Wednesday Liturgy: Table Wine for Mass

ROME, JAN. 27, 2009 (Zenit.org).- Answered by Legionary of Christ Father Edward McNamara, professor of liturgy at the Regina Apostolorum university.


Q: Could you please comment on the permissibility of using commercially available table wine for Mass? When the label clearly indicates "100% grape," this would seem to satisfy the requirements for validity. I ask the question because "altar wine" sells at a premium over table wine, and is generally not available without having to pay additional shipping charges. Having this option might appeal to pastors of poorer parishes who are looking for ways to trim parish expenses, and yet who are expected by the diocesan ordinary to offer the chalice to the laity at all Masses. -- A.L., Gallitzin, Pennsylvania

A: The principles involved in the determination of proper matter are relatively simple. The most recent official declaration on this point stems from the instruction "Redemptionis Sacramentum," No. 50, which basically sums up earlier laws and the Code of Canon Law, No. 924:

"The wine that is used in the most sacred celebration of the Eucharistic Sacrifice must be natural, from the fruit of the grape, pure and incorrupt, not mixed with other substances. During the celebration itself, a small quantity of water is to be mixed with it. Great care should be taken so that the wine intended for the celebration of the Eucharist is well conserved and has not soured. It is altogether forbidden to use wine of doubtful authenticity or provenance, for the Church requires certainty regarding the conditions necessary for the validity of the sacraments. Nor are other drinks of any kind to be admitted for any reason, as they do not constitute valid matter."

Almost a century earlier the Catholic Encyclopedia gave basically the same doctrine but added more details, all of which are still relevant.

"Wine is one of the two elements absolutely necessary for the sacrifice of the Eucharist. For valid and licit consecration vinum de vite, i.e. the pure juice of the grape naturally and properly fermented, is to be used. Wine made out of raisins, provided that from its colour and taste it may be judged to be pure, may be used (Collect. S. C. de Prop. Fide, n. 705). It may be white or red, weak or strong, sweet or dry. Since the validity of the Holy Sacrifice, and the lawfulness of its celebration, require absolutely genuine wine, it becomes the serious obligation of the celebrant to procure only pure wines. And since wines are frequently so adulterated as to escape minute chemical analysis, it may be taken for granted that the safest way of procuring pure wine is to buy it not at second hand, but directly from a manufacturer who understands and conscientiously respects the great responsibility involved in the celebration of the Holy Sacrifice. If the wine is changed into vinegar, or is become putrid or corrupted, if it was pressed from grapes that were not fully ripe, or if it is mixed with such a quantity of water that it can hardly be called wine, its use is forbidden (Missale Rom., De Defectibus, tit. iv, 1). If the wine begins to turn into vinegar, or to become putrid, or if the unfermented juice is pressed from the grape, it would be a grievous offence to use it, but it is considered valid matter (ibid., 2). To conserve weak and feeble wines, and in order to keep them from souring or spoiling during transportation, a small quantity of spirits of wine (grape brandy or alcohol) may be added, provided the following conditions are observed (1) The added spirit (alcohol) must have been distilled from the grape (ex genimime vitis); (2) the quantity of alcohol added, together with that which the wine contained naturally after fermentation, must not exceed eighteen per cent of the whole; (3) the addition must be made during the process of fermentation (S. Romana et Univ. Inquis., 5 August, 1896)."

Note that none of these documents speak about the obligation to use any officially denominated "Altar Wine" and indeed there is nothing special about official altar wine except that it is guaranteed to be nothing special.

If one could be equally certain that a cheaper table wine is 100% grape with no additions of other substances or of non-grape alcohol, then it would also be valid matter. To be certain, and before using it, one should inquire from the manufacturer regarding the process involved in making the wine so as to exclude any doubt whatsoever.

While any priest could make such an inquiry, it would be more prudent that it be done through the local ordinary who could then inform his clergy that, as well as official altar wines, such and such a brand of common table wine may also be considered as valid matter for the Eucharist.

Wednesday Liturgy: Follow-up: Concelebrating at Additional Masses

ROME, JAN. 27, 2009 (Zenit.org).- Answered by Legionary of Christ Father Edward McNamara, professor of liturgy at the Regina Apostolorum university.


Pursuant to our comments on concelebrated Masses (see Jan. 13), a priest from Honduras wrote the following: "Quid agerem? I have a large parish in Honduras and I celebrate three parish Masses on Sunday, and should I have to go to one in an aldea [village], four. On weekdays, I celebrate one Mass, and at times I have a funeral, and also have to visit an aldea,' and hence would celebrate three Masses. Am I in violation? On one day, I have to go to the cathedral to concelebrate the bishop's ordination anniversary, plus the morning Mass in the parish, plus the patron feast of an aldea which celebrates Cristo de Esquipulas, with baptisms and first Communions. I fear that should someone die, I would have to celebrate the funeral Mass, too. Here in Honduras, only the wealthy can afford embalming, and hence the rank and file have to be buried within 24 hours. Some advice, please, so that my soul is not in jeopardy!"

Our correspondent is evidently a hardworking zealous priest who is at the same time striving to celebrate the liturgy according to Church norms.

This is an important quality, as not all priests clearly perceive that we are administrators and not the owners of the sacred gifts received at ordination. In other words, we may not dispose of them according to our will, or according to our criteria of what is "pastorally suitable," but must perform our service according to the mind of the Church.

In limiting the number of Masses that a priest may celebrate, the Church does not desire to limit the possibility of grace. Rather, it widens its consideration beyond immediate pastoral concerns to take into account deeper values such as the sacred nature of the Mass itself -- which could easily be obscured by an exhausted priest going through the motions for the sixth time in one day.

In this sense the Church's restrictions are themselves pastoral, as she cares for the spiritual and physical well-being of the shepherd himself as well as safeguarding the faithful's right to a reverent celebration of the sacred mysteries.

What should be done by our correspondent? First of all, he should consult the bishop regarding the specific canonical norms applicable in the diocese. Not a few countries and dioceses with grave pastoral situations such as those described have been granted permission to go beyond the canonical restrictions and allow for the celebration of four Masses on Sunday and three daily.

Second, although the Mass is the high point of Catholic worship, the Church has liturgical possibilities other than the Mass. I have many priest friends from Latin American dioceses and am aware of the great pastoral needs. (For example, I have a Brazilian friend with a parish of 90,000 souls and another in Mexico with 25 small towns under his care.) These priests try to rotate as best they can the number of Masses allowed them and then use the other possibilities such as the Celebration of the Word with Holy Communion.

In the case of funerals, which by their very nature cannot be programmed, the Church has the possibility of a funeral liturgy without Mass. Thus, if one has already celebrated all possible Masses and a funeral turns up, one can celebrate the funeral and burial rites while offering to celebrate a Mass for the family at the nearest possible date.

God does not depend on our schedules to distribute his mercy as all time is in his hands. Certainly it is necessary to educate the faithful in this and explain that the priest is also subject to obedience and that the scarcity of clergy precludes the satisfaction of all possible desires.

Article: The Spiritual and Psychological Value of Frequent Confession

FATHER JOHN A. HARDON, S.J.

The more frequently we receive the sacrament of Christ's mercy, the more grace is restored to our soul.

Judging by the drastic drop in confessions in countries like the United States, the false opinion is gaining ground that Confession is not to be received, or made, frequently. No doubt, one reason for this sad state of affairs is the prevalence of some wild theories about mortal sin. For example, the Fundamental Option theory claims that no mortal sin is committed unless a person totally rejects God. Who but the devil hates God? One adultery or one abortion is not a mortal sin. On these grounds, there are parishes in which almost no one goes to Confession.

Our focus in this conference, however, is more specific. We wish to emphasize the value of frequent Confession, where no conscious mortal sins are being confessed. We are speaking of the frequent, and therefore early confessions of children, as soon as they reach the age of reason -- and let's make sure before they receive their First Holy Communion. We are speaking of the frequent confessions of youth, of married people, of those in declining years. We are with emphasis speaking of the frequent confessions of priests and religious, whose progress in sanctity is so closely bound up with their often receiving the sacrament of Penance.

Before going on, let me assure you that I am quite familiar with the present state of affairs in more than one diocese. People tell me it is becoming increasingly difficult to find a priest to hear your confession. You may have to make an appointment by telephone at the priest's convenience. You may have to meet a priest in person in the parlor and identify yourself before you go to Confession. You may have to listen to an unwelcome homily on not abusing the sacrament by having nothing except venial sins to confess, or be told to come back some other time, when you have something worthwhile to say.

