Dare we hope ....

Dare we hope that all men be saved? This is the title of a short book by Hans Urs von Balthasar, and it perhaps asks of us an interesting question during the Jubilee 2025. The book was written in the heat of a polemic, a polemic triggered at least in part by the re-phrasing of the question as one about whether or not anyone will go the Hell. Fr von Balthasar's treatment of the subject is wide ranging, and it should be noted that it is far from suggesting a superficial notion of universal salvation.

To open the discussion in the way that Fr von Balthasar does, we can start by observing that, in living our Christian lives, we stand under the judgement of God, in an existential choosing between the way that leads to life and the way that leads to death, the way that leads to heaven and the way that leads to hell. Scripture offers both a picture of a severe judgement, with the separation of the saints from those condemned to hell, and a picture of hope in the mercy of God. The risk that we face if we insist on a populated hell is that, at least on the part of others, we lose our faith in the work of redemption. The risk that we face if we insist on the mercy of God to the exclusion of the idea of a judgement, at least on our own part, is that we become complacent and fail in our actions to make the choice for the way that leads to heaven.  The Christian life involves keeping both of these pictures in view and in balance, one with the other. 

In some words of Pope St Gregory I:

Before sinning, let man fear God's justice, but after sinning let him presume on His mercy. And let him not so fear His justice as not to be strengthened by the consolation of hope; not so confident of His mercy as to neglect to apply to his wounds the medicine of adequate penance.

At one point in his book, Fr von Balthasar quote Adrienne von Speyr to a similar effect:

The truth is not simply an either-or: either somebody is in hell or nobody is. Both are partial expressions of the whole truth. Thus, too, Ignatius has a right to make his meditations on hell and to instruct that they be made ... The truth consists in a sum total of partial truths, and each of these partial truths must be wholly expressed, wholly thought out and lived through. We do not arrive at the truth if we only bring out one part and cover up the other. In every perspective, the whole must come to expression.

In a Jubilee Year dedicated to a them of hope, it is a most audacious expression of that hope to ask ourselves the question posed by the title of von Balthasar's book: Dare we hope that all men be saved?

To adapt the words of the Jubilee prayer:

May the grace of the Jubilee

reawaken in us, Pilgrims of hope,

a yearning for the treasures of heaven,

not only for ourselves but also for others.

Jubilee of Seminarians

A special Jubilee of Seminarians is to take place in Rome, starting in the evening of Monday 23rd June and concluding the following day, Tuesday 24th June. It forms the first of a sequence of three "Jubilees", being followed in successive days by the Jubilee of Bishops and the Jubilee of Priests.

Adrienne von Speyr has a lovely book entitled "They Followed His Call", which explores the experience of vocational calling. It combines a theological sense with a certain psychological understanding of the experience of one who listens to the Lord's call, so that in his foreword Hans Urs von Balthasar writes that it "accompanies the young person very seriously and even maternally through the difficult time that leads from the call's awakening in the soul to the great Decision and its realization".

The chapter of Adrienne's book entitled "The Time of Choice" is perhaps most relevant to seminarians.

The experiences of the time of choice are comparable to those of a young mother who, before marriage, had only a theoretical knowledge of how to care for an infant. And now suddenly she is responsible for her living child's most diverse needs. Through his presence God shows what he needs, asks for, and expects. He creates new times and divisions in a day's work, new tools, too, and qualities. A person attempts to reciprocate God's new wishes and designs as best as he can. For the most part, this will mean valuing one's self and one's things less highly, leaving everything to God in ever greater measure, until we can perhaps say that we have totally forgotten about ourselves and find all meaning in God. ...

Just as there is a total treasury of prayer, so too, in particular, is there a treasury of the time of choice, a treasury of consent and of gleaming example. Every newly spoken consent, every example that is given in such a consent, belongs to the Church in an intimate way and is further dispensed by her. It is the Church's to administer. The Church keeps none of her treasures for herself. She no more locks up her spiritual provisions than she removes her monstrances and vestments in cathedrals from use. They are there in order to be seen, used and lived. No consent stands isolated. Each and every consent is related to a future one or an already spoken one, and to every other consent.

Jubilee of the Missionaries of Mercy: The Sacrament of Penance

The days 28th - 30th March 2025 are being marked as a Jubilee of the Missionaries of Mercy. A news report ahead of this event can be found at Vatican News: Jubilee of Missionaries of Mercy bringing 500 priests worldwide. The event coincides with the 2025 celebration of "24 hours for the Lord".

For several years now the Friday/Saturday immediately before the fourth Sunday in Lent has been marked by a celebration of "24 Hours for the Lord", a particular time of prayer and recourse to the Sacrament of Penance. It is intended that the celebration take place at all levels in the Church, including at parish level. An introduction to the theme of the celebration for the Jubilee Year is here.

The purpose of the event is to put the sacrament of reconciliation back at the center of the pastoral life of the Church, and consequently, of our communities, parishes, and all ecclesial realities. This is the centre of the Gospel message: the Mercy of God, which gives us the certainty that before the Lord no one will find a judge, but rather will find a father who welcomes him, consoles him and also shows him the way to renewal.

I have a preference for referring to the sacrament as the Sacrament of Penance because that is the title used of the sacrament in the Code of Canon Law (cc. 959-997). The Catechism of the Catholic Church (nn.1423 - 1424), however, explains several different names for the sacrament. I have added the bold below to highlight each of them:

1423 It is called the sacrament of conversion because it makes sacramentally present Jesus' call to conversion, the first step in returning to the Father from whom one has strayed by sin.
It is called the sacrament of Penance, since it consecrates the Christian sinner's personal and ecclesial steps of conversion, penance, and satisfaction.

1424 It is called the sacrament of confession, since the disclosure or confession of sins to a priest is an essential element of this sacrament. In a profound sense it is also a "confession" - acknowledgment and praise - of the holiness of God and of his mercy toward sinful man.
It is called the sacrament of forgiveness, since by the priest's sacramental absolution God grants the penitent "pardon and peace."
It is called the sacrament of Reconciliation, because it imparts to the sinner the love of God who reconciles: "Be reconciled to God." He who lives by God's merciful love is ready to respond to the Lord's call: "Go; first be reconciled to your brother."

One of the more remarkable books about the sacrament is Adrienne von Speyr's book entitled Confession. The German original dates from 1960, with the Ignatius Press English translation dating from 1985. The book has a preface by Adrienne's close collaborator Hans Urs von Balthasar. (The site Balthasar and Speyr gives more information about the lives and work of these two). Adrienne's book ranges from a presentation of confession in its Christological and ecclesial dimensions (two early chapters are entitled "Confession in the life of the Lord" and "The Confession on the Cross") to very practical insights into the experience that we should have of  the sacrament (in chapters entitled "Types of Confession" and "The Act of Confession", which respectively look at confession in the context of different states and experiences of life and at the different specific steps taken in approaching and receiving the sacrament). It is striking that one can dip into this book, written essentially before Vatican II, and yet recognise in it much that is reflected in the passage from the Catechism quoted above, even though the book itself inescapably depends on the term "confession" used of the sacrament.

The attitude out of which the Son speaks his "I am thirsty" and "My God, why have you forsaken me?" on the Cross is not only an expression of his unique suffering; it is simultaneously the essence of every correct confessional attitude. The penitent who receives the sacrament of the fruit of the Cross, who stands naked and exposed before the Father, must thirst for absolution and for the nearness of God that he has lost through sin. If he confesses openly and with humility, God will grant him this thirst and this yearning to be stilled - not as something the penitent imagines or presses out of himself, as it were, but as an objective gift of grace.... Only when he receives absolution does sin become an objective quantity for him, something that no longer clings to his person, yet something from which he still must separate himself and take leave of in a highly conscious act.... The sinner's burning, thirsting desire for absolution should generate something enduring, namely, that perpetual search for God that characterises love here below, a searching which is the discipleship of the suffering and "confessing" Son on the Cross who thirsts more and more until finally "it is finished".

The Office of Peter

 Perhaps the liturgical feast of the Chair of St Peter, celebrated on 22nd February, is most exactly a celebration of the office of the Successor Peter; but I nevertheless find the Solemnity of St Peter and St Paul on 29th June prompt to reflect on that office. I am left at a bit of a loss that clergy seem to shy away from preaching on the Papal office on this feast day.

Hans Urs von Balthasar makes great play of the way in which, though he arrives at the tomb first on Easter morning, St John waits for St Peter to catch up, and then allows that he should enter the tomb first. Though not in time - the first immediate witness is Mary Magdalene - this gives a certain precedence to St Peter's witness to the resurrection. It is reflected at the start of the liturgy of the Easter Sunday Mass in St Peter's Square, when the successor of St Peter venerates an image of the risen Christ in a testimony to the truth of the resurrection. Whilst both the charism of love (St John) and that of hierarchy (St Peter) are essential to the Church, the former charism gives precedence to the latter.

