Vatican Conference on Sexual Abuse concluded

This past week has seen the conclusion of a special conference in Rome called by Pope Francis on how to deal decisively with the sexual abuse scandal in the church.  We also have seen the condemnation of Cardinal Pell in Australia to 50 years in prison at his 70 years old in life.  Today we are informed that last night was his first night in prison. As all convicted pedophiles he will be held in isolation and will be spending 23 hours a day by himself.

What a lot.  We do have some sympathy for him.  He seems to have very few, relatively "minor" slips, some call them "vanilla", in his long, illustrious career.  We don't need to get into specifics, as you easily can find them online, elsewhere.

There are many types of victims here.  Sexual abuse seems to happen in all sorts of arenas in various ways.  I once ended up in a car with a man once, when young, and felt I escaped by the skin of my teeth.  I was once grabbed in an alleyway and managed to run away when 13 years old.  The man managed to kiss me on the cheek.  I had to identify him in a lineup and testify in court.  Stuff like this happens all the time, sad to say.  The innocent and the minor are always the true victim.  Yet, the adult cleric, sworn to celibacy is also a victim.  Celibacy does not work for the vast majority people.  St. Peter himself was a married man and had his wife with him.  St. Paul writes that if one burns with passion one ought to marry and have a partner, as God and nature ordains and calls for.  We are sexual beings and it is the odd man or woman out of the whole lot who can do without the closeness, intimacy, confiding, pleasure and comfort of sexual relations and life-long union.

It is the command for celibacy itself which must be removed and abolished.  This is not something that I heard coming out in the statements from the conference.  I would expect, therefore, that NOTHING constructive has been accomplished.  Nothing whatsoever. -- The Pope said the church will come down with the "wrath of God" on the perpetrators.  If the church continues in this unnatural and un-biblical stance to marriage, if may find the wrath of God coming down on it.

During and after the Reformation, Rome ridiculed the Lutherans for wanting their "wine and women" when they simply asked for biblical standards, serving wine at communion, as instituted by Christ himself, and permitting marriage for church leaders, as permitted by St. Peter and St. Paul, themselves.  Why the Roman church persists in sitting "beside scripture", as Luther would always complain, is beyond comprehension and has led to the most deplorable spectacle possible.  It ought to teach us about taking scripture supremely seriously.  We dare not tamper with it.  We dare not set ourselves up as superior in suppression of simple human needs to demonstrate a holiness that God never asked for nor designed. It is the peak of irreligiosity to do so.

My Roman Catholic Friend and 2. Timothy 1:15-18, re: Praying for the Dead

2. Timothy, chapter 1:

15 You know that everyone in the province of Asia has deserted me,including Phygelus and Hermogenes.

16 May the Lord show mercy to the household of Onesiphorus, because he often refreshed me and was not ashamed of my chains. 17 On the contrary, when he was in Rome, he searched hard for me until he found me. 18 May the Lord grant that he will find mercy from the Lord on that day! You know very well in how many ways he helped me in Ephesus.

From this passage my Roman Catholic friend of the previous post is intending to show that people--including as illustrious and authoritative a writer as the apostle Paul--do and ought to pray for the dead.

Specifically, he is attempting to show it from this short exclamation:  "May the Lord grant that he will find mercy from the Lord on that day!"

As we can see from the context, nothing here indicates first of all, that Onesiphorus has died, second that Paul believes that a prayer for any person will be counted towards their righteousness.  

Moreover, we also see from the context, that Paul has suffered the loss of his leadership over a number of individuals in the church, even though he is an apostle, as he has just vigorously asserted with various preceding points.  In that sense, he is able to act as intercessor for these people who have turned specifically against him (and who are living).  Their faith in Christ may be in question now, but that is between them and God.  They have, however, rejected the messenger Paul without cause, having previously been dedicated to him and his message of the Gospel. This is an injury and injustice also to Paul, himself.  His own response is one of pious hope and forgiveness.  We see also Paul's Christ-inspired grace.  (He does not wish to  call down the fire from heaven, as certain disciples ones proposed to Jesus;  the "sons of thunder", as he nicknamed them.)  Yet, it will be the Lord himself who judges and dispenses mercy. 

Onesiphorus appears not have turned against Paul, but nothing further is explained regarding his present fate, just as we know nothing further about Phygelus and Hermogenes.  Anything more becomes a matter of conjecture.

We also note, that Paul attaches no invocation or affirmation to his pious hope of mercy.  Nor does he indicated that all should pray to the Lord for the mentioned individuals, living or dead, instituting here no Requiem Mass, so to speak.