Before going any further, I must tell you: choose your confessors carefully and wisely, and pray for those priests who seem unwilling to exercise this precious sacramental ministry as the Savior who ordained them wants it to be exercised, with prudence and kindness and the practice of Christlike mercy.

The Church's Teaching

There is no doubt that the practice of frequent Confession in the absence of mortal sin is a relatively recent development in the Catholic Church. Such development under divine guidance is part of the genius of Catholic Christianity.

Consequently, those who frown on frequent Confession and go back to dusty volumes about the practice of Penance in the early Church are behind the times. They fail to realize that the Church is not a static organization, but the living and therefore developing Mystical Body of Christ. So what is wrong with the Church growing up?

The nine pontiffs of the present century have defended frequent Confession against, you guessed it, critics among the clergy.

Let me quote the words of Pope Pius XII. The quotation is long, but I do not hesitate saying it deserves to be memorized.

By it genuine self-knowledge is increased, Christian humility grows, bad habits are corrected, spiritual neglect and tepidity are resisted, the conscience is purified, the will strengthened, a salutary self-control is attained, and grace is increased in virtue of the sacrament itself.

It is true that venial sins may be expiated in many ways that are to be highly commended, but to ensure more rapid progress day by day in the practice of virtue we want the pious practice of frequent Confession which was introduced into the Church by the inspiration of the Holy Spirit to be earnestly advocated. By it genuine self-knowledge is increased, Christian humility grows, bad habits are corrected, spiritual neglect and tepidity are resisted, the conscience is purified, the will strengthened, a salutary self-control is attained, and grace is increased in virtue of the sacrament itself. Let those, therefore, among the younger clergy who make light of or lessen esteem for frequent Confession know what they are doing. What they are doing is alien to the spirit of Christ and disastrous for the Mystical Body of Christ.

Then came the Second Vatican Council with widespread liturgical changes that are common knowledge. What may not be common knowledge, however, is that since the Council, Pope Paul VI authorized one of the most eloquent pleas in papal history for frequent reception of the sacrament of Penance. While recognizing that the immediate purpose of the sacrament is to remit grave sins, the new ritual emphasizes its salutary function also when mortal sins against God have not been committed. Once again, I quote in full.

Frequent and reverent recourse to this sacrament, even when only venial sin is in question, is of great value. Frequent confession is not mere ritual repetition, nor is it merely a psychological exercise. Rather is it a constant effort to bring to perfection the grace of our Baptism so that as we carry about in our bodies the death of Jesus Christ who died, the life that Jesus Christ lives may be more and more manifested in us. In such confessions penitents, while indeed confessing venial sins, should be mainly concerned with becoming more deeply conformed to Christ, and more submissive to the voice of the Spirit.

Pope John Paul II, in one document and speech after another, repeats the same message. He dares to say that those who discourage going to Confession because it produces a repressive mentality "are lying." He tells the faithful to receive this sacrament as often as possible. Why? Because "by this sacrament, we are renewed in fervor, strengthened in our resolutions, and supported by divine encouragement." How we need to hear these words in an age when discouragement, leading to despair, is almost the hallmark of the modern world.

Spiritual Value of Confession

Suppose we examine, and even number, the spiritual benefits of frequent Confession as identified by the modern popes.

Self-Knowledge is Increased. How blind we are to our own failings and weaknesses. We are hawk-eyed in seeing the faults of others, but stone blind when it comes to our own. There is nothing in the world that we more need to grow in humility than to recognize how stupid and helpless we are in the face of temptation. How desperately we need God's grace to see ourselves as we really are.

Bad Habits are Corrected. Another word for bad habits is "vices." These bad habits are acquired by the repetition of bad actions. We may have the habit of unkind words, or of selfish behavior, which may have taken years to acquire. On the natural level, it would take years to change these bad habits into the opposite virtues. But with the grace of the sacrament of Confession, we can overcome these vices in record time, beyond all human expectation.

Conscience is Purified. We do not commonly speak of purifying the conscience. But we should. What is a pure conscience? A pure conscience is one that sees clearly, we may say instinctively, what should be done in a given situation and how to do it. The opposite of a pure conscience is a dull or insensitive conscience. People will do all kinds of evil, commit every kind of sin, without even realizing that they are doing wrong. The sacrament of Penance purifies our mind to recognize God's will in every circumstance of our lives, instantly and almost without reflection. How? By the action of the Holy Spirit, whose gift of counsel enlightens the mind to know exactly what the Lord wants us to do and how to do it the moment we are faced with a moral decision.

The Will is Strengthened. We could spend not just a whole conference on this subject, but a semester course on the value of what I call "the sacrament of courage." Certainly, we all have a free will. But our natural inclination is to do our own will, to choose what we want and reject what we do not want. The very expression "pro-choice" has become a synonym for the culture of death in our society. Christ told us to love others as He has loved us, even to dying out of love for another person. The world is now telling us in the laws of most nations to murder innocent unborn children out of self-love.

Do we ever need to have our wills strengthened to resist our love of self and submit these wills to the will of God! I do not hesitate to say it is the single most desperate need as we come to the close of the twentieth century. The self has been literally deified. In one Western university after another, the philosophy of Immanuel Kant is the staple diet of the academic curriculum. At the root of Kantian morality is the principle of the autonomy of the will. My will is the basic and final norm of my conduct.

Did we ask whether we need the sacramental grace of Confession to strengthen our wills to submit to the will of God? In our age of self-idolatry, this grace is indispensable, dare I say, for the survival of Christianity.

Salutary Self-Control is Attained. A standard English dictionary contains, by actual count, three hundred eighty terms beginning with the word "self." Among these are such terms as self-absorption, self-admiration, self-advancement, self-applause, self-approbation, self-assertion, self-assurance, to mention only the words with an "a" after the prefix "self."

To its credit, the dictionary defines self-control as "restraint exercised over one's own impulses, emotions, or desires."

But everything depends on what we mean by "restraint." All that we have so far said about the spontaneous tendency we have to satisfy our own desires brings out the importance of the Christian meaning of self-control.

Our faith tells us that we have a fallen human nature. Part of that nature is the loss of the gift of integrity that our first parents possessed before they had sinned. From the moment of our conception in our mother's womb, we already have the spontaneous tendency to desire what is pleasant and to run away from what is painful.

Did we ask whether we need the sacramental grace of Confession to strengthen our wills to submit to the will of God? In our age of self-idolatry, this grace is indispensable, dare I say, for the survival of Christianity.

On these premises, self-control means the mastery of our impulses to conform to the mind and will of the Creator. Not everything we want is pleasing to Him, and not everything we dislike is contrary to His will. Self-control means mastering our thoughts and desires to correspond to the infinite mind and will of God.

That is why the Church, founded by the Incarnate God, is telling us to have frequent access to what Christ has instituted in the sacrament of Confession. We need the light which this sacrament assures us and the strength we so desperately need to surrender our "Selves" to the almighty Self from whom we came and for whom we were made.

We Become More Sinless. By the frequent and reverent reception of the sacrament of Penance, we make more perfect the justification we first received in Baptism. What does this mean? It means we become more and more sinless. Christ thereby exercises His saving redemption on our souls by cleansing us more and more and thus preparing us better and better for that kingdom of glory where nothing undefiled can enter and where only the sinless have a claim to enjoy the vision of the All-holy God. And who in his right mind would claim he or she is already sinless?

We Become More Conformed to Jesus Christ. We become more like Jesus Christ in the power to practice the virtues that characterized His visible life on earth. What virtues are they? We become more humble and better able to conquer our foolish and stubborn pride. And the very humiliation of telling our sins to another sinner is God's way of telling us, "If you confess, I will make you more humble." We become more patient in bearing with pain and enduring the people that God puts into our lives. Sometimes I think pain should have a masculine and feminine gender. Most of our suffering, most of the difficulties and problems and tribulations, that we have to endure on earth, if your lives are like mine, come from other people. And of course, we pay them the favor of being corresponding graces of tribulation in their lives. Through this sacrament we become more conformed to Jesus by becoming more prayerful in greater awareness of God's majesty and, therefore, our need to pay attention to God, and in greater awareness of our weakness and constant need for assistance from the Lord. This is one place where Jesus did not have to pray to overcome His sinful tendencies. Above all we become more loving in giving and giving and giving ourselves according to the divine will even as Jesus kept giving Himself to the will of His Father even to the last drop of His blood.

