Fourteenth Sunday after Pentecost
For the second time this month, the sacred liturgy brings before us what is probably the best known part of the Sermon on the Mount, with its command to contemplate the birds of the air and the lilies of the field. They do not amass treasures of any kind, and yet the Eternal Father provides for them, making them in some respects more beautiful than any man-made products. Solomon in all his glory was not clad with as much beauty as one of the tiny flowers of the field that blooms today and withers tomorrow. Clearly Divine Providence wants us to trust, blindly, without any hesitation or concern.
Let’s be honest with ourselves and admit that this teaching is hard. We are all far too inclined to look ahead, to amass treasures, to put money in the bank, to have extra clothes and stores of food, “just in case”. We are afraid of being in want, because we are frail creatures that have multiple needs which, if not satisfied, put us in danger of suffering and even death. And yet, the Eternal Father has given us His word: He is watching over us.
But does Our Lord really mean literally what He is saying here? Are we forbidden to put things away for the future? Are we not allowed to be ready for the rainy day. We are. Elsewhere the Lord Himself invites us to be prudent as serpents, to make use of our talents, to be astute in the way we handle our earthly goods, to be proficient and conscientious stewards of creation.
What Our Lord is really trying hard to get across to us in today’s Gospel is that we are forbidden from giving in to discouragement and despair when things are lacking. We are not allowed to be distraught in times of trial. If we have made provision for the future and our provisions are stolen or perish in a fire, we must trust that God will give us what we need. If we meet someone who is in greater need than us and we give them what we have at hand, we must have confidence that the Creator of the universe will not allow us to want beyond the reasonable, and if He does, He will give us the grace to bear it virtuously.
This lesson is one that also has deep ramifications for the present trials of the Church. Many souls today find themselves in situations in which the basic needs of their souls are not provided for. They ask for bread and they receive scorpions. They go to Mass to worship God and be spiritually fed, but they are treated to a show, sometimes even to pagan rituals, and are starved of eternal truths. Many write to their parish priest, their bishop or even the Holy See about abuses and scandals, and they are ignored. Many ask for clarifications and they only get more confusion. What used to be the beacon of light for the entire Church seems only to give out vaporous fumes that distress and suffocate the children who continue to clamour for bread.
Let’s not forget the lilies of the field and the birds of the air. God looks after them. And so He looks after the lost sheep today. St Thomas, when asked how the “savage in the woods” can obtain salvation, draws from the example of the centurion Cornelius in Acts 10 to affirm that for anyone who truly seeks God, God will provide the means of salvation, even if it means sending an angel from Heaven as He did for Cornelius. We must believe this today. It has its demands on us. In former times, Catholics had it “easy”, too easy perhaps. “Father knows” was the easy way out of any dilemma. And if Father did not know, well, “the Bishop will fix it”. And in the worst case scenario, we knew we could rely on the Vatican to “sort things out”. But all that has changed drastically.
A few weeks ago, we considered how in certain times of crisis of the faith, help came not from the bishops but from an unexpected place, that is to say, from the simple faithful. This is true today as well. The guidance received from the hierarchy is often lacking and when given, very unhelpful, if not outright erroneous. But the faith and true morals remain in the simple faithful, in good Catholic families who are rearing all the children God gives them, in simple priests feeding their flock with the eternal truths and with the Bread from Heaven. If the centre is to hold, it will be due to the integral faith of the simple.
But let’s pursue our reflections further. We have spoken previously about the pope’s role as teacher, how he, in spite of any lack of personal sanctity or intelligence, has the grace to define dogma and bind the faithful to profess it. Outside of those cases, we also saw how popes can fail to transmit the truth by compromising with error or even openly professing error.
Almost immediately after the First Vatican Council’s definition of papal infallibility, theologians began trying to ascertain what kind of guidance is given to the pope when he is not teaching infallibly, which is 99.99% of the time. Many of them pointed out that in order to expound the doctrine of the faith, the pope, and indeed the bishops, must say many things to elucidate the doctrine, to help the faithful understand it better. In doing this, they are not infallible, no more than any priest is infallible when he preaches his Sunday sermon.
There are also a number of teachings in the Church that have not been defined as dogmas of the faith, either because they are all too obvious, or because the formulation of the teaching has not yet reached a point at which it can be put forward as a dogma. For example, there is no dogmatic definition that the Jews must enter the Church in order to be saved. However, the teaching is all too evident in the New Testament, and to deny it is to leave Christianity altogether. There is no dogmatic definition that it is gravely immoral to kill unborn babies, but the teaching is so obvious in Holy Scripture and tradition that it has not been deemed necessary as yet, even though Pope John Paul II came pretty close to doing so…. Nor has it been dogmatically defined that it takes a man and a woman to receive the sacrament of matrimony, but to deny it is not only to leave the Church, it is to cease to be a rational human. And many other received teachings that could very well be defined as part of divine revelation, but which have not been as yet.
