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.

Before we conclude, a bit of housekeeping. On this podcast’s website, contemplating-life.com, our spam-blocking software has been disabled because it was for noncommercial use only. Because I solicit donations and Patreon sponsors, that makes me a commercial entity even though I’m not making any appreciable money here. Therefore, I have disabled comments on the blog posts where I promote each episode. I would have to make four times as much to afford that software. So, I’ve had to disable comments on the blog post where I promoted each podcast. If you want to comment, please continue to do so on Spotify, YouTube, or Facebook. I encourage you to do so.

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.

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

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In this episode, I conclude a series of episodes about my life of ministry in my local Catholic Church. I discuss the struggles I had with our new inexperienced pastor in my experience of a miracle worthy of canonization of a saint.

Hi, this is Chris Young. Welcome to episode 42 of Contemplating Life.

This week I’ll continue with more stories of my many years of volunteer ministry for Saint Gabriel Catholic Church. This week we discuss the challenge of adjusting to a new pastor and my experience of a miracle.

Standard disclaimers: I’m not trying to evangelize or preach to anyone. I’m just telling my stories. Also, this is my best recollection of events from over 20 years ago. I may have some of the details wrong or out of sequence but this is what I remember… the way I remember it. I believe I served briefly on the Board of Education. They not only covered the management of the school but the CCD Sunday school program as well as RCIA and other adult education programs. Naturally, my interest was in RCIA and adult education.

The biggest transition after leaving the finance committee was that we had a new pastor. A relatively young priest named Father Bill Marks was assigned to St. Gabriel. He was a tall, blonde, handsome man who somewhat resembled a young Robert Redford.

Let me talk about clergy assignments for a moment.

In my earlier faith series of episodes, I talked about getting private tutorship from Father Paul Rehart at St. Christopher Parrish when I was about six years old. He was the youngest of 3 priests assigned to that parish. While having three clergy in one parish was rare, the standard was 2. There would be an experienced priest assigned as pastor and a young priest newly ordained as an associate pastor. One typically did not get to be a pastor until they had served a considerable time as an associate.

As I was growing up in St. Gabriel we always had 2 priests. When I returned to the church in my late 20s we also had 2. Father Paul Landwerlen was the pastor and Father Conrad Camberon was the associate. Father Conrad was eventually moved and assigned as pastor of another parish but I don’t remember which one. We then had Msgr. Fred Easton lived at our parish rectory and celebrated mass but his regular job was as the Judicial Vicar of the Archdiocese. He didn’t have any other duties at the parish except to celebrate the sacraments.

The Catholic Church as a whole is suffering from a severe lack of new priests so the days when you could have 2 or 3 per parish are long gone. These days, one priest might have to serve multiple parishes.

As our story approaches the turn of the century, that shortage is just beginning to be felt. Father Bill Marks had only briefly served as an associate pastor before being assigned full pastor at St. Gabriel. Having Father Bill assigned as pastor so early in his career was quite unusual.

Having listened to Father Paul Landwerelen preach for a decade, I was looking forward to someone with a new perspective. I got something new all right but it wasn’t anything I could use. Father Bill would tell stories that we knew could not have happened to him and he would tell them as if he was the originator of the story. He would say something like, “I was on a flight to Chicago this week to visit my family and…” he would describe an encounter with a famous person. The likelihood that he would encounter such a person on a flight from Indianapolis to Chicago was near zero. I’ve heard that there are magazines that clergy can subscribe to that contain articles and anecdotes that you can use for a homily. But the idea behind it is that you’re supposed to stand up there and say, “I read this article with an inspiring story I want to relate to you.” Instead, he was taking these articles and making himself the center of the story.

Sometimes it was an old joke that I’d heard many times before but rather than say, “Did you hear the one about the guy…” Again he would tell the story as if it had happened to him.

There were other instances in which his duplicitous nature caused me great trouble.

In addition to our weekly bulletin that was printed and distributed after Mass each Sunday, we had a monthly newsletter with feature articles about the activities in the parish. Sometimes it was a thank you article from a parishioner whose spiritual needs have been met perhaps during the loss of a loved one or an extended illness in which parishioners helped out.

There was a woman who came to my RCIA class who converted to Catholicism and wanted to get involved. She went to Father Bill and said that she wanted to be the editor of the monthly newsletter. He suggested she form a small working committee and come up with a proposal on how to revamp the newsletter and make it more useful. She put countless hours into that committee putting together a proposal. Just before she was ready to present it to him, I had a conversation with him and learned that he was going to cancel the monthly newsletter. I later ran into the woman and said something like, “I guess your newsletter ideas didn’t go anywhere. I’m sorry to hear that.”

She said, “What!?”

I told her I had heard the newsletter was being shut down. She was furious. She had not yet presented her proposal to Father Bill. She was livid that her work was for nothing and was dead on arrival. She ended up leaving St. Gabriel and I don’t know but I think she may have left the Catholic Church completely.

