CONTRARIAN VIEWS of TR A D ITIO N A L CA TH O LIC TEA C H IN G S

J. ROBERT M ACK

All arguments in this book are Scripture-based when possible. Otherwise, writings of the Church Fathers, Councils or Papal edicts are relied upon for the contrarian opinions. All Scripture quotes are excerpts from THE JERUSALEM BIBLE, copyright 1966 by Darton, Longman & Todd, Ltd. and Doubleday, a division of Random House, Inc. Reprinted by Permission.

TABLE OF CONTENTS page Prologue Infallibility Chapter 1: The Extended Holy Family An attempt to enhance the humanity of Mary and Joseph as models of parenthood; confronting and countering the traditional arguments against other children of Mary; arguments against perpetual virginity and celibacy of Mary and Joseph Chapter 2: The Roman Church Does Permit Divorce It has been permitted, not excluded, by Gods chief spokespersons, i.e. Moses, Jesus, St. Paul, the Eastern Orthodox Church and numerous Popes, since the beginning of mans recorded relationship with the One God; the prevailing rationale for each change in practice after Jesus was to further the faith. Chapter 3: Jesus Chose A Married Clergy Married clergy, beginning with Peter and the other Apostles, persisted longer in the Roman Catholic Church than celibate clergy; the former for 1500 years, the latter only since the Council of Trent (1563 C.E.); the original practice should be restored; the expected benefits of celibacy to the Church are not demonstrated in practice Chapter 4: Precedents for Women As Ordained Clergy Three critical events in the public ministry of Jesus where a woman played the key role in furthering the mission of Jesus are highlighted, while the presence and availability of the Apostles was deliberately by-passed by Jesus; also other scriptural and historical precedents for women as priests 42 31 20 5 10

TABLE OF CONTENTS page Chapter 5: Evolution of Certain Moral Teachings Challenges the premise of onanism as the basis for prohibiting birth prevention; also challenges the natural law argument using Thomas Aquinas and the premise of natural in Natural Family Planning; also deals with the related topics of premarital sexual relations and masturbation Chapter 6: Life and Death Moral Decisions A contrarian position is presented regarding the beginning of life, especially as applicable to the moral issues of abortion, stem-cell research and cloning; also addresses euthanasia, assisted suicide, palliative care, persistent vegetative state, and determination of death for organ transplants Chapter 7: Indulgences and Purgatory Questions concerning the concept of temporal punishment being imposed on a physical body after it has separated from the soul and after time has stopped at the moment of death; challenges the lack of any foundation for these doctrines in either Scripture or early Tradition; counters with examples of Jesus forgiving unconditionally and immediately and with arguments based on earliest penitential practices Chapter 8: Essence of Seven Sacraments The long evolution of the distinguishing signs and forms of the seven sacraments is highlighted; questions the absence of direct links of the signs to institution by Christ; challenges the Churchs current resistance to changes that would benefit the sacramental life of the Church Chapter 9: The Marks of the Church The words of the Nicene Creed havent changed, but the original meanings have changed drastically; challenges the Churchs defense of the new meanings as self-serving and directed primarily to defending its claim to be the only true Church of Jesus Christ Bibliography 114
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PROLOGUE Donald Cozzens, in his book Sacred Silence, stated: Over the years, even centuries, historically conditioned practices, customs and teachings take on the dignity of divinely revealed dogmas. The mere suggestion that they be reviewed in the light of changing times and pastoral experience is determined by some members of the church, especially some of its leaders, to be dangerous, and those calling for such reviews disloyal. Responding to some groups who argued that dissent from official Roman Catholic teaching is illegitimate, Chicago Cardinal Joseph Bernardin once quoted Jesuit theologian (now Cardinal) Avery Dulles as follows: Room must be made for responsible dissent in the church. Theology always stands under correction. The good health of the church demands continual revitalization by new ideas. Nearly every creative theologian has at one time or another been suspected of corrupting the faith. The chapters of this book are offered both as attempts at responsible dissent as well as, in some cases, a re-analysis of historical and traditional developments in Roman Catholic teaching, from new perspectives. The teachings addressed in this book have all been authoritatively proclaimed by the Roman Church as if given to the church directly by Jesus or indirectly through the authority given to his apostle Peter. A common misconception by many Roman Catholics, as well as by most nonCatholics, is that every teaching by the Pope of Rome, the successor of Peter, is essentially infallible or unchangeable teaching. However, since the concept of infallibility as focused in the Pope was not even defined until the First Vatican Council in 1870, statements or teachings from Popes prior to that date generally do not need to be considered infallible. Nevertheless, Vatican Council II pointed out the obligation of Catholics to assent to all papal teaching even when it is not presented with the seal of infallibility, as follows: religious submission of will and of mind must be shown in a special way to the authentic teaching authority of the Roman Pontiff, even when he is not speaking ex cathedra. That is, it must be shown in such a way that his supreme magisterium is acknowledged with reverence, the judgments made by him are sincerely adhered to, according to his manifest mind and will. It is important to understand what infallibility is, as well as what it is not. Basically, infallibility, as defined by the Roman Church, means that the Pope is protected by the Holy Spirit from speaking in error about matters of faith and
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morals under the conditions listed below. Infallibility does not confer the ability to issue new revelations about Jesus or faith and morals, but only the ability and authority to clarify the existing body of faith and morals as it was proclaimed by Jesus. As defined, infallibility applies only when the Pope speaks ex cathedra (from his chair or throne), on matters of faith and morals, and with the intention of binding the whole church, or, alternatively, when the bishops of the whole Church define a dogma of faith (generally at an Ecumenical Council) in union with the Pope. Since it was defined, infallibility has only been officially invoked three times, always concerning doctrines and at no time concerning moral issues: 1) to define the doctrine of infallibility itself in 1870; 2) also in 1870, to confirm Pius IXs official declaration of the Immaculate Conception of Mary (which had already occurred in a Papal Bull of 1854) as infallible and 3) to define the bodily Assumption of Mary into heaven (without death or corruption of her body) by Pius XII in 1950. Historically, there have been a number of major examples of different popes overturning the authoritative dogmatic and moral teachings of a predecessor pope. Each is an example of infallibility (or its equivalent) becoming fallible! For instance, Pope Gregory the Great, in the late sixth century, confirmed authoritatively what had been believed about Jesus prior to that time, i.e. Christ alone was conceived without sin. This common belief derived from the fact that Christians had been taught that the sex act, because it was believed to necessarily involve lust, always included some element of sinfulness. Since Mary was born of human parents in the normal manner, Mary necessarily was born in sin. Obviously, the declaration by Pius IX fourteen hundred years later, of the Immaculate Conception of Mary (i.e. that she was born without sin) outright contradicted this longstanding earlier belief and the authoritative papal teaching of Gregory the Great. There is no authoritative or reliable historical source to document the details of Marys birth. Only the apochryphal Protoevangelium of James, believed to have been written about the year 150 C.E., purports to know and tell the story of Marys birth, her early upbringing until she became betrothed to Joseph and the story of the birth of Jesus. There is, however, no corroborating historical record that the Protoevangelium is based on factual information. Moreover, if it was, then nearly all of the details of our traditional Christmas story about the birth of Jesus would be negated. For example, according to the Protoevangelium, there was no denial of a room at the inn, Joseph was not present at the actual birth of Jesus because he was out seeking a mid-wife (two eventually show up and then in graphic detail verify Marys virginity after the birth of Jesus), and there was no appearance of an angel to any shepherds.
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Innocent IV introduced torture, to elicit confessions from heretics, into the Inquisition procedure (papal Bull, Ad Estirpanda, 1250 C.E.) even though the use of torture had been condemned in the strongest terms four hundred years earlier by Pope Nicholas I. Later, in a papal Bull of 1454, Romanus Pontifex, Pope Nicholas V gave his endorsement to the practice of enslaving conquered peoples. The practice of slavery then flourished throughout the Papal States and was extended, particularly over American Indians, to the churchs holdings in the New World. In 1891, Pope Leo XIII in Rerum Novarum repudiated the practice of slavery with the strong words that any legitimate excuse for slavery is denied. Pope Sixtus V, in a papal bull Effraenatum (1588), declared contraception and abortion at any stage of pregnancy, whether the fetus was animated or not animated, formed or unformed, to be a homicide, a mortal sin and grounds for excommunication. But then, just three years later (1591), Pope Gregory XIV in Sedes Apostolica stated that: Where there is no homicide or no animated fetus is involved, [the Church] should not punish more strictly than the sacred canons or civil legislation does. Civil law at the time held that a fetus did not become animated until at least 40 days after conception and did not treat contraception or abortion of a non-animated fetus as a homicide. The II Lateran Council in 1123 in Canon 13 stated: We condemn the detestable, disgraceful and insatiable rapacity of usurers which has been outlawed by divine and human laws in the Old and New Testaments, and we deprive them of all ecclesiastical consolation. We further command that no archbishop, no bishop, no abbot of any order, nor anyone in clerical orders shall, except with the utmost caution, dare receive [forgive] usurers, but during their whole life let them be stigmatized with the mark of infamy, and unless they repent, let them be deprived of Christian burial. In his book entitled Catholicism, Richard P. McBrien makes the following statements about the practice of usury (in the scriptures and through the Middle Ages this meant the lending of money for interest at any rate): Three papal bulls promulgated [by three successive Popes] over a seventeen-year period (1569-1586) had unequivocally denounced and condemned usury as immoral and unjust. In a slightly longer period of time, just thirty years, the bulls were deprived of force to influence anyones behavior. Theologians refused to support the teachings, and the laity continued about their business as if the teachings did not exist. St. Paul in I Cor. 5:11-12 stated the following: What I [Paul] wrote was that you should not associate with a brother Christian who is leading an immoral life, or is a usurer, or idolatrous, or a slanderer, or a drunkard, or is dishonest; you should not even eat a meal with people like that. Despite this history, today the Church is one of the worlds largest practitioners of usury, i.e. the borrowing and
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lending of money with interest. The Church, however, partially remains faithful to the ancient teachings by stating that charging excessive interest is sinful usury. Tradition is the second corner-stone on which the Roman Church bases its claim for authenticity in faithfully conveying the teachings of Jesus. The Scriptures, the Creed, the decrees of the seven Ecumenical Councils between 325 (I Nicaea) and 787 (II Nicaea), the writings of those considered to be Church Fathers (also generally between the first and eighth centuries), as well as early laws and liturgical practices, form a composite picture of the Churchs arguments for finding authentic Catholic teaching in Tradition. For legitimacy in relying on Tradition as an acceptable source, some scholars point to St. Pauls words in II Thes: 2:14-16: Through the Good News that we brought he called you to this [salvation] so that you should share the glory of our Lord Jesus Christ. Stand firm, then, brothers, and keep the traditions that we taught you, whether by word of mouth or by letter. Truth or authenticity of a particular tradition is seen in the consensus of the sources of the tradition, i.e. a perceived thread of agreement running back through the Patristic sources to the early Church and the Apostles. This does not explain why the outer limits of authoritative tradition extend some 750 years beyond the death of Jesus. Those who disagreed with what came to be considered the consensus were not accepted as authentic Fathers. In some cases, those who were accepted as authentic Fathers might, nevertheless, have had some theological opinions that were not universally shared but which were not condemned as heretical. Teachings (e.g. purgatory and indulgences) which first appeared in the body of later tradition but which had no foundation in the teachings of Jesus or the Apostles or in the patristic writings, should not continue to be endorsed as authentic teaching. As will be seen in the development of the chapters of this book, most of the subjects of this text were not found in their present form in either the Scriptures or in Patristic Tradition. In several instances the present practice has no foundation in tradition or is a major deviation from the original tradition. The purpose of this book is to examine certain significant teachings of the Popes and of the Roman Catholic Church which have been and still are proclaimed as constant, and supposedly irreversible teachings, as if presumptively infallible. The historical record, however, shows that the subjects treated herein leave many gaps in credibility as irreversible teachings because, in some cases, evidence of contrary facts has been ignored, covered over, or conclusions have been drawn from
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questionable interpretation, or from premises later disproved or later shown to be highly suspect. These contrary facts are documented in Scripture and/or other authentic patristic literature. Likewise, some teachings have taken on new meanings over the centuries, to the point that the original teaching is obscured or even negated. It is my hope that these pages will open debate and dialogue and even lead to meaningful reforms in regard to how the Church addresses the subjects raised in this book in the twenty-first century.
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Chapter One

THE EXTENDED HOLY FAMILY The Roman Catholic Church has always considered families as the essential building blocks for its faith community, the church, the body of Christ. A primary source for new members has been the growth of Christian families through the addition of multiple children to those families. A primary source for the sustenance of Christian faith has been the teaching, practical example and nurturing provided by Christian family members to each other. With all this value placed on family life, why has the Roman Catholic Church, throughout two millennia, worked so hard to downplay the parenthood of Mary and Joseph and their lives together as fully human husband and wife? Why has the Church not tried to capitalize on the reality of Mary and Joseph as a human married couple, parents of multiple children as was expected in their cultural and religious heritage? When the worlds rapidly expanding populations, and particularly Catholic families, were looking for compassionate and reasonable moral guidance from the Church regarding family limitation, Pope Paul VI responded with his encyclical Humanae Vitae which strictly banned all artificial methods of contraception. He compounded his insensitivity to the realities of married life by advising even young mothers, already burdened with as many children as their circumstances would permit, to live celibately if the rhythm method would not work for them, and look to the Virgin Mary as their model for the remainder of their married lives. The church would have us believe that the entire family relationship of the Holy Family is limited to the meager information recorded in the scriptures as angelic messages delivered to Mary and Joseph and embellished by a few infancy stories culminating in the trip to Jerusalem with their only (?) son Jesus at age twelve. At the same time it proclaims these basic parental and familial relationships of Joseph and Mary to Jesus, the Roman church has gone beyond the recorded historical facts to both deny that Jesus had any brothers or sisters and to turn Joseph and Mary into individual icons of celibacy and virginity. While there is no contemporary documentary evidence to support the latter position, the church has vehemently opposed any contrary view despite the fact that there is strong scriptural and limited non-scriptural support for the existence of other family members in the Holy Family.
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Scriptural Testimony Scripture provides just bits and pieces of information about the Holy Family as family. However, the following passage from Matthews Gospel fully documents the establishment of the traditional basic family unit (Mt.1:18-25): This is how Jesus Christ came to be born. His mother Mary was betrothed to Joseph, but before they came to live together, she was found to be with child through the Holy Spirit. Her husband Joseph, being a man of honor and wanting to spare her publicity, decided to divorce her informally. He had made up his mind to do this when the angel of the Lord appeared to him in a dream and said, Joseph, son of David, do not be afraid to take Mary home as your wife, because she has conceived what is in her by the Holy Spirit. She will give birth to a son, and you must name him Jesus, because he is the one who will save his people from their sins. When Joseph woke up he did what the angel of the Lord had told him to do: he took his wife to his home and though he had not had intercourse with her, she gave birth to a son; and he named him Jesus. Subsequently, there is Scriptural record of Joseph and Mary exercising their parental and family responsibilities to Jesus when they found refuge for the birth of Jesus in a stable in Bethlehem, when they received the visit from the astrologers or wise men from the East and when they fled to Egypt to escape the wrath of Herod, who sent his soldiers to attempt to kill the child whom the wise men had marked as the future king of the Jews. Other reported family events were the trips to Jerusalem for the ritual purification of Mary and the presentation of Jesus to God, as required under Mosaic law for every firstborn Hebrew male (Lk 2:22-24), and the annual trips for celebration of the festival of the Passover (Lk 2:41) until Jesus was at least 12 years old. At the end of this twelfth-year pilgrimage, Jesus remained behind in Jerusalem without the knowledge of his parents. His parents traveled for a full day toward Nazareth before realizing that Jesus was not to be found among their relatives and friends. They then returned to Jerusalem and found Jesus the next day in the Temple, sitting among the doctors, listening to them and asking them questions (Lk 2:42-46). Following a brief statement about the anxiety that Jesus had caused his parents, the gospel author Luke tells us that: He then went down with them and came to Nazareth, and lived under their authority. (Lk. 2:51) No further mention is made in any of the New Testament scriptures regarding the next eighteen years of Jesus life, nor of any further direct interaction of Joseph with Jesus. Some have argued
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that Joseph had no other role than to legitimize the birth of Jesus and to establish his status in the tribe of Judah as a descendent of David. There are several references to the presence of Mary, mother of Jesus, during his public ministry which began when Jesus reached the age of 30 years. For example, at the wedding feast at Cana in Galilee (Jn 2:1-12), and when Jesus was addressing a crowd gathered in a private home: his mother and his brothers appeared; they were standing outside and were anxious to have a word with him. (Mt 12:47) Lastly, Mary is named as one of several women who witnessed the death of Jesus on the cross (Jn 19:25-27) and as one who gathered with the Apostles after the Ascension (Acts 1:12-14) and probably, in the company of the apostle John, was present with the disciples for the Pentecost event. All of the preceding is a compact testimonial to Mary and Josephs recorded parental relationship and involvement in both the private and public life of their son, Jesus. At this point in the story of Jesus, the Roman Catholic Church closes the historical book on the makeup and life of the Holy Family. Scriptural References to Other Children Doing so ignores the several inspired scriptural references to other children of Mary and Joseph. One of the most notable of these records is the following passage from the gospel of Mark (6:1-4): Going from that district, he went to his home town and his disciples accompanied him. With the coming of the Sabbath he began teaching in the synagogue and most of them were astonished when they heard him. They said, Where did the man get all this? What is this wisdom that has been granted him, and these miracles that are worked through him? This is the carpenter, surely, the son of Mary, the brother of James and Joset, and Jude and Simon? His sisters, too, are they not here with us? Then Jesus said to them, a prophet is only despised in his own country, among his own relations and in his own house. A similar but slightly different list of brothers is found in Matthew (13:55-56) This is the carpenters son, surely? Is not his mother the woman called Mary, and his brothers James and Joseph (could easily be the same individual as Joset found in Mark) and Simon and Jude? His sisters too, are they not all here with us? Matthew also tells of the time when Jesus was with a crowd in a private home and someone told him that his mother and brothers were standing outside, wanting to speak with him (Mt. 12:46 50):
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He was still speaking to the crowds when his mother and his brothers appeared; they were standing outside and were anxious to have a word with him. But to the man who told him this Jesus replied, Who is my mother? Who are my brothers? And stretching out his hand toward his disciples he said, Here are my mother and my brothers. Anyone who does the will of my Father in heaven, he is my brother and sister and mother. The Church has never had an issue with the words quoted above as implying that Mary is not really the mother of Jesus. Why then should the brothers and sisters be singled out and attempts be made to reinterpret the words of Jesus? This response did not deny the existence of actual brothers and sisters. Rather, it made a clear distinction, in Jesus own words, between his natural family members and those who become members of his spiritual family through their faithfulness to the teaching of Jesus and their obedience to the will of God. It also shows Mary, his mother, and his brothers showing familial concern for Jesus, wanting to somehow steer him away from trouble with the authorities. The gospel of John records other incidents (2:11-12) and (7:1-10): This was the first of the signs given by Jesus: it was given at Cana in Galilee. He let his glory be seen, and his disciples believed in him. After this he went down to Capernaum with his mother and the brothers but they stayed there only a few days. After this Jesus stayed in Galilee; he could not stay in Judea because the Jews were out to kill him. As the Jewish feast of Tabernacles drew near, his brothers said to him, Why not leave this place and go to Judea, and let your disciples see the works that you are doing; if a man wants to be known he does not do things in secret; since you are doing all this, you should let the whole world see. Not even his brothers, in fact, had faith in him. Jesus answered: Go up to the festival yourselves: I am not going to this festival, because for me the time is not ripe yet. Having said that, he stayed behind in Galilee. However, after his brothers had left for the festival, he went up as well, but quite privately, without drawing attention to himself. It is significant that in each of these accountings, John clearly distinguishes the brothers of Jesus from the disciples of Jesus. Yet again, the Acts of the Apostles (1:12-14) recounts the return of the Apostles to Jerusalem from the Mount of Olives, where they had witnessed the ascension of Jesus into heaven. They gathered in the upper room where they were staying. After naming each of the apostles individually, the author then states: All these joined in continuous
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prayer together with several women, including Mary the mother of Jesus, and with his brothers. Lastly, the Apostle Paul is probably the most definitive in naming a brother of Jesus when he writes in Galatians (1:19-21): Even when after three years I went up to Jerusalem to visit Cephas [Peter] and stayed with him for fifteen days, I did not see any of the other apostles; I only saw James, the brother of the Lord, and I swear before God that what I have just written is the literal truth. Paul credits this same James with receiving a one-on-one appearance from Jesus, which places James on a par with only Mary Magdalen (see Mk. 16:9-11 & Jn. 20:11-18), Cephas and Paul, after his resurrection when he writes in I Cor: 15:3-8: Well then, in the first place, I taught you what I had been taught myself, namely that Christ died for our sins, in accordance with the scriptures; that he was buried; and that he was raised to life on the third day, in accordance with the scriptures; that he appeared first to Cephas and secondly to the Twelve. Next he appeared to more than five hundred of the brothers at the same time, most of whom are still alive, though some have died; then he appeared to James, and then to all the apostles; and last of all he appeared to me too. When the Letter of James was added to the approved list of New Testament writings in the fourth century, it was accepted primarily because it was believed to have been authored by James, the brother of Jesus. Eusebius, bishop of Caesarea and known as the Father of Ecclesiastical History, documents in his book the History of the Church, that this same James was the first bishop of Jerusalem from approximately 40 to 62 C.E. Based upon this historical fact we presume that at least one of the brothers of Jesus must have been a close follower of Jesus during his public preaching period. Two other early Christian writers documented that James was truly the brother of Jesus. Clement of Alexandria in his work entitled Homilies Clementines, referred to James as the brother of Our Lord and bishop of bishops. Later, when producing his Latin translation of the Bible known as the Vulgate, St. Jerome used the Latin word frater, which has the sole translated meaning of brother, in reference to James, and never used the Latin word for cousin. There is at least one contemporary, non-scriptural record of Jesus having at least one brother. The Jewish historian, Flavius Josephus (37-100 C.E.), in his book entitled: Antiquities of the Jews, written about the year 94 C.E., commented on the civil trial of James and identified him as the brother of Jesus, the so-called
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Christ. It is most significant that Josephus confirms the previously cited Christian records about James as the brother of Jesus. Arguments against Other Family Members Despite these several clear scriptural and other references to brothers of Jesus, the Roman Catholic tradition of Christianity has been adamant in proclaiming that Mary had no children other than Jesus and that she remained perpetually a virgin. To justify this position, notations are frequently included in footnotes to the biblical passages cited above, as for example in the Jerusalem Bible: In Hebrew and Aramaic (and many other languages), brothers is the word used for cousins or for even more distant relations of the same generation. No explanation is given for why the scriptures distinguish sisters of Jesus from the brothers of Jesus, if the argument is valid that brothers generically includes all cousins, close relatives and close friends or supporters. Writings of certain of the early church fathers (scholars) suggested that the individuals named as brothers and sisters of Jesus were children of an earlier marriage of Joseph, even though there has never been any authentic documentation of such an earlier marriage. Other arguments used to persuade that Mary had no other children are: the absence of any representation in Christian art of any brothers or sisters of Jesus, the fact that the first two of the four brothers named in Mt: 13:55 appear to be named in Mt: 27:56 as the sons of a different Mary and the words of Jesus while dying on the cross, addressed to Mary, his mother and to John, the beloved disciple: (Jn 19:26-27) Seeing his mother and the disciple he loved standing near her, Jesus said to his mother, Woman, this is your son. Then to the disciple he said, This is your mother. And from that moment the disciple made a place for her in his home. Special Role of John: The commissioning of John, the beloved disciple, by Jesus to take responsibility for the care of his mother after his death is not proof that Jesus had no other family members to whom he could make this request. Obviously, John was present with Mary at the foot of the cross and presented Jesus with the opportunity to make his request. The fact that none of Jesus brothers or sisters was present should not be seen as any more remarkable than the fact that none of the other apostles was reported as being present. If Jesus brothers and sisters were not traveling with Jesus on a daily basis, they might not even have known about his arrest on a Thursday, nor would they have had time to travel to Jerusalem to witness his crucifixion the following day. If any of them had been accompanying Jesus at the time of his arrest, they would have had every reason to run away in fear and confusion just as did all of the Apostles, except
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John and Peter. Even Peter may have avoided the crucifixion scene after he had denied being a follower of Jesus three times in Pilates courtyard. The transferal of responsibility for the care of Mary to John, the beloved disciple, rather than to one of her other children is also understandable if Jesus intent was to emphasize Marys future role as the mother of his new faith family, the Church. Redefining Brothers: It was not until the end of the 4th century that any Christian writer called the brothers in the scriptures cousins, so for more than 300 years there was no apparent dispute that Jesus had real brothers. Thus there was no authentic tradition in the early Church to sustain this argument. Without disagreeing that the word brothers can and did also have a wider connotation in several mid-eastern cultures and languages, why should we discount the literal meaning? If the scriptural interpreters believed that the authors intended to reference cousins, why did they not simply use the specific word for cousin that was available to them, as did St. Paul in Col. 4:10: Aristarchus, who is here in prison with me, sends his greetings, and so does Mark, the cousin of Barnabas? Why should we deny the most literal meaning of the word brother and force acceptance of a more generic definition of this term? Having actual brothers and sister(s) whose names are provided in the scriptures in the same context as references to the mother of Jesus is easier to believe and to accept than to have to create undocumented aunts and uncles, or a prior marriage for Joseph, to explain the parentage of these individuals as cousins or step-brothers/sisters or as generic brethren. Celibacy v. Husband/Wife: Does the Roman Church perceive sexual relations between Mary and Joseph as somehow debasing or sinful? When Joseph agreed to take Mary as his wife, why is it not reasonable to believe that they both then committed to a full and normal human marital relationship? There is no evidence that God or the angel of God placed any conditions or limitations such as celibacy or virginity on their marriage. Jesus elected to be born into a human family, and into a Jewish cultural environment that highly prized large families. He spent thirty of his thirty-three years in this world with this human family, apparently even becoming a carpenter just as was his father. During those same 30 years, why should we expect that Mary and Joseph were living in a unique and abnormal (for their time and circumstances) celibate relationship? It was not until the 13th century that Thomas Aquinas developed a theological argument that a virginal marriage could be a real marriage. He did this specifically to legitimize the Churchs claim that an unconsummated marriage between Joseph and Mary was a valid marriage.
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Why would we even want to deny a normal marital relationship between Joseph and Mary? Sexual relations between a husband and wife are not evil. In fact, consummation of a marriage through the act of intercourse, in Christian tradition (at least since the Council of Trent), is the confirmation of the sacramental bond. Joseph agreed to take Mary as his wife despite the revelation from the angel that Mary was already pregnant through the intervention of the Holy Spirit. There is no reason to disbelieve the uniqueness of the conception of Jesus, but there is also no reason to believe that Joseph and Mary did not have other children subsequent to the birth of Jesus. In fact, the New Testament scriptures already quoted provide inspired testimony from at least three (but potentially five) independent authors: the gospel writers Matthew, Mark and Luke are counted as one because they may have used an as yet unidentified common source for their information; John, obviously was able to obtain his information directly from Mary; Paul, developed his own sources, including a face-to-face meeting with James, but all of these contemporary sources agreed that Jesus did have brothers and sisters. Presenting Joseph as forever celibate and Mary as a perpetual virgin demeans the marital relationship of this human couple. Imposing the condition of celibacy on their marriage would invalidate the guidance provided to Joseph by the angel as he was planning to dismiss Mary because she was pregnant before they had consummated their relationship: Joseph, son of David, do not be afraid to take Mary home as your wife. (Mt: 1:20) This invitation or instruction in no way suggested that Joseph accept Mary as merely a consort or companion, or that he live with her as a brother and sister might live together. He was invited to accept Mary as his wife. We have no reason to impose limitations on their relationship that are not supported by any historical documentation and which are actually contravened by the scriptural records. According to the common understanding of the term virgin in the first two Christian centuries, it could be used to designate the age rather than the sexual status of a person. Thus, the same term could signify a young married person, or a person who had been a virgin when married, as well as a person who remained in a monogamous marriage, regardless of whether or not there were normal sexual relations or children resulting from that marriage. (There are tombstone inscriptions in both Hebrew and Greek which attest to married virgins.) Application of that title to Mary in early Christian tradition does not address or resolve the question of whether Mary remained a virgin after the birth of Jesus and throughout her lifetime. Joseph was a living member of the holy family for a minimum of twelve years and potentially up to thirty or more years. We have only one scriptural record (Jn
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6:41- 42) which indirectly suggests that Joseph was still alive at the time of Jesus public ministry. In that passage, John reports the following: Meanwhile the Jews were complaining to each other about him [Jesus], because he had said, I am the bread that came down from heaven. Surely this is Jesus, son of Joseph, they said. We know (emphasis added) his father and mother. How can he now say, I have come down from heaven? For these Jews to actually know Joseph, it seems most likely that he was still alive at or around the time of the public ministry of Jesus. As a practicing Jewish male, we should expect that Joseph would have been faithful to the law that required healthy Jewish males to seek to procreate. If Gods intention for Josephs marital relationship with Mary was contrary to what was expected of all married Jewish males, wouldnt it have been communicated by the angel to Joseph? If commitment to a mutual loving, giving sexual relationship (which is also open to the possibility of generating new life) between husband and wife is the essence of a Christian sacramental marriage, then why should we seek to exclude both of those elements from the marital relationship of Joseph and Mary? Why should we expect Mary and Joseph to have spent all those years together without the normal sexual fulfillment of their marital partnership? Just as Jesus increased in wisdom, in stature, and in favor with God and men (Lk: 2:52) for 30 years in a very human environment before going public, we should see Mary and Joseph in that same human milieu with normal human marital passions, emotions and interactions, and with other children of their marriage. Acknowledging Mary as the human mother of other children in addition to Jesus in no way compromises either our belief in Marys Immaculate Conception (i.e. our belief that Mary, from the first moment of her conception, remained fully in a loving relationship with God and at no time was subject to sin or the temptation to sin) or in her Assumption (i.e. our belief that Mary, at the end of her human life, was assumed without death or bodily corruption, directly into the fullness of eternal life with God in the next world). Seeing Mary as the mother of other children would reinforce our belief that Mary truly contributed a human nature (which grew and flourished within a natural human family) to Jesus. Christian Art: Not finding the brothers and sisters of Jesus portrayed in Christian art is a weak argument to attempt to offset the direct testimony of the inspired scriptures and of a non-Christian author. There are few portrayals of Joseph other than those pertaining to the infancy stories and the works featuring Mary always
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describe an incident or event where Mary is identified with the infancy stories or with the fulfillment of the mission of Jesus. The same observation can be made about the Apostles, the disciples and a whole host of individuals who appeared only briefly in the scripture narratives. Since no significant intervention or contribution to the mission of Jesus by the brothers or sisters of Jesus, other than his brother James, is reported in the scriptures, there was no particular reason to memorialize these individuals in art or sculpture. The one standout exception to the argument regarding no representation in art is the existence of the cathedral of St. James de Compostela in Spain. This cathedral is filled with exquisite carvings, paintings, manuscript illuminations and stained glass representations linking Jesus and James as brothers. The cathedral is also testimony to the endurance of the Gnostic strain of the early Christian beliefs with which James is traditionally identified. It should be noted that this association with Gnostic beliefs which were declared heretical by the early Church, gave even more reason for the Church to downplay the role of James than being identified as the brother of Jesus. The overall evidence is strongly in favor of a conclusion that Mary and Joseph had a normal human marital relationship which resulted in a family of several additional children after the birth of Jesus. Accepting this fact takes nothing away from the uniqueness of the conception and birth of Jesus, but it greatly enhances our view of Mary and Joseph as more ideal models for marital commitment and partnership. This is the portrait we should cherish of the fully human HOLY FAMILY, whose parents were also gifted with the unique privilege of parenting Jesus, the son of God, during his brief sojourn as both son of God and son of humans.
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Chapter Two THE ROMAN CHURCH DOES PERMIT DIVORCE The Roman Catholic tradition regarding marriage and divorce argues that God is the lawgiver from the beginning of creation. By empowering two unique genders, female and male, with the ability to procreate new human life, God established the basic family unit which constitutes marriage. Throughout all of human existence, it has generally been accepted that the generation of new life in sons or daughters imposes a concomitant responsibility to nurture and teach those children until they reach maturity and are able to singly fend for themselves or until the children are in turn married and the responsibility transfers to the newlymarried couple. Admittedly, in some societies this responsibility has been shared by multiple adults in tribal or extended family units, or has been taken over by state or government entities, but in all cases, parents or surrogate adults have carried the responsibility. However, it is not at all clear from recorded history that God willed that the marriage bond was forever unbreakable. In fact, just the opposite is abundantly clear. Mosaic Teaching Beginning with Moses, for over 1200 years of mankinds documented interaction with the same God recognized by both Jews and Christians, the lawmakers and interpreters of Gods will for humans permitted divorce and remarriage. (Deut. 24:1-2) Supposing a man has taken a wife and consummated the marriage; but she has not pleased him and he has found some impropriety of which to accuse her; so he has made out a writ of divorce for her and handed it to her and then dismissed her from his house; she leaves his home and goes away to become the wife of another man. Interestingly, under the Mosaic Law only a husband had the right to initiate a divorce, but then both parties to the divorce were free to remarry. The grounds for initiating divorces were both serious, such as for adultery or unfaithfulness, as well as so minimal as to include a situation in which a woman appeared in public with unbound or uncovered hair. In Israelite culture, such a display was a sign of sexual license and thus considered a heinous act.

