the winners are the texts that made it into the New Testament “canon,” which means literally the “yardstick” by which we measure the value of any text about Jesus.  All the alternative texts were the losers, simply because they failed to measure up.  As sources go, the New Testament trumps any other source we can realistically imagine

Fact #8: The New Testament evidence is not clear.  What does the New Testament’s silence mean?  Some argue it means Jesus was single, or his wife would have been mentioned along with his mother, father, and brothers.  Others argue the silence means Jesus had been married, since his culture saw a celibate adult male as abnormal, and we would expect the Gospels to mention someone challenging him, and Jesus offering a response and defense.

Both arguments are logically coherent, but neither one has much evidence to support it.

In other words, the Gospels’ silence cannot really settle the question.  We can speculate: what if, for example, Jesus were widowed before his public life began? His wife might not be mentioned simply because she was no longer present. But any such answer is just speculation.  We know the texts are silent, but we cannot tell for sure what that silence means.

Fact #9: If Jesus was married, our core Christian beliefs remain unchanged.  Nothing in our creeds, are catechisms or our theological principles about Jesus Christ is based on the premise of Jesus’ celibacy.  If Jesus was married, then the popular devotion about his single state would be inaccurate--but nothing else would change.  My Catholicism does not hang on this question, and yours should not either.  For me, the question of Jesus’ marital status is nothing more than idle curiosity.  It is not a deal breaker--or even a game-changer--for my faith. It clearly did not matter enough (one way or the other) to the authors of the Gospels, or to St. Paul, or to the other New Testament authors, to include any mention in their texts.

Fact #10: But it might change some attitudes.  Clearly much of Christian history has been ambivalent or even negative about marriage and sexuality (see CrossCurrents #359).  In the New Testament, St. Paul essentially regards marriage as a last resort so those who cannot hack celibacy do not fall into adultery.  And the assumption of Jesus as life-long celibate has often fueled the double standard by which celibates are superior to married people.  Many modern Christians would like to see that double standard fall, and see a golden opportunity in debunking the celibacy of Jesus.  More broadly, people who disparage the place of sexuality in Christian history might love the opportunity, with the leverage of a new “revelation,” to reboot Christianity over again and get it right this time.  Controversy over minor matters advances the cause and makes good newspaper copy--but such controversy does not fit the facts.

On this score, ironically, our Christian faith is rooted much more firmly in fact than most of the media coverage.

© Bernard F. Swain PhD 2012

#446: Do Muslims and Christians Worship The Same God?

 As Christians attempt to celebrate the sacred season of Christmas amid a sea of consumer excess, the last thing we need to see is conflict among ourselves.  So it was sad last week to see a Christian college punish a professor for quoting Pope Francis. 

Administrators at Wheaton College in Illinois, a leading evangelical college, placed Larycia Hawkins, an associate professor of political science, on administrative leave last Tuesday after she suggested that Christians and Muslims follow the same God. Her December 10 Facebook posting read: “And as Pope Francis stated last week, we worship the same God.” The college offered this rationale:

"Dr. Hawkins’ administrative leave resulted from theological statements that seemed inconsistent with Wheaton College’s doctrinal convictions, and is in no way related to her race, gender or commitment to wear a hijab during Advent."

The Internet predictably exploded with sites asking “Do Christians and Muslims worship the same God?” (google it!) The result is a flood of pseudo-academic gobbledygook detailing supposed differences between the “Christian God” and the “Muslim God.”

Many arrive at the same conclusion as Bryan Fischer, columnist for the American Family Association:

Do Christians and Muslims worship the same God? The answer is an unequivocal and unambiguous "No." Muslims themselves will confirm this to you if you know the questions to ask.

  Some of these commentaries argue about words: the origin of “Allah” and “Yahweh” and “Jehovah,” for example.  Some argue about whether Abraham sacrificed Isaac or Ishmael.  Some argue that Allah is not a loving father, or that Allah has no son.  Some finally, detail many differences in Christian and Islamic beliefs. 

All of which provides ample evidence that Christianity and Islam are not the same religion.  We do not share the same faith, which is why interactions between us are called “inter-faith” events.  But all these things are beside the point. 

All these arguments, however distinct, make the same basic error.  It is called a “category mistake”:

A category mistake is an error in logic in which one category of something thing is presented as belonging to another category. For example, to say "the rock is alive" assigns the category of life to that which is not alive. Another example would be to say that an idea is the color blue. It mistakenly applies the category of color to a concept in the mind.

https://carm.org/dictionary-category-mistake  

In short, the arguments above all waste our time by making the points that do not even apply to the question about the “same God.”