There were also major changes he made in the staff. Many of them affected my friend Judy who was the parish secretary and bookkeeper. Under Father Paul, Judy had a great deal of responsibility. In any other parish, I think someone with her responsibilities would have had the title “business manager” which many parishes had. Saint Monica parish had a man named Jim Welter who I greatly admired. His title was business manager and pastoral associate. A pastoral associate is someone who is a priest but deals with many of the spiritual needs of the parish. It’s the kind of thing that an associate pastor used to do. Our pastoral associate was Sister Timothy Kavanaugh. I think that the titles business manager and pastoral associate could have fit Judy considering the work she was doing. I had often been disappointed that Father Paul had not given her a title that more closely reflected what she was doing.

But Father Bill was offended that a lowly secretary was running the parish. The clashes between Judy and this new inexperienced pastor are not mine to tell. I only mention these things here because they so deeply affected me. It hurt me personally that someone who had dedicated so much of her life above and beyond her job description to work for the parish was being so devalued. She eventually resigned and took a position as an administrative assistant at the Church Federation of Greater Indianapolis. I continued to work with her as her favorite computer consultant for several years in that position.

Judy wasn’t the only staff person who was driven out. We had a part-time staff person named Joan who served as Youth Ministry Coordinator. He redefined her job description such that the position required a college degree. She didn’t have one so it was his backdoor way of firing her. When she filed for unemployment, he contested it in court. He said she was free to apply for the new position of course ignoring the fact that he knew she wasn’t qualified under his new standards.

He went into court with his priestly collar on and testified that he didn’t fire her and therefore she didn’t deserve unemployment. The judge practically laughed in his face and ruled against him. When a man of his position testifies under oath to something with his hand on the Bible and the judge rules against him it says a lot about the kind of person he is.

The obvious fabrications from the pulpit, his disrespect for the staff, and his manipulation of volunteers created an atmosphere where it was impossible to respect anything that he said or to receive any sort of spiritual direction from him.

All of the incidents I’ve described and others I haven’t described affected other people. They were people I cared about but they didn’t affect me directly. I kept telling myself he hadn’t done anything to me personally so I shouldn’t react too strongly. But it was becoming more and more difficult to stay involved in the parish I loved.

It came time for the parish to buy a new computer. I consulted with him and others on what they should purchase. I don’t recall the details of the controversy that arose around that purchase. It all boiled down to the question, “Had the computer been ordered or not?” I was told that it had been and had made major preparations to get it set up and configured. I think I recall we were in a time crunch. Again I don’t remember all of the details but I remember having to make a lot of arrangements that turned out to be unnecessary because the new machine had not yet been ordered.

When I confronted him about it, he argued over the sentence, “It has been ordered.” He argued over the meaning of the word “has” which reminded me of Bill Clinton. Clinton had made a statement under oath during a deposition in the sexual harassment civil trial which came out in public after the Lewinsky scandal. Clinton famously said, “It depends on what your definition of the word ‘is’ is.” Clinton was so duplicitous and chose his words so carefully that he could argue over the meaning of the word “is”.

The idea that my pastor, a man of the cloth, and an ordained priest of God in the Holy Roman Catholic Church could be a deceptive, manipulative, bender of words similar to William Jefferson Clinton completely destroyed any hope that I could work with the man in the future.

I tried repeatedly to get an appointment with him to discuss some church business and he kept blowing me off. When I finally did get to sit down with him, he admitted he was avoiding me because he knew how disgruntled I had become. I told him he was making value judgments. I did have important things to discuss with him. After discussing them, I gave him an earful. I told him that I was done working in any administrative capacity.

I told him I couldn’t keep up with his lies and cover for him when he got caught. The only way to avoid that was to avoid having to deal with him at all. Then I wouldn’t have to worry about whether or not something he told me was going to burst someone’s bubble and drive them away from the church when they discovered they couldn’t trust the priest.

I did spend some time crunching budget numbers for the school because the principal there, a wonderful woman named Barbara Shuey, knew my skills as a number cruncher and respected me.

I would keep teaching RCIA because it meant I didn’t have to deal with Father Bill directly. By the way, Father Paul used to teach all but about 8 weeks of the classes throughout the year. RCIA was a high priority for him. I would teach 4 or 5 lessons. A retired history professor from our parish would do two weeks on church history and Sister Timothy would do a lesson on prayer. Father Paul would do nearly 20 lessons to fill out the course. In contrast, we were lucky to get Father Bill to teach 4 or 5 lessons all year. It just wasn’t his priority. So I could continue to do nothing for the church but teach and avoid having to deal directly with him.

I would go to Mass on Sunday and sit through his lies from the pulpit and hate every minute of it. I seriously considered moving to a different parish. St. Christopher in Speedway and St. Michael’s on 30th St. are almost the same distance from my house in St. Gabriel. The problem was, that I attended Mass with my mother, and although she was aware of everything that was going on and disturbed by it, I don’t believe she would change parishes. As upset as she was about the situation, she was in the mode where I had been in that he hadn’t done anything to her personally.

Both my mother and I were devoted to the church and our parish. It wasn’t like we had to be good friends with the pastor as we had been with Father Paul. But there are limits to what we can tolerate.

