In this episode, I present material based on the second lesson I taught in my local Catholic parish inquiry program for 30 years. I’m not here to convert anyone. I’m just sharing my stories. In this episode, we take a deep dive into the most important Catholic tradition – the celebration of our Sunday liturgy, the Mass.

Hello, this is Chris Young. Welcome to Episode 96 of Contemplating Life.

In this episode, I continue a multi-part series based on my 30 years teaching the Catholic faith in my local parish’s inquiry program.

As always, whenever I talk about religion, I’m not out to convert anyone. I’m just telling my stories.

I had hoped this would wrap up my series on Catholic traditions. However, having written the script, it’s too long. So, there will be one more episode after this one before we move on to our next topic.

Continuing with the topic of sacred tradition, this week we explore the most important tradition in the Roman Catholic Church – the celebration of Sunday liturgy, which we call the Mass. I’ve been a Catholic my entire life (off and on), and I taught adult Catholic classes for 30 years. and it never once occurred to me until I began to prepare this lesson to ask why we call it “Mass.”

I’ve done some research, and the general consensus is that it derives from the Latin phrase “Ite, missa est,” which are the concluding words of the Roman Catholic worship service. It means “go, it is dismissal.” This phrase is used not only in Roman Catholic ritual but also in the Divine Service of the Lutheran Church. Although the Lutherans don’t call their service “Mass.” They call it the “Divine Service.” See the Wikipedia links provided for more information.

I should also take a moment to define the word “liturgy.” It originates from the Greek word “leitourgia,” meaning “public work” or “work for the people.” In this context, it simply refers to any form of public prayer or worship conducted according to a particular, prescribed ritual. The celebration of the Roman Mass, Catholic sacraments, and other church ceremonies can all be described as Liturgy.

Our liturgies are celebrated in the context of a calendar year known as the Liturgical Year. The church year begins with the first Sunday of Advent, which is four Sundays before Christmas. It is a time of preparation not only for the coming of Jesus at Christmas but also in anticipation of His eventual second coming at the end of time.

Christmastide begins on Christmas Eve and continues through the Feast of the Baptism of the Lord, which is the first Sunday after the Feast of the Epiphany on January 6.

This is followed by Ordinary Time, which extends from Christmas until Lent. By the way, it’s not called “ordinary,” as in “nothing special,” even though there is nothing particularly special about that season. It is called ordinary because we measure it using ordinal numbers such as the first Sunday of Ordinary Time, the second Sunday of Ordinary Time, and so on.

Lent is a time of repentance and preparation for Easter. It begins on Ash Wednesday, which is 46 days before Easter. You may hear people describe Lent as 40 days. This is because Sunday is considered a feast day and, technically, doesn’t count as part of Lent. So, if you subtract the Sundays from 46, you get 40 days.

Lent concludes with the Mass of the Lord’s Supper on Holy Thursday night. That is the Thursday before Easter.

That event marks the beginning of the Easter Triduum, which includes Good Friday, Holy Saturday, and Easter Sunday. The Easter celebration spans seven weeks until the Feast of Pentecost, which commemorates Jesus’ ascension to heaven and the coming of the Holy Spirit.

After Pentecost, there is an additional period of Ordinary Time, which extends back to Advent, and everything starts over again.

So, some of the details behind our liturgical planning depend upon which of these various seasons we are in.

Each week, the Mass has a theme. This is based on the liturgical season and upon the Scripture readings specified for that day. We will discuss these readings further in a moment.

My mom was the chairman of the Liturgy Committee at Saint Gabriel for many years and was responsible for planning how we would celebrate each of the liturgical seasons. She used to ask a trivia question, “When does the Mass begin?”

Old school Catholics might tell you that it begins at a portion of the Mass called the “offertory.” This is because people asked, “If I come late to Mass or if I have to leave early, what are the essential portions that I have to be there in order to fulfill my obligation to attend Sunday services?” The answer was that the offertory, consecration, and communion were the essential minimum. Therefore, people wrongly concluded that anything before the offertory was optional and unimportant. That just isn’t right. You need to be there for the whole thing.

Some people say Mass begins with the priest’s opening blessing. Others might say with the opening hymn as the priest and altar servers process into the sanctuary.

My mom said, “Mass begins in the parking lot.”

The rationale is that God is present in three different forms during the Mass. We have God present in the Word of God proclaimed in the Scripture readings. We have the Real presence of the Body and Blood of Jesus in the Eucharist, and God is present in the community. Jesus said, “For where two or three are gathered in my name, there am I in the midst f them.” (Matthew 18:20) So when we gather in the parking lot or the lobby of the church and greet one another, God is present there. That’s where it really begins.

People sometimes ask, “Why do I need to go to Mass to pray? Can’t I pray better on my own at home?” The surprising answer is, “Yes. You can play better at home on your own. You don’t go to church to pray. You go to church to worship.” Worship is a communal expression of our relationship with God. Worship requires a community, and that is a different kind of encounter with God than one-on-one prayer. So, once the community has gathered, our liturgical celebration has already begun, even if the prescribed rituals have not yet started.

My mother’s view of the parking lot notwithstanding, the Mass really begins with an opening hymn sung by the entire congregation, led by a song leader known as a cantor and possibly accompanied by a choir. While an organ typically provides accompaniment, it is not uncommon to also have a piano, guitar, or other musical instruments.

I have provided a link to a webpage that explains in detail what goes on at Mass. It includes all the prayers that are said. So, you might want to follow along.

https://www.liturgies.net/Liturgies/Catholic/roman_missal/roman_missal_order_of_mass.htm

After the hymn, the priest offers an open blessing. This is followed by a penitential rite in which we acknowledge our sinfulness and ask for God’s mercy and forgiveness.

The congregation prays, “I confess to almighty God and to you, my brothers and sisters, that I have greatly sinned in my thoughts and in my words, in what I have done and in what I have failed to do, through my fault, through my fault through my most grievous fault; therefore I ask blessed Mary ever-Virgin, all the Angels and Saints, and you, my brothers and sisters, to pray for me to the Lord our God.”

The priest replies, “May almighty God have mercy on us, forgive us our sins, and bring us to everlasting life.”

All reply, “Amen.”

The version of the prayers of the priest and the response of the congregation that I was most familiar with was promulgated in 1975. It was a somewhat streamlined and modernized English translation of the ancient Latin rites. In 2011, new translations were issued that more directly reflected the original Latin.

For example, in the middle of that prayer of confession, the phrase, “through my fault, through my fault, through my most grievous fault,” was not in the 1975 version but was put back in 2011. During that portion of the prayer, you are supposed to strike your chest with your fist. You may be familiar with the Latin version of that phrase, which is, “mea culpa, mea culpa, mea máxima culpa.” Whenever someone takes responsibility for something they did wrong, it is often referred to as a “mea culpa,” even in a non-religious setting.

The penitential prayer is followed by a hymn called “Gloria to God” except for during Advent and Lent when we omit the prayer

This is another prayer that was revised between the 1975 version that I had memorized and a newer 2011 edition, which is a more direct translation of the ancient Latin version. In the Wikipedia article linked, the “ecumenical version” from 1975 is the one I have memorized. The new version sounds awkward to me.

For many centuries, composers have created musical settings for these words. Often, they are adapted where a cantor sings a phrase and the congregation responds. These variations all contain the same basic words.

If there is no organist or other musical accompaniment, as is typical for a weekday Mass, it is simply recited as a prayer rather than sung. However, it really should be sung. Sometimes the words are not enough. You need music to make it a complete experience.

Saint Augustine is quoted as saying, “When you sing well, you pray twice.” Both the words and music are parts of the prayer.

Some things just need to be sung. Suppose it was a special day for a friend. It doesn’t matter how sincerely I express these words; it doesn’t mean as much if I don’t sing them. For example, if I say [overly dramatic and sincere spoken word] “ Happy birthday to you. Happy birthday to you. Happy birthday, dear friend. Happy birthday to you.“ [jhuckling] That just doesn’t work. You have to sing, [singing] “Happy birthday to you…”

Similarly, you can’t recite, [spoken in a dull monotone] “Glory to God in the highest, and peace to his people on earth.” You have to sing, [sung] “Glory to God in the highest, and peace to his people on earth.”

After the introductory rite, we begin the first of the two major portions of the Mass. They are the Liturgy of the Word and the Liturgy of the Eucharist.

The Liturgy of the Word consists primarily of three Scripture readings and a psalm. The first reading usually is from the Old Testament, or during Eastertime, a reading from the Acts of the Apostles.

This is followed by a Responsorial Psalm. Some people think it is called that because the cantor sings the verse, and the congregation sings a response. However, that is not why it is called Responsorial. Instead, it is called that because it is our response to the first Scripture reading.

The second reading is always one of the New Testament epistles.

Both of these readings are given by a lector, who may be a clergy member but is more likely to be a layperson.

This is followed by a reading from one of the four Gospels. There is a brief ceremony as the priest processes from the altar, carrying a lectionary book, and makes his way to the pulpit. This can be accompanied by music and singing, typically an alleluia. A lectionary is a large, ornately decorated book containing all of the prayers and Scripture readings used during Mass.

After the gospel reading, the priest delivers a homily. This is a type of sermon related to the Scripture readings for the day.

The Scripture readings set the tone and theme for the entire celebration. The hymns chosen by the music director are often based upon some of the Scripture readings or reflect the theme of those readings.

Scripture readings follow a three-year cycle, designated as Cycle A, B, and C. We are currently in Cycle C in the summer of 2025, which will continue until the Solemnity of Christ the King, the last Sunday of the liturgical year, immediately preceding the First Sunday of Advent. Cycle C uses gospel ratings from Luke. Cycle A uses Matthew and Cycle B uses Mark. Readings from John are used during Easter, Advent, and Lent.

This three-year cycle is specified by the Common Lectionary, which is used not only by Roman Catholics but also by other Catholic-like denominations, such as Lutheran, Methodist, Anglican, and others.

Mass is also celebrated daily, and it uses a different series of readings on a two-year cycle consisting of a mixture of the Gospels.

After the homily, the congregation recites a Profession of Faith, typically the Nicene Creed. This is a creed first established by the Council of Nicaea in 325 CE. It was then revised by other church councils over the centuries. In some churches, the Apostles Creed is substituted in various liturgical seasons, but I’ve never heard the Apostles Creed prayed at Mass. The current 2011 version, which sounds a bit strange to my ears. See the linked article for the new version. Here’s my version from the 70s.

“We believe in one God, the Father, the Almighty, maker of heaven and earth, of all that is, seen and unseen. We believe in one Lord, Jesus Christ, the only Son of God, eternally begotten of the Father, God from God, Light from Light, true God from true God, begotten, not made, one in Being with the Father, through him all things were made. For us men and for our salvation, he came down from heaven; by the power of the Holy Spirit, he was born of the Virgin Mary, and was made man. For our sake, he was crucified under Pontius Pilate; he suffered death and was buried. On the third day, he rose again in accordance with the scriptures; he ascended into Heaven and is seated at the right hand of the Father. He will come again in glory to judge the living and the dead, and his kingdom will have no end. We believe in the Holy Spirit, the Lord, the giver of life, who proceeds from the Father and the Son. With the Father and the Son, he is worshipped and glorified. He has spoken through the prophets. We believe in one holy, catholic, and apostolic church. We acknowledge one baptism for the forgiveness of sins. We look for the resurrection of the dead and the life of the world to come. Amen.”

A couple of notes about the prayer… Where it says that the Holy Spirit “proceeds from the Father and the Son,” that is quite controversial. In 1054, a schism occurred between the Roman Catholic Church and the Eastern Orthodox Church. One of the major theological arguments centered on the phrase “and the son,” which was added to the prayer sometime in the sixth century. The Eastern Orthodox Church objected, and this remains a major sticking point between them and the Roman Catholic Church to this day.

The revised 2011 version, in my opinion, is more awkward and complicated. For example, instead of saying “one in being with the Father,” The new version says, “consubstantial with the Father.” Yeah… What the heck does that mean? Of course, any attempt to clearly understand the concept of the Trinity is a challenging endeavor. I don’t think the use of a bizarre word like “consubstantial” helps matters. Also, instead of “born of the Virgin Mary,” it now says “incarnate of the Virgin Mary.” Okay… Maybe that is technically correct, but we don’t celebrate Christmas as Jesus’ incarnation day. We celebrate his birthday.

As a side note, when I was drifting away from the church in my late teens, I felt hypocritical about attending mass when I didn’t believe. So, I would simply drop out during certain sentences of the creed. Eventually, I wasn’t sure I should be praying it at all, and that’s when I left. Of course, I came back. That has been chronicled in earlier episodes of this podcast.

The Liturgy of the Word concludes with prayers of petition. They are introduced by the priest, and then the prayers are read by a cantor or other layperson. Each petition is concluded with, “Let us pray to the Lord.” The congregation responds, “Lord, hear our prayer.” These petitions are prepared in advance by the priest or perhaps a pastoral associate.

The first petition is typically for the church in general, followed by prayers for the Pope, Bishop, and clergy. If there are specific community needs, they are mentioned, such as recovery from a natural disaster or other turmoil. Other petitions might include prayers for peace, especially if there are ongoing conflicts in the world, such as Gaza or Ukraine. Typically, we conclude with prayers for the sick and mention by name parishioners who have asked for prayers. We also mention any parishioners or family of parishioners who have died recently.

There is a tradition that you can have a Mass dedicated to some intention. Most often, it is prayers for a sick person or a deceased relative. You pay a stipend of about $5 to the priest. You get a card suitable to send to the sick person or grieving person, saying that a Mass has been said in their memory. Sometimes, a mass is dedicated to an anniversary or other special occasion.

This concludes the Liturgy of the Word.

The Liturgy of the Eucharist begins with the Preparation of the Gifts. When I was growing up, this portion was called the offertory. It was that first mandatory piece. Typically, there is a hymn as the priest prepares the altar. Members of the congregation carry the bread and wine in procession up the aisle and give them to the priest. At Saint Gabriel, we would schedule a family to bring up the bread and wine for every mass. For a while, my grandmother was the volunteer in charge of calling people and asking them when they typically attended Mass and asking them if they would be the offertory family. If no one has been scheduled, the ushers or lay Eucharistic ministers might do it.

Typically, during this process, the ushers also take up the monetary collections from parishioners. Sometimes, a second collection is taken up for missionary work or other special causes.

As the offertory hymn continues, the priest prepares the bread and wine as a symbolic sacrificial offering. He washes his hands in a ritual fashion. There are prayers that you will say quietly if the hymn is all going or if the hymn has concluded, or at Mass, when there is no music, the priest will pray these prayers out loud. You can see those prayers in the page I mentioned that covers the order of the Mass.

The priest then begins the Eucharistic Prayer, which is the central ritual of the Mass. There are four different versions of this prayer, varying in length and detail. The priest decides which one he will use, although I believe that process is informed by the liturgical season and the theme of the mass. Eucharistic Prayer II is the most commonly used.

The prayer begins with a dialogue between a priest and a congregation in which she says, “The Lord be with you.”

The congregation responds, “and with your spirit.”

“Let us lift up our hearts.”

“We lift them up to the Lord.”

“Let us give thanks to the Lord our God.”

The congregation says, “It is right and just.”

The priest continues, “It is truly right and just, our duty and salvation, always and everywhere to give thanks to you…” and the priest continues with the remainder of the Eucharistic prayer.