The category mistake here lies in thinking that talking about “the same God” is equivalent to talking about “the same concept of God” or “the same ideas of God”  or “beliefs about God” or even “names of God.”

These are all mistakes, because the question is not if we all believe the same things.  In fact the question is not about us (our ideas, concepts, beliefs, words) at all.  It is about God. It is not about our beliefs, but about the object of our beliefs. And as Saint Thomas wrote, the object of our faith is not an idea--it is a being, or even Being itself. 

Let me take an everyday example. I have three children.  Do they all acknowledge the same father?  Perhaps one thinks I am generous, another thinks I am wasteful, and a third thinks I am stingy.  They have very different ideas of me--but their ideas do not change me. I am still father to all three.  Do they all love the same father?  Perhaps one thinks she is my favorite child, another believes I have no favorites, and the third thinks I’m the best father in the world.  None of those things alters the main fact--I am still their father, and if they love their father then they all love me. 

My kids’ ideas may be right or wrong, of course.  But those ideas do not change who I am.  Different people’s ideas about God may also be right or wrong.  But they do not change God. 

So Muslims do not believe Allah has a son.  But then, Jews do not believe in the Son of God either.  Nor do Unitarians.  Nor did the 4th century Arians, who believed Jesus was only human.  Then there were the Docetists, who did not believe that God’s Son became human.  And the Jansenists, who believed that God’s grace destroyed our free will.  And the Greek and Russian Orthodox Christians, who do not believe, as we do, that “the Spirit proceeds from the Father and from the Son.”

Are we to conclude that Jews, Unitarians, Arians, Docetists, Jansenists, and Othodox Christians all worship a different God?  Of course not.  That would make a mockery of Western monotheism, which began with the notion that the God of Abraham is the only God, that all others are frauds.  We may disagree with those others, or believe they are wrong in their beliefs.  We may even judge, as history does, that Arianism, Docetism, and Jansenism are heretical beliefs incompatible with true Christian faith.  But we cannot say they worship a different God.  We all share the same monotheism. 

By definition, monotheists acknowledge only one God.  If Jews worship a different God from Christians, then the God of Abraham cannot be God at all.  So why do we use their scriptures?  Why don’t we reject their God?  But of course, we do not--any more than Muslims reject our God. 

To repeat: the question is not whether we all believe all the same things about God.  The question is not about us at all.  The question is about God.  In short, the focus is not on our beliefs but on the object of our beliefs—and God is and remains the same God whether our beliefs are right or wrong. 

So how do we know we all worship the same God if our beliefs are so different?  The obvious way to consult our traditions. Here is what the Catechism of the Catholic Church says:

The plan of salvation also includes those who acknowledge the Creator, in the first place amongst whom are the Muslims; these profess to hold the faith of Abraham, and together with us they adore the one, merciful God, mankind’s judge on the last day.

--CCC 841, quoting the Dogmatic Constitution on the Church, Lumen Gentium 16, from Vatican Council II.

Vatican II's Declaration on the Relation of the Church to Non-Christian Religions, Nostra Aetate, 3, makes the teaching of the Council perhaps even clearer:

The Church regards with esteem also the Moslems. They adore the one God, living and subsisting in Himself; merciful and all-powerful, the Creator of heaven and earth, who has spoken to men; they take pains to submit wholeheartedly to even his inscrutable decrees, just as Abraham, with whom the faith of Islam takes pleasure in linking itself, submitted to God.

And here is what the Quran says:

We believe in God and what has been sent down to us, and what had been revealed to Abraham and Ishmael and Isaac and Jacob and their progeny, and that which was given to Moses and Jesus, and to all other prophets by the Lord. We make no distinction among them, and we submit to Him.-- Quran 136:2

If we compare these statements, it is clear beyond doubt that both Catholicism and Islam claim to worship the same God--the God of Abraham.  So we share the same God, but we do not share the same beliefs about God--which should be obvious, since we belong to different religions. Jews, Christians, and Muslims all live by different belief systems, including different beliefs about God.  But we all claim the God of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob as the one true God.  “Yahweh,” “Allah,” “Trinity”--all these are different names for the same creator. 

This truth may threaten some Christians. Stating this truth may cost Larycia Hawkins her job.  But the reasons people use to deny this truth inevitably fall into that “category mistake” I explained above.  In fact, what they are really giving us are the reasons why Muslims are not Christians. 

Did anyone think they were?

   © Bernard F. Swain PhD 2015

#369 Revisited: “Was Jesus Married?” 10 Facts

Harvard's Karen King once again made headlines (New York Times, Boston Globe) last week when the fragment concerning the "wife of Jesus" was certified as no modern forgery, but an ancient text---though it is now dated from the 8th century. But the issues around Jesus' marriage remain as they were when the story first broke in 2012, so I am re-posting my blog from September 2012.