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Position of Jesus Jesus spoke very definitively on this subject when he answered a direct question from a group of Pharisees who approached him and asked: (Mk 10:1-12) Is it against the law for a man to divorce his wife? They were testing him. He answered them, What did Moses command you? Moses allowed us, they said, to draw up a writ of dismissal and so to divorce. Then Jesus said to them, It was because you were so unteachable that he wrote this commandment for you. But from the beginning of creation, God made them male and female. This is why a man must leave father and mother, and the two become one body. They are no longer two, therefore, but one body. So then, what God has united, man must not divide. Back in the house the disciples questioned him again about this, and he said to them, The man who divorces his wife and marries another is guilty of adultery against her. And if a woman divorces her husband and marries another, she is guilty of adultery too. The central thought in the above words attributed to Jesus as expressing Gods will on this subject is a direct parody of language in the book of Genesis: 2:24: This is why a man leaves his father and mother and joins himself to his wife, and they become one body. The unique significance of the passage from Mark is that Jesus himself explains that the teaching of Moses was contrary to the supposed will of God, i.e. that the marriage bond was unbreakable, but God permitted this practice to go unchecked for some 1200 years before Jesus proclaimed his revised teaching for his followers. Even more remarkable is the fact that Jesus seems to accept the frailty or unwillingness of humans to accept the stricter standard of a permanent marital bond as a legitimate excuse for God to tolerate the law proclaimed by Moses. Why should we believe that a permanent marriage bond from the beginning of creation was the will of God, if God permitted a contrary practice proclaimed by Gods chief law-giver, Moses, and Moses is then expressly exonerated by Jesus, the son of God? Moreover, Jesus himself created an immediate exception to his own proclamation when he stated (Mt. 5:31-32): It has also been said, Anyone who divorces his wife must give her a writ of dismissal. But I say this to you: everyone who divorces his wife, except for the case of fornication (emphasis added), makes her an adulteress; and anyone who marries a divorced woman commits adultery.
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By this teaching, Jesus significantly narrowed the span of permissibility for divorce as compared with Moses, but he did not close the door entirely to this practice. This statement on its face also creates some confusion by designating that the fact of getting or giving a divorce makes her [the woman] an adulteress: (1) why only the woman, and not the man also, is not explained, and (2) the Church teaches that adultery does not occur until a married person has sexual relations with someone other than his or her spouse. Even under present Church law, a divorced person who remains single and celibate does not commit adultery. Interestingly, the Orthodox Church perceives adultery as not only giving oneself over to another person, but also as giving oneself over to another thing, such as alcohol, drugs, work, etc. Thus, becoming infatuated, obsessed and/or controlled with/by power, wealth, addictions, a career, etc. is just as destructive to a marriage as adultery with another person. Pauls Contributions and Exception Following on the teaching of Jesus, this issue pertaining to divorce and the permanent bond of marriage is further muddled when we examine the decisions and exceptions developed by the disciples of Jesus and leaders of his church. The stated official position of the Roman Catholic tradition of the Christian church has always been that divorce is not permitted and the marriage bond is forever. The ideal for Christian marriage is that the love of husband and wife for each other will be as strong and enduring (forever) as Christs love for his church. The basis for the churchs position relies to a large extent on scriptural passages from St. Pauls letter to the Ephesians (Eph: 5:25 & 28-33): Husbands should love their wives just as Christ loved the Church and sacrificed himself for her to make her holy. In the same way, husbands must love their wives as they love their own bodies; for a man to love his wife is for him to love himself. A man never hates his own body, but he feeds it and looks after it; and that is the way Christ treats the Church, because it is his body and we are its living parts. For this reason, a man must leave his father and mother and be joined to his wife, and the two will become one body. This mystery has many implications; but I am saying it applies to Christ and the Church. To sum up, you, too, each one of you, must love his wife as he loves himself; and let every wife respect her husband. However, even in the first half century of the churchs struggle to faithfully spread the teachings of Jesus, a major compromise on this issue was made by the same individual who established the standard set in the passage above. Saint Paul, the
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most vocal and prolific writer of all the churchs first leaders, ignores the exception stated by Jesus but creates an entirely different one of his own. In his first letter to the Corinthians (1Cor: 7:10-16) Paul initiated the following policy (which later became known as the Pauline Privilege): For the married I have something to say, and this is not from me but from the Lord: a wife must not leave her husband -- or if she does leave him, she must either remain unmarried or else make it up with her husband nor must a husband send his wife away. The rest is from me and not from the Lord (emphasis added). If a brother has a wife who is an unbeliever, and she is content to live with him, he must not send her away and if a woman has an unbeliever for her husband, and he is content to live with her, she must not leave him. This is because the unbelieving husband is made one with the saints through his wife, and the unbelieving wife is made one with the saints through her husband. If this were not so, your children would be unclean, whereas in fact they are holy. However, if the unbelieving partner does not consent, they may separate; in these circumstances, the brother or sister is not tied: God has called you to a life of peace (emphasis added). In the first paragraph of the preceding quote, Paul states the primary teaching of the Roman church: breaking of the marriage bond is not permitted. However, he immediately acknowledges that separation may sometimes occur, and is permitted so long as the partners then remain unmarried or, preferably, reconcile. In the next paragraph, Paul establishes his exception for believers who are married to unbelievers. In these situations, when two unbelievers are married, one converts, and the unbeliever then interferes with the believers adherence to the Christian faith, St. Paul approved not only divorce/separation but the right to remarry. From this premise evolved the definition of sacramental marriage, i.e. a marriage between two baptized Christians. Recognition of Pauls exception is also the beginning of a continuous history of interpretive variations developed within the Roman church to permit dissolutions(the breaking of a recognized bond of marriage) or declarations of nullity (declarations that no valid bond of marriage ever existed) to first presumed marriages so that believers can remarry with the churchs blessing. What is most surprising is that Paul clearly acknowledges that his teaching is from me and not from the Lord. Nevertheless, it has been endorsed and refined by the churchs rule-makers from the time of Paul to the present. This double standard, i.e. that non-Christians may divorce and remarry while Christians generally may not, does not reconcile with the churchs
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teaching that it is Gods will from the beginning of creation that a man and woman, if married, are intended to be united for life. Early Church practices of recognizing second marriages without even applying the conditions established by St. Paul may be found in the following Canon (#8 of 20 total) issued by the Council of Nicaea (325 C.E.), the first ecumenical council of the Christian church: Concerning those [clergy] who have given themselves the name of Cathars, and who from time to time come over publicly to the catholic and apostolic church, this holy and great synod decrees that they may remain among the clergy after receiving an imposition of hands. But before all this it is fitting that they give a written undertaking that they will accept and follow the decrees of the catholic church, namely that they will be in communion with those who have entered into a second marriage and with those who have lapsed in time of persecution and for whom a period [of penance] has been fixed and an occasion [for reconciliation] allotted [emphasis added], so as in all things to follow the decrees of the catholic and apostolic church. An even more significant argument regarding the Churchs traditional practices regarding approval of divorce can be found in the historical and on-going practice of the Eastern Churches, and particularly, the Eastern Orthodox Churches. These churches have always granted divorce and permitted re-marriage. Re-marriage in those churches has generally been permitted only when an original marriage has clearly ended, the parties are no longer living together, and one or both wishes to or has already entered into a new (civil) union. As further evidence of this historical practice, John T. Noonan, a noted Catholic historian and member of the papal commission on contraception for Vatican Council II, has documented that the Christian emperors from Constantine the Great (4th cent.) to Justin II (7th cent.) granted civil divorces and the official Church accepted their decisions for the religious sphere. It was not until the eighth or ninth centuries that the Western or Roman Church became more restrictive in forbidding divorces. Papal Modifications The next major exception to Jesus teaching did not formally occur until nearly a thousand years later. It originated with Pope Alexander III (1159-1181) who officially declared that a marriage in which two baptized persons do not have sex is a valid sacrament, but is also a dissoluble union. Later evolution of this teaching, particularly during the papacy of Martin V (1417-1431) added the
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further exception that even consummation of such a marriage while at the same time having the intent to not conceive a child, or acting to prevent conception, leaves the marriage open to dissolution through papal dispensation. Alexander III initiated one truly unique and radical application of his own new policy. He used it to advise a rich young nobleman who had sworn a betrothal oath and then, just before the wedding was to occur, decided that he had a call to become a monk. Alexander told the young man to honor his oath to marry his fiance, but to report directly to the monastery without consummating the marriage. Alexander decreed that the marriage was a sacramental marriage (a questionable assertion since there was neither consummation nor the intent to consummate), but the marriage bond was automatically dissolved when the nobleman took his religious vows. In this type of case, the church ruled that no dissolution of the marriage is necessary because it has died at the time of the taking of religious vows. The Council of Trent (1563) fully endorsed and elaborated on this teaching when it declared that ordination or profession of religious vows by one of the spouses is valid grounds to consider a marriage dissolved, even if it has been consummated. The Church has not expressed concern nor offered justification for the negative impact of this law on the other partner to this abandoned marriage. Nor has the Church ever proclaimed the logical corollary to this teaching: that forsaking ones religious vows in order to enter a sacramental marriage likewise nullifies the priestly or religious vows. There is no evidence that this Tridentine teaching ever received widespread implementation but its very existence shows how the Church manipulated its teaching on marriage when it perceived an advantage for increased clerical vocations. Subsequent major exceptions occurred when Pope Gregory XIII in 1585 granted blanket dispensation for dissolution of even consummated marriages (no distinction being made for baptized or unbaptized parties) between married slaves when one of the partners converted to Catholicism. Again because dissolution signified that the previous marriage no longer existed, divorce and remarriage was granted in favor of the faith. Most recently, in 1924, Pope Pius XI, established another radical change in the churchs regulations regarding marriage dissolution. He declared that he possessed the papal or Petrine authority to dissolve a valid consummated marriage between a baptized (Christian) and an unbaptized (non-Christian) person, in favor of the faith when the non-Christian converts to the true faith. There is one restriction for this dissolution to be permissible: the unbaptized party cannot have had sex with his or her original baptized partner after he or she is baptized. This authority was announced in a document entitled: Norms for the Dissolution of Marriage in Favor of the Faith by the Supreme Authority of the Sovereign Pontiff. There is no explanation or justification offered by the Roman Church regarding the
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potential unwelcome harm to the existing marital relationship imposed on the other (Roman or non-Roman Catholic) Christian in this situation. Typically, however, this form of dissolution is requested and granted only when the original parties have already separated and a second marriage is already pending. Throughout the 1900 years when these refinements, enacted first by St. Paul and subsequently by various Popes, were establishing numerous grounds for the Church to dissolve the officially unbreakable bond of marriage, the Church continued to proclaim that divorce and remarriage were prohibited. Since papal dissolution was not frequently granted, the great majority of Catholics who separated or divorced, and then remarried, during those earlier centuries were considered to be guilty of the grievous sin of adultery. These sinners could not seek forgiveness unless they were willing to separate from their new partner. This was often an unfair consequence on the parties since most first marriages up until the middle ages were matrimonial alliances arranged by parents seeking to benefit from the endowment of money and property, or from enhanced family or class status, brought to each union. Marriages required parental approval (almost exclusively from the male parent or guardian) and often were forced marriages between young women and much older men, in order for parents to benefit from the already accumulated wealth of the prospective groom. Children also often married at very young ages and most frequently without any prior social interaction through which they could make some personal assessment of compatibility. Practices, which we now consider traditional, such as an engagement period (most often signified by the giving of a ring), a church ceremony with the exchange of rings and vows, bridal bouquets and wedding cakes, etc., all originated in England only in the 16th century. The accepted primary purpose of marriage was clearly to beget children, and in particular, male children, who would then carry on the family lineage and hopefully add to the family wealth. Although there were scattered references to the marital union as having a sacramental value as early as the third century, marriage was not added to the list of true Sacraments until the Council of Florence in 1439 and then formally at the Council of Trent in 1563. Prior to this latter historical moment, there was no set form, no restrictions on location for the marriage ceremony, or other consistent requirements which would identify marriage as a standard process administered by the Church. From the Council of Trent forward until the Second Vatican Council in 1962, the Church administered the form of the sacrament of marriage (basically the exchange of consent between the parties in the presence of an official of the Church and at least two witnesses), and established a system for recording Church-approved marriages. The primary purpose of marriage
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continued to be the bearing of children, with the exchange of marital rights between the spouses as a close secondary purpose. This ranking of the purposes of marriage was removed by the Second Vatican Council in the Pastoral Constitution on the Church in the Modern World. Twentieth Century Amendments As already indicated, papal authority has never been generous in granting large numbers of dissolutions, despite the expansion of the permissible reasons for dissolution over the centuries since Jesus and Paul. Nevertheless, Roman Catholics increasingly sought civil divorce and subsequent new marriages, with little or no hope of any recourse to obtaining a decree of dissolution. Then, remarkably, the same Pope (Pius XI) who established the Petrine Privilege in 1924, acted again by authorizing the Congregation of Sacraments in 1936 to promulgate the rules for Church tribunals to follow when declaring a marriage null and void, i.e. the marriage never existed from the beginning. The bases for granting annulments were further expanded by Pius XII in 1944. Annulments may now be granted when, for example, any of the following conditions are shown to have existed from the beginning of the union: an existing prior marriage bond, too close blood relationship, compulsion (e.g. due to pregnancy) or fear, lack of due discretion by the wedded parties to really understand what they are committing to in the marriage relationship, alcoholism of one of the parties, denial or lack of partnership in conjugal life, emotional immaturity, psychological problems affecting one of the parties, physical impotency or not open to the possibility of having children, spouse abuse (whether physical, sexual, psychological or verbal) and a host of other reasons. Not all of the reasons for declaring nullity can be as easily recognized as affecting the informed consent of the parties as those listed above. In Chile, for example, which did not permit even civil divorce until late in 2004, couples with failing marriages were forced to seek annulments in order to maintain their standing in the Church. They often resorted to subterfuge to meet the churchs criteria for an annulment. It was common for one of the partners to declare before a court that a marriage was illegal because one spouse reported a false address at the time of the wedding. About 6,000 annulments are approved annually in this country of 15.5 million citizens. This most recent circumvention of the Roman Churchs proclaimed position that divorce is not permitted and that the marriage bond is forever has proven to be a real boon to the roughly 10 million civilly-divorced Catholics in the United States. Approximately 100,000 annulments are now being granted annually in the United
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States alone, and 90-95% of all the requests submitted are being approved. Rome has facilitated the granting of annulments by placing the decision-making authority at the local level of diocesan tribunals. Annulments are, of course, granted so that a civilly-divorced Catholic may enter a second valid marriage in the Church. The Church obviates the need for a Church-approved divorce by declaring that the first marriage never existed from the beginning. Such annulments have been granted, for example, in cases involving two Catholics who lived in an apparent valid marriage for as long as 20 years or more, with children born and raised; then one of the parties seeks and obtains a civil divorce and subsequently seeks a new marriage in the Church. Despite the reality of 20+ years of conjugal life, the bearing and rearing of children together, and adherence to all the requirements for a valid Church wedding in the first instance, the Church continues to maintain that Jesus prohibition of divorce is preserved because the first marriage is declared to have never existed as a sacramental reality. The overall historical picture of the Churchs treatment of the issue of marriagedivorce- remarriage is one that is very self-serving. The Pauline privilege, the exception granted by Gregory XIII for slaves, and the Petrine Privilege established by Pius XI, are all dependent on the condition that the dissolution or declaration of nullity of an original marriage bond is in favor of the faith. Thus, a perceived increase in the number or freedom of true believers to practice their faith becomes the grounds for the Church to amend its official position that God intended that the marriage bond be unbreakable and last forever. What alternative, if any, is offered by the Church to those individuals who have married, then divorced and remarried (civilly), but whose first marriages do not meet the Churchs legal criteria for dissolution or annulment? Either of two choices, neither of which is generally considered practical or acceptable to the involved parties, is offered by the Church as the only morally acceptable solution if the individual wishes to again become eligible for reception of the sacraments of Reconciliation and Eucharist. An official who at the time was the Vatican undersecretary of the Pontifical Council for the Family, stated that not contradicting the continuing validity of a first marriage in the eyes of the Church means that they: 1. must separate from the person who is not the legitimate wife or husband and, if possible, should return to the original matrimonial cohabitation, 2. or, if for serious reasons, they cannot satisfy the obligation of separation, they are obliged to abstain from acts proper to spouses; with the help of grace, they must commit themselves to interrupting
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their reciprocal sexual life and to transforming their current bond into sentiments of friendship and mutual assistance. The Churchs contemporary decisions about marriage and divorce, dissolutions and annulments mostly revolve around the Churchs own definition of marriage as a Sacrament. However, as already indicated, no formal definition of sacramental marriage existed in the Church until 1500 years after the Church was founded. Thus, marriages arranged by parents or guardians or those for which consent was forced through intimidation or fear of disinheritance should not have been considered as forever binding on the parties. During at least the last century, the Church has attempted around the world to work out agreements with Governments that would legitimize marriages under the laws of both entities. Due to its stand regarding no divorce, however, no similar agreements exist for couples who may become civilly divorced. Many are not eligible for ecclesial annulment under current church law, so they are technically ineligible for reception of the sacrament of the Eucharist if they enter a second marriage. In light of the preceding information, it is fair to ask why the church should continue to proclaim that divorce is not permitted as if this were the will of God from the beginning of creation. The content of this chapter has shown that beginning with Moses, and followed by Jesus, St. Paul and numerous Popes, exceptions and loopholes have been endorsed by the highest lawgivers representing the will of God for believers on this earth. For the first 700 years of the Churchs history, divorce was permitted and second marriages in the Church were permitted. At no time in the 3000-year history of human documentation of Gods will in this matter has there really been an absolute assertion that the marriage bond is unbreakable and that divorce is therefore always prohibited. There is no question that, in the twentieth century, the nearly simultaneous conjunction of inexpensive and effective contraception, liberalized civil divorce laws and the sexual revolution persuaded millions of people that marriage was unnecessary and irrelevant. Those who chose to forego marriage, along with many who opted for marriage, clearly put their personal sexual fulfillment above their desire to have children or to maintain family stability for the sake of their children. However, this devaluation of marriage overlooked one crucial societal impact: the raising of healthy, well-adjusted children to be successful, responsible adults. For this task, no adequate substitute for the two-parent family has been found. For the sake of social stability in our society and particularly out of concern for the welfare of children born to those marriages, the Church should continue to strongly promote lasting commitments in marriage. At the same time,
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for the sake of honesty and credibility, the Church should modify its position on the permissibility of divorce to fit the reality of both its historical and current practices. There are thousands of divorced and remarried Catholics throughout the world who cannot, and in most cases have no desire to, restore their original marital relationship under either civil or church law. Yet, many of these same thousands faithfully participate in the weekly celebration of the liturgy of the Eucharist despite being denied reception of the Eucharist, by church law. Many of these individuals also actively participate in parish ministries and other activities and often enroll their children in Catholic schools. Why are actions such as the above not seen and accepted as suitable penance for any actual or perceived sinfulness for having broken an original contract of marriage, as was clearly permitted in the fourth century? Why must the Church declare a continuing state of adultery when a Catholic or other baptized spouse has broken all marital ties with a first spouse and now is committed to a single partner in a new marriage? Why does the Church impose a Catholic sacramental bond on the marriage of a baptized non-Catholic who does not believe that marriage is a sacrament? In contrast, the Catholic Church denies a baptized nonCatholic who does not believe in the sacramentality of the Eucharist, the right to receive that sacrament.
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Chapter 3 JESUS CHOSE A MARRIED CLERGY Essentially, the vow of celibacy is defined by the church as a life-long commitment to refrain from marriage. The greatest benefit and primary motivation for requiring a life-time commitment to celibacy from Roman Catholic priests, and from vowed religious, is supposedly the freedom for them to then devote all of their time, talent, love and ministry to achieve their personal salvation and to carry out the work of Jesus, without the limitations that would accompany marriage and family responsibilities. Realistically, however, all human beings need the support of particular friendships for both their emotional and spiritual health. Jesus appeared to have such friendships outside his band of apostles in the persons of individuals such as Salome, Martha, Mary and Lazarus, and particularly in Mary Magdalene. Celibate priests are encouraged to find this support primarily within the fraternity of other priests; vowed religious men and women are to find the same support primarily within their religious communities. Ironically, to whatever extent these celibate individuals dedicate portions of their time to building and maintaining their particular friendships, they are diminishing their commitment to total and complete ministry. While these celibate to celibate relationships are seen by the church administration as necessary and healthy (provided the time spent together is reasonable and the involved parties remain sexually abstinent), the church does not see marital relationships for priests or vowed religious as equally beneficial. While the special friendships that Jesus developed apart from the apostles, as best we can learn from the scriptural records, were predominately female, church administration expects that same-sex relationships will predominate for its celibate clergy and religious. Married Clergy Endorsed in Scripture The most remarkable historical fact about celibacy for clergy in the Roman Catholic Church is the reality that Jesus chose married men to serve as Apostles. Then, marriage was highly praised by no less a personage than St. Paul and permitted and/or tolerated for priests, bishops and even popes for more years, decades and centuries than the period of time during which mandatory celibacy has been imposed. Celibacy by the leaders of the early church was very likely not considered as a priority, and, in fact, was probably strongly discouraged for two very good reasons. Jewish law required every healthy male to seek to procreate,
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and Roman laws placed penalties on bachelors and rewarded women who gave birth to three or more children. Thus the contemporary expectation both by the Church and by civil government would have been that the apostles and their successors would marry and have families. It is a certainty based on scriptural evidence that Peter, the first pope, was married. This fact was known by Jesus when he selected Peter to be the pillar, the rock, on which he would found his church. This information is verified anecdotally in Marks gospel (1:29-31) and confirmed in Matthew (8:14-15) and Luke (4:38-39): On leaving the synagogue, he [Jesus] went with James and John straight to the house of Simon [Peter] and Andrew. Now Simons mother-in-law had gone to bed with fever, and they told him about her straightaway. He went to her, took her by the hand and helped her up. And the fever left her and she began to wait on them. St. Paul confirms Peters marital status (see below) and scripture offers only one other important detail about Peters marriage. This nugget is found in the conclusion to Peters own letter to the churches of the Dispersion: (I Pet: 5:12-13) I write these few words to you through Silvanus, who is a brother I know I can trust, to encourage you never to let go this true grace of God to which I bear witness. Your sister in Babylon, who is with you among the chosen, sends you greetings; so does my son, Mark (emphasis added). Beyond these brief but definitive details in scripture, tradition tells us that Peter probably left his wife, Perpetua, most of the time while he traveled with Jesus for the three years of his public ministry. However, tradition also tells us that Peter reunited with Perpetua after the death of Jesus, that she went with him when he relocated to Rome, and that she joined in Peters ministry, including personally preaching and baptizing. While apparently espousing celibacy for himself and recommending celibacy not only for priests but for all Christians, Paul nevertheless provided conflicting but clear evidence in two separate letters that bishops, in particular, could be married, but only once, and that having and raising children could be a plus for their role as bishops: (Titus: 1:5-9) and (I Tim 3:1-6) The reason I left you behind in Crete was for you to get everything organized there and appoint elders in every town, in the way that I told you: that is, each of them must be a man of irreproachable character; he must
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not have been married more than once (emphasis added), and his children must be believers and not uncontrollable or liable to be charged with disorderly conduct. Since, as president, he will be Gods representative, he must be irreproachable. Here is a saying that you can rely on: To want to be a presiding elder [episcopus is not yet translated as bishop] is to want to do a noble work. That is why the president must have an impeccable character. He must not have been married more than once, and he must be temperate, discreet and courteous, hospitable and a good teacher; not a heavy drinker, not hottempered, but kind and peaceable. He must not be a lover of money. He must be a man who manages his own family well and brings his children up to obey him and be well-behaved; how can any man who does not understand how to manage his own family have responsibility for the church of God [emphasis added]. These were incontrovertible endorsements for a married clergy from St. Paul. In another instance (I Cor. 9:1-5), when defending his right to expect food, shelter and support from the Christian community for his travels during his preaching journeys, Paul also provided the following testimonial about the marital status of Peter and the other apostles: I, personally, am free: I am an apostle and have seen Jesus our Lord. My answer to those who want to interrogate me is this: Have we not every right to eat and drink? And the right to take a Christian woman around with us like all the other apostles and brothers of the Lord and Cephas [Peter]? This statement from Paul leaves little doubt that Peter and the other apostles were married, but leaves his own status somewhat cloudy. He implies that he is unmarried (I am free), but why would Paul defend his own and the Apostles right to travel with a Christian woman unless they were married to those companions? This passage lends support to reports by early Christian writers, e.g. Origen, Tertullian and Clement of Alexandria, that Paul was, in fact, married. There was, however, additional strong evidence from Paul himself that he was not married, so this historical issue remains unresolved. Pauls reasons for promoting celibacy not only for himself but for all Christians (including avoidance of sexual relations within marriage) seems to have stemmed from two major misconceptions which gradually gained rather strong credence in the early church.

