Q&A 149
Q. Wsup! As usual many thanks for the Q&As! I've been following them for the last 2 years now and I've learnt a lot! More than I have from going to Church actually!
A. That's rather unfortunate to be honest...
Q. So if I'm learning all this direct from my phone, why do I need to go to Church on Sunday?
A. Because Sunday Mass is not meant to be a class lecture, but a family reunion. Revisit Q&A 4.
Q. Will do! Meanwhile, if I had to be brutally honest about why I no longer attend Mass on Sundays, it would boil down to one intellectual debate I have not been able to settle...
A. Oookay... This sounds serious!
Q. You see. All the Q&As you've posted and all the books written by the saints and encyclicals by Popes etc. all make sense - but only within the system of the Church. Only within the confines of the Bible.
So my difficulty is precisely about that system and that Bible. How in the world can we be sure that Christianity - out of all the other religions on offer - is THE supernatural religion, is the real or true religion? What if all those stories are made up? Why didn't the Hindus experience this revelation? Why can't we argue that Islam is the revealed revelation? They have a book too called the Koran! They have some history too!
A. Wow! You have voiced the one objection to religion or Christianity that I'm finding more and more common nowadays. Basically it argues that the Bible should be shelved in the fantasy section with Harry Potter and Lord of the Rings, not in the biographies section with Long Walk to Freedom or Unbowed or the spiritual-motivational section with The Monk who Sold His Ferrari, Who Moved My Cheese and Seven Habits of Highly Effective Teens.
Q. Exactly! The Christian religious system is just one more option and the Bible in particular is at best a collection of myths and fantasy stories.
Don't get me wrong! They have done some good to some people... but so did Chronicles of Narnia and The Art of Total Living. For me they just don't have anything unique that other religions cannot claim as well. It may well have been made up by humans - how can we be sure? Every other kind of religion also would say that theirs is divine. What else does it offer?
And if you argued that Christianity is the only one that speaks of resurrection I would have to correct you and point out that Ancient Greek religion also speaks of resurrection... Not to mention the ancient Egyptian religion.
A. That is true, although the Greek and Egyptian religions from my understanding spoke of a resurrection of specific people - usually gods. Christianity is the only one that speaks of your resurrection and the resurrection of all mankind.
Q. What would you say to someone who thinks that Christianity is something that was made up to give humans some discipline and direction?
A. I'd tell him that he is wrong, right and incomplete.
Wrong if he implies it was made up by humans alone.
Right in that it does give discipline and direction.
Incomplete in that it offers more than just discipline and direction.
Q. Elaborate please.
A. The Church like her Sacraments, like Christ Himself and indeed like each one of us has a physical, material part and a spiritual, immaterial part.
Christ established plenty of both for example the sacraments themselves: He established what their material and immaterial parts are. So much so that no Pope or group of cardinals or even all the members of the Church could change them however much they unanimously agreed. That is the way Christ established them. He is their author. Only He has the author-ity to change them. The Church is merely their custodian. And incidentally, this is where many misunderstand the Church and label her backward, draconian, dogmatic, etc. As Martin Luther King Jnr very beautifully wrote, the Church is not meant to be a thermometer of society but a thermostat for society.
But as custodian, there are a number of physical elements the Church has established so as to better preserve, better proclaim, better explain and better administer. For example: Christ instituted the Sacrament of Confession when on Resurrection Sunday He gave the apostles the power to forgive or retain sins. That was about it. The rest of what we recognise today as the Sacrament of Confession came from the experience of the Church: if the apostles - and their successors - had the power that Christ himself had to forgive and retain sins, how would they know which sins to forgive and to which not to forgive (to retain)? It became pretty clear early on that the apostles and their successors had first to know what the sins of the person seeking forgiveness were. How would they know what sins these were? The penitent had to tell them what sins he wanted forgiven. Thus begun the practice of mentioning your sins to a descendant of one of the apostles. And together with that, the external rules that a priest cannot mention your sins to anyone for whatever reason, about what kind of penance and restitution the priest can impose, etc. All these serve to highlight and better practice those words of Christ on that glorious Easter day: "Receive the Holy Spirit. If you forgive anyone's sins, they are forgiven; if you retain anyone's sins, they are retained." (Jn 20:22-23)
To be continued...
7th May 2017