We Become More Submissive to the Holy Spirit. The Holy Spirit, dwelling in the depths of our hearts, is always speaking to us, but we are not always listening to Him. We are so busy with so many things, so preoccupied with ourselves, our interests and concerns, that He is often not only the unseen but, I am afraid, the unappreciated Guest in our souls. As John the Baptist said of the Savior to his contemporaries, "There is one in our midst whom we know not." And if we are going to be submissive to this Spirit of God, the first condition is that we are aware that there is a Spirit, that He has a voice and that He is talking. You do not listen to silence. And this is divine speech.

The Spirit of God wants nothing more than for us to pay attention to Him. Pay Him the courtesy, if you will, of recognizing that He is within us. The Spirit of God wants us to thank Him for all the good things He has given us. He wants us to keep asking Him. That is why He keeps creating problems. Those are divine signals. Did you know that? They are divine shouts, "Listen to me. Thanks. Thanks for at least looking at me. And except for the pain or sorrow or trial or temptation, knowing you," He tells us, "you would not even bother thinking of me. Thanks! Now that you are awake, listen!" So we rub our eyes and say, "Yes, Lord."

But mainly the Holy Spirit wants us to be submissive to His will whether this be obedience to His commands when He tells us, "Do this," or "Do not do that," or when He gently invites us to do something more than we have to under penalty of sin, when He just whispers, "Would you mind doing this?" or "Would you mind avoiding that? Not because you have to, but because I would like you to show that you love me." All of this, and far more than human speech can describe, is available to us, so the Church of God tells us, by our frequent and reverent reception of the sacrament of Christ's peace.

Psychological Value of Confession

Frequent Confession has not only deep spiritual value as we have just seen. It is also immensely beneficial psychologically. In other words, the frequent reception of the sacrament of Penance contributes to the well-being of our mind. In one declarative sentence, it is a divinely instituted means of giving us peace of soul.

Remember what happened on Easter Sunday night. As described by St. Luke, "The doors were closed in the room where the disciples were, for fear of the Jews. Jesus came and stood among them. He said to them, 'Peace be with you,' and showed them His hands and His side. The disciples were filled with joy when they saw the Lord, and He said to them again, 'Peace be with you. As the Father sent me, so am I sending you.' After saying this, He breathed on them and said, 'Receive the Holy Spirit. For those whose sins you forgive, they are forgiven; for those whose sins you retain, they are retained'" (Jn 20:19-23).

As the Catholic Church teaches, by these words of the risen Savior, He instituted the sacrament of Confession. For twenty centuries, it has been called the sacrament of peace.

The principal source of conflict in the human spirit is the sense of guilt. Psychologists tell us, it is the mysterious feeling of guilt which lies at the root of most people's disquiet of mind and disturbance of will. On both levels, the sacrament of Confession is the Lord's great gift to His followers.

The more frequently we receive the sacrament of Christ's mercy, the more grace is restored to our soul.

Peace of mind is the experience of knowing the truth. We all know that we are sinners. We also know that, as sinners, we have offended God and become estranged from His love in the measure of our sins. How we need the assurance, based on faith, that this offended God is still pleased with us. When Christ tells us that there is greater joy in heaven over one sinner doing penance than over ninety-nine who are just, He is speaking of us who have deserved His rejection. The more often we receive His sacrament of mercy, the more deeply we are at peace.

Peace of heart is the experience of doing the will of God. There is no peace in doing what we want. I know whereof I speak when I say that, doing one's own will is hell on earth. God wants us to enjoy peace of heart. That is why He instituted the sacrament of Confession. The more frequently we confess our failings, no matter how minor they may seem to be, the more deeply peaceful we shall be. Why? Because if there is one thing that God wants us to admit, and keep admitting, it is that we are sinners who trust in His loving mercy.

There is some value in explaining what the Catholic Church understands by guilt. Guilt is the loss of God's grace. The more deeply we have sinned, the more guilt we incur. That is what mortal sin means. It is the supernatural death of the soul by the loss of sanctifying grace.

But all sin incurs guilt. Every sin we commit deprives us of more or less of the grace of God. The subjective experience that is called guilt is only the tip of an iceberg. Beneath the feeling of guilt is the objective fact that we have been deprived, however minimally, of God's friendship.

I like the statement of St. Thomas Aquinas who says, "The act of sin may pass, and yet the guilt remains."

The more frequently we receive the sacrament of Christ's mercy, the more grace is restored to our soul. We can experience the effect by growing in that peace of soul for which there is no substitute this side of heaven, realizing and not only knowing that, in spite of our sins, God loves us with that special love He reserves for repentant sinners.

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ACKNOWLEDGEMENT

Father John A. Hardon. "The Spiritual and Psychological Value of Frequent Confession." (Inter Mirifica, 1998).

Reprinted with permission from Inter Mirifica.

THE AUTHOR

Fr. John A. Hardon, S.J. (1914-2000) was a tireless apostle of the Catholic faith. The author of over twenty-five books including Catholic Prayer Book, The Catholic Catechism, Modern Catholic Dictionary, Pocket Catholic Dictionary, Pocket Catholi Catechism, Q & A Catholic Catechism, Treasury of Catholic Wisdom, Catholic Lifetime Reading Plan and many other Catholic books and hundreds of articles, Father Hardon was a close associate and advisor of Pope Paul VI, Pope John Paul II, and Mother Teresa and the Missionaries of Charity. Order Father Hardon's home study courses here.

Copyright © 1998 Inter Mirifica

Article: Keeping An Open Mind

DONALD DEMARCO

"I have an open mind," of course, has become a cultural cliché. What it really means is, "I am open to any trendy idea that blows in the wind, and am willing to accept it uncritically."

My barber is a good man. From what he tells me, he is a faithful husband, a dutiful father, and a loyal friend. He is amiable, remembers my name, and is consistently pleasant. He is, however, a bit loquacious. But that is fine with me. I view it as part of his charm, and a welcomed one at that since it allows me to pass the time in his operating chair as a captive audience of one.

More specifically, whenever I am patient to his beautifying art, I am invariably entertained by a steady stream of highlights from the world of current events. His most recent tonsorial performance featured some offhand comments about same-sex "marriage." While he confessed that he is not entirely comfortable with men marrying men and women marrying women, he is, nonetheless, willing to go along with it because, as he puts it, "I have an open mind."

I make it a point never to argue with anyone who is operating on my head with sharp instruments and electrical devices. It is much wiser to write at leisure for a friendly audience than to speak hastily to a single person and thereby risk losing a valuable ally. So, I chose to let my own stream of thoughts engage my mind and silence my tongue.

A certain Jayne Mugglestone, 35, and a British health worker has been artificially inseminated with the sperm of a homosexual friend. She and her female partner plan to share their parental duties with the child’s biological father and his boyfriend. This four-cornered arrangement may be unconventional, but should we not have an open mind and accept it? How voracious, we might ask, is the open mind? Is there anything it might be closed to? Is there room in its wide, cavernous, yawning openness for a principle that might allow it to reject something?

"I have an open mind," of course, has become a cultural cliché. What it really means is, "I am open to any trendy idea that blows in the wind, and am willing to accept it uncritically." There is too much emphasis, unfortunately, on the "I" and none whatsoever on that to which one is open. It is hard for me to hear this tiresome phrase without sensing the presence of too much ego and too little objectivity. "Pride," as G. K. Chesterton has reminded us, "Is the falsification of fact by the introduction of self."

An "open door" policy is good. But why have a door at all if it is always going to be open and never closed? Would not a "no door" policy be even better? It is a truism that every door that is made to open is also made to close. Similarly, it is good to keep our eyes open. But the presence of eyelids suggests that there are times when their closing action is not only needed but also necessary.

The human mind has not completed its natural function while it remains in the state of openness. It is only when it closes itself on something true or good or right that it has completed the activity for which it was created.