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The first relied on Pauls firm belief that two events, the end of the world and the second coming of Jesus, were extremely imminent. If these events were to occur within days or weeks, or at most, a few years, as Paul apparently believed, then there was no reason whatsoever for Christians to burden themselves with other distracting responsibilities. The followers of Jesus were encouraged to prepare for these events by freeing themselves as much as possible from all worldly attachments and even married couples were supposed to refrain from marital acts because these were believed to render them unclean (1 Cor. 7:25 & 29-33): About remaining celibate, I have no directions from the Lord [emphasis added] but give my own opinion as one who, by the Lords mercy, has stayed faithful. Brothers, this is what I mean: our time is growing short. Those who have wives should live as though they had none, and those who mourn should live as though they had nothing to mourn for; those who are enjoying life should live as though there were nothing to laugh about; those whose life is buying things should live as if they had nothing of their own; and those who have to deal with the world should not become engrossed in it. I say this because the world as we know it is passing away. I would like to see you free from all worry. An unmarried man can devote himself to the Lords affairs, all he need worry about is pleasing the Lord; but a married man has to bother about the worlds affairs and devote himself to pleasing his wife: he is torn two ways. Again, in Rom. 13:11-14: Besides, you know the time has come: you must wake up now; our salvation is even nearer than it was when we were converted. The night is almost over, it will be daylight soon let us give up all the things we prefer to do under cover of the dark; let us arm ourselves and appear in the light. Let us live decently as people do in the daytime: no drunken orgies, no promiscuity or licentiousness, and no wrangling or jealousy. Let your armor be the Lord Jesus Christ: forget about satisfying your bodies with all their cravings. Likewise, we read in the gospel of John (Jn.16:16): In a short time you will no longer see me, and then a short time later you will see me again. And in the first Letter of Peter addressed to the Christians of the Dispersion (1 Peter 4:7, 17 & 5:10):
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Everything will soon come to an end, so, to pray better, keep a calm and sober mind. The time has come for the judgment to begin at the household of God; and if what we know now is only the beginning, what will it be when it comes down to those who refuse to believe Gods Good News? You will have to suffer only for a little while: the God of all grace who called you to eternal glory in Christ will see that all is well again; he will confirm, strengthen and support you. Again in Hebrews (10:37), St. Paul states: Only a little while now, a very little while, and the one that is coming will have come; he will not delay. The second misconception was the belief that sexual relations, even between a husband and wife, were sinful or, at the very least, detracted from ones love for God. This conviction was evident, for example, in the passage already quoted from Pauls letter to the church at Corinth. In order to prepare for the perceived imminent return of Jesus, Paul exhorted those who have wives to live as though they had none. Position of Church Fathers This latent belief regarding the sinfulness of sexual relations was brought to full flowering in the second, third and fourth centuries in the writings of church fathers such as Ambrose, Tertullian, Jerome and Augustine. These celibate writers (note: Augustine can only claim this status after repenting and giving up his concubine with whom he had an out-of-wedlock son) not only proclaimed virginity and chastity as higher states than marriage, they also found reasons to disparage sexual relations within marriage. For example, Jerome believed that sex was so evil that he wrote an instruction for priests to advise that married couples should abstain from sexual intercourse three nights before receiving communion. Augustine proclaimed in his writing, the City of God, that, while sexual intercourse between spouses should be permitted for the purpose of conceiving children, the act should be performed by the spouses without passion or pleasure because of its evil nature, i.e. not through the eager desire of lust, but the normal exercise of the will. A few centuries later, Thomas Aquinas sided with Augustines views on the evils of intercourse and then added his own unique teaching that Jesus had to have been conceived virginally because Original Sin is transmitted by the male seed.
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As the expectation of an early end time and second coming of Jesus gradually waned and disappeared, especially after the destruction of the Temple of Jerusalem in 70 C.E., the early church was faced with the fact that clergy, including bishops and popes, continued to marry and have families. Not until 306 C.E. was there any legislation from the church to address this issue. In that year, the Synod of Elvira, a council having very limited authority over only a small region in Spain decreed that all clerics, even those who were married, were to practice continence. There was no prohibition of marriage itself, nor were there demands that those already married give up their wives, but even the latter were to cease having sexual relations with their spouses. Nineteen years later (325 C.E.), an ecumenical (universal) Council of Nicaea declined to make celibacy obligatory among all clerics, although it recommended the practice for bishops (an instruction that was directly opposite to that given by St. Paul). That council also identified and prohibited another contemporary practice pertaining to celibacy, i.e. the habit of clergy who were supposedly committed to celibacy inviting young women to reside in their residences in order to test their sexual restraint and to confirm their moral faithfulness. In practice, supposedly celibate clergy were not being faithful to their vows and the majority of the clergy continued to marry. From the fifth through tenth centuries, a married clergy remained commonplace. This was true even though there were a few further attempts to curtail marriages, the maintaining of mistresses and/or live-ins, and to proscribe married clergy from having sexual relations with their married partners. For example, the second Council of Tours (567 C.E.) originally imposed a penalty of one year of excommunication on any married clergyman who was found guilty of having sex with his wife. When the number of offenders became so great as to reduce the number of active clergy to an unacceptable level, the church then lifted the penalty against priests and instead applied it to their wives. In 580 C.E. Pope Pelagius II first surfaced the key reason why the church later imposed a total ban on married clergy, i.e. the economic impact on the Church. Pelagius permitted marriage for the clergy in general, but discouraged it for bishops, provided that in all cases Church money and property was excluded from estates left to spouses and children of the clergy. For the next 500 years a married clergy was still the rule rather than the exception and apparently abuses again crept in regarding nepotism and inheritances. This situation led Pope Benedict VIII (1012-1024 C.E.) to declare all offspring from clerical marriages as illegitimate (on what legal grounds other than his say-so is not explained), thus depriving the children of the right of inheritance and preserving the Churchs claims to property and income flowing from the property or ministry. Interestingly, there is no evidence that the clerical marriages were declared
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illegitimate, but only the children of such marriages. The Second Lateran Council (1139 C.E.) made the first serious attempt to impose clerical celibacy throughout the universal church. As reported in the on-line Medieval Sourcebook, Tenth Ecumenical Council: Lateran II, 1139, Canon 16: No one shall demand an ecclesiastical office on the plea of hereditary right. Such offices are conferred in consideration of merit. Commentary: Owing to the license and venality of the times, episcopal sees were frequently usurped and given as fiefs to soldiers in recompense for services. Once in such hands, they were treated as property which descended by hereditary right from father to son. Likewise, many of the clergy, bishops and priests who had taken wives and begotten children, transmitted their benefices to their offspring. The overriding motive for the Councils directive was the churchs concern for preventing the loss of church money and property through inheritance to surviving family members of married clergy. At the same time, as Orthodox churches began to reunite with Rome, they were permitted to retain a married clergy as long as the marriages took place before ordination. Council of Trent to Present Still, the response to this new legislation remained one of significant noncompliance. For example, historical records show that the installation of Pope Alexander VI in1492 C.E. was witnessed by his four adult sons. Thus, another 400 years after the II Lateran Council, Martin Luther and other contemporary reformers made a married clergy one of their rallying points for reform. The Roman Church, now separated from the Eastern Church by the schism which began in 1054, responded by issuing another strong demand for clerical celibacy through a decree of the Council of Trent in 1563. Aided by the establishment of seminaries (schools for the education of the young and of those preparing for ordination to priesthood) as ordered by Trent, and by the rapid spread of the newly founded Society of Jesus (Jesuits) in 1540, the Roman church was much more able to enforce this latest decree of mandatory celibacy for its priests. That decree has remained in effect, unchanged but not unchallenged, to the present day. Two popes in the twentieth century strongly reinforced Trents requirement of clerical celibacy. In 1920 Benedict XV condemned a Christian organization that promoted the revocation of clerical celibacy and stated the Church never would abrogate or mitigate the law of priestly celibacy. Then in 1967 Pope Paul VI issued his encyclical On Priestly Celibacy which reiterated Benedicts position
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and added a new primary basis for retaining priestly celibacy in the Roman Church, i.e. priests should be free of familial obligations in order to be totally available for ministry. In adopting this new primary premise for retaining celibacy in the Roman Church, Paul VI relied heavily on decrees issued by Vatican Council II such as, for example (Decree on Priestly Formation, 10): Students who, according to the holy and fixed laws of their own rite, follow the revered tradition of priestly celibacy, should be very carefully trained for this state. By it they renounce the companionship of marriage for the sake of the kingdom of heaven (cf. Mt., 19:12); they devote themselves to the Lord with an undivided love which is profoundly proper to the new covenant; they bear witness to the state which the resurrection will bring about in the world to come [i.e. in heaven there will be no marriages, cf. Lk., 20:36]; and they gain extremely appropriate help for exercising that perfect and unremitting love by which they can become all things to all men through their priestly ministration. Again, in a 1993 address, Pope John Paul II said the discipline of celibacy is a kind of challenge that the Church makes to the mentality, tendencies and charms of the world, with an ever-new desire for consistency with and fidelity to the Gospel ideal. There was no elaboration in this address as to which gospel ideal he was referring, but as has already been demonstrated in this chapter, the Gospels and letters of St. Paul clearly promote a married, not a celibate clergy. The flood of priestly resignations, particularly in the United States, was already well under way when the 1967 decree on celibacy was issued. Seminary enrollment was dramatically declining, so drastic changes in the use of existing clerical personnel were called for. Priests who may have spent most or all of their priestly careers in administrative, teaching (of non- religious subjects), and other non-ministerial roles were now expected to devote the bulk of their time to pastoral ministry while the laity of the church properly assumed the nonministerial jobs. Actually, the church has failed to successfully effect this desired change. The hierarchy or governing leaders of the church at all levels, including parish, diocesan, and every other intervening level through and including Rome, continue to spend a disproportionate amount of time in administration rather than ministry. The church hierarchy may have felt that the preceding realignment of clerical roles as well as the rededication of priests to total availability for ministry under their vows of celibacy would meet the churchs increasing needs for dedicated service. In practice, many of the expected improvements in use of priestly
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personnel supported by highly skilled laity and ordained deacons have occurred. However, the vast majority of priests, deservedly so, have found ways to preserve their weekly days off, their annual vacation time, educational or developmental sabbaticals, and time for casual activities that could just as well be dedicated to familial responsibilities or shared with family members. It really seems as if the economic factor is still the primary reason why the church will not permit a married clergy, i.e. how to provide sufficient income to support families as opposed to single clergy, and how to prevent church property from becoming subject to inheritance by heirs of the ordained priest or vowed religious. Factually, in the United States at least, it is a rare parish priest who does not live in a residence large enough to house a family. Even parishes large enough to require the services of more than one live-in priest generally already have large enough rectories to accommodate more than one average family. The alleged concern over the risks of losing church properties or monies through inheritance is really a flawed pretext for requiring a celibate clergy. All church property belongs to a diocese established as a corporate entity with a bishop as its CEO. All of the Churchs rights can be legally protected under modern contract law and through the exercise of responsible accounting and auditing processes. As regards John Pauls 1993 call for renewed consistency with and fidelity to the Gospel ideal, we should be clear that there is no substantial evidence in the New Testament scriptures or in the practices of the Christian communities throughout their 2000 year history that celibacy is an ideal preferred over marriage. Overattachment to the material things of this earthly existence will prove an obstacle to eternal life, but reasonable detachment from such worldly possessions can be achieved as well by married as by unmarried and celibate individuals. There is no persuasive reason to continue to require a life of celibacy as a condition for ordination to the priesthood. As we have just seen, historically, there was a predominately married clergy in the Roman Church for 1500 years as compared with a mostly celibate clergy for only the last 500 years. The Eastern Church continues to have and support a married clergy and the Western Church is now permitting some married Protestant clergy converts to function as married priests. In my opinion, the driving motivation for celibacy has been and remains primarily the potential costs for family support and protection of the Churchs property and monetary assets from passing through estates to heirs of married clergy. The argument that a celibate priest can more fully imitate the life of Jesus by dedication of all his time and energy to ministry is hardly a fair comparison since Jesus devoted 30 years to family and community life and only three years to
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public ministry, while the average priest who is ordained by or before age 30 can expect to serve for 40 or more years in church ministry. The contemporary celibate priest is expected to live and function in an unrealistic environment where the following conflicts are commonplace: - in pastoral work, a priest is expected to be warm, friendly and supportive to men, women and children, but not give in to exclusivity, favoritism or especially to male or female emotional relationships that would have sexual overtones with any members of these groups; often is subject to arbitrary transfer to new locations and new congregations when relationships become comfortable and supportive in the current location - at the same time, a celibate priest is strongly encouraged to seek support for his dedication to ministry and for his emotional and faith stability by relying on close, but asexual, relationships primarily with brother priests or other members of his religious community; such relationships are often very difficult to establish or maintain due to distance separation, conflicting demands of their individual ministries, disparity of interests, and other similar personal involvements - a priest is entitled to reasonable time off from ministry for recreation, personal faith development, parental and other personal family matters, etc., but often abuses this private time off by seeking selfsatisfaction in excessive drinking, gambling, travel, golf, socializing and other related leisure activities, and even in sexual relationships which infringe on his vow of celibacy - while seeking his own social stability, he sometimes adversely affects the marital relationships of couples with whom he develops particular relationships, or sometimes develops improper (sexually abusive) relationships with children in his sphere of contact All of these problems could be substantially alleviated or avoided if priests who wish to marry were permitted to do so. At the same time, optional celibacy could be retained for those who desire to remain celibate. A third possibility would be a requirement only for a limited period of celibacy (e.g. 5 years), with the freedom to choose between continued celibacy and marriage after that time. There is no guarantee that a married priest would never become addicted to alcohol, gambling or any of the other excesses listed above, but the support of a loving spouse and family would surely motivate most priests to avoid the enticements of those selffulfilling interests. The co-ministry of a loving spouse, especially if she were permitted to also be ordained, could add substantially to the numbers of available
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clergy to meet the ever-growing needs of the Church. Most importantly, returning to a married clergy would most closely imitate the status of the first priests chosen by Jesus and would most closely model the practice of the first 1500 years of the churchs history.
Return to Table of Contents

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Chapter 4 PRECEDENTS FOR WOMEN AS ORDAINED CLERGY Dogmatic and Philosophic Arguments Addressed Pope John Paul II, in a 1994 letter entitled: Ordinatio Sacerdotalis, declared that the church has no authority to ordain women and that this teaching was to be held definitively by all Catholics. Nevertheless, challenges continued to flourish. Then, a statement issued by the Sacred Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith in December, 1995 attempted to close off any and all discussion of the possibility of the ordination of women in the Roman Catholic Church. The key portion of that statement was the following: The teaching that the church has no authority whatsoever to confer priestly ordination on women is to be understood as belonging to the deposit of the faith [emphasis added]. This teaching has been set forth infallibly by the ordinary and universal magisterium [a male-only, clerical ruling authority of the church]. In counterpoint, a Catholic laywoman asked the question: Is our baptism somehow different from that of men, that we are qualified for only six of the seven sacraments? As already clearly outlined in this book, infallibility, as defined by the church, only applies to matters of faith and morals. I find no doctrine of faith or issue of morality, that is supportable either in Scripture or Tradition (prior to the Council of Trent, 1545-1563), involved in the historical practice of selecting only males to be ordained priests. The fact of 2000 years of adherence to this historical practice also does not make it impossible for the church to change its mind on this issue. We have just seen how the church has already made such an equally substantial change in practice when it imposed mandatory celibacy on candidates for priesthood after 1500 years of a predominately married clergy, a practice which was clearly in accordance with that initiated by Jesus. How is denial of priesthood to women considered to be a dogma which is included in the deposit of faith while the issue of a married male clergy is not? When we closely examine the churchs rationale for denying ordination to women, we find that the primary objection proclaimed by the church is that women cannot act in the person of Christ, presumably because, in his human nature, Jesus was a male. But this argument just doesnt stand up against serious challenge: what does gender have to do with preaching the Gospel, teaching the faith, tending to the needs of the poor, the sick and dying, leading others in prayer and worship (including the Eucharist and all other sacraments), or (God forbid!)
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administering the property and finances of the church? Except for administering those sacraments which the Church has reserved for priests, all the other tasks have been admirably performed by multitudes of women throughout every age of the church. Without women who have been able and willing to assume the large majority of the preceding tasks performed by the church in the name of Jesus, the churchs growth and outreach would have collapsed in a heartbeat. There is no quality inherent in the male gender that makes men more suitable for preaching, teaching, serving the needy, administering the sacraments or the possessions of the church that is not also found in women. The further argument that women could not suitably represent Christ in his spousal relationship to the church as bride is too chauvinistic to merit debate. Jesus never had any sort of male to female relationship with his followers who are his church. Besides, if this analogy is more than an image, how can males who are members of the Church be the bride of Christ? The second most-strongly defended argument for denying priesthood to women is the fact that Jesus selected and commissioned only men to be his apostles. However, there is no scriptural or theological argument other than this factual accommodation by Jesus to the existing cultural conventions regarding the subservient role of women in his era to justify denial of priesthood to women. Scriptural and Other Precedents It seems clear that for the first 100 to 125 years of the new churchs growth after the death and resurrection of Jesus, there were no churches outside of private homes and no designated (ordained) clergy for celebrating the Eucharist. To the contrary, there was abundant scriptural and other evidence that during these early years, the breaking of the bread was celebrated in private homes. Whenever the hostess for these home celebrations of the Eucharist was a wealthy widow (as frequently reported regarding Pauls travels), the hostess was the presider for the breaking of the bread. A book co-authored by Sr. Carolyn Osiek and Kevin Madigan, entitled Ordained Women in the Early Church, recorded substantial non-scriptural evidence of women in ministerial roles. They found 61 inscriptions and 4 literary references to deaconesses in the Eastern church and 4 inscriptions and 2 literary references to deaconesses in the Western church. In addition, one reference to a female bishop (episcopus) in Rome, plus 29 references to women holding the role of presbyter in the Western church and 10 references to women who were presbyters in the Eastern church.
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It was not until the Church developed a process of ordination (laying on of hands) of presbyters who were then assigned to serve specific congregations or churches that the privilege of presiding was taken from women. The fact that a male-dominated church administration has refused to share the power of priesthood with women for some 2000 years, does not convert this discriminatory practice to a theological mandate from Jesus. Conversely, if it really wishes to be faithful to the precedent set by Jesus, the church should now feel compelled to recognize the contemporary social status of equality between women and men in our current society and thus invite women candidates to ordination. Even though Jesus chose only males as members of his band of twelve apostles, the scriptures provide documentation of at least three extremely critical moments in the revelation of his mission when Jesus used women rather than men as his agents. More importantly, in each of these high-point instances Jesus not only used a woman to further his ministry, but did so despite the fact that his chosen apostles were available at the time of each incident and could have served the same role Jesus gave to the women: Jn. 2:1-6 Three days later there was a wedding feast at Cana in Galilee. The mother of Jesus was there, and Jesus and his disciples had also been invited. When they ran out of wine, since the wine provided for the wedding was all finished, the mother of Jesus said to him: they have no wine. Jesus said: woman, why turn to me? My hour has not come yet. His mother said to the servants: Do whatever he tells you. [Jesus proceeded to change water in six stone jugs into wine.] This was the first of the signs given by Jesus: it was given at Cana in Galilee. He let his glory be seen, and his disciples believed in him [emphasis added]. Thus Jesus involved his mother, a woman, to initiate his public ministry to the world despite the fact that his already-selected apostles were present at that same wedding feast. As portrayed in the last line of the passage above, the display of Marys faith in Jesus is actually cited by John as the catalyst for the apostles to believe in Jesus. Pope John Paul II, devoted his weekly general audience speech on November 29, 1995, to the significance of Marys role in the Church and said: The biblical teaching that God created men and women in his image and likeness and the proof of Gods great esteem for Mary in choosing her to bring his son into the world, show there is no theological basis for discriminating against women [emphasis added]. The second significant event occurred shortly after the first. The scriptures report that Jesus preached first to Jews in Judaea and Galilee and the apostles
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baptized those who accepted his message. In the course of moving from Judaea to Galilee, Jesus had to pass through the territory of the Samaritans. On that trip, Jesus came to a town named Sychar. Jesus chose to stop at the well in that town to drink, rest and eat a meal. Jesus waited at the well while his apostles went into the nearby town to obtain food. While at the well, a Samaritan (non-Jewish) woman came to draw water and Jesus asked for a drink. A discussion followed, in which Jesus gained the womans confidence by telling her he was aware that she had five husbands prior to her current one. Then he revealed his credentials and mission to her by promising to provide the living water of eternal life to those who believe in him. Selected verses from the gospel of John relate the significance of this conversation: Jn. 4:28-30 & 39-42 The woman put down her water jar and hurried back to the town to tell the people: Come and see a man who has told me everything I ever did; I wonder if he is the Christ? This brought people out of the town and they started walking toward him. Many Samaritans of that town had believed in him on the strength of the womans testimony [emphasis added] when she said: He told me all I have ever done. He stayed for two days, and when he spoke to them many more came to believe; and they said to the woman: Now we no longer believe because of what you told us; we have heard him ourselves and we know that he really is the savior of the world. The importance of this event at the well was again the fact that Jesus bypassed the use of the apostles, all of whom were reportedly sent off to find food, and put his own reputation at serious risk by meeting alone with a woman who was a social outcast in her town. Then Jesus used this non-Jewish woman to initiate the revelation of his message of salvation to the non-Jewish world. This choice of a woman for such a momentous role is in sharp contrast to Jesus use of the apostles in baptizing Jewish converts in Judaea in the days immediately preceding his selection of the Samaritan woman for her role. It is even more astounding when we recall St. Matthews gospel description of their instructions from Jesus as the twelve apostles were being sent out on their first mission: (Mt. 10:5-8) These twelve Jesus sent out, instructing them as follows: Do not turn your steps to pagan territory, and do not enter any Samaritan town [emphasis added]; go rather to the lost sheep of the House of Israel. And as you go, proclaim that the kingdom of heaven is close at hand. Cure the sick, raise the dead, cleanse the lepers, cast out devils.

