Why Does the Catholic Church have so many Rules!?

Question: Why does the Catholic Church have so many rules!?

This is a common question/complaint from both Catholics and non-Catholics alike.  Many people perceive the Church as overly strict and rule-laden.  Why does the Church place these seemingly burdening laws upon its members?  A few responses might be in order.

First, for some people this critique of the Church may be a simple parroting of a common objection they’ve repeatedly heard over the years, perhaps without really reflecting on it.  A few times I have (somewhat tongue-in-cheek) asked the person to list which rules they mean.  Let’s sit down with pen and paper and list which rules it is we object to.  There are, after all, only ten Commandments and six Precepts of the Church.  Which shall we do away with?  The one about murder?  Adultery?  Stealing?  This is a bit of a sarcastic response, but it gets to the heart of the question: rather than just resent some abstract idea of “so many rules,” what specifically is the objection?

Well, in truth there are more rules than just the Ten Commandments and the Precepts of the Church.  Universal Church law, the Code of Canon Law, has 1752 canons!  What could possibly necessitate so many laws?  Consider for a moment that the current NFL rule book runs 88 pages.  88 pages of rules just to play a game with an oblong ball!  If it takes 88 pages to lay out the rules of a game, isn’t it reasonable that a certain complexity would grow around the life of an organization with 1.1 billion members worldwide?  That’s worth considering: what kind of system of rules should one expect to unite 1.1 billion people?  Given the scale of the Church as an organization made of human beings, one should not be surprised that a body of law has grown up around it for the sake of unity and good order.

It may not be rules in general that a person has a problem with, but the idea that certain rules are arbitrary or unreasonable.  That’s a different story.  We can all agree we should have rules in the world, from traffic laws to rules of Scrabble.  But we object to rules and laws that are contrary to reason or which place pointless restrictions on our freedom.  So the question should be, is this particular rule reasonable or unreasonable?  This takes some exploration, openness, and study.  For instance, the Church gives a handful of requirements for a person to be a baptismal sponsor (godmother or godfather).   The Church requires, for example, that the sponsor be at least 16 years of age and a fully initiated Catholic (baptized, confirmed, and practicing their faith).  This often causes new parents consternation, especially if they’ve already asked their 13-year-old Lutheran niece to be the godmother.  But are these rules really arbitrary or unreasonable?  The Church is simply ensuring that a baptismal sponsor be sufficiently mature, and that the person sponsoring someone for initiation into the Church be themselves fully initiated members.  At face value both of those requirements are quite reasonable.  In my experience this is the case with nearly all the rules some find objectionable. 

Finally, it may be beneficial to question why one objects to a given rule.  We only resent the speed limit or a stop light when we have left ourselves less than enough time and want to speed.  We only tend to resent rules we want to break.  We dislike rules when our hearts are not in conformity with the rule.  If our heart is in conformity with the rule, we don’t feel oppressed by it, and in a sense are free from that rule.  Most us don’t “need” the fifth commandment to tell us not to murder our spouse.  We don’t find that rule oppressive because our heart is already in conformity to the rule.  So our dislike of rules may signal material for our examination of conscience.  

St. Irenaeus of Lyons - A Witness for Truth in the Early Church

Today, June 28th, the Church celebrates St. Irenaeus of Lyons.  Irenaeus, who lived in the late second century, was a bishop, a defender of the faith, and an early martyr.  A large portion of St. Irenaeus' writings have come down to us, including a large tome, Against Heresies, in which St. Irenaeus defended the true Catholic faith against attacks from groups known as Gnostics. 

One thing St. Irenaeus emphasizes is authority in the Church.  When there are people in the Church teaching contradictory things, to whom do we turn?  How do we know the truth which Christ handed on to the Apostles?  Who teaches with Christ's authority today?

In answering these questions, St. Irenaeus points his readers in the early Church to consider the tradition handed on in the Churches through the bishops, who are successors of the Apostles:

"It is possible, then, for everyone in every church, who may wish to know the truth, to contemplate the tradition of the apostles which has been made known to us throughout the whole world. And we are in a position to enumerate those who were instituted bishops by the apostles and their successors down to our own times, men who neither knew nor taught anything like what these heretics rave about" (Against Heresies 3:3:1).