I also had to consider what kind of message it would send to my students if I wasn’t attending Mass at Saint Gabriel. Here I am saying, “Come join this Church but I can’t stand being here so I’m going elsewhere.” I didn’t know was there would be a teaching opportunity for me at St. Christopher or St. Michael.

As I was dealing with all of this, we had an outside guest speaker come to RCIA. It was a nun from the Sisters of Providence St. Mary of the Woods. They are an order of religious sisters based out of Terre Haute Indiana about 70 miles west of Indianapolis. Their special ministry was as teachers. They had been providing teachers to Catholic schools around central Indiana for over a century. They founded and ran St. Mary of the Woods College. It was an all-girls institution again focused on training educators whether they were vowed religious sisters or not. I had attended a couple of weekend seminars there and it was a very nice facility.

This sister, I’m sorry I forgot her name, was giving a talk about the founder of their order Mother Théodore Guérin who had recently been beatified by Pope John Paul II. This is the final step before becoming canonized as an official Saint of the Catholic Church. The speaker was the nun who was in charge of the program to try to get their matriarch declared a saint.

Mother Guérin was born Anne-Thérèse Guérin in France in 1798. She entered the convent in 1823 and took the name Sister Saint Theodore. In 1840, at the request of the Bishop of Vincennes Indiana, a group of sisters from France led by Sister Theodore came to Vincennes to found a school and convent and to assist with the influx of Catholic immigrants to the area. In those days, Vincennes was the capital of Indiana. This was before the founding of Indianapolis and its establishment as the state capital.

They arrived in the small village known as St. Mary of the Woods and in a small log cabin founded a convent and school that later grew into the institution it is today. Sister Theodore was their Mother Superior.

Apparently, Mother Guérin was quite a character. She was known to hang out in town and engage in intellectual debates with the movers and shakers of the community discussing religion, politics, philosophy, or whatever topic and she could hold her own with the best of them.

Although she was there at the invitation of the Bishop, he tried to micromanage her and interfere in the way that she ran the convent and the school. When she returned to France briefly on a fundraising mission, he tried to hold an election in her absence to have her replaced as Mother Superior. She was unanimously elected to retain the post by her community.

At one point, she was so upset with the interference from the Bishop that she wrote a letter to the Bishop of Detroit and asked if he would sponsor their move to his area. He wrote back rejecting the request and told her to stay faithful and that God would provide. After that, the Bishop of Vincennes never interfered with her again. Probably the Detroit Bishop wrote him a nasty letter telling him to stay the hell out of her way and let her run her convent or he would end up losing them altogether.

Mother Théodore Guérin died in 1856 at age 57.

Under the rules of the Church, one cannot be considered for sainthood until 50 years after their death although there have been exceptions made. In 1907, a process was begun to have her considered for canonization as a saint. To be declared a saint, one has to have two miracles attributed to them. The first was in 1908. One of the sisters in her community had breast cancer and other medical issues including an abdominal tumor and a neurological problem that affected the use of her arms. One evening she prayed at the crypt of Mother Théodore Guérin not for herself but for another sister who was ill. The next day, she regained the use of her arms, her abdominal pain disappeared, the cancer never spread and she lived into her 80s. They never said what happened to the woman she was actually praying for. Let’s hope she recovered as well.

Once you have one miracle attributed to you, can be “beatified” which is a step along the way to becoming a saint. The sister who visited us talked about going to Rome for the beatification ceremony and how beautiful it was. After beatification, you earned the title “Blessed”.

I was greatly inspired by the story of this amazing woman who dedicated her life to God and to education. She also had clashes with clergy that nearly drove her away from her ministry as a teacher. I could identify with that situation. My primary ministry for the church was as a teacher and I was worried that my troublesome clergy was going to make it impossible for me to continue that ministry just as it had happened with Mother Guérin.

That night I went home and prayed to Blessed Mother Théodore Guérin. I told her, “You know what it’s like to try to teach the Word of God under the authority of a troublesome member of the clergy. Yet you persisted and succeeded. Mother Théodore… give me the strength to endure this challenge the way that you endured your challenges.”

The following week it was my turn to teach. Throughout the lesson, I kept thinking that this might be the last time I would teach for Saint Gabriel and perhaps the last time I would teach forever if I could not find a position in another parish.

When I returned home from class that night, my mom had a huge smile on her face. “I’ve got some juicy gossip for you.”

“What is it?”

“Father Paul heard that they are moving Father Bill to a new parish. He will be leaving in just a few months.”

Thank you Blessed Mother Théodore Guérin. All I asked for was the strength to endure. I would never have had the gall to pray that the man goes away. But that prayer was answered. He was leaving my life for good. I could continue to serve my parish as I had been doing for many years.

I don’t recall exactly how long Father Bill was assigned to our parish but I think it was under two years.

We would be getting a new pastor. With new challenges. Like all priests in my life, I had some serious disagreements. But things were much much better after that.

Overall, I taught RCIA classes for 31 straight years.

