Taken from the book Világnézeti Válaszok (Answers Regarding Worldviews) by P. Béla Bangha
If we believe in Jesus, that is enough for salvation. Jesus says, “he that believeth in me, although he be dead, shall live” [John 11:25]
The same Jesus who said this also said, “But if thou wilt enter into life, keep the commandments.” [Matthew 19:17], and also this: “Not every one that saith to me, Lord, Lord, shall enter into the kingdom of heaven: but he that doth the will of my Father who is in heaven, he shall enter into the kingdom of heaven.” [Matthew 7:21]
It is clear, then, that Jesus does not regard mere, theoretical faith as a condition of salvation, but living faith, that is, faith which is manifested in the keeping of all the commandments, including, of course, the laws of the Church which He ordained and to which He gave the authority to govern the believers spiritually.
Therefore, whoever “has faith” but lives an immoral life, divorces and remarries, does not go to Mass, does not go to confession, does not receive Communion, hates and harms his neighbour, or disobeys the Church, is not saved. “So faith also, if it have not works, is dead in itself.” (James 2:17.)
According to Scripture, good works are not necessary for salvation.
This basic teaching of the reformers was conceived in the terrible error of not realizing that when St. Paul contrasts “works of the law” with faith as the author of salvation, by the law he means here the Torah, the Jewish laws of circumcision and other ritual laws, whose worthlessness he explains in terms of the faith and new law that Jesus brought. It is an absurd idea to conclude, with Martin Luther, that the divine and ecclesiastical laws have lost their significance and that there is no longer any need in Christianity for good works, keeping the commandments, practising charity and other virtues. This frightening doctrine must have been largely responsible for the moral upheaval, the rapid decay, of which Luther and his fellow reformers themselves later lamented. Good works are so necessary for salvation that an entire Book of the New Testament, the Epistle of St. James the Apostle, deals mainly with them. “What shall it profit, my brethren, if a man say he hath faith, but hath not works? Shall faith be able to save him?” “For even as the body without the spirit is dead; so also faith without works is dead.” (James 2:14, 26). Christ our Lord Himself says that at the last judgment the Son of Man “shall come in the glory of his Father… and then will he render to every man according to his works” (Matthew 16:27).
It would be a very comfortable gospel if it were based on the principle that good works were not necessary, and therefore this is the right instruction: “Sin boldly, but believe more boldly”.
All men are predestined either to salvation or to damnation. We have no free will for good.
This is the terrible teaching of John Calvin, but we believe it is contrary to reason as well as to the justice of God. Why, then, do the Scriptures constantly proclaim that God is just if He has predestined who will receive eternal salvation and who will receive eternal damnation? If He determines beforehand who shall be saved, and gives no free will for good? He punishes us for what we could not have done otherwise! The God who has predestined us to damnation without our free will is no longer God, but a monster. Calvin’s followers also feel this and therefore want to explain away Calvin’s terrible doctrine in every possible way. One of their Hungarian leaders, for example, explains predestination in such a way that he who believes has nothing to fear, for he himself is already predestined to salvation. Yes, but the problem for other people remains in all its awfulness. The question whether God has destined us, this or that man, for salvation, is not settled by this. As soon as God has destined just one unfortunate Black person or Chinaman to eternal damnation, regardless of his free will, at that moment God is no longer God, but an unjust and cruel tyrant.
Calvin responds to this: This predestination is not injustice on God’s part, for what God does is just because God does it. But this is typical sophistry and does not resolve the issue at all. The question is precisely: can God do something that is manifestly and flagrantly unjust? To condemn a person to eternal damnation without his own individual sin which is due to his own free will is in itself and conceptually a terrible injustice that cannot be whitewashed by blaming God. Either God is just, in which case He can under no circumstances will such a predestination, or He is not just, but cruel and wicked, in which case He is no longer God.
The Scriptures themselves speak of predestination, as do St. Augustine and St. Thomas.
Yes, they do, but either in the sense that God, foreseeing man’s free-will action, predestines him from eternity to salvation or damnation as a deserved reward or punishment, and this is essentially different from the Calvinistic, absolute, and independent of free-will, predestination to hell; or in the sense that certain graces and invitations are predestined to him from eternity, and without any fault on man’s part, e.g. being called into the true Church or to a higher sanctity etc. But there is no example or proof, either in Scripture or among church doctors, that God predestines a man to damnation independently of his merit or demerit.
Experience also shows that man has no free will for good.
Experience only shows that man has a strong tendency to sin, and that mere human goodwill, without the help of grace, is not sufficient to overcome these sinful tendencies permanently. But that man has no free will at all for good, as Luther says, is by no means proved by experience. On the contrary, it is proven by experience, as Scripture itself says, that by the strengthening grace of God “do all things”. (Phil. 4:13.) Otherwise, why should God command us to keep the commandments, if we are not able to keep them? And why would He threaten us with eternal punishment if we could not do otherwise than we did? For then God would demand the impossible of us, and punish us unjustly, which is incompatible with the perfection of God.
The rites of the Church are only there to dazzle the simple-minded faithful.
If this is true, the same could be said of the rites of all denominations, but also of the rites of state and social life. Why, then, the splendid coronation of a king, the solemn opening of parliament, the ornate processions of the army, the solemn forms of a wedding or funeral, and the like? It is natural that the immediate purpose of ceremonies is to make a strong impression on the senses of the spectators and participants. But why? It is always for the sake of a great and noble idea, to illustrate it. Is it not worthy, then, that, for the sake of the greatest and noblest idea, the idea of religion, and of any imperfect illustration of the greatness of God, the Church should endeavor to offer the most beautiful and sublime that can be offered, and that has been sanctified by the custom of thousands of years?
Yes, but the Church is all about ceremony.
Absolutely not! The ritual is always a means and a framework, the essence is always the worship of God and the asking for and transmission of grace. Even in the sacraments this is the point, although in those the external act also plays a direct role in obtaining or increasing grace.
Why does the Catholic Church insist on Latin in its rites?
Firstly, the mother tongue plays a far greater role in the prayer life of the Catholic Church than in that of any non-Catholic denomination anyway, because the rich prayer and devotional life of the Catholic Church, its litanies, chaplets, hymns, popular devotions, are all in the sweet mother tongue and far exceed in quantity the one hour of weekly worship that we find in non-Catholic churches.
