My post below has prompted a reaction.
I’ll let Kevin speak for himself but make a couple of points about what is said of my own words:
Oh my. So invocation of the saints and the veneration of images, practices long, long practiced by both the Eastern and Western Churches, are condemned as necromancy. The Angelus just rang at the Catholic Church next door. I stopped my typing and prayed the Hail Mary three times. Was I engaging in necromancy? Of course not. What a silly suggestion. I was participating in the prayers and intercessions of the communion of saints. Catholic Christians have always known the difference between the invocation of the saints and necromancy. Mr. Horne appears to be stuck back in a time before the incarnation and resurrection of the Son of God and his Pentecostal outpouring of the Holy Spirit had occurred. Like the iconoclasts of the seventh and eighth centuries, who did not see how the incarnation of the Son of God necessitated a reinterpretation of the second commandment for Christians, Horne does not see our baptismal incorporation into the triune life of God through the sacred humanity of Christ Jesus has affected the life of prayer for the people of the New Covenant. In Christ we share in the wondrous mystery of communion with the saints and all the faithful departed. We are upheld by the prayers of the saints and are bidden by the Church to invite their intercessions. None of this was possible before the death and resurrection of Christ but is wondrously possible now in the Holy Spirit.
OK, the writer never engaged in necromancy and Bill Clinton never had sex with Monica Lewinsky. God prohibits contacting the dead. If this was retracted at some point, we would expect to see some major sparks flying over this. There are tens of thousands in Judea, we are told in Acts, who remained loyal to the Law as Christians. This caused some huge arguments about circumcision and diet. But we are supposed to believe that people began praying to the dead and it never provoked a ripple of concern?
When Moses constructed the Tabernacle and later Solomon the Temple the Spirit as fire fell upon the altar so that the priests had to retreat. At Pentecost, rather than falling on things, the fire fell on people as living sacrifices and living stones in the Temple of God. From this huge difference we are expected to learn that it is now OK to to venerate objects and talk to dead people? Venerate the living.
If you have to stay RC, you can still use this, OK? If you ever get to meet the Pope kiss his hand rather than his ring.
Iconoclast? I have three bona fide Eastern Orthodox icons on the wall not ten feet away from where I sit. The only thing is that I’m never on my knees in front of them except when I am searching for one of the remote controls (which raises uncomfortable questions about whether or not there is an iconostasis in the living room that my family “adores.”) I think the “iconoclast” label is being stretched rather widely, especially in a piece that complains about imprecision.
Of course, there can be no argument. The writer claims to represent the group that is always right by virtue of holding their own opinions. If they say it isn’t necromancy then, by definition, it is sin to say otherwise. I make no claims for hoping to persuade the writer of anything. I can’t cure autism. I’m writing for people who aren’t sick yet, who can still hear the living.
This is confusing, and insulting, and it’s difficult to see a proper response. That it is possible to invoke the saints and venerate images and not fall into gnosticism is evidenced by the long history of the Church. These are completely different issues. The grounding of both communions in the incarnation and sacraments is solid protection against the retreat into gnostic interiority. As to whether Protestantism is a superior protection against gnosticism, I refer the reader to Philip Lee’s Against the Protestant Gnostics.
Good book. But no one in the Church is a gnostic or else he wouldn’t be a professing Christian. It is still possible to find gnostic tendencies in the Church. My point is that Protestants for all their faults (which Lee is right to point out) have the resources to more easily overcome this. My assumption is that gnostic tendencies affect the entire church East and West and the question is how to root them out.
I didn’t take time to argue about how gnosticism affects the RC communion other than the obvious ways I critique on other grounds (which the writer simply states can have nothing to do with gnostic impulses). So I can see why this was difficult to respond to. Since I completely share in the incarnation and the sacraments (and other practices which I might not want to technically call “sacraments” but still see as real means of grace and gracious gifts) we can just stipulate that there is no real gnosticism here.