There are common elements to the four versions of the prayer. After giving thanks, the priest leads the congregation in a hymn called the Sanctus, which is Latin for Holy. The prayer is, “Holy, holy, holy Lord. God of power and might. Heaven and earth are full of your glory. Hosanna in the highest. Blessed is he who comes in the name of the Lord. Hosanna in the highest.” Again, if there is no musical accompaniment, it is simply recited rather than sung, but it should be sung.

The central part of the Eucharistic Prayer is the consecration of the bread and wine into the body and blood of Christ. We previously spoke of these words in Scripture in the last episode, but here are the words used at Mass.

“On the night he was betrayed, he took bread and, giving thanks, broke it, and gave it to his disciples, saying: Take this, all of you, and eat of it, for this is my body, which will be given up for you.

“In a similar way, when supper was ended, he took the cup and, once more giving thanks, he gave it to his disciples, saying: Take this, all of you, and drink from it, for this is the cup of my blood. The blood of the new and eternal covenant which will be poured out for you and for many, for the forgiveness of sins. Do this in memory of me.”

When I was very, very young, and the Mass was still celebrated in Latin, the altar servers would ring a bell when the priest says, “This is my body,” or “This is my blood.” This was to call the attention of the congregation to this moment because many of them didn’t speak Latin. Although I am glad that the mass is in English since Vatican II, I kind of miss the ringing of those bills. It made it extra special.

The priest then says, “Let us proclaim the mystery of our faith.” There are a variety of possible responses from the congregation. One of the most common is, “When we eat this bread and drink this cup, we proclaim your death, oh Lord until you come in glory.”

After an additional portion of the Eucharistic prayer, it concludes with the priest holding the bread and wine high above his head and proclaiming, “Through him, with him, and in him, in unity with the Holy Spirit, all glory and honor are yours, Almighty Father, forever and ever.”

The congregation responds, “Amen.” This is sometimes called “the great amen.” If it is sung, it is usually quite elaborate.

Next the priest invites us to pray as Jesus taught us. Lord’s prayer as we already outlined in detail last episode, complete with the embolism and the extra doxology which Protestants accuse us of leaving off.

A prayer for peace follows, and the priest concludes, “Let us offer each other a sign of peace.”

The congregation then turns to the people around them and shakes hands, saying, “Peace be with you.” Or if it is a family member, it might include a hug.

After additional prayers, the priest again holds up the bread and wine, saying, “Behold the Lamb of God who takes away the sins of the world. Blessed are those who are called to his supper.”

We respond, “Lord, I’m not worthy that you should enter under my roof. But only say the word, and my soul shall be healed.” This is a paraphrasing of a line from Matthew 8:8, when a Roman centurion came to Jesus and asked that his servant be healed. Jesus offers to go to the man’s house, but he refuses, saying, “Lord, I am not worthy to have you enter under my roof; only say the word, and my servant will be healed.”

The priest, with the assistance of several lay Eucharistic ministers, then distributes the bread and wine to the congregation. Typically, a hymn accompanies this. The ushers lead people up the aisles, pew by pew, to receive communion.

Traditionally, one would kneel, tilt one’s head back, open one’s mouth, and the priest would place the consecrated host on one’s tongue. After Vatican II, the standard practice is to remain standing and holding your hands out, palms up, cupped together. With your right hand underneath. The priest or Eucharistic minister places the consecrated host in your left hand and says, “Body of Christ.” To which you respond, “Amen.” You then pick up the host with your right hand and eat it, or if you are left-handed, reverse the process.

You then step over to a different Eucharistic minister and optionally take the wine. They say, “Blood of Christ.” You respond, “Amen,” and take a sip of the wine. The Eucharistic minister then wipes the lip of the cup with a cloth. You return to your seat for a moment of silent reflection.

Because receiving the Eucharist is a symbol of our unity, we ask that non-Catholics not participate by receiving the bread and wine. Non-Catholics are invited to participate by coming forward and folding their hands across their chest as they approach the priest or Eucharistic minister. This indicates that you are not Catholic, and they will give you a blessing. Children who are not yet old enough for their First Communion can also receive such a blessing.

After the distribution of communion, there is a moment of silent reflection. Then the priest stands and offers a blessing. “May Almighty God bless you, the Father, Son, and Holy Spirit.” He gestures in a cross shape, and you make the sign of the cross. You respond, “Amen.”

In Roman Catholic tradition, you make the sign of the cross with your right hand. You touch your forehead, saying, “In the name of the father.” Then you touch your chest, saying, “and the Son.” Then you touch your left shoulder and your right shoulder, saying “and the Holy Spirit.” Some denominations, particularly Eastern Orthodox Christians, make the sign of the cross right to left instead of left to right.

Sometimes announcements about pairs events are made before the final dismissal.. Then the priest dismisses the congregation by saying, “The Mass is ended. Go in peace to love and serve the Lord.” We respond, “Thanks be to God.”

There is a closing hymn as the priest and servers process to the back of the church. The priest typically stands by the door and greets the congregation as they exit.

Note that I described his assistants as altar servers and not altar boys. Both boys and girls can serve in that capacity.

That’s going to wrap up our overview of the Mass. In the next episode, I will provide more details about what you will find in a Catholic Church. We will discuss the utensils that the priest uses throughout Mass and discuss the symbolism of his priestly vestments. We were also wrap up a few more Catholic traditions.

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I will see you next time as we continue contemplating life. Until then, fly safe.

In this episode, I present material based on the second lesson I taught in my local Catholic parish inquiry program for 30 years. I’m not here to convert anyone. I’m just sharing my stories. In this episode, we continue to explore the connection between Scripture and tradition. We will then take a deeper dive into Catholic traditions as they relate to the Sacraments.

Hello, this is Chris Young. Welcome to Episode 95 of Contemplating Life.

In this episode, I continue a multi-part series based on my 30 years teaching the Catholic faith in my local parish’s inquiry program.

As always, whenever I talk about religion, I’m not out to convert anyone. I’m just telling my stories.

In our previous episode, we talked about the role of sacred tradition in the Catholic Church. We discussed the Protestant position of sola scriptura or Scripture alone, and why it doesn’t hold up.

This week, we continue to explore the connection between Scripture and tradition. We will then take a deeper dive into Catholic traditions as they relate to the Sacraments.

One of the main reasons that sola scriptura is inconsistent is that there is nowhere in Scripture that says Scripture is the sole authority. However, there are several places in Scripture that talk about the importance of tradition.

In 1 Corinthians 11:2, Paul says, “I praise you because you remember me in everything and hold fast to the traditions, just as I handed them on to you.”

What were some of those traditions that Paul handed on to them? The early church held worship services that they described as “the breaking of the bread.” It was the earliest form of the current Roman Catholic worship service, which we call the Mass. More on the word “Mass” later. This practice is a remembrance and re-creation of what Jesus did at the Last Supper. He adapted the traditional Jewish Passover Seder meal into a new ritual. A few verses later in 1 Corinthians 11:23-26, Paul describes what happened at the Last Supper and the commandment that Jesus gave to do this in memory of him.

It says, “For I received from the Lord what I also handed on to you, that the Lord Jesus, on the night he was handed over, took bread, and, after he had given thanks, broke it and said, ‘This is my body that is for you. Do this in remembrance of me.’ In the same way, also the cup, after supper, saying, ‘This cup is the new covenant in my blood. Do this, as often as you drink it, in remembrance of me.’ For as often as you eat this bread and drink the cup, you proclaim the death of the Lord until he comes.”

If that scripture quote sounds familiar to you, it’s because it’s the exact words the priest says during the Eucharistic prayer at Mass. When we celebrate the Catholic Mass the way that we do, we are following the command that Jesus gave us to carry on this tradition. Now, one could argue that because this is in Scripture, it isn’t strictly sacred tradition apart from Scripture, but it does illustrate the importance of traditions.

Here are some more examples of Scripture speaking of the importance of tradition. In 2 Thessalonians 2:15, it says, “Therefore, brothers, stand firm and hold fast to the traditions that you were taught, either by an oral statement or by a letter of ours.” This passage is one of Professor Scott Hahn’s favorite passages in defending the importance of tradition. Note that it speaks of traditions that were transmitted by oral statement and not simply those traditions which were written down in what would later become official Scripture.

Later in chapter 3:4-6 it says, “We are confident of you in the Lord that what we instruct you, you (both) are doing and will continue to do. May the Lord direct your hearts to the love of God and to the endurance of Christ. We instruct you, brothers, in the name of (our) Lord Jesus Christ, to shun any brother who conducts himself in a disorderly way and not according to the tradition they received from us.”

I mentioned last time that one of the verses traditionally used to support sola scriptura is in Mark 7:1-13, where Jesus condemns human traditions when in conflict with God’s law.

It reads…

Now when the Pharisees with some scribes who had come from Jerusalem gathered around him, they observed that some of his disciples ate their meals with unclean, that is, unwashed, hands. (For the Pharisees and, in fact, all Jews, do not eat without carefully washing their hands, keeping the tradition of the elders. And on coming from the marketplace they do not eat without purifying themselves. And there are many other things that they have traditionally observed, the purification of cups and jugs and kettles (and beds).) So the Pharisees and scribes questioned him, “Why do your disciples not follow the tradition of the elders but instead eat a meal with unclean hands?” He responded, “Well did Isaiah prophesy about you hypocrites, as it is written: ‘This people honors me with their lips, but their hearts are far from me; In vain do they worship me, teaching as doctrines human precepts.’ You disregard God’s commandment but cling to human tradition.”

He went on to say, “How well you have set aside the commandment of God in order to uphold your tradition! For Moses said, ‘Honor your father and your mother,’ and ‘Whoever curses father or mother shall die.’ Yet you say, ‘If a person says to father or mother, “Any support you might have had from me is qorban”‘ (meaning, dedicated to God), you allow him to do nothing more for his father or mother. You nullify the word of God in favor of your tradition that you have handed on. And you do many such things.”

The author of Mark is talking about a tradition that said it was unnecessary to support your elderly parents if you declared that your assets were to be given to the church upon your death. It was sort of a way to launder your money in a way that avoided your obligations to your family. Jesus condemns this tradition as it violates one of the 10 Commitments.

A similar version of this story can be found in Matthew 15:1-9. Also, Colossians 2:8 condemns “empty, seductive philosophy according to human tradition.”

The Old Testament also warns against empty, meaningless traditions in Isaiah 29:13-14, “The Lord said: Since this people draws near with words only and honors me with their lips alone, though their hearts are far from me, And their reverence for me has become routine observance of the precepts of men, Therefore I will again deal with this people in surprising and wondrous fashion: The wisdom of its wise men shall perish and the understanding of its prudent men be hid.”

So, it is warning against going through the motions without having spiritual intent behind them. Scripture also warns us not to perform traditions for the sake of showing off. In Matthew 6:1-18, Jesus says…

“(But) take care not to perform righteous deeds in order that people may see them; otherwise, you will have no recompense from your heavenly Father. When you give alms, do not blow a trumpet before you, as the hypocrites do in the synagogues and in the streets to win the praise of others. Amen, I say to you, they have received their reward. But when you give alms, do not let your left hand know what your right is doing, so that your almsgiving may be secret. And your Father who sees in secret will repay you.

“When you pray, do not be like the hypocrites, who love to stand and pray in the synagogues and on street corners so that others may see them. Amen, I say to you, they have received their reward. But when you pray, go to your inner room, close the door, and pray to your Father in secret. And your Father who sees in secret will repay you. In praying, do not babble like the pagans, who think that they will be heard because of their many words. Do not be like them. Your Father knows what you need before you ask him.

“This is how you are to pray: Our Father in heaven, hallowed be your name, your kingdom come, your will be done, on earth as in heaven. Give us today our daily bread; and forgive us our debts, as we forgive our debtors; and do not subject us to the final test, but deliver us from the evil one.

If you forgive others their transgressions, your heavenly Father will forgive you. But if you do not forgive others, neither will your Father forgive your transgressions. “When you fast, do not look gloomy like the hypocrites. They neglect their appearance, so that they may appear to others to be fasting. Amen, I say to you, they have received their reward. But when you fast, anoint your head and wash your face, so that you may not appear to be fasting, except to your Father who is hidden. And your Father who sees what is hidden will repay you.”

As an example of how we can misuse sacred traditions, there is a tradition on Ash Wednesday where Catholics go to Mass and they have ashes smeared on therefore heads in the shape of a cross. People who don’t regularly attend Mass are known to always go on Ash Wednesday just so they can be seen the rest of the day with the mark on their foreheads.

You undoubtedly recognize parts of that previous passage as a prayer we call the Lord’s Prayer.

Traditionally, when Protestants pray the Lord’s prayer, they add the phrase, “for thine is the kingdom, and the power, and the glory, forever and ever. Amen.”

By the way, I love it when I can use the word “traditionally” in regard to Protestant doctrine.

Anyway, Catholics are often asked, “Why did you leave off the last sentence of the Lord’s prayer?”

The bigger question is, “Why did you add a sentence to the Lord’s prayer?” As you can see, that additional phrase is not in Scripture. The extra sentence called a doxology dates back at least to the Book of Common Prayer in 1662. Considering they believe strictly in sola scriptura, they sure do seem attached to that extra sentence which is not found in Scripture.

When Catholics pray the Lord’s prayer alone or perhaps in praying the rosary, we do not add an extra sentence. However, when praying it at Mass, we interject an additional sentence and then add the extra sentence. At Mass, the priest and the entire congregation recite the Lord’s prayer and conclude the prayer with, “… deliver us from evil.”

Then the priest prays a paragraph known as an embolism. In the same way a vascular embolism blocks the flow of blood through a vein or artery, this embolism interrupts the flow of the prayer. The priest says, “Deliver us, Lord, from every evil, and grant us peace in our day. In your mercy keep us free from sin and protect us from all anxiety as we wait in joyful hope for the coming of our Saviour, Jesus Christ.”

Then all pray together, “For the kingdom, the power, and the glory are yours, now and forever. Amen” So, the bottom line is, Catholics don’t completely delete the sentence that wasn’t there in the first place.

Moving along…

Last time we talked about what it might have been like to be one of the apostles or disciples and the rich experience you would have living with Jesus, traveling with him, and not only hearing him speak but seeing how he conducted himself. It would be impossible to put all of that lived experience into writing, and we see in John’s Gospels and epistles expressions of that impossible task of recording everything. In John 20:30-31, it says, “Now Jesus did many other signs in the presence of his disciples that are not written in this book. But these are written that you may (come to) believe that Jesus is the Messiah, the Son of God, and that through this belief you may have life in his name.”

That passage also reiterates our position that Scripture is not intended to be a historical record of exactly what Jesus did. These stories were written with a theological purpose behind them. They were written so that you may believe that Jesus is the Messiah, the Son of God and through this belief you may come to have life in him.

If you study the last two chapters of John’s Gospel, you will see that it has two endings. It is believed that one of John’s disciples added that last chapter. In John 21:25, it says, “It is this disciple who testifies to these things and has written them, and we know that his testimony is true. There are also many other things that Jesus did, but if these were to be described individually, I do not think the whole world would contain the books that would be written.”

In John’s epistles, he also talks about the inadequacy of the written word. In 2 John 12, he writes, “Although I have much to write to you, I do not intend to use paper and ink. Instead, I hope to visit you and to speak face to face so that our joy may be complete.” He also concludes his third letter in much the same fashion.

Now let’s take a deeper dive into sacred tradition.

While the written or spoken word involves our sense of hearing or seeing, tradition is a much more sensual experience. Given that God is beyond our complete understanding, we want to use all of our capabilities to encounter Him. We need physical experiences to more closely connect to God.

Catholics have seven ceremonies we call Sacraments, where we experience God in special ways. In the RCIA curriculum, we typically devote an entire lesson to each of these Sacraments, but to get you started, here’s a brief overview of how the seven Sacraments are sensual experiences.