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The third event, probably the most significant of the three, is related in two parts, but both parts involve the same woman, Mary of Magdala. Johns gospel is again the source of our information for what transpired at the tomb of Jesus on the second morning after his burial: Jn. 20:1-2 It was very early on the first day of the week and still dark, when Mary of Magdala came to the tomb. She saw that the stone had been moved away from the tomb and came running to Simon Peter and the other disciple, the one Jesus loved. They have taken the Lord out of the tomb she said, and we dont know where they have put him. [The two disciples then ran back with Mary to the tomb, checked the tomb, found the garments in which Jesus had been wrapped but saw no sign of Jesus himself [emphasis added]. The disciples then returned to where they were staying.] Jn. 20:11-18 Meanwhile Mary stayed outside near the tomb, weeping. Then, still weeping, she stooped to look inside and saw two angels in white. They said: Woman, why are you weeping? They have taken my Lord away, she replied, and I dont know where they have put him. As she said this, she turned around and saw Jesus standing there, though she did not recognize him. [After a brief exchange Jesus revealed himself to Mary but would not permit her to touch him.] Jesus said to her, Do not cling to me, because I have not yet ascended to the Father. But go and find the brothers, and tell them: I am ascending to my Father and your Father, to my God and to your God. So Mary of Magdala went and told the disciples that she had seen the Lord and that he had said these things to her [emphasis added]. It should not go unnoted that St. Paul, who later experiences a personal meeting with the risen Christ, claims his encounter as the basis for his own title of apostle and equality with the other apostles. The enormous impact of these three events on the revelation by Jesus of his mission, his power, and his credentials as the Son of God is immeasurable. His first miracle, his first outreach to non-Jews, and his first appearance to any of his followers after his resurrection, were all initiated by or involved a woman in a critical leadership role while the apostles who were on the scene each time were conspicuously by-passed. Mary of Magdala was actually recognized by some historians as the apostle to the apostles for her role in announcing the resurrection of Jesus to the others. The message for us is that Jesus fully intended that women should have leadership roles in his church equal to (or greater than) the roles of the apostles and their successors.

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St. Paul, despite the negative press he frequently gets from some of his statements about the role of women, has also provided evidence of women taking leadership roles, including clerical leadership roles in the early church. It is important to understand that there was no identifiable sacrament of ordination to the priesthood before the year 1208 C.E. Likewise, for the first 75 years of the churchs history, there was no formal process for selecting the individual who would preside at celebration of the Eucharist. There is also no recorded testimony regarding any of the apostles actually presiding at a celebration of the Eucharist after the Last Supper. It seems that the consent of the local community of believers was sufficient to establish an individual as the presider at the Eucharist. As Richard P. McBrien notes in his book, Catholicism, There is no compelling evidence that a chain of ordination [or any other form of authorization] from Apostle to bishop to priest was required for presiding. Limited historical records show that the presider was most often the host or hostess in whose home the breaking of the bread occurred. Paul indirectly endorses several women as performing ministry similar to that of the apostles (which the scriptures document as primarily preaching), including most likely acting as presiders. He does this, first of all, by making a distinction between women who served as deaconess versus those who hosted the community for breaking of the bread: Rom. 16:1-16 I commend to you our sister Phoebe, a deaconess of the church at Cenchreae. My greetings to Prisca [wife] and Aquila [husband], my fellow workers in Christ Jesus ; I am not the only one to owe them a debt of gratitude, all of the churches among the pagans do as well. My greetings also to the church that meets at their house. [Then follows a long list of both men and women whom Paul recognizes variously as co-workers in Christ, as compatriots, and as those who work hard for the Lord; the women are:] Mary, Tryphaena and Tryphosa, the mother of Rufus, Julia, and the sister of Nereus. I Cor. 1:11 From what Chloes people have been telling me, my dear brothers, it is clear that there are serious differences among you. I Cor. 16:19 All the churches of Asia send you greetings. Aquila and Prisca, with the church that meets at their house, send you their warmest wishes, in the Lord. Philippians 4:2-3 I appeal to Evodia and I appeal to Syntyche to come to agreement with each other, in the Lord . These women were a help to
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me when I was fighting to defend the Good News . Their names are written in the book of life. Colossians 4:15 Please give my greetings to the brothers at Laodicea and to Nympha and the church which meets in her house. Acts 16:14-16: We [Paul and Timothy] sat down and preached to the women who had come to the meeting. One of these women was called Lydia, a devout woman from the town of Thyatira who was in the purpledye trade. She listened to us, and the Lord opened her heart to accept what Paul was saying. After she and her household had been baptized, she sent us an invitation: If you really think me a true believer in the Lord, she said, come and stay with us; and she would take no refusal. All of the women named above were considered peers with the men with whom their names were associated. All were recognized by Paul for their contributions in proclaiming the message of Jesus, making new converts, and for supporting his ministry with food, lodging and finances. Those women who stood alone, and who were presumably heads of their own households, were quite likely presiders at the Eucharist celebrated in their homes. This presumption is based on the facts that: 1. There was no administrative hierarchy of ordained or designated ministers in the Church until Constantine declared Christianity the State religion in the early third century. According to the writings of Hippolytus, there was an apparent liturgical hierarchy of ordained clergy for the limited number of established churches as early as 140 C.E. However, the presider at the breaking of the bread celebrated most frequently in homes (in small cities and more rural areas) was the host or hostess in whose home the meal was celebrated. 2. When ordination rites were described in written documents in the early third century, women were ordained as deaconesses by the laying on of hands in the presence of the presbyters, deacons and other deaconesses, with a primary role to minister to other women. They continued to be ordained until this role was abolished at the beginning of the sixth century (Councils of Epaon 517 and Orleans 533). 3. The ministry performed by widows also led these women to be ranked with the senior clergy and is documented by a fifth-century writing as involving an ordination prayer.

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The fact that the Scriptures do not document any women as presiders at the Eucharist is no argument against this probability. Surprisingly, the Scriptures document many incidents of the apostles preaching, healing and working miracles but they do not document any of the Apostles or anyone other than Jesus at the Last Supper as a presider. Two passages in the Acts of the Apostles show St. Paul as participating in the breaking of the bread, but neither shows him clearly acting as presider at the Eucharist: Acts 20:7-12: On the first day of the week we met to break bread. Paul preached a sermon that went on till the middle of the night. [A]s Paul went on and on, a young man who was sitting on the window sill grew drowsy and fell to the ground three floors below. He was picked up dead. [Paul went down and revived him.] Then he went back upstairs where he broke bread and ate and carried on talking until he left at daybreak. Acts 27:33-37: [Paul is on a ship being transported as a prisoner to Rome.] Just before daybreak Paul urged them all to have something to eat. For fourteen days, he said, you have been in suspense, going hungry and eating nothing; let me persuade you to have something to eat; your safety is not in doubt. Not a hair of your heads will be lost. With these words he took some bread, gave thanks to God in front of them all, broke it and began to eat. Then they all plucked up courage and took something to eat themselves. [There is nothing to indicate that this was a celebration of the Eucharist.] Again, in I Cor. 10:16-18 Paul writes: The blessing cup that we bless is a communion with the blood of Christ, and the bread that we break is a communion with the body of Christ. The fact that there is only one loaf means that, though there are many of us, we form a single body because we all have a share in this one loaf. Historical Precedents One other woman who was a contemporary of Jesus has gone down in history as functioning in a clerical role. Veronica, who offered her veil to Jesus to wipe away the sweat and blood from his face as he carried his cross on the way to Calvary, is reported to have traveled to the region of Bordeaux shortly after the Ascension of Jesus. There, according to French legend, she preached and led a Christian community for many years. The Catholic Encyclopedia on CD-ROM presents two stories, summarized below, regarding St. Veronica in France: 1) she is given in marriage to Zacheus, the convert of the Gospel stories, accompanies him to Rome
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and then to Quircy, where her husband becomes a hermit under the name of Amadour, in the region now called Rocamadour. Meanwhile Veronica joins Martial, whom she assists in his apostolic preaching. 2) in the region of Bordeaux, Veronica is believed to have, shortly after the Ascension of Christ, landed at Soulac at the mouth of the Gironde; there she preaches, dies and is buried in the tomb which was long venerated either at Soulac or in the church of St. Severin at Bordeaux. Following the era of Jesus and the apostles, there are only a very few documented examples of Catholic women serving as presbyters or women of higher clerical rank. However, they are all highly significant in their individuality: Karen Jo Rorjesen, in her book When Women Were Priests (Harper, San Francisco), describes a mosaic in a Roman basilica that portrays four female figures, including one identified as Theodora Episcopa (Bishop Theodora) as well as other burial sites with epitaphs of women presbyters. Peter Stanford, in his book The Legend of Pope Joan researched extensive evidence in Rome and other parts of Europe to attempt to verify the legendary story of Pope Joan: she was reportedly an English woman who allegedly disguised herself as a man and became Pope John in the middle of the ninth century. Despite many signs of determined efforts by the Church to deny any truth to the story, and to disguise or destroy any historical records, Peter Stanford builds a very strong circumstantial evidentiary case for the truthfulness of the story. Peter based his case on investigation of medieval carvings and manuscripts, including tracking pieces of Joans story through some 500 chroniclers of the papacy and other Catholic concerns. He relied on such a variety of sources as a unique papal chair (designed to test the physical gender of successors to Joan) which he found still stored in a Vatican archive, an elaborate Bernini sculpture on a canopy over the main altar of St. Peters basilica in Rome showing a woman in various stages of labor and childbirth under a papal crown, a street shrine, unambiguous testimony of papal servants, of several bishops and of some of the most distinguished and respected medieval writers. His conclusion is that Pope Joan reigned as Pope John VIII for two years, five months and four days following the death of Pope Leo IV who died in 855 C.E. According to the legend, Joans tenure ended so abruptly because she had become pregnant, and during a procession, unexpectedly delivered her infant in the street. Both mother and child along with her reputed lover were allegedly immediately killed by angry observers who were upset by the popes deception. Joan and her baby were then buried by the roadside. The street shrine reportedly marks the spot where Joan/John delivered her baby.
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Heidi Schlumpf, in an article in the February, 2005 issue of U. S. Catholic entitled: Were Women Ever Ordained Catholic Priests?, reports on a definitive twentieth century example of a woman priest as follows: we have the story of Ludmila Javorova, who was ordained in 1970 secretly by a Catholic bishop who served the underground church in Czechoslovakia for 20 years. There is no record of any disciplinary action being taken against the bishop or the woman for ordaining or for permitting this woman to function as a priest. Both the Anglican and Episcopalian churches began ordaining women as priests (1974) and women as bishops (1989). Since each of these denominations rightfully claims apostolic succession for its bishops, women ordained by these bishops are validly ordained, though not accepted by Rome, and should have the same rights as validly ordained Catholic priests and bishops. Seven women were validly (but illicitly) ordained as Catholic priests on 6/29/02. All were immediately given a deadline of 8/25/02 by the Vatican to renounce their ordinations. All refused and all were officially excommunicated by the Vatican on 9/5/02. Another nine women in the United States have been ordained in 2005 (5) and 2006 (4), with a further 12 slated for ordination on July 31, 2006. None of these women is recognized as a priest by the Vatican, but all perform a variety of church-related ministries such as teaching, retreats, counseling, social work, etc., as well as presiding at the Eucharist for small communities of believers. Throughout the ages, there have been countless debates, discussions and pronouncements about the subject of women priests. In most recent times, Popes Paul VI and John Paul II have taken definitive stands that women may not be ordained priests in the Catholic Church. Jesuit Fr. Avery Dulles, in a private session at the end of the U.S. Catholic Bishops 1996 Conference, attempted once again to lay out all the arguments in favor of the Popes position and encouraged the bishops to begin speaking with one voice on this subject. However, Fr. Dulles did not obtain a consensus. One of the most significant objections was criticism by Bishop Kenneth Untener of Saginaw, MI, that Fr. Dulles refused to accept the suggestion that there is a new question the discovery of a different window to look at it [the ordination of women]. It is the first time the question is being discussed in the context of the equality of men and women. An apropos scriptural starting point for a new look at this subject in the context of equality is St. Pauls declaration in Gal. 3:27-29 you are, all of you, sons of God through faith in Christ Jesus. All baptized in Christ, you have all clothed yourselves in Christ, and there are no more distinctions between Jew and Greek, slave and free, male and female [emphasis added], but all of you are one in Christ Jesus.
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Merely by belonging to Christ you are the posterity of Abraham, the heirs he was promised. Looking at the cumulative records of how Jesus and Paul utilized women, along with the apostles, as key players to announce and further the growth of the Christian church in its earliest stages, there should be no hesitation for the church to open the last doors of equal service to women. The church has been strengthened, not weakened, by every inclusion of women in new roles in the church. There is every reason to believe that the church would be revitalized again if women were invited to participate fully in ordination and advancement to the highest levels of church administration.
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Chapter 5 EVOLUTION OF CERTAIN MORAL TEACHINGS Birth Prevention/Contraception In the matter of birth control/contraception, the Church has not been totally consistent in its teaching. Saint Augustine, the first Christian theologian to outright condemn birth control, wrote in his work, Marriage and Concupiscence, that a husband and wife who engage in the evil of birth control are married in name only. In Augustines era, the predominant method of birth prevention was coital interruption. Augustines basis for condemnation of this practice was founded on an erroneous interpretation of the story of Onan in Genesis 38: 8-10: Then Judah said to Onan, Take your brothers wife and do your duty as her brother-in-law, to produce a child for your brother. But Onan, knowing the child would not be his, spilt his seed on the ground every time he slept with his brothers wife, to avoid providing a child for his brother [emphasis added]. What he did was offensive to Yahweh, so he [Yahweh] brought about his [Onans] death also. Onan was not put to death for spilling his seed in order to frustrate conception. We cannot even be certain from the brief record above whether Onan actually had sexual intercourse with his sister-in-law or, alternatively, whether he interrupted such activity before emission of his seed. Rather he was punished for violating the law of the Levirate, i.e. for refusing to impregnate his deceased brothers wife for the purpose of keeping his brothers lineage alive, compounded by his deceit in pretending to fulfill that duty by (apparently) cohabiting with his sisterin-law. Another major anomaly in regard to the story of Onan which is never discussed by Christian moralists is this: there is no directive that Onan must marry his deceased brothers wife before attempting to impregnate her, nor is there any record of whether or not Onan might already be married and still have the obligation to commit adultery with his brothers wife in order to fulfill the law of the Levirate. In either of the preceding circumstances, fulfilling the law of the Levirate would have been an equally serious violation of contemporary moral teaching as spilling his seed.

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Unfortunately, all the Christian spokespersons on the subject of birth prevention from St. Paul until Pius XI in 1930 relied on the same misinterpretation of the story of Onan (as a case of spilling of his seed through coital interruption) as their primary basis for condemnation of any act of birth prevention. Yet there is no reported discussion of the subject of birth prevention by Jesus or by St. Paul anywhere in the New Testament, despite the fact that Rabbinic law in that era clearly permitted birth control through the use of an early form of the diaphragm. This is in stark contrast to other acts which St. Paul clearly itemizes as immoral: I Cor. 6: 9-10: people who do wrong will not inherit the kingdom of God: people of immoral lives, idolaters, adulterers, catamites [those who engage in anal intercourse with a boy], sodomites [those who engage in unnatural copulation, especially with an animal], thieves, usurers, drunkards, slanderers and swindlers. Thomas Aquinas, in the thirteenth century, introduced his natural law argument against homosexual intercourse but there is no evidence that he separately applied this law to birth prevention. This is understandable because Thomas rationale for his natural law argument was that he saw no examples of same gender sexual intercourse (a basis now known to be untrue) or spilling of seed in the animal world. Thomas Aquinas natural law argument thus had none of the elements pertaining to the physical integrity of the sexual act that became the foundation for the current church teaching. In 1588, in a Papal Bull titled: Effraenatum, Sixtus V declared that excommunication should be the penalty for the use of contraceptives and for abortion. This was repealed within just three years by his successor, Gregory XIV in Sedes Apostolica (1591) when he recommended: where no homicide or no animated fetus is involved, not to punish more strictly than the sacred canons or civil legislation does. In the twentieth century only the Roman Catholic Church has, alone among the Christian churches, taken an authoritative stand forbidding the use of any and every artificial means to prevent conception. The evolution over the last 75 years to the churchs present position on this subject was also inconsistent to the extent of one pope contradicting another pope, both through encyclicals. Pius XI reversed centuries of papal teaching when he amended the Churchs position that the primary purpose of marital intercourse was procreation of children, to say that sex in marriage is good and holy in itself. This reversal also directly conflicts with the teachings of St. Paul and St. Augustine that the sin of lust was involved even in the act of intercourse between a husband and wife.
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Then in 1930, Pius XI issued Casti Conubii (on Chaste Marriage), in which he stated: Any use whatsoever of matrimony exercised in such a way that the act is deliberately frustrated in its natural power to generate life is an offense against the law of God and of nature, and those who indulge in such are branded with the guilt of a grave sin. Pius fully intended to and did include in this statement a prohibition against the use of the safe period as a means of birth prevention. He had previously condemned this method which had been proposed by his contemporary, Margaret Sanger. In concert with Pius XI, the Roman Church authorities of that period considered this method a form of mutual masturbation, as it did all intercourse without the intent to conceive. Pius XI (as well as many earlier popes, theologians and Christian writers) was, in turn, reversed by his successor, Pius XII, in his address to the midwives of Italy, in which he cautiously authorized the use of the rhythm or safe period method for family planning. The document now considered definitive on the issue of birth prevention is Humanae Vitae, an encyclical letter of Pope Paul VI, issued July 25, 1968. This encyclical begins by listing several (then) contemporary reasons for needing updated guidance on the regulation of births. These reasons included: rapid population growth with perceived rapidly declining resources to sustain families and developing countries; conditions of work and pay for individual families vs. the economic burdens of providing housing, food and education; the changing status of women and their place in society; changes in the value attributed to conjugal love in marriage and to the meaning of conjugal acts in relation to that love; mans progress in the mastery and rational organization of the forces of nature, including the ability to regulate the transmission of life. The encyclical then asserts that Jesus empowered Peter and the other Apostles (and through them, his Church), by sending them forth to teach Gods commandments to all nations. He thus, according to Paul VI, constituted them guardians and authentic interpreters of the whole moral law, that is to say, not only the law of the Gospel, but also of the natural law [emphasis added]. For the natural law, too, is an expression of the will of God, and it must likewise be observed faithfully to obtain salvation. After outlining what it designates as the marks and requirements of conjugal love, i.e. that it be fully human, total, faithful and exclusive and fruitful, the
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encyclical goes on to define responsible parenthood. One part of that definition is the following: In relation to physical, economic, psychological and social conditions, responsible parenthood [emphasis added] is exercised either by the thoughtfully made and generous decision to raise a large family, or by the decision, made for grave motives and with respect for the moral law, to avoid a new birth for the time being, or even for an indeterminate period. Responsible parenthood also and above all implies a more profound relationship to the objective moral order established by God, and of which a right conscience is the faithful interpreter. Humanae Vitae then proceeds to list the unlawful means of birth regulation such as direct interruption of the generative process already begun, directly willed and procured abortion, and direct sterilization, whether perpetual or temporary, whether of the man or of the woman. It next adds the following significant statement directly attacking the use of any artificial or other preventive means of birth regulation other than use of the infertile periods within the natural rhythm of the womans ovulation cycle: Similarly excluded is every action that, either in anticipation of the conjugal act or in its accomplishment or in the development of its natural consequences, would have as an end or as a means, to render procreation impossible. There are a number of leaps of logic in the above citations that deserve our consideration. It is an immense stretch to argue that the commission from Jesus to go and teach Gods commandments (emphasis added) to all nations constituted an absolute authority of the Church over both the teachings of Jesus and of the natural law. The scripture version of this commissioning found in Mt. 28: 18-20 is the most detailed, yet it references only the teachings or commands outlined by Jesus: Jesus came up and spoke to them. He said, All authority in heaven and on earth has been given to me. Go, therefore, make disciples of all the nations; baptize them in the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit, and teach them to observe all the commands I gave you (emphasis added). And know that I am with you always; yes, to the end of time.