I wrote a letter to the sister from St. Mary of the Woods who had come to our parish to tell us about Blessed Mother Théodore Guérin. I told her how untenable things had become under my pastor. And how I had prayed to Mother Guérin not for a solution to my problem but for the strength to endure it. And I told her that my troublesome pastor was leaving. I said I didn’t know if it was the kind of thing that would count as the second miracle to get her matriarch canonized but I had no doubts whatsoever that I had my own personal miracle through the intercession of Blessed Mother Théodore Guérin.

The cause for canonization finally succeeded.

The second miracle occurred in January 2001 when a maintenance man who worked at the college wandered into the chapel attracted by sacred music. He was suffering from an eye condition that was going to require surgery. He prayed that the crypt of Mother Guérin and awoke the next day to find that his vision was much clearer. He no longer needed complicated eye surgery and doctors were at a loss to explain how his condition resolved itself.

She was canonized as Saint Theodora Guérin in 2006 and at the time was only the third American Saint.

Father Bill was assigned a new parish in southeastern Indiana just across the border from Cincinnati. I pray from time to time that he is doing well and is growing in experience as a priest and a pastor.

I could continue to talk about my work under our next pastor but I think it’s time to take a break from the religious topics. I know not all of my audience is that interested in this area of my stories. Next week, we go to college. I will talk about my nine semesters at IUPUI earning a BS degree in computer science and I will probably follow up with the two years I was employed as a computer programmer starting with my eighth semester in college.

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Many thanks to my financial supporters. Your support pays for the writing seminar I attend and other things. But most of all it shows how much you care and appreciate what I’m doing. 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.

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

In this episode, I continue a series of episodes about my life of ministry in my local Catholic Church. I discuss more work on the church finance committee and talk about my relationship with my pastor and good friend Father Paul Landwerlen.

Hi, this is Chris Young. Welcome to episode 41 of Contemplating Life.

This week I’ll continue with more stories of my many years of volunteer ministry for Saint Gabriel Catholic Church continuing with stories from my eight years serving on the finance committee and later on the Parish Pastoral Council.

Standard disclaimers: I’m not trying to evangelize or preach to anyone. I’m just telling my stories. Also, this is my best recollection of events from over 30 years ago. I may have some of the details wrong or out of sequence but this is what I remember… the way I remember it.

As you’ve seen in these past few episodes, the work on the finance committee at Saint Gabriel was intense but it built a camaraderie among us. We worked hard but we had a good time as well often joking around with one another. One of my fondest memories was a discussion in which we were trying to decide how much to increase a particular line item. Should it be 10% or 11%? I don’t recall if it was me or a committee member named Julie who suggested 11% was a better number. Someone asked why. Julie and I looked at each other and grinned and simultaneously said, “Because it’s 1 more.” And then we both burst into laughter hysterically at the reference to the classic film “Spinal Tap”. Neither of us had any idea that we were fans of the movie before that day. The other committee members looked at us like we were crazy and wanted to know what was so funny. We said, “Spinal Tap.” They still had no idea what we were talking about. By the way, if you don’t know what I’m talking about, I included a YouTube clip in the description.

We also very much enjoyed our December meeting because that was our annual Christmas party. We would dispense with our business as quickly as possible then bring out the snacks, turn on the Christmas music, open a bottle of wine, and have a really good time. Larry, the chairman of the committee, always brought a really great cheese ball made by his wife. Somehow that started a tradition that the chairman brought the cheese ball. When I was the chairman, they liked my mom’s recipe almost as well as the one made by Larry’s wife.

As much fun as we had, there were still times when controversies arose and differences had to be worked out.

The Parish Pastoral Council was governed by a set of bylaws. We loosely followed the normal parliamentary procedure of making a motion, having a second, and discussion followed by a vote. The strange thing was that we had to find what we called “consensus”. The theological theory was that God has a plan for us and it’s our job to prayerfully discern that plan and implement it. And there can be no division among us. So consensus in essence meant a unanimous vote on everything. If we are really guided by the Holy Spirit there can be no division among us. The Holy Spirit guides each of us differently so maybe that one dissenting voice has the right answer.

In practice, what we said was, “You don’t have to totally agree with it 100%. But you have to be able to live with it.” Council members were strongly encouraged to sort of go with the flow and side with the majority. I’m not saying rubberstamp whatever we brought in. You could raise objections and often people did. The bottom line was that one individual had the power to block, veto, or essentially filibuster anything.

On one occasion, when I was the finance chairman there was a guy named John on the pastoral Council. John was the finance chairman before me so we had worked together for a couple of years. We were pretty good friends. He objected to the budget which sort of pissed me off because he knew the kind of work that had gone into it having been in our position before. We spent the entire evening listening to his objections, trying to understand his concerns, and to address them. The evening ended with an impasse. We were all sent home to pray over it and come back again in a week.