We categorize these rituals into three categories.

The first of the three Sacraments of Initiation is Baptism. We become adopted children of God. Water cleanses us of sin. Although in infant baptism, we typically just sprinkle the water, it is more meaningful for adults to be baptized in full immersion. When the priest dunks you under the water, if he doesn’t pull you back up again, you are dead. It is a symbolic dying to your old self and rising as your new self. We symbolize this new life with pure white garments. A candle represents the light of Christ.

The second sacrament of initiation is Eucharist: Also known as “Holy Communion”. The word Eucharist comes from a Greek word meaning Thanksgiving. We receive the Body and Blood of Christ. Catholic doctrine says that the bread and wine have the “real presence” of the body and blood of Christ. It looks like bread and wine. It tastes like bread and wine. It smells like bread and wine. But it is the body and blood of Jesus. When we receive communion, Christ joins us, dwells inside us, and nourishes us. We taste, feel, and smell. These are sensual experiences.

The third sacrament of initiation is Confirmation: We receive the Holy Spirit. We are anointed with sacred oil. The bishop or priest lays his hands upon her forehead in an ancient gesture of commissioning that was used to anoint kings. The result is that we receive and/or awaken spiritual gifts.

The first of two sacraments of healing is Reconciliation. You probably know this sacrament by its most common name, “Confession.” When I was very young, it was called “confession.” Then it was renamed “penance,” because the focus is not just on confessing your sins but reforming your life and recognizing your sinfulness by performing penance. However, it was once again renamed “reconciliation,” because that puts the focus where it properly belongs. We reconcile or heal our broken relationship with God. It is an expression of our sorrow and experience of God’s forgiveness.

You’re probably familiar with the confessional box, as depicted on TV or in movies. You are separated from the priest by a screen. However, the modern way of experiencing this Sacrament is face-to-face with the priest. You feel the human presence of the Priest. When the priest prays the words of absolution for giving your sins, he will place his hand gently upon your forehead, and you feel that human touch and you hear those words that God is forgiving you. It is a powerful and sensual experience.

The second sacrament of healing is also one that has gone through a metamorphosis of titles. You probably know it as “Last Rites.” When I was first learning the sacraments as a child, it was called “Extreme Unction.” An unction is an anointing. The adjective “extreme” indicated it was only used in extreme circumstances, such as upon your deathbed. Often, people were reluctant to call the priest to pray over a sick person. If grandma sees the priest coming, she will think she is dying. So, they only called the priest in extreme circumstances. The sacrament is now called “Anointing of the Sick” or the “Sacrament of the Sick.” It is no longer reserved for deathbed circumstances. Anyone who is facing a serious illness or a chronic condition can be anointed. Often, people seek the sacrament before a major surgery.

At Saint Gabriel, once a year, we would have a group ceremony of the Sacrament of the Sick. My mother would organize transportation for people from nursing homes to come to the Anointing Mass, in which we would anoint anyone who wanted it after Mass concluded. I’ve been anointed many times when I was facing a health crisis, even if it wasn’t life-critical.

Finally, we have two sacraments of vocation or commitment. First, we have Matrimony. The man and woman are joined in a covenant relationship of love. A covenant is an unbreakable and unconditional commitment. The joining of a man and woman is a covenant love relationship that is symbolic of the covenant love that Christ has for his people, the church.

Finally, we have Holy Orders: A Priest or Bishop is commissioned by the Church. The priest is given the delegated authority to forgive sins. They are authorized to celebrate Mass, given the power to consecrate the bread and wine into the body and blood of Christ. The ceremony involves an anointing and the laying on of hands.

In addition to these seven formal sacraments, Catholic tradition also includes other minor ceremonies and practices known as sacramentals. They are small signs to help us stay holy and faithful. These include sacred medals, statues, a crucifix, holy water, incense, and blessed palms from Palm Sunday.

The most important part of Catholic sacred tradition is the celebration of the Mass. In my next episode, I will give a brief overview of what goes on at Mass. We will not dig too deep into the theology of it. Typically, we would devote two entire lessons to the theology behind the Mass. When I taught this lesson on sacred tradition, part of the lesson would take place in the church and involve a tour of the sanctuary and explanation of the altar, the priestly vestments, and other items used during our celebration of the Mass. Although I can’t take you on a tour of the church physically, I will try to cover much of the same material I used in that tour.

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I will see you next time as we continue contemplating life. Until then, fly safe.

In this episode, I present material based on the second lesson I taught in my local Catholic parish inquiry program for 30 years. I’m not here to convert anyone. I’m just sharing my stories. In this episode, we explore the Catholic Church’s approach to authoritative teaching based not only on Scripture alone, as the Protestants do, but on a combination of sacred Scripture and sacred tradition.

Hello, this is Chris Young. Welcome to Episode 94 of Contemplating Life.

In this episode, I continue a multi-part series based on my 30 years teaching the Catholic faith in my local parish’s inquiry program.

As always, whenever I talk about religion, I’m not out to convert anyone. I’m just telling my stories.

I said I wasn’t going to offer an opening prayer for every lesson. However, as I reviewed my notes for this lesson, I see that I had prepared a pretty good opening prayer, so I will share it with you today. It is the prayer of St. Francis of Assisi. Francis was an Italian mystic, poet, and Catholic friar who lived from 1181 to 1228. He founded the religious order of the Franciscans. Inspired to lead a Christian life of poverty, he became a beggar and an itinerant preacher.

He received a calling from God to “rebuild the church.” At first, he believed this was a calling to rebuild a rundown church physically, but eventually realized he was being called to reform the entire Catholic Church.

He spent time among nature, communing with animals, and is known as a patron saint of animals and animal lovers. Fun fact: When out in the woods with the animals, he often wandered around naked. They don’t teach that part in your typical “Children’s Book of the Saints.” Anyway, our pastor would offer a special blessing to pets at St. Gabriel on the Feast of St. Francis. More details about Francis can be found in the description links for this episode. The prayer of St. Francis is quite popular in Catholic tradition, and there have been versions of it set to music as a hymn. Let us pray…

In this episode, we start on the second lesson I taught for the RCIA program. The title is “Revelation and Sacred Tradition.”

Traditions are an important part of our culture. We have traditional ways of celebrating special occasions. On Memorial Day or Labor Day, we celebrate with family gatherings and cookouts. On Independence Day, we have fireworks and patriotic songs. Thanksgiving is a time for families to come together for a traditional meal and a day of watching football. We celebrate birthdays with cake, ice cream, and a traditional song.

Sporting events have developed traditions that are important to fans. The Indy 500 begins with a playing of Taps to commemorate Memorial Day. Someone sings “Back Home Again in Indiana.” An honored guest announces, “Ladies and gentlemen, start your engines.” The Kentucky Derby wouldn’t be the same without big, flowered hats, mint julep drinks, and the singing of “My Old Kentucky Home,” Take Me Out to the Ballgame,” and the seventh inning stretch are meaningful traditions in baseball.

Human beings are creatures of habit. Rituals and traditions are part of our very nature, even if those practices are not tied to religious belief. So it is no surprise that ritual and tradition are an integral part of our relationship with God.

Virtually all religions are steeped in traditions of one form or another.

Judaism, which is the precursor to Christianity, is steeped in every tradition. Anyone who has seen the musical “Fiddler on the Roof” might recall that there is a song about tradition. During an interlude in the song, Tevye describes various Jewish traditions and then says, “You may ask, how did this tradition get started? I’ll tell you. I don’t know. But it’s a tradition. And because of our traditions, every one of us knows who he is and what God expects him to do.”

I love that line, “And because of our traditions, every one of us knows who he is and what God expects him to do.”

His entire life is lived according to these traditions. His life has meaning because of his traditions. When conditions change, and he is forced to give up some of those traditions, it is a big challenge to his life.

Christianity is similarly steeped in tradition. Celebrations of Easter, Christmas, and other Christian practices are important expressions of our faith. I think many Christians could perhaps echo Tevye’s words and say that tradition helps define our relationship with God.

However, one of the main differences between Catholic and Protestant churches is the degree of importance of tradition.

Recall that our overall theme of these lessons is that our God is a God who speaks to us. Things have been revealed to us that we could not otherwise know had God not revealed them. One major difference between Catholic and Protestant doctrine is the method by which revelation is preserved and handed on to future generations authoritatively. Protestants believe in a doctrine called sola scriptura, which means “Scripture alone.” For them, the Bible is the only authoritative source of revealed information. In contrast, Catholics believe that both sacred Scripture and sacred tradition are authoritative ways to preserve and pass on revelation.

The Catholic Church has not always lived up to this philosophy of a balance between Scripture and tradition. For centuries, the emphasis was most decidedly on tradition over Scripture. Part of the reason for this was that the population was mostly illiterate. The church used the art and architecture of its worship spaces as multimedia presentations. Biblical stories were depicted in stained glass and paintings, such as on the ceiling of the Sistine Chapel. Statues depict the lives of the saints who are our role models.

Then Gutenberg invented the printing press, and among the first things he produced were Bibles. The population gradually became more literate, but it took the Catholic Church a long time to catch up to the fact. They kept emphasizing tradition. “We’ll tell you what the Bible says and we’ll tell you what it means.”

It wasn’t until the early 1960s that the Second Vatican Council tried to put things back in balance. It decreed many reforms which reemphasized Scripture and insisted that Scripture be proclaimed in all of our liturgy, including celebrating the seven sacraments. While Scripture readings have always been an essential part of our Sunday Catholic mass, including Scripture in the sacraments was not widely practiced before Vatican II.

To explain and reaffirm the importance of sacred Scripture, Vatican II issued a document titled “Dogmatic Constitution on Divine Revelation.” This document can be found in the opening pages of many Catholic Bibles and is available on the Vatican website, which I have linked. I’m going to read through portions of this document to explain the church’s position on the relative roles of Scripture and tradition.

I really enjoyed teaching this document in my classes because it affected people in opposite ways. Some of the people in the class were lifelong Catholics without much background in Scripture. So it was saying to them, not only do we need to preserve and protect and make use of our sacred traditions, we also need sacred Scripture. In contrast, the Protestants who were considering joining the church saw this document in the reverse light. They had been raised dedicated to Scripture, but the importance of tradition was a new concept to them.

So, let’s see what the church has to say about Scripture and tradition in the Vatican II Dogmatic Constitution on Divine Revelation.

In paragraph 2, it explains that God chooses to reveal himself. It says, “This plan of revelation is realized by deeds and words having an inner unity:”

Remember that phrase, ”deeds and words.” You will hear it repeated many times.

“The deeds wrought by God in the history of salvation manifest and confirm the teaching and realities signified by the words, while the words proclaim the deeds and clarify the mystery contained in them. By this revelation, then, the deepest truth about God and the salvation of man shines out for our sake in Christ, who is both the mediator and the fullness of all revelation.”

As an aside, you may have heard of the author Marshall McLuhan, who famously said, “The medium is the message.” He was primarily talking about television, but the phrase is also applied to the internet. However, I think it perfectly describes Jesus. The message is that God loves us and forgives our sins. That message is delivered by Jesus. But he is the embodiment of that message. He is both the medium and the message. Or, as the Vatican document says, “Christ is both the mediator and the fullness of all revelation.”

Skip reading through paragraph three, it says, “God, who through the Word creates all things and keeps them in existence, gives men an enduring witness to Himself in created realities.” Recall that in an earlier episode, we talked about how some people discovered God by contemplating the wonders of nature. You can find God in those “created realities.”

Continuing, “… from the start manifested Himself to our first parents.” That is, Adam and Eve. Later it says, “He called Abraham in order to make of him a great nation Through the patriarchs, and after them through Moses and the prophets, He taught this people to acknowledge Himself the one living and true God, provident father and just judge, and to wait for the Savior promised by Him.” Of course, that Savior is Jesus.

Continuing with paragraph four: “Then, after speaking in many and varied ways through the prophets, ‘now at last in these days God has spoken to us in His Son’ (Heb 1:1-2). For He sent His Son, the eternal Word, who enlightens all men, so that He might dwell among men and tell them of the innermost being of God. Jesus Christ, therefore, the Word made flesh, was sent as ‘a man to men.’ …Jesus perfected revelation by fulfilling it through His whole work of making Himself present and manifesting Himself: through His words and deeds,“ That phrase again… words and deeds. “His signs and wonders, but especially through His death and glorious resurrection from the dead and final sending of the Spirit of truth. The Christian dispensation, therefore, as the new and definitive covenant, will never pass away, and we now await no further new public revelation before the glorious manifestation of our Lord Jesus Christ. “

What it means is that there will be no new revelation until Jesus returns in the final judgment at the end of time. However, we are constantly re-examining what has been revealed and coming to a deeper understanding of it. We have to reapply and interpret that revelation in the light of present-day circumstances.

Continuing: “Through divine revelation, God chose to show forth and communicate Himself and the eternal decisions of His will regarding the salvation of men. That is to say, He chose to share with them those divine treasures which totally transcend the understanding of the human mind.”

So, I think what it’s saying is even if we don’t understand God completely because he is so far beyond us that we can’t, he has revealed to us the part we can understand. We might struggle with that understanding. It takes centuries to really understand what God is saying.

Summarizing paragraph seven, it says, “What has been revealed will last forever in full integrity. This will happen because Jesus commissioned the apostles and commanded them to preach the good news. The apostles fulfilled that commission in two ways. One by their oral preaching, example, and observances, which they received from what Jesus said, from living with Him, from observing what he did, and what they deduced through the prompting of the Holy Spirit. The commission…” that is, the commission to hand on what was revealed, “…was also fulfilled by apostles and apostolic men who, under the inspiration of the Holy Spirit, put what they learned into writing.

So, we have two ways of passing on revelation—one through example and observances, and the other through the written word. Just imagine what it would have been like to travel with Jesus for approximately three years. There is no way you can write down all of those lived experiences. Yet, you could pass along that lived experience by the way in which you conducted yourself. You could create traditions that would pass along that lived experience.

Maybe that answers Tevye’s question, “Where did these traditions come from?” It comes from the lived experiences of the people of God.

It then explains that the apostles handed on that mission to their successors, who are the modern-day bishops of the church. Stories of the appointment of other people beyond the apostles can be found in Luke 10 and Acts 6

Paragraph eight says in part, “And so the apostolic preaching, which is expressed in a special way in the inspired books, was to be preserved by an unending succession of preachers until the end of time.”

Let’s talk about that phrase “ending succession.” The Catholic Church and some other denominations believe in a doctrine known as “Apostolic succession”. Jesus appointed the 12 apostles. They, in turn, appointed their successors. Who, in turn, appointed others, who appointed others, and so on. The church teaches that every bishop today was ordained by a bishop who was ordained by a bishop who was ordained by a bishop and so on in an unbroken succession all the way back to the original 12 apostles. Similarly, every priest has been ordained by a bishop who is part of that allegedly unbroken line of succession, all the way back to the original 12 apostles.

Peter was the leader of the 12 apostles and the first Bishop of Rome. He is considered to be the first pope of the Catholic Church. Our modern-day popes trace their heritage back to Peter.

While we don’t have 2000+ years of paperwork to prove it, the church still insists that apostolic succession has been maintained. No one can just pop up and declare themselves a priest or a bishop.

Continuing: “The Apostles, handing on what they themselves had received, warn the faithful to hold fast to the traditions which they have learned either by word of mouth or by letter and to fight in defense of the faith handed on once and for all. Now what was handed on by the Apostles includes everything which contributes toward the holiness of life and increase in faith of the people of God; and so the Church, in her teaching, life, and worship, perpetuates and hands on to all generations all that she herself is, all that she believes.