But secondly, the Catholic Church insists on Latin as the ecclesiastical language because it wants to express its unity beyond all national and linguistic differences. It is easy to get along with the mother tongue where the people are monolingual, but where they are bilingual or multilingual, unfortunate national rivalries arise at the same time, and Holy Mother Church does not wish to include these rivalries at least in the official functions of worship. Latin is for everyone, there can be no rivalry.
Latin also expresses the unrivalled ancientry and apostolic continuity of the Church. Latin is the bridge which unites us, the children of the 20th century, in an unbroken, living continuity with the ancient Christians and their worship, with the prayers and songs of the martyred bishops and popes, priests and lay faithful of the catacombs and amphitheatres, and with one another across frontiers and oceans. What an uplifting feeling to know that this Greek Kyrie eleison, this Latin Pax vobis, was already cried and sung by the Church of the Martyrs, and is still sung by the Church in England and France, in Spain and Italy, in Constantinople and China, in Madagascar and in the churches of San Francisco! This unified, ancient Latin language is a beautiful symbolism of the eternal Christian Church, which transcends time and space, and it would be a pity to sacrifice it when there is ample opportunity to use the vernacular, and the meaning of the Latin text is easily understood with the help of widely used Hungarian missals.
St. Paul says that Christ has redeemed us once and for all. Why then is there still a need for sacraments?
So that the saving grace of Christ may truly come to our souls. Christ Himself ordained these means of grace, such as baptism, forgiveness of sins and the Blessed Sacrament, precisely so that we might individually receive the graces of salvation. He says of baptism, for example, that whoever does not get baptised will be damned. So, it is not enough that he has redeemed us, we also need the sacrament of baptism in order to be saved. And the same is true of the other sacraments ordained by Christ. Salvation itself was a mighty fact of the God-man, but there are certain conditions for receiving it individually, which Christ Himself laid down.
The 7 sacraments cannot be shown to be of Christ; at most, the sacraments of Baptism and the Sacrament of the Altar. Most of them are purely ecclesiastical, human inventions and as such are to be rejected.
Catholicism knows 7 sacraments because Christ did indeed ordain 7 sacraments. He ordained not only the two sacraments mentioned above, but also the Sacrament of Penance (John 20:23), Anointing of the Sick (James 5:14), Ordination (Luke 22:19; I Corinthians 11:24) and matrimony, which St. Paul would not otherwise call a “great sacrament” (Ephesians 5:32). Moreover, even if the founding by Christ of one or another of these sacraments were not explicitly mentioned in Scripture, this would not prove anything, because the idea that Jesus’ actions should be accepted only if they happen to be recorded in Scripture is fundamentally mistaken; Jesus did not entrust the teaching of the faithful to Scripture, but to the living preaching of the Church (Mt 28:19; Mk 16:15).
The teaching of the Church on the origin of the seven sacraments from Christ is so old and universal that even the most ancient schismatic churches, some of which separated from the body of the Church as early as the 6th century, invariably profess the seven sacraments and their origin from Christ. In contrast, it is of little importance that in the 16th century Martin Luther and John Calvin arbitrarily cut the number of sacraments. In the Church of England, this arbitrariness was already repented of, and Protestants there are increasingly returning to the doctrine of the seven sacraments.
Baptism of children is invalid, the apostles only baptized adults. After all, a child has no sin.
The whole Baptist schism is based on this misconception. First of all, a child has no personal sin, but he has the stain of original sin on his soul, that is, the absence of the supernatural grace which God pours into souls through baptism.
Secondly, how do Baptists know that the apostles only baptized adults? Scripture says nothing about this! If Scripture is the only authority, they are already on the wrong track!
Thirdly, if Christ our Lord made baptism a condition of salvation for all men (John 3:5), it would be cruel to exclude children from this sublime means of salvation, for a child can die young and then what will become of him? He will not be damned in the strict sense of the word, but without baptism he can in no case attain to the beatific vision of God. Moreover, St. Paul says of baptism that it is the circumcision of Christians (Col. 2:11); and children have also been circumcised.
Christ was baptized only when he was an adult.
What a proof! The baptism of Christ is not at all the same as the Christian baptism, for there it was only the baptism of John the Baptist, a simple sign of repentance. Besides, in Jesus’ childhood, the law of the New Testament and the sacrament of baptism in the New Testament had not been ordained at all, so it is natural that Jesus could not have availed himself of it in any form. In Jesus’ childhood, only circumcision had been ordained and Jesus had already received it in childhood.
But the child cannot yet believe, and Jesus says that salvation requires faith and baptism.
That is correct, the child must believe as soon as he comes to the use of his reason; but he may be baptized before that. There is no argument to the contrary.
If baptism is so necessary to salvation, what will become of the millions of children who die in infancy and are not baptized?
Such children, according to the plain word of Jesus, cannot enter into the beatific vision of God. (John 3:5.) But because they have no personal sin, they cannot go to hell either. It may be supposed, then, that God will give them some natural eternal happy existence, what theologians call limbus.
Which church will the baptized person belong to?
Since there is only one true Church ordained by Christ, the Catholic Church, every person who is validly baptized becomes a child of the Catholic Church and ceases to belong to it only when he consciously opposes it and declares himself a member of one of the denominations which have separated from it.
Confirmation is an ecclesiastical invention and not a sacrament of grace.
Scripture tells us that when St. Peter and St. John the Apostles went to Samaria, they prayed for the believers they found there, who had already been baptized, “laid their hands upon them, and they received the Holy Ghost” (Acts 8:14-17). St. Paul also mentions the “imposition of hands” as one element of the teaching of Christ. (Heb. 6:2.) This means that the apostles already confirmed, and obviously on the basis of a command of Christ, because it involved the “reception of the Holy Spirit”. So the objection is incorrect.
Jesus is present in the Eucharistic bread and wine, but the bread and wine are not changed, not “transubstantiated” into His body and blood. The doctrine of transubstantiation, which was introduced only by the Council of Trent, is therefore false.