In the figures of St Paul and St Peter, a similar precedence can be seen. St Paul's mission to the Gentiles seeks its confirmation from the apostles gathered around St Peter in Jerusalem. Both represent essential features of the life of the Church; but St Paul shows a deference to St Peter that reflects that of St John.

Four Thoughts about an Interview

 America magazine, a journal published by the Jesuits in the United States, have recently carried an -interview with Pope Francis. A full text has been published online: Pope Francis discusses Ukraine, U.S. bishops and more.

The first thought is less a thought, but more a feeling that this particular observation by Pope Francis should give every Catholic cause to pause and reflect:

I go to confession every 15 days.

[I suspect that the reference to 15 days might properly translate from Spanish to English as every two weeks.]

The second thought is to suggest that there is some parallel between my previous post on abortion as an ideological or an existential question and Pope Francis' account of abortion as a political or as a pastoral question:

The problem arises when this reality of killing a human being is transformed into a political question, or when a pastor of the church uses political categories.Each time a problem loses the pastoral dimension (pastoralidad), that problem becomes a political problem and becomes more political than pastoral. I mean, let no one hijack this truth, which is universal. It does not belong to one party or another. It is universal. When I see a problem like this one, which is a crime, become strongly, intensely political, there is a failure of pastoral care in approaching this problem. Whether in this question of abortion, or in other problems, one cannot lose sight of the pastoral dimension: A bishop is a pastor, a diocese is the holy people of God with their pastor. We cannot deal with [abortion] as if it is only a civil matter.

In answering a question about the role of women in the Church, Pope Francis spoke of a ministerial or Petrine dimension of the Church and of a feminine or Marian dimension. The theme of the Petrine and Marian dimensions of the Church can be found in Charles Journet's Theology of the Church and, perhaps more explicitly, in Hans Urs von Balthasar's The Office of Peter and the Structure of the Church. There is therefore rich hinterland lying behind Pope Francis' references here. Pope Francis then offers a context for his repeated remarks about giving women a greater role in the Church - that there is an administrative principle, which is not theological, but more about the every day running of the Church:

There is a third way: the administrative way. The ministerial way, the ecclesial way, let us say, Marian, and the administrative way, which is not a theological thing, it is something of normal administration. And, in this aspect, I believe we have to give more space to women....

And why can a woman not enter ordained ministry? It is because the Petrine principle has no place for that. Yes, one has to be in the Marian principle, which is more important. Woman is more, she looks more like the church, which is mother and spouse. I believe that we have too often failed in our catechesis when explaining these things. We have relied too much on the administrative principle to explain it, which in the long term does not work. This is an abbreviated explanation, but I wanted to highlight the two theological principles; the Petrine principle and the Marian principle that make up the church. Therefore, that the woman does not enter into the ministerial life is not a deprivation. No. Your place is that which is much more important and which we have yet to develop, the catechesis about women in the way of the Marian principle.

My last thought refers to how Pope Francis understands the relationship between a Bishop and the people of his diocese, a relationship which he characterises by the word "pastoral".  The discussion occurs in a couple of different places in the interview, at one point contrasting it with the role of episcopal conferences:

A bishops’ conference has, ordinarily, to give its opinion on faith and traditions, but above all on diocesan administration and so on. The sacramental part of the pastoral ministry is in the relationship between the pastor and the people of God, between the bishop and his people. And this cannot be delegated to the bishops’ conference.

In the interview, Pope Francis does not connect this to the idea of synodality. I do think, however, that the responsibility of a bishop towards his diocese is one key point on which the practice of synodality turns, and Pope Francis articulation of this responsibility has implications for the synodal pathway.

Believing in Two

 Believing in Two is the title of the September 2021 issue of the magazine Women Church World, published as a supplement to L'Osservatore Romano. This issue seeks to explore spiritual relationships between men and women in the mission of the Church. 

The theme of the issue is introduced in an article entitled Equality:

... in the September edition of Women Church World we are taking a journey to explore great spiritual friendships between men and women. These articles demonstrate that common and co-responsible work, as an inclusive “combination”, has always been fruitful in the life of the Church. In fact, it is often precisely these “couples” who have initiated innovative processes.

The male-female pairings treated in the issue are those of Hans Urs von Balthasar and Adrienne von Speyr ( A double mission in the Church); Romana Guarnieri and Giuseppe de Luca (The "singular friendship"..);St Clare and St Francis (Clare's gift); Raissa and Jacques Maritain (Between Faith and Reason); St Jane Frances de Chantal and St Francis de Sales (The social force of friendship); Armida Barelli and Agostino Gemelli (Culture in action). There is also a discussion of the standing of St Scholastica (in relation to St Benedict) and St Clare (in relation to St Francis), as being independent saints, not just women subordinate in some way to their respective siblings (To be saints without living in the shadow of saints).

In our own times, a defence of the complementarity between male and female is part of the Church's mission with regard to marriage and an authentic understanding of human sexuality. But Believing in Two draws our attention to another aspect of this complementarity, namely its spiritual dimension in terms of charisms in the life of the Church. We should expect to be able to see it in our own experience of life in the Church.

These relationships of the masculine and the feminine reflect the spousal relationship between Christ (masculine) and the Church (who, in the figure of the Virgin Mary, is feminine). There is, therefore, a rich ecclesial and theological theme to be developed from these, and the many other, examples of masculine/feminine complementarity.

Three actions of the Magi

I rather like Pope Francis' homily for the Solemnity of the Epiphany:

Three actions of the Magi guide our journey towards the Lord, who today is revealed as light and salvation for all peoples. The Magi see the star, they set out and they bring gifts....

Seeing the star. This is where it starts.....

Setting out, the second thing the Magi do, is essential if we are to find Jesus.....

Bringing gifts. Having come to Jesus after a long journey, the Magi do as he does: they bring gifts. Jesus is there to give his life; they offer him their own costly gifts: gold, incense and myrrh. The Gospel becomes real when the journey of life ends in giving. To give freely, for the Lord’s sake, without expecting anything in return: this is the sure sign that we have found Jesus.

In his discussion of "setting out", Pope Francis included the following:

Jesus makes demands: he tells those who seek him to leave behind the armchair of worldly comforts and the reassuring warmth of hearth and home. Following Jesus is not a polite etiquette to be observed, but a journey to be undertaken. God, who set his people free in the exodus and called new peoples to follow his star, grants freedom and joy always and only in the course of a journey. In other words, if we want to find Jesus, we have to overcome our fear of taking risks, our self-satisfaction and our indolent refusal to ask anything more of life.

The reference to the armchair put me in mind of Hans Urs von Balthasar's more forceful comment in the Preface of his short book about the significance of martyrdom in the Christian life, whose English title is The Moment of Christian Witness .

A criterion has a stimulating effect, even if one uses it only in a purely experimental way to exercise one's imagination. If you say to Georges Bernanos, "Come along with me. It's the Ernstfall - the crucial moment in Christian experience", the old grumbler will get up out of his armchair without so much as raising an eyebrow and follow you like a lamb. But if you go to Reinhold Schneider, the author of Winter in Vienna, and say the same thing to him, there is no telling what might happen. Whether you would finally manage to get any response at all from those who have been "demythologised" and converted to the world, I do not know. They have already explained everything away and are left with a merely symbolic belief in a message that they understand only by analogy. For them, both the belief and the message are worth dying for only by analogy, just as they consider their Christianity worth living for only by analogy to something else.

Correcting the correction .....

There is a thought that I came to adopt quite some time ago now, prompted I think by an observation of Hans Urs von Balthasar in his study Therese of Lisieux: The Story of a Mission. Von Balthasar suggested that Therese was reduced in her experience of Christian life, in particular the mystery of confession, by an early confessor who said to her that she had never committed a mortal sin. The thought prompted by this is that the person who has experienced sin has a deeper experience of the Christian mystery, because that mystery is one of redemption from sin rather than being one of perfection originally achieved. Perhaps those who try to live in the Church with the greatest experience of sin are also those with the greatest experience of the Christian life. In any case, we can say that, both at the level of the individual Christian life and at the level of the community of the Church as a whole, there co-exists that which is sin and that which is grace, this co-existence characterised by the wish that it is the latter that will be in the ascendant over the former.