“This tradition, which comes from the Apostles, develops in the Church with the help of the Holy Spirit, for there is a growth in the understanding of the realities and the words which have been handed down. This happens through the contemplation and study made by believers, who treasure these things in their hearts through a penetrating understanding of the spiritual realities which they experience, and through the preaching of those who have received through episcopal succession the sure gift of truth. For as the centuries succeed one another, the Church constantly moves forward toward the fullness of divine truth until the words of God reach their complete fulfillment in her.

Now, in paragraph nine, we get down to the meat of the business. It says, “Hence there exists a close connection and communication between sacred tradition and Sacred Scripture. For both of them, flowing from the same divine wellspring, in a certain way merge into a unity and tend toward the same end. For Sacred Scripture is the word of God inasmuch as it is consigned to writing under the inspiration of the divine Spirit, while sacred tradition takes the word of God entrusted by Christ the Lord and the Holy Spirit to the Apostles, and hands it on to their successors in its full purity, so that led by the light of the Spirit of truth, they may in proclaiming it preserve this word of God faithfully, explain it, and make it more widely known.”

Here is the most important sentence in the document. “Consequently, it is not from Sacred Scripture alone that the Church draws her certainty about everything which has been revealed. Therefore, both sacred tradition and Sacred Scripture are to be accepted and venerated with the same sense of loyalty and reverence..

“Sacred tradition and Sacred Scripture form one sacred deposit of the word of God, committed to the Church.”

I like to think of it as one deposit with two methods of withdrawal.

Think about that again. “It is not from Sacred Scripture alone that the Church draws her certainty about everything which has been revealed.” It is not sola scriptura as the Protestants believe. It is not data over dogma, as is promoted by my favorite scripture scholar, Dan McClellan. It is data and dogma in equal portions.

Continuing: “Holding fast to this deposit the entire holy people united with their shepherds remain always steadfast in the teaching of the Apostles, in the common life, in the breaking of the bread and in prayers, so that holding to, practicing and professing the heritage of the faith, it becomes on the part of the bishops and faithful a single common effort.”

That means it’s not just the clergy who are responsible for passing along sacred tradition. In our families and our everyday lives, when we participate in the traditions of the church by going to mass, celebrating the sacrament, praying traditional prayers, we join with the bishops in preserving these traditions and handing them on to our children and to future generations.

The document goes on to explain that the teaching authority of the church explains to us what Scripture means. It says, “This teaching office is not above the word of God, but serves it, teaching only what has been handed on, listening to it devoutly, guarding it scrupulously and explaining it faithfully in accord with a divine commission and with the help of the Holy Spirit, it draws from this one deposit of faith everything which it presents for belief as divinely revealed.

“It is clear, therefore, that sacred tradition, Sacred Scripture and the teaching authority of the Church, in accord with God’s most wise design, are so linked and joined together that one cannot stand without the others, and that all together and each in its own way under the action of the one Holy Spirit contribute effectively to the salvation of souls.”

So, it’s not data over dogma. It’s not dogma over data. It’s not the authority of the church over all of that. It’s a three-pronged approach. You have the data – Scripture itself. You have the dogma – that’s the traditions. Then you have the church and its teaching authority, which helps us understand both.

I strongly encourage you to read the entire document. It goes on to explain more about what we believe about the importance of the Old Testament and the New Testament. The wording is a little bit difficult at times. You might find yourself rereading a sentence a couple of times to let it sink in. You should see the unedited version of this podcast. I got tongue-tied several times. There are references to Scripture quotes throughout that you might want to look up along the way.

Moving along…

As I’ve explained, this issue of sola scriptura is one of the main doctrinal differences between Catholic and Protestant denominations.

There are some significant problems with sola scriptura. The following discussion comes from the work of theologian Scott Hahn. You can find him on YouTube. I first heard of him from a lecture on cassette tape decades ago.

He was teaching at Presbyterian University and described himself as significantly anti-Catholic, not in a hateful way, per se. He just thought that Catholicism was wrong.

One day, a smart aleck student in the back of the class raised his hand and asked, “Uhh… Prof. Hahn… We believe in sola scriptura, right?”

“Yes, what is your point?”

“That means, if it’s not in the Bible, we don’t have to believe in it, right?”

“Yes.”

“So, where in the Bible does it say that Scripture is the only authority? Because if it’s not in the Bible, we don’t have to believe it.”

“Well… 2 Timothy 3:16 says, “All Scripture is inspired by God and useful for teaching, refuting errors, etc.”

“Okay, but all that says is that it is inspired and useful. It doesn’t really say Scripture alone.”

“Consider Mark 7 in which Jesus condemns the Pharisees for their human traditions which are contrary to God’s law.”

“Well… So what? What about those sacred traditions that are not contrary to Scripture? You still haven’t proven Scripture alone.”

The professor replied, “It’s in their. I’ll get back to you.”

That evening, Prof. Hahn, called his former professors explaining about the smart ass kid who challenged sola scriptura. They went through the same scripture quotes, such as 2 Timothy, Mark 7, and others, which still fail to prove Scripture alone.

Long story short…Scott Hahn converted to Catholicism. He has made it an essential part of his ministry to explain why sola scriptura doesn’t hold water. Here are his bullet points explaining the problems with sola scriptura:

In fairness to the Protestants, at the time of the Protestant Reformation in the 1500s, there was widespread corruption in the church and its clergy. So anything that supported a corrupt central authority was going to be purged in the Reformation. If you don’t have a Pope, the Vatican, the College of Cardinals, and a Council of bishops, you have to turn to something to ground your faith. The obvious choice is to depend upon unchanging Scripture.

In this backlash against the corrupt clergy, people were taught that they could interpret the Bible themselves. You don’t need a church to tell you what it means. Of course, that didn’t stop Protestant clergy from telling people what it meant. So, if you wonder why we have thousands of Protestant denominations, this is a big part of the reason.

This idea that you can open up the Bible and figure out on your own is sometimes perverted into the practice of “Bible roulette.” That’s where you open up the Bible, point to a random page, and figure out what it means for yourself.

My colleague Jim Welter, who is my inspiration for much of this lesson, used to tell a joke about the perils of Bible roulette. Unfortunately, I can’t find notes on his original joke, but I will try to re-create it.

A guy opens the Bible to a random page. He lands on Mark 15:34, which says, “My God, my God, why have you forsaken me?” Well, that’s not very encouraging.

So, he tries again. This time it’s Matthew 27:5, which says, “he departed and went off and hanged himself.” That’s depressing, let’s try one last time.

He gets Luke 10:37, which says, “Go and do likewise.” And we wonder why religious people are messed up. You have to take everything in context with a knowledgeable background. You shouldn’t play Bible roulette.

The Protestant Reformation was a reaction to the corruption of the Catholic Church. But how did we get there?

I’m not extremely well-versed in church history. St. Gabriel was blessed to have Dr. Jim Divita, a history professor at Marian University, a local Catholic institution. He would come in and teach one or two lessons about church history. We may cover that topic in a future episode in about 10% of the detail that he did. I’m no expert.

Anyway, Dr. Divita theorized that the black plague worsened the corruption of the Catholic Church. Consider this: if you were sick with the plague, you would call the priest to anoint you or pray over you. The good priests answered that call, became infected, and died off. Lazy priests would stay home and survive. The vacuum left behind by the dedicated clergy who died was likely to be filled with people who sought to become clergy for less than spiritual reasons. Remember that in those days, the church wielded not only spiritual but political power as well as a great deal of wealth. So that attracted people who were not in it for the most noble purposes. Dr. Divta believed that this contributed to the corruption of the church. And I agree with him.

We will talk more about the corruption of the Middle Ages and the Protestant Reformation in a later episode.

We are going to wrap this up for today. In the next episode, we will continue our discussion of sacred tradition in more detail.

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I will see you next time as we continue contemplating life. Until then, fly safe.

In this episode, I wrap up part three of my series based on the first lesson I taught in my local Catholic parish inquiry program for 30 years. I’m not here to convert anyone. I’m just sharing my stories. In this episode, we explore how Scripture scholars use historical critical methods, textual analysis, and knowledge of ancient languages and cultures to help us understand the original intent of the Sacred Authors.

Hello, this is Chris Young. Welcome to Episode 92 of Contemplating Life.

In this episode, I continue a multi-part series based on my 30 years teaching the Catholic faith in my local parish’s inquiry program.

Whenever I talk about religion, I’m not out to convert anyone to my beliefs. As with all topics, my purpose is to educate, entertain, enlighten, and possibly inspire. But that doesn’t include trying to evangelize you into Christian or Catholic traditions. I’m just telling my stories.

This week, I will talk more about how scripture scholars use historical critical analysis to help us understand the deeper truths to be found in Scripture. This episode is part 3 of the first class I ever taught for the RCIA program.

That lesson was titled “Revelation and the Bible.”

As previously mentioned, the Bible was written over the period of perhaps 1000 years by at least 50 different authors in three different languages. In our last episode, we discussed the scholarly debate over the translation of the opening word of the Old Testament. While the average person can typically find something meaningful and useful in Scripture translated into their native language, such as English, if we want to get serious about what the Bible really means; we have to rely on people who have a deeper understanding of ancient languages, ancient culture, textual analysis, and ancient history.

We also need to understand the distinction between what the Bible actually says and how our particular denomination or faith tradition interprets Scripture. One of my favorite Scripture scholars, Dan McClellan, says we need to consider data over dogma. Although I quote him often and use him as a valuable and respected resource, personally, I don’t place data over dogma. I simply believe it’s important to understand the distinction between the two.

In the same way that I trust scholarly investigation to help me understand the original intent of the Sacred Authors in the context in which the works were written, I also trust the centuries of church leadership who have reflected on how to apply Scripture to everyday life and to clarify the deeper meaning behind the written words.

In short, the scholars tell us what Scripture really says. The theologians and church leadership help us understand what it means.

While I don’t have the skills to teach an entire course on scriptural analysis, I want to give you some insights into the types of things that scholars use to help us understand scripture better. The general name for their work is the “historical critical” method of Scripture analysis.

This method is not just used by atheists or Catholic theologians. Such analysis is also used by many of the mainstream Protestant denominations, which are not those that would be described as Evangelical. We are talking about certain branches of Methodist, Lutheran, Episcopal, and Anglican as well as Reformed Jewish traditions. These denominations do not take a strictly literal, “what it says is what it means exactly” approach.

In contrast, Evangelical churches such as Southern Baptist, Church of God, Church of Christ, and others interpret Scripture in an extremely literal manner. These denominations take the “descending view” of Scripture that we talked about earlier, in which what is written is totally inspired, inerrant, and univocal.

So, here are some things that Scripture scholars consider to understand the original meaning intended by the Sacred Authors.

1) HISTORICAL CRITICISM: What were the historical circumstances when the book was written? For example, many people interpret the Book of Revelation as predicting what will happen in the end times. However, we need to understand that it was written in a time when Christians were being persecuted. It was written to comfort first-century Christians and reassure them that although they were suffering for their faith now, the good guys would win in the end.

Other historical issues to consider… Is it verifiable in secular history? Do we have evidence of the facts of the story from nonbiblical sources?

For example, we have no outside sources to indicate that the plagues described in Exodus actually occurred in Egypt in Mosaic times. Many scholars even question whether Moses was a real person or was simply a legendary character, similar to someone like King Arthur. There probably was a historic Moses, but the stories have been elaborated and may be an amalgam of various early Jewish leaders.

On the other hand, we do have nonbiblical sources that talk about Jesus of Nazareth, around whom the Christian religion was founded, and which confirm that he was crucified by the Romans. A Roman historian, Josephus, describes Jesus and reports that his followers claimed he rose from the dead. It stops short of saying he actually did rise.

2) SOURCE CRITICISM: What sources did the author use? For example, the gospel of Matthew and Luke have copied entire sections of Mark. Furthermore, there are sections of Matthew and Luke that are common to one another that are not found in Mark. Scholars believe that it came from a third source, which they called the “Q” source. We’ve already seen that Genesis 1 and 2 apparently came from independent sources. Sometimes, this analysis notes that the style changed. While the books of 1 and 2 Timothy, as well as Titus, claimed to have been written by Paul, analysis shows that the style is significantly different from other Pauline epistles and in places contradicts the principles found in genuine works by Paul.

3) TEXTUAL ANALYSIS: Scholars look at what the earliest manuscripts said. The older the manuscript, the more likely it is that it has not been altered. One of the problems is that even our earliest manuscripts were produced a couple of hundred years after the originals were written. We have no idea what kind of changes may have been made during that time.

In some instances, we have direct evidence that changes have been made. We have a manuscript where a verse was written in the margin. Manuscripts prior to that version did not contain the verse in question; however, manuscripts produced after that alteration do contain the extra verse. See the video linked in the description where Dan McClellan describes several places where we believe verses were added at a later date. Modern translations usually delete these verses that make reference to them in a footnote. It reports that some manuscripts include this verse.

When given conflicting manuscripts, one of the rules of thumb that scholars use is that the more difficult it is to understand a particular passage, the more likely it is that this is the original. The thought being that somewhere along the way, someone found these difficult passages and tried to fix them by rewriting them to make them clearer. It’s unlikely someone would deliberately rewrite something to make it more confusing. So, scholars favor the confusing version as being the original and the easy version as being something that was edited.

4) LITERARY FORM: We earlier discussed that Scripture uses many literary forms and genres, including myth, law, poetry, history, epic stories, parables, and philosophical statements such as proverbs. You can’t interpret poetry as you would history. You don’t read law like parables. In modern times, we have difficulty distinguishing between editorials and news sometimes. So you have to understand the genre of writing you are reading.

5) INTENT and CONTEXT: We already discussed that Revelation was not intended to predict the end of the world but rather to comfort troubled Christians. We have to determine intent based on context. Here is an example of a simple English sentence with seven words in it. Without context, we can put emphasis on any of these seven words and come up with seven different meanings.

Consider the sentence “I never said he stole the money.” Here are seven variations

“-I- never said he stole the money.” You said that. I didn’t.

“I NEVER said he stole the money.” Not once! Not ever did I say that.

“I never SAID he stole the money.” I may have implied it, but I never outright said so.

“I never said HE stole the money.” Maybe she did, or someone else? Not him.

“I never said he STOLE the money.” He just borrowed it, but didn’t return it for a long time.

“I never said he stole THE money.” Not the money you were talking about. Different money. Not the money.

“I never said he stole the MONEY.” Just the jewelry and the artwork, but not the money.

If we don’t understand the context of that sentence, we cannot determine the author’s intent.

6) CULTURE and TIMES: This is a big one. Consider what the role of women was in biblical times. When Paul says that wives should be obedient and subservient to their husbands, consider that he also said husbands should love their wives as Christ loved the Church. And how did Christ love the church? He died for it. The first-century model of a marriage in which both parties were committed to one another meant that wives obeyed and were subservient to their husbands, and husbands sacrificed for their wives. It’s not at all the model we use today, but it is the one used in ancient times. Today, we consider marriage as a partnership of equals. That was a foreign concept to people in biblical times. But the core idea of total commitment is the same. That remains the same in both cultures. They expressed that total commitment to one another in vastly different ways.

7) PERSPECTIVE: Different people can view the same event from different perspectives. For example, as I’m writing this, the Indiana Pacers just lost Game 3 of the second round of the NBA playoffs, 126-104, at Gainbridge Fieldhouse last night.

Consider how different people view the event.

Coach Carlisle: “We didn’t play to our potential. And the referees were against us.”

