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Part Two: The sacraments of faith
15 The second part of the Catechism explains how God’s salvation, accomplished once for all through Christ Jesus and the Holy Spirit, is made present in the sacred actions of the Church’s liturgy (Section One), especially in the seven sacraments (Section Two). Paragraph 15 is relatively brief but it embodies two distinct meanings of the word “sacrament.” I got my ladder and climbed up to my old volume of The Encyclopedia of Theology: the Concise Sacramentum Mundi (1975) edited by the great Karl Rahner himself. The SM is a theological dictionary of major themes, and I thought there might be helpful information here within its 1800 pages. If nothing else, I get a lot of dusting done while retrieving old sources. The opening section of this treatment of the term “sacrament” in SM begins with the observation that there is a generic sense of the word, which the Catechism captures in its use of the term “sacred actions.” As early as New Testament times, Biblical authors understood the essential principle that individual acts (Baptism and Eucharist in that time) shared in common a unique purpose as extensions of God’s salvation. The SM is quick to point out that at its root the word sacrament is somehow synonymous with the Church itself, that the Church exists as the saving vehicle of God’s expressed wish to “draw all men to myself.” The historical progression has been to identify the specific moments of how this happens, so that by the high middle ages the word sacrament became wedded to the (by then) seven events through which this happens. Interestingly, the authoritative writers of the Church over history felt no reservation about asserting that the Old Testament had its own sacraments, valid in its time and place. Catholic sacraments are distinguished by the fact that modern day church sacraments were instituted by Christ, by direct command, imitation or inference. Mainstream Catholic theology has always argued that sacraments are visible or “outward” signs that effect an invisible result. In addition, the Church has maintained throughout history that sacraments do not depend upon the holiness of the minister, but upon the proper execution of the rite, a major point of disagreement between Catholics and classical Protestant thinking. Para. 15 seems to indicate that the Catechism will attempt to put forward the nature of the sacramental life of the Church as a whole, and then address the individual seven events and their places in the salvific process. The SM, though, notes that any discussion of individual sacraments must be preceded by studies in a variety of other disciplines—history of the development of sacramental teaching, [Christian] anthropology, grace, Christology, eschatology and especially ecclesiology, or the nature of the Church itself. The reason for this is that too much practical focus upon individual sacraments glosses over the one overarching sacramental reality, that of the image and understanding of the Church itself as the primary sacrament or witness of God’s actions. The Church’s self-image and self-understanding is a very long story in itself. Suffice to say that for much of the past 1500 years the Church has seen itself as the Kingdom of God on earth, and under this banner has exercised or attempted to exercise considerable authority in both the spiritual and temporal reign. Probably the most audacious example is the late medieval Pope Boniface VIII (d. 1303) who issued an astounding claim in his encyclical Unam Sanctam that “we declare, we proclaim, we define that it is absolutely necessary for salvation that every human creature be subject to the Roman Pontiff.” Needless to say, this claim won him not only a place in Dante’s Inferno but more seriously in a king’s prison. The concept of a Church with temporal as well as spiritual powers probably did not really die until Pius XI effected a concordat with Mussolini in 1929; Vatican City is the last vestige of the medieval dream of ultimate spiritual and temporal power. This still left the question of the identity of the spiritual role of the Church in the world. By the twentieth century if not earlier even Catholic theologians were growing more consciously uncomfortable about a total identity of the Church as the Kingdom of God as the term was used by St. Mark and others in the New Testament. Obviously, the claim of identity was offensive not just to Protestants but to Orthodox believers who share legitimate sacramental life despite final obedience to the Patriarch of Constantinople. But if the Church was identifying itself as the sacrament of God’s life, there would need be greater onus for reform and humility. This is one of the theological reasons for the convocation of Vatican II. (This is not quite the same theological question as whether one can be saved outside the Church, which we will address later in the series.) So, in studying sacraments, one begins with the Church itself as the living primary sacrament: its holiness, fidelity to Sacred Scripture, its continuation of the work and intent of Christ. A basic principle of difference between Catholic and classical Protestant thinking is that the Roman Catholic Church continues to hold that the true Church is visible. Other strains of Christian thought hold for a purer, invisible Church, but over the years my personal belief is stronger in the Roman Catholic concept, although it places the Church under greater pressure to perform well. Christ himself, after all, as a living being was sacramental: the symbols and actions of his life were and are effective and saving. It makes sense to me that his Church, whatever its form, would be real, sacramental, and effective. Of course I would be the first to admit that very often the Catholic Church does not look or act as the Body of Christ. In 1959 John XXIII recognized this, too, which is one of his primary reasons for invoking a reform Council. I might add here another maxim of the science of ecclesiology: every local Catholic Church, diocese or parish, contains what it necessary for full salvation. Thus, each diocese, and more to the point, each parish is in its particular way a sacrament of Christ unto itself. I happened to catch an article the other day written by a woman who had moved to Philadelphia from Louisville. (If you care to read this article, don’t miss Garrison Keillor’s wonderfully humorous but very accurate discussion of the sacramentality of Episcopal parishes, in the blog section.) While I disagreed with some of her points about parishes—too utopian for me—there is the ongoing truth that when the rubber meets the road, the principle of sacramentality is best experienced (or least) by the signs of Christ present in a person’s parish—from the Consecration to the coffee and donuts.