St. Irenaeus doesn't stop there.  When it comes to knowing the truth, the Christian is instructed to turn to the Church of Rome, the Church that all the other Churches must agree with:

"But since it would be too long to enumerate in such a volume as this the succession of all the churches, we shall confound all those who, in whatever manner, whether through self-satisfaction or vainglory, or through blindness and wicked opinion, assemble other than where it is proper, by pointing out here the successions of the bishops of the greatest and most ancient church known to all, founded and organized at Rome by the two most glorious apostles, Peter and Paul, that church which has the tradition and the faith which comes down to us after having been announced to men by the apostles. With that church, because of its superior origin, all the churches must agree, that is, all the faithful in the whole world, and it is in her that the faithful everywhere have maintained the apostolic tradition" (Against Heresies 3:3:2).

Here, around the year 190 AD, St. Irenaeus of Lyons essentially gives us a description of Roman Catholicism!

More about Grace: Sanctifying and Actual

God’s grace, the gratuitous favor he shows us and His very own life He shares with us, comes in a few different forms.  We can distinguish first of all sanctifying grace and actual grace.

“Sanctifying grace is an habitual gift, a stable and supernatural disposition that perfects the soul itself to enable it to live with God, to act by his love” (CCC 2000).  Sanctifying grace is infused in our souls at baptism, and makes us pleasing to God.  Sanctifying grace elevates us to become sharers in God’s own life.  This state  of sanctifying grace can be lost through a mortal sin, but regained through repentance and the sacrament of confession.

Sanctifying grace, which is a permanent disposition, can be “distinguished from actual graces which refer to God’s interventions, whether at the beginning of conversion or in the course of the work of sanctification” (CCC 2000).  So the movement of God’s grace before our conversion and baptism, which cannot be attributed to sanctifying grace, is termed an actual grace.  Also, all the little (and larger) helps God gives us on a daily basis to live the twofold law of love of God and love of neighbor are actual graces.  When your natural inclination is to go off on someone with road rage, and you feel an intervening calm allowing you to practice patience, consider that an actual grace.

The point here, perhaps, is that God’s grace pervades our whole lives.  God’s very life dwells in us in a habitual, permanent way through the gift of sanctifying grace, and God offers us the aids to live a life worthy of His calling continually through actual graces.

What is so Amazing about Grace?

You've probably heard the hymn Amazing Grace many times.  Perhaps you can rattle off the lyrics without even thinking of them.  But have you stopped to consider how amazing grace really is?

The Catechism of the Catholic Church tells us that grace is  "favor, the free and undeserved help that God gives us to respond to his call to become children of God, adoptive sons, partakers of the divine nature and of eternal life."  The Catechism also tells us that grace "is a participation in the life of God."  (CCC 1996-1997)

The theology of grace has many divisions and nuances, but two aspects of grace stand out:  grace is healing, and grace is elevating.

Because of the fall and original sin, our human natures are wounded.  Our intellect is darkened, our will is weakened, and we have a tendency or proclivity to sin known as concupiscence.  We stand in need of grace to heal our wounded nature.  Grace is medicinal in this sense, and restores what was damaged due to sin.

But grace doesn't end there.  Grace actually lifts us up beyond where our nature would be even without sin.  Grace is elevating.  Human nature, even freed from sin, cannot reach its goal of communion with God.  Grace elevates our nature, making us "partakers of the divine nature."  We become by grace and adoption what Christ is by nature: sons of God.  This supernatural gift goes far beyond restoring what was lost through sin; grace far exceeds any expectations humanity could have had by making us like God.  We call this deification - being made sharers of God's own trinitarian life.  That is amazing grace!

What is Marriage?

Pope Francis recently promulgated his Post-Synodal Apostolic Exhortation Amoris Laetitia, or The Joy of Love, discussing marriage and family.  Amoris Laetitia stands as one element within a great tradition of Catholic thought on marriage and family, and must be read in light of that tradition.  The tradition of the Church has a very definite notion of what marriage is, an idea of marriage that is often not shared by secular culture.

In fact, many discussions in our culture today about marriage don’t even ask the question “What is marriage?”  When people advocate new norms for marriage that don’t accord with the collective wisdom of the past, the last question that is ever asked is, what is the fundamental nature of marriage?  What is marriage all about?  What is its purpose or goal?  So let’s ask that question: What is marriage?