Need I point out that Zwingli, Luther, and Calvin, as well as other reformers, believed in the perpetual virginity of Mary. As far as the tendency of many Christians in the past to associate sexual intercourse with sin, I certainly agree that this was unfortunate. It’s a tragedy the Church Fathers did not listen to and learn from the rabbis—one of the evil consequences of the first great schism, the schism between Church and synagogue. In any case, contemporary Catholicism certainly cannot be accused today of demeaning sexual intercourse or identifying it as evil. Mr. Horne should carefully read the reflections of the celibate John Paul II on the sacredness of the nuptial union.
Again, sort of had in mind a reader different from my critic–one who would recognize Benedict Pictet as a late Protestant Scholastic. If I’m stipulating that he was at least open to the perpetual virginity of Mary I’m stipulating that the Reformers also held to it at least as strongly and probably more so. You don’t need to point out anything about Luther or Calvin or Zwingli (can anyone be surprised about Zwingli?) except to the extent that I used in-house sorts of references that went past you. So thank you for making my intended meaning clear, which is: Luther and Calvin and Zwingli and Pictet were in error on this point.
Whatever spin (and this may involve nothing but solid truths) can now be put in celibacy, the historical fact is that it was considered to demeaning to the Theotokos to be penetrated by her husband. It is a sick superstition which needs to whither and die rather than be perpetuated by anyone. This still comes across even when moderns try to come up with acceptable rationalizations. EO apologist Peter Gilquist claims in Becoming Orthodox that if his wife had given birth to God that his respect for her would be greatly heightened. And there it is: husbands defile their wives by virtue of sex. This needs to be terminated and cauterized.
A proper response to this criticism is beyond this article, and most likely my competence. I am persuaded by the arguments of Newman and others, but I acknowledge that the papal claim, based on the historical evidence alone, is less than coercive. But the Catholic does not properly ground his belief in the supremacy and infallibility of the successors of Peter on the scholarly, and not so scholarly, research of historians but on the authoritative teaching of the Catholic Church (see my article “Newman did not become Catholic because of the Pope“). The authority of the Catholic Church comes first, then the authority of the Pope.
OK, I’m not able to read your essay on Newman at the moment, but I appreciate your candor here (Having read what you said earlier about Pope Leo I was all set to pounce). But still, you seem to have simply stopped time at the age you want. The church produces the Pope and then everything else is illegitimate rather than a further development in the Church. You appeal to the Church as your standard of truth for giving you the Pope but you only recognize as the Church that which is associated with the Pope.
On the Vulgate I’ll simply wait until I have time to collect sources. The idea that Trent represented a huge step backwards, a reinvention of the Church, is not simply a piece of Protestant self-justification. But arguing further in that direction needs to await another day.
One other thing: the writer seems to see himself as open to Eastern Orthodoxy in some way. This is interesting in light of Luther’s debate with Eck:
As for the article of Hus that “it is not necessary for salvation to believe the Roman Church superior to all others” I do not care whether this comes from Wyclif or from Hus. I know that innumerable Greeks have been saved though they never heard this article. It is not in the power of the Roman pontiff or of the Inquisition to construct new articles of faith. No believing Christian can be coerced beyond holy writ” (Roland Baintan, Here I Stand: A Life of Martin Luther [Nashville: Abingdon Press] p. 89, emphasis added).
So thank you for making my intended meaning clear, which is: Luther and Calvin and Zwingli and Pictet were in error on this point.
Oh, I didn’t know you were there when Joseph and Mary had sex….
…because surely you recognize that your argument that something did not happen (i.e. Mary remaining a virgin all her life) because you would deem such a thing ‘sick superstition’ is just a non sequitur.
‘Something didn’t happen because I do not want it to have happened.’ That’s about what you’re saying, isn’t it?
Petra, thanks for the universal negative point because I think it gives me chance to hopefully be more clear.
First off, you’re critique cuts both ways. I can’t claim to have seen them do it (thankfully!) and you can’t claim to be watching them 24/7 to make sure nothing got beyond hand-holding.
But what I have, which I took for granted, is the fact that marriage is meant for fellowship including sexual fellowship. Both Mary and Joseph would have grounds for divorcing the other for a refusal of conjugal rites under Jewish law. A celibate marriage is a perversion.
So what do we have?
1. references to Jesus’ brothers and sisters.
