Presider’s Page for 15 September (Ordinary Time 24)

15 Comments

1. Just wondering – and hopefully someone liturgically knowledgeable will enlighten me: from which ROMAN MISSAL, approved for Use in the Diocese of Ireland by the Bishops’ Conference of Ireland and Confirmed by the Apostolic See is the text of EUCHARISTIC PRAYER III as printed above in the webpage of the Association of Catholic Priests of Ireland?
   Tomorrow (15 September) is usually celebrated Our Lady of Sorrows when not falling on a Sunday; but the pious arbitrary insertion of Our Lady of Sorrows – I think may be understandable but is out of place in a Eucharistic Prayer.
   After mention of the “most Blessed Virgin Mary, Mother of God with blessed Joseph her Spouse, with your blessed Apostles and glorious Martyrs” are the correct words in the approved text of Eucharistic Prayer III. (Prof. N. 215/11/L, 1 May 2013, made public 19 June 2013).
   It is so good to note that among the aims and objectives of the Association of Catholic Priests is: to provide a voice for Irish Catholic priests at a time when that voice is largely silent and needs to be expressed.
   When I express my voice at Mass tomorrow I just want to make sure I will have the correct and approved words – so someone might be able to update me.

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2. Could anyone enlighten me, Why did God send his only son to die to save us when knowing the outcome?
   The world in now in a worse state of sin.

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   1. Your statement that God “sent his son to die” is the window of possible new insight into your question. Did God send Their Son to die? Or did they send Him to live and invite all into the salvation that was, until then, only presumed to be for the Jewish people? And/or was Jesus’ message of love over rules and His charismatic ability to challenge leadership and draw followers create such a conflict among the religious leaders of the time, that they partnered with the Romans to take away that threat to their power? “Sent His Son to Die” is St. Anselm’s theory, and one that is most often taught these days, but it is not definitive. Check out Duns Scotus’ atonement work, referred to here: https://cac.org/daily-meditations/a-nonviolent-atonement-2017-07-24/ I hope this helps!

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3. The remedy for sin is the Sacrament of Confession.

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4. “Could anyone enlighten me, Why did God send his only son to die to save us when knowing the outcome?”

   Not quite sure what Edward means by ‘the outcome’ I wonder if that for him is the Crucifixion or the Resurrection.

   There is a whole universe of difference between thinking of the life of Jesus as ending in death or, on the contrary, in the promise of life after death.

   For the early church it was the Resurrection that gripped the Christian imagination – and made e.g. St Paul convinced that a New Creation was in process.

   In the Middle Ages that firm belief began to recede. Allied with the state the church had generally little interest in the coming of a different kingdom without violence – and eventually the crucifixion was explained in terms of Jesus repaying a debt owed by us humans to the Father – a circular and fundamentally nonsensical theology that is still reflected in article 615 of the Catechism.

   To recover a firm belief in the Resurrection of Jesus we need to go – or to be taken – to a place we tend to avoid at all costs: what Psalm 23 calls the Valley of the Shadow of Death. Only then do we truly pray as though our lives depend on the outcome – because they truly do. Only in that place can we truly bond with the person who stood alone before Pilate – and realise why he did that: to be spiritually with every one of us in our own terminal crisis.

   I would know nothing whatever of this if I hadn’t had an experience of a cancer that could have been terminal in 2003. Otherwise I would never have discovered where persistent prayer can take us – to the complete lifting of our fear of death.

   The ‘worse state of sin’ that Edward sees nowadays has largely to do with a loss of belief in any possible life after death – and the sins of the churches have a lot to do with that. So has the ‘satisfaction’ theology of atonement summarised above, the bedrock of Christian fundamentalism.

   Paradoxically it is those in most current danger of death who are most likely to discover what can happen in that Dark Valley when we pray. The world crisis that is now gathering will intensify that experience – so those who carry with us a tenuous belief in the Resurrection will find then a greater readiness to listen than exists just now in Ireland – when unexpected wealth from the multinationals tell us we have ‘never had it so good’.