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Mark, 16: 14-16 is even less specific: Lastly, he showed himself to the Eleven themselves while they were at table. He reproached them for their incredulity and obstinacy, because they had refused to believe those who had seen him after he had risen. And he said to them, Go out to the whole world; proclaim the Good News to all creation. He who believes and is baptized will be saved; he who does not believe will be condemned. There is nothing in either of the preceding quotations that relates to authority to interpret the laws of nature, unless Jesus had separately spoken of some aspect of the natural law to his disciples. However, nowhere in the scriptures is there any evidence that Jesus ever addressed the subject of family planning. This is especially noteworthy because Jews, following the Mosaic laws, have permitted family planning and family limitation since before the time of Jesus. By the first century B.C.E., it was already imbedded in Jewish law that the parents duty to procreate is satisfied after the birth of one male and one female child or two male children. Once those numbers were achieved, preventive contraception other than abstinence or avoidance of the fertile cycle was permitted (and was practiced) under Jewish law despite the on-going Jewish awareness of Gods mandate in the creation story (Gen: 1:28): Be fruitful, multiply, fill the earth and conquer it. This is another instance (see chapter on divorce) in which the legitimate interpreters of Gods law before the coming of Jesus took a position contrary to that of the current Catholic teaching, but Jesus, in this case, did not overturn or modify that teaching in any way. The last phrase of the Genesis passage is just as important as the first portions: mankind was given authority to dominate all of creation, including all of our human condition. Provided humans do not selfishly use or abuse their partners in sexual relations (e.g. forcing sexual activity without the partners mutual consent) nor act to terminate new human life once it has begun (e.g. abortion), it appears that God has given humans the authority and the reasoned ability to control the entire sexual and procreative process. This authority includes the use of artificial means to prevent conception (e.g. use of condoms, pills, spermicidal jellies, Plan B drug, etc.), within the parameters of responsible parenthood, or during a time of famine, or to prevent the transmission of injurious or deadly disease (e.g. the AIDS virus or hepatitis B). Humanae Vitae endorses individual responsibility for these moral decisions by its guidance that a right conscience is the faithful interpreter.
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By definition, the Natural Law as it applies to humanity is that order which is found in the natural state of human existence and activity as ordained by the Creator and as understood by our human reason. Humanae Vitae, #11, states: The fact is, as experience shows, that new life is not the result of each and every act of sexual intercourse. God has wisely ordered laws of nature and the incidence of fertility in such a way that successive births are already naturally spaced through the inherent operation of these laws. The Church, nevertheless, teaches that each and every marital act must of necessity retain its intrinsic relationship to the procreation of human life. By the very existence of fertile and infertile periods in the female reproductive cycle, as well as by the fact that some males and some females are infertile throughout their lifetimes or become so at some stage of their individual lives, we easily reason to the conclusion that it was not Gods intention or law that every distinct act of intercourse be open to possible conception. As noted above, Gods people following the Mosaic Law reached a different conclusion and Jesus did not counteract the Mosaic teaching or practices. Other Christian denominations, as well as non-Christian sects and countries have reasoned that uses of artificial means of birth prevention are not universally wrong and immoral. Why must we impute to every couple using artificial means of birth prevention in a given instance that they are not open to the possibility of procreation at some future date if their circumstances change? Assuming that serious reasons prevail here and now for not conceiving, why should this action be assessed any differently than intended prevention using Natural Family Planning? The Churchs choice of natural family planning as the title for its approved method of family limitation is a true misnomer. It is the nature of human (and animal) physiology that either or both of the partners to a sex act experience heightened sexual attraction and passion during fertile rather than the infertile periods. Instructions for Natural Family Planning using the Sympto-Thermal Method states that it is based on daily fertility awareness. Day by day, a couple charts the wifes common signs of fertility and uses that information to determine her fertile and infertile times. Using these results, the couple can opt to seek a pregnancy or to avoid or postpone such an outcome. To refrain from responses to natural sexual urgings when they are strongest or to limit ones response to these urgings based on the dictates of a thermometer or a calendar is truly unnatural. A very troubling aspect of the encyclical is the fact that any and every use of artificial means of family limitation is declared to be morally evil, while family
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limitation using the infertile period of the ovulation cycle is considered to be morally acceptable. In either situation, the same grave reasons for family planning may exist and the intent of the participating couples may be exactly the same, i.e. to prevent conception at this particular time. It is totally illogical to say that the socalled natural family planners (other than those who are seeking to conceive) are open to the possibility of conception when they have done everything possible to assure that their sexual relations are occurring at the height of female infertility. Since most artificial means of birth prevention also have a slight risk of failure, why are users of these methods of prevention denied consideration as also being open to the possibility of conception? Moreover, what is morally evil about limiting conception when the grave reasons previously discussed are driving the decision, and provided no means which would cause an abortion are used to prevent conception? There are multiple reasons why one or the other party to a marriage is or may become infertile: among these are certain physical abnormalities of either the male or female, removal of the female ovaries or male testes for medical reasons, menopause of the female or low sperm count of the male. The Church rightfully does not consider it immoral for spouses to exercise their marital rights in any of these situations even though the possibility of conception is out of the question. Why then apply a different standard to the use of artificial means of birth prevention, particularly when grave reasons for doing this exist in the marital relationship? While seemingly leaving no door open regarding use of artificial contraception, the encyclical included the language already quoted, but repeated here because of its significance (Humanae Vitae, section 10: Responsible Parenthood): Responsible parenthood also and above all implies a more profound relationship to the objective moral (emphasis added) order established by God, and of which a right conscience is the faithful interpreter (emphasis added). The responsible exercise of parenthood implies, therefore, that husband and wife recognize fully their duties toward God, toward themselves, toward the family and toward society, in a correct hierarchy of values. The morality of sexual relations is determined by the conformance or nonconformance of the sexual interaction between the parties to Gods law of love your neighbor as yourself (with neighbor being interpreted in its broadest sense, i.e. all other human beings). Thus the various actions related to marital intercourse such as fondling, manual or mechanical stimulation, other forms of foreplay and even the use of artificial means to prevent conception are morally neutral in
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themselves. They become morally good or morally bad to the extent that they conform with or violate the individual, societal or family standards outlined above. But, in each instance the morality of the actions between the marital partners is determined by the right conscience of the participants, not by the physical structure of the act itself. Within a short period of time after the issuance of Humanae Vitae, the primacy of individual conscience for determining the morality of the method to be used to prevent conception was acknowledged by numerous national conferences of Catholic bishops. Among these were the conferences of Belgium, Canada, France, Germany, the Netherlands and the Scandinavian countries, along with many individual bishops in other countries, including the United States. All of these bishops generally accepted the encyclical as authoritative teaching, but indicated that there are many factors which determine ones personal conscience regarding marriage rules, for examples: mutual love, the relations in a family, and social circumstances (Dutch bishops). And, again, If someone for weighty and wellconsidered reasons cannot become convinced by the argumentation of the encyclical, it has always been conceded that he [or she] is allowed to have a different view from that presented in a non-infallible statement of the Church. No one should be considered a bad Catholic because he [or she] is of such a dissenting opinion. In summary, the worlds bishops and clergy generally uphold the encyclical as authoritative teaching but they do not all regard as sinful those actions which may be contrary to the encyclical, but performed in good conscience. Premarital Sexual Relations Using the preceding authority and rationale, it is also arguable that an engaged or seriously committed couple could engage in premarital sexual intercourse (even if using artificial means of birth prevention) and related sexual acts in good conscience that they are not violating Gods will, and thus not sinning. There is, of course, great risk that young and relatively immature men and women will be responding just to their animal (natural?) passions, possibly seeking only to satisfy their personal desires, with little or no thought for the desires of their partner, for the idea of a life-time commitment such as should accompany marriage or for accepting responsibility for any new life that might result from their actions. A strongly committed engaged couple, on the other hand, might use premarital sexual intercourse to confirm and strengthen their love for each other. However, each individual must examine his or her own conscience as to what degree of
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personal selfishness or of injury to the other partners rights, if any, is involved in their actions. The actions themselves are morally neutral. Premarital sexual intercourse is again not a subject addressed either by Jesus or any of the New Testament writers. The Church gradually evolved to a position that any and every sexual look, touch or thought outside of marriage was sinful because from the earliest Christian times even sex within marriage was considered sinful. Thus the curiosity of an adolescent looking at nude or semi-nude pictures, or the casual sexual touching by teenagers of someone of the opposite (or same) sex during their passage to maturity, or even personal touching or stimulation of their own sexual organs other than for bathing or normal bodily functions were actions that were historically classified as sinful. The same negative moral assessment has been made with regard to petting, kissing, foreplay and related actions. The question that needs to be asked and answered in each of these situations is this: when and how is love of God, neighbor or self diminished or abused by these normal, healthy actions? Masturbation A specific related moral issue is that of masturbation. As defined in Websters II, New College Dictionary (Houghton Mifflin Company, 1999), masturbation is excitation of the genital organs, usually to orgasm, by manual contact or means other than sexual intercourse. The Church generally prefers to label this act as one of self-abuse, with little or no clarification as to what constitutes abuse, and always classifies it as grave sin in its teaching materials. Fortunately, most contemporary priest confessors are more in tune with the reality that this action may not be a sin at all. Based on the premises established above, the act of masturbation in itself is morally neutral. The Church has historically linked the Old Testament story of Onan deliberately wasting his seed as the primary basis for declaring masturbation sinful. In rebuttal, the following observations are in order: 1) It has already been argued that Onans sin was his deliberate violation of the law of the levirate and that his action was not a sexual sin. 2) Even if wasting of the seed is maintained as the basis for declaring masturbation sinful, this is an argument that would apply only to masturbation by males and would not apply to masturbation by females. 3) There is no comparable attribution of sinfulness to nocturnal emissions, premature ejaculations, or to the mutual masturbation (a
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designation applied by some commentators) occurring in the use of the rhythm method of family planning. 4) In the act itself, there is no automatically demonstrable injury to ones love for God, self, neighbor or society that would constitute moral degradation or sinfulness. There are situations where masturbation is not only not sinful, but times when it can have the very positive and wholesome effect of sustaining and fulfilling, at least partially, the marital relationship or the health of the individual performing the act: 1) In a marriage when one of the partners becomes physically incapable (through injury, illness, etc.) of further sexual intercourse, while the other partner is still desirous of sexual fulfillment. 2) In a marriage, when one of the partners for a variety of reasons (e.g. impotency due to medications, onset of menopause, age-induced impotency, etc.) becomes unable to or no longer desirous of further marital intercourse, but the other partner still seeks sexual satisfaction. 3) A study of nearly 30,000 men has shown that the higher the number of ejaculations per month (either through sexual intercourse or masturbation), the lower the risk for that male to develop prostate cancer. The explanation for this finding is that frequent ejaculations help flush out cancer-causing chemicals or reduce the development of calcifications that have been linked with prostate cancer. In summary, none of the moral issues, i.e. family planning/birth prevention, premarital sex, or masturbation, discussed in this chapter were addressed in the teaching of Jesus or in the New Testament writings. Thomas Aquinas based his natural law argument on a false premise and one which is totally distinct from the Churchs current natural law position that each and every act of intercourse has to be open to the possibility of conception. Pius XI and Pius XII each issued authoritative but opposing teaching on the permissibility of the use of the rhythm method to prevent conception. Paul VI, in Humanae Vitae #11, added to the confusion on this subject by declaring that each and every act of marital intercourse must of necessity retain its intrinsic relationship to the procreation of human life, while at the same time outlining his message of responsible parenthood as determined by the right conscience of the parties to the act. The Church has historically labeled every act of premarital intimacy, casual sexual contacts of all kinds, and acts of masturbation as always sinful strictly based on its own perceived objective moral standard without demonstrating any perceived harm to an individuals love for God, self or society.
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The great majority of todays practicing Catholics, acting in good conscience, disagree that violations of these objective standards are themselves morally evil acts, and they are fully supported in their beliefs and contrary practices by the clergy at all levels of the Church.
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Chapter 6 LIFE AND DEATH MORAL DECISIONS Abortion/Conception of Human Life The most challenging life and death moral issue of the twentieth and thus far in the twenty-first century is that of abortion. The baseline definition of abortion according to Websters II New College Dictionary (1999) is the induced termination of pregnancy before the fetus is capable of independent survival. Accepting this definition leaves no room for dispute that termination of a developing human life is murder and therefore morally evil. (Many would argue that at least two exceptions, i.e. therapeutic abortions and abortions in the case of rape, would not be morally evil.) The II Vatican Council speaks to this subject in Gaudium et Spes, 51: God, the Lord of life, has conferred on man [and woman] the surpassing ministry of safeguarding life, a ministry which must be fulfilled in a manner that is worthy of man [and woman]. Therefore, from the moment of its conception [human] life must be guarded with the greatest care while abortion and infanticide are unspeakable crimes. Despite the Churchs universal condemnation of abortion, if we examine closely the process leading to conception of human life, there appears to be a narrow window of dispute for some actions that are currently condemned as sinful by the Church. The primary question that needs to be answered is: when does human life begin/when is the first moment of conception? Does life begin in the first instant that a female egg is fertilized by the male sperm, or is human life conceived only at the moment of implantation of the fertilized egg in the female uterus? As background to answering this question, I pose the following consideration: if indeed Mary remained physically a virgin throughout the conception of Jesus, then human life for Jesus must have begun after implantation and fertilization of the egg in her womb. While the church has taken a firm stand regarding the protection of human life from the moment of conception to the moment of natural death, prior to comments by Pope Benedict XVI on February 27, 2006, the Church had not taken a definitive position on the question of when a fertilized egg becomes a human life. In an audience with members of the Pontifical Academy for Life, Benedict stated that embryos developed for in vitro fertilization deserve the same right to life as fetuses, children and adults and that right extends to embryos even before
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they are transferred into a womans womb. The previous ambiguity on that issue was acknowledged in the Instruction on Human Life published by the Vaticans Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith in 1987, and in Pope John Paul IIs encyclical Evangelium Vitae issued in 1995. The latter source, for example, states in paragraph #60: from the time that the ovum is fertilized [emphasis added], a life is begun which is neither that of the father or the mother; it is rather the life of a new human being with his own growth. It would never be made human if it were not human already. This has always been clear, and modern genetic science offers clear confirmation. It has demonstrated that from the first instant there is established the programme [sic] of what this living being will be: a person, this individual person with his characteristic aspects already well determined. Right from fertilization the adventure of a human life begins, and each of its capacities requires time a rather lengthy time to find its place and to be in a position to act [emphasis added]. On the other hand, it also contains passages such as the following: More than anything else, at work here is the certainty that the life which parents transmit has its origins in God. We see this attested in the many biblical passages which respectfully and lovingly speak of conception, of the forming of life in the mothers womb [emphasis added], of giving birth and of the intimate connection between the initial moment of life and the action of God the Creator. As will be seen in the material which follows, genetic science does not confirm the beginning of human life as starting with fertilization, but rather with implantation. Even the paragraphs quoted from Evangelium Vitae raise conflicting notions about the origin of life right from fertilization or with the forming of life in the mothers womb. We know that the ovum and sperm begin immediately to divide and multiply once they are united. The moment of fertilization undeniably begins a process which has the potential (reference capacities in the encyclical) to result in new human life. However, before implantation occurs and a lifeline of human maternal nourishment (i.e. food, water and oxygen) is established, the division of cells is purely mechanical. While the potential now exists, there are no immediate human characteristics or sensitivities to identify this activity as human. If implantation fails, then no human life is achieved or lost because there was not yet
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any actual human life to lose. Conception of human life is not simultaneous with fertilization, but rather with implantation. Although there is no consensus among scientists about when life begins, many scientists believe life begins only when the first neurological tissues are evident, about two to three weeks after fertilization. On the other hand, the Complete Medical Encyclopedia compiled by the American Medical Association outlines the development from zygote to infant as follows: The fertilized egg passes through several stages from zygote to infant: Zygote: A fertilized egg in the first 24 hours after fertilization Blastocyst: The mass of continually dividing cells up to 8 days after fertilization Embryo: The blastocyst after it attaches to the wall of the uterus from about two weeks after fertilization [emphasis added] until the end of the seventh week after fertilization Fetus: 7 or 8 weeks after fertilization until birth Infant: After the birth of the fetus The Encyclopedia further states under the heading of Embryo: After fertilization, the egg (zygote) begins to divide into a cluster of cells, or blastocyst, which continues to divide as it moves down the fallopian tube toward the uterus. At conception, 5 to 8 days after fertilization [emphasis added], the blastocyst implants itself in the wall of the uterus and becomes a developing embryo. After 8 weeks it is called a FETUS. Obviously, Pope Benedicts statement (and those found in Evangelium Vitae) substantially conflicts with the above medical determinants of the beginning of life as an embryo since he references embryos as if they could exist even before fertilization and before they are transferred into a womans womb. If we accept the preceding medical outline for the true beginning of human life, i.e. at the moment of implantation, then certain other conclusions follow:
1. Websters definition of pregnancy is the period during which a

developing fetus is carried within the uterus (emphasis added). It would not invalidate Websters definition of ectopic pregnancy, i.e. gestation outside the uterus, often in the Fallopian tube, because the embryo begins receiving some (usually inadequate and
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2.

3.

4.

5.

unsustainable) human nourishment from the human maternal organ to which it attaches. Likewise, Websters definition of gestation is vindicated, i.e. the period of carrying developing offspring in the uterus after conception (emphasis added). In vitro fertilization, a process by which one or more of a donor womans eggs are fertilized in a laboratory, outside the womans body, and then reinserted into the womans uterus or fallopian tube, should be considered a morally acceptable practice for overcoming infertility. According to the American Society for Reproductive Medicine, infertility affects more than six million American women and their spouses, or about 10% of the reproductive-age population. If this method is the only way these millions of parents can give life to children born of their love, how can the Church consider this process to be immoral? Even if some of the eggs fertilized in this process are either destroyed or frozen for possible future use, no abortion would occur because human life has not been generated prior to implantation. The stored or destroyed cell clusters are not yet embryos. Therapeutic stem-cell research using zygotes created from harvested eggs and sperm, outside the uterus, would not constitute abortion because these zygotes never reach the stage of implantation or the beginning of human life. Further, it is incorrect to refer to this research as embryonic stem-cell research since no implantation has occurred to create an embryo. One position of the Church which I find contradictory is the following: the Church permits and supports stem-cell research for therapeutic reasons when the stem cells come from adults or umbilical cords. These cells are obviously living cells because they are post-implantation. Again, if some or many of these living cells are destroyed or discarded during the research process, the Church has not classified these results as abortion. Morning-after pills taken immediately (or potentially up to 5 days while the zygote/blastocyst is still traveling through the fallopian tube toward the uterus) after a sexual encounter, before implantation could occur, would be morally permissible because no abortion of human life would occur. Contrary to the popular notion that sperm travels at the speed of light, it takes up to 24 hours for an egg to be fertilized and a minimum of three to five days to make the uncertain trip into the uterus. The morning-after pills have been specifically designed to prevent pregnancy for up to 72 hours (3 days) after having had unprotected sex or after an individual has been the victim
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of sexual assault. Once implantation could have occurred or after pregnancy is confirmed, use of the morning-after pill would be morally wrong because it could or actually would result in an abortion, a termination of a gestating human life. 6. Emergency contraception, which consists of taking two heavy doses of ordinary birth-control pills up to three days after intercourse in order to prevent pregnancy from occurring, would not cause an abortion because implantation has not yet occurred. Two emergency contraceptives, namely Preven (marketed in 1998) and Plan B (marketed in 1999) which causes less nausea and is effective up to five days after sexual intercourse, would be morally permissible to the extent that they prevent implantation and pregnancy. On the other hand, the abortion pill Mifeprix, which causes a chemical abortion up to seven weeks into a pregnancy, would not be morally acceptable. On the other hand, the following conclusions would also be true: 1. Any direct action taken to terminate the developing human life at any stage of the pregnancy following implantation would, on its face, constitute grave sin, i.e. abortion, an act of murder of an innocent human life. 2. Indirect or therapeutic abortions that are medically necessary, e.g. removal of a cancerous womb from a pregnant woman, or of a fallopian tube in danger of infection or other life-threatening complications resulting from an ectopic pregnancy, are permitted in order to save the mothers life from the direct threats posed by the cancer or the irregular pregnancy. In most cases, an ectopic pregnancy occurs when the zygote implants in the fallopian tube rather than in the uterus. If allowed to develop, an ectopic pregnancy will almost always eventually rupture and cause severe internal bleeding threatening the mothers life. 3. Partial-birth abortion is clearly an act of murder. It is a heinous and grave sin both because it takes an innocent life at the very moment of birth and because of the manner in which the partially-delivered lateterm fetus is destroyed. If the mothers life is being severely threatened in the final moments before delivery, there are other means such as caesarean delivery, to protect the mother without taking the life of the infant.

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One anomaly in regard to Catholic teaching on abortion has to do with miscarriage (defined by Webster as: the premature expulsion of a non-viable fetus from the uterus). Miscarriage may also be called a spontaneous abortion, i.e. rejection of a nonviable fetus due to naturally occurring events as opposed to elective or therapeutic abortion procedures which a woman may choose to have done. It is noteworthy that the Church has no directive or even expectation that this non-viable, but perhaps living fetus (at the time of its rejection), be baptized, even conditionally. Stem Cell Research When a sperm and an egg cell unite in the act of fertilization, the resulting cell begins immediately to divide into 2, 4, 8, 16, 32 and then 64 cells in a hollow clump of cells called a blastosphere or blastocyst. At this early stage, all of these cells remain undifferentiated, i.e. each has the potential to develop into any part of the human body. (It is the viewpoint taken by most stem-cell research scientists that the embryonic stage at which the blastocyst begins to differentiate into distinct organs and other body parts is when sentient life begins.) In the next stages of cell-division, most cells will have a dedicated purpose directed at formation of each of the distinct parts of the body, tissue and blood, but some will remain undifferentiated even into adulthood. It is the latter group which provides adult stem cells for research but these are not nearly as versatile as blastocyst cells. Stem cell research is currently being conducted using undifferentiated cells collected from blastocysts, umbilical cords of newborns, and from infants, children and adults. The selected cells have the ability, if they are maintained in a viable environment and are stimulated by chemicals or electricity, to divide indefinitely with the potential to form into specialized stem-cell lines that make up individual tissues and organs in the human body. These cells are found predominately in the bone marrow and in lesser numbers, in the bloodstream. These versatile cells can help repair organs in two ways: by filling in damaged areas and by secreting potent chemicals that can make tissues rejuvenate themselves. Examples of successful research are the following: adult bonemarrow stem cells are being transplanted into damaged hearts, regenerating healthy heart tissue; adult-nerve stem cells from the nasal passages are being transplanted into the spinal cords of paraplegics, with some success in helping them to regain movement in their limbs; and umbilical-stem cells have had some success in treating cases of leukemia, anemia and other blood-based diseases. In the May, 2005 issue of the journal Science, South Korean scientists revealed that
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they had created stem cells, using reengineered blastocyst cells, which genetically match injured or sick patients. The goal for these blastocyst cells had been to capture them when they are only days old and to harness the chemical signals by which these early cells, once implanted, coordinate the development of fetal organs in the womb. Then, hopefully, the impaired organs of a recipient of these laboratory-created stem cells can be regenerated into a more youthful condition or even replaced, as necessary. Unfortunately, on December 29, 2005 a university panel of his peers said that Hwang Woosuk, the lead scientist in the proclaimed discovery, had falsified evidence and had not produced any stem-cell lines that were patient specific as had been reported earlier. Stem-cell research using cells drawn from blastocysts would not be morally wrong if conception of human life does not occur until the moment of implantation (generally 5 - 8 days after fertilization). It is critical to note that stem cells at the blastocyst stage of development have no embryonic organs or tissues, no cell mass with any distinctive cranial or tail formation, no appearance of a back or skeletal structure, no dedication of individual cells to specific developmental goals. Even if the multiplication of blastocyst cells is stimulated in the laboratory for days or weeks while research is conducted, human life does not begin if implantation does not occur. On the other hand, attempted embryonic cell research which could result in the ending of human life through the destruction of living human cells used in failed experiments would generally be morally wrong. In my opinion, it is actually more difficult to morally justify stem cell research using cells from the bone marrow and umbilical cord than from the blastocyst. In the latter cases, living human cells (since they have obviously passed the stage of implantation) are collected, kept viable and stimulated until they begin to replicate, hopefully, with the help of medical science, to form stem cell lines in a manner that will lead to further medical breakthroughs. Interestingly, Cardinal William H. Keeler of Baltimore, chairman of the U.S. bishops Committee on ProLife Activities, in May, 2005, wrote a letter to the U.S. House of Representatives endorsing stem cell research using umbilical cord blood. In his letter he stated that: unlike the false expectations raised by embryonic stem-cell research, studies using umbilical cord blood retrieved immediately after live births had already shown results in treating more than 60 diseases. In the year 2004, collected bone marrow and umbilical cord cells had already been coaxed to form functional heart muscle cells, blood cells, neurons and the cells that form blood vessels, cartilage, muscle and bone. Approval for the use of these cells is apparently based on the following premises:
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1. The extraction of bone marrow cells does not negatively affect the on-going life of the adult or child donor. 2. Umbilical cord cells which have been expelled from the mothers body and which have fulfilled their intended function to nourish an embryo/fetus have no further normal purpose for the continuation of human life. These arguments, however, do not explain why it is morally wrong to research using blastocyst cells which have not attained human life, while it is morally acceptable to research using bone marrow or umbilical cells which had achieved human life. In all three cases the process is the same: i.e. initiate replication and multiplication of the cells; steer the direction of the developing cells to enable repair or replacement of defective, living human parts; end the viability and discard those replicating cells which do not achieve a successful research outcome. In the latter two cases, this would mean ending the viability of living human cells. Comparatively, it is important to note that all blastocyst stem-cell research in the United States derives from fertilized eggs, unused during in vitro fertilization, which are frozen for possible future use by the donors. Of the approximate 400,000 fertilized eggs frozen in the U.S., most will not be used and will eventually be destroyed. Cloning A logical progression from the repair or replacement of human body parts is the attempt to clone an entirely new human being, the genetic twin of the donor organism. Reproductive cloning thus far has been restricted to cloning of animals, beginning with the celebrated breakthrough with the sheep, Dolly, in 1996. Reproductive cloning follows a three-step process: 1. transferring genetic material from the nucleus of a donor adult cell to an egg whose own nucleus, and thus its genetic material, has been removed 2. treating the reconstructed egg containing the DNA from a donor cell with chemicals or electric current in order to stimulate cell division 3. when the cloned blastocyst reaches a suitable stage of replication, it is implanted in the uterus of a female host where it takes on the life form of the host and continues to develop until birth Due to the inefficiency of animal cloning (generally only 1 or 2 viable offspring for every 100 experiments) and the lack of understanding about reproductive cloning, most scientists and physicians strongly believe that it would be unethical to attempt to clone humans at the present time. Not only do most attempts to clone animals fail, but about 30% of clones born alive are affected with large offspring
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syndrome and other debilitating conditions. The same problems would be expected in human cloning. In addition, scientists do not know how cloning might impact mental development. With so many unknowns concerning reproductive cloning, any attempt to clone humans at this time is considered potentially very dangerous and ethically irresponsible. Under the terms previously established, i.e. that human life is not conceived until implantation is achieved, one could argue that reproductive cloning research on the blastocyst cells should be permitted as morally acceptable. However, with a 98% failure rate for implanted cells to survive as embryos without major physical or mental deficiencies, it would be morally irresponsible and morally wrong to attempt to create a human clone. Likewise, if the motivation for reproductive cloning is to establish a master race to the detriment of any existing culture or race or to any group or class of people perceived as inferior, such cloning attempts would also be morally wrong and unacceptable. On the other hand, therapeutic cloning (a.k.a. stem-cell research) whose goal is not to create cloned human beings, but rather to harvest stem cells that can be used to study human development and to treat human diseases or bodily defects, is highly endorsed and avidly pursued by medical researchers. The process followed in therapeutic cloning is similar to that for reproductive cloning: 1. Stem cells are extracted from a newly-fertilized egg after it has divided for three to five days. The egg at this stage of development is called a blastocyst. 2. The extraction process destroys the blastocyst before implantation but initiates the process of forming stem cell lines that one day may serve as replacement cells to treat heart disease, Alzheimers, Parkinsons, cancer and other diseases. Therapeutic cloning should be recognized as morally acceptable because its sole purpose is to heal and preserve human life using reprogrammed stem cells. Since therapeutic cloning utilizes cells drawn from blastocyst clusters which have not been implanted, there is no destruction of human life when individual experiments are unsuccessful and, therefore, the research is morally acceptable. Euthanasia, Assisted Suicide, Palliative Care, Permanent Vegetative State The catechism of the Catholic Church defines euthanasia as: An action or an omission which, by itself or by intention, causes the death [emphasis added] of handicapped, sick or dying persons sometimes with an attempt to justify the act as a means of eliminating suffering. No similar justification is generally offered
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for participation in an assisted suicide. A study conducted by a physician in the State of Oregon showed that patients opting for assisted suicide share certain common, but hardly meritorious, characteristics: 1. They were well off socio-economically. 2. Eleven percent felt that they were a burden to their families. 3. Most were over-achievers and felt less appreciated when they reached 65 years of age. They wanted to maintain control of their own lives and dreaded dependence on others. 4. They are generally individuals who have died socially, i.e. they are both depressed and demoralized. Since death by euthanasia is directly initiated or caused by the action or omission of a second party, it differs significantly from assisted suicide which is initiated by the person taking his or her own life. In the latter case, the assistant facilitates the act of suicide by providing the means for a quick and generally painless death. In 1997, the U.S. Supreme Court held that while Americans have no constitutional right to assisted suicide, States may decide the issue for themselves. In all of the United States, physician-assisted suicides using federally controlled drugs are legal only in the state of Oregon. Under that states Death with Dignity Act which went into effect in 1994, physicians have been permitted to prescribe lethal doses of drugs to requesting patients who meet the following conditions: 1. The patient must be diagnosed by at least two physicians to have less than six months to live. 2. The patient must be diagnosed by those same physicians and be determined to be mentally competent to make the request to die. Opponents of assisted suicide argue that when a state or doctor uses drugs not to heal or to relieve pain, but simply to facilitate death, that action is not a medical treatment; it is killing. Even though the physician may not administer the drug, he or she becomes complicit in the taking of human life by providing the killing drug. The Church teaches that each of the preceding acts is morally wrong because each involves the taking of a human life. On the other hand, an apparent Church contradiction is its position that palliative care, even when it reaches the stage of withdrawal of nutrients and hydration, is sufficient and may even be desirable for a patient who has been diagnosed as in the last stages of terminal illness. This position of the Church remains even though death may not be
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expected for several days (usually), weeks (sometimes) or possibly months (rarely). As expressed by Michael R. Panicola, PhD in Health Progress, Nov-Dec, 2001: Catholic teaching on prolonging life has always held that the duty to maintain life through medical means is limited. It ceases when medical treatment cannot offer one a reasonable hope of benefit in terms of pursuing the spiritual goods of life (love of God and love of neighbor), or can only offer one a physical condition in which the pursuit of the spiritual goods of life will be profoundly frustrated in the mere effort for survival. The palliative therapy, based on a multi-disciplinary approach, no longer seeks to limit disease progression, but continues efforts to ease the physical pain, treat symptoms of serious illness and insure patients a peaceful death. The inconsistency of this latter church position is that at least in the perceived last stage of terminal illness, food and water may be withheld from the patient. When the combined opinions of the medical team, social workers and spiritual guides conclude that the benefits vs burdens of continuing the patients life are no longer in the patients best interest to attempt to stem disease progression, then the discontinuance of hydration and nourishment is permitted even though death may not occur for several days or even weeks. Palliative care treatment may be applied under a variety of conditions:
1. Permanently unconscious state means an irreversible condition in which