By analogy, watching the lives of marriages that I have encountered, I wonder if those marriages that experience the most difficulty (and difficulty arising from a whole range of different causes), and the lack of both financial and emotional security that result from difficulty, might have a deeper experience of the Christian life than other, more stable marriages. There can be among those difficulties a very radical experience of poverty - of not knowing what the next day, or week, or month will bring. The Christian in these kinds of circumstances has an experience of poverty that may not be readily experienced by others; they may not advert to it consciously as a Christian vocation, but they might nevertheless live it in a profoundly existential way.

There can, of course, be causes for a marriage break up that are a result of choices that go against the teaching of the Catholic Church with regard to marriage. This might be an extra-marital affair, where one spouse betrays the other. But then, later, both of the spouses involved might enter into a second marriage through a close friendship that comes about through the every day circumstances of life. Both of those second marriages are choices that are not morally just according to Catholic teaching. In both cases, the "objective state of sin", to use the term of Amoris Laetitia, means that they cannot receive Holy Communion should they still wish to practice their Catholic faith. The second is, however, perhaps more understandable in human terms than the first.

The situation that Chapter 8 of Amoris Laetitia tries to address does not primarily appear to me to be the situation at the time of the entering in to the second marriages, or of first embarking on a cohabitation. Instead, it appears to me to address a situation much later in time, when the immediacy of the decisions that created the "objective state of sin" has been moderated with the passage of time (cf n.298).

At this point, I am prompted to reflect on the  requirements set for the admission of a person to the monastery set out in chapter 58 of the Rule of St Benedict. It is not a requirement of any particular perfection but instead a requirement that the aspirant should "truly seek God", with provision for the testing of the integrity of that seeking of God:

A senior, skilled in conversion, should supervise him to see if he truly seeks God and eagerly hopes for the Divine Office, obedience and humiliations. He must be told of the difficulties and austerities ahead of him on the pathway to God.

At this later point in time, there might well emerge for the re-married person through a conversion, experienced in all probability in some limited way, a wish to "truly seek God". Equally, for some, no such wish may exist and the people involved will move away from the practice of the faith altogether; these would take the view that there is nothing wrong with being in a second marriage or with cohabiting. Chapter 8, however, faces up to the question of how, in practical terms, the Church approaches the situation of those who do have an at least latent wish to "seek God" (ie fidelity to Catholic teaching and life with regard to marriage) in their irregular situation.

[Whilst it is less easy to see how it might occur, it is also possible that those who are living together without marrying, or who contract a civil marriage only, might also reach this point of conversion that represents a wish to "seek God" through fidelity to Catholic teaching. Though some of these situations might be readily resolved through a marriage, one might think, for example, of a couple co-habiting when one of the couple is prevented from marriage by a previous marriage, or where one might wish to move to marriage and the other not.]

In this light, I propose the following theses.

1. The person who, even in a limited way, wishes to "seek God" in the sense suggested above, already knows that there is something (morally) wrong with their situation. They do not need to be told it. "Doctrinal clarity" is neither here nor there for them. I recall the parable of the ship's captain and the lighthouse that Mgr Paul Watson was wont to tell when he was at Maryvale Institute - once the captain of the large ship realises that he is heading towards a lighthouse on land instead of a smaller ship that can move out of his way, he does not need to be told that he needs to change direction. And this is where the logic of the dubia and the clamour for clarification runs up against the pastoral approach proposed in Chapter 8. None of the doctrine being "defended" by the dubia and the calls for clarification have ever been put into question by Chapter 8 or by any other passage in Amoris Laetitia. There is no objective need for Pope Francis to clarify that teaching. There is every need, in the pastoral intention of Amoris Laetitia, to maintain the sense of welcome to those whose conversion leads them to "seek God" in their marital situation. The need for clarification has arisen because of the activity of those who call for it, and not because of the manner of Pope Francis' exercise of the office of the Successor of Peter.

2. If the pastoral programme of Chapter 8 is followed, there is a certain testing of the desire to "seek God" and of the conversion giving rise to it. An examination of conscience and moments of reflection and repentance are proposed by Amoris Laetitia n.300; and the discernment is against the bench mark of "truth and charity as proposed by the Church", humility and discretion, and love for the Church and her teaching. If priests and bishops fulfil their responsibility in respect of this part of the pastoral programme of Chapter 8, it is difficult to see how a person in a second marriage could embark on the process of discernment and integration without a genuine wish to "seek God". Indeed, the one who "flaunts an objective sin as if it were part of the Christian ideal ... needs to listen once more to the Gospel message and its call to conversion" in the words of Amoris Laetitia n.297. There is no question here of accepting as morally just the "objective state of sin" with regard to a second marriage or cohabitation.

3. A key point of both pastoral and theological importance in Chapter 8 is the suggestion that, though a couple might be in an objective state of manifest sin (ie a state of sin that is openly visible), there are circumstances where the element of consent in particular, but also of knowledge, that are necessary for that sin to be mortal may be lacking or compromised. In other words, it is possible for someone living in an irregular marital situation, with that desire to "seek God", to still share in the life of grace that is the common spiritual life of the Church. This is the discussion that extends across nn.301 - 305 of Amoris Laetitia, with reference to both St Thomas and the Catechism of the Catholic Church. It seems to me that this discussion reflects what one might call traditional teaching with regard to the requirements of mortal sin - full knowledge, full consent and grave matter. It does not question that the irregular marriage situations represent grave matter, and leaves intact the provision of Canon 915 that persistence in manifest sin in grave matter means that a person should not be admitted to Holy Communion. It also reflects what is said above about the Christian life being one that shares in sin and grace, with the effort always that grace should become the ascendant. If one can summarise the discussion, it is in this sentence from n.305:

Because of forms of conditioning and mitigating factors, it is possible that in an objective situation of sin - which may not be subjectively culpable, or fully such - a person can be living in God's grace, and can also grow in the life of grace and charity, while receiving the Church's help to this end.

4. The discernment expected by the pastoral programme of Chapter 8 is not a discernment with regard to admission to the sacraments of Penance and the Eucharist. That aspect is relegated to a footnote to n.305 just quoted (or it was until the critics raised it to a kind of canonical status that is entirely sui generis), the essence of which is to say that the process of discernment does not rule out an eventual access to the sacraments and neither does it rule it in. The admission to these sacraments is not itself the subject of the discernment. It should also be absolutely clear that recognising that an objective state of sin can exist alongside grace does not represent a kind of acceptance as a status quo of the objective state of sin, and to suggest so is a very serious misrepresentation of the teaching of Chapter 8. Amoris Laetitia is not suggesting a standing still in that objective state of sin. Instead, it is presenting a discernment of a way forward enabling a growth in the life of grace and charity, "so they can reach the fullness of God's plan for them, something which is always possible by the power of the Holy Spirit" (Amoris Laetitia n.297).

5. When I look at the manner of Pope Francis' exercise of the ministry of the Successor Peter, its most striking feature appears to be the raising of the status of the act of charity in terms of the living of the Christian life. For Pope Francis, it is a central focus of the bringing of grace into ascendancy over sin in the life of the individual Christian and in the life of the Church as a whole. The promotion of the corporal works of mercy - exemplified by Pope Francis himself in his Friday "visits of mercy" - was perhaps an underestimated intention of the recent Year of Mercy. It is n.306 of Amoris Laetitia which is crucial to recognising the part to be played by engagement with the Church's mission of charity in the process of discernment intended by Chapter 8:

In every situation, when dealing with those who have difficulties in living God's law to the full, the invitation to pursue the via caritatis must be clearly heard. Fraternal charity is the first law of Christians (cf Jn 15:12; Gal 5:14). Let us not forget the reassuring words of Scripture: "Maintain constant love for one another, for love covers a multitude of sins" (1 Pet 4:8); "Atone for your sins with righteousness, and your iniquities with mercy to the oppressed, so that your prosperity may be prolonged" (Dan 4:24[27]); "As water extinguishes a blazing fire, so almsgiving atones for sins" (Sir 3:30). This is also what Saint Augustine teaches: "Just as, at the threat of a fire, we would run for water to extinguish it… so too, if the flame of sin rises from our chaff and we are troubled, if the chance to perform a work of mercy is offered us, let us rejoice in it, as if it were a fountain offered us to extinguish the blaze".

It is the discernment, and accompaniment, of how a person might engage in this activity of charity that is seen by Pope Francis as the manner of an approach that integrates them in the life of the Church rather than rejecting them from it. Its spiritual, and therefore redemptive, value derives from the possibility that the person has participation in the life of grace of the Church. For the one who "seeks God" whilst in an objectively sinful marital situation, it offers a way of moving forward, of growing towards perfection. There is no reason why such a person should not be active in an SVP conference, engaged in hospital visiting or engaged in ship visiting (to give examples with relevance to my own locality), though they are not able to receive Holy Communion.