The finance committee met in a special meeting a few days later to see if we could come up with a proposal that would address John’s concerns. I made a little speech which got me in some hot water. I really screwed it up. I intended to speak in John’s defense but I started out really poorly. I really regretted it. Rather than starting out saying, “I want to defend John but…” instead I said, “I want to say a few things about John. I like the guy but he can be a real pain in the ass…”

Before I could finish my sentence, Father Paul tried to stop me. I insisted on continuing and said, “But I’m not here to criticize him. I’m here to empathize in support him. I’m a pain in the ass also. As much as he frustrates me. I have to defend him because I want the right to be the same kind of pain in the ass as he is.”

When we came back for the second meeting, John didn’t show up. The budget passed through consensus without him. I don’t recall if we made adjustments or if it passed in its original form. He later explained he wasn’t happy with it. But he could live with it. And that was the definition of consensus. You had to be able to live with it.

As I mentioned previously, the chairman of the finance committee automatically had a seat on the parish council as part of their job. Somewhere along the way, they amended the bylaws and said the chairman of the finance committee could not participate in the consensus on budget issues. The finance chairman was otherwise allowed to participate in consensus on non-budgetary matters just like any other council member. They thought that the finance chairman would be biased in favor of the budget that they had worked so hard to present. I was always proud of the work we did but I recognize that we serve at the pleasure of the Council.

I was offended by the idea even before I was the chairman. Did that mean that a school board representative also should not participate because the school budget was on the line? That was a big, big line item. Or what if you represented the maintenance committee? Did they not also have a vested interest in the budget? Even if you’re a member at large and didn’t have a specific role on the Council, everyone there had their own priorities.

My concern was, why would you exclude this veto power from the one person in the room who was the most knowledgeable about the budget? If the Council voted to change the budget in a way that could be significantly detrimental to the financial status of the parish, the chairman of the finance committee would be the one person in the room who would be most likely to know that and to raise concerns about it. The idea that their opinion should not count in the final consensus seemed completely idiotic to me.

After I was no longer on the finance committee but was serving on the parish council for other reasons, I tried to get them to reverse that policy but I was unsuccessful.

I want to conclude this series were some comments about my dear friend Father Paul Landwerlen who was our pastor throughout this time. I’ve mentioned him several times in this series and in my previous faith series in which I talked about my return to the church after a nearly 9-year absence.

Father Paul and I had a great working relationship and I always felt that he respected me and I deeply respect him to this day. But we both got on each other’s nerves on several occasions as you’ve already seen.

One time there was controversy about someone on the school staff doing some bad paperwork on finances. There wasn’t anything nefarious going on. Nobody was dipping into the till. It’s just the record-keeping sucked. Everything didn’t always balance. It was just a procedural problem.

Father met with the person in question to try to work things out but he took John, who was the finance chairperson at the time, with him. Word got out about the meeting. Several school people came to various finance members and asked, “Why is the finance committee involved in a private personnel matter?” Most of us on the committee had no idea what was going on. We didn’t even know about the meeting. At the next finance meeting several of us complained why we were out of the loop on this issue. Father explained it was a staff issue and had nothing to do with our committee. Father seemed upset that we were making a big deal out of this. In his mind, it was none of our business. John simply said, “Father asked me to be there so I went.” I wasn’t upset with him. He was just doing what the boss asked.

So I asked Father, “Then why did you take John our chairman to the meeting with you? He is the public face of the committee. When you take him to a meeting you’re taking this committee. Sure he knows our procedures and was probably a useful resource in straightening things out. Still, either this was a private internal manner that should not have involved anyone from the committee, especially the chairman who everyone sees as the representative of the committee, or it was the work of the committee. We all needed to be at least aware of what was going on and not hear it secondhand and get the 3rd° from people what to know why we’re meddling.”

As I was speaking, Father had a nasty scowl on his face because I was continuing to complain about something he didn’t want to discuss any further. When I finished, his expression changed. He sort of raised his eyebrows and then cracked a grin. Finally, he said, “Uhh… you’re right. Now I get it. He is the public face of the finance committee. Now I get it. I probably should not have gotten him involved.”

“That satisfies me,” I said. The rest of the committee seemed satisfied as well. One of the other committee members, a woman named Betty, used to pick me up at my house in my van to go to the meeting and take me home afterward. After the meeting that night when she brought me home, she gave me a kiss on the cheek and said, “I’ve never felt closer to you than I did tonight.” She was glad I raised a stink.

The point of the story though is not that I had this great victory in a disagreement with Father Paul. It was that most of the time, if not always, Father really listened to what I and others said when we complained. We didn’t win them all. I’m sure that I and many others frustrated the hell out of him on occasion. And he frustrated the hell out of me. But he would listen when you pinned him down and if you could make a good argument, you could win one now and then. That’s why I love the man so much. I didn’t need to win every argument but I needed to know that my opinion mattered and it did matter to him.

I’ve mentioned before that I taught classes for our RCIA inquiry program for new converts. Father trusted me with that responsibility. I would also attend most of the classes that he taught and afterward, the RCIA team which consisted of Father, me, Judy, my mother, and Sister Timothy would go out to Denny’s after class for a late-night cup of coffee and some snacks. On the evening as we didn’t go out to Denny’s we would generally hang out at church for a while to talk about how the class went or just socialize.