The completely open-minded investigator would be even more inept that the fabled Crown Prince of ineptitude, Inspector Clouseau. Reason, by nature, is a narrowing activity. Like a good investigator, it begins with a myriad of suspects, but by applying logic to the facts, whittles the list of suspects down to the one person who is guilty. Philosophers have often been compared with sleuths. Their actions are like swords that cut down the many imposters to reveal the unequivocal truth. But what kind of detective is it that proceeds by enlarging the number of suspects? "I have an open mind," he says, "my job is to increase the number of suspects so that in the end, everyone is equally guilty or equally innocent." Such is the portrait not of a philosopher or sleuth, investigator or detective, but of a madman.

The justification for having an open mind is not to keep it open until it devours everything and holds on to nothing. Rather, it is to take the first step toward discovering what is true or what is good or what is right. And then, when confronted with the natural object of the mind, it grasps it, apprehends it, comprehends it, or takes hold of it. Thomas Jefferson’s Declaration of Independence would have been an unremembered piece of useless drivel had the third president of the United States said: "We are open to theories about human equality and the rights of every man to life and liberty, but we are equally open to theories of tyranny, oppression, and slavery. In saying, "We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty, and the pursuit of Happiness," he was echoing the mind of St. Paul who advises us to "Hate what is evil, hold fast to what is good" (Rom 12:9); "Test everything; hold fast to what is good, abstain from every form of evil" (1Tim 5:21); "Hold firm to the sure word as taught, so that he may be able to give instructions in sound doctrine and also to confute those who contradict him" (Tit 1:09).

The human mind has not completed its natural function while it remains in the state of openness. It is only when it closes itself on something true or good or right that it has completed the activity for which it was created. We will never enjoy or share anything of value with anyone unless we first take hold of it. Perhaps I will give my barber a better tip the next time I visit his shop.

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ACKNOWLEDGEMENT

Donald DeMarco. "Keeping An Open Mind." excerpted from Being Virtuous in a Non-Virtuous World. (Coleta, CA: Queenship Pub. Co., 2007): 215-217.

This article is reprinted with permission from Donald DeMarco. Order Being Virtuous in a Non-Virtuous World here.

Picture: Barber Shop, 1988 oil on canvas by Robert Cottingham

THE AUTHOR

Donald DeMarco is adjunct professor at Holy Apostles College & Seminary in Cromwell, Connecticut and Professor Emeritus at St. Jerome's University in Waterloo Ontario. He also continues to work as a corresponding member of the Pontifical Acadmy for Life. Donald DeMarco has written hundreds of articles for various scholarly and popular journals, and is the author of twenty books, including The Heart of Virtue, The Many Faces of Virtue, Virtue's Alphabet: From Amiability to Zeal and Architects Of The Culture Of Death. Donald DeMarco is on the Advisory Board of The Catholic Education Resource Center.

Copyright © 2009 Donald DeMarco

Article: The Realism of the Incarnation, and Our Present Circumstances

GEORGE WEIGEL

The Gospel reading for the vigil Mass of Christmas Eve is the genealogy of Jesus according to Matthew: a terror to priests and deacons with poor Hebrew pronunciation and a bore to most congregants.

Once, it was a string of "begats;" now, it's a catalogue of strange names with which most Catholics are unfamiliar. Why would the Church appoint such an odd Gospel reading on Christmas?

Matthew's point, in his time, was to locate Jesus within one stream of the Jewish messianic expectation: the belief that the Promised One of God would be a descendant of David. Thus there's all that begetting, from Abraham to David, from David to the Exile, and from the Exile to St. Joseph. Jesus, Matthew is telling his readers, is the fulfillment of both the covenant with Abraham and the promises made to David. Which point was, I suspect, clear to the Jewish communities of the first century for whom Matthew wrote; it's not, perhaps, self-evidently important to twenty-first century Christians, most of whom are gentiles.

No, were I to have preached recently on Matthew's genealogy, I'd have pointed out that its most interesting feature is that it isn't air-brushed. At the risk of blasphemy, and to take an example from the contemporary "art" of spin-control, this is a "narrative" that includes Bill Ayers, Tony Rezko, Jeremiah Wright, and Rod Blagojevich, rather than air-brushing them out of the picture. To be sure, Matthew's genealogy has patriarchs, heroes, psalmists, and saintly men and women; but it also includes scoundrels, idolaters, apostates, vicious kings, inept kings, and foreigners. Jesus is "located" amidst the very mixed bag that proceeds from Abraham, our father in faith. Why?

Because Matthew is determined to underscore the realism of the incarnation. The coming of the Son of God is not magic. And it's not sugar-coated. The Son, in the power of the Spirit, will fulfill the Father's covenantal promises despite every obstacle that human weakness and wickedness can throw into the path of the divine fidelity. Moreover, in writing to his Jewish-Christian readers (and to potential converts to Christianity from the tribe of Abraham), Matthew takes pains to highlight Ruth, the Moabite woman whose fidelity to her Jewish mother-in-law becomes one of the instruments by which God's messianic promise to Israel is fulfilled. In doing so, Matthew helps prepare his Jewish-Christian readers for two revolutionary ideas: that the new covenant in Jesus is universal in character, and that the gentiles, the wild branches grated onto the tree of Israel, are full inheritors of the promises to Abraham.

I believe that, after the initial amenities, the conversation has to begin by the Church and its leaders defining some non-negotiables -- and pointing out, politely but directly, the consequences that will follow if, for example, the new administration signs off on a federal override of state laws providing conscience-clause protections for Catholic heath care professionals.

Matthew's brutal honesty about the messy history of the messianic line is more than a matter of authorial honesty; Matthew refuses to engage in spin-control to make an important theological point. That point -- face the facts squarely; God is in charge, and God will ultimately prevail -- speaks as much to us as it did to the first century. Which brings me back to Ayers, Blagojevich, and the rest.

In the weeks after November 4, some Catholics have taken an apocalyptic view of the period ahead, seeing in President-elect Obama a man with whom serious Catholics can do no serious business. Others have taken the precise opposite tack, arguing that the Church has to "stay in play," that Catholics must "find common ground" with the new administration, that "we have to talk with these people," even if that means muting some of the Church's core issues and fudging its sacramental discipline. Neither of these approaches strikes me as satisfactory.

I'm all for talking with everyone. But in this instance, when certain issues at stake are of fundamental moral gravity, and the interlocutors respond primarily to power rather than reason, I believe that, after the initial amenities, the conversation has to begin by the Church and its leaders defining some non-negotiables -- and pointing out, politely but directly, the consequences that will follow if, for example, the new administration signs off on a federal override of state laws providing conscience-clause protections for Catholic heath care professionals.

The realism at the root of Christian faith demands no less. St Matthew would have understood that.

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ACKNOWLEDGEMENT

George Weigel. "The Realism of the Incarnation, and Our Present Circumstances." The Catholic Difference (January 7, 2009).

Reprinted with permission of George Weigel.

George Weigel's column is distributed by the Denver Catholic Register, the official newspaper of the Archdiocese of Denver. Phone: 303-715-3123.

THE AUTHOR

George Weigel, a Senior Fellow of the Ethics and Public Policy Center, is a Roman Catholic theologian and one of America's leading commentators on issues of religion and public life. Weigel is the author or editor of eighteen books, including Faith, Reason, and the War Against Jihadism: A Call to Action, God's Choice: Pope Benedict XVI and the Future of the Catholic Church (2005), The Cube and the Cathedral: Europe, America, and Politics Without God (2005), Letters to a Young Catholic: The Art of Mentoring (2004), The Courage to Be Catholic: Crisis, Reform, and the Future of the Church (2002), and The Truth of Catholicism: Ten Controversies Explored (2001).

George Weigel's major study of the life, thought, and action of Pope John Paul II, Witness to Hope: The Biography of Pope John Paul II (Harper Collins, 1999) was published to international acclaim in 1999, and translated into French, Italian, Spanish, Polish, Portuguese, Slovak, Czech, Slovenian, Russian, and German. The 2001 documentary film based on the book won numerous prizes. George Weigel is a consultant on Vatican affairs for NBC News, and his weekly column, "The Catholic Difference," is syndicated to more than fifty newspapers around the United States.

Copyright © 2009 George Weigel

Wednesday Liturgy: Applause at Homilies

ROME, JAN. 20, 2009 (Zenit.org).- Answered by Legionary of Christ Father Edward McNamara, professor of liturgy at the Regina Apostolorum university.