Pacers owners, the Simon brothers: “It was great! We sold out every ticket.”

Mayor Hogsett: “Indianapolis is a major league city, not just known for auto racing. The city looked good on national TV.”

A teenager who didn’t see any of his friends at the game: “Nobody was there.” As if the 17,000 fans in attendance didn’t count.

Cleveland fans: “God is on our side.”

Pacers fans: “God abandoned us.”

You have to understand the perspective. What are the biases? How do people view the same events differently? Remember that Scripture sees things through a theological perspective, not a scientific or historical perspective.

8) ADAPTATION: How does the author adapt the Gospel message into stories? Take, for example, the story of the paralytic at Capernaum. This story is found in Matthew 9:2-8, Mark 2:1-12, and Luke 5:17-26. This is one of my favorite stories of the New Testament. Jesus was preaching in a building surrounded by a huge crowd. There was a paralyzed man whose friends wanted to bring him to see Jesus, but it was so crowded they could not carry him in through the door. So, his friends carried him on a mat up to the roof, opened a hole in the roof, and lowered him down so that he could see Jesus. I often say this illustrates one of the earliest examples of a disabled person who could not get into church because of a lack of proper accessibility.

Anyway, in Luke’s version of the story, he says that they removed the tiles from the roof to make a hole. Neither Matthew nor Mark included that detail. They just said the friends opened a hole in the roof and lowered him down. They did not mention the tiles. There’s a good reason for that. Luke was unaware of the fact that the buildings in Capernaum did not have tile roofs. Luke had heard the story, and he lived in an area where there were tile roofs. He presumed that if you’re going to lower someone down through a hole in the roof, you would have to remove some tiles.

There are many such geographic errors throughout Scripture because the author was not intimately familiar with the exact details of the geography. Yet they adapted the same stories to their own needs and told the stories in their own manner.

Speaking of tiles and accessibility, one day I was entering our parish facility to teach this very lesson. Our meeting room is on the lower floor of the building, which I entered through the Northeast corner of the building. As I went down the hall, a workman was replacing the tile floor that had been damaged. He had just spread a layer of contact cement over the concrete floor and was waiting for it to get sticky so that he could lay the new tile. The area completely stretched across the entire hallway, and there was no way around it.

He laid down a pair of wooden planks over the sticky area, and I carefully rolled my wheelchair over this impromptu bridge. When I got to this part of the story, I began laughing uncontrollably until I could compose myself and explain to the class that they nearly had to open a hole in the roof to get me there that night.

In subsequent years, I thought that story over and over again, but I didn’t realize until now the irony that it was missing tiles that prohibited me from getting in the building, whereas in Luke’s story, they had to remove tiles to get the disabled guy into the building.

Let’s take another example of adapting the same story in three different ways. In Mark 8:34, it reports that Jesus said, “Take up your cross and follow me.” In Matthew 16:24, it says, “Take up your cross and follow me.” However, in Luke 9:23, it says, “Take up your cross and follow me EACH DAY.”

In the time and place in which Mark and Matthew were written, the church was very much under persecution, and people were literally at serious risk of crucifixion or other forms of death for their beliefs. However, when Luke wrote, things were a bit easier on Christians. Furthermore, it was becoming more apparent that Jesus might not return as quickly as early believers thought he would. Luke’s message is that the day-to-day challenges of living life as a Christian are a different way to take up your cross and follow Jesus, and to do so each day, not one time, literally on a cross.

For many years, I would follow up on this story of how Luke adapted the words of Jesus to his own audience by commenting that we were fortunate to live in times that were more like Luke and less like Mark and Matthew. These days, we don’t face crucifixion. So, we take up our cross each day.

I used that observation until 1999. That is because on April 20, 1999, two armed students walked into Columbine High School in Colorado and killed 13 students and one teacher. Media reports at the time said that two different female students were asked by the gunmen if they believed in God. When they answered yes, they were killed.

From 1999 onward, I pointed out that post-Columbine, maybe we do live in times more like Mark and Matthew, where we might die for our beliefs.

In my research for this podcast, I discovered that the accounts of the martyrdom of these two young women may not have been accurate. Still, I think we can all agree that we live in dangerous times, and while we should follow Luke’s advice to take up the cross of Christianity in our daily struggles, we never know when we might have to sacrifice for our beliefs.

The point is, as circumstances evolved over my 30 years of teaching, I had to adapt my material to my particular audience. The Sacred Authors adapted their material based on their cultural conditions and intended audience when they wrote Scripture.

To summarize, to accurately understand the original intent of the Sacred Authors, one has to be well-versed in ancient languages, ancient culture, cognitive linguistics, and a variety of other disciplines. Internet research on such topics has pitfalls unless you are confident of the sources the Internet presents to you. There are a lot of people who are trying to renegotiate what the text means to suit their own social identities and political agendas.

I’ve recommended scholars such as Dan McClellan and Bart Ehrman because they have well-established academic credentials and claim to represent the views of a consensus of Scripture scholars. They back up their views with recommendations of other well-credentialed scholars, if you want to read further on these topics.

Even if you do find reliable sources, the consensus among well-trained Scripture scholars is a constantly evolving endeavor.

Attempting to use biblical concordances or Greek and Hebrew dictionaries can lead to erroneous assumptions. See the McClellan video I’ve linked on the problem with dictionaries.

The bottom line is, unless you intend to do sufficient research to become an academic scholar on these topics, take my advice and, as they say, “Don’t try this at home.” That may sound hypocritical coming from someone with no formal theological training. However, I know my limitations. Everything I present on these topics has come from trustworthy sources. I’m not attempting to do my own historical critical scriptural analysis. I’m just reporting what I have found to be the consensus.

Before we wrap up this lesson, let’s define some terminology we use and give you a brief overview of what’s in the Bible.

Bible: from Greek “Biblia” (books) – a collection of inspired writings arranged into 72 books which relate the faith experience of God’s saving activity among his people.

Testament: (covenant) – agreement between God and His people. “Old Testament” – offered by God to Abraham and Moses. “New Testament” – offered through Christ to all who believe in Him.

Scripture: (writing) – that part of the Church’s experience of God that has been written – much of it hasn’t been; and including some writings not included in the Bible as we have it today, (e.g., the Gospel of Thomas and the letter of Barnabas).

Gospel: (good news) – the account of Jesus’ life, death, and resurrection, and his teaching understood as the good news of God’s love for us and our forgiveness in Christ.

Epistle: (circular) – a letter from an apostle offering spiritual guidance and encouragement.

Revelation: (making known) – that which God shares with us about Himself. Also, the name of the last book of the Bible.

Literary Form: a form of literature (history, poetry, myth, parables, law, proverbs, hymns, epic) used to reveal God’s truth. Some forms employ imagery and symbolic language as a means of proclaiming a deeper level of truth. Accuracy of detail is readily sacrificed for the purpose of a more easily related presentation of the deeper truths.

Canon: (collection) – the set of books of scripture held to be the inspired word of God. The church determines what is or is not canonical.

Now, let’s take a very brief overview of what’s in the Bible.

The Hebrew Scriptures, referred to by Christians as the Old Testament, are a collection of 46 books written somewhere between 900 BCE and 100 BCE. There are seven books and parts of two others that are accepted by Catholic and Orthodox churches, which are not present in the official canon of Jewish tradition, and many Protestant churches. We will discuss those more in the next episode.

The first five books are known as the Pentateuch or the Jewish tradition called the Torah. They consist of Genesis, Exodus, Leviticus, Numbers, and Deuteronomy. It is the most important part for Jewish people.

This is followed by historical books Joshua, Judges, and Ruth, which relate the story of Israel in the first days it entered Palestine. Note that while we describe a book as “historical,” it does not necessarily mean that it is strictly a history book. It is the story of the Chosen People that is told through a theological perspective.

This is followed by 1 Samuel, 2 Samuel, 1 Kings, 2 Kings, 1 Chronicles, and 2 Chronicles. These are also historical books about Israel’s rise to power during the reign of the kings and the Babylonian exile, which is attributed to their infidelity to God.

Ezra and Nehemiah are historical books about the return of the Jews to Jerusalem at the end of their captivity.

The books of Tobit, Judith, and Esther are parables or morality stories that probably do not have a genuine historical basis.

1 Maccabees and 2 Maccabees are historical books from the era just before the time of Jesus. They are the latest written of any of the books of the Old Testament.

There are wisdom books that describe how a good Hebrew should live their life. These include Job, Psalms, Proverbs, Ecclesiastes, The Song of Songs, Wisdom, and Sirach (also known as Ecclesiasticus).

We then have books about the prophets divided into major and minor prophets. This refers only to the book’s size and not its contents’ importance. Major prophets are Isaiah, Jeremiah, Lamentations, Baruch, Ezekiel, and Daniel. The minor prophets are Hosea, Joel, Amos, Obadiah, Jonah, Micah, Nahum, Habakkuk, Zephaniah, Haggai, Zechariah, and Malachi.

The New Testament consists of 27 books written between about 48 CE and 100 CE. Protestant and Catholic Bibles do not disagree on which books belong in the New Testament.

We begin with the Gospels of Matthew, Mark, Luke, and John, which recount Jesus’s life and teachings. This is followed by the Acts of the Apostles, which is the history of the early church and is believed to have been written by Luke as an extension to his gospel.

Then we have a collection of epistles or letters beginning with the letters of Paul to various churches. We have Romans, 1 and 2 Corinthians, Galatians, Ephesians, Philippians, Colossians, and 1 and 2 Thessalonians. This is followed by personal letters written to individuals supposedly by Paul. It includes 1 & 2 Timothy, Titus, and Philemon. Note that only Philemon is undisputed in its authorship. The other three so-called pastoral letters were probably written by someone impersonating Paul because the style is significantly different, sometimes contradicts earlier teaching of Paul, and shows evidence that it was written after his death.

The letter to the Hebrews was once believed to have been written by Paul, but that is generally rejected because it reads nothing like Paul. It explains Christian theology in the context of Jewish tradition.

We have what are known as the “Catholic letters,” although that has nothing to do with the Catholic Church. The word Catholic simply means “universal.” These books appear in both Catholic and Protestant Bibles. In this context, it simply means they were written to the entire church and not specific individuals or church communities. They bear the names of their authors. We have James, 1 and 2 Peter, 1, 2, and 3 John, and Jude. The Johannine letters are believed to have been written by the author of the Gospel of John, who also wrote the book of Revelation. Note that this John is not John the Baptist nor John the Apostle. He is often referred to as John the Evangelist to distinguish him from other Johns.

Finally, we have the Book of Revelation, sometimes called the Book of the Apocalypse. It is a highly symbolic work of apocalyptic literature designed to give comfort to first-century Christians in their struggles against Roman occupation. It was not designed to predict the end of the world.

This wraps up our three-part series covering the first lesson I taught for RCIA. In our next episode, we will dive into my second lesson, which discusses the role of tradition in the Catholic Church. Protestants believe in a doctrine called sola scriptura, which means Scripture alone. This means that the Bible is the sole authority and only method for passing on what God has revealed. In contrast, Catholics believe that both sacred Scripture and sacred tradition have authority and are means by which we preserve what has been revealed. We will explore all of these topics in the next few episodes.

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I will see you next time as we continue contemplating life. Until then, fly safe.

In this episode, I continue a multipart series in which I adapt some of the lesson plans I used as I taught the Catholic faith for 30 years. I’m not here to convert anyone. I’m just sharing my stories. In this episode, we explore how Scripture looks at historical events through God’s eyes and not from a human perspective. We will also debate how and when to use God’s Divine Name.

Hello, this is Chris Young. Welcome to Episode 91 of Contemplating Life.

In this episode, I continue a multi-part series based on my 30 years teaching the Catholic faith in my local parish’s inquiry program.

Whenever I talk about religion, I always include this disclaimer that I’m not out to convert anyone to my beliefs. As with all topics, my purpose is to educate, entertain, enlighten, and possibly inspire. But that doesn’t include trying to evangelize you into Christian or Catholic traditions. I’m just telling my stories.

At the end of the previous episode, I said, “In the next episode, I will talk more about how scripture scholars use historical critical analysis to help us understand the deeper truths to be found in Scripture.” Well… as usual, I’m going to go off on a couple of tangents in this episode, so we will barely scratch the surface of what I thought we would be talking about this week. Still, this is good stuff, so let’s dive into what will already be a pretty long episode that will not get nearly as far into the material as I anticipated.

This episode is part 2 of the first class I ever taught for the RCIA program.

That lesson was titled “Revelation and the Bible.”

Not everything in the Bible is considered “Revelation,” that is, something that can only be known if God reveals it. Some things we know to be historically accurate from outside sources. For example, we can be pretty sure that Jesus was a real historical figure who the Romans crucified because we have nonbiblical sources that record these events. So, the existence of the historical Jesus is not revelation.

On the other hand, there are things that we would only know because God revealed them. For example, God revealed his name to Moses in Exodus 3:13-14, which says,

“But,” said Moses to God, “if I go to the Israelites and say to them, ‘The God of your ancestors has sent me to you,’ and they ask me, ‘What is his name?’ what do I tell them?” God replied to Moses: ”I am who I am.” Then he added: “This is what you will tell the Israelites: I AM has sent me to you.”

So, God reveals to Moses that his name is “I am”. The actual word used is a form of the Hebrew verb HAYAH, which means “to be”. This Hebrew word, transliterated into English, could be pronounced Yahweh. So, in effect, the name of God is Yahweh, just like my name is Chris, or you might be Joe, Pete, Sally, or Sue. Words such as “God”, “Lord”, or “Almighty” are what He is or how He is, but His name is Yahweh. More on that in a moment.

The point is that we wouldn’t know that name if God hadn’t told us. Later in Exodus 6:2-3, God makes a bigger deal out of this revelation when He reminds Moses that when He appeared to Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob, He just referred to Himself as God Almighty, which in Hebrew is El Shaddai.

When I used to teach this lesson, I also gave the example of the Trinity as something we wouldn’t know if God hadn’t revealed it to us. Yet, as I have become more familiar with critical scriptural scholarship through the works of Dan McClellan, it is debatable that the Bible really discusses the Trinity as we know it. Sure, it mentions the Father, Son, and Holy Spirit, but it doesn’t explicitly lay out the doctrine of three persons in one God as we understand it today. There are other concepts in Scripture, such as God’s plans for our salvation, that we would not know had he not revealed them to us.

We are going to go off on a tangent here for a minute because we need to discuss further the use of the Divine Name as God revealed it to Moses.

Old Testament manuscripts depict this name with four characters, YHWH, which Scripture scholars call the tetragrammaton (a fancy way of saying the four-letter name). Hebrew has vowels, but they aren’t always put in written text. Vowels are implied or deduced from the context. So, if you put the right vowels in YHWH, it would be pronounced Yahweh.

One of the 10 Commandments in Exodus 20:7 says, “You shall not invoke the name of the LORD, your God, in vain.” The Jewish people were so afraid that they would use his name in vain, they were afraid to say it at all. When reading Scripture, the practice was to use the Hebrew word Adonai, which means “Lord”. Greek translations of the Old Testament use the word Kyrios, which also translates as Lord. When Scripture was translated into Latin, these four characters were usually replaced with the Latin word Dominus, which also translates as Lord.

The New American Standard translation of the Bible, which we use for all the Scripture readings at Mass and is considered the official Catholic translation, uses the phrase “the LORD” to render the tetragrammaton, but it uses small uppercase letters for ORD. So, whenever you see this version of the word LORD with an uppercase “L” and a small caps “ORD,” you know the original Hebrew used the Divine Name. The word Lord in any other type style it simply means Lord. It doesn’t mean that Divine Name.

