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The Bible is one hundred percent True, it is infallible. Every statement in it is True and thus it is the greatest collection of Truths that we have. But, wait a minute, which version of the Bible is True? and where in the Bible does it say which books belong in the Bible and which don’t? (the table of contents is not part of the Bible).
The Bible as great and wondrous of a gift from G-d as it is, its not a complete set of Truths. Simple logic says so: nowhere in the Bible does it say that the Bible is True — so how do we know it is True? Answer: something outside of the Bible has to tell us that the Bible is true. The Bible isn’t complete in of itself. Thus, Sola Scriptura isn’t possible.
Now, enter the Church. The Church has some hard-to-refute credentials when it comes to declaring what is Truth outside the Bible. With more than 33,000 versions of protestantism and evangelical faith-based initiatives, the Church has to! Here are two important ones to consider, both from the Bible.
And I tell you, you are Peter, and on this rock I will build my church, and the gates of Hades shall not prevail against it (Mt 16:18)
Simply put, Peter built Christ’s Church on Earth. Christ, who is G-d, could not be more specific. Wherever Peter went and formed this Church, that is where Christ’s teachings would be founded. Peter went to Rome and founded the Church.
I will give you the keys of the kingdom of heaven, and whatever you bind on earth will be bound in heaven, and whatever you loose on earth will be loosed in heaven (Mt 16:19)
This would be an unbelievable statement if it weren’t in the Bible. G-d’s love for us humans is so great that He’s willing to allow us to affect His divine plan. This underlines the Church’s moral authority, it can make statements about the Bible and interpretations of the Bible that (when held consistent) are also True.
For instance, it was the Church that first taught us that the Bible is infallible and one hundred percent True. The Church first formulated the books of the Bible, and without the Church there would really not be the collection of books we call the Bible today.
Some important questions to ask.
When should we question the Church’s teachings?
The answer to this is: when learning. As we learn about Truths, its important to understand them with the human power of reason. While its great to take something on a leap-of-faith every once and a while, you should be skeptical about the things you believe. Thus, as you learn about Truths, its important to ask ‘Why?’. New Truths don’t come out of a fountain somewhere, they are revealed by studying other teachings and meditating on them in prayer. New Truths take root through word of mouth and other forms of communication. The Church can then carefully analyze them and eventually (it can take hundreds of years!), adopt them.
Is the Church some sort of answer machine?
No. It simply contains a large collection of G-d’s messages (all Truths) given to mankind. While it doesn’t have every answer to every problem, it can give you a good sense of consistency so you can have moral clarity on the issues you face in life. When you ask whether something is right or wrong, consider Church teaching first. While you may not get a direct answer, you’ll get a pretty good sense as to what G-d’s position might be.
Could the Church be led astray?
Its not possible, and that’s what Mt. 16:19 is really meaning. Whatever G-d reveals and the church binds itself to becomes Truth. The Holy Spirit guides the Church so that whatever it embraces it is not only the will of G-d, but the direction Christ wants us to go.
The Church did some really immoral things in the past, how could that be true?
This is the subject of a whole field of theology called apologetics. The most important thing to remember here is that the Church’s message has been consistent since Peter was at its helm. This is not the same as the person or people who occupied positions of power in the Church over time. These people, subject to temptation and sin just like you and I, fell prey to many bad ideas and selfish thoughts. Consequently, their actions — though immoral, aren’t what the Church stands for. Its a fact of reality that everyone sins, priests and popes alike are no different.
The Church says a lot of strange things, especially about the Saints and Mary, the “Mother of God”. How can this be True?
Creation didn’t end when Christ left this world and ascended into Heaven. G-d’ kept revealing new facts about the world that the Church carefully considered and “picked up” as time went on. This was a realization in the early times of the Church when the apostles and leaders realized that by approximately 60-70AD that the world wasn’t going to end immediately. They formulated a process in which revealed truths would be reviewed for consistency with all other known Truths. If the truth didn’t contradict anything, it became Truth. This is where many of the strange beliefs come from in the Church. In particular popular attacks — people like to ask why the Church believes certain ways about Mary. These strange teachings took years and years of influential people and scholars to formulate. Suffice to say, they’re very well thought out!
More on these subjects in posts to come.
Ever wonder about what Truth is? That is, the existence of a set of laws that govern right or wrong. While I could argue many ways of how Truth is real, there’s an interesting property of Truth that helps create a perfect moral clarity.
I think most people wish they had an instruction manual to life sometimes. They want to ask the question, “really — was I right or wrong here” or, “I wish I knew if that was the right thing to do.” Unfortunately no one complete guide exists, it comes in bits and pieces. The important thing is that there is a collection of these “Truths”, things that are always right or always wrong.