6. Pope Francis' answer to the dubia and to the correction is already there in Amoris Laetitia n.308:

I understand those who prefer a more rigorous pastoral care which leaves no room for confusion. But I sincerely believe that Jesus wants a Church attentive to the goodness which the Holy Spirit sows in the midst of human weakness, a Mother who, while clearly expressing her objective teaching, 'always does what good she can, even if in the process, her shoes get soiled by the mud of the street'".

According to one of its signatories, the real claim of the correction is that Pope Francis has left  little doubt about how he wants Amoris Laetitia to be understood and applied, and this understanding is in the last analysis incompatible with the Catholic Faith. I think this claim is in the realm of speculation. Several of the cited instances of actions by Pope Francis that are claimed to indicate how he wishes us to understand and apply Amoris Laetitia do not in reality do any such thing unless a speculative interpretation is placed on them; and in so far as there is any indication of how Amoris Laetitia might be understood and applied, it is as  I indicate above. The Argentine bishops guidelines referred to, for example, do not say anything other than what is already in Amoris Laetitia itself, so Pope Francis' endorsement of them has no content in addition to Amoris Laetitia in any case.

Perhaps the authors of the correction would have better spent their time in promoting an understanding and application of Amoris Laetitia that is faithful to its text.

Dare we hope that all men be saved?

One might preface any remarks about von Balthasar by indicating that he is a theologian who is Catholic in the deepest and widest sense of the word, so the slighting of his orthodoxy by those of a more traditionalist inclination seems to me to say more about them than it does about von Balthasar.

But having seen once again a "re-tweet" - more or less well informed - of the side swipe at Hans Urs von Balthasar's position on whether or not anyone actually goes to hell, I offer the following.

At the front of Ignatius Press English edition of the relevant work Dare we hope that all men be saved? is the following quotation, from a catechism published by the German Bishops Conference (emphasis in the original):

Neither Holy Scripture nor the Church's Tradition of faith asserts with certainty of any man that he is actually in hell. Hell is always held before our eyes as a real possibility, one connected with the offer of conversion and life.

From the Catechism of the Catholic Church nn.1033 ff, on hell (my italics added):

We cannot be united with God unless we freely choose to love him. But we cannot love God if we sin gravely against him, against our neighbor or against ourselves: "He who does not love remains in death. Anyone who hates his brother is a murderer, and you know that no murderer has eternal life abiding in him." Our Lord warns us that we shall be separated from him if we fail to meet the serious needs of the poor and the little ones who are his brethren. To die in mortal sin without repenting and accepting God's merciful love means remaining separated from him for ever by our own free choice. This state of definitive self-exclusion from communion with God and the blessed is called "hell."

The affirmations of Sacred Scripture and the teachings of the Church on the subject of hell are a call to the responsibility incumbent upon man to make use of his freedom in view of his eternal destiny. They are at the same time an urgent call to conversion ...

God predestines no one to go to hell; for this, a willful turning away from God (a mortal sin) is necessary, and persistence in it until the end.

 From the Catechism of the Catholic Church nn.2090 - 2092, on Hope

When God reveals Himself and calls him, man cannot fully respond to the divine love by his own powers. He must hope that God will give him the capacity to love Him in return and to act in conformity with the commandments of charity. Hope is the confident expectation of divine blessing and the beatific vision of God; it is also the fear of offending God's love and of incurring punishment.

The first commandment is also concerned with sins against hope, namely, despair and presumption:

By despair, man ceases to hope for his personal salvation from God, for help in attaining it or for the forgiveness of his sins. Despair is contrary to God's goodness, to his justice - for the Lord is faithful to his promises - and to his mercy.

There are two kinds of presumption. Either man presumes upon his own capacities, (hoping to be able to save himself without help from on high), or he presumes upon God's almighty power or his mercy (hoping to obtain his forgiveness without conversion and glory without merit).

Hans Urs von Balthasar's position is less one that suggests that no-one will go to hell than one that, in the first instant recognises the real risk on my own part (the call to responsibility and conversion), but then, in terms of my love towards others, insists that I should continue to hope "to the end" in the possibility of their conversion (and therefore ensure my love for my neighbour).

I do wonder how it can be possible to live a bearable Christian life if hell is seen only as a driver for the avoidance of mortal sin, that is, in its negative import, and not also in its positive import as a hope that one's response to the call to conversion will be sufficient, as will be the response of my neighbour.

Hell: a literary investigation

In the light of the centenary of the apparitions of the Blessed Virgin Mary at Fatima, I have recently been reading Sr Lucia's accounts, published in English under the title Fatima in Lucia's own words. In her account of the apparition on 13th July 1917 (see page 178 of the English text), Sr Lucia describes the vision of Hell shown to them by Our Lady:

As Our Lady spoke these last words, she opened her hands once more, as she had done during the two previous months. The rays of light seemed to penetrate the earth, and we saw as it were a sea of fire. Plunged in this fire were demons and souls in human form, like transparent burning embers, all blackened or burnished bronze, floating about in the conflagration, now raised into the air by the flames that issued from within themselves together with great clouds of smoke now falling back on every side like sparks in huge fires, without weight or equilibrium, amid shrieks and groans of pain and despair, which horrified us and made us tremble with fear (It must have been this sight which caused me to cry out, as people say they heard me). The demons could be distinguished by their terrifying and repellent likeness to frightful and unknown animals, black and transparent like burning coals. Terrified and as if to plead for succour, we looked up at Our Lady, who said to us, so kindly and so sadly: 

“You have seen hell where the souls of poor sinners go. To save them, God wishes to establish in the world devotion to my Immaculate Heart....

I then went on to re-read the description of Hell given by Georges Bernanos in The Diary of a Country Priest. It is uttered by the parish priest in a vehement response to Madame la Comtesse:

'You won't hate, you'll cease to know one another.'....

'...what have you laymen made of hell? A kind of penal servitude for eternity, on the lines of your convict prisons on earth, to which you condemn in advance all the wretched felons your police have hunted from the beginning - "enemies of society" as you call them. You're kind enough to include blasphemers and the profane. What proud or reasonable man could stomach such a notion of God's justice?.... Hell is judged by the standards of the world, and hell is not of this world, it is of the other world, and still less of this Christian society. An eternal expiation - ! The miracle is that we on earth were ever able to think of such a thing, when scarcely has our sin gone out of us, and one look, a sign, a dumb appeal suffices for grace and pardon to swoop down, as an eagle from topmost skies. It's because the lowest of human beings, even though he no longer thinks he can love, still has in him the power of loving. Our very hate is resplendent, and the least tormented of the fiends would warm himself in what we call our despair, as in a morning of glittering sunshine. Hell is not to love any more! That sounds quite ordinary to you. To a human being still alive, it means to love less or to love elsewhere. To understand is still a way of loving. But suppose this faculty which seem so inseparably ours, of our very essence, should disappear! Oh, prodigy. To stop loving, to stop understanding - and yet to live..... if a living man, the vilest, most compatible of the living, were cast into these burning depths, I should still be ready to share his suffering, I would claim him from his executioner .... To share his suffering! The sorrow, the unutterable loss of those charred stones which once were men, is that they have nothing more to be shared."

My next stop on the road to hell was the account of Adrienne von Speyr's charismatic insight into Jesus' descent into Hell on Holy Saturday given by Hans Urs von Balthasar in his First Glance at Adrienne von Speyr:

It is Christ's final act of obedience towards his Father that he descends "into hell" (or "underworld", Hades, Sheol). Because hell is (already in the Old Covenant) the place where God is absent, wher there is no longer the light of faith, hope, love, of participation in God's life; hell is what the judging God condemned and cast out of his creation; it is filled with all that is irreconcilable with God, from which he turns away for all eternity. It is filled with the reality of all the world's godlessness, with the sum of the world's sin; therefore, with precisely all of that from which the Crucified has freed the world. In hell he encounters his own work of salvation, not in Easter triumph, but in the uttermost night of obedience truly the "obedience of a corpse". He encounters the horror of sin separated from men. He "walks" through sin (without leaving a trace, since, in hell and in death, there is neither time nor direction); and, traversing its formlessness, he experiences a second chaos. While bereft of any spiritual light emanating from the Father, in sheer obedience, he must seek the Father where hi cannot find him under any circumstances. And yet, this hell is a final mystery of the Father as creator (who made allowances for the freedom of man). And so, in this darkness, the Incarnate Son learns "experientially" what until then was "reserved" for the Father. Hell, seen in this way, is, in its final possibility, a Trinitarian event. On Good Friday the Father hands the "key" to it over to the Son....