In the face of this week's ignorant media hype about a new discovery, let’s set the record straight…

Any talk of Jesus being married always stirs needless controversy, so this week’s news out of Harvard--about an ancient text in which Jesus speaks of “my wife”--poses the kind of teachable moment that calls for some serious fact checking.

Fact #1:  The belief that “Jesus never married” is not Catholic doctrine.  It is true that generations of Christians have assumed that Jesus was single, and passed on that assumption as a kind of pious tradition, part of our popular image of Jesus, like long hair and a beard.  But this popular belief is not in our creeds or our catechism; at most it is an informal, unofficial “teaching” commonly communicated to believers.  But Catholics are not required to believe this, and they never have been.

Fact #2: Believing that Jesus was married is not heresy.  The September 19 Boston Globe claimed that “The notion that Jesus may have been married” is “considered heretical by the Catholic Church.” This is just ignorant reporting.  To be heresy an idea must contradict an “orthodox” doctrine.  But since there is no official Catholic doctrine (one way or another) about Jesus’ marital status, then there is nothing to contradict. Hence heresy on this question is impossible.  Claiming Jesus married does clash with the popular tradition I mentioned above, but disagreeing with popular tradition is not heresy.

Fact #3: The Roman Catholic Church DOES allow married men to be priests.  That same Globe article claimed with similar ignorance that “These issues remain intensely relevant in Christianity today, particularly in the Roman Catholic Church, which allows only celibate men to be priests.” Not true!

Catholicism embraces five different “rites ” or worship styles, and four of the five (often refer to collectively as the “Eastern Rites”) ordain married man as priests.  Only the “Latin Rite” requires celibacy of all candidates for the priesthood--and even that is changing, since former Anglican priests may now be accepted as Latin Rite priests even if they are married. The confusion is based on numbers: more than 90% of all Catholic priests belong to the Latin Rite, so celibate priests do outnumber married priests. But the Catholic Church allows both.

Fact #4: Priestly celibacy is not a doctrine.  History rather than doctrine explains why Latin Rite priests must be celibate while Eastern Rite priests may marry in.  Long ago all priests (except members of all-male religious communities) could be married, but in the 11^th century a general rule of mandatory celibacy was adopted for Latin Rite priests. That rule was never adopted for the Eastern Rites.  So the fact here is simple: priestly celibacy is just a rule; there were married priests before this rule was adopted, they are still married priests outside that rule’s jurisdiction, and there will be married priests again whenever the rule is dropped.

Fact #5: We do not actually know if Jesus was married or single.  Our best source is the books of the New Testament, and these books are totally silent on the question.  In fact, they’re totally silent about Jesus from the age of 12 to the beginning of his public life at about 30.  We know virtually nothing of the adolescence and early adulthood of Jesus--the very period when his own culture would have expected him to marry.  If, as a hypothetical argument, Jesus had been widowed in his mid-twenties, his married life would be invisible. It would have fallen into that huge gap in the gospel narratives--a gap that no other source can fill.  The fact is, we just do not know.

Fact #6: We will probably never know.  Harvard’s Karen King, who announced the new fragment, told reporters “It’s not saying we got the smoking gun that Jesus was married.” After all, just because one person writing long after the death of Jesus puts the words “my wife” in the mouth of Jesus does not mean we have discovered a new fact, or even that many others believed it to be so.  And it certainly does not mean these were Jesus’ own words. It just means one person wrote it, true or not, for reasons we cannot know. 

The fragment probably dates from the late fourth century, and may be based on a text from the mid-too-late second century--that is, more than a century after Jesus’ death.  All of the New Testament books are closer to Jesus’ lifetime.  There is nothing in the new discovery that can penetrate the silence of the New Testament.  That silence is definitive, and I can think of no way anyone could penetrate that silence.

Fact #7: The old evidence trumps any new discoveries.  All of the other ancient texts and alternative “gospels” that have fueled books like The DaVinci Code are also further from Jesus time than the authentic Biblical texts.  Most of these alternative texts were specifically rejected as less than reliable during the process of forming the Christian Bible as we know it today.

We are often told history is written by the winners, and the simple fact is the winners are the texts that made it into the New Testament “canon,” which means literally the “yardstick” by which we measure the value of any text about Jesus.  All the alternative texts were the losers, simply because they failed to measure up.  As sources go, the New Testament trumps any other source we can realistically imagine

Fact #8: The New Testament evidence is not clear.  What does the New Testament’s silence mean?  Some argue it means Jesus was single, or his wife would have been mentioned along with his mother, father, and brothers.  Others argue the silence means Jesus had been married, since his culture saw a celibate adult male as abnormal, and we would expect the Gospels to mention someone challenging him, and Jesus offering a response and defense.