Here the theologians rightly say that, when teaching about such matters, that there must certainly be some sort of guidance of the Holy Spirit given to the hierarchy. Indeed, it is not possible for a Catholic to say, for example: I find no dogma that abortion is murder, therefore I am free to think it isn’t. If a Catholic does say something to that effect publicly, the Church authorities have the sacred duty to impose a censure upon such a person, going so far as excommunication, especially if he or she is a public person. In doing this, the pope or bishop is certainly guided by the Holy Spirit, even though it had not been defined as a dogma of faith.
In other words, when the shepherds exercise their magisterium, the Holy Spirit is given in such a way as to assist them in expounding the sacred doctrine along with all that flows logically from it. It is in this sense also that the faithful are to hold firmly doctrines that have not yet been defined when they have been held for as long as anyone can remember. For the same reason, they must have an attitude of reverent submission when the same authorities make use of their own wits to give their point of view on matters that are open to debate, but this is also dependent upon their own submission to the Holy Spirit, which can fail.
Here we must make an important distinction concerning the magisterium itself, what it is and what it is not. The magisterium is by definition a teaching office, and it is a teaching office that is concerned not with just any teaching but only with Divine Revelation. Consequently, whatever does not fall within the purview of Divine Revelation is not and cannot be part of the magisterium. So we can eliminate anything that concerns the natural sciences, the environment, politics, art, and many other disciplines. Popes have their opinions on these things, but they cannot impose them on anyone.
Furthermore, any considerations given by the pope or bishops to teach the faith must respect the very nature of that faith, which is the transmission of the deposit received from the apostles. Whenever it is a question of novel teachings that obviously have no grounds in the tradition, and might even contradict it, we are not in the realm of the magisterium at all, for the Holy Spirit was not given to the shepherds to inspire new dogmas but to ensure the transmission of those received from Christ and the apostles.
But a curious thing happened after the First Vatican Council, which defined the dogma of papal infallibility. Just as there would develop a spirit of Vatican II, that would so exaggerate the teaching of that council as to make it say just about anything you want, so there was also a spirit of Vatican I that still exists in the minds and hearts of many Catholics. That spirit of Vatican I essentially consists in considering the pope as some sort of divine oracle, who, as soon as he opens his mouth to speak, he is inspired by the Holy Spirit and can never be wrong; whatever he decides is guaranteed by the Holy Spirit to be God’s will.
Of course, no one actually says that, but in practice that is how many people thought and lived, and still do. As long as the popes were careful to walk in the footsteps of Tradition and not to consent to any novelties or adulteration of the faith, it wasn’t really a problem. But when the spirit of Vatican II came along, listening to the spirit of the world and the spirit of change, and joined with the spirit of Vatican I, we had the unmitigated and ongoing tragedy of a pope using his pontifical power to impose novelties on the Church, all the while saying that he is “giving the voice to the people”. And so many think: if the pope says so it must be OK because the Holy Spirit is with him. From what we expounded in earlier homilies, we know that such reasoning is faulty. It does not take into account the historical reality of popes who have fallen into error and promoted it.
It is precisely the clarity of doctrine as defined by the Church that the pope is meant to serve. If he fails to teach defined doctrine or causes confusion by his muddled presentation of it, then not only are the faithful not obliged to believe what he says, they are obliged to reject it as being unsound and even heretical if manifestly opposed to sound doctrine or morals.
In all this however, we cannot judge the reigning pontiff’s conscience. God alone can do that. A future pope and council will pass judgment in His name. What we can do in the simplicity of our faith is point out the evident inconsistency between certain words or actions with the faith, and we rightly claim the right to be Catholics as Catholics have always been. If a Catholic today cannot be what a Catholic was a century ago, then we have a clear change in teaching, regardless of whatever sophistry might be put to profit to explain that, even though different, it is still the same. A square peg will never enter a round hole, try hard as you may and writing as many pages as you wish. It doesn’t work.
To return to today’s Gospel then, and the lilies of the field, none of what we are witnessing at the moment should disquiet us. Christ did not found his Church on the impeccable. He chose sinners to lead His Church, because His Church is composed of sinners and was founded for them. G. K. Chesterton pointed out the fallacy of thinking that when God intervenes in the world, it’s all going to be smooth sailing. He writes:
“The things that have been founded on the fancy of the Superman have died with the dying civilisations which alone have given them birth. When Christ at a symbolic moment was establishing His great society, He chose for its corner-stone neither the brilliant Paul nor the mystic John, but a shuffler, a snob, a coward – in a word, a man. And upon this rock He has built His Church, and the gates of Hell have not prevailed against it… All the empires and the kingdoms have failed, because of this inherent and continual weakness, that they were founded by strong men and upon strong men. But this one thing, the historic Christian Church, was founded on a weak man, and for that reason it is indestructible. For no chain is stronger than its weakest link” (Heretics, 1905).
It matters not that we are led by a weak and confused man. What matters, the only thing that really matters, is that we are lilies in the field of God, and we have no excuse for not being clothed in the garment of grace and holiness, which is on offer to all the humble of heart, and which is by far more exquisite than the robes of Solomon.