My friends, I can teach you the most important thing you need to know about Truths — they are always consistent. What I mean is that in every situation, a Truth always gives you an answer. I recently debated two separate issues: embryonic stem-cell research and shooting the cat burglar. They are different, but they both are based on a simple Truth: murder is always wrong. With a clear definition of murder (read the articles) one has perfect moral clarity on both of these questions.
Its great to live your life in a consistent, steady course. I know many of you will disagree, but true happiness doesn’t come from being a ball of contradictions. No, a purposeful and meaningful life is one that is neat, orderly, and consistent. Once you know Truths you will see that the clutter of your life can be easily untangled. Consistency is everything.
Consistency is also important when it comes to discovering Truths. They all come from one source, G-d and they are in my opinion our greatest proof of His existence. If you discover some saying or something you read and ask yourself, “is that really a Truth?” — remember consistency. No Truth can contradict another Truth.
I will always respect your position as long as you are consistent in your beliefs. But make no mistake, if you can’t tell me consistently who and what you are, then what are you?
I will close this post by saying that the Church has the greatest collection of Truths. Guided by G-d, the Church can not go wrong. It will not embrace things to itself that are not clearly right or wrong. This is why many things (e.g., existence of life on other planets, Evolution, etc.) the Church has no position because there isn’t any truth revealed yet. So while we lack a “instruction manual” to life, the Church is your best collection to find one.
I write to you today with the news that New Jersey has voted ‘no’ to spending state money on Stem Cell research. This is both a good and bad thing. First, with Jersey taxes being so ridiculously high, its good that we’re not spending additional money on something even more burdensome. This is bad because supporting morally right stem cell research is a good thing to do. The question is then, what is morally right stem cell research? We must find the answer because states are proposing to do research in this promising area and we must guide our legislature in the right way.
Lets begin with some basic information. Respect for human life is a center point of living a life of Christ. Life is more precious than any thing that we have ever been given. Valuing that life, from its beginning to its natural end is important to do because it demonstrates to G-d that you and I love life as much as He does. It is from this viewpoint of life that the question of ‘Is Stem Cell Research right or wrong?’ can be addressed.
Human life is most precious of all life for humans carry within them a soul, a tiny piece of the infinite G-d, perfect and divine in every way that G-d is. So much does G-d love you that he was willing to come to this world in human form and endure suffering and death just for you! This is so that you could come to know him and obtain one day the gift of living by his side for all eternity. But, I digress. Because you carry such a gift of a godlike presence within you (note the lower-case g), your life has value beyond measure. So do the lives of everyone else.
We as people are called to use our lives to help the lives of others. Unless it is in the act of defending another’s life, we should look to help others without irreparably harming our own precious life. Stem cell research can be right in many ways, following this consistent guideline.
First, adult stem cell research which has remarkable promise is certainly a right thing to do. This is when a human (no matter the age) uses cells that have the ability to reproduce into other forms without harming the human self. Since the body can reproduce the missing stem cells, they are replenished soon after extraction. Volunteering for this is like giving blood, a noble and wonderful thing to do for others.
Now on to the tricky part of embryonic stem cell research. When harvested from unused organs that don’t impact the life of a embryo or newly born human, this type of stem cell is perfectly fine and moral. Its important to pay attention to the consistency of my message – this is simply life using itself to help others without causing irrepable harm. Since this is the case for a baby, the child no longer needs its embryonic cells and thus it causes the child no harm to give them up for others.
The only time embryonic stem cell harvesting is wrong is when my message of life is no longer followed. This would be when harvesting the cells comes from the destruction or irreparable harming of one human to benefit another. To kill or permanently damage an embryo or a child to harvest their stem cells is thus wrong.
The question becomes more sticky because some will argue that an embryo isn’t a human life yet and thus to grow embryos to kill them is perfectly right. Of course, this gets into the question of ‘when does life begin?’ and quite simply, no one really knows exactly when this happens. G-d has eluded to it in scripture as occuring before the baby is born as in one (of many) examples, “When Elizabeth heard Mary’s greeting, the child lept in her womb” (Luke 1:41) which indicates that the child was happy to hear Mary’s arrival, just as his mother Elizabeth was. The child had the ability to sense emotion and thus must indeed be alive. I will plan to write more on this question as time goes on.
The Church thus maintains in order to “play it safe”, life begins at conception and although it could be debated still, there’s really no scientific way to observe it by measurement. So I maintain that from the moment of conception, the preciousness of life must be maintained. Thus, harvesting cells in an destructive way from an embryo (i.e., post-conception, pre-birth) of a human beign for any reason is morally wrong.