Both arguments are logically coherent, but neither one has much evidence to support it.

In other words, the Gospels’ silence cannot really settle the question.  We can speculate: what if, for example, Jesus were widowed before his public life began? His wife might not be mentioned simply because she was no longer present. But any such answer is just speculation.  We know the texts are silent, but we cannot tell for sure what that silence means.

Fact #9: If Jesus was married, our core Christian beliefs remain unchanged.  Nothing in our creeds, are catechisms or our theological principles about Jesus Christ is based on the premise of Jesus’ celibacy.  If Jesus was married, then the popular devotion about his single state would be inaccurate--but nothing else would change.  My Catholicism does not hang on this question, and yours should not either.  For me, the question of Jesus’ marital status is nothing more than idle curiosity.  It is not a deal breaker--or even a game-changer--for my faith. It clearly did not matter enough (one way or the other) to the authors of the Gospels, or to St. Paul, or to the other New Testament authors, to include any mention in their texts.

Fact #10: But it might change some attitudes.  Clearly much of Christian history has been ambivalent or even negative about marriage and sexuality (see CrossCurrents #359).  In the New Testament, St. Paul essentially regards marriage as a last resort so those who cannot hack celibacy do not fall into adultery.  And the assumption of Jesus as life-long celibate has often fueled the double standard by which celibates are superior to married people.  Many modern Christians would like to see that double standard fall, and see a golden opportunity in debunking the celibacy of Jesus.  More broadly, people who disparage the place of sexuality in Christian history might love the opportunity, with the leverage of a new “revelation,” to reboot Christianity over again and get it right this time.  Controversy over minor matters advances the cause and makes good newspaper copy--but such controversy does not fit the facts.

On this score, ironically, our Christian faith is rooted much more firmly in fact than most of the media coverage.

© Bernard F. Swain PhD 2012

#415: Was Saint Patrick Catholic?

How the recent controversy in Boston disserves Catholic identity and the Church’s public image.

Back in the 1950s, Father Leonard Feeney made headlines by proclaiming loud and long that no one could go to heaven except members of the Roman Catholic Church.  For that he was excommunicated from membership in the Roman Catholic Church.

Years later Feeney and his followers were officially reconciled with the Church, but their take on Catholic life (ostensibly “hardline” but actually just weird) has not changed substantially.

And now the Feeneyites (officially, the “Slaves of the Immaculate Heart of Mary” out of the Saint Benedict Center in Harvard, Mass.) are back in the headlines.  The principal of their school, Brother Thomas Dalton, withdrew his student band from marching in Boston’s Saint Patrick’s Day parade on the mere prospect that the kids would be marching down the same street as Mass Equality, a gay pride group.

Brother Thomas Dalton

Defending his position in a letter to the Boston Globe, Brother Thomas explained his opposition to associating with the gay marchers:

Jesus Christ once compared the Kingdom of Heaven to a wedding feast. When the king saw a guest not properly attired, he said to his servants, ‘Bind him hand and foot, and cast him into exterior darkness: there shall be weeping and gnashing of teeth’ (Matthew 22:13). All that over improper dress; what would he have done to a group parading unnatural lust?

To many readers, Catholic and non-Catholic alike, this talk of “unnatural lust” probably sounds like typical Catholic teaching: backward and mean-spirited and exclusionary.  In fact, Brother Thomas’ sentiments are backward, mean-spirited, and exclusionary--but they are not Catholic teaching.

Brother Thomas is, of course, entitled to his own opinion (as well as to his dubious misinterpretation of a Biblical parable), and he even has the authority to impose his opinion on his students. In fact, when the gay marchers were finally rejected, Brother Dalton reinstated his children in the parade and led them in applauding their “victory.” All under the guise of providing a “Catholic education.”

But Brother Thomas is not entitled to his own facts--and he is not entitled to speak for the Church, let alone speak falsely.  In a time when Pope Francis is finally at long last reversing the appallingly bad (and mostly deserved) PR the Catholic Church has received over the last 20 years, the last thing we need is some loud voice distorting our Catholic identity in public view.

But I fear that many Catholics secretly (or even openly) share this man’s views, or at least believe that these are the Church’s views.  So a little plain talk about the Church’s teachings on homosexuals is timely. Here they are, drawn from the Catechism of the Catholic Church and from statements by the Vatican and the US Bishops:

1.   Homosexual orientation is most often experienced as given and discovered, not chosen--and is not in itself morally wrong or sinful.