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Part One: The profession of faith
14 Those who belong to Christ through faith and Baptism must confess their baptismal faith before men.16 First therefore the Catechism expounds revelation, by which God addresses and gives himself to man, and the faith by which man responds to God (Section One). The profession of faith summarizes the gifts that God gives man: as the Author of all that is good; as Redeemer; and as Sanctifier. It develops these in the three chapters on our baptismal faith in the one God: the almighty Father, the Creator; his Son Jesus Christ, our Lord and Savior; and the Holy Spirit, the Sanctifier, in the Holy Church (Section Two). Paragraph 14 introduces a wider view of the internal organization of the Catechism, introducing “the Profession of Faith” segment as the logical or foundational basis for all that would follow. The other three parts are titled “The Sacraments of Faith;” “The Life of Faith;” and “Prayer in the Life of Faith.” The first section described in para. 14 will embrace the three portions of the Nicene Creed proclaimed at Mass, faith in the Father, Son, and Holy Spirit and their respective roles in the unfolding of creation and redemption. The Church, mentioned at some length in the Creed, will have its own section following, given that the Church is animated by the Holy Spirit. This paragraph begins with the strong assertion that those who belong to Christ by faith and Baptism have an obligation to profess faith in Him before mankind. The two sources of para. 14 are Matthew 10:32 and Romans 10:9, but each has a slightly different nuance: Matthew states that only those who have proclaimed faith in Jesus before men will have the privilege of Jesus acknowledging the individual before the Father. Matthew’s terminology may reflect the times in which he wrote, when Jewish converts to Christianity were abandoning the new faith in the face of Roman persecution. Paul’s citation from Romans is more a statement of promise: those who are professing Jesus with their lips will participate in everlasting life. Read together, both citations make the point that faith is of its nature evangelical, a gift for the marketplace, so to speak. The message here is that one must know the faith in order to share it. In sentence two the process of learning this saving faith begins development, stating that the Catechism “expounds revelation.” The use of this word “expound” is a technical stretch. While it may be true that the Catechism will put forward the critical issues of Scripture and Tradition, it is not true that the Catechism is the sole source of this material or that it is the primary organ by which Revelation and Church teaching is developed. In earlier paragraphs we saw the mission of the Catechism described in an ancillary sort of way—a guide to teaching, preaching, and even text book publishers. The Catechism does not supersede the sacred texts nor the people commissioned to actually preach and teach, including catechists. I have read enough Catholic blogs in recent years to make me think that there are many in the Catholic Church who view the Catechism as a sort of final day compendium of all preaching, teaching, and scholarship. One need only return to the Roman Catechism of the Council of Trent to be reminded that official Catechisms serve a pastoral need at a particular time in the Church’s history. Our present day Catechism was in part an effort to consolidate and solidify the explosion of teaching methods and theological development immediately after Vatican II. The second sentence passes over the mystery of God’s impulse to create, a matter of great interest to theologians even in high medieval times, and proceeds immediately to God addressing himself and giving himself to man. Another issue left uncovered is the matter of creation itself, and even more critically, the fact that man is composed in such a way as to be able to hear Revelation and to act upon it. In fact, in para. 1 this fact of a “totally other God” creating and conversing with man is highlighted as probably the building block doctrine of the entire Christian venture. My own opinion is that the Catechism is deficient in its failure to integrate post-Enlightenment theological thinking into this compendium aside from Vatican II documents it could not possibly ignore. I suspect that if the Catechism was a product of the reign of Benedict XVI, who as Joseph Ratzinger made significant theological contribution to the conciliar debates of Vatican II, there would have been more attention to the catechetical needs of thoughtful and learned Catholics in today’s significant dialogues with secular society. Para. 14 goes on to distinguish what we would recognize today as the three works of God: the creator, the redeemer, the sanctifier. Again, there is a silence regarding one of the most pressing issues in Christian thought, the problem of evil. Describing God as the author or creator of “all that is good,” the text never suggests that one of the truly significant (and ecumenical, for that matter) questions of our time is the Holocaust, regrettably followed by wars, human trafficking, genocide, and a host of other evils that create unspeakable suffering. It will not do to blame all such evils on outside forces such as the devil; the writer of the second creation account goes out of his way to comment on the garden scene with Eve that “the serpent was the most cunning of all the creatures God had made.” It is sad, for one of the compelling reasons individuals seek out catechetics and religious formation is answers to the question of “why God lets bad things happen.” Para. 14 underscores one of the shortcomings of the Catechism itself: a tendency to retrench to previous answers and schemas of religious thought that were already under siege when composed; the Roman Catechism of the sixteenth century was battling Protestant reform theologians, for example. The catechists of today will need to spend as much time translating the Catechism as teaching it. 13 The plan of this catechism is inspired by the great tradition of catechisms which build catechesis on four pillars: the baptismal profession of faith (the Creed), the sacraments of faith, the life of faith (the Commandments), and the prayer of the believer (the Lord’s Prayer).