That the doctrine of transubstantiation was introduced only by the Council of Trent is a sheer fallacy; it was invented only by the faith innovators. Jesus Himself did not say: in this bread is my body, and in this wine is my blood, but He said: this (which I hold in my hand) is my body, this is the cup of my blood. So “this”, which was bread and wine before, is now my body and my blood. So it is no longer bread and wine. This is what we have called from ancient times the transformation, or since the Council of Trent, more precisely, transubstantiation, and this is how the words of Jesus were understood throughout Christian antiquity. Only the formal adoption of the word transubstantiation comes from the Council of Trent, the concept and dogma being as old as Christianity.
There is no mention of transubstantiation in Scripture.
But there is, if not in the form of this theological term, but in substance, in content. There is no mention of “stormcalming” in the Bible, only that Jesus miraculously calmed the storm. Nor is there any mention of the “Trinity” in the Bible, only that God is “Father, Son and Holy Spirit”. The word “Christianity” itself is never used in the gospel. Those who look not at the words but at the meaning of things cannot deny that Jesus proclaimed a transubstantiation, a transformation, when He declared that what was bread was now His body, and what was wine was now His blood.
Jesus is present in the Eucharist, but only at the moment of reception.
On what do those who preach this base their doctrine? Where did Jesus say “this is my body now, but only at the moment you receive it and then it will be simply bread again”? Those who refer so much to the Bible and do not want to accept anything that is not explicitly stated in it: they should show from Scripture where the Lord Jesus said this? According to Jesus, the bread and the wine are simply and forever changed into His holy body and blood at the word of transubstantiation, and will remain so as long as the appearances, the accompanying phenomenons of the bread and wine, which are subject to our senses, remain.
If the transsubstantiated bread and wine were subjected to physical or chemical examination, it would be found to be not human flesh and blood, but mere bread and wine.
A great discovery! As if the Catholic Church didn’t know that! It is only natural that the “appearances”, the appearances of bread and wine should persist, with their physical and chemical properties. No one denies this. The only question is, does God Almighty have the power to replace the bread and wine with Himself, while preserving the appearances? It would be difficult to show that God is weak and incapable of doing so, that the divine omnipotence no longer extends to this. For then it would no longer be omnipotence.
Not even God can do everything, e.g. he cannot make five out of two times two.
Something which is an intrinsic impossibility, that is, what is essentially nothing but an empty word, God of course cannot do either. But that which has no internal, conceptual contradiction, that which has a wise and great purpose and meaning: God can do it anyway.
The Host does not enter the “heart” of the communicant, as the priests preach, but into the stomach, where it dissolves like any other food.
If the priests preach that Jesus enters the “heart” in Communion, they are right to preach this, for, according to the Spirit and grace, Communion makes the Lord a wonderful guest of the soul and heart. Physically, however, the holy body does not, of course, go into the material heart, but into the stomach, where the sacramental presence of Jesus naturally disappears as the original appearances of the bread and wine dissolve. Where is the contradiction here? Indeed, does this not also make profound sense? Physical reception as a symbol of spiritual nourishment and communion with Christ: what a beautiful and expressive symbol! If Jesus wanted to be our food, by the reception of His holy body and blood as “real food and real drink”, then this means that He wants to come to us as if He were real food. In other words, He wants to enter into a certain physical communion of life with us, the kind in which a parent lives in physical communion with his child, a vine with a branch [John 15:5]. This is just another sign and testimony of the Lord’s great love for us; he does not shrink back from us and isn’t disgusted by us even in this respect. Of course, the purpose of this nourishment is not the same as that of simple, earthly food, to nourish our bodies, but to make bodily nourishment a means and a symbol of spiritual nourishment and of supernatural union with us.
Jesus tells us that when we receive the Lord’s Supper, we should not only eat of the bread, but also drink of the cup. Yet why does the Church keep the faithful away from the cup?
She did not keep away from it in the beginning and she does not keep away from it today, for example, those who are in the Eastern rite. In the Western rite there are two reasons for withholding the chalice: one dogmatic and one practical. The dogmatic reason is that under the appearance bread is not a bloodless, dry, decomposed body, but the living body of Jesus, and therefore also his blood, and vice versa: under the blood is not just some lifeless, spilled blood, but the whole Jesus. Whoever, therefore, communicates under either one or the other appearances, receives the whole Jesus; there is therefore no strict necessity that everyone should communicate under both appearances. Communion under two kinds was demanded in the West by those who denied the doctrine itself; therefore the Church did not allow it, while in the East no objection was raised to the ancient practice. In practice, however, communion under two kinds, at least where masses of people receive communion, can lead to very unpleasant consequences. Just think of the risk of dripping, contamination and the disgust that the use of a common cup inevitably brings! Since, therefore, communion under two kinds is not really necessary to the essence of the matter, and since, on the other hand, it involves many dangers of irreverence, the Church, on the basis of her authority from Christ, has ordered that only priests should communicate under two kinds, and only in the Mass, and that the faithful in the Western Church should receive Christ only under the appearance of bread.
But Jesus said of the cup, Drink ye all of this! [Matthew 26:27] So not only the priests.
Only Jesus addressed this saying to the apostles, not to the faithful. From this, therefore, we cannot deduce the universal command to use the cup.
Is this not an obvious change of Jesus’ command?
No, it is at most a certain formal restriction, which the Church has the right to make. The practice of reception under both kinds is, therefore, maintained in the Church, just as Christ introduced it; for, when our Lord Christ ordained the Blessed Sacrament, it is probable that Jesus Himself only gave communion under both kinds only to priests. As to the manner in which the lay faithful were to receive Holy Communion, Jesus did not order anything in particular, but left that to the Church.
It is like inviting someone for a visit and then after the first course, ask him to leave so that only the priests can partake of the rest.
This is a completely false explanation. For he who receives the Lord Jesus under the appearance of bread, receives exactly the same as he who drinks from the cup. It is only formally that the priests have an advantage in this respect, which is, as stated above, a perfectly normal thing. The illustration is therefore false and the comparison is biased.
Is he who communicates unworthily also fed spiritually by Christ?