This is the most flimsy passage imaginable, to burden Christian consciences with mandatory prayers for the dead and their achieving mercy.  People who have come out of Roman Catholicism, often speak about the heavy burden of guilt they carried, the hammer over their head.  This, here, would be another instance of burden:  the Christian struggles under the innumerable sins of others, when it is Christ who has born them all.  Let each come to repentance of his very own sins, instead, and turn to the Lord. 

All Saints' Day and Maccabees

This past All Saint's Sunday I spent the afternoon reading first and second Maccabees, never having read it before.  The story was familiar to me from a past lecture, but why should it come up now?

This is how it happened.  A very famous Christian author and pastor, Eugene Peterson, had died the week before, which promoted a Roman Catholic friend of mine on Facebook to remark that he himself hopes that when he dies, people will remember to pray for his departed soul, not like this famous protestant pastor who was assumed to have gone straight to heaven, by protestants who talked about his departure.--As we know, Roman Catholics promote a teaching about a thing called "purgatory", where many souls are said to go be purified for an undetermined time to eventually be promoted to heaven, leaving people, the departed as well as their living family, in a kind of limbo, as least for the present.  As to where a dearly departed has departed to precisely, one dare not say, especially if he or she was not perfect, which none of us are.  This gives rise to a whole industry of indulgences, praying for the dead, saying masses for the dead, etc.  To which every "Protestant" says: "what exactly are you, dear Roman Catholic, proclaiming regarding the death and resurrection of our Lord Jesus Christ?  Was his sacrifice not for sinners like you and like me?"  Indeed, this whole praying for the dead reads like a racket, as the Reformation has clearly shown, and as the height of faithlessness in the cloak of piety.  But Christ is left out.  He is not there.  (As Jesus said:  "Where the corpse is, the vultures will gather." Matthew 24.)

So, what about Maccabees?

Well, the said Friend on Facebook, of Roman Catholic confession, as I said, just slung that one out:  "It's in 2  Maccabees!"  Yea, sure, "It's in 2 Maccabees..."--So I read all of 1. Maccabees and all of 2. Maccabees.

Without belaboring the matter, in Maccabees we have the story of the strenous Jewish revolt against oppressive Hellenization during the second century B.C.  (Also read about such topics, here.)  It does not read like a sermon, nor a theological treatise, nor prophecy, nor prayer.  The Jews did not include it in their canon.  The Reformation excluded it from the canon.  It is not a source of doctrine about God and spiritual matters.  Maccabees  highlights the events of the oppression and the revolt, as well as the deeds of the Maccabees.  It demonstrates the struggle for conscientious objection involving martyrdom. 

We see in Maccabees a high regard for the law.  The leaders of the revolt defended the Jewish way of life with great zeal, the regulations the Lord had put down for the nation.  Their efforts were of military nature.  Outsiders were "sinners."  The book does not promote mercy, nor does it speak about the Lord or for the Lord.  The authors speak for themselves and their version of the historical record. They do not claim to be prophets, nor to have been living among prophets.  In fact, it says, that prophecy had ceased in those times.  It should follow, therefore, that the editorializing comments of the unnamed author/s, be taken under advisement.

It boggles that mind that precisely here, our Roman Catholic friend wants to find corroboration for the doctrine of purgatory and praying for the dead.  

The concern for the dead, so it is said in Maccabees several times, should be taken as a sign of the belief in the resurrection of the dead.  This rings a bell when we think about what St. Paul said, as an aside, such as:  if there is no resurrection for the dead, why do some bother to be baptized for the dead?  (1. Corinthians 15:29).  Also, there is the time, where he causes a commotion saying in Jerusalem that he is persecuted for his belief in the resurrection.  (Acts 22:6-8.)


"6 Then Paul, knowing that some of them were Sadducees and the others Pharisees, called out in the Sanhedrin, “My brothers, I am a Pharisee,descended from Pharisees. I stand on trial because of the hope of the resurrection of the dead.” 7 When he said this, a dispute broke out between the Pharisees and the Sadducees, and the assembly was divided. 8 (The Sadducees say that there is no resurrection, and that there are neither angels nor spirits, but the Pharisees believe all these things.)"


Obiously, these issues had been brewing for some time, just as much as the Pharisaical emphasis on the law vs. mercy and justice.  For me, reading Maccabees put some things into perspective regarding thorny issues Jesus and Paul were speaking to in the culture and in the life of the individual consciences in relationship to God.