2.   Given the inherent dignity of every human person, the Church teaches that “homosexual persons, like everyone else, should not suffer from prejudice against their basic human rights.”

3.   Violence in speech or action against homosexuals “deserves condemnation from the Church’s pastors wherever it occurs.”

4.   “Every sign of discrimination in their regard should be avoided.”

5.   Nothing in the Bible or Catholic teaching can be used to justify prejudicial or discriminatory attitudes and behaviors toward homosexual persons.

Note than none of this stopped Brother Thomas Dalton from using the Bible to imply that Catholic teaching DOES justify his discriminatory attitude.

Of course, Catholic moral teaching also finds no justification for homosexual acts. But the moral objections are essentially the same as the Church’s objections to masturbation, artificial contraception, pre-marital sex, adultery, coitus interruptus, oral and anal sex, etc.—namely, that only marital procreative sex is morally legitimate. Everything else—not just gay sex—violates natural law.

In other words, official Catholic morality opposes all those acts but not the people who perform them. Such opposition therefore provides no grounds for treating those people differently from anyone else--and that goes for homosexuals as well as for all the others!

Thus gays and lesbians have the same basic rights as all other human beings, and must be protected from discrimination like anyone else.  This principle holds even if we accept official church teaching on homosexuality as a “disordered” orientation.

In short, the Church sees active homosexuals as sinners.  But to be consistent, to avoid discrimination, one must treat them as we do any others whose behavior is called immoral.

Thus a true “hardline” would insist that the Saint Patrick’s Day parade exclude anyone who engages in masturbation, premarital sex, oral or anal sex, adultery, contraception, theft, lying, slander, cheating, etc—as well as any Catholics who deliberately ate meat the previous Friday (the second Friday in Lent). 

This would result, of course, in a very short parade,  made up mostly of marching Protestants.  Throw in the exclusion of those engaging in drunkenness and natural lust, and there would be precious few onlookers left to cheer the children marching (practically alone!) for Brother Thomas Dalton’s school.

So singling out gays is wrong, not because we are not entitled to disapprove of their behavior, but because we are not entitled to judge them while ignoring everyone else.

When Pope Francis famously said “Who am I to judge?” with reference to gays, he was thinking of two things.  First, Catholic tradition dictates that only one person can judge whether someone has sinned--namely, the sinner himself!  That’s why Catholics confess their sins, rather than being denounced for them.  Sin requires that one violate one’s conscience--and no one knows my conscience but me. 

Second, the pope had already described himself as “a sinner.” His point, of course, is that Catholics believe that sin is a universal phenomenon within the human family.  We all sin.  To judge that homosexual activity is sinful merely lumps gays in with the rest of us.  Far from justifying their exclusion, it confirms their inclusion in the company of sinners.

In this sense, the Saint Patrick’s Day parade is a parade of sinners, cheered on by thousands more sinners.  And it always has been. Who are we to judge that gays have no place among us?

Certainly, any such judgment cannot claim to represent true Catholicism.  And any event in honor of a Catholic saint is hardly enhanced by the proclamations of those who distort Catholicism and confuse the public. If we believe Saint Patrick was Catholic—and he was—then our celebration should reflect Catholic tradition, not distort it.

God willing, Brother Thomas Dalton’s band will someday learn about true Catholicism—but not, I fear, at his school.

  © Bernard  F. Swain PhD 2014

#398: The Pope’s New Role: Troublemaker

Pope Francis put his style AND his substance on display in Rio to stunning effect...

By the end of World Youth Day in Rio, everyone--bishops, priests, politicians, journalists, even the youth themselves--were left a bit breathless trying to keep up with this elderly but ever-youthful “phenom” called Pope Francis.

Not only did he wade on foot into Rio’s most dangerous slum, not only did he draw more than 3 million to Copacabana Beach, not only did he initiate an unprecedented 80-minute no-holds-barred press conference on the plane home--but he used the Rio trip as the occasion to begin spelling out his agenda on the major issues facing our Church and our world. 

And that spelling out spelled “trouble” for a wide variety of audiences.

Rather than offering lengthy complex analyses of a few issues, Francis made brief comments on many current concerns.  In that spirit, let me suggest just how much trouble he is stirring up.

Clericalism:  When Francis says this: I want to tell you something. What is it that I expect as a consequence of World Youth Day? I want a mess. We knew that in Rio there would be great disorder, but I want trouble in the dioceses!...I want to see the church get closer to the people. I want to get rid of clericalism, the mundane, this closing ourselves off within ourselves, in our parishes, schools or structures. Because these need to get out!

That spells trouble for any churchmen who strive for status, who cling to privilege or power, who exploit their authority for themselves, OR who expect laypeople to be docile and compliant like obedient little children.