2. a claim that Joseph did not have intercourse with Mary until the point where Jesus was born.
3. a moral code requiring sex within marriage (Exod. 21 I think).
4. Apostolic authority prohibiting celibacy within marriage for more than a small amount of mutually agreed upon time (1 Cor 7).
Against this we have the universal belief of Christians
in late classical antiquity that Mary was “ever virgin.” The idea that such a belief somehow trumps all of the above is rather unconvincing unless you have already decided that early Christian beliefs are by definition beyond question.
And you raise an interesting point about that tradition. How did anyone know? How did anyone know with a certainty that Joseph and Mary never had sex? Did Mary teach this? To what purpose? Were other husbands and wives supposed to emulate her and Joseph?
Or did the Christian religion of classical antiquity tend to thrive among those who held convictions that led them to naturally assume Mary would remain a virgin?
There are a bunch of places to go from here but I’ll bring this short. For what its worth, I’ll point out that this is not about whether celibacy is superior to marriage. it is about whether celibacy is the ideal within marriage. To my mind that makes it tremendously more important.
Though I appreciate many things Catholic since Vatican II, I find the insistence upon celibacy, and its underlying gnostic tendencies, a little tiresome. For example, Benedict’s recent encyclical, like many practical papers released by recent Popes, deals with issues of marital love and intimacy…as if he would know.
Yes, I know the arguments regarding Paul and celibacy by the RC’s but unlike a Protestant church that may periodically be gifted with celibate men, it has an institutional policy regarding it. In other words, everyone who is giving you pastoral counsel about marriage and sex has supposedly not engaged in it. Would you visit a mechanic who has never been in or driven a car? I find it a little bizarre and why frankly, issues of sex and marriage in RC circles seems to have an etherial metaphysical emphasis rather than a “hey, the benefits of marital fidelity also feels physically good!”
A Joseph who is constantly beating himself with switches, taking cold showers, and glaring at his wife doesn’t comport with Judaism. Oh yeah, I forgot he was some sort of unber-mensch levitating on a cloud with Stoics!
Rad:
If people believed half the stuff you wrote here (including the horrors of marital sexual activities), the human race would have been extinct long ago.
Yawn.
Several things. First, though it may be wrong and sinful to pray to the dead, I can see no reason for being insulting and calling it Necromancy. Moreover, it is not necromancy. Necromancy deals with the vile raising the dead to life, and communicating with the dead–like in Hamlet. But prayer to the dead assumes that they are truly alive. Asserting that prayers to the dead are necromancy is like saying “Inside the stable (of the last battle) there is nothing but the stink and decay of death.”
Second, the objection to Mary and Joseph having sex does not have to do with whether sex is sinful or not. St. Thomas asserts it is not. (Summa II 153 2.) Yet still asserts that Joseph would have violated the temple of the Holy Spirit if he had had sex with Mary. (Summa III 28, 3). This is more like saying it would be to profane the Holy of Holies if there had been sexual intercourse inside it. I believe you would say this, yet this is not because you believe sex to be evil.
Perhaps the Catholics are wrong. But nothing is gained by being insulting. And anyone can attatch a picture of St. Thomas to a scare-crow and tilt against that.
But Matthew, the Holy of Holies is not the body of a married woman. Sex in the holy of holies is not holy; married sex within the body of a married woman IS holy.
So an argument from holiness of place doesn’t make sense, because holiness of place does not preclude the holy act of sex when the place is a wife’s body.
The word “necromancy” refers to consulting the dead in any fashion. It is forbidden. I’m all for the intercession of the saints–the ones who can actually hear us (and confront us when necessary).
According to the Apostle Paul, the fact that (all our) bodies are Temples means that we should not be immoral with prostitutes (1 Cor 6). On the other hand, he tells these holy people not to deprive spouses except perhaps for a short period that is mutually agreed upon (1 Cor 7).
But this brings us right back to the “sex is evil” problem. The message your sending is that husbands may only make love to their wives because their wives are not holy. Sex is only for a downgraded wife and a wife willonly submit to the experience because she is not far enough above her husband for it to matter.
Hey radfeminist, where’s the love?