He who receives the holy body unworthily, that is, in a state of grave sin, without the state of grace and without the festive robe of love, also physically receives the Lord as much as anyone else, but not spiritually, because the obstacle is there in the sinner’s soul, and so the sacrifice does not produce its own effects of grace in him. This is the unworthy sacrifice, of which the Apostle Paul says that it only increases the condemnation of the soul: such a man “eateth and drinketh judgment to himself, not discerning the body of the Lord” (I Cor. 11:29).
In the Apostles’ Creed or Nicene Creed, there is no mention of the Eucharist.
This is perfectly understandable for two reasons. First, because in the oldest confessions of faith mentioned there are very few Christian truths at all, so to speak only those which relate to the doctrine of the Trinity and the Incarnation, against the heresies of the time. No one then attacked the Eucharist, and so, like a thousand other things, it is not specifically mentioned in the Creed. Secondly, the doctrine of the Eucharist was shrouded in the “discipline of the secret” by the Christians of old, that is, it was not mentioned at all to the outsiders, the pagans who mocked and misinterpreted everything; and the creeds contained precisely the elements of the outward profession of faith.
Is there any evidence that the first Christians were already celebrating mass and receiving communion?
But how much so! Already St Paul, in 1 Corinthians 11:20-34, gives undeniable proof that the Eucharistic act, that is to say, the Mass and Communion, was the essential act of Christian worship, even though it was not then called that, but called Eucharist.
This is also attested to in the ancient Christian document Didache, written towards the end of the first century, which already refers to the Eucharist as a “sacrificial act”. In the middle of the second century, St Justin Martyr, in his apologetic writing, gives an account of the worship of Christians, and although he, too, speaks of the Eucharist only in a vague way due to the pagans, he unmistakably indicates that the Eucharist and the partaking of it is at the heart of Christian worship. The whole of Christian antiquity is full of clear traces and evidence of the Eucharist and Communion. St Augustine invites his fellow priests to pray at the altar for his dead mother, and expounds the whole theology of the sacrificial nature of the Mass.
Luther and Calvin rejected the Mass on the grounds that Jesus, by his sacrifice on the cross, had redeemed mankind once and for all and that there was no need for ever more sacrifices.
Indeed: new sacrifices are not necessary. But the mysterious renewal and presentation of the one sacrifice on Calvary is necessary. The Mass is not a new sacrifice, not independent of the sacrifice of Calvary, but identical with it, ordered by the Lord precisely so that it might be an eternal, living memorial of his sacrifice. “Do this for a commemoration of me.” [Luke]
If the Mass is not a new sacrifice, there is no need for it.
Yes there is, because Jesus Himself commanded that what He did we do in memory of Him. He wanted His sacrificial act to be in a certain sense constantly before God and the faithful, by which He Himself would constantly plead for us and directly shower on us the fruits of His redeeming sacrifice.
How can we prove that Jesus really wanted the Mass?
From the fact that He Himself first made a sacrifice by the institution of the Blessed Sacrament, when He gave His holy body and blood to His disciples under distinct kinds and using separate words, that is to say, separated from one another, and said of His body, “This is my body, which is given for you” [Luke 22:19], and of his blood, “which shall be shed for you” [Luke 22:20]. The commentators of the Scriptures prove on the basis of linguistics that these words are to be understood in the present tense, as the Greek text also indicates a simultaneity, that is to say, they don’t mean “this is the body which will be broken on the cross tomorrow”, but that it is broken here, now, in the form of a sacrifice. There, in the Cenacle, Jesus gave His body there broken and His blood shed in the chalice, to His disciples, which is obviously the expression of the first sacrifice, of death. This is also the text of Luke, which reads: “This is the chalice, the new testament in my blood, which shall be shed for you.” (22:20). According to the original Greek text, the “shed” here does not refer directly to the blood, but to the cup, or more precisely, to the blood in the cup. The chalice, however, was not used at all at the crucifixion, so the “shedding” is also done here, at the Last Supper, where the holy Blood shed is in the chalice. In other words: the Last Supper event was indeed a sacrificial act and so is the Mass as a renewal of it in accordance with the ordinance of Christ.
The Mass is nothing other than the fulfillment of Jesus’ ordinance in perfect obedience: the transformation of the bread and wine into the real, broken body of Jesus and the real, shed blood of Jesus, that is, into the sacrificial presence of Jesus.
How do I know that Jesus did not only mean the apostles, but that He also applied this provision and authority to the priests of today?
It is because Jesus ordained a priesthood in general (the apostolic office is also a priestly office) and endowed it with all the necessary authority for the salvation of souls and the leadership of the Church. And since Jesus came to redeem and invite into His kingdom not only the humanity of His own time, but also all humanity that would follow Him, He clearly intended His Church, and in it the distinctive and essential priestly powers, to be eternal. He Himself expressly speaks of His kingdom, that is, His Church, as enduring to the “consummation of the world” [Matthew 28:20]. In the form, of course, in the constitution, with the essential arrangements and institutions which He has ordained as its foundation.
There is no such perpetual sacrifice in the Bible.
But there is! As we have already explained, the Gospels and St Paul’s letter to the Corinthians speak in this sense. But this eternal Eucharistic sacrifice is already mentioned in the prophecies. In the prophet Malachias we read that the Lord God severely rebukes the Jews of that time for their sacrificial acts, which were often only done outwardly, and with a defiled spirit. I have no need of such sacrifice, the Lord continues, I will provide a better sacrifice. He then continues with these wonderful words, “For from the rising of the sun even to the going down, my name is great among the Gentiles, and in every place there is sacrifice, and there is offered to my name a clean oblation” (1:11). Note: in the Hebrew, the word for “sacrifice” here is replaced by a term by which the Jews meant only a bread-like meal offering. In other words, God Himself declares that instead of the Jewish sacrifices He will ordain a perfect and pure food offering, and that He will do so for the whole world. It is certain that these words, which were of great importance, and at that time still a complete mystery to the Jews, could only refer to the sacrifice of the altar, and were only perfectly fulfilled in that sacrifice: that one and pure meal offering which was to be presented to the Lord everywhere from the east to the west, so that His name might be glorified among the nations.
Confession was not ordered by Jesus.