Culture Wars:  When asked why he had little to say about abortion and same-sex marriage, Francis said that the Church’s official positions are well established, and besides he wanted to keep a positive focus during World Youth Day.  

 This spells trouble for anyone who thinks the Church is only strong when it is fighting the culture wars or obsessing over sexual matters like contraception.

Gay Priests:  Asked about gay priests in the Vatican, Francis quipped:

"I have still not seen anyone in the Vatican with an identity card saying they are gay"--and then went on to say:

So much is written about the gay lobby…They say there are gay people here.  I think that when we encounter a gay person, we must make the distinction between the fact of a person being gay and the fact of a lobby, because lobbies are not good.

This spells trouble for all who thought Benedict XVI’s policy against ordaining gay men (which led to purges of some seminaries and seminaries faculties) was an absolute, eternal edict.  It now appears that the Church’s many gay priests can breathe a little easier.

Gays: And Francis also made these remarks about gay people in general:

If someone is gay and he searches for the Lord and has goodwill, who am I to judge? The catechism of the Catholic Church explains this very well. It says they should not be marginalized because of this [orientation] but that they must be integrated into society.  The problem is not that one has this tendency; no, we must be brothers.

This spells trouble for pastors and bishops who want to boycott the Boy Scouts of America just to keep out gay members—as well as many other Catholics who discriminate against gays.

An Introverted Church: At Rio’s cathedral, Francis urged the gathered bishops and clerics that they must not:

Keep ourselves shut up in parishes, in our communities, when so many people are waiting for the gospel…I want the church to go out in the street.  The seminaries, the institutions must go out in the street.

This spells trouble for all church officials content with “business as usual” even as our numbers decline.

Youth: When Francis focused on youth, he said this:

A young man who doesn’t protest doesn’t suit me…A young man is essentially a nonconformist, and that is a very beautiful thing. You need to listen to young people, giving them outlets to express themselves and ensure they don’t get manipulated.

This spells trouble for parents who pressure their kids to conform, to simply accept things as they are and fit in--and spells trouble too for youth who are content to simply follow the path laid out for them.  Francis, who came of age in the 1960s, seems here to echo that decade’s call to question both established ways and the authorities that defend them.

And when he called on youth to be “actors of change,” he challenged a whole generation to make a difference in the world:

Keep overcoming apathy and offering a Christian response to the social and political concerns taking place in different parts of the world.

Materialism: This went along with his warning not to idolize the seductive comforts of modern life:

It is true that nowadays, to some extent, everyone, including our young people, feels attracted by the many idols which take the place of God and appear to offer hope: money, success, power, pleasure…Often a growing sense of loneliness and emptiness in the hearts of many people leads them to seek satisfaction in these ephemeral idols.

This spells trouble for young people conditioned to believe that materialism holds the key to the good life.  It invites them to realize that life is fullest when understood as a spiritual journey.

Inequality, Injustice, and Peace: No doubt the destitution of Rio’s favelas reminded Francis of its own poor neighborhood in Buenos Aires, so it’s no surprise he made his typical concern for the poor a main theme in Rio.  But he made it clear that his concern went beyond charity to justice, and beyond poverty to its causes:

The measure of the greatness of a society is found in the way it treats those most in need…those who have nothing apart from their poverty!

I would also like to tell you that the Church, the “advocate of justice and defender of the poor in the face of intolerable social and economic inequalities which cry to heaven” (Aparecida Document, 395), wishes to offer her support for every initiative that can signify genuine development for every person and for the whole person.

No-one can remain insensitive to the inequalities that persist in the world."

This led him to appeal to the world’s rich:

"I would like to make an appeal to those in possession of greater resources, to public authorities and to all people of good will who are working for social justice: Never tire of working for a more just world, marked by greater solidarity.

And it also led him to dismiss the naive notion that we can pursue peace at home and abroad without attacking inequality:

No amount of pacification will be able to last, nor will harmony and happiness be attained in a society that ignores, pushes to the margins or excludes a part of itself.

All this spells trouble for those American Catholics--and Americans generally--who fail to see that our way of life has produced the worst inequality of any rich nation, has also perpetuated inequalities between the rich and poor nations, and has impeded peace while providing fertile soil for terror.

The Church’s Methods: When Francis offers this criticism of the way the church communications with its members and the world at large:

At times we lose people because they don't understand what we are saying, because we have forgotten the language of simplicity and import an intellectualism foreign to our people," he said. "Without the grammar of simplicity, the church loses the very conditions which make it possible to fish for God in the deep waters of his mystery.