The Catechism of the Catholic Church defines marriage in this way:  "The matrimonial covenant, by which a man and a woman establish between themselves a partnership of the whole of life, is by its nature ordered toward the good of the spouses and the procreation and education of offspring; this covenant between baptized persons has been raised by Christ the Lord to the dignity of a sacrament."

Perhaps this is not the most romantic description of marriage you’ve ever read, but it does bring out certain essential elements worth noting:

·        Marriage is a covenant.  That is, marriage is a sacred oath that establishes a familial relationship between two people.  This is not a mere contract, or exchange of goods.  A covenant forms two people into one.

·        Marriage is a partnership of the whole of life.  In other words, unlike other bonds or forms of friendship, marriage has a kind of comprehensiveness to it.  All of life is shared.  Marriage is a comprehensive bond in that it includes the whole of the human person: it is a partnership of body, mind, soul, and all the realities that go along with human life.  Marriage is also a partnership of the whole of life in the temporal sense, that is, marriage is comprehensive in time.  Marriage is “until death do we part.”  This reflects the radically comprehensive gift of self that defines marriage.

·        Marriage is ordered to the good of the spouses.  The primary good we can will our spouse is their salvation!  But the good of the spouses includes all the dimensions of human life.

·        Marriage is ordered to the procreation and education of children.  Here our contemporary culture is more and more departing from this vision of marriage.  In a variety of ways, a wedge has been driven between marriage and children.  But the tradition of the Church clearly sees that (all things considered), marriage is for children, and (all things considered) the best place for a child to be raised is within the covenant of marriage.

·        Finally, for two baptized Christians, marriage takes on another reality: marriage is a sacrament.  A sacrament is an outward sign, instituted by Christ, to give grace.  Hence, marriage is an outward sign, willed by Jesus Himself, to give us grace.  If marriage is an outward sign, what is it a sign of?  As we shall see, marriage is an outward sign of Christ’s love for the Church.

Various attacks on the institution of marriage, or realities that weaken marriage all deform on or another of these aspects of the notion of marriage.  They imply different answers to the question, what is marriage?  Marriage is viewed as less than totally comprehensive; or not permanent; or divorced from procreation.  We shall see, however, that this vision of marriage upheld by the Catholic Church finds its grounding in creation itself, in the design of God, and in the redeeming work of Christ.  We will also see that this vision of marriage truly responds to the deepest longings of the human heart.

Pope Francis, Amoirs Laetitia, and the Tradition of the Church

On April 8^th, Pope Francis promulgated his Post-Synodal Apostolic Exhortation Amoris Laetitia, or The Joy of Love.  The document is a kind of summary of two synods (or gatherings) of bishops over the last two years discussing marriage and family.  Amoris Laetitia is like the Pope’s encouragement to the Church regarding marriage and family in light of the discussions at the synods.

Amoris Laetitia runs to over 250 pages, and commentators from all quarters of the Church and secular world have been quick to pull out texts to form sound bites appropriate for the nightly news or social media.  Some are quick to claim that the Pope is changing doctrine or Church discipline.  Others point out that this is simply not the case, nor is it even possible.  Like any papal text of such density, however, it will take the Church some time to read, study, and appropriate the Holy Father’s words.

It’s of the greatest importance to realize that Pope Francis’s Amoris Laetitia did not arise in a vacuum.  The Pope’s new exhortation stands as one element within a great tradition of Catholic thought on marriage and family, and must be read in light of that tradition.  Teachings on marriage and family go all the way back to Jesus Himself as recorded in the Gospels, and to St. Paul and the other biblical writers.  The biblical witness to marriage and family must remain normative for us since it reflects either the very words of Christ Himself, or otherwise the inspired word of God in the scriptures.  There is also a great wealth of teaching regarding marriage and family in the early Church Fathers, as well as saints and doctors of the Church throughout the centuries.  Even in the last century, the Popes have frequently offered teaching on marriage and family, most notably Pope Pius XI’s Casti Connubii (1930), Blessed Pope Paul VI’s Humanae Vitae (1968), and Pope St. John Paul II’s Familiaris Consortio (1981), as well as his group of teachings known collectively as The Theology of the Body.  It is this tradition of Catholic thought that can act as an effective key for reading and understanding Pope Francis’ latest link in the great chain of church teaching on marriage and the family.