The sacrament of penance was indeed ordered by Jesus, quite clearly (John 20:23), and from this it clearly follows that Holy Mother Church has the right to demand an exact confession of sins, for otherwise it would be impossible, according to Jesus’ order, to decide wisely and justly whether in this or that case the priest, as representative of the Church, should “forgive” or “retain” [John 20:23] sins. If there is no confession, how does the priest know what to forgive and what to retain? Should he hand out forgiveness without thinking? Should he forgive the unworthy who will not reform and retain the sins of a repentant? And how else can the priest be sure that the sinner is truly repentant, that he has truly repented, and that he is willing to repent?
Confession was introduced by the Fourth Lateran Council in 1215.
The Lateran Council only established the law that every Catholic must confess and receive communion at least once a year. But confession itself (and communion) was not introduced by the Council, because it had been around since the very beginning of Christianity. The heresies of the 2nd and 3rd centuries, such as Montanism and Novatianism, accused the Church of forgiving sins too easily. St. John Chrysostom speaks of a striking case of a priest who heard confessions and who abused the confessional, and this happened in the 4th century. Frequent confession was already practised by the monks of St Benedict (d. 547). So it is not true that confession was introduced only in the 13th century.
I confess only to God.
You want to determine, guilty man, what is enough for forgiveness? Is it not determined by God, the one whom you have wronged? Since when is it customary for the sinner to determine how he shall make restitution for his sin? He who is a sinner and desires forgiveness, let him not seek to set the conditions of grace himself, but let him seek to know what conditions God has made for forgiveness of sins!
If our Lord Christ entrusted to the priesthood the dispensation of forgiveness of sins, or the retention of sins in heaven (John 20:23), then it is not enough to confess only “to God”! You can confess, but God does not give absolution, because He has entrusted it to the Church.
The priest is also a sinner, how can he be the judge of consciences?
As a sinful man, the priest himself is obliged to go to confession. As a pastor, however, he does not judge on the basis of his own innocence or holiness of life, but as Christ’s anointed and delegated representative.
Confession is a temptation to reckless sinning. “I’m going to confess it anyway,” many people say, and then they sin just as much as before.
He who does and feels so confesses invalidly. For confession is not the only important condition for the forgiveness of sins, but rather deep and sincere repentance and a serious and resolute firm purpose of amendment. If some people confess without a serious and firm purpose of amendment, they are deceiving themselves, but it is not possible to judge the value of the institution of confession in this way. In reality, it is sincere confession and contrition that are the most remarkable means of avoiding sin and improving our lives. People do not become more frivolous through true confession, but on the contrary, they become more serious, better, more moral, more heroic.
The Church used to hand out forgiveness for money.
This fairy tale is also the worst kind of controversialist literature and fabrication of religious hatred. The Church has never promised nor given forgiveness for money. It has sometimes made the obtaining of indulgences conditional on a certain charitable donation, and this, we may allow, was so clumsily and perversely proclaimed by certain overzealous monks in Luther’s day, as if the charitable donation itself were the price of obtaining indulgences. However, the Church never taught this and immediately intervened against abuses of indulgences. Moreover, indulgences are not themselves “forgiveness of sins”, but only the remission of certain temporary punishments by virtue of the Church’s power to loose and bind.
There is no mention of Anointing of the Sick in Scripture.
There is! Let us look at the letter of St. James the Apostle, which says: “Is any man sick among you? Let him bring in the priests of the church, and let them pray over him, anointing him with oil in the name of the Lord” etc. [James 5:14] Why then should the sick be anointed with oil according to the Apostle, if not by divine ordinance, and because oil is in this case an external sign and instrument of divine effects? The expression “in the name of the Lord” is also, according to the Judaeo-Aramaic usage, “according to the commandment, the ordinance of the Lord”. This is why the apostle James attributes divine effects to this anointing (“and the Lord shall raise him up: and if he be in sins, they shall be forgiven him”) [James 5:15]. In other words, according to St. James, the sacrament of Anointing of the Sick was not ordained by the Church, but by Christ himself. This is also the way the faith of the Church has always held.
When did Jesus establish the Sacrament of Holy Orders?
Immediately at the Last Supper, when He instituted the Sacrament of the Altar, and immediately ordered that the same thing, the presentation of the Eucharistic Sacrifice, “[d]o this for a commemoration of me” [Luke 22:19]. By this He ordained the apostles bishops and priests. And since He ordained the Eucharist to the end of the world, according to the sentence above, according to St. Paul (1 Cor. 11:26), it is clear that he ordained the priesthood to be perpetual.
In addition to the Blessed Sacrament, He gave to the same apostles ordained bishops, the right to forgive sins and the spiritual direction of the faithful, likewise obviously as a perpetual institution. The ecclesiastical order is therefore an ordinance of Christ; hence we read in Scripture that the apostles themselves ordained bishops and appointed deacons.
There can be religion without priests.
First of all, there cannot be a Christian religion without priests, because the Christian religion was founded by Jesus Christ to have priests as leaders, preachers and ministers of the sacraments. Jesus Christ undoubtedly entrusted to priests the spreading of his spiritual kingdom, the instruction and the spiritual government of the faithful, the administration of religious and moral affairs. No one can deny this. One need only glance at the Gospels to be convinced of this. This cannot be changed, even if someone shouts himself hoarse in repeating his own deceptive rhetoric. Secondly, everyday experience shows a hundred and a thousand times day after day that those who are enemies of the priests are not very good at religion anyway. It is not true, therefore, that they “want religion but do not want priests”. On the contrary, they do not need God, they do not need Jesus, they do not need religion, a pure life, morality, the Ten Commandments, conscience; and they do not need priests, because priests preach it. Let us look around: who hates priests? All thieves and evildoers, all […] adulterers, all lazy people and those who exploit others, all rabble-rousers […]. Honest men never have a quarrel with the clergy, at least with the clergy who are zealous, […] who life a pure life, that is to say, the very clergy who most vigorously defend and represent the principles and interests of the Church.
St. Peter says that we are all members of the “holy priesthood”. (1. Pet. 2, 5.) There is therefore no sense in a separate ordination.
It is interesting how one obscure scripture passage can be one-sidedly played off against ten of the clearest other scripture passages.