What Adrienne experienced is actually more horrible than the hell depicted for us by medieval imagination; it is the knowledge of having lost God forever; it is being engulfed in the chaotic mire of the anti-divine; the absence of faith, hope and love the loss, as well, therefore, of any human communication... Her experience of it was so real that, in view of it, it would be ridiculous and blasphemous to speak of the nonexistence of hell or even just of apokatastsis [a universal salvation] in the "systematic" sense....[Adrienne's experience] justifies the exaltation of Christian hope over fear, and yet, through its Trinitarian interpretation, gives the whole problem an altogether Christian seriousness, perhaps never before known.

My final destination was the title of a novel by Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn, The First Circle. It portrays life in a Soviet research institution, where the researchers are not free academics but an imprisoned intelligentsia. The full import to that title, with its reference to Dante,  can only be grasped in relation to Solzhenitsyn's account of hell on earth that is The Gulag Archipelago - a wide ranging and at times abrasively cutting account of the prison camp system under Soviet Russia. Which of course brings us back to the context of the Marian apparitions at Fatima.

The Pope today

Earlier today I re-read the essay with this title, to be found in Hans Urs von Balthasar's book Elucidations. First published in German in 1971, the immediate context of the essay is the pontificate of Pope Paul VI.

It is an essay that has a striking resonance for the pontificate of Pope Francis, and for many of the critical observations made of him and of those who defend him. It does need to be read as a whole, so that the trenchant critiques of the behaviour of ecclesiastics (this is not in von Balthasar's original context a reference to cardinals as it might be in the present context in respect of Amoris Laetitia) is seen also against its background of von Balthasar's equally trenchant comment on the teaching of Vatican I with regard to the Papal office and its balancing by the teaching of Vatican II (that at the former bishops seemed to readily offload to the higher authority a responsibility that was rightly their own, a tendency which achieved its correct balancing at the latter).

In the process of humiliation it is necessary to distinguish between the burdensome responsibilities which are accepted for the wrong reasons (even if in good faith) and that pastoral load which the man who follows in Peter's tracks cannot pass on to other men. The formulations promulgated in such an inflated style by Vatican I will, in a quite different style, retain their truth, a very humble truth, without sparkle or strength, for as long at least as men do not seek spontaneously to take the lowest place.

On the other hand, the loud-mouthed, Christian, mostly clerical rogues who take such pleasure in attacking Rome can study their own physiognomies in the satirical pictures of Bosch and Breughel. They will never be truly in the right even if they themselves imagine that they are angels of truth sent by heaven or by the human race or by the future to the Church, and even it if appears that they again and again receive plausible confirmation of their views by innumerable faux-pas of the central government of the Church. They have all the laughs on their side. But Peter must have seemed fairly laughable too when he was crucified upside down ....

There ... I did say the critiques were trenchant! It is perhaps the observation that "they will never be truly in the right .." to which we must pay most heed.

Note: I have not been able to find an on-line text of this essay, so if you do know of one, I would be happy to link to it.

Pope Francis: "sofa" Catholics are called to lace up their boots

There is a very good report on the evening vigil at World Youth Day at the website of he Guardian: Pope Francis holds vigil near Kraków amid tension over refugees. Do read the whole report, as the reference to the tension over refugees forms only a small part of the whole report. The Catholic Herald also carries a report here, that I suggest you read before continuing.

The text of Pope Francis' address to the young people is here (English) and here (Italian - the language of delivery). I do think one needs to read the whole, but I was particularly struck by Pope Francis use of the image of a "sofa":

We have heard three testimonies. Our hearts were touched by their stories, their lives. We have seen how, like the disciples, they experienced similar moments, living through times of great fear, when it seemed like everything was falling apart.....

But in life there is another, even more dangerous, kind of paralysis. .... I like to describe it as the paralysis that comes from confusing happiness with a sofa. In other words, to think that in order to be happy all we need is a good sofa. A sofa that makes us feel comfortable, calm, safe. A sofa like one of those we have nowadays with a built-in massage unit to put us to sleep. A sofa that promises us hours of comfort so we can escape to the world of videogames and spend all kinds of time in front of a computer screen. A sofa that keeps us safe from any kind of pain and fear. A sofa that allows us to stay home without needing to work at, or worry about, anything. “Sofa-happiness”! That is probably the most harmful and insidious form of paralysis, which can cause the greatest harm to young people. And why does this happen Father? Because, little by little, without even realizing it, we start to nod off, to grow drowsy and dull. ...

For many people, that is more convenient than having young people who are alert and searching, trying to respond to God’s dream and to all the restlessness present in the human heart. I ask you: do you want to be young people who nod off, who are drowsy and dull? [No!] Do you want others to decide your future for you? [No!] Do you want to be free? [Yes!] Do you want to be alert? [Yes!] Do you want to work hard for your future? [Yes!] You don’t seem very convinced… Do you want to work hard for your future? [Yes!]....

..... Dear young people, we didn’t come into this work to “vegetate”, to take it easy, to make our lives a comfortable sofa to fall asleep on. No, we came for another reason: to leave a mark. It is very sad to pass through life without leaving a mark. But when we opt for ease and convenience, for confusing happiness with consumption, then we end up paying a high price indeed: we lose our freedom. We are not free to leave a mark. ....

My friends, Jesus is the Lord of risk, he is the Lord of the eternal “more”. Jesus is not the Lord of comfort, security and ease. Following Jesus demands a good dose of courage, a readiness to trade in the sofa for a pair of walking shoes and to set out on new and uncharted paths. To blaze trails that open up new horizons capable of spreading joy, the joy that is born of God’s love and wells up in your hearts with every act of mercy. To take the path of the “craziness” of our God, who teaches us to encounter him in the hungry, the thirsty, the naked, the sick, the friend in trouble, the prisoner, the refugee and the migrant, and our neighbours who feel abandoned. To take the path of our God, who encourages us to be politicians, thinkers, social activists. The God who encourages us to devise an economy marked by greater solidarity than our own. In all the settings in which you find yourselves, God’s love invites you bring the Good News, making of your own lives a gift to him and to others. This means being courageous, this means being free!

[It is interesting that the BBC news report that I have just heard on the radio spoke of Pope Francis encouraging young people to become social activists and politicians - but omitted to mention his account of this as a following of Jesus Christ and a practicing of God's love towards others].

The times we live in do not call for young “couch potatoes”, but for young people with shoes, or better, boots laced. The times we live in require only active players on the field, and there is no room for those who sit on the bench. Today’s world demands that you be a protagonist of history because life is always beautiful when we choose to live it fully, when we choose to leave a mark. History today calls us to defend our dignity and not to let others decide our future. No! We must decide our future, you must decide your future! As he did on Pentecost, the Lord wants to work one of the greatest miracles we can experience; he wants to turn your hands, my hands, our hands, into signs of reconciliation, of communion, of creation. He wants your hands to continue building the world of today. And he wants to build that world with you. And what is your response? Yes or no? [Yes!] 

The reference to the "sofa" reminded me of the preface to Hans Urs von Balthasar's study of the witness of martyrdom, published in English with the title The Moment of Christian Witness.  The context may be strictly different than that in which Pope Francis was speaking - an academic/ theological reflection on the nature of martyrdom for a particular debate then occurring in the life of Church rather than a pastoral encouragement to young people to live the Christian life - but perhaps there is not that much difference after all. The 2016 World Youth Day has been overshadowed by the martyrdom of Christian communities in Syria and Iraq (one of the testimonies during the vigil was from a young lady from Aleppo in Syria) and by the martyrdom of Fr Jacques Hamel in France. So perhaps one can see Pope Francis' call to young people to get themselves up off the sofa and tie their boot laces as a call to that "decisive moment" of von Balthasar, a "decisive moment" that may involve the ultimate witness of the martyr:

If you say to Georges Bernanos, "Come along with me. It's the Ernstfall - the crucial moment in Christian experience", the old grumbler will get up out of his armchair without so much as raising an eyebrow and follow you like a lamb. But if you go to Reinhold Schneider, the author of Winter in Vienna, and say the same thing to him, there is no telling what might happen.  Whether you would finally manage to get any response at all from those who have been "demythologised" and converted to the world, I do not know. They have already explained everything away and are left with a merely symbolic belief in a message that they understand only by analogy. For them, both belief and the message are worth dying for only by analogy, just as they consider their Christianity worth living for only by analogy to something else.

In Krakow, Pope Francis has clearly called young people to live up to the demand of the "decisive moment" that they may encounter in their Christian lives.

The Name of God is Mercy

When he edited Adrienne von Speyr's book Confession in 1960, Fr von Balthasar wrote at the end of his foreword:

It is fashionable today to speak of a "sacrament of penance" instead of "confession". In a certain superficial historical sense this may be correct to the extent that in the first centuries confession was present in Christian consciousness primarily under the aspect of penance. However, everyone knows that in reality this was only an initial seed and not the full-grown plant. Indeed, it was a seed that scarcely suggested the dogmatic basis just mentioned [ie the Trinitarian and Christological basis that is the subject of Adrienne's book], a basis whose centre is expressed by "confession" (Augustine's confessio, to admit or confess). Thus there is no real reason to dispense with the traditional word.