   Jesus needs to be taken seriously when he tells us how difficult it is for a rich man to enter the kingdom of heaven, and why it is the poor in spirit who are blessed. We need to run totally out of other resources to learn to pray seriously – and there is no other route to that kingdom of heaven.

   ‘Sin’ is another day’s work. When in December 2021 Pope Francis said, correctly, that there are worse sins than the sins of the flesh he was challenging the fixation with sexuality that causes so many professed Christians to be indifferent to social injustice, the root of all violence. He was also challenging his most obdurate opponents in the church, those who tell us that we do not need synodality.

   Nothing is more needed nowadays than synodality – the human context in which Edward could ask his good questions in hope of a sensible answer.

   Don’t stop Edward – you are ‘doing theology’ as it needs to be done.

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5. “…and eventually the crucifixion was explained in terms of Jesus repaying a debt owed by us humans to the Father – a circular and fundamentally nonsensical theology that is still reflected in article 615 of the Catechism.”
   Seán, you hit the nail absolutely on the head.
   Thank you.

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6. “For as by one man’s disobedience many were made sinners, so by one man’s obedience many will be made righteous.”443 By his obedience unto death, Jesus accomplished the substitution of the suffering Servant, who “makes himself an offering for sin”, when “he bore the sin of many”, and who “shall make many to be accounted righteous”, for “he shall bear their iniquities”.444 Jesus atoned for our faults and made satisfaction for our sins to the Father.445

   This is a catena of biblical quotes. I would like some clarity as to what exactly this constant anti-atonement rhetoric is aiming at.

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   1. (This comment was updated at 16.21 – Ed)
      First, Joe, the formulation ‘constant anti-atonement rhetoric’ is itself not only rhetorical but mistaken. As you must know St Anselm’s ‘satisfaction’ theory of atonement is very late in the church, was not the belief of e.g. the apostles or of e.g. Ireneaus and was not even adopted by all well-reputed Christian theologians when it was introduced, c. 1097.

      Second, the purpose of my own protest at the dominance of the satisfaction theory of atonement is the restoration of belief in the Father of Jesus – Our Father – as the source of our liberation from fear of judgement and death, rather than as retributive seeker of self-satisfaction at the suffering and death of his Son.

      Was it not also always the Father’s intention to forgive us our sins, and was not Jesus the mirror of that forgiveness? Was that not explicitly said by Jesus himself when he told us that when we see him we see the Father also?

      When Christians opt to suffer violence rather than to project it onto others are they not also ‘suffering servants’ and mirroring the forgiveness of the Father as well as the Son? Why not believe that the Father is bent on freeing us – through Jesus – from the primeval sin of blaming others – of scapegoating – and from violence – rather than on making servants suffer?

      What do YOU see as ‘satisfying’ the Father? Was it Jesus’ anguish and death on the cross – or our own liberation, as followers of Jesus, from fear of death and from suspicion of the same Father?

      If Catholic clergy were crystal clear on this there would be no need for an anti-satisfaction protest. Instead almost all we get is incoherence and the strange condition you yourself have diagnosed and named – a clerical ‘phobia’ about Theology.

      This is the hangover of Christendom, the era in which the Church conformed to the Constantinian heresy that the Gospel could be spread and maintained by violence – a heresy that necessarily obscured Jesus’ rejection of the option of violence, in obedience to the Father – who is as non-violent as the Son.

      Situated as he was in the high middle ages St Anselm of Canterbury could not see where the attribution of satisfaction to the Father at the violence of the Crucifixion could lead. Knowing where it did lead, in the 20th century – and is still leading Christian fundamentalism – we in the 21st have no such excuse.