Various forms of this word evolved over the ages. The letter “Y” can sometimes be pronounced like a “J”, and if you throw some vowels, change the W to a V, you get the word Jehovah, which is also used as an alternative to say the name of God without really saying it.

One exception to the rule that you can’t pronounce the Divine Name is in the word hallelujah or alleluia because these words are created from the phrase Hallelu-Yah (Praise Yah). Apparently, the shortened form Yah, when combined with the word “praise,” has been and remains acceptable.

In modern times, the use of the word Yahweh grew in great popularity thanks to a translation of Scripture known as the Jerusalem Bible (JB). Published first in French and later in English in 1966, it used the word Yahweh wherever the tetragrammaton appeared. It was updated as the New Jerusalem Bible (NJB) in 1985.

The Jerusalem Bible was published as an official Roman Catholic translation with full imprimatur. Imprimatur is a kind of stamp of approval by the Catholic Church. It is a Latin word meaning “let it be printed.” English-speaking countries outside North America used the JB in Mass and other liturgies, while North America uses the NASB..

The JB and the NASB were created as a response to Pope Pius XII’s call in 1943 for new translations of Scripture to be prepared. These translations were to be based not on the Latin version, which had been used for centuries, but on the original Greek and Hebrew texts.

The JB was extremely popular in my parish. It also had extensive footnotes, which made it a huge volume. See the YouTube version of this episode for a photo. My mother joked that she was going to get her orthopedic doctor to write her prescription for a small print version of the Jerusalem Bible so that she wouldn’t hurt her back. She finally did get a smaller edition with very thin pages and very small text.

On June 29, 2008, the Vatican wrote to the presidents of all conferences of bishops at the behest of Pope Benedict XVI, stating that the use of the name Yahweh was to be dropped from Catholic Bibles in liturgical use as well as from songs and prayers, since pronunciation of this name violates long-standing Jewish and Christian tradition.

Dan Schutte, of the St. Louis Jesuits, who has composed many popular Catholic hymns, explained that he and other composers were attracted to the use of the word Yahweh in the JB and thought that it added something significant to the lyrics of their songs, most of which were adapted from the Psalms. He is the composer of a popular Catholic hymn, “You Are Here,” which begins with “Yahweh, I know you are here, standing always at my side”. His publisher, Oregon Catholic Press, has rereleased versions of his and other songs that use the word Yahweh. They have suggested alternative lyrics so that these songs can continue to be used in our liturgy. Typically, the revisions use “Oh, Lord,” because it keeps it to two syllables to fit the music well.

Schutte notes that the Jerusalem Bible does have an imprimatur from the Catholic Church. He suggests we should feel free to use the Jerusalem Bible for any other prayers privately that use the word Yahweh if we feel that will make it a richer experience for us. I personally agree. Sometimes I like to use the word. It makes it more personal if you are addressing God by name.

One problem translators have with using the word LORD to render the tetragrammaton is that there are, by my count, over 300 places in the JB that have the phrase “Lord Yahweh.” In Hebrew, this would be “Adonai Yahweh.” That would translate into English as Lord Lord. The translators have been told that the word Adonai should be translated as Lord (without the small caps) and that Yahweh should be translated as God. So instead of saying “the Lord Yahweh,” or “Lord Lord,” it would say “the Lord God”.

I don’t know how to discuss the above without occasionally pronouncing the Divine Name directly. It is my policy in this podcast not to use the Divine Name unless I have to out of respect for Church policy and feelings of our Jewish brethren. Because my Scripture quotes are from the NASB, which uses LORD, this shouldn’t be a problem.

Okay, let’s get back on topic.

We need to understand that the Bible is primarily theology, not history. It interprets history and world events, especially about Israel and the chosen people, from God’s point of view. Let’s take the example of the epic Old Testament story of Joseph, son of Jacob, which appears in Genesis chapters 37-50.

Joseph was the youngest of 12 brothers, and as is often the case, the baby of the family gets a lot of attention. His father spoiled him so much that he gave him a coat of many colors. The story is the basis of the Andrew Lloyd Webber musical “Joseph and the Amazing Technicolor Dreamcoat.”

Joseph had prophetic dreams that predicted that someday his brothers would be bowing down to him. This made them quite jealous. One day, while they were all out tending the flocks, they grew so angry with him that they threw him down a cistern, and then calmly went off to share a meal. A group of traveling traders from Egypt came by, and the brothers decided to get Joseph out of the well and sell him into slavery to the Egyptians

Joseph was a handsome fellow and attracted the attention of the Pharaoh’s daughter, who tried to seduce him. When he refused her advances, she accused him of assaulting her and had him thrown in prison.

Joseph continued to have prophetic dreams and could interpret other people’s dreams. When he correctly interpreted the dream of one of his jailers, the word got around to Pharaoh, who called him in to interpret the Pharaoh’s dreams. Joseph said that he could not only interpret a dream for Pharaoh, but he could tell him what the dream was without having been told in advance.

Without going into the details here, Joseph explained the dream meant there would be seven years of prosperity with good harvests. This would be followed by a drought of seven years in which there would be little or no harvest. The Pharaoh was so impressed that Joseph knew the dream without having been told what it was, he put Joseph in charge of the program to save up resources during the seven prosperous years so that they could withstand the seven lean years. Joseph went from being a slave in jail to becoming a very powerful person in the court of the Pharaoh.

As predicted, the drought came. Joseph’s father, Jacob, sent the brothers to the Pharaoh to see if he would give them provisions to survive the tough times. When they arrived in Egypt, they were sent to Joseph, who was in charge of the Pharaoh’s reserves. In Genesis 45:3-11, we see what happens when they realize their salvation lies in the rejected brother Joseph.

“I am Joseph,” he said to his brothers. “Is my father still in good health?” But his brothers could give him no answer, so dumbfounded were they at him. “Come closer to me,” he told his brothers. When they had done so, he said: “I am your brother Joseph, whom you once sold into Egypt. But now do not be distressed, and do not reproach yourselves for having sold me here. It was really for the sake of saving lives that God sent me here ahead of you. For two years now, the famine has been in the land, and for five more years tillage will yield no harvest. God, therefore, sent me on ahead of you to ensure for you a remnant on earth and to save your lives in an extraordinary deliverance. So it was not really you but God who had me come here; and he has made of me a father to Pharaoh, lord of all his household, and ruler over the whole land of Egypt. Hurry back, then, to my father and tell him: ‘Thus says your son Joseph: God has made me lord of all Egypt; come to me without delay. You will settle in the region of Goshen, where you will be near me–you and your children and grandchildren, your flocks and herds, and everything that you own. Since five years of famine still lie ahead, I will provide for you there, so that you and your family and all that are yours may not suffer want.’”

If this were an episode of ABC 20/20 or Dateline NBC, it would be told as the lurid tale of jealous brothers who turned against Dad’s favorite son. But it’s not a true crime drama or the story of a family feud. From Joseph’s perspective, and that of the Bible, this is the story of divine providence. It was God’s will that all of these horrible things happened to Joseph so that he would later be in a position to save his family.

It tells the story from a theological perspective, not from a simple human drama. Let’s take a couple of other examples.

According to the Bible, Kings rule because God lets them. In Wisdom 6:1-9, we read

Hear, therefore, kings, and understand; learn, you magistrates of the earth’s expanse! Hearken, you who are in power over the multitude and lord it over throngs of peoples. Because authority was given you by the LORD and sovereignty by the Most High, who shall probe your works and scrutinize your counsels. Because, though you were ministers of his kingdom, you judged not rightly, and did not keep the law, nor walk according to the will of God, Terribly and swiftly shall he come against you, because judgment is stern for the exalted. For the lowly may be pardoned out of mercy, but the mighty shall be mightily put to the test. For the Lord of all shows no partiality, nor does he fear greatness, Because he himself made the great as well as the small, and he provides for all alike; but for those in power a rigorous scrutiny impends. To you, therefore, O princes, are my words addressed that you may learn wisdom and that you may not sin.

Around 20 years ago, when I taught this lesson, I would say, from a historical point of view, George W. Bush became president either because Florida voters did know how to operate a punchcard voting system or perhaps because the Supreme Court handed it to him. But if this were a Bible story, it would say that God chose him to be president and will scrutinize his actions to an extremely high standard. While our current president and his minions believe that he was appointed by God, it’s not so much that God wanted him to be president, but that God allows him to be president and will hold him to a very high standard. In the words of Peter Parker’s Uncle Ben, “With great power comes great responsibility.”

One final example, when Jesus is on trial before Pontius Pilate, we read in John 19:10-11

So Pilate said to him, “Do you not speak to me? Do you not know that I have power to release you and I have power to crucify you?” Jesus answered (him), “You would have no power over me if it had not been given to you from above.”

We can imagine that when Pilate heard this, he was thinking in worldly terms. He thought that Jesus was talking about Caesar in Rome, who was the source of Pontius Pilate’s power, but Jesus was talking about God, who allowed Pilate to rule. That’s the difference between a secular view of history and a theological view. The Bible looks at things from God’s perspective and not from a secular human perspective.

When we read the Bible, we need to be aware that it is literature that uses the various forms (history, poetry, myth, parables, law, proverbs, hymns, and epic stories) to reveal God’s truths. You don’t read poetry the same way you read a legal text. You don’t read an epic story of a hero in the same way you read a history book or a political analysis. Nothing in the Bible is intended to be a science textbook.

In episode 89, I discussed the use of myth in the Bible. Recall that we said that a myth teaches truths that facts cannot reveal. I read to you portions of two different creation stories: one of them in Genesis chapter 1 and the other in Genesis chapter 2. We pointed out the inconsistencies between these two versions of creation.

Different communities wrote these different stories at different times. You might think that because we’ve ordered them as Genesis 1 and 2, that is how they were written, but Scripture scholars believe that Genesis 2 is older.

It begins with the earth already formed, and then God creates humans out of the dust of the earth, followed by plants and animals. Some argue that this simply fills in the details missing from Genesis 1. However, Scripture scholars believe that after Genesis 2 was written, they went back and wrote Genesis 1 to emphasize that God had not just created humans, plants, and animals but created the entire heavens and earth. So, it is Genesis 1 that is filling in earlier details that were skipped over by Genesis 2.

By the way, when Scripture speaks of “heaven and earth,” it is because they didn’t have a word for the universe. So when we read “heaven and earth,” you need to think of it as “the universe” or “everything.”

We discussed these two different creation stories in Episode 89, and I mentioned that Genesis 1 came from a source that scholars call “J” and that Genesis 2 came from a source they call “P”. I gave you homework asking you to think about what we could learn about these two different communities of believers who are the source of the oral traditions behind these written narratives.

Let’s look in more detail.

Genesis 1 is all about water. They believed that the universe initially consisted of an infinite ocean of water until the second day, when God created the dome of the sky to separate the waters above the dome from the waters below it. Then, God separated the land from the sea on the third day. Note, it doesn’t say he created the land. It was already there, presumably beneath the waters, or who knows? It doesn’t really say. It just says that he separated the land from the sea. Genesis 1 also talks a lot about sea creatures. It discusses the sun, moon, and stars. One can easily conclude that these were people who lived near the sea. Their livelihood comes from the sea. How does one navigate the sea? By tracking the sun, moon, and stars. So, they wrote a creation story about the things that were important to them.

In contrast, Genesis 2 was probably a community of farmers. It’s all about the land. It explains that no plants existed because God had not yet created a man to till the soil. Adam lives in a garden that is full of food to sustain him. God creates animals for man, but concludes they are not suitable companions and, almost as an afterthought, decides to create woman. What does that tell you about the community that wrote this story?

Each of these communities discovered God in the nature around them, but one saw it connected to the water, and the others saw it connected to the land.

After publishing Episode 89 in which I read these sections of Genesis, I’ve begun to read Dan McClellan’s new book, “The Bible Says So: What Scripture Gets Right and Wrong About Today’s Most Controversial Topics.” Dan points out that if we strictly focus only on what Scripture really says, God didn’t create everything out of nothing. In Genesis 1, the water and the land already existed, and he just divided them with the help of the dome.

Other passages that seem to imply that God created everything out of nothing actually talk about God creating things out of some sort of primordial raw materials. Greek philosophers believed that this disorganized nonbeing matter, which had no function, was coeternal with God. It wasn’t until the second century CE that Christians began to argue that God created everything out of absolutely nothing.

This was an uphill battle because 1800 years ago, the Greeks had already deduced that matter could be neither created nor destroyed. That is a very modern scientific concept. It wasn’t until Einstein illustrated that matter and energy can be transformed into one another that we understood that matter could be created and destroyed. But the total amount of matter/energy in the universe remains constant. Energy eventually dissipates to the point where it is no longer useful, but there is still a fixed amount of matter/energy.

Going back to that dome issue again, if you look around social media, you will see that many of the people who believe that the Earth is flat also believe that this dome exists. See the YouTube version of this episode for a drawing illustrating how ancient people viewed the world. They believed that when God opened up the floodgates of the dome, it would rain. These modern-day flat-earth fanatics think that all of space travel has been faked because obviously, if you went up in a rocket, you would crash into the dome. It’s truly sad that ancient Greeks understood the nature of the universe better than these religious fanatics who still believe such ridiculous things as a solid dome in the sky, because they insist that a 3000-year-old model of the universe has to be accurate, simply because it is recorded in Scripture. It’s just sad.

Moving on, McClellan explains that the typical translation of the opening phrase of the Bible, “In the beginning…” is a bad translation. We tend to think of the phrase “In the beginning” as referring to “the beginning of time.” In my own teaching, I used to describe that word as meaning “forever ago.” That’s all wrong.

The Hebrew word used here is bereshit. However, if the author intended to mean “in the beginning,” the first word wouldn’t have been bereshit; it would have been barishonah. Some have suggested that the word be translated as “in a beginning,” But that isn’t completely right either.

McClellan explains this word doesn’t mean “In a beginning something happened.” Rather, it means, “In the beginning of something happening…”

The printed NASB version that I’ve had for many years says, “In the beginning God created…” The NASB 1995 edition at the Bible Gateway website also uses that same traditional translation. However, the latest update on the website of the US Council of Catholic Bishops, which I presume is from the 2020 NASB update, says, “In the beginning, when God created…” McClellan likes the New Revised Standard Version Updated Edition (NRSVue), which says: “When God began to create the heavens and the earth…”

If Scripture scholars are still debating how to translate the opening word of the Bible, what hope do we have in really understanding it? Well, we just have to trust the latest information that we can obtain from the most trustworthy scholarship.

In our next episode, I will finally get around to talking about some of the techniques that Scripture scholars use to come to a deeper understanding of the original intent of the author in the context of the culture in which they wrote and their intended audience.

So, as always… if you find this podcast educational, entertaining, enlightening, or even inspiring, consider sponsoring me on Patreon for just $5 per month. You will get early access to the podcast and other exclusive content. Although I have some financial struggles, I’m not really in this for money. Still, every little bit helps.

As always, my deepest thanks to my financial supporters. Your support means more to me than words can express.

Even if you cannot provide financial support, please, please, please post the links and share this podcast on social media so that I can grow my audience. I just want more people to be able to hear my stories.

All of my back episodes are available, and I encourage you to check them out if you’re new to this podcast. If you have any comments, questions, or other feedback, please feel free to comment on any of the platforms where you found this podcast.

I will see you next time as we continue contemplating life. Until then, fly safe.

In this episode, I continue a multipart series in which I adapt some of the lesson plans I used as I taught the Catholic faith for 30 years. I’m not here to convert anyone. I’m just sharing my stories. In this episode, we try to understand how Scripture was created from oral traditions. We engage in an exercise where we write some Scripture of our own.