But how can we distill such a wealth of wisdom from so many authors over so long a period of time?  Thanks be to God, the Church has given us the Catechism of the Catholic Church, an authentic summary of this great tradition that pulls from and incorporates all these sources.  The Catechism of the Catholic Church deals with marriage and family under the heading of the seven sacraments, as well as in the context of living the moral life in Christ.  Hence, over the next several weeks, these articles will focus on an overview of the beautiful Catholic teaching on marriage and family as it is presented in the Catechism.  After that, we will be ready to look at a summary of Pope Francis’ Amoris Laetitia.

So next week we will ask a very fundamental question: What is marriage?  Perhaps take the next week and ask yourself how you would answer that question: What is marriage?  How would you define it?  Why does marriage exist?  What is the purpose or goal of marriage?  This is the most basic question we can ask, because until we know what something is we can’t know anything about how to use it, what will make it thrive, or what could make it suffer.

Abortion and the Catholic Vote

A couple of weeks back I wrote a letter to the editor in the Diocese of Green Bay newspaper, The Compass regarding the issue of abortion in this election year. Here is the letter:

I am not a single-issue voter. That is, I do consider more than one issue when evaluating a candidate. However, there are single issues that are so fiendish that, in my mind, they disqualify a candidate from getting my vote. For instance, if a candidate were to favor the legalization of race-based slavery, I obviously couldn't vote for him. If a candidate favored the legalization of domestic abuse, no vote from me. If a candidate favored the legalization of something outlandish like kitten-torture-for-fun, I simply couldn't vote for him. It doesn't matter what his other policies are, or even how likely it is that this odd-ball policy would be enacted. It doesn't even matter if I agree with that candidate on every other issue. Other issues don't really matter at that point. His position on any one of the above mentioned issues (and hundreds of others we could imagine) would disqualify him from holding office. I think many people would find this line of thinking very reasonable. Many of these examples are only hypothetical or even imaginary (like kitten-torture-for-fun). But if a candidate and his party platform supported the legal killing of unborn human beings, that should clearly qualify as one of these unspeakably heinous disqualifying factors. It doesn't matter what one's position is on the economy, foreign policy, immigration, or anything else. If you and your party celebrate abortion on demand, you won't get my vote. It baffles me that faithful Catholics could think otherwise.

I'd note that my position seems at least consistent with the United States Conference of Catholic Bishop's Forming Consciences for Faithful Citizenship (#42):

As Catholics we are not single-issue voters. A candidate's position on a single issue is not sufficient to guarantee a voter's support. Yet if a candidate's position on a single issue promotes an intrinsically evil act, such as legal abortion, redefining marriage in a way that denies its essential meaning, or racist behavior, a voter may legitimately disqualify a candidate from receiving support.

I say that my letter is "consistent" with the USCCB guidelines, since those guidelines don't say that a Catholic "must" or even "should" disqualify a candidate based on a single issue concerning an intrinsic evil.  They merely state that that one "may legitimately" do so.  Admittedly, my position is a bit stronger, but I think my argument justifies this.

At the risk of repeating what I wrote in the letter to the editor, I will summarize my argument succinctly as follows:

1. (General Principle)  There are certain single issues that are so crucial, that a faulty stance on that one issue ought to disqualify a candidate from consideration by any voter of good will.
2. (Specific Application)  Abortion is such an issue.

In the following issue of the Compass, Sr. Ruth Battaglia CSA, who works as a Pastoral Associate at Holy Family Parish in Brillion, wrote the following response.  I offer my response and comments to her letter in purple:

It would be nice if deciding who to vote for was as simple as Mike Brummond suggests in the March 11 issue of the Compass. (I'm not sure what aspect of what I wrote suggested to Sister that this is a simple matter.  I proposed one criteria, not an entire voters' guide.  Even if one were to accept this one criteria, there would still be others to apply.  As I said at the opening of my letter, "I am not a single-issue voter."  Calling my position "simple" seems to be just a case of ad hominem.)   From my perspective it does matter what parties' and candidates' policies are beyond abortion, as weighty as that it.  (First off, a candidate's policies do matter to me beyond the issue of abortion, so long as we are speaking of the pool of candidates who oppose the legalized murder of unborn children.  So it seems to me Sister must be denying #2 of my basic argument.  She must not think that abortion is the kind of issue that should disqualify a candidate from consideration.  I have to think she agrees with #1.  For instance, I'd be willing to bet a box of donuts that Sister Ruth would not support a candidate who lined up with her on every issue she mentions below, yet supports the legalization of race-based slavery.  Or religious genocide.  So here's the rub:  Why doesn't abortion qualify for Sister and so many other Catholics as a disqualifying issue?  Certainly some "Catholics" simply dissent from Church teaching on abortion and are actually pro-choice.  I want to give Sister the benefit of the doubt, and assume she wishes Roe v. Wade to be overturned, and to see an end to abortion in our country.  So, again, why would abortion not be a disqualifying issue?  I'd like to suggest it is because we have become desensitized to the reality of abortion.  We either no longer avert our minds to the fact that abortion is the murder of innocent unborn human beings, or that concept has become so sanitized to us that in no longer produces in us the appropriate response.  I think I can illustrate this point.  Instead of abortion, imagine we were speaking of infanticide.  Imagine a candidate or party whose platform supported the legalization of a parent's right to euthanize their child up to three months after birth.  Would Sister Ruth's last sentence make any sense if we made this substitution?  Imagine her saying "From my perspective it does matter what parties' and candidates' policies are beyond infanticide as weighty as that it."  Of course not!  That sounds ludicrous to us because we still  instinctively recognize the gravity of the crime of murdering born children.  But we have lost that same sense of gravity when it comes to the unborn.  My challenge to Sister Ruth would be this: explain how something like legalized infanticide could be a disqualifying factor for a candidate (I'm assuming she would say so), but abortion is not.  Ultimately she has to concede one of the following: 1) Infanticide would also not be a disqualifying issue (a monstrous thought), 2) The unborn are less human or less deserving of legal protection than a born child (denying Catholic teaching), or 3) The unborn are just as human, but she is being inconsistent.)

I do not want my vote to support abortion (I certainly hope not, or that would be formal cooperation in a grave intrinsic evil, which would itself be a mortal sin), but I also do not want my vote to support actions of war, torture, violence, racism, sexism, building walls, mass deportations, refusal to raise the minimum wage, ignoring the poor, or favoring corporations and industry to the detriment of Earth and its inhabitants now and in the future, to name some of my additional concerns. (First off, some of the things she states are just misleading or ingenuous, like "ignoring the poor."  There isn't a party platform or candidate who is running that supports "ignoring the poor."  Perhaps sister disagrees with the means by which a candidate or party proposes to deal with the poor, but simply tagging it as "ignoring the poor" is an example of what she criticizes below, a "social media sound bite."   But more to the point, what Sister fails to mention to the reader is that not all these issues are of the same gravity.   Our Catholic Tradition recognizes some things as intrinsic evils.  While there are some matters that good, well-informed Catholics may disagree on, there are other things that are always wrong in every situation.  While there are some issues that Catholics can argue about regarding how to prudentially act, there are some issues where there is no argument; they are simply, unequivocally wrong.  Abortion - the intentional killing of an innocent human being in the womb - is one such issue.  As far as I can tell, the only other intrinsic evil Sister Ruth mentions in her litany is torture, and perhaps racism and sexism, depending on what exactly she means by those things.  As the US Bishops have said in Forming Consciences for Faithful Citizenship, the Church's defense of life is distorted by "a moral equivalence that makes no ethical distinctions between different kinds of issues involving human life and dignity. The direct and intentional destruction of innocent human life from the moment of conception until natural death is always wrong and is not just one issue among many. It must always be opposed.")

These complex issues bear some weight on the scale of life issues that I care about. (I agree with Sister here that these issues bear some weight.  But certainly not all to the same degree.  I do think that once one has disqualified candidates that support the legalized murder of unborn children, these issues all need to be weighed.  But I'm left wondering which of these issues Sister thinks are proportionately grave so as to balance the 54 million abortions in the U.S. since 1973.) Therefore, it is vital that I learn more about the candidates and their policies than from social media sound bites, that I have basic understanding of the issues facing our state and our nation, and that I pray and discern over the ballots that I will cast.