It was on those occasions after class Father and I would have our share of theological debates as well. You may recall way back in Episode 6, I had been asking priests tricky theological questions since I was six years old so I guess this was just an extension of that.

A lot of it had to do with the nature of miracles in the relationship between religion and science. Science fiction author Arthur C. Clarke famously said, “Any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from magic.” The same is true for theological miracles that seem magical. It might just be science we don’t understand it. We would debate the nature of miracles.

One time we had a debate about the “Star Trek The Next Generation” episode “Who Watches the Watchers?” season 3 episode 4. We watched that episode together.

The most interesting part of the discussions was the time that I speculatively asked him one time, “What if someday they scientifically proved that Jesus rose from the dead by a completely explainable scientific method? Theologically, Jesus was fully human and completely suppressed his divinity while here on earth so he could fully embrace the human condition as an example for us. Theoretically, anything that Jesus did, if we had strong enough faith we could do as well.

And because we are told that someday we will rise as well, what if science proved that under the proper circumstances, any of us could rise from the dead by the same method that Jesus used?” My point was that I think it would not diminish its miraculous nature. Just because there is a scientific explanation, does not for me mean that God is not involved. For me, science is the mechanism by which God does everything. Science is the study of the things God did.

Father’s response was, ”If you scientifically proved how the resurrection worked, I would hang up my collar and walk away.” I guess he needs his miracles to be mysterious in order to be miraculous.

Father and I spent other social time together over the years. Sometimes we would hang out at Judy’s and watch football or movies. We would often gather at her house on Good Friday and re-watch “Jesus Christ Superstar” over and over every year. He would celebrate Christmas Eve at our house for many years and would visit us at our lakeside cabin in Brown County about an hour south of here.

But sadly, all good things come to an end. Priests are typically appointed to serve at a particular parish for a term of six years and most of the time that is extended for another six years. It is quite common to rotate them to a new place after that. He served at St. Gabriel from the summer of 1982 until the summer of 1996 so he exceeded the typical 12-year term.

There were people in the parish who disliked him greatly. It eventually reached the point where it was apparent that he needed to move on and we needed fresh blood. As much as I was going to miss him and as much as I admired and respected him, I also had the sense that he had taught me everything that he could teach me. I needed a fresh perspective if I was going to continue to grow spiritually. The Archbishop assigned him to St. Vincent Depaul Parish in Shelbyville about 45 minutes southeast of here. He served there for many years and then took the mandatory retirement at age 70. In January, he will celebrate his 95th birthday and is still going strong.

Because there is a severe shortage of priests, he serves as a substitute priest in parishes all over the Archdiocese so he is still celebrating Mass in front of some congregation almost every Sunday even though he doesn’t have any administrative duties any longer.

Overall Father Paul Landwerlen is a great spiritual director and a great pastor, and he remains a good friend to this day. I’m very blessed to have him in my life.

We were assigned a new priest who was quite young. It was his first assignment as pastor. Next week we will talk about that experience and how it nearly drove me away from Saint Gabriel Parish. On the bright side, I will tell the story of how I experienced what I believe to be a genuine miracle worthy of the canonization of a saint.

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.

Many thanks to my financial supporters. Your support pays for the writing seminar I attend and other things. But most of all it shows how much you care and appreciate what I’m doing. 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.

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

In this episode, I continue a series of episodes about my life of ministry in my local Catholic Church. We talk about the struggles of maintaining a budget in a Catholic parish in the various strategies we used to meet those challenges.

Hi, this is Chris Young. Welcome to episode 40 of Contemplating Life.

This week I will continue my story of my many years of volunteer ministry for Saint Gabriel Church continuing with stories from my eight years serving on the finance committee.

Standard disclaimers: I’m not trying to evangelize or preach to anyone. I’m just telling my stories. Also, this is my best recollection of events from 40 years ago. I may have some of the details wrong or out of sequence but this is what I remember… the way I remember it.

It’s difficult to remember what happened in what order when you’re talking about things nearly 40 years ago. This week I have two different stories and I don’t recall when these events occurred or what order. Some of it could’ve been before events I’ve already described in previous episodes. I don’t remember the order of these two separate stories I want to tell this week.

Like last week’s episode, it’s a bit of a best-of-times and worst-of-times story. Let’s get the bad one out of the way first and try to end on a high note.

As I mentioned a couple of episodes ago, the plan to reinstate tuition for Catholic families was not well received but it did solve our immediate budget crisis and saved us from having to close the school.

Although tithing had worked wonders for us initially, there was a certain percentage of the population that just wouldn’t buy into it so the dramatic increases we had experienced tended to flatten out. I don’t think many people gave up on tithing but we just weren’t getting new converts.

There was pressure to do more fundraising. My belief was that any fundraising we did should be for particular projects and not for ordinary operating expenses. Part of the promise of tithing was that we wouldn’t do other fundraising. That promise eventually faded away. The school wanted to further subsidize its income and started something called “Market Day” where you could order frozen food from some service. They would deliver it to the school and you could pick it up once a month. They also sold trash bags after Mass. School volunteers handled all of the logistics of these programs.