Q: The parishioners in our church used to be spontaneous in their reactions to excellent homilies that the priests deliver. The parishioners, sometimes, respectfully applaud after the homily, either to communicate that they are in agreement with the priest, or to offer their appreciation. However, when a newly ordained priest came, and this happened after a homily he gave, he gravely scolded the people for the impropriety of their action and reminded them that they are attending a Mass and not a performance. From then on, people's spontaneity is gone; occasionally, applause would be heard, but one can sadly sense the hesitation. Could you enlighten us on the propriety of people applauding after the homily? D.B., Denver, Colorado

A: First of all, it is a very hopeful sign of overall improvement in the quality of homilies that the faithful consider them worthy of applause.

That said, the young priest was correct in stating that, in general, applause is to be discouraged during Mass.

It is not an absolute rule, however; the Pope's homilies usually conclude with applause and are even sometimes interrupted by enthusiastic ovations. In the ancient world, great sermons, such as those of a St. Augustine, were occasionally interspersed with appreciative accolades on the part of the people.

There are also some cultures where applause or hand-clapping is a spontaneous sign of respect and even veneration. For example, some African peoples even clap their hands during the consecration, because this was the traditional gesture observed when their kings were present and it seemed natural to carry it over to greet the presence of the King of kings.

Therefore, while respecting cultural differences and not excluding an occasional spontaneous applause for a particularly inspired and inspiring homily, I would agree that the practice should not be encouraged or regular in Western parish settings.

First of all, the Roman liturgical tradition is usually sober in its external manifestations. This holds true even in those Catholic cultures that are exuberant in the demonstrations of popular piety such as the processions of Latin America, the Iberian Peninsula and southern Italy where applause, cheers and the like are regular features.

After the homily, the liturgy recommends a moment of silence in order to reflect upon and assimilate the message. Applause easily breaks the concentration and makes it harder to gather one's thoughts and bring them to bear on the essential questions of living the Gospel.

When applause is neither common nor expected a priest can prepare the homily with greater freedom, both regarding the doctrine he wishes to transmit and the best means of delivery. In other words, although he should always strive to prepare an excellent homily from the rhetorical point of view, not having to worry about applause makes him less subject to the temptation of striving more to please than to instruct and exhort toward sanctity.

Not being expected to applaud also frees both priests and parishioners from the danger of making subtle and not-so-subtle comparisons among priests. Father X's homily received timed respect; Father Y got a standing ovation, while Father Z's preaching on Christian morals got the silent treatment. I am exaggerating, of course, but the point is that any element that might induce disharmony should be avoided.

The best reaction to a well-thought and delivered homily is a decision to move forward and grow as a Christian. If this is lacking, then all external applause is just so much fluff.

In his book "The Spirit of the Liturgy" the then Cardinal Joseph Ratzinger wrote: "Whenever applause breaks out in the liturgy because of some human achievement, it is a sure sign that the essence of liturgy has totally disappeared and been replaced by a kind of religious entertainment" (Page 198).

The context of the present Pope's remarks was regarding applause after so-called liturgical dancing; it did not directly address our present case of applause as a sign of respect and agreement to the message of the homily. The principle involved, however, of not applauding the merely human achievement of one of the liturgical actors could be a good rule of thumb for deciding when applause is appropriate or not.

Wednesday Liturgy: Follow-up: Shifting or Substituting the Sunday Liturgy

ROME, JAN. 20, 2009 (Zenit.org).- Answered by Legionary of Christ Father Edward McNamara, professor of liturgy at the Regina Apostolorum university.


Related to our column on shifting the Sunday liturgy (see Jan. 6), a priest residing in the United States asked the following:

"I searched the GIRM [General Instruction of the Roman Missal] for some light on the patronal celebration of the feast on a Sunday. In Mumbai, India, we observe the solemnity of the feast of the patron saint on the following Sunday so that the entire parish can take part in the celebration.

"I am at a parish dedicated to St. George, and we are celebrating the diamond jubilee of the parish. I suggested to the pastor to have the celebration of the feast, which falls on April 23, on the following Sunday, April 26. He wants to know how it can be done. Could you throw some light on this?"

Actually, this question is not addressed in the GIRM but in No. 58 of the introduction to the Roman calendar published in 1969.

This document states: "For the pastoral advantage of the people, it is permissible to observe on the Sundays in Ordinary Time those celebrations that fall during the week and have special appeal to the devotion of the faithful, provided the celebrations take precedence over these Sundays in the Table of Liturgical Days. The Mass for such celebrations may be used at all the Masses at which a congregation is present."

Therefore, it is legitimate to transfer the celebration of a parish's patron saint (which has the rank of solemnity in the parish itself) to the following Sunday if this is a Sunday of ordinary time.

In the concrete case mentioned by our reader, however, the Sunday following April 23 always falls in Eastertide or, as will occur in 2011, 2038 and 2095, is Easter Sunday itself. This Sunday, therefore, always has a higher rank in the table of liturgical days than the feast of the patron saint. Thus, in this case it is not possible to transfer the feast to the following Sunday.

It is still possible to organize other activities of popular devotion on this Sunday if this is the only day that people can gather, but the Mass must be that of the corresponding Sunday of Easter.

Another priest raised an intriguing question to the follow-up article on Communion under both species: "Further to the question/answer of Jan. 6, as 'the body, blood, soul and divinity of Christ are present in both the consecrated bread and wine,' is there anything -- apart from the fact that 'it isn't done' -- against administering only the Blood of Christ, and not the Body of Christ? I never see the question raised this way round."

I would say that, strictly speaking, this could be done. It is quite regularly done in case of those who are intolerant to wheat and to those incapable of receiving solid food. I would also suppose that it could be done if, in admittedly highly unusual circumstances, a group of isolated Christians found themselves with little bread and a lot of altar wine.

As far as I know, there is no explicit prohibition against this, probably because nobody ever thought of doing it before. But the law presumes that it is not done and that if Communion is given under one species, this species is ordinarily the species of bread.

There are myriad practical reasons that justify the Church's present custom of not distributing only the species of wine, but I think that the reasons go beyond the practical and the budgetary.

Many Old Testament types of the Eucharist, such as the manna in the desert to which Our Lord himself refers to in Chapter 6 of the Gospel according to John, plus the reference to the Eucharist as the "breaking of the bread" found in the Acts of the Apostles, indicate that there is a clear preference toward the species of bread from the very beginning.

Likewise, the species of wine is not easily conserved, and distributing only the species of wine would have made the development of Eucharistic devotion and adoration almost impossible.

I think we can therefore conclude that the prevalence of distributing the consecrated bread rather than just the consecrated wine is a practice guided by the Holy Spirit for the greater good of the Church.

Article: The Ideal Conscience: Correct and Certain

FATHER KENNETH BAKER, S.J.

Conscience is the supreme subjective norm of morality.

We have already considered "law" as the basic objective norm. Today "conscience" is frequently appealed to as an absolutely autonomous principle in a person -- as something that is not supposed to be challenged or questioned by anyone, including the Church or the state. In order to deal with this situation it is important to know precisely what conscience is and what it is not.

First, what conscience is not. It is not an "inner voice" telling me what is right and what is wrong. It is not an emotional feeling produced by my parents or by toilet training or by my peer group. Finally, it is not a special faculty, distinct from my mind and my will, that tells me what to do and what to avoid.

According to constant Catholic tradition, especially as it was elaborated by St. Thomas Aquinas, "conscience" is a function of the human intellect making moral judgments. To be more specific, when the mind judges, on the basis of general principles (such as "Thou shall not steal"), that a particular action should be done or avoided, here and now, then the practical judgment of the mind is called "conscience". Through reason and revelation the mind is conscious of many general, abstract principles, such as the Ten Commandments or the most general moral principle of all, "Do good and avoid evil." Since man lives in time and space and must make decisions all day long in the here and now, he is constantly applying those general principles to concrete situations. The application of the mind of those general principles to concrete cases is what Catholic moralists mean by "conscience".

Conscience both precedes and follows concrete moral actions. Antecedently, conscience will urge me to do some good action or to avoid some evil action. The judgment of conscience following an action is either approving (when the action is good) or condemning (when the action was bad); the latter is said to be a "bad conscience" and is accompanied with a sense of guilt.

Since conscience involves a judgment, it is said to be correct when the judgment corresponds with the objective norms of morality.; it is said to be erroneous when it is not. Subjectively, a conscience is said to be certain if an individual has no doubts about the morality of what he is doing; it is said to be doubtful if a person is undecided what to do. The ideal conscience, the one that is to be striven for, is a conscience that is both correct and certain.