I suspect that Fr von Balthasar would all the more strongly speak against the use of the word "reconciliation", though he must have had to come to terms with the title of the sacrament as the Sacrament of Penance used in the 1983 Code of Canon Law. He might have found some consolation in the Catechism of the Catholic Church, where the title "confession" is included along with the other titles now used of the sacrament:

It is called the sacrament of confession, since the disclosure or confession of sins to a priest is an essential element of this sacrament. In a profound sense it is also a "confession" - acknowledgment and praise - of the holiness of God and of his mercy towards sinful man.

When Pope Francis' book The Name of God is Mercy arrived this week, it was therefore striking to see a chapter entitled "The Gift of Confession":

It is true that I can talk to the Lord and ask him for forgiveness, implore him. And the Lord will forgive me immediately. But it is important that I go to confession, that I sit in front of a priest who embodies Jesus, that I kneel before Mother Church called to dispense the mercy of Christ. There is objectivity in this gesture of genuflection before the priest; it becomes the vehicle through which grace reaches and heals me.  

And again, at the beginning of a short chapter devoted to how Catholics should live the Year of Mercy, Pope Francis identifies confession as the first of the important things that should be done to live the Year of Mercy:

[The believer] should open up to the mercy of God, open up his heart and himself, allow Jesus to come toward him by approaching the confessional with faith. And he should try and be merciful with others. 

The Year for Consecrated Life: No to "temporary commitment"

A blog post at The Tablet for the beginning of the Year of Consecrated Life suggests that a form of temporary participation in religious life should be offered alongside the permanent commitment that is the traditional form of such life in the Church: Commitment-shy young people need mini tasters of consecrated life.

Bishop Hugh of Aberdeen has observed that, since Vatican II, one area of the Church's life that has not shown a great flourishing is that of the religious life. The Year for Consecrated Life certainly provides an opportunity for those who live other vocations in the Church to gain some experience of consecrated life, perhaps by spending some time with religious communities or sharing in the apostolic activity of such communities. One impact of the decline in religious life has been that a typical parish now has little or no visibility of religious in the day to day life of the parish - and so young Catholics grow up without any direct experience of consecrated life. So, not only might the lay faithful spend some time in an experience of religious life, but also religious might make a particular effort during this year to be more visible to the Church at large.

But is the kind of "temporary commitment" suggested in The Tablet blog post really the way forward?

Louis Bouyer observes in the Preface to his book The Meaning of the Monastic Life (with my italics added):

The purpose of this book is primarily to point out to monks that their vocation in the Church is not, and never has been, a special vocation. The vocation of the monk is, but is no more than, the vocation of the baptized man. But it is the vocation of the baptized man carried, I would say, to the farthest limits of its irresistible demands. All men who have put on Christ have heard the call to seek God. The monk is one for whom this call has become so urgent that there can be no question of postponing his response to it: he must accept forthwith.

And Pope Francis said something similar in an interview, cited in the letter from the Congregation for Institute of Consecrated Life linked above (again with my italics added):

“It is a question of leaving everything to follow the Lord. No, I do not want to say ‘radical’. Evangelical radicalness is not only for religious: it is demanded of all. But religious follow the Lord in a special way, in a prophetic way. It is this witness that I expect of you. Religious should be men and women able to wake the world up.”

Can this evangelical radicalness admit of a temporary response, a temporary commitment to consecrated life?

In two complementary essays in his book Elucidations, first published as long ago as 1971, Hans Urs von Balthasar argues that the evangelical counsels so characteristic of consecrated life are the form in the Church of a decisive act of discipleship, a decisive choice to follow Jesus Christ:

But nothing has been said about the attitude of the man who gives himself....[The counsels] mean discipleship, not only material, but above all, spiritual discipleship. They mean precisely and centrally our total offering of ourselves to be disposed of by the Lord, just as he puts himself totally at the disposition of the Father's will.

And in an essay entitled "Temporary Christians", von Balthasar challenges explicitly ideas of temporary commitment in marriage, in the priesthood and in religious profession:

For here the very basic act of the Christian life is put in question, namely that God in Jesus Christ can dispose of a man's life once and for all and that this man is enabled to ratify that act of God's disposing. 

Recognising that the Church might by way of dispensations free those who might otherwise break under the demands of a task they have taken on; and recognising that "temporary vows" or first profession exist as a step towards a final and complete consecration; von Balthasar nevertheless argues that, if the permanence of the commitment in the Christian life of discipleship ceases to be the expected norm in favour of the "limiting cases", then it is all up for the essence of such discipleship.

The fear of lifelong decision gnaws today at the marrow of the life of society, most dangerously in the Church. Perhaps young people speak about commitment so much today because they are frightened of the "once for all" character of decision. They seek refuge in provisional commitments which for their limited period are meaningful (a spell of work in overseas development), which hold open the possibility of changing over to something else later. They imagine that they are being serious about it but in truth, a truth which is hidden to them, they are only flirting like half-virgins who have all kinds of experience but not the decisive one: namely, that of finally giving oneself...

.... ultimately what stands behind these three programmes, "temporary marriage", "temporary priests", "temporary vows", is the unsaid "temporary Christians"....

 [It is interesting to see in this essay how vividly von Balthasar compares the commitment of man and wife in marriage to what is to be expected of commitment to consecrated life.]

There will always be those who start out on the way of religious life, with every intention of persevering, but who do not stay the full course and leave before permanent consecration. Some might even try several times, and in different institutes. This kind of temporary participation in consecrated life there will always be.

But it is quite different than the acceptance in principle of "temporary commitment", of commitment that knowingly and deliberately from the beginning is going to be temporary. The kind of temporary commitment that undermines the authentic decision for Christian discipleship, not just for the religious, but for the lay faithful too.

Whatever initiatives are undertaken during the Year for Consecrated Life to make such life better known and lived in the Church, they should avoid any encouragement of a sense of temporary commitment as the norm.

The Church we are in

Introduction

Writing in 1935, in the interval between the First Vatican Council and the Second, Dom Anscar Vonier wrote in the Foreword to his book The Spirit and the Bride:

I have noticed with a feeling of pain how several recent books by Catholic writers of fame make a distinction that is a surrender to Protestant feeling between an ideal Church and the real Church. Being themselves very orthodox Catholics the writers in question abound, of course, in their encomiums of the beauty of the Church conceived ideally. But after that they seem to gloat on the Church's human infirmities, piling it on and letting the Protestant have it his own way with his century-old fault-finding. Different, indeed, was the mentality of the Vatican Council [ie the First] which considered the Church in her actuality to be a testimonium irrefragibile, a "witness that cannot be gainsaid", of her divine mission: The Church, through herself, on account of her admirable extension (propagationem), her exceeding sanctity (eximiam sanctitatem), her inexhaustible stability, is a great and everlasting motive of credibility and a witness to her divine mission that cannot be gainsaid (Vatican I, sess, III, cap. 3,7).

The Council means, of course, the actual living Church, not an ideal, or a mere system of the means of sanctification. To say the least, it is very bad taste on the part of a Catholic to represent Catholicism as a divine religion and to speak of Catholics as having been the world's worst sinners.... The eximia sanctitatis, "exceptional holiness", which the last of the General Councils perceived in the Church is the true portrait of what exists.

In a subsequent chapter entitled "The Great Metaphors", Dom Vonier insists that the titles used of the Church in the Scriptural writings of St Paul and of Revelation refer, not to an "ideal" Church of some kind, but to the actual living experience of the Church in the immediately apostolic period.

There is a limited parallel to the quoted passage from Vatican I in the constitution Lumen Gentium of Vatican II (nn.39-40, my italics added to draw out the parallel):

....in the Church, everyone whether belonging to the hierarchy, or being cared for by it, is called to holiness, according to the saying of the Apostle: "For this is the will of God, your sanctification". However, this holiness of the Church is unceasingly manifested, and must be manifested, in the fruits of grace which the Spirit produces in the faithful; it is expressed in many ways in individuals, who in their walk of life, tend toward the perfection of charity, thus causing the edification of others...

Thus it is evident to everyone, that all the faithful of Christ of whatever rank or status, are called to the fullness of the Christian life and to the perfection of charity; by this holiness as such a more human manner of living is promoted in this earthly society.....  In this way, the holiness of the People of God will grow into an abundant harvest of good, as is admirably shown by the life of so many saints in Church history.