Hello, this is Chris Young. Welcome to Episode 90 of Contemplating Life.

In this episode, I continue a multi-part series based on my 30 years teaching the Catholic faith in my local parish’s inquiry program.

Whenever I talk about religion, I always include this disclaimer that I’m not out to convert anyone to my beliefs. As with all topics, my purpose is to educate, entertain, enlighten, and possibly inspire. But that doesn’t include trying to evangelize you into Christian or Catholic traditions. I’m just telling my stories.

This episode is based on the first class I ever taught for the RCIA program, so it was someone I taught at least 30 times. I spent weeks developing a lesson, practicing it, reworking it, and sweating over the details. I felt like I had to amass at least twice as much information as I put into the lesson in case someone asked a question. I didn’t want to be ill-prepared. After about 8 years or so, in which I adapted and adjusted the material, I had a lecture that worked every time. I had revised it into a really well-thought-out outline that I could deliver without any further preparation. Just print out copies of the handouts and my notes, and I was off and running.

As my repertoire of topics grew, I went through the same process. Sweat blood over the initial development, revise over the course of 4-8 years, and then deliver the same well-tested material thereafter.

First, a bit of housekeeping that I should have included in the last episode. All of the Scripture quotes I’m using are from a translation known as the New American Standard Bible or NASB. Although not strictly a Catholic edition, it is the translation approved for use in US Catholic churches for all of our liturgy. I provided links to all of the passages from the NASB provided on the website of the US Council of Catholic Bishops. There is also a Wikipedia article talking about the origins and updates to the NASB.

Moving along… Typically, we would begin the evening with an opening prayer, and while I don’t intend to do so in all of the lessons I present here, I have an opening prayer I usually use on the first evening that I would like to share with you. It set the tone for what I was trying to achieve with my teaching and what our entire program was trying to achieve with our participants who were considering this spiritual journey with us. I also used this prayer in a program I presented called “Catholics Returning Home,” which was designed to help people who had left the church for whatever reason to consider returning and becoming active again.

It is called “The Prayer of Thomas Merton.”

Thomas Merton lived from 1915 to 1968. He was a Catholic Trappist monk from the Abbey of Gethsemane in Kentucky. He studied at Cambridge and Columbia. He is known as a poet, social activist, and student of comparative religion. He wrote more than 70 books on spirituality, social justice, and pacifism.

Let us pray, [The Prayer of Thomas Merton]

My Lord God, I have no idea where I am going. I do not see the road ahead of me. I cannot know for certain where it will end. Nor do I really know myself, and the fact that I think that I am following your will does not mean that I am actually doing so.

But I believe that the desire to please you does, in fact, please you. And I hope that I have that desire in all that I am doing. I hope that I will never do anything apart from that desire.

And I know that if I do this, you will lead me by the right road, though I may know nothing about it. Therefore, will I trust you always, though I may seem to be lost and in the shadow of death. I will not fear, for you are ever with me, and you will never leave me to face my perils alone.

Amen.

The title of this lesson is “Revelation and the Bible.”

This is the first of four lessons in a row that I taught about Scripture. The overarching theme of these lessons is that our God is a God who speaks. We know what we know about God because it has been revealed to us throughout the ages. We talked earlier about the various ways that people come to know God, such as through nature, their upbringing, personal spiritual experiences, and so on.

What do I mean by revelation?

I would ask the class, “Tell me everything you know about my friend from Arizona.” Well, you know that they are from Arizona. You don’t know if they are male or female. You don’t know how I met them. You can speculate it’s an old college buddy. Maybe it’s a former girlfriend. Perhaps it’s someone with a disability like mine. Unless I reveal it to you, you can speculate, but you wouldn’t know.

What we know about God, we know because He has revealed things to us in a variety of ways. God speaks to us.

In Scripture, we are told that God spoke directly with Adam and Eve in Genesis 3:9. In Exodus 3:4, we read that God spoke directly to Moses. In 1 Kings 19:11-18, we read how God spoke to the prophet Elijah. We will discuss the role of a prophet in more detail in a future lesson. And finally, in the letter to the Hebrews 1:1-3, it says, “In times past, God spoke in partial and various ways to our ancestors through the prophets; in these last days, he spoke to us through a son, whom he made heir of all things and through whom he created the universe.”

God has revealed mysteries. Eph 1:8-10 says, “In all wisdom and insight, he has made known to us the mystery of his will in accord with his favor that he set forth in him as a plan for the fullness of times, to sum up all things in Christ, in heaven and on earth.”

So, Scripture outlines for us various ways that God has spoken to us. But in order to understand Scripture properly, we need to understand who wrote it and how it was written.

As we explained in the last lesson, while God is the ultimate authority behind Scripture, it is mostly the product of human authorship written over the course of about 1000 years in a variety of places around the Middle East. It was written in Hebrew, Aramaic, and Greek. The sacred authors came from a variety of backgrounds and cultures, and they had a variety of audiences in mind when they wrote what they wrote.

Except for perhaps the letters of the New Testament, called epistles, all of Scripture began with oral traditions. People would sit around campfires and tell stories. Some of it was in the form of, “My God is better than your God.” They would recount the history of their culture and how God had guided them throughout that history. They would tell stories of battles won because God was on their side. They would talk of times when they were unfaithful and turned away from God and were forced to suffer the consequences of their misdeeds.

Eventually, as these stories grew in importance to the people, someone would write them down. Keep in mind that in ancient times, most people could not read or write. You had to hire scribes to write for you. I like to think of computer programmers and IT specialists as modern-day scribes who understand the mysterious ways to keep records in formats that only they can read.

I would then invite the class to engage in an exercise where they would attempt to write Scripture of their own. This was an exercise I experienced in my first RCIA program as a participant. It was led by Father Conrad Cambron, but I think he got the idea out of a book.

I would explain to the class, “We are going to write our own Gospels. Use the blank side of the handout I gave you this evening and write down about 8-10 or so things you know about Jesus. Assume I just landed from Mars and asked you, ‘What can you tell me about this guy Jesus?’ Take about 10 minutes to do that. Just random sentences.”

As I explained before, the participants were sitting at cafeteria tables with about 5-6 people per table. I would then say, “Have everyone at your table read off the list of things that they wrote. Then appoint one person from your table to be your official scribe. With the help of the entire group, the scribe should create some sort of narrative based on the things that each of you wrote. Try to include at least one thing from each person at your table. Put them in whatever order makes sense to you. Some people will duplicate items, of course. After all, we are all talking about the same guy. Put it in whatever order makes sense to you. Take about 10 minutes to do that. You should come up with something that’s maybe 12-15 sentences long.”

When they were finished, I would ask the scribe from each table to stand up and read the gospel that was produced by their table. I would say, “Who is the scribe from this table? Stand up and tell us your name.” A woman would stand and say, “I’m Susie Smith.”

I would reply, “Ladies and gentlemen, we will now have a reading from the Gospel According to Susie.”

Invariably, the scribe would always say, “It’s not my gospel. I just wrote it for my table.”

To which I would reply, “That’s the point. Your name is on it. But it is a product of your community. You may have contributed something of yourself, but it’s not just you. It’s the work of the collected traditions of your people. It’s a world of their experiences of who Jesus is.”

Here is an example of two typical Gospels I might have heard. I made these up, but this is the type of thing I would get.

“Jesus was the son of God. He was born in Bethlehem to the Virgin Mary. He was visited by shepherds and wise men. When he was 12, he was lost in the temple, but his parents found him conversing with the elders, who were impressed by him. He began his public ministry at age 30 by calling 12 people who were apostles to follow him. For three years, he preached a message of forgiveness and repentance and talked about the kingdom of God. He was betrayed by one of the apostles, Judas, who handed him over to be tried and sentenced by the Roman governor Pontius Pilate. He was tortured and crucified and died. Three days later, he rose from the dead and appeared to the apostles several times before he ascended to heaven, where he sits at the right hand of the Father. He will return in the end times.”

The class would applaud. Another table might write something like this…

“Ladies and gentlemen, the Gospel according to Steve. Jesus is my Lord and Savior who sacrificed himself for the sins of the world. He is the son of God, and he is God as well, along with the Father and the Holy Spirit. He became human and taught us that God is love and we should love one another. He healed the sick. He raised the dead man named Lazarus. He gathered with his apostles the night he was arrested and celebrated the Last Supper with them when he offered bread and wine, he said, ‘This is my body. This is my blood. Do this in remembrance of me.’ He was crucified, died, and rose from the dead three days later. He sent us the Holy Spirit to guide us and remind us of all that he taught. He has prepared a place for us in heaven.”

Then I would ask questions. Susie, did your Jesus heal sick people, raise a dead man, and have a Last Supper with his apostles? She would respond, “Yes, but we just didn’t have time to put in all those details.” Then I would ask Steve, “Was your Jesus born in Bethlehem and visited by shepherds and wise men? Was he betrayed by Judas? Is he coming back in the end times?” To which Steve would reply similarly, “Yes, but like Susie, we couldn’t tell everything in all that detail. We had to pick and choose what our people said.”

I would ask them each, “Is there anything in the other Gospels you heard here that you disagree with?” They would always say no.

I explained… Note that there is an overlap in the essential items. Jesus is God. He taught. He died for us. He rose 3 days later. But the differences don’t make any of it less true. Along the way, we could have had details that didn’t line up 100%. You might have put things in a different order. You put emphasis on different things. One of our Gospels focused on what Jesus did. But the other one focused on what it meant. Jesus is a personal savior.

While this isn’t exactly how the Gospels were written, it’s pretty close. The stories written in the four Gospels of Matthew, Mark, Luke, and John are the result of the experience of early Christians. In an upcoming lesson, we will take a more detailed look at each of these gospels and how they compare to one another. We will learn something about the communities that generated the scriptures and the intended audience for which they were written.

I want to talk about two views of Scripture. This discussion is based upon a lecture seriesl by my colleague from St. Monica Parish, Jim Welter.

On the one hand, we have what we will call “The Descending View.” God handed down His word. Human authors wrote exactly what God wanted written. In essence, “Divine dictation.”

On the other hand, we have “The Ascending View.” The community of believers experienced God in their lives and created oral traditions about His works in the world and their relationship with God. These oral traditions were then assembled into the written word by human authors. In effect the community offers up the Scriptures they wrote saying to God in prayer: This is what you revealed to me that I will hand down for generations. Although it is the work of human authors, it is still the revealed word of God protected from error by the Holy Spirit.

The Bible is word of God. God is the author but there is also human authorship too. However, the Bible is not the result of Divine dictation. In 1 Thes 2:13 we read, “And for this reason we too give thanks to God unceasingly, that, in receiving the word of God from hearing us, you received not a human word but, as it truly is, the word of God, which is now at work in you who believe.”

Scripture is divinely inspired, written at God’s will, at his inspiration. We read in 2 Peter 1:19-21, “Moreover, we possess the prophetic message that is altogether reliable. You will do well to be attentive to it, as to a lamp shining in a dark place, until day dawns and the morning star rises in your hearts. Know this first of all, that there is no prophecy of scripture that is a matter of personal interpretation, for no prophecy ever came through human will; but rather human beings moved by the holy Spirit spoke under the influence of God.”

We can rely on scripture. According to 2 Tim 3:14-17, “But you, remain faithful to what you have learned and believed, because you know from whom you learned it, and that from infancy you have known (the) sacred scriptures, which are capable of giving you wisdom for salvation through faith in Christ Jesus. All scripture is inspired by God and is useful for teaching, for refutation, for correction, and for training in righteousness, so that one who belongs to God may be competent, equipped for every good work.”

It’s time to depart a bit from the “official positions” and acknowledge the fact that we are using Scripture to say that we should use Scripture. It’s reliable because it tells us it’s reliable. This is obviously highly circular reasoning. In this instance, I’m not trying to “prove Scripture is true.” I’m merely explaining how Christian apologists defend their dogmatic beliefs about Scripture.

I also have to refer back to Scripture scholar Dan McClellan, whom I introduced you to last time. He points out that when these passages talk about “Scripture,” they’re not talking about the entire Bible as we know it today. Much of the New Testament had not yet been written when the Epistles were written. And even if they were written and widely distributed and known, they had not yet reached the level of importance of “Scripture” that we assign to them today. So, when he says “all Scripture is inspired by God,” he is probably just talking about the Hebrew Bible or the Old Testament, as we call it. Even then, scholars debate when the official list of writings that make up the Old Testament today was officially approved

Back to the official dogma…

Given all the caveats we have made about Scripture, is the Bible true? It may sound like we are engaging in doublespeak or parsing words in a manipulative manner, but we need to talk about the difference between “truth” and “facts.”

Factually, there are hundreds, maybe thousands, of mistakes in the Bible. It is not scientifically accurate. It is not historically accurate. But it contains deeper truth about who God is, what his plan is for us, and how we can develop a relationship with him.

The word “inspiration” means “breathing into” or “life-giving,” In the same way that God blew into the nostrils of Adam and brought him to life. It comes from the same root as respiration, which means to breathe in and out.

Inspiration is the activity by which the Holy Spirit influences a person to act, think, speak, or write, according to God’s will and plan. Inspiration does not preclude the free will, experience, or disposition of the one inspired. It is not equivalent to divine dictation. When Catholics say the Bible is “inspired,” it means what the Bible says about God is reliably true. However, other historical facts or details may have been adapted or created to fit the purpose of the story.

We also need to discuss the ancient concept of authorship and how it is vastly different from what we think of today. To say that someone is the author of the work means that it was written under their authority. For example, it appears that parts of the Gospel of John were written by one of his disciples rather than by John himself, but was written under the authority of John.

Also, because Scripture is based upon oral tradition, the source of that tradition comes from the community and not from any single individual, as we saw in our Scripture writing exercise earlier.

The goal is to try to understand the original intent of the author in the context of their culture and their intended audience. To do that, we need to rely on Scripture scholars who can analyze various samples of ancient texts. The scholars have a deep understanding of ancient languages and can interpret the meaning for us so that we can appreciate the true message and not get hung up on factual errors or inconsistencies.

In the next episode, I will talk more about how scripture scholars use historical critical analysis to help us understand the deeper truth to be found in Scripture. This is still a continuation of my first lesson on Scripture.

So, as always… if you find this podcast educational, entertaining, enlightening, or even inspiring, consider sponsoring me on Patreon for just $5 per month. You will get early access to the podcast and other exclusive content. Although I have some financial struggles, I’m not really in this for money. Still, every little bit helps.

As always, my deepest thanks to my financial supporters. Your support means more to me than words can express.

Even if you cannot provide financial support, please, please, please post the links and share this podcast on social media so that I can grow my audience. I just want more people to be able to hear my stories.

All of my back episodes are available, and I encourage you to check them out if you’re new to this podcast. If you have any comments, questions, or other feedback, please feel free to comment on any of the platforms where you found this podcast.

I will see you next time as we continue contemplating life. Until then, fly safe.

In this episode, I begin a lengthy multipart series in which I adapt some of the lesson plans I used as I taught the Catholic faith for 30 years. I’m not here to convert anyone. I’m just sharing my stories.

Hello, this is Chris Young. Welcome to Episode 88 of Contemplating Life.

In this episode, I kick off a multipart series in which I return to the topic of religion.

Whenever I talk about religion, I always include this disclaimer that I’m not out to convert anyone to my beliefs. As with all topics, my purpose is to educate, entertain, enlighten, and possibly inspire. But that doesn’t include trying to evangelize you into Christian or Catholic traditions. I’m just telling my stories.