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7. Sean the only part of the quote from the Catechism (#615, criticized by Paddy) that might be affected by the criticisms you give is the last clause: “Jesus atoned for our faults and made satisfaction for our sins to the Father.445.”
   The footnote here refers to the Council of Trent. I think the notions of atonement and satisfaction go far beyond Anselm, and I doubt if Trent was dependent on Anselm. The primary source of all this atonement-thinking is the Epistle to the Romans. “What do YOU see as ‘satisfying’ the Father? Was it Jesus’ anguish and death on the cross – or our own liberation, as followers of Jesus, from fear of death and from suspicion of the same Father?” Paul would say that the latter is the result of our being reconciled with God (in the gift of justification and in our sanctifying identification with the crucified and risen Christ).
   The former is what brings this about: Rom 5:8-10: “But God shows his love for us in that while we were yet sinners Christ died for us. Since, therefore, we are now justified by his blood, much more shall we be saved by him from the wrath of God. For if while we were enemies we were reconciled to God by the death of his Son, much more, now that we are reconciled, shall we be saved by his life.”
   Rom 8: 3-4 “For God has done what the law, weakened by the flesh, could not do: sending his own Son in the likeness of sinful flesh and for sin, he condemned sin in the flesh, in order that the just requirement of the law might be fulfilled in us, who walk not according to the flesh but according to the Spirit.”
   I guess that “satisfaction” corresponds to fulfilling “the just requirement of the law” (first by Christ, who takes our place, and then in our own eventual sanctification). The premise of all this is that we need to be reconciled with God, and that the whole world needs to be saved.

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   1. Joe – you say: “the only part of the quote from the Catechism (#615, criticized by Paddy) that might be affected by the criticisms you give is the last clause: ‘Jesus atoned for our faults and made satisfaction for our sins to the Father.445.’”

      How can you say this? The second sentence in CCC 615 reads as follows:

      “By his obedience unto death, Jesus accomplished the substitution of the suffering Servant, who ‘makes himself an offering for sin’, when ‘he bore the sin of many’, and who ‘shall make many to be accounted righteous’, for ‘he shall bear their iniquities’.”

      The idea that Jesus substituted himself for us to receive a punishment from the Father that would otherwise fall on us follows as a corollary of Anselm’s ‘satisfactionism’. God (or God’s justice) is not ‘satisfied’ by our own sufferings as punishment for sin: his justice can only be satisfied by the sufferings of someone as important as Jesus, so the Son of God has to die in our place to make up (atone for) the difference.

      And substitutionary atonement is the bedrock of Christian fundamentalism.

      CCC and yourself do indeed quote St Paul to support this idea of satisfaction as emanating, from, and supported by, the New Testament, but the dominant idea in the latter is not the ‘wrath of God’ but the Father’s own part in redemption/salvation – by sending us the son and then vindicating Jesus via the Resurrection. For Paul too that emphasis is dominant even in the passage you cite – and it was out of that idea that the analogy of ‘ransom’ came. Every history of atonement theology that I have read insists that for the early church it was to Satan that this ransom was believed to have been paid – not to God the Father – and by implication, it was the Trinity together who had paid that ransom. As Gustav Aulén argues, for the New Testament authors and for e.g. Irenaeus, God himself ‘is the effective agent in the redemptive work, from beginning to end’ (‘Christus Victor’.)

      It was satisfactionism from c. 1097 that transformed God the Father from active redeemer, via Jesus and the Resurrection, into dissatisfied and remote demander of the full debt that we sinners cannot ourselves pay.

      Philosophical realism and sensible theology must surely attribute the sufferings that fall on the innocent – including Jesus – either to natural catastrophes or to the sins of others, and not to God. Jesus himself denied that e.g. Roman brutality should be understood as divine punishment for sin (Luke 13:1-3) and surely the New Creation that Paul saw had to do with the lifting of the cloud of fear that must have been attached to that very idea, before the experience of the Resurrection?

      That CCC 615 reference to ‘the suffering servant’ is obviously deploying Isaiah also in support of satisfaction / substitution – when as we now well know a very different interpretation is provided by René Girard: scapegoating violence (‘lynching’) was an evil feature of archaic society, as illustrated also by the episode of the woman accused of adultery and threatened with stoning even within the Temple precincts. That in turn throws a whole new light on the Crucifixion – as the Trinity’s revelation of where scapegoating always leads us, aimed at freeing us from that evil. Just as the violence that threatened that woman was the violence of her accusers, and did not come from God, the very same is true of the violence that came at and crucified Jesus.