The Catechism of the Catholic Church quotes the passage from Vatican I, though with slight difference in translation compared to Abbot Vonier (n.812), referring to the historical manifestations of the unity, holiness, catholicity and apostolicity of the Church as speaking clearly to human reason of the truthfulness of her mission. Hans Urs von Balthasar, in a passage of The Office of Peter and the Structure of the Church (p.196 ff in the Ignatius Press translation), suggests the figure of Mary as the point, theologically speaking, where the temptation to divide the Church into "ideal" and "earthly" realities is overcome.

Abbot Vonier was speaking to a very different ecclesial context than the one that pertains today; and clearly he was not denying the human frailties that must have been as much present in the Church of his time as they are in the Church of our own time. (If the Church of our own time has offered sorrow and repentance for failings of the past, then so to has the Protestant ceased from using those failings as an argument to denigrate the Catholic Church.)

But it is of value, I think, to take Abbot Vonier's fundamental insight - that there is no distinction to be made between a Church "ideal" in its faithfulness to Christ and a Church "real" in the vagaries of its earthly life - and use it to reflect on the Church during the papacy of Pope Francis.

Reform-minded Catholics

As an example of the movement that self-identifies as a "reform movement" in Catholicism we have ACTA. On 25th October 2014, they held a national conference at Liverpool Hope University. One of the talks was entitled "Remarriage and the Eucharist - after the Synod". You have to dig down to page 10 of the text on the ACTA website (it is the talk by Fr Buckley) to find the suggestion that indicates just how far away from an authentically Catholic position it is (my italics added):

....we have been willing to accept that we understand more about the psychology of human relations and therefore the possibility that the bond of marriage may not have been validly formed for many more reasons than hitherto thought possible, but we don’t seem willing or able to question a theological notion that has tied us up in knots and leaves us with little or no room for manoeuvre. If we are willing to accept the judgement of a tribunal on whether or not an indissoluble bond was formed, why can we not also accept that the very fact that two people subsequently become totally estranged and unable to live out their marriage commitment is itself a sign that the bond was never properly formed? I fail to see how such a judgement would mean that we had abandoned our belief in the sanctity and permanence of marriage. It would simply acknowledge that there is much that we will never know for certain on this earth, in spite of our best efforts.

Unfortunately, and somewhat inaccurately, Fr Buckley has earlier in his talk given the impression that Pope Francis appears to support his position, even though I am not aware of any suggestions that Pope Francis would accept the idea that marital breakdown is sufficient evidence for invalidity of the original marriage:

..... I sense that more and more people’s instincts now lead them to conclude as I did that the official position simply doesn’t add up and it is a relief to find that it would seem that the Pope himself thinks likewise.

It is Professor Mary Grey's comments on the ordination of women to the Catholic priesthood - see pages 5-6 of the text of her talk at the ACTA website - that reveal how far she is from a truly Catholic position:

.... some Roman Catholic women of great courage have sought to authenticate their own call to ordained ministry. One group is the well publicised ordination on a boat on the Danube in 2002. These pioneering women are referred to as “The Danube Seven”. This event was swiftly followed by excommunication from Rome, even though technically speaking, the ordinations might be reckoned as valid. Dramatic consequences ensued: nine further women sought ordination in the Roman Catholic Church on July 25 2005, in the international waters at the mouth of the St Lawrence Seaway (known as the St Lawrence Nine). Two other women Catholic theologians, Christine Mayr-Lumetzberger of Austria, and Gisela Forster of Germany, now bishops, came to the St Lawrence River to ordain these women. Other ordinations have followed, and now, as WOW (Women's Ordination Worldwide) attests, there are increasing numbers of women being ordained and practising ministry especially in the United States...

Fr Tony Flannery's blog reveals something of the extent of this latter development in posts during his tour of America: here  and here. Elizabeth Scalia posted recently on Christine Mayr-Lumetzberger here.

Traditional Catholics

But equally absurd in its distance from being an authentic Catholic position is the following, commenting on Archbishop Nichols pastoral letter after the October 2014 Synod on the Family (my italics added):

.... it makes for incredibly concerning reading in the wake of the Synod. Cardinal Vincent Nichols uses some striking language that prompt more questions over the 'mind' of Pope Francis and the safety, in his hands, of the Deposit of Faith.

 Or this, from the same source:

To Muslims, Jews, Evangelicals and other religions, Pope Francis has only good things and words of encouragement to say (though actual pagans could be offended by recent remarks).

Yet, I am beginning to wonder whether he believes in and prays to the same God as Cardinal Burke and many others. Where is the "fraternity" and "brotherhood" for those who uphold the Magisterium and defend Church teaching from pagans and the 'enemies of the Cross of Christ'? They don't seem to be terribly welcome in Rome.

Sitting in the background to these more explicit comments is an array of more discretely expressed antipathy towards the papacy of Pope Francis, which appears very rational and mature, until recognised as an incessant carping that undermines the office of the Successor of St Peter. Some blogs have a greater discretion than others - compare Fr Ray to Eponymous Flower, for example - but nevertheless maintain the same line of thought. Hans Urs von Balthasar wrote many years ago of an "anti-Roman attitude" or "anti-Petrine attitude" on the part of some Catholics. It is difficult to read the Traditionalist blogs today without being reminded of such an attitude.

 

Elizabeth Scalia has written tellingly of how both the Traditionalist and Reform-minded in the Church are creating idols of Cardinal Burke on the one hand, and of Pope Francis on the other.

It takes conceit to imagine that the Holy Spirit is not to be trusted, does not know what it is about, and needs the instruction and exhortation of liberal writers to sustain a direction — or of traditionalist bloggers to “turn the course” — of an event like the recent synod.

Yes, one might want to support the position of Cardinals Burke, Pell et al with regard to the controversies of the recent Synod (or, if one is so minded, the proposals of Cardinal Kasper), and to do so with the energy that questions of faith will prompt. But when the former are given adulation at the expense of the Office of Peter and the latter excoriated as encouraging the Church to accept mortal sin; or Pope Francis is adored for incorrect assumptions of radical change to come; then we are in the realm of idols in Elizabeth Scalia's sense of the term.

A conclusion: the Church we are in

To return to the reflection based on Abbot Vonier's notion that the Church should not be seen as divided into an "ideal" and a "real", but exists as a single entity whose beauty and holiness shine out to the world. If we look around us during the papacy of Pope Francis, we see the Church that we are in, and some of it - perhaps more on the reform-minded side than on the Traditionalist side - appears pretty far off the wall. But if we take Abbot Vonier's insight seriously, there is an abiding beauty and splendour that is there in all of it. And we need to trust that it is there and that it does still shine out.

The touchstone of that shining out is, as it has ever been, the office of the Successor of Peter. Nothing is to be gained by excoriating - or mis-representing -  its holder.

The Extraordinary Synod as witness to the Family

Hans Urs von Balthasar frames his book The Moment of Christian Witness (original German title Cordula oder der Ernstfall) with two striking motifs. A key principle underlying the book is that the Christian life experience contains that decisive moment of Christian witness, manifested in the literal blood-martyrdom of those killed for their belief in Christ, or manifested in decisive openness to the possibility of such a witness by those who are not called to its literal fulfilment. In the Preface to his book, von Balthasar contrasts the response of the faithful Christian in the figure of Georges Bernanos with that of the Christian whose liberal thinking has robbed him of any real Christian commitment:

If you say to Georges Bernanos, "Come along with me. It's the Ernstfall - the crucial moment in Christian experience", the old grumbler will get up out of his armchair without so much as raising an eyebrow and follow you like a lamb. But if you go to Reinhold Schneider, the author of Winter in Vienna, and say the same thing to him, there is no telling what might happen. Whether you would finally manage to get any response at all from those who have been "demythologised" and converted to the world, I do not know. They have already explained everything away and are left with a merely symbolic belief in a message that they understand only by analogy. For them, both the belief and the message are worth dying for only by analogy, just as they consider Christianity worth living for only by analogy to something else.

The motif that closes the book is that of Cordula, whose name features in the German title of the book:

When the Huns caught sight of the young girls they fell upon them with savage howls, like wolves among sheep, working havoc among them and destroying them all.

But there was one girl, called Cordula, who out of fear hid herself the whole night long in a ship. The following morning, however, she offered herself up to the fury of the Huns, and thus received the crown of martyrdom. Afterward, her feast day was not celebrated because she had not suffered together with the others. A long time afterward, therefore, she appeared in a vision to a woman hermit and asked for her death to be commemorated on the day after the feast of the eleven thousand virgins. 

The Legend of the Eleven Thousand Virgins

[The historical accuracy of this legend of eleven thousand virgins martyred in Cologne in the fourth century is pretty much rejected. See St. Ursula and the Eleven Thousand Virgins at New Advent.]