The Scriptures are full of dispositions on hierarchy and clearly distinguish between ecclesiastical prelates and ordinary believers, between ecclesiastical superiors who administer the sacraments and govern the souls, between the teaching church and the learning or hearing church.
This cannot be contrasted with St. Peter’s description of the whole Church as “holy priesthood”. In a certain sense and to a certain extent we are all indeed partakers of Christ’s priesthood, in so far as we are all involved in his redemptive sacrifice; but we are not all partakers of the hierarchical priesthood in the strict sense, of which Christ and the apostles so often speak.
The Catholic Church only allows Bibles approved by the Pope to be read.
This statement also confuses true and false. Those who are trained and qualified in theology are given permission by the Church to read any Scripture texts, even those that are obviously falsified. The Church, on the other hand, requires the faithful in general to read only those editions of Scripture which have been approved by the legitimate ecclesiastical authority and to which are appended explanatory notes taken from the Fathers and ecclesiastical scholars. In this way, the sacred text is in no way altered, but the Church is trying to avoid misinterpretations and nonsense. St. Peter himself writes of St. Paul’s letters that they are in places “hard to be understood”, difficult to understand, and easily misinterpreted by the ignorant (2 Pet. 3, 16). It is indeed an absurd idea that every uneducated and unauthorized person should read his own uninformed ideas into the Scriptures.
And the fact that we are only allowed to read ecclesiastically approved Scripture is very understandably explained by the fact that the Church, out of respect for the Word of God alone, cannot allow any random individual, much less conscious fraudsters and forgers, to falsify scripture at their pleasure or to “translate” it as freely as they please. […] After all, no one can rewrite the Hungarian code of law just as he pleases; let alone the Word of God, Holy Scripture!
The State, as the ultimate source of law, is above the Church; for the Church has only as many rights as it receives from the State.
This is a totally outdated, liberal theory of law, which is based on completely wrong foundations. At one time, the proponents of the superstition of State omnipotence and the legal positivists did indeed claim that the State was the exclusive source of all rights on earth. But this is not true. There are human rights which are deeper, more sacred and independent of the state than any state law, rights which man would have even if he lived outside the state. Thus, for example, every man has a natural, God-given, fundamental right to his own life, to preserve his human dignity, to follow his conscience and the moral law, and this right is absolutely independent of any state power. It is also directly from the Creator, and not from the State, that man derives the right to start a family, to bring children into the world and to educate them according to his own conscience. There is not only a state right, but also a divine right, of two kinds: natural and positive. Both are completely independent of state law.
The Church is as sovereign a body and as autonomous a source of law as the state. The State is sovereign in its own sphere, in the external establishment of earthly welfare and earthly legal security; the Church is sovereign in her own sphere, in matters of religion and conscience. The Church has received her rights directly from God, and in the exercise of them is not subject to any earthly power. But as the Church, by the commandment of God, teaches and obliges her faithful to respect the laws of the State, if they are not contrary to divine law, so it is the duty of the State to respect the rights of the Church, which she has received not from herself, but from Christ himself.
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Only Pope Gregory VII introduced celibacy in the 11th century.
Gregory VII only renewed the ancient regulations on the subject and disciplined priests who sinned against celibacy. But he did not introduce the law of priestly celibacy, which had been in place for much longer. Already the Council of Elvira in Spain (c. 300 A.D.) had made celibacy compulsory for the clergy, and although this Council was a local council one, the law of celibacy was becoming more and more general in the West by this time, as a matter of custom. Already at the first ecumenical Council of Nicea (325) there were some who wished to extend this law to the whole Church, and indeed, as the Trullan Council (629), among others, states, even then no bishop in the East could be not celibate. Pope Leo the Great and Pope Gregory the Great (the former d. 461, the latter d. 604) had already extended the decision of the Council of Elvira to include the subdeacons. So anyone who says that the law of celibacy was introduced only by Gregory VII is showing a great deal of historical ignorance.
The law of priestly celibacy is contrary to nature.
Contrary? A bit of an overstatement. That this law is difficult and highly supernatural in its orientation: there is no doubt. That is why its observance requires a truly serious determination, constant self-discipline and deep spirituality. But it is only those who forget that Jesus and the apostles also lived celibate lives, and that Jesus praises abstinence voluntarily for the kingdom of God and declares it to be a higher state of perfection (Mt 19:12). Likewise, St. Paul recommends and counsels chastity as a higher perfection (1 Cor. 7). Therefore, this cannot be called unnatural on a Christian basis.
And if voluntary celibacy and complete chastity are evangelical counsels, it is worthy and fitting that especially priests should set a good example in them, all the more so because they thereby become more worthy to minister the sacred mysteries to which they are called. The celibate and chaste priest is also approached by the faithful with great trust and respect, especially in the confessional. The Church, at least in the West, wants her priests to lead such a high spiritual life, so concerned only with apostolate, that they are not at all absorbed in earthly, sensual or family concerns. This is the eternal ornament of the Church, and is praised and approved of by many Protestants of good will, and is even being imitated of late by Anglican ministers in England.
Why, then, does the Church allow Eastern priests to marry?
Because priestly celibacy is a higher degree of perfection, but not an essential condition for ordination to the priesthood. Besides, there are certain restrictions in this respect in the Eastern Church, too.
Nowhere in Scripture do we read about the sacramentality of marriage and of its being an ordinance of Christ.
Here again, the basic premise is false: as if only what is explicitly stated in Scripture can be true and can be an ordinance of Christ. […] Christ did not leave it to individual men, with Bibles in their hands, to judge the ordinances and statements of Christ, but to the Church to teach and guide, to govern and sanctify. If the Church teaches that marriage is a sacrament, then it is a sacrament! And then he, who pushes Holy Mother Church out of the way, goes against Christ Himself. “And if he will not hear the church, let him be to thee as the heathen and publican.” (Mt 18:17). Something may be included in the ordinances of the apostles without being explicitly stated in Scripture, such as the sanctification of Sunday instead of the Sabbath, or the baptism of children. The fact that there are seven sacraments is also among them.