Perhaps the church appeared too weak, perhaps too distant from their needs, perhaps too poor to respond to their concerns, perhaps too cold, perhaps too caught up with itself, perhaps a prisoner of its own rigid formulas," he said. "Perhaps the world seems to have made the church a relic of the past, unfit for new questions. Perhaps the church could speak to people in their infancy but not to those come of age.

This spells trouble for all those who fail to see that, even when Catholic truths are convincing, their communication may not be persuasive.  

This repeats, of course, John XXIII’s distinction between that truths of Catholic faith and the way those truths are expressed--which was his argument for the “updating” that he expected from Vatican II.

The Value of Mercy: When Francis speaks of mercy:

We need a church capable of rediscovering the maternal womb of mercy…Without mercy, we have little chance nowadays of becoming part of a world of “wounded” persons in need of understanding, forgiveness and love.

He echoes John XXIII’s opening address at Vatican II, more than 50 years ago.

That spells trouble for all those who are convinced that a stricter, calmer, sterner church leadership will produce a smaller, purer, better Church. Francis clearly prefers a bigger, messier, more “catholic” and less puritanical Church.

By now you may realize that, when I say “trouble,” I do not mean a negative consequence--any more than Francis did when telling youths to cause trouble in their dioceses.  By “trouble,” Francis and I mean simply to challenge the accepted ways and establish paths that keep many of us from promoting the “civilization of love” that is the Church’s mission in the world.  This challenge applies to so many--to bishops, priests, church officials, parents and youth, political and business leaders, teachers, parents, and the youth themselves.

The more I hear this man, the more convinced I become that we must understand him as the first truly “post-Vatican II” pope.  By that I mean that he is the first pope since Vatican II who was not a participant at Vatican II.

His five predecessors experienced firsthand the ambivalence in tension that built toward the Council’s end --a tension that weakened some support for the Council’s final document:  The Church in The Modern World.  Neither John-Paul II nor Benedict XVI were entirely happy with that document, for they did not share its optimistic tone about the outside world.

But Francis was a seminarian--still a layperson--during the Council.  And his experience of it was like millions of other Catholics: secondhand, by media coverage and word of mouth.  Instead of witnessing the infighting and negotiations among the council fathers, he witnessed the euphoria that greeted the council’s work--and he witnessed too the love and gratitude for John XXIII’s courageous decision to call the Council.

I believe we are now witnessing the “troubling” openness and simplicity of a man formed, not by the Council itself, but by its impact on the rest of the Church.  Like many of us, he seems to feel that its great legacy has been neglected and compromised--and he seems determined to restore its place as the central event in Catholic life even in the 21^st century.  So more and more his papacy feels like an extension of John’s, for he seems committed to making John’s vision real--no matter how much “trouble” that causes.

  © Bernard   F. Swain PhD 2013

#369 “Was Jesus Married?” 10 Facts

In the face of this week's ignorant media hype about a new discovery, let’s set the record straight…

Any talk of Jesus being married always stirs needless controversy, so this week’s news out of Harvard--about an ancient text in which Jesus speaks of “my wife”--poses the kind of teachable moment that calls for some serious fact checking.

Fact #1:  The belief that “Jesus never married” is not Catholic doctrine.  It is true that generations of Christians have assumed that Jesus was single, and passed on that assumption as a kind of pious tradition, part of our popular image of Jesus, like long hair and a beard.  But this popular belief is not in our creeds or our catechism; at most it is an informal, unofficial “teaching” commonly communicated to believers.  But Catholics are not required to believe this, and they never have been.

Fact #2: Believing that Jesus was married is not heresy.  The September 19 Boston Globe claimed that “The notion that Jesus may have been married” is “considered heretical by the Catholic Church.” This is just ignorant reporting.  To be heresy an idea must contradict an “orthodox” doctrine.  But since there is no official Catholic doctrine (one way or another) about Jesus’ marital status, then there is nothing to contradict. Hence heresy on this question is impossible.  Claiming Jesus married does clash with the popular tradition I mentioned above, but disagreeing with popular tradition is not heresy.

Fact #3: The Roman Catholic Church DOES allow married men to be priests.  That same Globe article claimed with similar ignorance that “These issues remain intensely relevant in Christianity today, particularly in the Roman Catholic Church, which allows only celibate men to be priests.” Not true!

Catholicism embraces five different “rites ” or worship styles, and four of the five (often refer to collectively as the “Eastern Rites”) ordain married man as priests.  Only the “Latin Rite” requires celibacy of all candidates for the priesthood--and even that is changing, since former Anglican priests may now be accepted as Latin Rite priests even if they are married. The confusion is based on numbers: more than 90% of all Catholic priests belong to the Latin Rite, so celibate priests do outnumber married priests. But the Catholic Church allows both.