I woke up today to the Michael Smerconish program on the radio, and apparently the police had very recently captured John Timoney, the lead suspect of the October 31st murder of Philadelphia police officer Charles Cassidy. Of course, this brought up some sort of discussion of whether or not the death penalty should be applied to John. Much of the frustration over this case is not only from the barbaric murder of officer Cassidy, but the past killing of Philadelphia police officer Daniel Faulkner in 1981 by Mumia Abu-Jamal. Smerconish was attempting to capture the moment of hatred towards the alleged barbaric act of Timoney. The goal was to preserve this moment so that potentially — years down the road — we wouldn’t have crowds of people supporting Timoney and attempting to get him off the death row.
Although I strongly disagree with Smerconish’s attitudes by feeling his objective is not good natured, it brings up an important question — is it right to take the life of someone who took another’s life?
Capital punishment has been stated by the Church morally to be wrong in almost all cases,
“Assuming that the guilty party’s identity and responsibility have been fully determined, the traditional teaching of the Church does not exclude recourse to the death penalty, if this is the only possible way of effectively defending human lives against the unjust aggressor. If, however, nonlethal means are sufficient to defend and protect people’s safety from the aggressor, authority will limit itself to such means, as these are more in keeping with the concrete conditions of the common good and are more in conformity to the dignity of the human person.” – Catholic Catechism, 2267.
Simply stating that unless the aggressor can not be stopped from killing further human lives, the death penalty is indeed wrong. Of course, now that Timoney is no longer a threat to any other human life, killing him would indeed be murder and thus be a grave sin.
My take on this is to explain the position a bit further. First you have to understand the definition of murder that the Church has. Murder is the intentional act of killing another human being unless in the defensive act of preserving human life (including self-preservation). Let us not kid around here, the Truth is: murder is being committed by the death penalty for it is not an act of defense. It is wrong. A non-lethal solution such as prison is the right thing to do.
We as people are called to follow in Christ’s footsteps. We must never kill another human. We have to keep our tempers in check and guard against the ‘heat of the moment’ where we’d like to kill someone for killing another.
When Christ was brought before the leaders of the Jewish temple, he was accused in being in league with Satan and was thus condemned to death on a cross. Even though Christ knew this was going to happen, he didn’t strike his accusers down — albeit he would have been right to do so. No, Christ’s message is one of a pure love, a love that always leaves the door open to forgiveness and repentance.
Cassidy and Faulkner have ended their journeys here on this Earth. But Timoney’s journey hasn’t. There must always be given time to him to repent and change his ways, and make up to us as best he can for what was taken.
Christ says, (Mat. 5:44) “Love your enemies and pray for those who persecute you.” If Timoney is society’s enemy, he too should be loved and given this chance. For Cassidy’s family, this might be quite possibly the hardest thing they will ever have to do in their entire lives: forgive him. “For if you love those who love you, what reward do you have?”
Christ’s message is a hard one to swallow but it is necessary that we do so. If we are to be like Him, we must aspire to be like His love, a more perfect and wholesome love than what is conventional. For if He could forgive even Timoney, there would be even greater hope for us and our salvation too. Love like Christ.
Throughout this blog, you will notice that I capitalize the first letter of the word Truth sometimes, and other times I leave it in its improper format: truth. Using Truth in the proper sense means that I am referring or stating an absolute truth, a statement that can never be argued as wrong in any circumstance.
For example, the statement, “Murder is wrong.” is a Truth because it can never be false. It is absolute in that it can never change under any circumstance.
In contrast, the statement, “Chicken is delicious!” is a truth because it is subjective meaning that it can be true for some people and false for others. It depends on the person, whereas Truth never depends on any person’s point of view.
I will reference my Truths as often as I can. If a Truth comes from Scripture, which is a book of Truths, then it is easily referenced in (book chapter:verse) format. Since I do not believe in sola scriptura, Truths can be revealed to others and written by holy people, especially the Saints. There is a governing body called The Church which determines what is Truth and what is not after careful review of the arguments. Furthermore, I do believe that G-d is guiding The Church so that it can’t ever be wrong in its choices. A discussion of this is beyond the scope of this entry.
Sacred Scripture (the Bible) is used throughout this blog to underline certain Truths. The New Revised Standard Version (NRSV) edition is the copy that I use. Scripture is infallable meaning it is Truth, however the literal interpretation of the text in the Bible is impossible to be entirely True. Instead, consider that the Bible is a literary device — its a collection of the best Truths that mankind has ever been revealed to by G-d. People wrote it, and their contexts, culture and language were vastly different than today. Although the message they wrote is without a doubt G-d’s word to mankind and this makes it infallable.
There’s many arguments to back me up on this one, and to date — none can really make a compelling argument to me that sola scriptura is true, nor that any one specific version of the Bible is “more True” than this version.