Moreover, the Scriptures themselves are quite clear on the subject of marriage, when St Paul openly refers to Christian marriage as a holy mysterion, or a great sacrament. This is on the grounds that marriage is a sacred image of the mystical union of Christ and the Church and as such is the mediator of Christian graces (Eph 5:22-32). It is for this reason that the ancient church thought of marriage as a sacrament. From Tertullian, for example, we know the interesting fact that the early Christians already often tied the marriage ceremony to the sacrifice of the Mass (Ad uxor. 2, 9).
Marriage is a simple contract, like a sale. What sense does it make to consider it a sacrament?
This is what Martin Luther claimed, but he was wrong. It is not a question of a good, a house or an estate, but of a loving union between two people who are to live their lives in faithful love for each other and to bring up, by common strength and effort, the children God has given them. It is therefore above all a moral bond, involving a whole series of duties which bind in conscience. Christ our Lord elevated marriage to the dignity of a sacrament precisely so that, as a sacrament, it might be an inexhaustible source of the graces without which a religious, moral, Christian, peaceful and harmonious family life could not long be imagined.
For 1900 years, sacramental and indissoluble marriage, based on Christian morality, has indeed been the surest pillar of a healthy and virtuous family life for the nations. The Protestants themselves regarded marriage, if not as a sacrament, as a sacred and ecclesiastical matter, and it was and is still celebrated in church ceremonies.
But then came the age of the Enlightenment, the age of anti-religious freethinking, which, as in all areas, was concerned only with how to weaken the influence of religion and the Church on society. In order to detach family life from religious thought, it pushed through so-called civil marriage and divorce in most European states.
But once the spouses no longer love each other? If their lives are hell together! What if, as László Ravasz [Presbyterian bishop in Hungary] said, the soul dies out of marriage?
This is a one-sided reasoning! Well, let the spouses see to it that their life does not become hell and that the soul and love do not die out of the marriage sanctified by vows! Let them love each other as they have promised and sworn to love each other! What kind of Christianity is it that says that hatred must be allowed free rein? Or which dares not demand the duty of love at all costs? Which does not confess that, even if one party offends against the other, peace must be restored at all costs?
If the “spirit of honesty dies out” of me, am I free to steal and commit crimes? Is it Christian reasoning: please, it is hard for me to keep the law, it is hell for me if I cannot steal, rob, commit fornication? Do not evildoers speak thus? What excuse is this? Get your act together, think of God, be loving and patient, be able to give in and to forgive, and then the greatest differences can be smoothed out!
However, the fact is that it is often difficult to remain faithful in marriage and many marriages become “hell” because divorce is allowed! Because the spouses know that all they have to do is get into a big fight and then one is free to go! Because this is itself a constant temptation to infidelity and quarrelling! Where there is no divorce (as there was no divorce in the time of our forefathers for 1900 years, or in Italy even today!), people do not quarrel so much, or if they quarrel, they make peace, because they know that they cannot divorce and marry someone else! But where the way is opened to evil, as here, people are much more easily led into evil than where it is forbidden by divine and human law alike, and social stigma follows those who break the law!
Jesus himself allows divorce “for fornication” (Mt 19:9).
Yes, separation is permitted by Jesus, and by the Catholic Church in such cases. But not remarriage! It is not the same thing! A new marriage during the life of the spouse is most explicitly called by Jesus fornication, without exception (Mt 19:6 and following; Mk 10:11 and following). Likewise, St. Paul repeatedly states that a second marriage during the life of a husband or wife is simply adultery and that only in the case of the death of the lawful spouse is a new marriage not adultery (Rom 7:2; 1 Cor 7:10 and following).
I can be religious even if I’m not married in church.
Yes, you can, but then there is a constant conflict between your religiosity and your actions. You may be religious in that you pray and go to Mass, but you are not religious in what ought to be even beyond that, keeping the severely binding laws of God and his Church. Without this, your religiousness is of little avail, and will not save you from the peril of eternal damnation. “Not every one that saith to me, Lord, Lord, shall enter into the kingdom of heaven: but he that doth the will of my Father who is in heaven, he shall enter the kingdom of heaven.” (Mt 7:21).
Many people today are living in civil marriages and are not bad Christians.
Yes, they are bad Christians if they knowingly defy the commandments of God and the laws of His Church! The fact that many people are on the road to damnation is nothing new; the Lord Jesus Himself said so. This is why He said: “Strive to enter by the narrow gate; for many, I say to you, shall seek to enter, and shall not be able.” (Lk 13:24). Whoever follows the crowd, will be lost together with the crowd.
What business is of the Church or the State whom I love and with whom I live?
The State does have something to do with it, because it is obliged to protect public morality and because such cohabitation often has civil consequences. But the Church has even more to do with marriage, because it is not a neutral thing with regards to conscience, as indifferent as putting on or taking off a coat, but by its very nature it is bound up with serious considerations of conscience and moral consequences; and as soon as a matter is a matter of conscience, it is a matter for the Church.
The Church forbids birth control, although in many cases it is directly required by circumstances.
It is not the Church, but divine law itself which forbids the abuse of conjugal rights. For this reason, and because the Church is better able to instill in her faithful a love of children, one child or zero children are more prevalent among non-Catholics than among Catholics, at least among Catholics who live a life of faith. However, neither God nor the Church forbids birth control based on permanent or intermittent abstinence, which, according to recent scientific findings (Knaus-Ogino theory), seems to be a natural and therefore permissible method of birth control. Moreover, the means of religious grace also equip man for the heavy sacrifices of total abstinence.
Catholics worship Mary as well as God.
This is repeated stubbornly in many Protestant theology textbooks; nevertheless, it is nothing but a complete and utter misunderstanding. In the sense of worship, that is, to honour as God, Catholics also worship and adore only the one true God. Simple reverence on religious grounds is one thing, and worship is another. This conceptual difference is present in all languages (adorare – venerari, anbeten – verehren, adorer – vénérer). The fact that in some places, for four hundred years, people have been refusing to acknowledge this striking difference has its own psychological reasons. It is not our fault.
But yes, Catholics kneel before the image of the Virgin Mary and pray to her.