The ideal conscience, the one that is to be striven for, is a conscience that is both correct and certain.

"Let your conscience be your guide," we say. That is true. The ultimate guide for each person in his moral decisions is his conscience. We must follow the dictates of a certain conscience -- even if it is erroneous. However, we may never act with a doubtful conscience. To do so would be equivalent to affirming that we are willing to do something evil. If we are in doubt, therefore, we must either refrain from acting or resolve the doubt. Doubts can be resolved by reflection, by consulting knowledgeable persons like confessors or teachers, by consulting reliable books. Since each person must follow his or her own conscience, it is crucial that one's conscience must be correctly formed.

What I want to stress here is the importance of the formation of conscience. Conscience does not just happen -- it is formed by parents, peer group, school, church, media. In previous ages the principal agents in the formation of conscience of youth were the family, the Church and the school. That is not the case any more. They are still a factor, but it seems to me that, in this electronic, permissive age, the peer group and the media are more effective in the formation of conscience than are the family and the Church.

Since man is fallible and prone to error, it follows that he can err in the matter of conscience. A person may think that he is justified in perpetrating an act of terrorism, he might even be sincere, but that does not make terror and murder good. Today, due to philosophical currents of subjectivism and relativism, many persons tend to absolutize the individual conscience. They neglect the objective principles of morality and claim that an action is good or bad simply because they think it is good or bad. Some of the results of this mentality are a breakdown in public morality, increased violence in our streets, premarital sex, shoplifting, and so forth.

Let me conclude by saying that as Catholics we should cultivate not only a good moral conscience, but also a Christian conscience -- which is something much more. In addition to reason, we have the added advantage of grace -- personal grace, revelation, the teaching of the Church and the good example of the saints. We should learn to judge all things in the light of salvation offered to us in Jesus Christ. He is the model and examplar, for he is "the way and the truth and the life".

See the index of chapters from Fundamentals of Catholicism
which have been reprinted to CERC here.

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ACKNOWLEDGEMENT

Kenneth Baker, S.J. "The Ideal Conscience: Correct and Certain." In Fundamentals of Catholicism Vol. 1 Part II, Chapter 5 (San Francisco: Ignatius Press, 1983), 132-135.

Reprinted with permission from Father Kenneth Baker, S.J.

THE AUTHOR

Rev. Kenneth Baker, S.J., has served for the past thirty years as editor of the Homiletic & Pastoral Review. He entered the Society of Jesus in 1947. In 1970 he served as president of Seattle University and in 1971 became editor of the Homiletic & Pastoral Review. In 1973 he published his translation of the Philosophical Dictionary and adapted it to American usage. In 1975 he became president of Catholic Views Broadcasts, Inc., which produces a weekly 15-minute radio program that airs on 50 stations across the United States. He has built and run three community television stations. In 1983 he published a three-volume explation of the faith called Fundamentals of Catholicism Vol. 1, Creed and Commandments; Vol. 2, God, Trinity, Creation, Christ, Mary; and Vol. 3, Grace, the Church, the Sacraments, Eschatology.

Copyright © 1995 Fr. Kenneth Baker, S.J.

Article: Like a Virgin: The Press Take On Teenage Sex

WILLIAM MCGURN

The chain reaction was something out of central casting.

A medical journal starts it off by announcing a study comparing teens who take a pledge of virginity until marriage with those who don't. Lo and behold, when they crunch the numbers, they find not much difference between pledgers and nonpledgers: most do not make it to the marriage bed as virgins.

Like a pack of randy 15-year-old boys, the press dives right in.

"Virginity Pledges Don't Stop Teen Sex," screams CBS News. "Virginity pledges don't mean much," adds CNN. "Study questions virginity pledges," says the Chicago Tribune. "Premarital Abstinence Pledges Ineffective, Study Finds," heralds the Washington Post. "Virginity Pledges Fail to Trump Teen Lust in Look at Older Data," reports Bloomberg. And on it goes.

In other words, teens will be teens, and moms or dads who believe that concepts such as restraint or morality have any application today are living in a dream world. Typical was the lead for the CBS News story: "Teenagers who take virginity pledges are no less sexually active than other teens, according to a new study."

Here's the rub: It just isn't true.

In fact, the only way the study's author, Janet Elise Rosenbaum of Johns Hopkins University, could reach such results was by comparing teens who take a virginity pledge with a very small subset of other teens: those who are just as religious and conservative as the pledge-takers. The study is called "Patient Teenagers? A Comparison of the Sexual Behavior of Virginity Pledgers and Matched Nonpledgers," and it was published in the Jan. 1 edition of Pediatrics.

The first to notice something lost in the translation was Dr. Bernadine Healy, the former head of both the Red Cross and the National Institutes of Health. Today she serves as health editor for U.S. News & World Report. And in her dispatch on this study, Dr. Healy pointed out that "virginity pledging teens were considerably more conservative in their overall sexual behaviors than teens in general -- a fact that many media reports have missed cold."

What Dr. Healy was getting at is that the pledge itself is not what distinguishes these kids from most other teenagers. The real difference is their more conservative and religious home and social environment. As she notes, when you compare both groups in this study with teens at large, the behavioral differences are striking. Here are just a few:

• These teens generally have less risky sex, i.e., fewer sexual partners.
  
  
• These teens are less likely to have a teenage pregnancy, or to have friends who use drugs.
  
  
• These teens have less premarital vaginal sex.
  
  
• When these teens lose their virginity they tend to do so at age 21 -- compared to 17 for the typical American teen.
  
  
• And very much overlooked, one out of four of these teens do in fact keep the pledge to remain chaste -- amid much cheap ridicule and just about zero support outside their homes or churches.

And very much overlooked, one out of four of these teens do in fact keep the pledge to remain chaste -- amid much cheap ridicule and just about zero support outside their homes or churches.

Let's put this another way. The real headline from this study is this: "Religious Teens Differ Little in Sexual Behavior Whether or Not They Take a Pledge."

Now, whatever the shock that might occasion at CBS or the Washington Post, it comes as no surprise to parents. Most parents appreciate that a pledge of virginity -- a one-time event that might be made at an emotional moment in a teen's life -- is not some talisman that will magically shield their sons and daughters from the strong and normal desires that grow as they discover their sexuality. What these parents hope to do is direct these desires in a way that recognizes sex as a great gift, which in the right circumstances fosters genuine intimacy between a man and a woman and at its freest offers the possibility of new life.

This is not the prevailing view, of course. And these parents know it. Far from conformists living in a comfortable world where their beliefs are never challenged, these families live in an environment where most everything that is popular -- television, the movies, the Internet -- encourages children to grow up as quickly as possible while adults remain locked in perpetual adolescence.

Nor do these families believe their children are better than other kids. Unlike the majority of health experts and their supporters in the press, however, they don't believe that the proper use of the condom is the be all and end all. For these parents, the good news here is that the striking behavioral differences between the average American teen and the two teen groups in this study show that homes and families still exert a powerful influence.

That, alas, is not something you're likely to read in the headlines. For when it comes to challenging the conventional wisdom on issues of sexuality, the American media suddenly become as coy as a cloistered virgin.

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ACKNOWLEDGEMENT

William McGurn. "Like a Virgin: The Press Take On Teenage Sex." The Wall Street Journal (January 6, 2009).

Reprinted with permission of the author and The Wall Street Journal © 2008 Dow Jones & Company, Inc. All rights reserved.

THE AUTHOR

William McGurn was the chief speechwriter for President George W. Bush until February 8, 2008. Formerly an executive with Newscorp, McGurn also served as the chief editorial writer with The Wall Street Journal. From 1992 to 1998 McGurn served as the senior editor of the Far Eastern Economic Review. Prior to this he was the Washington bureau chief of National Review. McGurn is a graduate of the University of Notre Dame and Boston University. He is the author, with Rebecca Blank, of Is the Market Moral?.

Copyright © 2009 Wall Street Journal

Wednesday Liturgy: Concelebrating at Additional Masses

ROME, JAN. 13, 2009 (Zenit.org).- Answered by Legionary of Christ Father Edward McNamara, professor of liturgy at the Regina Apostolorum university.