I was a bit uncomfortable with it. I seem to recall Jesus got pretty pissed one time about all of the people selling things in the temple and he threw them out. At least this just took place in the school cafeteria and not the actual church sanctuary. All of this was mostly harmless but I would’ve preferred people do their shopping at the store probably at better prices and put the savings in the collection plate. But I didn’t feel strongly enough to raise a stink about it.

I did raise a stink about other things.

I was very upset about how aggressively we pushed people to increase their financial pledges. The standard philosophy of fundraising is that you put your efforts into the big donors because they are the only ones who are going to make or break your budget. You do a minor amount of effort courting smaller donors because they are not going to help anyway. That might work for some big fundraising organizations like a United Way agency where your corporate sponsors are your bread-and-butter and the five-dollar donors help a little. Or perhaps if you are trying to raise big dollars for a capital campaign I can see that is an appropriate strategy. It’s one we used many years later for capital campaigns when we raised money to renovate the church. More on that in future episodes.

But when it came to ordinary income in the Sunday collection, I STRONGLY objected to pushing the large donors and ignoring the little guys. The reason was, our big donors were already tithing. If we kept coming at them more and more, all we were going to do was alienate them.

I wanted to focus on the people who were not tithing. We would have people get up at Mass and give a witness talk about how using tithing and putting God first in their finances had really helped them. I wanted to see everyone have those benefits. We were supposed to be preaching Gospel values and not just fundraising.

I got so emotionally caught up in the arguments over fundraising philosophy that I nearly had a nervous breakdown. The politics and greed were too much for me. I needed to get back to more spiritually-based activities. I signed up to go back on the team for Christ Renews His Parish renewal retreat for a second time.

One of the lessons that I used to teach in my inquiry classes was about the Old Testament prophets. They weren’t just about predicting the future. Their primary responsibility was to be God’s spokesperson and to call people back to God when they went astray. They were almost always persecuted for that. I felt like I was being called to be a prophet. People needed to understand that we were drifting away from spiritually-based fundraising. I was failing at that job and I felt like I was being persecuted for my views.

My entire personality was changing. I was becoming extremely withdrawn and shutting people out. I was bitter and angry all the time. I knew that I was withdrawing. I knew that that was bad for me. I knew it was bad for the people around me. And I didn’t care. I was just too depressed.

The definition of a mortal sin is when you do something wrong, you know it is wrong, and you do it anyway. It also has to be a serious offense. I don’t think going into a deep emotional withdrawal in a self-destructive way necessarily rose to the level of mortal sin. I didn’t steal money or kill anybody or anything. But I certainly was aware that what I was doing was self-destructive and I didn’t care and I did it anyway. So it’s the closest I’ve ever come to a mortal sin.

The thing that brought me out of the self-destructive cycle was when I realized it was hurting the people around me. I was cutting myself off, isolating myself, and pushing people away. I thought about the end of the classic Pink Floyd album “The Wall”. It’s a semiautobiographical story by Roger Waters about how he shut the world out. The final song called “Outside the Wall” goes…

I could see people pounding on my wall trying to pull me out of that situation. And so I had to drag myself out. Like Roger Waters, I had to tear down the wall.

I suddenly realized that if I was in such a personal mess, I really didn’t have anything to give as a member of another CRHP renewal team. I had signed up for the wrong reasons. On the evening that I was supposed to be at a team meeting discerning what job I would take on in the team, I didn’t go to the meeting. Instead, I tracked down Monsignor Fred and I went to confession.

After confession, I joined the team meeting late and told them I was withdrawing from the team. I explained that I joined for all the wrong reasons and that I needed to take care of my personal demons before I could have anything to give of myself to the team or the people who would come to our renewal.

The team was understanding. Father Paul… not so much so. He was a bit upset with me. They barely had enough people to form the team. Without me, they were going to be a man short and someone would have to double up on duties. Trust me, if I had stayed… They still would’ve been a man short. I was not in a state where I could contribute in a positive way. My first trip through the renewal program was emotionally and physically draining on me. I never would’ve made it through a second one.

Eventually, I simply resigned myself to the idea that I wasn’t getting through to the people I wanted to. I was powerless to do anything about it. They were making mistakes and they were going to have to deal with the consequences. It was going to be difficult not to say, “I told you so” when the strategy failed or backfired. I just kept thinking of how the prophets felt when they preached and no one listened to them. How sad it must’ve been to see the people they loved fail to heed warnings. There’s no pleasure in being right under such circumstances.

The policies I opposed did ultimately fail. There was negative backlash as I predicted. I took no pleasure in being right.

So, I think that was the lowest point in my many years of ministry. But there were other successes to celebrate. Here’s another story about the finance committee that’s a little more upbeat.

One day the finance committee was meeting on a Saturday afternoon to stuff envelopes for financial statements. It was that complicated procedure I described a couple of episodes ago where we had to send different letters to different groups of people based on whether or not they were a school family and whether or not they had met their pledge. While we were doing it we brainstormed about strategies for solving our financial difficulties.