Paragraph 13 introduces a section on the scheme or breakdown of the material in the Catechism. This format parallels the catechetical process fairly well. The editors cite the “great tradition of catechisms;” which strongly suggests the Roman Catechism for Priests produced shortly after the Council of Trent (1547-1563). I checked the text of that catechism, and indeed the Roman Catechism employs a four-point outline of (1) Creed; (2) Sacraments; (3) Decalogue or Ten Commandments; and (4) the Our Father. The key point to remember, of course, is that in this context terms like “Creed” and “The Decalogue” are umbrellas for vast amounts of material—within the catechisms themselves (my present-day Tabor Press Catechism runs to 803 pages in hard cover—and within the greater Catholic academic and seminary worlds as well. To illustrate the scope of the topics, I am going to try a little experiment. I will take each of the four “pillars” described in para. 13 and break down how a graduate or seminary program would address them by means of individual courses. Remember that there will be significant overlap. Part I: The Creed (would encompass courses in); Foundational Theology Revelation Hebrew Scripture (multiple courses) Christian Anthropology Christology Soteriology (the study of salvation) Pneumatology (study of the Holy Spirit) Eschatology (study of the future or last things, such as heaven, hell, judgment) Ecclesiology (nature and structure of the Church) Church History (multiple courses) Part II: The Sacraments Sacraments: an Overview Christian Initiation Eucharistic Celebration Penance Anointing and Pastoral Care of the Sick Sacraments of Christian Vocation: (1) Marriage (2) Priesthood Part III: The Decalogue or Ten Commandments Foundations of Moral Decision Making Christian Sexuality Social Justice Formation of the Virtuous Life Part IV: The Our Father An overview of Christian Mysticism Spirituality Writings of the Church Fathers The Christian Life of Prayer Formation of the Virtuous Life Click here and scroll down to the class offerings of St. Vincent’s Seminary in Boynton Beach, Florida, to see how its curriculum corresponds to the above outline. Seminarians include the study of Spanish and several pastoral field experiences during their formation. I would say that on paper the curriculum of courses appears more challenging than the one I faced in 1971. Some important points demand attention here. While para. 13 singles out the four pillars, the Catechism does not use these titles in its own master outline, using instead (1) The Profession of Faith; (2) The Celebration of the Christian Mystery; (3) Life in Christ; and (4) Christian Prayer. Had there been more input from contemporary Catholic scholars at the time of the planning, points three and four might have been consolidated, the moral life with the spiritual, given that the avoidance of sin and the development of prayer and virtuous acts are in fact one process. Second, the scope and size of the Catechism gives the catechist—and all of us in the Bark of Peter—a faint idea of the richness of our Catholic heritage. One of my great frustrations is that those presently involved in Catholic formation have little idea of this, nor do they trust the sources and narrative of Catholic theology to inspire and create interest in their students. In fairness this problem has been around for a long time, and there are probably countess Catholic business executives today who never had the benefit in their teen and college years of hearing Pope Leo XIII’s teachings on private property and the rights of workers enumerated in Rerum Novarum (1891). Third, one thing you quickly learn in college is that despite the best efforts of your professors, the formal courses one takes in school, and this is true in every discipline—are the tip of the iceberg in any field of Christian study. It is no secret that our Protestant brethren have understood this for many years, that collective and individual study is part and parcel of growth in the faith for every baptized adult. Catholicism has never quite grasped this, preferring instead to “tank up the kids” and hope they are gassed enough to make it to the finish line. Catechetics must always be taught provisionally, in the sense that we are providing roadmaps and blueprints for further exploration of Christian truth, and in fact traveling with our people on that quest. Fourth, there are a number of areas in the Christian heritage that as a rule are either poorly taught or not addressed at all. An immediate subject which comes to mind is “Christian Anthropology.” It is the entire issue of human identity and the process whereby a God who is “totally other” communicates with us finite beings. What is it about us that makes us capable to even conceive of an inconceivable God? Coupled with that is the irresistibility of grace or God’s favor: why do some people open their minds and hearts to some aspects of Revelation while others do not? Is there such a thing as predestination? Can a man damn himself, so to speak? What constitutes human freedom in a baptismal context? Gaining some grasp of these questions has significant implications in developing our own dignity and worth, and enlightens our attitudes about social justice and abortion, among many other things. Finally, it bears repeating that the final section of the Catechism is devoted to the formation of a virtuous life sustained and nourished by the life of prayer. It is true that the text of the Our Father is employed, but as in the discussion of the Decalogue, the texts are jumping off points for more detailed discussions of the spirituality of the human being. |
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