It is comforting to know that you can be a progressive Tridentine.
On necromancy: If praying to those who have died is necromancy, then all Christians, Protestant, Catholic, Orthodox, Coptic etc. are guilty of it. Do we not all confess “he was crucified died and was buried”? But you say “he rose again the third day according to the scriptures.” Granted. But “Today you will be with me in Paradise.” Therefore just as it is not necromancy to pray to a resurrected and ascended Christ, so it is not necromancy (it may still be idolatry) to pray to a glorified (though not yet resurrected) saint. The author of “Shadowlands” said that Lewis said death is better than life in Narnia. He was referring to Prince Caspian at the end of “The Silver Chair” and to everyone at the end of “The Last Battle” but his criticism misses the mark. Lewis’ whole point was that such people are not truly dead.
Again, if it is necromancy, then it implies that were God to allow a saint to visit a living person, (as angels often did in the Old Testament), that person so visited would be guilty of Necromancy.
Finally, even if you say somehow that Christ is alive, but the saints are dead (which is a contradiction of what you believe-you believe the saints are very much alive in heaven) still for three days any sort of prayer, or at least any sort of prayer explicitly through Christ would have been necromancy. But this seems preposterous again.
Finally, you are equivocating on the definition of necromancy. If by necromancy we mean the attempt to through magic revivify the limbs of the departed, or to force the dead to come to our biding, which is what it meant in the O.T. then there is nothing about necromancy in prayers to the saints (who by the way are still alive), for this is in submission to them, not magically dominating them. Indeed, if it is necromancy, it is not idolatry.
Therefore your accusation that it is necromancy to pray to the saints proves 1) that they are not alive “to the eyes of the foolish they seemed to die, but they are in bliss.” (I know that’s from the Apocrypha, but I am really quoting the Lutheran Schutz’s Musicalische Exsequien). Second, it equivocates. Third, it proves all Christians are guilty of necromancy because Christ has died.
About the perpetual virginity of Mary: It is not claimed that the common wife is sufficiently evil, therefore it is permissible to enter her, but Mary is too good for Joseph to enter, any more than it was claimed in the Old Testament that the whole world was sufficiently evil for Uziah to enter it, but the Holy of Holies was too good for his body. Rather it claims (perhaps incorrectly) that just as the Holy of Holies was too holy for Uziah to enter because of the direct and peculiar presence of God, so Mary’s womb was too holy because of the direct and peculiar presence of God. Paul’s statement in Corinthians does not apply because though we are all the temple of the Holy Spirit, we are not all theotokos, and the argument is based on the theotokos. Perhaps the sort of holiness Mary’s womb possessed because she was Theotokos was not sufficient to prohibit Joseph and other siblings from entering. That would be a profitable and useful discussion. But the divide over the sort of holiness that was given to Mary’s womb because she was theotokos, not over the goodness of sex.
Furthermore, it is a common criticism of Catholics that they raise sex too high, making it mystical. But this criticism is directly in contradiction with your claim that Catholics believe the sex is evil. I am reminded of Chesterton’s statement that this proves not the incorrectness, but the correctness of the Catholic position.
(It may be that the Catholic elevation of sex also has something to do with the claims about profaning Mary. A discussion of this would also be profitable, but again, only a discussion where it is remembered that the Protestants have a lower view of sex, and stop slandering their Catholic brothers as if the Catholics not only had a lower view of sex than the Protestants, but believed sex to be evil.)
Matthew,
This is the problem I have with those who would be Catholic apologists: you just pick and choose from a smorgasbord of ideas you have on Holy Writ which you think will support your argument…often out of context. For example here you say:
“Therefore just as it is not necromancy to pray to a resurrected and ascended Christ, so it is not necromancy (it may still be idolatry) to pray to a glorified (though not yet resurrected) saint.”
But the apostle Paul in 1 Thess. 4 calls those who have died and are in heaven, “the dead in Christ.” Christ is the only member of the new humanity who is alive both body and spirit. You have proved my point for me in demonstrating that there is a substantive difference between the two. Also, you fail to mention that this resurrected man is also the second person of the Trinity and thus, praying to him is in complete continuity with both Testaments.