I am permanently unaware of myself and my surroundings. My physician and one other physician must examine me and agree that the total loss of higher brain function has left me unable to feel pain or suffering. 2. Terminal condition or terminal illness means an irreversible, incurable and untreatable condition caused by disease, illness or injury. My physician and one other physician will have examined me and believe that I cannot recover and that death is likely to occur within a relatively short time if I do not receive life-sustaining treatment. 3. In a vegetative state patients are awake but not aware of themselves or of their environment. (This condition is different from a coma, in which the patient is neither awake nor aware. Both, however, are states in which the patient is devoid of consciousness.) If the vegetative state continues for a month, the patient is said to be in a persistent vegetative state. After a year without improvement, the patient is said to be in a permanent vegetative state.
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Obviously, the one distinctive difference in the above three cases is that patients in the permanently unconscious state may or may not be dying while those in the vegetative state are not dying, at least in the near-term. In all three cases their conditions are believed to be irreversible. Until March 20, 2004, Catholic bishops, theologians and ethicists were generally in agreement in following the Ethical and Religious Directives (ERD) for Catholic Health Care Services which were issued by the U. S. Conference of Catholic Bishops. According to those guidelines, feeding tubes for people in persistent vegetative states are considered medical treatment that can be continued or halted based upon an evaluation of the benefits vs burdens for patient and family or guardian of the patient. These guidelines call for respecting the free and informed judgment of a competent patient to accept or refuse life-sustaining treatment. Such judgments are generally set out in advance, in living wills, by people who do not want life-prolonging medical treatments. Catholic medical personnel may honor these living wills as long as the persons wishes dont conflict with Catholic moral teachings, including the churchs ban on euthanasia. Then, in a speech delivered on March 20, 2004, to participants of a Vatican conference on the ethical dilemmas of dealing with incapacitated patients, Pope John Paul II attempted to overturn this long-standing set of guiding principles, particularly in regard to the permanent vegetative state (PVS). He said that removal of feeding tubes from people in vegetative states (even PVS) is immoral, and that no judgment on their quality of life can justify what he called euthanasia by omission. The Pope specified that the provision of food and water must be continued until and/or as long as they are achieving their proper finality, i.e. providing nourishment and alleviating suffering. The Pope then added the statement that since no one knows when or if a patient in a vegetative state may awaken, the abandonment or interruption of minimal care for the patient, including food and water, cannot be ethically justified. The Popes statements on this subject have been characterized as authoritative and significant but they do not carry the weight of an encyclical, the most authoritative level of Vatican teaching other than an infallible statement. This declaration by the Pope caused a serious moral dilemma for health care providers who had relied on the contrary but also highly authoritative guidance of a national conference of Bishops, moral theologians, ethicists and other religious leaders for more than 25 years. Why is a practice that was not considered morally wrong and, which was in fact strongly endorsed for all that time, now declared to be morally wrong? Even though a patient in a permanent vegetative state is awake, all of the medical indicators show that this patient is not conscious of
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pain, suffering or of any activity, communication or other external stimuli. Therefore, continuing hydration and nourishment only succeeds in sustaining an artificial existence with no apparent present or future benefit for the patient, but almost surely significant burdens on the caregivers. In practice, Catholic health care providers are continuing to apply the previously recognized ERD criteria for determining the benefits vs burdens and then deciding whether or not to continue medically assisted nutrition and hydration. Death and Organ Transplants Another area of Church controversy is the issue of when life ends, particularly with regard to harvesting human body organs for transplant. Most physicians agree that for an organ to be suitable for a transplant, it must be a healthy organ. For the organ to be considered healthy, it must be obtained from a living body, or from a body whose cardiac and respiratory functions have been maintained artificially, or immediately at the time of death. Vital human organs that occur singly in the body can be removed only from the body of someone who is certainly dead. The controversy about time of death revolves around two distinct definitions of death:
1. cardiopulmonary death is identified by the stoppage of both the heart

and lungs 2. brain death is identified by determining that the brain stem, cerebral cortex and cerebellum have ceased functioning even though the heart and lungs continue to function; this determination cannot be reached solely by observing a flat brain wave The Vatican first took an official position on this subject in 1957 when Pope Pius XII stated in the document entitled The Prolongation of Life that the determination of death does not fall within the competence of the Church but is left to physicians. At that time, physicians were only capable of determining cardiopulmonary death. By 1975 physicians were reaching conclusions of brain death sometimes based only on observations of flat brain waves. Not until 1985 did the Pontifical Academy of Sciences acknowledge its concurrence that death had occurred when there has been an irreversible cessation of all brain functions, even if cardiac and respiratory functions that would have ceased have been maintained artificially. Then in an address to the International Congress of Transplants in 2000, Pope John Paul II stated the
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following: The criterion adopted in more recent times for ascertaining the fact of death, namely the cessation of all brain activity, if rigorously applied, does not seem to conflict [emphasis added] with the essential elements of a sound anthropology. The U. S. bishops Ethical and Religious Directives (ERD) for Catholic hospitals address brain death in general terms. In Directive 62 they state that the determination of death should be made by the physician or competent medical authority in accordance with responsible and commonly accepted scientific criteria. Then, in Directive 64, Catholic hospitals are advised that organs for donation should not be removed until it has been medically determined that the patient has died. There are some moralists and ethicists who continue to argue that both pulmonary as well as brain death must be assured before a transplant of a vital organ may begin. They assert that the removal of a healthy unpaired vital organ suitable for transplantation from someone who has been legally declared brain dead but who is not truly biologically dead, is not ethically acceptable. However, Vatican and other commentators point out that John Paul, in his address in 2000, meant to and clearly did state that verification of either/or brain death or heart death is sufficient for proceeding with an organ transplant. These defenders of John Paul also point to the still-standing guidelines issued by the Pontifical Council for Health Care Workers in 1995, which state: Persons are dead when they have irreversibly lost all ability to integrate and coordinate the physical and mental functions of the body. The significance of the Popes position in regard to brain death is the contradiction it creates in regard to his most recent edict about permanent vegetative state. In the former case, the Pope permits the cessation of nourishment and hydration, while in the latter the Pope does not. Both cases are the same to the extent that the individuals condition has taken away the ability to integrate and coordinate the physical and mental functions of the body, while in both cases the nourishment and hydration are serving only to keep the body functioning in an unconscious state. This is a glaring instance of the same Pope contradicting himself while reportedly issuing authoritative moral teaching.
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Chapter 7 INDULGENCES AND PURGATORY On January 14, 2005, U.S. Cardinal J. Francis Stafford, head of the Apostolic Penitentiary announced that Pope John Paul had authorized special indulgences to be available to Catholics during the Year of the Eucharist which would run through October 2005. With this action, the Pope and the Vatican reopened one of the most controversial issues which resulted in the Protestant schism from Rome. Indulgences The Church teaches that for those who comply with the rules established by Rome, earning an indulgence will result in remission of the temporal punishment due for sins committed. As defined in the Catholic Encyclopedia, indulgences are: Authoritative grants [by the Pope] from the Churchs treasure of Grace for the remission or payment in whole (plenary indulgences) or in part (partial indulgences)of the temporal punishment after the guilt of sin has been forgiven. Cardinal Stafford announced that the special Eucharistic year indulgences included the normal requirements for all plenary indulgences: i.e. that within a reasonably short period of time, the recipient goes to confession, receives the Eucharist, and prays for the intentions of the Pope, all in a spirit of total detachment from the attraction of sin. Then he added that special plenary indulgences would be awarded to those who fulfill the normal requirements in conjunction with participating with attention and piety in a sacred function or a pious exercise carried out in honor of the Blessed Sacrament, either solemnly exposed or preserved in the tabernacle. So as not to exclude anyone from receiving this wonderful reward, the Cardinal further elaborated that if any of the above conditions could not be fulfilled, the following would suffice: 1. reciting Evening and Night prayers of the Liturgy of the Hours in a church or chapel where the Eucharist is exposed or present in the tabernacle 2. those who because of illness or other serious reason cannot physically visit a church or chapel, may still earn the indulgence if they mentally make the visit with the desire of their hearts, in a spirit of faith in the real presence of Jesus Christ in the sacrament of
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the altar, and recite the Lords prayer, the creed and a short prayer about the gift of the Eucharist. It is abundantly clear from the description above that the Roman Church of the twenty-first century is in no way emulating the abusive practice of the sixteenth century, which focused on the selling of indulgences to generate church income, i.e. allegedly to build St. Peters Basilica in Rome. (The first stone for the foundation of the basilica was laid in 1506 and the structure required 130 years to complete.) However, by initiating this new indulgence, Rome sadly compounded the mythology that has surrounded the concepts of both Indulgences and Purgatory since their establishment as matters of faith in the early fifteenth century. It is particularly in connection with these two officially endorsed doctrines that we must recall the basic principle of infallibility (or equivalent authoritative teaching): infallibility does not confer the ability to issue new revelations about Jesus or about faith or morals, but only the ability and authority to clarify the existing body of faith. It was bad enough that the Church created a new dogma of Christian faith more than 1000 years after the death of Jesus. It was worse that purchases of indulgences were promoted by convincing believers that they were purchasing spiritual benefits, i.e. the remission of temporal punishment due to sin, while at the same time contributing to the building and maintenance needs of the Church. There is no question about the appeal of the concepts of Purgatory and Indulgences to most Catholic Christians. It is particularly enticing to believe that through the simple actions required to be performed to earn a plenary indulgence, all the temporal punishment (see subsequent paragraphs in this chapter for challenge to this particular concept) still due for all the sins one may have committed in a lifetime will be forever erased. But, detailed examination of the conditions for meriting a plenary indulgence, such as that proclaimed for the Eucharistic Year of 2005, raises several serious questions relating to the promised indulgence itself as well as to other basic tenets of our faith: 1. If every plenary indulgence removes all the temporal punishment due to sin, what can a special plenary indulgence effect that is different from the effects of a normal plenary indulgence? 2. Why is confession of sin a mandatory condition for any and every plenary indulgence when ordinarily confession of sin is only required when one is guilty of mortal sin? 3. Why is the actual sacrament of reconciliation, along with performance of the assigned penance, accompanied by a sincere
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4.

5.

6. 7.

commitment not to sin again, not sufficient to remove all the effects of sin without leaving any residual effects to be removed by a sacramental such as an indulgence? Why is praying certain prayers in a church or chapel where the Eucharist is reserved or solemnly exposed worthy of a special plenary indulgence, while a community celebration of the Eucharist is not? Presence at and participation in the celebration of the Eucharist should always rank higher than any devotional practice in the presence of the Eucharist. The higher value of the former was specifically noted by the Council of Trent. Why is the Pope requiring prayers for the Popes intentions as barter for forgiveness of the alleged residual effects of personal sin? Jesus forgave sins and all of their effects immediately and unconditionally. Why is the Pope continuing to endorse and promote a teaching and practice which is so ecumenically devisive and which has no foundation in the scriptures or in the early tradition of the church? Why is fulfillment of the required procedures for earning a plenary indulgence given more prominence, and apparently more credit, than a sincere conversion of heart as well as a firm commitment to avoid repetition of sin?

As seen in the preceding series of questions, the doctrine and teaching surrounding Indulgences is unsound theology. It panders to the apparent need for many Christians to have some measurable guarantees and assurances that they are saved, and that any and all barriers of sin have been forgiven and removed. It denigrates the value of sacraments as compared to that of a sacramental. It creates or revives barriers to the desired reunion of all Christian churches. This doctrine is a primary support pillar for the Churchs teaching regarding Purgatory, a doctrine whose foundation is just as shaky as that of Indulgences. Purgatory The Council of Trent (1545 1563) formally defined this doctrine in the following words: Whereas the Catholic Church, instructed by the Holy Ghost, has from the Sacred Scriptures and the ancient traditions of the Fathers, taught in Councils and very recently in this Ecumenical Synod that there is a purgatory, and that the souls therein are helped by the suffrages of the faithful, but principally by the acceptable Sacrifice of the Altar, the Holy
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Synod enjoins on the Bishops that they diligently endeavor to have the sound doctrine of the Fathers in Councils regarding purgatory everywhere taught and preached, held and believed by the faithful. This is where the Church went wrong with Indulgences and Purgatory: it created new doctrines without any foundation in the teachings of Jesus. Scholars point to four scriptural texts (Mt. 5:26 & 12:32, 1 Cor. 3:10-15 and 2 Tim.1:18) as providing at least inferential bases for belief in the doctrine of Purgatory. However, a simple reading of these verses shows no references to any post-death, other-worldly temporary place of punishment nor to any need for punishment or forgiveness of residual effects of sin after any sin itself is forgiven. On the other hand, strong counter-arguments to the Churchs rationale for this doctrine can be seen in several instances where Jesus is described as forgiving sin without any reservations or expectation of residual payback: Lk. 5: 18-26: Then some men appeared, carrying on a bed a paralyzed man whom they were trying to bring in and lay down in front of him [Jesus]. Seeing their faith he said, My friend, your sins are forgiven you. The scribes and Pharisees began to think this over. Who is this man talking blasphemy? Who can forgive sins but God alone? But Jesus made this reply, Which of these is easier: to say, Your sins are forgiven you or to say, Get up and walk? But to prove to you that the Son of Man has authority on earth to forgive sins he said to the paralyzed man I order you: get up, pick up your stretcher and go home. And immediately [emphasis added] before their very eyes he got up, picked up what he had been lying on and went home praising God. Jn. 5: 5-9 & 14: One man there [at the Pool of Bethsaida] had an illness which had lasted thirty-eight years, and when Jesus saw him lying there and knew he had been in this condition for a long time, he said: Do you want to be well again? Sir, replied the sick man, I have no one to put me into the pool when the water is disturbed. Jesus said, Get up, pick up your sleeping mat and walk. The man was cured at once [emphasis added], and he picked up his mat and walked away. After a while Jesus met him in the Temple and said: Now you are well again; be sure not to sin any more, or something worse may happen to you. Jn. 8: 3-11: The scribes and Pharisees brought a woman who had been caught committing adultery; and making her stand there in full view of everybody, they said to Jesus, Master, this woman was caught in the very act of committing adultery and Moses has ordered us in the Law to
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condemn women like this [but not men] to death by stoning. What have you to say? They asked him this as a test, looking for something to use against him. But Jesus bent down and started writing on the ground with his finger. As they persisted with their question, he looked up and said, if there is one among you who has not sinned, let him be the first to throw a stone at her. Then he bent down and wrote on the ground again. When they heard this they went away one by one until Jesus was left alone with the woman . He looked up and said, Woman, where are they? Has no one condemned you? No one, sir, she replied. Neither do I condemn you, said Jesus, go away and dont sin any more. Lk. 23: 39-43: One of the criminals hanging [beside Jesus on the cross] abused him. Are you not the Christ? he said. Save yourself and us as well. But the other [criminal] spoke up and rebuked him. Have you no fear of God at all? he said. You got the same sentence as he did, but in our case we deserved it; we are paying for what we did. But this man has done nothing wrong. Jesus, he said, remember me when you come into your kingdom. Indeed, I promise you [Jesus] replied, today [emphasis added] you will be with me in paradise. In each of the cited passages, we see that total healing, forgiveness of sin and/or promise of full reward in the next life are immediate rewards given without any follow-up conditions to be met by the recipient. In conclusion, the alleged scriptural bases for the doctrines on purgatory and indulgences are non-existent and directly opposed by other specific words and actions of Jesus. The reliance on tradition of Christian belief as an even stronger basis for the doctrines regarding Purgatory and Indulgences, is more shaky than the reliance on scripture. For the first 500 years of Christian history, discussion about life after death focused solely on Heaven and Hell. The overriding concerns about hell were: Is hell a place of eternal punishment, especially since we believe that it is Gods will that all will be saved? Are some souls predestined to banishment to hell while other souls are predestined to the glory and happiness of heaven? Is the punishment of hell a searing, torturing fire or the agony of eternal separation from God and the life of heaven? There were Christian writers and theologians during the first five centuries of the Church who strongly defended each of the opposing sides of the preceding questions, none of whom addressed any concept such as Purgatory. The Council of Orange (529 C.E.) declared that God does elect (predestines) some, but not others, for membership in the Christian faith but each individual retains the free
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will to accept or reject that election. Then the Council of Constantinople (563 C.E.) overturned the notion of universal salvation and endorsed the concept of eternal damnation for those who die unrepentant of serious sin. Also important to the background for any traditional argument surrounding the dogmas of Purgatory and Indulgences, is the concept of sin and forgiveness of sin in the early Church. For the first several hundred years of the churchs existence, only grave (mortal) sins in particular, murder, adultery and apostasy were confessed and forgiveness sought. In those years, it was customary for public physical penances (sometimes lasting several years) to be imposed and carried out before absolution from sin and readmission to the Christian community was granted. These long public penances were designed specifically to pay the penalty for the perceived guilt due to the particular sin. Once these penances were completed, the sinner was believed to be totally free from all guilt. (Unbaptized martyrs for the faith received their baptism and forgiveness of all sin by the shedding of their blood; baptized martyrs merited forgiveness of all their current sins also by the shedding of their blood in defense of their faith.) Thus, during this period there was no thought or concern about temporal punishment due to sin as still needing an accounting after forgiveness was granted. Beginning in the early seventh century and forward, Irish monks introduced the practice of devotional confession which, for the first time, included confession of minor (venial) faults, as well as the practice of granting absolution from sin before remedial penances were carried out. It was this last innovation which eventually led to concerns about temporal punishment (penances) due to sin not being fully satisfied before an individual was called to judgment by God. However, it must be noted that any meritorious good work demonstrating love of God or neighbor will suffice to both forgive venial sin and its effects, with or without confession and with or without performing a penitential action assigned by a priest. The real quandary surrounding this matter involved several issues: was the penance assigned by the priest carried out and was it sufficient to offset all the perceived temporal punishment due to the sins confessed; since humans cannot measure the amount of harm to self or others caused by any sin, how can we know what penance or temporal punishment to impose; how does this doctrine correlate to our belief that the death of Jesus on the cross paid the penalty for all the sins ever committed throughout the world and throughout the life span of every human from the beginning to the end of time. The Churchs solution to these unanswerable questions was found in the creation of the concept of Purgatory, defined as an intermediate place or condition of temporary punishment, after death, before one becomes eligible for eternal
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happiness in heaven. Not until the First and Second Councils of Lyons (1245 C.E & 1274 C.E., respectively) did the Church authoritatively proclaim the existence of Purgatory. Belief in the concept of Purgatory was also endorsed by the Council of Florence (1431-1445), and in response to the Protestant Reformers, the Council of Trent (1545 - 1563 C.E.) greatly expanded the theology of Purgatory by introducing totally new details about the intensity of the cleansing fire, length of stay and conditions for release that were clearly not part of any prior tradition of belief. In support of its new doctrine on Purgatory, the Church then created its practice of awarding Indulgences which living Christians could earn for their own benefit or for the benefit of designated souls in Purgatory who had pre-deceased them. The concept of Indulgences derived from the contemporary civil practice of offering monetary compensation for settlement of legal matters or to make satisfaction for crimes rather than exacting an eye for an eye type of justice, which frequently led to bloodshed. Conclusions about Authenticity of Teaching In summary, there is no sustainable argument from either Scripture or Tradition for 300 to 600 years after the death of Jesus to justify retention of the doctrines regarding Purgatory or Indulgences as part of the body of faith derived from the teaching of Jesus. There are also substantive rational arguments for discounting the validity of the doctrine of Purgatory. Major examples are the following:
1. By definition, Purgatory is a place or condition wherein our souls

experience punishment or cleansing from the temporal punishment due for sins committed while still alive. It is totally illogical to try to apply on-going temporal experiences to an individual whose human body is corrupting in the grave and for whom time has stopped at death. 2. It is just as illogical to try to apply the temporal constraints applicable to our human bodies to our spiritual souls which have left our bodies at the time of death. 3. It is arrogant and presumptuous for humans to attempt to measure the extent of sinfulness for any action deemed contrary to Gods will (even more so, the Churchs will) and then apply temporal measurements to establish the corresponding amount of punishment required to purge that sinfulness in order to earn heaven.
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4. It is contradictory to teach that only unrepented mortal sin will

prevent our sharing in the eternal blessedness of heaven and condemn us to the eternal punishment of hell, and then assert that unquantifiable residual effects of any sin, mortal or venial, can delay our final reward, at least temporarily, after death. God is not constrained by time limits, so our eternal fate is determined by our actions while we are alive in a temporal world. Our reward or punishment after death is immediate, as demonstrated by the actions of Jesus in the examples cited earlier. 5. Scriptural references to an unknown but future end time and final judgment must be understood as human attempts to frame the timelessness of eternity. For God, there are no gaps in time following human death, i.e. the end of time for that individual, before some future event such as a delayed judgment occurs. In each of these doctrines, we see further evidence of the Churchs proclaimed infallibility being fallible. The teachings of Jesus do not provide a foundation for either of these doctrines. Our salvation is not dependent on belief in these doctrines, but old barriers to ecumenism and reunion with other Christian denominations are reinforced each time a new indulgence is announced. The Church certainly ought to be able to promote devotion to the Eucharist or visits to the Holy Land or other similar initiatives without reliance on the motivation of Indulgences.
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Chapter 8 ESSENCE OF SEVEN SACRAMENTS Thomas Aquinas (1224 1274 C.E.) is credited with giving the first real definition of a Sacrament: A sacrament is a sign of a sacred thing in as much as it sanctifies men. In this definition there is no reference to any direct link to Jesus as the initiator of the sign. On the other hand, when the U. S. Catholic Church of the twenty-first century provides teaching regarding the topic of Sacraments, it still frequently begins by turning to the old and simple stand-by definition of the Baltimore Catechism: a Sacrament is an outward sign, instituted by Christ, to give grace. Then it proceeds to outline the unique character and purpose of the seven Sacraments recognized by the Roman Catholic Church. For a full catechetical understanding of each Sacrament, an inquirer must next absorb numerous details as to: who is the authorized minister of each Sacrament; what is the frequency with which each may be received; who is eligible to receive each Sacrament; and what are the essential ingredients or conditions for valid reception of each Sacrament. The resulting composite for each Sacrament is presented as deriving from the teaching or actual example of Jesus as confirmed by the constant tradition or practice of the Church. The implied continuity and strict adherence to the teaching of Jesus is a far cry from the historical reality. Each of the Sacraments evolved to its present form over many years, sometimes over many centuries. In actuality, the first enumeration of seven Sacraments did not occur until 1100 years after the death of Jesus with the publication of the Sentences in Four Books, a compilation written by Peter Lombard in 1157/58 which became the standard theological textbook for the next four centuries. The last Sacrament to be dogmatically recognized by the Church was Matrimony, as decreed by the Council of Florence (1438 1445 C.E.), but the form and matter of this last Sacrament was not codified until a hundred years later at the Council of Trent. First Deviations in Evolution of Sacraments From the very earliest days Church leadership exercised its discretion to define or modify those actions which would later be classified as Sacraments. Clearly there were not seven Sacraments in the early church: e.g. the washing of baptism combined immediately with the laying on of hands and prayer for the gift of the Holy Spirit were jointly considered one sacrament of initiation; there was no apostolic selection or delegation of power to preside at celebration of the Eucharist (the host or hostess in whose home the meal was celebrated was
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commonly designated by the attending community as the presider), thus there was no sacrament of Orders; there was no formal church witnessing or blessing of marriages, thus no sacrament of Matrimony. More importantly, there were some significant early modifications to the sacramental signs as they evolved in the first centuries of the churchs growth. Until St. Paul successfully challenged the practice at the first Council of Jerusalem in 50 C.E. as a result of his outreach to the Gentiles, both circumcision and baptism were required for initiation of male converts as Christians. The Eucharist was initially celebrated only in connection with the Sabbath evening meal. Then in the course of distinguishing Christianity from Judaism, the linkage between the celebration of the Eucharist and the Sunday morning resurrection of Jesus was established. Since Sunday was a regular workday, this meant that the Eucharist often became only a part of a family or small group meal and was frequently hastily accomplished early in the morning before participants set off to work. In the first centuries, generally only three sins were considered material for the yet-to-be- named sacrament of Penance (Reconciliation): namely, apostasy (denial of ones previously proclaimed belief in Jesus, usually when facing the threat of martyrdom), adultery and murder. These actions had such a severe impact on an individuals relationship with God and/or neighbor that public penances lasting months, if not years, had to be completed before forgiveness was extended and the sinner was again admitted to the Eucharist. Generally, these sins were confessed only to a bishop and forgiveness could be granted only once in a lifetime. The Gospels of Matthew and Mark are in agreement that Jesus gave the twelve apostles both the power and the commission to preach repentance, cast out demons, and anoint the sick with oil to heal them. Luke, on the other hand, does not separately identify the twelve, but reported that the Lord appointed seventytwo others [disciples] and sent them out ahead of him, in pairs, to all the towns and places he himself was to visit. (Lk.10:1) Among the tasks assigned, they were to cure the sick in the towns they visited. No mention is made of any anointing. In none of these three sources is anything mentioned regarding forgiveness of sin in connection with the ministry of healing the sick. It is only in the Letter of James, written to the church-at-large sometime between 49 and 58 C.E., that the element of forgiveness of sin is introduced into the process that has become the sacrament of Anointing of the Sick. This passage speaks of confessing ones sins to one another and praying for one another, and this will cure you.
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Subsequent Stages of Development The first two centuries of the developing Christian church saw only four (or five, once Baptism and Confirmation were separated) actions, later to be named as Sacraments, as key ingredients for maintaining the life of the Church. As already noted, it would be another thousand years before all seven Sacraments were enumerated together. During that long period each of the sacraments-to-be went through many significant changes and/or additions before reaching their modernday form and content. This latter fact is extremely important in the light of resolving periodic challenges to the Church regarding eligibility for conferring or receiving the sacraments. While the seeds of each of the sacraments except perhaps matrimony, can be found at least by implication in the New Testament scriptures, the full flowering of these signs required many centuries and many adaptations to reach their present status. Baptism and Confirmation In the four gospels, there is only one brief description of a process which portrays the essence of our current rite of baptism. This is found in the last two verses of Matthews gospel (Mt. 28:19-20): After his resurrection, Jesus came up to the eleven disciples and said: All authority in heaven and on earth has been given to me. Go, therefore, make disciples of all the nations; baptize them in the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit, and teach them to observe all the commands I gave you. Without describing any process as to how it would be achieved, Jesus did, however, address the subject of baptism (and confirmation?) to Nicodemus, a leading Jew and Pharisee, who came to Jesus in the night seeking direct answers to questions he had about Jesus teachings. One of Jesus replies to Nicodemus is reported in Johns Gospel, 3:5-8: I tell you most solemnly, unless a man is born through water and the Spirit, he cannot enter the kingdom of God: what is born of the flesh is flesh; what is born of the Spirit is spirit. Do not be surprised when I say: you must be born from above. The wind blows wherever it pleases; you hear its sound, but you cannot tell where it comes from or where it is going. That is how it is with all who are born of the Spirit.