      We must surely therefore understand the phrase ‘the wrath of God’ in Paul as a figurative reference to the wrath mistakenly attributed to God in a world where that inference was still possible. Paul himself had experienced both the risen Jesus and, earlier, his own ‘divine wrath’ at the Christians he had considered traitors to the law – so it is surely against that background that his use of the ‘wrath of God’ needs to be understood.

      How I wish I knew where you yourself stand on that – and that we could all agree with Richard Rohr that Jesus came not to change God’s mind about us but our minds about God. I fear that instead, especially by deploying Paul on ‘the flesh’ and ‘the wrath of God’ in support of satisfactionism, you have merely explained why most Catholic clergy opt to go nowhere near this question.

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8. Sean, the word “substitution” may add something to what’s quoted from Isaiah. But I do not think it adds the Anselmian distortion you find in it. It seems to me that the problems we have with classical atonement language are basically issues of biblical interpretation. Note that Jesus himself (in Mark) presents himself in Isaian terms as “a ransom for many.” Still more, he presents himself as a sacrificial victim (in the Eucharistic words). He offers himself as a loving sacrifice to the Father; and we are all encouraged to do the same “making up what is lacking in the sufferings of Christ” (Col 1:24).

   The “ransom to Satan” idea does not make much sense to me, and I am disappointed that even Origen promoted a version or versions of it, despite his wide vision of the salvation brought by the Logos enlightening all minds. Athanasius, too, has a wide vision of the Logos becoming flesh to bring us knowledge of God and incorruptibility (thus “divinizing” our human nature). He sounds a bit like Anselm when he explains why it was fitting that Christ should die, but he does not talk of a ransom to Satan. Athanasius says that Christ “offered his body to the Father”, and Origen says that too, but Origen adds “and his soul to the devil” (which Athanasius does not say as far as I can see). https://www.piercedhearts.org/theology_heart/teaching_saints/incarnation_athanasius.pdf
   Please note that neither Athanasius nor Anselm are fans of an angry God; both are putting forward theories of the logic behind the Atonement, seen as God’s wise, just, and gracious work. Certainly we need new ways of thinking of it, and René Girard is of help here.

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9. What you seem to be missing Joe, is the origin of the word ‘Redemption’ in the purchasing of the liberty of a slave. It is in that connection that ‘ransom to Satan’ makes sense, as Satan was understood as the ‘force’ behind ‘Pharaonic’ captivity. Augustine too used the ‘mousetrap’ analogy – with Jesus as the ‘bait’ that Satan ‘fell for’ in instigating Jesus arrest and condemnation to death. The Resurrection was seen as Satan’s defeat as well as Jesus’ and the Father’s victory.

   And so it is perfectly possible that in speaking of himself as a ransom Jesus was also using the term in that sense, and not in the Anselmian sense of the payment of a sin debt to the Father.

   What was the equivalent of Pharaonic captivity in the New Passover of the New Covenant if not the Roman imperial power that used crucifixion to intimidate and shame slaves – as in the crucifixion of the 6,000 followers of Spartacus in 71 BC along the Appian way?

   The reticence of the New Testament in saying precisely that is perfectly understandable, given the enveloping power of Rome at that time – but Paul’s expression ‘thrones and dominions’ is surely code for ‘Caesar’ above all else, and his perception of a ‘New Creation’ implies a belief that Jesus had ‘ended’ at least the oppression of imperial Rome.

   ‘Loving sacrifice to the Father’ makes sense too, especially if we include all the sins of scapegoating from the beginning that compromised us humans, including those of Jesus’ own enemies whose forgiveness he asked the Father for. That reminds me of the prayer found in Ravensbruck after the defeat of Nazism, in which some of the inmates apparently prayed for the forgiveness of their captors because of the graces of mutual friendship and love they had received while there.

   Re Anselm, remember that he did argue that God the Father was entitled to vengeance, to meet the argument that demanding satisfaction was incompatible with forgiveness. However you spin it satisfactionism is the wrong emphasis, when for the early church the emphasis was on the Father too as liberator.

   How can we understand Redemption as liberation from oppression BY God – and Jesus as ‘lamb of God’ in a new Passover – if we are also thinking of the same God as the demander of a ransom? This is the circular conundrum that a sensible atonement theology needs to resolve. Somehow we need to recapture the early church’s obvious sense of liberation by the Resurrection, and of the Father as liberator. For me Anselmian atonement theory – as formulated in CCC 615 – seriously complicates that cause.