Regarding Mary, you have misplaced the location of the Holy of Holies. Scripture does not indicate that the womb of Mary was the Holy of Holies rather it was the babe within who IS the Holoy of Holies.
See Mark, I knew you wouldn’t get away with that necromancy argument. The only way it works for you is if the saints in Christ are dead, dead, dead. Samuel in Sheol in the OT is a different thing. Anyway, asking for the saints to intercede for me is not the same thing as trying to use witchcraft to call them up. Your credibility would go way up if you just conceded this point.
e. donovan,
Where, pray tell, in the Scriptures are we ever told to seek the intercession of the departed? I think Luke 16 (Rich man and Lazarus) puts this one to bed.
Matthew,
You made this appeal:
“Again, if it is necromancy, then it implies that were God to allow a saint to visit a living person, (as angels often did in the Old Testament), that person so visited would be guilty of Necromancy.”
I think Samuel’s visit to Saul fits the bill.
The problem I have is that the “becoming the holy of holies” argument carries an unstated implication that it also “ceases to be the normal body of a normal married human woman.”
The two are not mutually exclusive. (I also agree here with garrett that the location of the Holy of Holies is misplaced, but even if that were not the case, there is a still a problem with your argument.) There is no reason to believe that in being hallowed by the presence of the Savior, Mary’s body ceased to be what it was — the body of a woman given in marriage. It was both a specially holy place and a married woman’s body — it was not a specially holy place instead of a woman’s body, but rather a specially holy woman’s body. Therefore, there can still be nothing unholy about faithful sexuality in that context.
I might add tangentially that viewing sex more mystically is not necessary elevating it. The highest understanding of something is not necessarily the most rarefied one, but the truest one.
pentamom:
Also, since Moses was vivified like Christ at the transfiguration (after being in very close contact with the holy) was he no longer a candidate for conjugal delights?
Just a few quick clairifications. My argument was not that Mary was so holy that she chould not have had sex, but that the difference between the Protestant and Catholic understanding of the virginity of Mary stems from a different understanding of her holiness. Perhaps Catholics are wrong. Perhaps we Protestants are. But the difference is not over whether sex is evil, but what sort of holy Mary was.
Second, when the height of the understanding is considered, the highest understanding of something is the true one. But when the alleged height of the thing in question is considered (which is the question facing us, for we are asking if Catholics believe sex is evil) the true conception is not always the highest. If I were to say “so and so’s croaking voice is the best voice in America” would you not object to this that it is false becuase it elevates her voice to highly?
Finally, my point is that the summoning of Samuel was fundamentally different for it tries to magically bring forth his soul from the place of the lifeless, where as a visitation from a saint would be a visitation from a very living person, and more like Gabriel visiting Mary than Samuel visiting Saul. Unless of course you think the dead in Christ are merely rotting in their graves, and not in heaven.
I actually, as I said initially, do not believe in praying to the saints. I’m not saying that Scripture commands us to do it.
But that’s not at all the same as saying that RC/EO practice is identical with necromancy. In necromancy, you’re trying to get the dead to appear before you and do things for you. These words from the liturgy of St. John Chyrsostom, which I think are fairly representative, have a very different spirit, I think: “Remembering our most holy, pure, blessed, and glorious Lady, the Theotokos and ever virgin Mary, with all the saints, let us commit ourselves and one another and our whole life to Christ our God.” (Now I would omit “ever virgin” from that prayer, but I think that “remembering” the dead in Christ who live in Him in this way is not sinful.)
I think you’d be hard pressed to say this prayer for the deceased (from the same liturgy) is necromancy either:
“Furthermore we pray for the repose of the soul(s) of the servant(s) of God (name-s of the deceased), departed from this life, and that Thou wilt pardon all his (or her or their) sins, both voluntary and involuntary.”
Matthew — I’m not saying this kills your whole point, but I’m really not getting a distinction between Samuel and a saint. What underlies your (apparent) assumption that Saul thought he was trying to bring back a Really Dead person, as opposed to doing that which is (supposedly) legitimate in contacting one participating in eternal life?