Q: Priests are allowed to binate or even trinate in cases of pastoral necessity. What should happen if a priest has to give the homily at several Masses on a Sunday, perhaps in connection with an appeal? When he has already said one Mass and another priest is the celebrant, should he also concelebrate? -- S.P., Stourport-on-Severn, England

A: I would say that the most relevant norm regarding this topic is found in the instruction "Redemptionis Sacramentum," No. 64:

"The homily, which is given in the course of the celebration of Holy Mass and is a part of the Liturgy itself, 'should ordinarily be given by the Priest celebrant himself. He may entrust it to a concelebrating Priest or occasionally, according to circumstances, to a Deacon, but never to a layperson. In particular cases and for a just cause, the homily may even be given by a Bishop or a Priest who is present at the celebration but cannot concelebrate.'"

The final phrase of this number would cover the case of our correspondent. An appeal, such as when a missionary priest preaches on Mission Sunday or when the pastor makes an annual diocesan appeal, would constitute a just cause.

It is important, however, that the priest should attempt to weave the themes of the appeal into the homily itself as relating to the readings and the Christian life. Otherwise, appeals are best left until after the post-Communion prayer and before the final blessing.

The priest who preaches in these circumstances should vest in an alb or a cassock and surplice, as well as a stole of the corresponding liturgical color.

The norm foresees the case of a priest who "cannot concelebrate." The general rule is that a priest celebrates or concelebrates no more than one Mass a day (Canon 905 of the Code of Canon Law). The permission to binate or trinate is a pastoral concession for the benefit of the faithful and only for a just cause. Since it is usually not necessary to concelebrate at a second Mass, then it would not generally fulfill the requirement of a just pastoral need.

Therefore, in the case at hand it is enough that the priest has already celebrated Mass, or is scheduled to celebrate a later Mass, in order to justify being able to both preach the homily and refrain from concelebrating.

Religious priests have a habitual exception to the one-Mass rule as they may always concelebrate at their community Mass even though they have another Mass scheduled for the faithful. All priests may likewise concelebrate at a second Mass in any justifiable situation such as the bishop's Mass, funerals, anniversaries of ordination, and similar circumstances.

Wednesday Liturgy: Follow-up: "Midnight Mass" at 9 p.m.

ROME, JAN. 13, 2009 (Zenit.org).- Answered by Legionary of Christ Father Edward McNamara, professor of liturgy at the Regina Apostolorum university.

Pursuant to our comments on Christmas Midnight Mass (see Dec. 23), an Eastern Catholic priest who is bi-ritual in the Roman rite asked the following question:

"On Christmas Day, as I was celebrating Mass in a Roman-rite parish, I wanted to use Eucharistic Prayer 4 because it lays out so majestically the whole plan of salvation vis-à-vis the Anaphora of St. Basil the Great in the Eastern Churches. However, I was not aware that it had its own Preface until I turned to it. Since I had already prayed the Christmas Preface, I decided I should not use Prayer 4. Would I have been wrong to have done so?"

Father was correct in refraining from using Eucharistic Prayer 4 and precisely because it has an invariable preface that forms a unity with the rest of the anaphora.

This beautiful prayer is theologically and structurally modeled on Eastern anaphoras, such as that of St. Basil. But it is stylistically and literarily more akin to traditional Latin prayer formulas although with a clear biblical background.

Because of its special structure and invariable preface it may not be used on feasts which have an obligatory preface of their own, such as Christmas and other solemnities, Sundays of the major liturgical seasons, and the fifth week of Lent.

It may be used when an assigned preface is not obligatory, such as on weekdays and Sundays of ordinary time; whenever a seasonal preface (rather than a preface of the day) is to be used; or for votive Masses. For example, Eucharistic Prayer 4 may not be used on Pentecost or the feast of Corpus Christi, but it may be used for a votive Mass of the Holy Spirit or of the Holy Eucharist even though the rubrics indicate the use of proper prefaces. In the case of votive Masses the use of the proper preface is not obligatory.

The most suitable Eucharistic Prayer to use on Christmas Day is the Roman Canon (No. 1). This ancient prayer has a traditional specific formula for this day that may be used every day of the Christmas octave.

While some bishops' conferences have composed special Christmas formulas for Eucharistic Prayers 2 and 3, they do not quite match the beauty of the traditional insertion.

Article: Created Equal: How Christianity Shaped The West

DINESH D'SOUZA

Christianity is largely responsible for many of the principles and institutions that even secular people cherish -- chief among them equality and liberty.

In recent years there has arisen a new atheism that represents a direct attack on Western Christianity. Books such as Richard Dawkins' The God Delusion, Christopher Hitchens' God Is Not Great, and Sam Harris' The End of Faith, all contend that Western society would be better off if we could eradicate from it the last vestiges of Christianity. But Christianity is largely responsible for many of the principles and institutions that even secular people cherish -- chief among them equality and liberty.

When Thomas Jefferson wrote in the Declaration of Independence that "all men are created equal," he called the proposition "self-evident." But he did not mean that it is immediately evident. It requires a certain kind of learning. And indeed most cultures throughout history, and even today, reject the proposition. At first glance, there is admittedly something absurd about the claim of human equality, when all around us we see dramatic evidence of inequality. People are unequal in height, in weight, in strength, in stamina, in intelligence, in perseverance, in truthfulness, and in about every other quality. But of course Jefferson knew this. He was asserting human equality of a special kind. Human beings, he was saying, are moral equals, each of whom possesses certain equal rights. They differ in many respects, but each of their lives has a moral worth no greater and no less than that of any other. According to this doctrine, the rights of a Philadelphia street sweeper are the same as those of Jefferson himself.

This idea of the preciousness and equal worth of every human being is largely rooted in Christianity. Christians believe that God places infinite value on every human life. Christian salvation does not attach itself to a person's family or tribe or city. It is an individual matter. And not only are Christians judged at the end of their lives as individuals, but throughout their lives they relate to God on that basis. This aspect of Christianity had momentous consequences.

Though the American founders were inspired by the examples of Greece and Rome, they also saw limitations in those examples. Alexander Hamilton wrote that it would be "as ridiculous to seek for [political] models in the simple ages of Greece and Rome as it would be to go in quest of them among the Hottentots and Laplanders." In The Federalist Papers, we read at one point that the classical idea of liberty decreed "to the same citizens the hemlock on one day and statues on the next ... ." And elsewhere: "Had every Athenian citizen been a Socrates, every Athenian assembly would still have been a mob." While the ancients had direct democracy that was susceptible to the unjust passions of the mob and supported by large-scale slavery, we today have representative democracy, with full citizenship and the franchise extended in principle to all. Let us try to understand how this great change came about.

A New Morality

In ancient Greece and Rome, individual human life had no particular value in and of itself. The Spartans left weak children to die on the hillside. Infanticide was common, as it is common even today in many parts of the world. Fathers who wanted sons had few qualms about drowning their newborn daughters. Human beings were routinely bludgeoned to death or mauled by wild animals in the Roman gladiatorial arena. Many of the great classical thinkers saw nothing wrong with these practices. Christianity, on the other hand, contributed to their demise by fostering moral outrage at the mistreatment of innocent human life.

Likewise, women had a very low status in ancient Greece and Rome, as they do today in many cultures, notably in the Muslim world. Such views are common in patriarchal cultures. And they were prevalent as well in the Jewish society in which Jesus lived. But Jesus broke the traditional taboos of his time when he scandalously permitted women of low social status to travel with him and be part of his circle of friends and confidantes.

The Christian prohibition of adultery, a sin it viewed as equally serious for men and women, and rules concerning divorce that (unlike in Judaism and Islam) treated men and women equally, helped to improve the social status of women. Indeed so dignified was the position of the woman in Christian marriage that women predominated in the early Christian church, and the pagan Romans scorned Christianity as a religion for women.

Christianity did not immediately and directly contest patriarchy, but it helped to elevate the status of women in society. The Christian prohibition of adultery, a sin it viewed as equally serious for men and women, and rules concerning divorce that (unlike in Judaism and Islam) treated men and women equally, helped to improve the social status of women. Indeed so dignified was the position of the woman in Christian marriage that women predominated in the early Christian church, and the pagan Romans scorned Christianity as a religion for women.