   It also clouds the importance of Jesus’ refusal to use violence as a key feature of his sinlessness and divinity. It is time to acknowledge honestly that the church-state alliance of Christendom compromised its theology and left us with the implicit inference that God the Father was holding the ancient world to ransom because of sin, and that Jesus came to pay that.

   As you say, Girardian anthropology is a promising route to a resolution of these problems. That the Trinity are continuously confronting us with our tendency to scapegoat one another, and to evade responsibility and repentance, is a possibility we need to consider.

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10. “the prayer found in Ravensbruck after the defeat of Nazism, in which some of the inmates apparently prayed for the forgiveness of their captors because of the graces of mutual friendship and love they had received while there.” (See https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ravensbrück_concentration_camp#:~:text=Ravensbrück%20(pronounced%20%5Bʁa%CB%90vənsˈbʁʏk%5D),part%20of%20Fürstenberg%2FHavel )

    I wonder if some of the Jewish captives remembered the long history of their captivities, in Egypt, Babylon, the ghettoes, etc., and if they could use the words of the Psalms even amid the evil of the concentration camps, perhaps being able to feel the presence of God. I don’t want to indulge in wishful consolation of the “Life is Beautiful” kind, but nothing can block out the divine presence. Maximilian Kolbe is an example of charity prevailing in such places; “the light shines in the darkness.”

    Thinking about atonement (reconciliation) might best begin from forgiveness — though oddly, “Father forgive them, for they know not what they do” is seen by textual critics as an interpolation in the text of Luke.

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11. Joe and Seán, I have been meaning to thank you both for such an excellent conversation above.

    Since I have been trying to educate myself on matters of faith and doctrine — having previously accepted everything I was told since I was a child on my Granny’s knee, without much question, apart from papal infallibility — I have more and more come to realise that the teaching that Jesus came among us to die such a horrible death to appease his Father’s wrath, wrath due to sins we were somehow guilty of inter generationally from our, most likely mythical, ancestors, Adam and Eve, was indeed
    “nonsensical theology”.
    I was grateful to you, Seán for calling it that.

    Now, I have a query for you both re John(s).

    Many years ago I read a book by Gerald Collins SJ on Jesus. I think the title actually was “Jesus”

    I think that was the first time I realised that John, the disciple Jesus loved was not John the brother of James, son of Zeebadee.
    I assumed that the John who wrote the Gospel of that name was neither of the two Johns I have mentioned as that Gospel was written in the 90s if not later. And, I think I knew that the John who wrote Revelations was yet another John.

    I recently attended a Sycamore video evening in our parish. The presenting priest — on video — Fr. Wang, I think, gave us the impression that the disciple Jesus loved was the author of the 4th Gospel. Is that the commonly held view of scholars?

    He also told that Jesus had given us all the sacraments.
    I immediately thought of Kieran O’Mahoney’s “insurmountable chronological difficulties”.

    We are currently on a train from Edinburgh to London. I love the train as long as you are forward facing, which we are.

    Thank you again, Seán and Joe, and I look forward to hearing/reading your erudition re the Johns.
    Paddy.

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12. A quick check: The Beloved Disciple only appears in the second half of the Gospel (Chapters 13-20) in 13:23; 18:15-16; 19:26-7, 35; 20:2-10. While a select group of the apostles are named in the Gospel: Peter (1:42: 6:68; 13:6, 24, 36; 18:10, 15-27; 20:2-10), Andrew (1:40; 6:8; 12:22), Philip (1:43; 6:5; 12:21; 13:8), Thomas (11:16; 14:5; 20:24-9), Judas (6:71; 12:4; 13:2, 26; 17:12; 18:2), they are named rarely and in a skilful literary way. In the appendix, ch. 21, Peter, Thomas, and the Beloved Disciple reappear, and the Beloved Disciple is identified as the author (21:20-24). Since John’s name is not mentioned in the Gospel, it is plausible that the Beloved Disciple is meant to be identified as John,

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