For 30 years, I taught classes to people considering converting to Catholicism. The classes were part of a program called RCIA, which stands for Rite of Christian Initiation of Adults. Note that “rite” is spelled RITE, not RIGHT or WRITE, because the program includes a series of rites or rituals that are part of the initiation process. Recently, the program has been renamed OCIA for the Order of Christian Initiation of Adults. I continue to call it RCIA because that’s what we called it when I was teaching.

The classes met one night per week, usually Thursdays, beginning in late August or early September and running a few weeks past Easter. The program’s first half is just basic instruction in Christianity and the Catholic faith. We clarify that there should be no pressure for you to join. In fact, sometimes, our pastors would say to the group, “Don’t tell me you are ready to join the Catholic Church. You don’t know what the Catholic Church really is.”

Sometime in January, the priest would interview each participant privately and see if they were still interested in converting to Catholicism. They could continue the classes even if they didn’t want to convert. The second half of the curriculum focused more directly on preparing you to receive the Sacraments of Initiation: Baptism, First Communion, and Confirmation. These sacraments would be administered at a special ceremony the night before Easter.

Two categories of non-Catholics attend the program. First, we have catechumens who have not been baptized in any other Christian religion. We also have candidates who are people who have been baptized but want to convert from some other form of Christianity to become Catholic. The program was essentially the same for both of them. The only distinction was which rituals they would participate in for their initiation.

In addition to the non-Catholics who attended the program possibly to convert, nearly half of the class participants were already Catholic. Often, these were Catholic spouses, fiancées, or fiancés who were there to support their partners in their faith journey. Some attendees had converted the previous year but wanted to come back again for a deeper understanding of what they had learned the prior year. Others were simply Catholics who wanted to update their faith.

I first attended the program in 1984-85 as someone who had left the church in their late teens and was returning to investigate whether or not the Church was right for me.

A year or two later, I began teaching some of the classes as part of our RCIA Team. I will explain later about my failing recollection as to when I actually started teaching.

In this series of episodes, I will dust off some of my old lesson plans and turn them into podcast episodes. When I taught these lessons, I felt obligated to adhere to official Catholic teaching to the extent I could. However, in this series, I might diverge a bit and talk about my own personal beliefs that may not be 100% the Catholic doctrine. I will talk about things I’ve learned about theology, especially interpretation of Scripture, in the few years since I retired from teaching. I will try to clarify what portions of my discussion represent genuine Catholic doctrine and where I go off on a tangent from time to time.

What I am about to present is not exactly how I would’ve taught it in my 30 years of service to my parish. I’m simply using my old lesson plans as an outline or a jumping-off point to talk about religion in general.

Before we get started, let me provide some context and background.

In previous episodes, I talked about the early part of my faith journey, from my indoctrination in the Roman Catholic Church beginning in first grade through my eventual departure from the Church in my late teens and my return to the Catholic Church in my late 20s. The details are in episodes 6, 7, 11, 12, 13, and 14. Although it’s not 100% necessary to review those episodes if you haven’t already heard them, I encourage you to check them out. It gives you a deeper understanding of how I got to where I felt that my faith had grown sufficiently that I was confident I could teach.

Additionally, I did a series of episodes about my early ministry in the Church once I returned. Most of that was about work I did as a member of the Saint Gabriel Parrish Finance Committee and Pastoral Council. These topics are covered in episodes 37 through 42. It’s not as necessary that you hear those episodes before we proceed, but I just thought I would mention them here. My ministry with the finance committee was ongoing during my first years of teaching.

You’re probably wondering how a guy with a BS degree in computer science ended up teaching Catholic Theology. Here’s the back story…

In addition to the full year of attending RCIA as a returning ex-Catholic, I also attended many other adult education programs offered by my parish. The most influential and inspiring one was a series of lectures on the Catholic approach to Scripture given by Jim Welter of nearby Saint Monica Parish. He called his lecture series “The Ascending View.” I already explained what he meant by that phrase in episode 13, but I will cover it more in later episodes here. I was quite impressed both intellectually and spiritually by Jim’s work. I was particularly interested in the sections where he would share part of his personal faith journey in the context of his teaching.

Whether one is teaching an adult education program, Catholic Sunday school, or religion in a Catholic parochial school, we are not called “teachers.” The term we use is “catechist.” This is defined as “someone who instructs by sharing their faith.” Jim taught me by his example what that means.

In preparation for these episodes, I tried to locate Jim Welter. His website domain has been taken over by someone else. I found him on Facebook, and I’m trying to contact him to thank him for all I learned from his work. I always gave him full credit for teaching me much of what I know about the Catholic approach to Scripture. One of my lessons was essentially a stripped it down condensation of what he taught over a series of three or four lectures.

One of the questions I cannot answer is, “Exactly when did I begin teaching?” We are talking about events from 40 years ago so my recollection is a bit fuzzy on the details.

The timeline begins on April 21, 1984, when I attended the Easter Vigil service at the invitation of my friend Judy to see her husband Paul initiated into the church. They had just completed a year of RCIA classes. Attending that service was my entry back to the church after an absence of about nine years. Judy and Paul returned to the classes in the fall of 1984, and I joined them. I attended through the 1984-85 sessions.

If you had asked me a few days ago when I began teaching, I would’ve said it was the following year in the 1985-86 sessions. But the more I think about it, I don’t think I started until 1986-87. Upon deeper reflection over the past day or so, here’s what I think really happened.

In the 84-85 sessions, our Associate Pastor, Fr. Conrad Camberon, taught the Introduction to Scripture lesson. He used a class participation exercise that I later incorporated into my introduction to Scripture lesson.

Sometime, probably in 1985, I attended those lectures by Jim Welter, where I learned more about the Catholic approach to Scripture.

For the 1985-86 sessions, our pastor, Fr. Paul Landwerlen, taught the Scripture lesson. He seemed to me to be struggling a bit with teaching the lesson. Because I was freshly armed with abundant knowledge on the topic from Jim Welter, my reaction was, “I could do better than that.” After class, I approached Fr. Paul and asked if perhaps I could teach the class next year. He agreed.

In the second week of the 1986-87 season, I presented a lesson about the Catholic approach to Scripture. Father Paul attended. I was happy to have him there as backup lest I accidentally preached some heresy or misrepresented the Church doctrine. After class, he approached with a big smile and said, “You teach that material better than I do. We were taught all of that in the seminary, but it’s not something we preach or teach about on a regular basis.”

I’m pretty sure I simply thanked him for the compliment and for placing his trust in me, but I know inside I was thinking, “Yeah… I know I can do it better than you. That’s why I volunteered.”

So anyway, that’s how I got started.

Let’s talk about a typical year in the program after I had been teaching a few years.

Father Paul would teach the vast majority of the lessons. He was supported by a small team of parishioners known as the RCIA Team. That consisted of me, my mom, Judy, and our Pastoral Associate Sr. Mary Timothy Kavanagh. Father Conrad had been reassigned as pastor of a different parish so we only had one priest going forward. I would teach 4-6 lessons per year. Sr. Tim would do one or two. Judy and my mom were there to help keep things organized, provide hospitality, and moral support.

For many years, we would attract as many as 20 or more people to the class. We met in the parish meeting room sitting around cafeteria tables that would seat 6-8 people. The class was scheduled for 2 hours from 7-9 PM but we would take a 15 minute break in the middle for refreshments and socializing.

Parts of each lesson generally included a discussion period. The team would position themselves at different tables around the room to help facilitate the discussion and to be eyes and ears for Father to see if there was anything he needed to address with individuals or the entire group. Often the Team would sit around after class to discuss how the evening went. Sometimes these debriefing sessions ended up at Denny’s for coffee and pie.

As I mentioned, we started the class either in late August or the first week of September. The first session was just to get acquainted. Father would give an overview of the program and present an outline of lesson topics. Then he invited everyone to introduce themselves. He had a brief outline: Who are you? Who or what brought you here? What do you hope to gain from these sessions? He would invite the Team to share first to get the ball rolling.

When it came to my question of, “What brought you here?” I typically said, “I rode in that blue van in the parking lot.” I’m sure my team got sick of the joke, but it always got a big laugh from the new people. The team members, including Father, always insisted that we got as much or more from the sessions as the participants. The example of Judy’s husband and others who joined the church at the Easter Vigil inspired me to return to the church. Seeing more and more people joining the church through the RCIA program and playing a part in their journey greatly recharged the spiritual batteries of the entire team.

The following week, the lesson was a basic introduction to some core concepts about who God is and what is our relationship with Him. Both Father Paul and, years later, Father Larry Crawford taught a similar lesson. What follows in this episode is based on an outline by Father Larry with my own personal spin on the topic.

Father Larry would begin with a reference to the 1966 Michael Caine film “Alfie,” in which the opening song asked the musical question, “What’s it all about, Alfie?” Father explained that we all want to know what life is all about. Why are we here? How did we get here? What is our purpose in life?

By the way, I’m old enough to remember the film and the song, but many of the people in the class had no idea what he was talking about in referring to the film. Sometimes, they were a bit less confused if he prefaced the reference with something like, “There was this movie years ago about a guy named Alfie, and the theme song of the movie asked the musical question, ‘What’s it all about, Alfie?’” It always illustrated to me that whether teaching a lesson or writing fiction, you should ensure your audience understands your cultural references.

For Father Larry, the answer was, “It’s all about God and our relationship with Him. That’s what life is all about.”

It’s part of our human nature to ask these questions. The Church has tried to address those. Even back in first grade, when I was learning Catholicism from the Baltimore Catechism, the first three questions were:

Q1. “Who made me?”

A. “God made me”

Q2. “Who is God?”

A. “God is the Supreme Being who made all things.”

The third question asks, “Why did God make me?” The answer was, “God made me to show forth his goodness and share with his everlasting life.”

The fourth question is, “What must I do to share in God’s everlasting life?”

Answer: “To share in God’s everlasting life, we must know, love, and serve him.”

For a further discussion about these four questions of the old catechism, see episode 6.

So, the process is to know God, love God, and serve God.

How do people come to know God? Here’s an overview of just a few of the ways as presented by Father Larry.

Some people grow up with knowledge of God. That probably accounts for the majority of believers. If you are raised in a religious tradition, that is your first encounter with the divine. It’s where I began. Along the way, that was insufficient, and I left. But I came back for my own reasons.

Some people come to know God by reflecting on the course of their life. They look at their blessings. They reflect on the times that they survived hardship. They conclude God’s presence in their life.

Some people find God’s presence in nature. I once heard astrophysicist and science educator Neil deGrasse Tyson explain that when out in the wilderness away from city lights, looking up at the stars, he can rightly describe it as a spiritual experience. For him, that is insufficient to lead him to believe in an anthropomorphic supreme being. However, it is common to find God in nature. I’ve experienced some of that as a sense of awe or wonder that I find in nature. I’ve often described science as the study of things God made. For better or worse, this phenomenon among fundamentalist Christians leads them to try to develop a science of intelligent design. While I have no problem considering God as the architect of the universe, I don’t use that philosophy to justify interpreting Scripture in a manner that defies scientific fact. The fundamentalist do that to maintain a false view of the inspiration, inerrancy, and univocality of Scripture.

Some people are convinced they have personally experienced God. I’m not talking about necessarily hearing voices from God. They simply have had transcendent, spiritual experiences in which they feel in contact with the divine. For example, a father witnessing the birth of their children or a woman giving birth can be a spiritual experience when they realize the miracle that is human life and the fact that they were able to participate in it. Perhaps surviving an accident, illness or disaster can lead you to the divine. As the saying goes, “There are no atheists in a foxhole.” These personal experiences of God are similar to the nature issue we discussed earlier, but it doesn’t always have to be an encounter with nature to instigate such feelings.

Some people are helped to know God by demonstration from reason. There are many philosophers throughout the centuries who have attempted to prove or disprove the existence of God. The most common one is titled “prime mover” argument. Take any object around you. A table, chair, lamp, your computer… Whatever. Where did that come from? The table is made from wood. Where did the wood come from? Where did the tree come from? Where did the seed from which the tree grew come from? No matter what you encounter, you can continually ask what came before. Even scientists cannot explain what happened before the Big Bang. Ultimately, when you can go back no further… they argue that is God.

If you go back to my earlier episodes about my spiritual journey, you will see that my “argument from reason” is that you don’t prove there is a God. You simply assume there is and see where that takes you. In mathematics, geometry, and logic, you always begin with axioms. These are unprovable truths that you accept as fact to have a basis from which to build everything else. If all of mathematics is based on axioms that are taken without proof, why can we not have axioms for religion? For me, God is an axiom. See episode 14 for more details on this topic.

Some people come to God through their desire for perfect unconditional love. In some respects, this also reflects my philosophy. I look at the blessings in my life, especially the people in my life–my family and friends who take care of me, and I sometimes feel unworthy to be so blessed. My logical conclusion is that these people were put in my life by a God who loves me. And I see it as my mission to be a blessing in their lives as well.

Some people are led to God by people who love God. This is similar to being brought up by believers. However, this can occur later in life. You associate with religious people, see the value it brings to their lives, and you adopt new traditions to get a piece of that peace.

Finally, some people cannot express why they believe or what God means to them.

It is simply beyond their capability to express what it means to them. And that’s okay. God is hard to explain. I think a saying attributed to St. Thomas Aquinas is illustrative. He said, “To one who has faith, no explanation is necessary. To one without faith, no explanation is possible.”

I look to Matthew 22:21, Jesus says, “Render unto Caesar, that which is Caesar’s and render unto God, that which is God’s.” I adapt the idea to deal with the dichotomy of faith and reason. I render unto reason that which requires reason, and I render unto God that which requires faith.

Going off-topic for a moment. I recently wrote a sci-fi murder mystery in which a church official is murdered. I invented a fictitious religion that claimed they could merge faith and reason. This fits my general category of sci-fi stories: “You can’t do that. But what if you could?” For me, I don’t try to merge or reconcile faith and reason. I give them each their own domain.

Anyway, back to God… Ultimately, what it takes to know God is experience. And we’ve already listed a variety of ways in which people come to experience and know God.

Father Crawford would say that God is wholly other. That is, wholly spelled WHOLLY, not HOLY. By definition, God is beyond human understanding. But we can talk about what we do know about God. We can discuss some of God’s attributes. We can say God is all-powerful, all-knowing, all-forgiving, and unconditionally loving. Can we really understand what those things mean? Can we really experience unconditional love? That’s ,eyond human experience

For many people, God is distant. Jewish tradition is that only Moses was able to be in the presence of God. That is why many of them failed to accept the idea that Jesus was God in human form. It was a radical concept that God would be with us personally here on earth.

For others, their relationship with God is quite personal. The image of a divine Jesus walking the earth as one of us and calling us brothers and sisters makes God more accessible and people have a personal relationship with God much more easily than they would with a distant God the Father sitting on a heavenly throne.

The theme of the four lessons that I taught after the opening lesson about God Is that our God is a god who speaks to us. He has revealed himself to us in a variety of ways. We will talk about what has been revealed, how we preserve and pass on that revelation, and what we have learned by reflecting upon what has been revealed.

Ultimately, we know most of what we know about God through Jesus.

We are going to wrap things up for today. In the next episode, we will discuss human nature. How we view ourselves as human beings affects how we see our relationship with God. We will also discuss good and evil and how we use the metaphors of Angels and Demons to discuss these concepts. All of that was included in our opening lesson in the RCIA program.

Remember that our weekly sessions were about 90 minutes or more, and I try to keep these podcasts not much longer than 30 minutes. So, it will take a while to get to each lesson plan.

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