Then there is slavery, a favorite topic for the new atheist writers. "Consult the Bible," Sam Harris writes in Letter to a Christian Nation, "and you will discover that the creator of the universe clearly expects us to keep slaves." Steven Weinberg notes that "Christianity ... lived comfortably with slavery for many centuries." Nor are they the first to fault Christianity for its alleged approval of slavery. But we must remember that slavery pre-dated Christianity by centuries and even millennia. It was widely practiced in the ancient world, from China and India to Greece and Rome. Most cultures regarded it as an indispensable institution, like the family. Sociologist Orlando Patterson has noted that for centuries, slavery needed no defenders because it had no critics.

But Christianity, from its very beginning, discouraged the enslavement of fellow Christians. We read in one of Paul's letters that Paul himself interceded with a master named Philemon on behalf of his runaway slave, and encouraged Philemon to think of his slave as a brother instead. Confronted with the question of how a slave can also be a brother, Christians began to regard slavery as indefensible. As a result, slavery withered throughout medieval Christendom and was eventually replaced by serfdom. While slaves were "human tools," serfs had rights of marriage, contract, and property ownership that were legally enforceable. And of course serfdom itself would eventually collapse under the weight of the argument for human dignity.

Moreover, politically active Christians were at the forefront of the modern anti-slavery movement. In England, William Wilberforce spearheaded a campaign that began with almost no support and was driven entirely by his Christian convictions -- a story powerfully told in the recent film Amazing Grace. Eventually Wilberforce triumphed, and in 1833 slavery was outlawed in Britain. Pressed by religious groups at home, England then took the lead in repressing the slave trade abroad.

The debate over slavery in America, too, had a distinctively religious flavor. Free blacks who agitated for emancipation invoked the narrative of liberation in the Book of Exodus: "Go down Moses, way down to Egypt land and tell old Pharoah, let my people go." But of course throughout history people have opposed slavery for themselves while being happy to enslave others. Indeed there were many black slave owners in the American South. What is remarkable in this historical period in the Western world is the rise of opposition to slavery in principle. Among the first to embrace abolitionism were the Quakers, and other Christians soon followed in applying politically the biblical notion that human beings are equal in the eyes of God. Understanding equality in this ingrained way, they adopted the view that no man has the right to rule another man without his consent. This latter idea (contained most famously in the Declaration of Independence) is the moral root both of abolitionism and of democracy.

Understanding equality in this ingrained way, they adopted the view that no man has the right to rule another man without his consent. This latter idea (contained most famously in the Declaration of Independence) is the moral root both of abolitionism and of democracy.

For those who think of American history only or mostly in secular terms, it may come as news that some of its greatest events were preceded by massive Christian revivals. What historians call the First Great Awakening swept the country in the mid-eighteenth century, and helped lay the moral foundation of the American Revolution. Historian Paul Johnson describes the War for Independence as "inconceivable ... without this religious background." By this he means that the revival provided essential support for the ideas that fueled the Revolution. Jefferson, let us recall, proclaimed that human equality is a gift from God: we are endowed by our Creator with inalienable rights. Indeed there is no other possible source for them. And Jefferson later wrote that he was not expressing new ideas or principles when he wrote the Declaration, but was rather giving expression to something that had become settled in the American mind.

Likewise John Adams wrote: "What do we mean by the American Revolution? The war? That was no part of the Revolution; it was only an effect and consequence of it. The Revolution was in the minds of the people ... a change in their religious sentiments." Those religious sentiments were forged in the fiery sermons of the First Great Awakening.

The Second Great Awakening, which began in the early nineteenth century, left in its wake the temperance movement, the movement for women's suffrage, and most importantly the abolitionist movement. It was the religious fervor of men like Charles Finney, the Presbyterian lawyer who became president of Oberlin College, that animated the abolitionist cause and contributed so much to the chain of events that brought about America's "new birth of freedom."

And finally, fast forwarding to the twentieth century, the Reverend Martin Luther King's "I Have a Dream" speech referred famously to a promissory note and demanded that it be cashed. This was an appeal to the idea of equality in the Declaration of 1776. Remarkably, King was resting his case on a proclamation issued 200 years earlier by a Southern slave owner. Yet in doing so, he was appealing to a principle that he and Jefferson shared. Both men, the twentieth-century pastor and the eighteenth-century planter, reflected the influence of Christianity in American politics.

Freedom Redefined

Christianity has also lent force to the modern concept of individual freedom. There are hints of this concept both in the classical world and in the world of the ancient Hebrews. One finds, in such figures as Socrates and the Hebrew prophets, notable individuals who have the courage to stand up and question even the highest expressions of power. But while these cultures produced great individuals, as other cultures often do today, none of them cultivated an appreciation for individuality. And it is significant that Socrates and the Hebrew prophets came to bad ends. They were anomalies in their societies, and those societies -- lacking respect for individual freedom -- got rid of them.

As Benjamin Constant pointed out, freedom in the ancient world was the right to participate in the making of laws. Greek democracy was direct democracy in which every citizen could show up in the agora, debate issues of taxes and war, and vote on what action the polis should take. The Greeks exercised their freedom solely through active involvement in the political life of the city. There was no other kind of freedom and certainly no freedom of thought or of religion of the kind that we hold dear. The modern idea of freedom, by contrast, is rooted in a respect for the individual. It means the right to express our opinion, the right to choose a career, the right to buy and sell property, the right to travel where we want, the right to our own personal space, and the right to live our own life. In return, we are responsible only to respect the rights of others. This is the freedom we are ready to fight for, and we become indignant when it is challenged or taken away.

Christianity has played a vital role in the development of this new concept of freedom through its doctrine that all human beings are moral agents, created in God's image, with the ability to be the architects of their own lives. The Enlightenment certainly contributed to this understanding of human freedom, though it drew from ideas about the worth of the individual that had been promulgated above all by the teachings of Christianity.

Let me conclude with a warning first issued by one of Western civilization's greatest atheists, the German philosopher Friedrich Nietzsche. The ideas that define Western civilization, Nietzsche said, are based on Christianity. Because some of these ideas seem to have taken on a life of their own, we might have the illusion that we can abandon Christianity while retaining them. This illusion, Nietzsche warns us, is just that. Remove Christianity and the ideas fall too.

In sum, the eradication of Christianity -- and of organized religion in general -- would also mean the gradual extinction of the principles of human dignity.

Consider the example of Europe, where secularization has been occurring for well over a century. For a while it seemed that secularization would have no effect on European morality or social institutions. Yet increasingly today there is evidence of the decline of the nuclear family. Overall birthrates have plummeted, while rates of divorce and out-of-wedlock births are up.

Nietzsche also warned that, with the decline of Christianity, new and opposing ideas would arise. We see these today in demands for the radical redefinition of the family, the revival of eugenic theories, and even arguments for infanticide.

In sum, the eradication of Christianity -- and of organized religion in general -- would also mean the gradual extinction of the principles of human dignity. Consider human equality. Why do we hold to it? The Christian idea of equality in God's eyes is undeniably largely responsible. The attempt to ground respect for equality on a purely secular basis ignores the vital contribution by Christianity to its spread. It is folly to believe that it could survive without the continuing aid of religious belief.

If we cherish what is distinctive about Western civilization, then -- whatever our religious convictions -- we should respect rather than denigrate its Christian roots.

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ACKNOWLEDGEMENT

Dinesh D'Souza. "Created Equal: How Christianity Shaped The West." Imprimis 37, no.11 (November 2008): 1-5.

Reprinted by permission from Imprimis, the national speech digest of Hillsdale College (www.hillsdale.edu), 33 East College St, Hills dale, Michigan 49242. Subscriptions to Imprimis, are free upon request, ISBN 0277-8432. 800/437-2268.

THE AUTHOR

Dinesh D'Souza is the Robert and Karen Rishwain Fellow at the Hoover Institution at Stanford University. D'Souza has been called one of the "top young public-policy makers in the country" by Investor’s Business Daily. His areas of research include the economy and society, civil rights and affirmative action, cultural issues and politics, and higher education. Dinesh D'Souza's latest book is What's So Great About Christianity. He is also the author of: The Enemy at Home: The Cultural Left and Its Responsibility for 9/11, Letters to a Young Conservative, What's So Great about America, Illiberal Education: The Politics of Race and Sex on Campus; The End of Racism; Ronald Reagan: How an Ordinary Man Became an Extraordinary Leader; and The Virtue of Prosperity: Finding Values in an Age of Techno-Affluence. Dinesh D'Souza is on the Advisory Board of the Catholic Education Resource Center. Visit his website here.

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