So, now, what does it exactly say in Maccabees that gets some people on the road for praying for the dead?  At the conclusion of 2 Maccabees, an incident is related where some of the warriors of the Maccabaean conflicts had been found dead, and when it came to the recovery of the bodies, it was found that they were wearing in their layers of clothing some sort of amulet dedicated to a foreign idol.  This presents the leaders with a nasty dilemma.  Here they were fighting zealously for the law of the ancestors, but their fighters are found practicing a form of idolatry.  This really does present a unique embarrassment.  What to do and say about this?

Ingenious to the end, they take up a collection of money to send to the temple, so a sacrifice could me made for the dead who had died relying on a foreign god, hoping they might still attain the resurrection of the dead.

Elegant?  Not.  Hopeful?  Maybe.  Mandated?  Definitely not.

Here comes Tetzel.  You know about Johann Tetzel.  "As soon as the gold in the casket rings, the rescued soul to heaven springs."  Who sent Tetzel?  Those who needed money for their simony and for their construction projects.

Maccabees closes by praising this solution as pious.   The leader is pragmatic in his actions.  No wonder, the book is excluded from the canon.  Theology:  fail.  God cannot be manipulated.  Not the God of the Bible.  At some point, you have to leave things to His judgement and to his mercy.  Save your money and your time.

 2. Maccabees 40-45: 

 "But when they found on each of the dead men, under their tunics, objects dedicated to the idols of Jamnia, which the Law prohibits to Jews, it became clear to everyone that this was why these men had lost their lives. All then blessed the ways of the Lord, the upright judge who brings hidden things to light, and  gave themselves to prayer, begging that the sin committed might be completely forgiven. Next, the valiant Judas urged the soldiers to keep themselves free from all sin, having seen with their own eyes the effects of the sin of those who had fallen; after this he took a collection from them individually, amounting to nearly two thousand drachmas, and sent it to Jerusalem to have a sacrifice for sin offered, an action altogether fine and noble, prompted by his belief in the resurrection. For had he not expected the fallen to rise again, it would have been superfluous and foolish to pray for the dead,whereas if he had in view the splendid recompense reserved for those who make a pious end, the thought was holy and devout. Hence, he had this expiatory sacrifice offered for the dead, so that they might be released from their sin."

To conclude, we note that the Old Testament does not make provision for this type of sacrifice, however pious the thought.  

We also note that Martin Luther wished Maccabees had not come down to us, at all, because it contains too many heathenish things.  The writer himself, excuses himself, making no claims except to tell the story in engaging fashion.  This is how the author of 2 Maccabees closes the book (chapter 15):

"The city of Jerusalem remained in the possession of the Jewish people from that time on, so I will end my story here. 38 If it is well written and to the point, I am pleased; if it is poorly written and uninteresting, I have still done my best. 39 We know it is unhealthy to drink wine or water alone, whereas wine mixed with water makes a delightfully tasty drink. So also a good story skillfully written gives pleasure to those who read it. With this I conclude."

It is an interesting story.  It is a mixed drink passed to us by the writer, however, and we are right not to draw Christian doctrine from it. 

In addition, our attention should be directed at the sacrifices for sin in Leviticus 4, where a sin offering requires repentance.  

Funeral for German Roman Catholic Bishop

Just to mention:  I don't follow Roman Catholic teachers and bishops, but someone sent me these two links to Cardinal Meisner.  They were very interesting and somewhat edifying, but they are in the German language.  In one of them Cardinal Meisner recounts the events of his life under dictatorships and expulsion from Silesia.  Since my father and his family was expelled from Silesia, and many ethnic Germans where I live in Canada have refugee background, this was important to me, touchingly and well told.

Here is the link to the funeral.

Here is the link to the interview and life story telling.

I enjoyed the sermon at the funeral when it focused on adoration of God and how we become important and human to each other when we adore God.  It reminded me of Bonhoeffer's "Life Together", where he shows that we don't live to manipulate each other, but that we are brothers and sisters to each other in Christ, and only in Christ.  Jesus is with us and between us.  All of this made me push harder to have evening devotions with my husband, he and I now being our own little home congregation of two.

In speaking about the expulsion from Silesia, Meisner points out, how many people had to go through heroic efforts to get their families out alive in severe winter weather, traveling the roads and relying on help from strangers.  His group survived intact, but we also know of plenty of tragedies.  These things are hardly treated in the media and history telling, which is unfortunate, he observes.  Yes, spoken like a Silesian.

He also tells stories about being Catholic in East Germany and contrasts his approach to Angela Merkel's. He explains how he was moved to Cologne from Berlin, by the Pope, against his own wishes to remain in Communist Germany to bloom where he is planted, so to speak.  He obviously was a thorn in a few people's sides, but he always considered this a good sign--it meant to him that he was on the right path.

So much about that, but now I have the links here.