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There are, in addition, several descriptions of baptisms (e.g. by Peter and Philip) in the Acts of the Apostles. The essence of the sacrament is also found in these words from Peter spoken to the huge crowds that gathered on the first Pentecost: (Acts 2:38-41) You must repent and every one of you must be baptized in the name of Jesus Christ for the forgiveness of your sins, and you will receive the gift of the Holy Spirit. He spoke to them for a long time using many arguments, and he urged them, save yourselves from this perverse generation. They were convinced by his arguments, and they accepted what he said and were baptized. That day about three thousand were added to their number. We believe baptism was generally originally accomplished by total immersion of the convert into a pool of water. Baptism was initially conferred only on adults, and whenever possible, only after a lengthy tutorial on the teachings of Jesus, followed by a commitment from the pending convert to be faithful to the Way, the teachings of Jesus. The early practice of concurrently baptizing and invoking the Holy Spirit (confirming) seems to have been performed only by the apostles or elders (the forerunners of bishops) delegated by them, and only on men. Due to the fact that baptisms involved immersion of recipients who were totally unclothed, deaconesses are believed to have performed the baptisms of women. The first deviations from the apostolic format for Christian initiation arose during the Roman persecutions, around the year 64 C.E. Some non-Christians, seeing the heroism of the Christians being martyred for their faith, announced their own immediate faith in Jesus and accepted the same penalty of death along with the martyrs. The shedding of their blood in the name of Jesus was then characterized as baptism by blood. St. Hippolytus of Rome, in his writing The Apostolic Traditions (about 215 C.E.), documented this form of baptism as follows: If any catechumens are apprehended because of the Name of the Lord, let them not be double-hearted because of martyrdom. If they may suffer violence and be executed with their sins not removed, they will be justified, for they have received baptism in their own blood. At a later point in history, anyone who heard about the teachings of Jesus, wished to be baptized, but was physically unable to fulfill this objective before death, was considered to have been baptized by the baptism of desire. Vatican Council II in its Dogmatic Constitution on the Church (ch.16) added a new dimension to
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baptism of desire by stating that it may also apply to those who have no knowledge of Christ or his Church: . Those also can attain to everlasting salvation who through no fault of their own do not know the gospel of Christ or His Church, yet sincerely seek God [emphasis added], and moved by grace, strive by their deeds to do His will as it is known to them through the dictates of conscience.

Other changes occurred over time, as when whole families were converted and both adults and youth of all ages were baptized, even without instruction in the Way, when urgency required its omission. By the end of the second century the practice of infant baptism was beginning to take hold, and by the beginning of the fourth century had become almost obligatory. This new practice caused the Christian writer, Tertullian, to pose a serious doctrinal question: why subject an infant in the innocent period of life to a ritual whose objective is the remission of sins? This question fermented over the next 200 years and erroneously expanded and confirmed the churchs early teaching on original sin and introduced the new concept of limbo: 1. The early Christian teaching (originating with St. Paul) that every sexual act, even if performed in marriage, was sinful because it issued from lust and passion, was expanded to now designate the sexual act as the transmitter of original sin to each new life that is conceived. 2. The new concept of limbo was created. It was perceived as a place outside of heaven where the unbaptized souls of deceased infants would eternally reside, not suffering any punishment but shut out from the eternal happiness of heaven because they had not been freed from the guilt of inherited original sin. There are two significant scriptural testimonials to the separation of the rite of confirmation from that of baptism. The first is found in the Acts of the Apostles (8:14-17) When the Apostles in Jerusalem heard that Samaria had accepted the word of God, they sent Peter and John to them, and they went down there, and prayed for the Samaritans to receive the Holy Spirit, for as yet he had not come down on any of them: they had only been baptized in the name of the Lord Jesus. Then they laid hands on them, and they received the Holy Spirit.

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Likewise, St. Paul in his Letter to the Hebrews (6:1-2) writes about the teaching about baptisms and the laying on of hands as two distinct actions while the Acts of the Apostles (19:1-7) describes another occasion when St Paul travels to Ephesus and meets some disciples of John the Baptist. After discussing the inadequacies of Johns baptism of repentance, Paul convinced them to accept belief in Jesus and performed only one action: They were [then] baptized in the name of the Lord Jesus, and the moment Paul had laid hands upon them the Holy Spirit came down on them, and they began to speak with tongues and to prophesy. Through subsequent centuries, the procedure of baptism went through other changes. It was separated from the confirming rite when it became logistically difficult to always time baptisms with the availability of a bishop. The washing by immersion took other forms such as sprinkling or pouring of water over the forehead. As seen by all of these changes throughout the centuries, there was no single mandated formula or procedure for conferring baptism (or confirmation). The essential elements of washing away of sin and membership in the community of believers in Jesus and receiving the gift of the Holy Spirit were always sustained. At the same time we see the Church exercising its authority to interpret the mind of Jesus and to make changes that it deemed practical. Eucharist Throughout its two thousand-year history, the Church has taught that the Eucharist was instituted at the Last Supper Jesus ate with his twelve apostles, when he first took bread and said: Take and eat; this is my body, and then took wine and said: Take and drink; this is my blood Do this in commemoration of me. Historically, the evolution of the sacrament of the Eucharist went through the same kind of dramatic changes as did the sacrament of Baptism. Through the ages, we find a wide variety of modifications to the celebration of this sacrament that, in their time, church authorities deemed necessary and appropriate. In addition to those listed previously, i.e. Sunday vs Sabbath celebration and not always as part of an actual meal, other early practices were adopted that cannot be traced to any mandate from Jesus: 1. Before the church became organized to the point where only male elders or presbyters were designated by the church leaders to preside at the Eucharist, all evidence points to the fact that each Christian community group initially designated its own presider. These could be men or
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2.

3.

4.

5.

women and were usually the host and/or hostess of the home in which the Eucharist was celebrated. When males became the exclusive approved presiders, women were also denied the right to receive the Eucharistic bread in their uncovered hands for fear of menstrual contamination. There is no evidence that this prohibition came from Jesus. This latter prohibition lasted until the sixth century. The words of Jesus: This is my body take and eat have also gone through many transitions: from participants breaking chunks of substantial bread from a single leavened or unleavened loaf and actually chewing it, to the dispensing of pre-baked, small paper-thin wafers directly on to the tongue, with the strict prohibitions that the host may neither be touched (except by the tongue) by anyone other than the priest-presider, nor chewed, but only swallowed, and back again to a mix of the two options (since Vatican Council II, the preferred method of reception is for participants to receive the consecrated bread in one hand and feed themselves with the other hand, i.e. take and eat); to the use of lay ministers for the distribution of the Eucharist; and from utilization of the everyday (leavened or unleavened) bread of whatever community in which the Eucharist was celebrated, to an ultimate requirement, for validity, that the bread must be unleavened wheat bread. The words of Jesus: This is my blood take and drink have gone through similar modifications: from all participants sharing in the consecrated blood by drinking from a common cup; to intinction, i.e. dipping the consecrated bread into the consecrated wine; to no reception of the consecrated wine by anyone other than the presider (based on the churchs decision that both the body and blood of Jesus are fully contained in either the consecrated bread or the consecrated wine); and back, since Vatican Council II, to an option for most participants to drink from a common cup or not at all (intinction is now prohibited, but still sometimes occurs). Leavened bread was more commonly used in both the Eastern and Western branches of the Christian church until unleavened bread was mandated for the Western church only in the 8th or 9th centuries.

This history of significant changes in practice with regard to the Eucharist makes it extremely difficult to understand why the Church of the twenty-first century has been so harsh and adamant in its response to celiac sufferers, i.e. only bread made from wheat-based flour is valid matter for the Eucharist. If the Church could decree (as it did, contrary to the literal reading of the words of Jesus) that
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reception of either the consecrated bread or wine suffices to receive the entire body and blood of Jesus, then it certainly could authorize an acceptable glutenfree alternative to wheat bread for celiac-sufferers. The assertion that wheat-based flour has been the only acceptable ingredient for Eucharistic bread from the earliest centuries is not a fact that can be historically documented. We dont know what the ingredients were for the common bread in every country to which Christianity spread in the first centuries of the Churchs growth. We do know, for example, that sorghum flour has been for centuries, and still is widely used for bread by poor farmers in both Africa and India who cant afford the more expensive wheat flour. Reconciliation Other than the conferral to the Apostles by Jesus of the power or authority to forgive sins, there is no description in the scriptures as to how this sacrament was to be carried out. John is the only author of the four Gospel writers who addresses this subject of the forgiveness of sins (Jn. 20:21-23): The disciples were filled with joy when they saw the Lord, and he said to them again, Peace be with you. After saying this he breathed on them and said: Receive the Holy Spirit. For those whose sins you forgive, they are forgiven; for those whose sins you retain, they are retained. There is no direction regarding what to confess or how to confess or even whether confession of individual sins is necessary in order to seek forgiveness. Only in the letter of James where he is addressing the healing of the sick by anointing do we find some elaboration on this subject. James 5:16 adds the following commentary about the ill person: if he has committed any sins, he will be forgiven. So confess your sins to one another, and pray for one another, and this will cure you; the heartfelt prayer of a good man works very powerfully. We know from second (Teachings of the Apostles) and third (Tertullian) century writings that part of the formal ministries of deaconesses and widows was care and anointing of the sick, particularly of other women who were ill. Since one another in the above quote is not gender-specific to males, we infer that women also had and exercised the authority to forgive sins.

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Despite the fact that each of the above ministries involved an ordination ceremony, the Church has nevertheless always held that only ordained (male) clergy at the level of priest or above have the power granted by Jesus to forgive sins in his name. For the first 600+ years of the churchs history, only the three sins of apostasy, adultery and murder were confessed. These could only be confessed once in a lifetime, and generally only to a bishop. In the seventh century, the Irish monks introduced the practice of more frequent confession, including less serious faults, as a way of seeking greater spiritual perfection. These more frequent confessions were generally made to other priests rather than to bishops. These devotional confessions also brought the innovation whereby forgiveness of sin was pronounced immediately and the assigned penance was performed after absolution was granted. A more contemporary new practice is the penitential service where large groups of penitents come together for a common examination of conscience, a common expression of sorrow in prayer and song, and a common absolution of all minor or venial sins but with the requirement for individual confession of mortal sins to a priest in order to obtain forgiveness for the latter. There is no directive from the Church that priests proclaiming this common absolution should use language limiting this forgiveness to venial sins. The discipline surrounding the frequency of receiving forgiveness of sin varied widely throughout the churchs history. As already noted, for the first 600 years, very few sinners sought this sacrament and generally they were only permitted to do this once in a lifetime. Even after the Irish monks introduced devotional confessions, this latter practice remained confined primarily to the religious orders of men and women. Throughout the middle ages, when reception of the Eucharist was discouraged due to the perceived unworthiness of the average person, there was no incentive for frequent Confession/ Reconciliation. In the United States, probably as a result of the immense impact of the Catholic school system, the twentieth century saw churches filled for Sunday masses and the great majority of attendees receiving the Eucharist with one critical proviso: i.e. that each recipient had received their weekly absolution (even if there were no mortal sins to confess) before approaching the altar for the Eucharist. Following the II Vatican Council another reversal in practice occurred, i.e. nearly everyone who gathered for weekly Mass received the Eucharist but minimal numbers of recipients preceded the Eucharist with the sacrament of Reconciliation. Prior to the II Vatican Council, there was also a requirement that every eligible Catholic satisfy their annual Easter duty, i.e. make an annual confession (provided the individual is guilty of at least one mortal sin) and receive the Eucharist at least once during the Easter season. Failure to fulfill the Easter duty was itself declared to be a mortal sin. In the twentieth century, at least prior to Vatican II, the Church
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branded many individual actions as definite mortal sins (e.g. missing Mass on any Sunday, breaking any of the precepts of the Church, any sexual interaction outside of marriage, etc.) without demonstrating how each individual action severely violated or injured ones love relationship with God or neighbor. This history of the evolution of the sacrament of Reconciliation again shows the Church, independently of any instruction from Jesus and contrary to six hundred years of practice (tradition?) by the early Church, making enormous changes to this sacrament and to the discipline surrounding it. The basic ingredients of the sacrament did not change: i.e. the confession of sin to someone else within the Church, but only if that person has the authority through ordination to pronounce forgiveness. But other major ingredients did change, sometimes more than once: i.e. the role of conscience vs. the dictates of church authorities in determining what constitutes mortal vs. venial sin; the frequency of confession and the mandates for confession under the threat of additional sin for failure to do so; the environment of a small, secretive, closed-in box vs. the now more common faceto-face confession in the reconciliation room; the performance of assigned penances that are more directly related to overcoming the specific tendency to evil or sinful practices vs. the perfunctory recitation of randomly-imposed numbers of Our Fathers, Hail Marys, rosaries and other memorized prayers. Anointing of the Sick There is only one description of the rite later to be named the Anointing of the Sick that is found in the New Testament scriptures. It is contained in the Letter of James, brother of the Lord, ch.5:14-16: If one of you is ill, he should send for the elders of the church, and they must anoint him with oil in the name of the Lord and pray over him. The prayer of faith will save the sick man and the Lord will raise him up again; and if he has committed any sins, he will be forgiven. Based upon their experiences of frequent cures and healing of the sick by Jesus, as well as by the sharing of that power with the 72 disciples (as recorded in Luke 10:1 & 8) and with the apostles (as recorded in Mark 6:13) in the early days of their ministry, the early Christians fully expected physical cures to result from the anointing of the sick. If we accept the details of the account in the letter of James, prayer for the forgiveness of sin was apparently part of the original form of what would later be identified as the sacrament of the Anointing of the Sick. However, this creates an anomaly which conflicts with the churchs traditional teaching about the forgiveness of sin: James (ch.5: 16) directs that the sick person should
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 confess your sins to one another, [emphasis added] and pray for one another, and this will cure you; the heartfelt prayer of a good man works very powerfully. On the other hand, as noted within the description of the history of the sacrament of reconciliation, the church has always held that only designated (male) clergy have received the power and authority to forgive sins in the name of Jesus. Yet the words to one another do not exclude the granting of this power to women as well as to men. The next major transition to occur in this sacrament did not happen until sometime in the ninth century, about the same time as when this practice was officially recognized as a sacrament in the Roman Church. The anointing ceased being primarily an anointing of the sick and transitioned to an anointing of the dying. The sacrament actually took on a new name called Extreme Unction, or the Last Anointing. Only those who were perceived as at the point of death were considered eligible for this sacrament and there was no longer much, if any, expectation of healing. Even though the anointing itself includes prayers for the forgiveness of sins, during this period, the Church began to offer three distinct sacraments (Anointing of the Sick, Penance and Eucharist) as the combined Last Rites to prepare the recipient for entry into the afterlife. More than a thousand years later, the II Vatican Council in its Constitution on the Sacred Liturgy (#73) sought to restore this sacrament to its original purpose. The name was changed back from Extreme Unction to the Anointing of the Sick. Once again, anyone suffering from serious illness, either physical or mental, which potentially could lead to death, became eligible for the sacrament. Even those not suffering an identifiable imminent threat of death such as those reaching (unspecified) old age or who will be undergoing surgery may request and receive this sacrament. The thinking behind these latter eligibilities is that older persons are closer to death because of the illnesses to which they are susceptible, and even simple operations sometimes unexpectedly lead to serious complications. The important message in this history of the back and forth development and administration of the Anointing of the Sick, is that the Church authorities felt free to adjust their practices and teachings about the sacrament to meet different needs in different times. Holy Orders There was no rush to establish a Christian priesthood as long as the first Christians continued to participate in the Jewish worship at the Jewish temple. There was
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probably not a recognizable, distinct Christian priesthood until the beginning of the second century. There is nothing in the New Testament scriptures attributable to Jesus that suggests a format for the later-named sacrament of Holy Orders or Ordination. There is concrete evidence that Jesus called the twelve apostles to be his special representatives and in the course of his public ministry, Jesus delegated to these followers the powers to baptize, to heal the sick, to cast out devils, to forgive sins, to change bread and wine into his body and blood, and, above all, to preach salvation. However, these authorities or powers were not all conveyed at the same time and there is no record of any laying on of hands by Jesus, or anointing of the disciples hands with oil, or any mandated celibacy, or any other ritual as is found in our current rite of ordination. When it came time to select a replacement for Judas, the Acts of the Apostles (1: 21-26) describes how it was done, as follows: We must therefore choose someone who has been with us the whole time that the Lord Jesus was traveling around with us, someone who was with us right from the time when John [the Baptist] was baptizing until the day when he [Jesus] was taken up from us and he can act with us as a witness to his resurrection. Having nominated two candidates, they prayed: Lord, you can read everyones heart; show us therefore which of these two you have chosen to take over this ministry and apostolate which Judas abandoned. They then drew lots for them, and as the lot fell to Matthias, he was listed as one of the twelve apostles. This nomination process for a successor apostle (later to be the equivalent of a bishop), contrasts sharply with the process (described in Acts 6: 1-6) for the selection of those (later to be the equivalent of deacons) who were to be responsible for the administration and distribution of the community goods and food shared by the early Christians: About this time, when the number of disciples was increasing, the Hellenists made a complaint against the Hebrews: in the daily distribution, their own widows were being overlooked. So the Twelve called a full meeting of the disciples and addressed them: It would not be right for us to neglect the word of God so as to give out food; you, brothers, must select from among yourselves seven men of good reputation, filled with the Spirit and with wisdom; we will hand over this duty to them, and continue to devote ourselves to prayer and to the service of the word. The whole assembly approved of this proposal and elected [seven men]. They presented these to the apostles, who prayed and laid their hands on them.
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Even though the apostles made the final choices in each case, the nominations for the group of seven came from the community of believers. In both cases, praying over the candidates is noted, but the laying on of hands occurs only for the seven (deacons?). The first and second century Christian church did not have a hierarchy anything like that of subsequent eras. St. Paul in I Cor.12: 27-30 outlines the recognized ministries and their order of importance as follows: Now you together [all Christians] are Christs body; but each of you is a different part of it. In the Church, God has given the first place to apostles, the second to prophets, the third to teachers; after them, miracles, and after them the gift of healing; helpers, good leaders, those with many languages. There is a total lack of information or detail to be found in the canonical scriptures regarding the churchs progression from Pauls list to the lengthy treatise on the recognized early Christian ministries outlined in the Apostolic Tradition, a work written about 215 C.E. by bishop Hippolytus of Rome. The Apostolic Tradition is the earliest-known record for any rite of ordination of Roman Clergy. It separately describes a process for the selection or designation of bishops, elders (initially equal to bishops, but later called priests), deacons, subdeacons, confessors, widows and readers as official roles to be carried out in the fledgling Christian church. Bishops, elders and deacons received the laying on of hands, but nobody else did because they do not have liturgical duties. (There is, however, no listing of the liturgical duties to be performed by deacons in this early stage of the Churchs formation.) There is such a radical difference in Pauls list of ministries and key roles in the early church as compared with that outlined by Hippolytus approximately 150 years later. We have to question on what authority the church believed it had the right to discard or downplay the charismatic roles of prophet, miracle-worker, and healer while building up the organizational/administrative roles of bishop, elder (presbyter), and deacon. By what authority, likewise, did the church of Hippolytus era believe it could legitimately exclude women from presiding (as hostesses in their homes) at the celebration of the Eucharist, a role which they had been performing for over a hundred years? By what authority could the church of the early third century preclude women from the role of deaconess when St Paul clearly identified Phoebe, a deaconess at the church of Cenchreae as holding that position in his letter to the Romans (16:1) By taking these actions, the church authorities of the second and early third century were deviating substantially from the ministerial roles and mission structure inherited from Jesus and the apostles.
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The ritual for ordaining both bishops and presbyters, as described in the Apostolic Tradition was limited to an imposition of hands accompanied by prayer for the Holy Spirit to sustain the candidates ministry. The major distinction between the role of bishops and presbyters seems to have been merely the size of the Christian community each was elected (by the community members) to serve. In the sixth through twelfth centuries, the right of selection of presbyters was controlled by individual feudal lords who each determined the presbyter to serve his own fiefdom. Usually this assignment was reserved to one of the sons of the feudal lord in order to preserve the rights to the church property within the feudal estate. During this period, new ordination rites were added: bishops were now anointed with holy chrism and received the crozier and ring as signs of both their church and civil authority. Priests were now ordained by the anointing of their hands and the giving of bread and wine, as well as by an imposition of hands to confer the power to forgive sins. A vow of celibacy as a condition for ordination to the priesthood was not imposed universally in the church until the Second Lateran Council, 1139 C.E. As previously indicated in chapter three, this requirement did not succeed in becoming substantially effective until after the Council of Trent in 1563. As late as the Council of Trent, there was still debate in the Church about whether ordination was legitimately a sacrament or just a conferral of administrative authority. Principally in response to Martin Luthers teachings, the Council declared that priesthood is conferred through the sacrament of Orders, that there is a hierarchy of clergy in the Church comprised of bishops, priests and deacons and that these ministers do not depend on the call of the community for their authority and powers. Cumulatively, the foregoing history shows that the sacrament of Orders required some 1500 years to evolve to the form and ritual that we currently recognize. In the very earliest centuries, the Church discounted and eliminated several ministries (e.g. prophets, healers, confessors) conferred by Jesus and prioritized by St. Paul. As a result, we once again have ample evidence that the Church has claimed and exercised the authority to modify the form and rituals of the sacraments to suit its perceived needs in different eras. Marriage There is nothing in the New Testament scriptures, attributable to Jesus, which can be used to establish a foundation for the form or ritual of the sacrament of marriage as coming from Jesus. The Church generally argues that Jesus endorsed marriage by his attendance at the wedding feast of Cana (where he performed his
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first public miracle) and, secondly, by his strong statement (reported in Mark 10: 9): This is why a man must leave father and mother, and the two become one body. They are no longer two, therefore, but one body. So then, what God has united, man must not divide. It is worthy of note, however, that we have no documentary record that Jesus actually attended the wedding ceremony for the couple at Cana, or that he in any way blessed this marriage for God. He was only recorded as present with his disciples for the festivities (the wedding feast) which followed the ceremony. Further, we have no indication from either the written or oral tradition of the Church that Jesus identified any action or sign by which we would know that God has united a particular bride and groom. And we have already addressed in chapter two, the ambivalence of Jesus teaching regarding divorce when he endorsed the practice of divorce under the Mosaic Law and then immediately established one exception of his own to an otherwise stern prohibition of divorce for his own followers. Based on the quote from Marks gospel, we would expect to find some process or ritual required for the marriage ceremony that would link the couple to God and/or acceptance of Gods will for them in their marital union. The closest the scriptures come to outlining the sacramentality of marriage is found in the words of St. Paul in Eph. 5: 24 33: as the Church submits to Christ, so should wives to their husbands, in everything. Husbands should love their wives just as Christ loved the Church and sacrificed himself for her to make her holy. He made her clean by washing her in water with a form of words, so that when he took her to himself she would be glorious, with no speck or wrinkle or anything like that, but holy and faultless. For this reason, a man must leave his father and mother and be joined to his wife, and the two will become one body. This mystery has many implications; but I am saying it applies to Christ and the Church. To sum up, you too, each one of you, must love his wife as he loves himself; and let every wife respect her husband. And, again, in his letter to the Hebrews (13: 4), Paul writes: Marriage is to be honored by all, and marriages are to be kept undefiled, because fornicators and adulterers will come under Gods judgment.
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Unfortunately, because he was convinced that the second coming was extremely imminent, Paul greatly diminished his praise of marriage in Ephesians by his words written in his first letter to the Corinthians (7: 29-34): Brothers, this is what I mean: our time is growing short. Those who have wives should live as though they had none [emphasis added]. I would like to see you free from all worry. An unmarried man can devote himself to the Lords affairs, all he need worry about is pleasing the Lord; but a married man has to bother about the worlds affairs and devote himself to pleasing his wife; he is torn in two ways. In the same way an unmarried woman, like a young girl, can devote herself to the Lords affairs; all she need worry about is being holy in body and spirit. Paul was beheaded in Rome about the year 67 C.E. When the Temple in Jerusalem was destroyed in the year 70 C.E. and the second coming did not occur, we would expect that Pauls followers would begin to question his negative image of marriage. However, the opposite proved to be true. All sexual relations, even those within marriage, were seen as resulting from concupiscence and lust. Children born of that lust were born in sin, i.e. original sin which was believed to be transmitted through the sexual act. St. Augustine in the fourth century cemented this perception by equating sexuality with animality. For this reason he urged that sexual relations by married couples be entered into without lust in order to remain right with God. Despite the strong implication of sacramentality in Pauls words in Ephesians, there was no designated sign by which the husband and wife would confer this sacrament on each other or by which the Church would confer a sacrament. In fact, marriage was not fully recognized as a sacrament until the Council of Florence in 1439 C.E. and the sign of the sacrament (i.e. the exchange of consent by the bride and groom in the presence of an authorized church official and at least two witnesses) was not officially defined until the Council of Trent which ended in 1563 C.E. That sign remains in effect, unchanged, to our present day. From the time of Christ until at least the Council of Trent, there was usually no mutual assessment by the prospective partners to determine whether they were drawn to each other through love and the desire to remain together for life. Marriages were almost always arranged, generally by the father or other male guardian of the potential bride for the specific purpose of enhancing the property or monetary status of the brides family. Any marriage contract that was established through these arrangements was generally between the parents or
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guardians of the two parties and should not be considered a sacramental bond between the bride and groom. The last significant change in the Churchs development of the sacramentality of matrimony occurred at Vatican Council II. The bishops, in their Pastoral Constitution on the Church in the Modern World, (n. 48) described the marriage bond as a conjugal covenant [between themselves and God] of irrevocable personal consent. Hence, by that human act whereby spouses mutually bestow and accept each other, a relationship arises which by divine will and in the eyes of society too is a lasting one. Thus the contract of marriage became the covenant of marriage. Of all the sacraments, this developmental history shows that matrimony was the least clearly defined as a sacrament traceable to the teaching of Jesus. Most importantly, this sacrament shows the Church exercising its authority to define the sign of a sacrament as late as 1500 years after Jesus died without demonstrating any tradition or prior historical practice to support this sign as coming from Jesus. Summary Cumulatively, the preceding vignettes on the formation and development of the seven sacraments show that the Church has certainly felt free to exercise wide flexibility in regard to adjustments or applications of the sacraments until the Council of Trent. Only in our most recent era, from Vatican Council II until the present, has the Church taken an inflexible stand, as if these standards were established by Jesus, on such modern issues as no ordination of women, no Eucharistic bread other than wheat-based and unleavened bread, no delegation of anointing of the sick to deacons or other designated lay ministers and no reconsideration of a married clergy. Despite the numerous precedents described in detail in this chapter, Church authorities remain adamant that they have no authority to change what has been received from the Lord. As we have just seen, however, very little of the form or ritual of any of the sacraments except Baptism and Eucharist have come to us intact from Jesus. In keeping with the mandate of Vatican II that the Church should reevaluate its liturgical practices in the light of their historical beginnings, the Church should seriously readdress the preceding issues which are of current concern to an evergrowing percentage of Catholic faithful. With over half of the parishes of the world currently functioning without a resident priest, it is essential to the future life of the Church that new initiatives be taken to open clerical ministry to the vast
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pool of interested and committed women, and to find new ways to restore divorced and remarried Catholics to the full life of the Church, including access to the life-giving food of the Eucharist. The Church needs to revitalize commitments to life-long marriages and to children within those marriages, and should use the model of the Holy Family for this purpose.
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Chapter 9 THE MARKS OF THE CHURCH The four marks of the true Church of Jesus Christ were first identified at the Council of Nicaea in 325 C.E in a proclamation that has historically been termed the Nicene Creed. In actuality, the original version of this creed only mentioned two characteristics that were later to be called the marks of the true Church because it was intended essentially as a statement of belief regarding the Trinity and contained all the current language regarding God the Father and Jesus Christ, his Son, but added only a single short statement about the Holy Ghost, i.e. and [we believe] in the Holy Ghost. Then the text added several assertions about Jesus which are not found in our current version of the creed: And whosoever shall say that there was a time when the Son of God was not, or that before he was begotten he was not, or that he was made of things that were not, or that he is of a different substance or essence [from the Father] or that he is a creature, or subject to change or conversion all that so say, the Catholic [Universal] and Apostolic Church anathematizes them. There was considerable dissatisfaction with this final product of the Council, particularly with the minimal statement about the Holy Spirit, since the principal purpose of this Council was to counteract the Arian teaching regarding the divine Trinity. Bishops and scholars continued to work on the language of this creed for the next fifty years and reached agreement by 379 C.E. on the version of the Nicene Creed which we still profess today. In the final version, the proclaimed belief in one, holy, catholic and apostolic church was intact. While these words have endured unchanged for nearly 1700 years, the original meaning has varied significantly over those years. As twenty-first century Roman Catholics, we routinely and confidently pronounce these words in our weekly worship services as if there was never a question regarding their meaning. But what did these terms, which later came to be known as the four marks of the one true church, really mean to their authors? Unity As best we can reconstruct the thinking of that period, Oneness in the Christian church of the fourth century meant primarily unity of belief in the teachings of Jesus as these teachings had been passed on by the Apostles and Paul. Specifically, as a result of the Council of Nicaea and the fifty years of debate
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which followed, only the doctrine of the Trinity, i.e. that there are three persons in one God, was clarified and confirmed. As a consequence, the heresy taught by Arius that Jesus is more than man but less than God was condemned. There was no specific reference to organizational unity focused on the Pope in Rome resulting from this Council. Reflecting on the subject of doctrinal unity as it related to the Council of Nicaea, we should keep the following facts in perspective: 1. Some 300 years after the death of Jesus, there was still major debate during the Council about whether Jesus was both human and divine, about whether Jesus was a being created by the Father, and about how the Holy Spirit related to the Father and to the Son of God. 2. The Arian heresy began as a serious positive teaching proposed by Arius, a prominent bishop of Alexandria in good standing in the Church, using the scriptural text of Proverbs 8:22-31 to argue his position. Reportedly, the vast majority of the hierarchy sided with Arius. While only a small number of prominent bishops supported the orthodox position, in this rare instance, the sustained refusal of the laity to accept the teaching, led to its rejection and condemnation as the heresy of Arianism. 3. There were many other challenges to the teachings of Jesus both before and after the issue raised by Arius, e.g. a. Docetism Jesus only seemed to be human; denied the reality of Christs suffering and death b. Montanism no sins committed after baptism can be forgiven c. Apollonarianism Jesus had no human soul d. Nestorianism Jesus was divided and Mary was the mother of a human only e. Pelagianism salvation is the result of human effort alone Over and above these (and many other) doctrinal challenges through the centuries, there were major organizational rifts that shattered the desired unity or oneness of the Christian church, e.g:
1. 1054 C.E. the great schism occurred which split the Christian church into