As I explained a couple of episodes ago, my best efforts to project our income were unsuccessful. Trying to figure out how much money we could spend in a given year was a challenge we weren’t meeting. One of our members, a very dedicated and gregarious guy named Tom, said, “What we need is a sugar daddy who will come along and give us one year’s worth of income. Then we would know how much money we had to spend that year. The following year, we would have banked all of our income and we would know how much we had to spend for the following year.” Unfortunately, none of us knew any filthy rich people who could do that. Our annual ordinary income in those days needed to be about $600,000 per year.

It was several days later thinking about Tom’s proposal that I realized how brilliant it was. He had the right strategy but he overcomplicated the solution.

We didn’t need a sugar daddy to kickstart the process.

The core of the idea that Tom proposed was to base this year’s expenses on last year’s income. All we had to do was project a 0% increase. We could still do that. It would be tough the first year because we had been counting on those increases. But if we held the line and counted on a 0% increase, we could build the budget on that. We were already basing school budgets on the 12-month rolling average ending February 28. Let’s take that number with no projected increase and use it as our income for the following year.

There’s an old adage, I’m not sure if it’s actually in Scripture or not, but it goes, “Don’t tempt God to perform a miracle.” That’s what we were doing when we proposed budgets with income increases. Let’s say for example our rolling average through February was $600,000. That’s the amount of money that God gave us during a 12-month period. So that must be how much he expects us to spend during 12 months. So use that as the income figure for the following fiscal year. If by chance, we get more than that, wonderful. Spend it next year. The only problem will happen if our income decreases and if it does, we make some midyear adjustments to expenses. We were doing that anyway when we didn’t meet our targeted income.

I really liked the idea because it was theologically based and I thought I could sell Father Paul on it. That’s what he liked about tithing. It wasn’t purely a fundraising strategy. Tithing is a theological principle based on the idea that everything you have comes from God and you give back 10% in gratitude. My plan says it’s sacrilegious to say, “We don’t have enough money.” God gives you everything you need. So if the budget didn’t balance, it’s something we’re doing wrong. You can’t say, “We don’t have enough.” That’s saying, “God didn’t take care of us.”

So that means either our spending priorities were wrong or we weren’t working hard enough to explain to people the value they were receiving for their donations. It was our fault that the budget didn’t work– not God’s.

The committee bought my idea. Tom was a strong supporter because it was really his proposal, to begin with. I just had the insight that we didn’t need a rich person to kickstart the program.

For the last couple of years that I was on the finance committee, that was the principle that we used going forward. No projected increase in income. If it goes up, spend it next year.

There was a catch… One that I didn’t see. But fortunately, it was a catch in our favor.

I hate to bog you down with numbers especially since these are hypothetical and I don’t remember the real figures but I don’t know any other way to explain the hidden positive consequence of this plan.

Let’s say that our running income from 1985 was $600,000. We base our 1986 budget on that amount. Now presume it goes up $10,000. So in 1986 we actually took in $610,000 instead of the $600,000 the year before. So we base our 1987 budget on $610,000. Let’s say that in 1987, the income went up another 10K so our 1988 budget is based on $620,000.

In 1986 we spent 600,000 but took in 610,000. In 1987 we spent 610,000 but took in 620,000. We end up with $10,000 extra in the bank each time the income goes up. The original idea was, “If it goes up… we’ll spend it next year.” But we didn’t. We kept basing next year’s expenses on this year’s income and I didn’t realize we would be banking that extra money.

Probably what we should have done when it went up by $10,000 in 1986, Our 1987 budget should have been $620,000. That is the $610,000 that we expected to continue to get plus the $10,000 windfall that we got through the grace of God.

When the money finally started getting significant, and we realized we had this extra cash lying around we began to use it for some long overdue maintenance projects. We started talking about our capital needs. We formed a special committee. I think it was called something like the “capital planning committee” or something like that. Their goal was to look at all of our big-budget capital needs and try to prioritize them. As I mentioned previously, there were maintenance projects that had been deferred year after year and we were only doing the bare minimum.

Windows needed to be repaired and replaced. The parking lot needed resealed and restriped. My mother came up with an idea for remodeling part of one of the downstairs restrooms into a handicapped restroom. All of these projects were funded out of this unspent increase which was an unforeseen side effect of our zero increase budgeting.

The only problem would come if we reached a year if our income decreased year-over-year. So it probably would’ve been a good idea to keep a little of that cash in reserve especially if that income graph flattened out too much. Because we were keeping a 12-month running total continuously, I think we would have seen it starting to flatten out and could’ve held back some of that windfall in the event that it did actually decrease.

So Tom had a brilliant idea. We needed a sugar daddy.

It turns out we had one all along.

His name was Jesus.

Next week we will continue telling stories of my days serving on my parish finance committee.

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 any other benefits I might come up with down the road. Although I have some financial struggles, I’m not really in this for money. Still, every little bit helps.

Many thanks to my financial supporters. Your support pays for the writing seminar I attend and other things. But most of all it shows how much you care and appreciate what I’m doing. 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.

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 find this podcast.

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