Fact #4: Priestly celibacy is not a doctrine.  History rather than doctrine explains why Latin Rite priests must be celibate while Eastern Rite priests may marry in.  Long ago all priests (except members of all-male religious communities) could be married, but in the 11^th century a general rule of mandatory celibacy was adopted for Latin Rite priests. That rule was never adopted for the Eastern Rites.  So the fact here is simple: priestly celibacy is just a rule; there were married priests before this rule was adopted, they are still married priests outside that rule’s jurisdiction, and there will be married priests again whenever the rule is dropped.

Fact #5: We do not actually know if Jesus was married or single.  Our best source is the books of the New Testament, and these books are totally silent on the question.  In fact, they’re totally silent about Jesus from the age of 12 to the beginning of his public life at about 30.  We know virtually nothing of the adolescence and early adulthood of Jesus--the very period when his own culture would have expected him to marry.  If, as a hypothetical argument, Jesus had been widowed in his mid-twenties, his married life would be invisible. It would have fallen into that huge gap in the gospel narratives--a gap that no other source can fill.  The fact is, we just do not know.

Fact #6: We will probably never know.  Harvard’s Karen King, who announced the new fragment, told reporters “It’s not saying we got the smoking gun that Jesus was married.” After all, just because one person writing long after the death of Jesus puts the words “my wife” in the mouth of Jesus does not mean we have discovered a new fact, or even that many others believed it to be so.  And it certainly does not mean these were Jesus’ own words. It just means one person wrote it, true or not, for reasons we cannot know. 

The fragment probably dates from the late fourth century, and may be based on a text from the mid-too-late second century--that is, more than a century after Jesus’ death.  All of the New Testament books are closer to Jesus’ lifetime.  There is nothing in the new discovery that can penetrate the silence of the New Testament.  That silence is definitive, and I can think of no way anyone could penetrate that silence.

Fact #7: The old evidence trumps any new discoveries.  All of the other ancient texts and alternative “gospels” that have fueled books like The DaVinci Code are also further from Jesus time than the authentic Biblical texts.  Most of these alternative texts were specifically rejected as less than reliable during the process of forming the Christian Bible as we know it today.

We are often told history is written by the winners, and the simple fact is the winners are the texts that made it into the New Testament “canon,” which means literally the “yardstick” by which we measure the value of any text about Jesus.  All the alternative texts were the losers, simply because they failed to measure up.  As sources go, the New Testament trumps any other source we can realistically imagine

Fact #8: The New Testament evidence is not clear.  What does the New Testament’s silence mean?  Some argue it means Jesus was single, or his wife would have been mentioned along with his mother, father, and brothers.  Others argue the silence means Jesus had been married, since his culture saw a celibate adult male as abnormal, and we would expect the Gospels to mention someone challenging him, and Jesus offering a response and defense.

Both arguments are logically coherent, but neither one has much evidence to support it.

In other words, the Gospels’ silence cannot really settle the question.  We can speculate: what if, for example, Jesus were widowed before his public life began? His wife might not be mentioned simply because she was no longer present. But any such answer is just speculation.  We know the texts are silent, but we cannot tell for sure what that silence means.

Fact #9: If Jesus was married, our core Christian beliefs remain unchanged.  Nothing in our creeds, are catechisms or our theological principles about Jesus Christ is based on the premise of Jesus’ celibacy.  If Jesus was married, then the popular devotion about his single state would be inaccurate--but nothing else would change.  My Catholicism does not hang on this question, and yours should not either.  For me, the question of Jesus’ marital status is nothing more than idle curiosity.  It is not a deal breaker--or even a game-changer--for my faith. It clearly did not matter enough (one way or the other) to the authors of the Gospels, or to St. Paul, or to the other New Testament authors, to include any mention in their texts.

Fact #10: But it might change some attitudes.  Clearly much of Christian history has been ambivalent or even negative about marriage and sexuality (see CrossCurrents #359).  In the New Testament, St. Paul essentially regards marriage as a last resort so those who cannot hack celibacy do not fall into adultery.  And the assumption of Jesus as life-long celibate has often fueled the double standard by which celibates are superior to married people.  Many modern Christians would like to see that double standard fall, and see a golden opportunity in debunking the celibacy of Jesus.  More broadly, people who disparage the place of sexuality in Christian history might love the opportunity, with the leverage of a new “revelation,” to reboot Christianity over again and get it right this time.  Controversy over minor matters advances the cause and makes good newspaper copy--but such controversy does not fit the facts.

On this score, ironically, our Christian faith is rooted much more firmly in fact than most of the media coverage.

© Bernard F. Swain PhD 2012