East and West, Orthodox and Catholic; some of the Eastern sects returned to full union with Rome in subsequent centuries (most occurred during the 15th through 19th centuries) but today there are still 23 distinct churches in the communion of churches under Rome; the Orthodox Eastern churches not united with Rome are governed by Patriarchs who also trace a continuous line of succession back to the apostles
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2. 1517 1545 C.E. the Protestant Reformation initiated by Martin Luther,

an Augustinian monk and priest, as a protest against church abuses such as the selling of Indulgences, a demand for approval of a married clergy, and a demand for lay participation in the governance of the Church, led to our present reality of multiple, distinct, non-Roman Catholic but, nevertheless, Christian churches such as: Lutheran, Reformed (Calvinist), Presbyterian and Anglican (Episcopal), from which roots sprang innumerable denominations and sects, including Quakers, Baptists, Pentecostals, Congregationalists and Methodists, as well as hundreds of non-denominational assemblies Both the Roman Catholic and many of the Protestant Christian traditions have continued to proclaim the Nicene Creed, with the one, holy, catholic and apostolic phraseology included, as their own creed. Despite doctrinal and organizational differences of great magnitude, all of these churches still see a strong bond of unity in their reliance on the New Testament scriptures as a common source for faith and belief in the teachings of Jesus that are necessary for salvation. The Roman Church also relies on tradition as an authentic source of the teachings of Jesus, but that issue is another huge sticking point with most non-Roman Christian churches. The Roman Catholic church can and does claim a unique oneness in its assertion of both doctrinal and organizational unity (despite the variances listed above) under the Pope in Rome, but that unity is different from the unity of Christian faith proclaimed in the Nicene Creed. Roman Catholics obviously no longer consider other Christian denominations as part of their unity. Holiness Holiness is an intangible attribute to measure. Holiness for Christians is the perceived depth of ones sharing in the life and love of Jesus who is God. The Roman Church has always claimed its followers have an inside track to holiness through access to the seven Sacraments, which according to Church teaching, were all signs instituted by Jesus to give grace, i.e. promote holiness. (See chapter 8 for the weaknesses in the argument regarding instituted by Christ.) However, holiness in the Church of the fourth century was not seen as deriving primarily from the celebration of the Eucharist and worthy reception of Sacraments as is the case in the twenty-first century. As detailed in the previous chapter, by the time of the Council of Nicaea, there were at most only four of our current seven sacraments in regular use. Three of these were considered sacraments of initiation and the fourth, as the sacrament for physical healing and transition to the next life. None of these, except perhaps the Eucharist, were received
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repetitively for the nurturing of holiness or the strengthening of Gods life in humankind. In place of the sacraments, the best evidence of ones holiness or commitment to the teachings of Jesus, was ones generosity in sharing personal wealth and possessions with the poor and needy, caring for widows, orphans and the sick, or other similar good works. As Jesus stated when he described the Last Judgment (Mt. 25: 34 - 40): the King will say to those on his right hand: come, you whom my Father has blessed, take for your heritage the kingdom prepared for you since the foundation of the world. For I was hungry and you gave me food; I was thirsty and you gave me drink; I was a stranger and you made me welcome; naked and you clothed me, sick and you visited me, in prison and you came to see me. I tell you solemnly, in so far as you did this to one of the least of these brothers of mine, you did it to me. For the early Christians, there were no individual models whose lives were solely dedicated to contemplative prayer, nor facilities such as cloisters or monasteries where one could pursue holiness and service of God as part of a dedicated community. Protestant and those non-denominational churches which require their members to tithe, the Mormons who require both tithing and at least two years of missionary service and the Amish, who share so much of their time, talent and treasure within their community of faith, are all examples of faith groups who may be further along the true path to Christian holiness than mainstream Catholic Sacramentalists who receive the Sacraments regularly but who concentrate on multiplying and retaining their worldly goods for their own personal use and pleasure without sharing their abundance with the poor and needy. Vatican Council II, in Gaudium et Spes, taught that: Catholics are gravely mistaken who think that religion consists in acts of worship alone and in the discharge of certain moral obligations. The document goes on to develop the concept of stewardship as the understanding that the things we have are given to us by God to be used for the welfare and benefit of all. The poor, the needy, the vulnerable, the lowly, all have a legitimate claim to our time, our energy, our money, our resources, our presence and our attention. In addition to participation in Sunday worship services, and frequently in midweek bible or community-building gatherings, non-Roman Christians have historically pursued holiness through personal study and personal application of the Scriptures to their lives. Comparatively, Roman Catholic Christians for centuries were discouraged, if not forbidden, to read and interpret the Scriptures
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for themselves. Doctrines of faith and morals for Roman Catholics were defined and imposed by Rome, by Councils, or by theologians and doctors of the Church having official approbation from Rome or from a local bishop in good standing. These teachings have been formulated in creeds, canons, and catechisms of the Church and imposed without any expectation or allowance for serious questioning or challenge. Children and adults are instructed almost entirely in the doctrinal content rather than in the social action, social justice aspects of our faith. Until the Second Vatican Council, the Mass was celebrated and Sacraments were conferred using a language which almost nobody understood unless it was accompanied by a translation. The routine, almost mechanical, reception of the sacraments of Reconciliation and Eucharist, without any noticeable change of heart or practice of Christian charity, leaves many questions as to whether frequent reception is really a sign of holiness. Even with the changes to use of contemporary languages by the Roman Church, it will always be debatable which of the two approaches (i.e. Roman or non-Roman Christian) is likely to lead to the greater degree of holiness, i.e. greater love of God and faithfulness to the teachings of Jesus. Catholicity Catholic in the fourth century had no reference to Roman Catholic as opposed to other non-Roman Christian denominations since there were no such divisions in the fourth century. Rather Catholic meant universal which was the direct definition of the Greek word katolikos and the Latin word catholicus. However, it is not likely that very many Roman Catholics who today routinely pray the Nicene Creed during the celebration of the Eucharist are aware of this original meaning. Most, if asked, would undoubtedly say that Catholic in the creed refers literally to Catholic (Roman) as opposed to any non- Catholic denomination. Even within our own denomination, one glaring example of our churchs misunderstanding of its mission to be catholic as proclaimed at the Council of Nicaea is the fact that from the date of the Great Schism to this day we have a separate book of laws, i.e. Code of Canons, for the Western (Latin) church and for the equally Catholic Eastern churches. We really should not be praying for a Catholic (divided) church, but rather for a catholic (universal) church, as Jesus desired his church to become.

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Apostolic The key to the meaning of the word Apostolic in the fourth century required an understanding of the words, deeds, signs and commissions conveyed to the Apostles by Jesus which they, in turn, passed on to their disciples and faith communities through their preaching, their actions and their writings. The words and deeds of Jesus are essentially those recorded in the four Gospels and in the writings of Paul. However, even from the very beginnings of church history, church authorities have recognized the need to critique and interpret the words of Jesus because they were addressed to many different persons and groups in a given cultural and religious environment, and because Jesus himself used stories and parables as well as analogies to Old Testament events or characterizations to convey his teachings. As a result, we have the words and deeds of Jesus as reported by the Apostles, but our understanding of their meaning is highly influenced by the authoritative interpretations of scripture scholars throughout the centuries since they were first uttered. The signs and commissions from Jesus to the Apostles focused primarily around those actions later called Sacraments, which have been addressed at length in chapter 8. In brief summary, they are: 1. Mt. 28:19-20: Go, therefore, make disciples of all the nations; baptize them and teach them to observe all the commands I gave you. 2. Mt. 26:19-20: Then he took some bread broke it and gave it to them saying, this is my body do this as a memorial of me. He did the same with the cup and said, This cup is the new covenant in my blood which will be poured out for you. 3. Acts 2:38-40: (Peter on the first Pentecost) You must repent and every one of you must be baptized in the name of Jesus Christ for the forgiveness of your sins, and you will receive the gift of the Holy Spirit. The promise that was made is for you and for your children for all those whom the Lord our God will call to himself. 4. John 20:23: Receive the Holy Spirit, for those whose sins you forgive, they are forgiven; for those whose sins you retain, they are retained. 5. Mt. 16:18-20: So now I [Jesus] say to you: you are Peter and on this rock I will build my Church. And the gates of the underworld can never hold out against it. I will give you the keys of the kingdom of heaven: whatever you bind on earth shall be considered bound in heaven; whatever you loose on earth shall be considered loosed in heaven.
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The Apostles were obviously seen as the most authoritative sources of knowledge about what Jesus said and did. However, as the early Church spread throughout the inhabited world, the Apostles realized they could not physically be present everywhere that Christians met. Thus, apostolic writings began to take the place of apostolic physical presence. By the time of the Council of Nicaea all of the writings which were later to be officially recognized as the canonical books of the New Testament were completed and were being circulated and used, at least by the larger churches, as the most accurate reflection of what Jesus had taught. By the end of the second century, there were also prominent Christian writers such as Justin Martyr, Eusebius, Irenaeus, Origen, Tertullian and Hippolytus whose works carried nearly as much weight regarding the true Christian message as did the New Testament scriptures. However, these writers were not always in agreement, e.g.: 1. Justin Martyr was one of the strongest defenders of Christianity against the pagans and in showing the superiority of Christianity over Judaism. Yet Justin only quoted from the four Gospels and never from the letters of Paul. Justin saw Paul as the source of the heresies propounded by the Christian, Marcion. 2. As many as seventeen additional gospels have been discovered which had some circulation in the early church, but all of which have since been excluded from the canonical or approved list of inspired scriptures. Most of these texts were rejected because they were declared to have been forgeries (i.e. not authored by the apostle or disciple to whose name they were attributed, or not written close to the period when Jesus lived and died), or because they endorsed, at least in part, teachings of other Christians which were later declared heresies. 3. There are many other existing non-canonical writings of the early Christian era which describe the acts and deeds of several of the apostles and their converts. Since these documents generally describe the personal (and, in some cases, possibly fictitious) exploits of the person for whom each is named and do not add to the history of Jesus and his teachings, they are not included among the inspired scriptures. Nevertheless, many of them are writings contemporary to the New Testament scriptures and therefore contribute to our knowledge of some of the early disagreements regarding the teachings of Jesus. 4. There are at least a dozen additional letters purportedly written by Apostles or their immediate disciples, most of which have been rejected as forgeries because they are believed to have been written long after the deaths of the alleged authors. However, these letters do contribute to our
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understanding of some of the early challenges to the unity of the Christian faith. The last commissioning issue addressed above, i.e. the apparent vesting of Peter (and by later implication, his successors) with universal authority over all matters arising in the Church founded by Jesus, was not a topic included in the definition of apostolic as that term was used in the Nicene Creed. For at least the first two centuries after Jesus died, there was no assertion of centralized power by any of the Apostles. On the contrary, there is clear evidence of the following: 1. Paul was recognized as the leading authority for the churches he established among the Gentiles. Paul clearly prevailed against the other Apostles at the first Council of Jerusalem in abolishing the requirement that Gentile converts to Christianity first become Jews (through circumcision and obedience to the Jewish ritual laws). It is also clear that Paul acted independently when he schooled his disciples and his churches regarding the message and mission of Jesus. This distinct status of Paul is pointedly outlined in Pauls letter to the Galatians 2: 6-9: these people who are acknowledged leaders as I say, had nothing to add to the Good News as I preach it. On the contrary, they recognized that I had been commissioned to preach the Good News to the uncircumcised just as Peter had been commissioned to preach it to the circumcised. The same person whose action had made Peter the apostle of the circumcised had given me a similar mission to the pagans. So James, Cephas [Peter] and John, these leaders, these pillars, shook hands with Barnabas and me as a sign of partnership: we were to go to the pagans and they to the circumcised. 2. James, the brother of the Lord, who became the first bishop of the church at Jerusalem, was the recognized leader of the Judaeo-Christian community in Jerusalem and surrounding areas until his martyrdom by stoning in 62 C.E. 3. Peters initial outreach was to the Jewish converts outside of Jerusalem, particularly those located in Asia Minor. Peter first received recognition as an episcopus (later to be called a bishop) when he headed the large Christian community at Antioch. The first Letter of Peter (cf. 1: 1-2) was addressed to the Jewish converts of the diaspora [scattered areas] in Asia Minor and not to the universal church. 4. Tradition tells us that the apostle Thomas went to India to spread the teachings of Jesus. 5. The process for spreading Christs teachings, apparently followed by each of the Apostles after the first Pentecost, was to scatter in many directions to the known parts of the inhabited world. As they made converts and established communities, they were the first leaders of their own flocks and
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acted independently of any control or direction exercised by Peter. The apostles sometimes nominated other individuals to lead the communities they established once they moved on. More frequently, however, the communities selected their own presiders for the Eucharist or simply recognized the host or hostess at whose house the Eucharist was celebrated as the presider/leader of the moment. In these latter instances, apostolic approval of the appointments was neither sought nor given. 6. During the period from 64 C.E. (date when Nero initiated the first persecution) until 312 C.E. (date when Constantine won his battle over Maxentius and attributed the victory to Christ), there were nine major persecution campaigns against the Christian converts. When Constantine then proclaimed Christianity the state religion of the Roman Empire, the Church finally began to organize a more centralized authority built around the presbyter/bishops who presided in the major cities. The bishop of Rome, because he resided at the seat of all civil authority over the vast Roman Empire, began to be recognized as the first among equals, not through any known delegation of authority flowing from Peter but simply due to his closeness to the seat of worldwide civil authority. Since Peter had held the position of first bishop of Rome (after he transferred from Asia Minor), he was retroactively credited with the first among equals status even though there is no clear evidence that he exercised universal authority over the early Church. In essence, then, apostolic in the Nicene Creed referred only to those teachings received from the apostles as found in the approved writings which formed the New Testament scriptures. The bishop of Rome had no more recognized authority than any other bishop of a large city for at least the first two centuries of the churchs history. Although Paul and some of the apostles appointed leaders to stay behind when they moved on to new locations, apostolic succession for the first generation of presbyters/bishops was most frequently the result of the respective communities choosing men from among the direct disciples of the apostles. Notwithstanding Pauls suggested list of qualifications for an episcopus, there was no organized, common instruction or preparation for assuming the role of presbyter/bishop. Once the apostles were gone from this life, each individual leader and member relied on his or her own and the communitys understanding of the New Testament scriptures, to the extent these were available, to guide the flock in remaining faithful to the teachings of Jesus. As previously noted, major rifts in the apostolic succession as regards authority in the Church occurred in later centuries. However, both the Orthodox Catholics and the Protestant Christians clung tightly to the New Testament scriptures as the
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foundation for their Christian faith. Thus it appears arrogant for the Roman Christian church to assert sole rights to the quality of apostolic as justification of its claim to be the one true church. The overall conclusions to be drawn from this review of the history behind the phraseology one, holy, catholic and apostolic found in the final version of the Nicene Creed, are the following:
1. The original meaning of each of the four terms in the 4th century creed

varies greatly from the meanings of the 20th and 21st centuries. 2. The Roman Catholic Churchs current definitions of these terms are very self-serving as a means to justify its claim to being the only true church of Jesus Christ. 3. While the Roman Catholic Church can and does claim a direct succession of authority back in history to St. Peter, it cannot claim an unchanging, authoritative body of teaching back to Jesus and the Apostles: a. Some significant elements of sacramental theology (e.g. infant baptism, the totality of Jesus body and blood contained wholly in either the Eucharistic bread or wine, the signs for the sacraments of Reconciliation and Marriage) did not come from Jesus or the Apostles. b. Some ministries (e.g. prophet, miracle-worker, healer) conferred by Jesus and the Holy Spirit and prioritized by St. Paul, were not fostered and retained by the Church. c. A married clergy initiated by Jesus and fully endorsed by Paul and the rest of the Apostles was eventually rejected by the Roman Church. d. Some teachings such as the prohibition of all birth control (including preventive), the existence of Purgatory and Limbo, as well as the power and effect of Indulgences have no foundation in the teachings of Jesus or the Apostles. As demonstrated by the chapters in this book, there has been considerable evolution in many of the practices and in some of the doctrines which are claimed by the Roman Church of the twenty-first century as the authentic teaching of Jesus Christ. It is my fervent hope that, by calling attention to these issues from some new perspectives, healthy discussion and dialogue will be generated and appropriate changes within the Roman Church will be achieved.
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BIBLIOGRAPHY
1. The City of God by St. Augustine, with an introduction by Thomas Merton,

published by the Modern Library, Random House, Inc., 457 Madison Ave., N.Y. N.Y. 2. Catholicism by Richard P. McBrien; Winston Press, Inc., 430 Oak Grove, Minneapolis, MN 55403. 3. Sacred Origins of Profound Things by Charles Panati; published by the Penguin Group, Penguin Books USA, Inc., 375 Hudson St., N.Y. N.Y.10014. 4. The Documents of Vatican II by Walter M. Abbott, S.J.; the America Press, N.Y. 5. The Jerusalem Bible by general editor Alexander Jones; Doubleday & Co., Inc., N.Y., N.Y. 6. Humanae Vitae, Encyclical Letter of His Holiness Pope Paul VI, the new, revised translation prepared by Rev. Marc Calegari, S.J.; Ignatius Press, San Francisco. 7. Human Life in Our Day, A collective pastoral letter of the American Hierarchy issued November 15, 1968, U.S. Catholic Conference, 1312 Massachusetts Ave., N.W., Washington, D.C. 20005 8. Websters II New College Dictionary by Houghton Mifflin Company, Boston / New York, copyrights 1999 & 1995. 9. The Complete Medical Encyclopedia 10. Sacred Silence by Donald Cozzens, The Liturgical Press, Collegeville, MN 56321 11. Ten Peak Moments of Church History by Alfred McBride, O.Praem. in Catholic Update published by St Anthony Press, 1615 Republic St., Cincinnati, OH 45210 12. Lost Scriptures by Bart D. Ehrman; Oxford University Press, Inc., 198 Madison Ave., N.Y., N.Y. 10016 13. The Legend of Pope Joan by Peter Stanford; Henry Holt & Co., 115 West 18th St., N.Y., N.Y. 14. Is It the Same Church by F. J. Sheed; Pflaum Press, Dayton OH 15. Should the Church Change Its Laws on Divorce? Taken from an interview with Msgr. Victor J. Pospishil, a priest of the Eastern Orthodox Christian Church, by Edward Wakin; published in U.S. Catholic, May 1968 16. When Women Were Priests by Karen Jo Rorjesen; Harper, San Francisco 17. Were Women Ever Ordained Catholic Priests? By Heidi Schlumpf in February, 2005 issue of U. S. Catholic; Claretian Publications, 205 W. Monroe St., Chicago IL 60606
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ACKNOWLEDGMENTS Sincere gratitude to my wife, Ginny, for her constant support and encouragement during this project, for her honest appraisal and occasional disagreement with my positions, for tolerating substantial clutter and preemption of space to store my resource books and other research materials, and for relinquishing time on our computer for writing and rewriting the drafts of this book. To Sr. Patricia E. McMahon, OSF, pastoral associate of St. Brendan Parish, Hilliard Ohio, for her constructive comments about style and format after an early review of the first several chapters, for steering me to additional resource material, and for her encouragement to complete this task. To the Rev. Rod Damico, Associate Pastor at St. Paul parish in the Catholic Diocese of Columbus, Ohio for his extremely helpful suggestions about modifying the tone and clarifying the objectives of this writing, and for guiding me in the search for a publisher. To Michelle Slavens, head nurse for the Palliative Care Unit and to Brian P. Smith, V.P. of System Mission and senior decision-maker regarding medical/moral ethics, both of whom are on the staff of Mt. Carmel, St. Anns (Catholic) Hospital in Westerville, Ohio, for their significant contribution of material regarding Church teaching on the duty to preserve life, foregoing Nutrition and Hydration and Euthanasia. Much thanks to all of the above as well as to many other friends with whom I discussed various chapters or sections and from whom I received helpful feedback and encouragement to proceed.

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