It is difficult to read Simon Caldwell's report Iraqi Christian: ‘ISIS terrorist held a sword to my throat but I refused to convert’ without being reminded of the story of Cordula, and without also asking ourselves whether, in the comfort of our developed nations, we would get out of our armchairs like Georges Bernanos if we faced a similar call to witness to Christian belief.

Does not, in a very different way, the Extraordinary Synod (and the Ordinary Synod that will follow) represent a "decisive moment" that calls the Church to witness to the beauty of God's plan for family life even to the point of derision and marginalisation? Witness in this sense relates to the teaching of the Bishops gathered in Synod; but it also relates to the living out of that teaching by Christian families in their own individual life situations. The witness may be imperfect - but at the "decisive moment", will we get out of our armchairs like Bernanos or hesitate like Schneider?  

Appreciating Paul VI: Part Two

Speaking at the conclusion of the third session of the Second Vatican Council on 21 November 1964, Pope Paul proclaimed that the Virgin Mary was to be honoured throughout the Catholic world by the title of "Mother of the Church" (Italian text here, cf nn.27-32). For those of us who have no ecclesial experience other than that in which the role of the Virgin Mary is seen in its orientation towards the life of the Church, this declaration now seems unexceptional. We should perhaps appreciate it rather more as a profound gift to the Church of our times.

The "back story" to Pope Paul's action is somewhat involved. The schema that eventually became Chapter 8 of Lumen Gentium did originally include the title "Mother of the Church" in its title. It was removed by the Theological Commission of the Council (cf O'Malley's What happened at Vatican II p.246 and Wiltgen's The Rhine flows into the Tiber p.240). Debate on the Council floor included interventions in favour of the title and interventions against its adoption. Pope Paul's own feeling in favour of the title had been expressed at the closing of the previous, second session of the Council (Italian text here, cf n.21), when he had explicitly expressed the hope that the Virgin Mary could be given the title in view of the consideration of the nature of the Church that was so much a part of the work of the Council. His affection for the title was articulated again in the Apostolic Exhortation Signum Magnum in 1967, an Apostolic Exhortation which develops the meaning of the title in some detail.

Much of the discussion at the Council surrounding the title and the schema on the Virgin Mary appears to have been in terms of the potentially adverse ecumenical implications of the adoption of any new titles, but hindsight suggests that this was to rather miss the point. Indeed, the title "Mother of the Church" seems to have had precedent in the life of the Church both recent and more distant - Paul Haffner's treatment in The Mystery of Mary, for example, cites Irenaeus, Ambrose, Augustine, Anselm and Rupert of Deutz using terms that implicitly, through recognising the Virgin Mary as mother of the grace, mother of us all, and the like, indirectly recognise her as Mother of the Church. Papal precedent is also cited from Pope Benedict XIV, John the XXIII and now Paul VI. And there is the lovely, short passage in Cardinal Journet's Theology of the Church, published in French in 1958, within five years of the opening of the Second Vatican Council, a passage whose spirit can very much be seen in the work of Hans Urs von Balthasar/Adrienne von Speyr and others:

... Mary is, in the Church, more a Mother than the Church, more a Bride than the Church, more a Virgin than the Church. We mean that she is Mother, Bride, Virgin prior to the Church and for the Church; that it is in her, above all, and by her that the Church is Mother, Bride and Virgin. It is by a mysterious excellence that is diffused from Mary that the Church can truly be, in her turn, Mother, Bride and Virgin. In the order of the grandeurs of sanctity, which are the supreme grandeurs, Mary is, around Christ, the first wave, as it were, of the Church, the genetrix of all others, until the end of time.

How can we characterise Pope Paul's action in proclaiming the title of Mary as "Mother of the Church"? One can perhaps see in Pope Paul's affection for the title "Mother of the Church" a particularly vivid experience of this ecclesial heritage, and a wish to proclaim it anew to the Church of his own times. I wonder, though I have no way of knowing just how far it is true, if there is not at least a hint of an immediate intervention of the Holy Spirit that guided Pope Paul's action. (Perhaps that is a question that might be explored by those who might write an academic study Pope Paul's life and ministry in the light of the forthcoming beatification.).

Some see Pope Paul's action as being a deliberate one in which he asserted his own, proper, apostolic authority, vis-à-vis the Council, by insisting on a title that the Council itself had chosen, by whatever course of events, not to take up. However, a footnote in O'Malley's What happened at Vatican II suggests another insight. The footnote is about the events leading up to this action by Pope Paul and reads in part:

For a lengthy analysis, see Rene Laurentin, "La proclamation de Marie 'Mater Ecclesiae' par Paul VI: Extra concilium mais in concilio (21 novembre 1964)"

"Outside the Council" but "in council" loses something of the nuance of the original phrasing. But Laurentin is surely right to suggest that, though it was an action taken outside the immediate work of the Council, it nevertheless retains a very strong relation to the Council.
 

Proclaiming the Resurrection; Appealing for Peace

The repeated message of the homilies during my participation in the celebration of the Triduum and Easter Sunday was that, if the Mysteries being celebrated meant anything to us, we would go out of that Church onto the streets outside and proclaim that Christ is risen. These homilies represented a clear call to each of us to undertake an act of "primary proclamation" by speaking explicitly of Christ to others.

The Easter flowers in my front window are a somewhat feeble effort at this. I should point out that double decked buses pass in the street outside roughly every five minutes and my flowers will be on ready view to any on the top deck.

On Sunday morning, in a St Peter's Square transformed into an Easter Garden by the flowers donated from the Netherlands, the Successor of Peter took part in the "Resurexit" rite, re-enacting the first appearance of the risen Lord to the first St Peter. It occurs between about 12 minutes and 15 minutes of the video on the Vatican Youtube Channel: Easter Mass. It is particularly moving as the Deacon sings that "He has truly risen and has appeared to Simon".

Pope Francis chose not to preach during Mass. Instead he opened his Urbi et Orbi address - at the beginning of which he explicitly greeted both the people of the city of Rome and the whole world - with an insistent proclamation of the Resurrection of Christ. Watch the first four or five minutes here: Urbi et Orbi.

What a joy it is for me to announce this message: Christ is risen! I would like it to go out to every house and every family, especially where the suffering is greatest, in hospitals, in prisons …

Most of all, I would like it to enter every heart, for it is there that God wants to sow this Good News: Jesus is risen, there is hope for you, you are no longer in the power of sin, of evil! Love has triumphed, mercy has been victorious!

We too, like the women who were Jesus’ disciples, who went to the tomb and found it empty, may wonder what this event means (cf. Lk 24:4). What does it mean that Jesus is risen? It means that the love of God is stronger than evil and death itself; it means that the love of God can transform our lives and let those desert places in our hearts bloom.

It is the reference to hell in the next paragraphs that particularly fascinates me, echoing for me at least the experience of Adrienne von Speyr and the writing of Hans Urs von Balthasar:

This same love for which the Son of God became man and followed the way of humility and self-giving to the very end, down to hell - to the abyss of separation from God - this same merciful love has flooded with light the dead body of Jesus and transfigured it, has made it pass into eternal life. Jesus did not return to his former life, to earthly life, but entered into the glorious life of God and he entered there with our humanity, opening us to a future of hope.

This is what Easter is: it is the exodus, the passage of human beings from slavery to sin and evil to the freedom of love and goodness. Because God is life, life alone, and his glory is the living man (cf. Irenaeus, Adversus Haereses, 4,20,5-7).

Some have wanted to say that Pope Francis has simplified the celebration of the Papal liturgy, in contrast to his predecessor, who instead wanted to aggrandise it. Such a perception seems to me unfair to both Francis and Benedict XVI. Pope Francis Easter Sunday Mass is full of splendour - the flowers, the music, the "Resurrexit" rite. Pope Francis has retained the "Benedictine arrangement" of candles and crucifix on the altar, whose prime intention is to express the orientation of the celebration towards the Father through the Son, though with the adjustment of moving the candles more to the side. My own assessment is that, more than anything else, Pope Francis has been anxious to remove from the Papal liturgy those moments that might in some way manifest a privileging of some persons over others (though, of course, a priest or deacon has a certain privilege that derives from their office rather than from their particular person). This would explain his not distributing Holy Communion himself, his opening of his daily Mass to (not-quite) all comers rather than to invitees, his wish to wash the feet of young detainees, a certain simplicity in the choice of vestments.

For the full report of Pope Francis' Urbi et Orbi address see here: Urbi et Orbi Message, Easter 2013. The appeal for peace in the world, that was more widely reported in the main stream media than the proclamation of the Resurrection, follows on from the passages quoted above.