Neither kneeling nor praying is worship in itself. Worship is as much as acknowledging as God and honoring as God. When we Catholics kneel down before the image of Mary, we do so because we have a profound reverence for the Virgin Mary, and kneeling is a worthy and permissible expression of this reverence. If the Protestants say that only what is in Scripture is true, let them show for once where Scripture forbids the expression of non-adoring veneration by kneeling? Praying to the Virgin Mary is simply supplication and invocation. Where in Scripture does it say that it is forbidden to invoke and ask for her help the Mother of God? Besides, half of the Hail Mary itself is no more than a repetition of the greeting which God himself addressed to the Virgin Mary through the angel and which Elizabeth addressed to the Blessed Virgin. If it were a sin to address the Virgin Mary in this way, “Hail, full of grace”, then the Lord God Himself would have been the first to commit this sin!
The first half of the Hail Mary is explicitly written in Scripture.
Scripture says that “to God alone belongs honour and glory” [quote location unknown]; and Catholics share this glory with the saints.
In the unlimited sense in which the glory belongs to God, we Catholics glorify none other than the one true God. To Him alone we thus pay homage, to him alone we acknowledge as the one supreme Lord of all. But is the above scriptural word to be understood as meaning that we must not give any glory or honour to anyone but God? Does not God himself command the contrary? Does he not demand, for example, in the 4th commandment, that we honour our parents? We may honour great men, kings, governors, scholars, poets, patriots; do not the saints, especially the Virgin Mother of Christ, deserve to be accorded special religious honour precisely because they are God’s friends, his most faithful servants, and the recipients of his grace? Especially the Holy Virgin, to whom Jesus Himself lavished the greatest glory and honour by choosing her as His mother?
Mary was not the “mother of God” at all, but only the mother of the man Jesus.
Naturally, God as such could not have a mother. But since Jesus was both God and man in one person, it is perfectly correct to call the Virgin Mary “Mother of God”. For although she was not the mother of God as such, she was the mother of Jesus who was also God. We are also right to call the Pope’s mother the Pope’s mother, even though the Pope was not born as the Pope, but as a little child.
The doctrine of Mary’s virginity is not found in Scripture.
But how much it is! Not to mention that Isaiah already prophesied (7:14) the supernatural and extraordinary birth of the Messiah when he wrote: “Therefore the Lord himself shall give you a sign. Behold, a virgin shall conceive, and bear a son, and his name shall be called Emmanuel”. St Luke himself says at the beginning of his Gospel: “the angel Gabriel was sent from God… [t]o a virgin…” The angel informs Mary that she has been chosen by God to be the mother of the Messiah, and Mary, in spite of the great honour, asks in fear: “How shall this be done, because I know not man?” The angel reassures her that it is not by the intervention of a man, but by the power of the Most High that she will bring her son into the world. Only then does Mary say the word “be it done”.
According to the Gospel, Jesus had brothers and sisters, so Mary cannot be called a virgin after all.
The word “brother” in Eastern languages and in Scripture very often means cousin or relative in general. Although Matthew (13:55) refers to James and Joseph, Simon and Judas as “his brethren” and also speaks of “his sisters” (13:55 and following), but he himself mentions another Mary under the cross, “the mother of James and Joseph” (27:56), who, according to St. John the Evangelist, was not the Virgin Mary, but the wife of Cleophas (in Greek, Alphaeus) and a relative of the Virgin Mary. They were therefore relatives of Jesus, but in no way the real brothers and sisters of Jesus, as the Bible itself testifies. Moreover, if Jesus had real brothers and sisters, it would be incomprehensible that Jesus, dying on the cross, should have offered his mother to the care of John the stranger, rather than to one of his brothers.
Jesus Himself contradicts the veneration of Mary, for at the wedding in Cana He rejects Mary with the words, “Woman, what is that to me and to thee?” (John 2:4).
Few objections show the bias of some anti-Catholic polemicists as convincingly as this one. Do they really want to infer from these words of Jesus that Jesus denied His mother in the first place, and rejected her like some naughty and disobedient child? But in reality this is not the case. The meaning of the words quoted is certainly not “what do I have to do with you”, but “in what way does it concern us whether there is enough wine for the wedding guests or not”? The miracle at Cana, moreover, proves that Jesus did indeed heed the intervention of the Virgin Mary, for at her request He performed a miracle and turned water into wine. The marriage at Cana, therefore, is not an argument against the justification of the veneration of Mary, on the contrary, it is an argument in favor of it.
The bodily assumption of the Virgin Mary into heaven is not found in Scripture.
Neither is it in Scripture that the body of the Virgin Mary remained in the tomb. However, the earliest Church tradition has always held that God assumed the Virgin Mary, body and soul, into heaven after her death. From the very beginning, the early Christians had great respect for the tombs of Saints Peter and Paul and the other saints, but no church community ever claimed that the body of the Blessed Virgin was buried here or there. Moreover, it is a worthy hypothesis that God did not abandon the body of the Virgin Mother of the God-Man to the fate of decay, not only because of the close maternal relationship with the God-Man, but also because death and decay are a direct consequence of the original sin from which the Virgin Mary was preserved from the beginning by the grace of the Immaculate Conception.
The Marian shrines are a hotbed of superstition; thus, it has long been established that the alleged miracles at Lourdes are the result of mere suggestion and hallucination.
The opposite is the conclusion of all unbiased researchers, including the more than 10,000 doctors who have so far testified with their signature proving that the cures they have examined in Lourdes cannot be explained on any medical basis. Indeed, hundreds of people have been cured at Lourdes whose illnesses are not at all due to neurological influences, especially hallucinations and suggestion. Cancer, tuberculosis in an advanced stage, huge wounds, bruises, broken bones and the like cannot be cured by suggestion.
If one wants to know more about this, one should read the book Lourdes by the French professor Bertrin. The infidel and frivolous novelist himself, Emil Zola, when visiting Lourdes, stated before witnesses that the findings of the medical review office there were undoubtedly true with regards to the miracles; but he later denied this statement and in his novel Lourdes tried to explain the miraculous cures by openly falsifying the facts. When the people who were healed and appeared as characters in his novel challenged him in a letter, he said that he was writing a novel, not a story, and that he would do what he liked with the characters in his novels. Despite this, the former leader of the German atheists, Ernst Haeckel, refers to Zola’s novel as a historical source work, and the unbelieving world would rather believe this fraudster than the written, solemn declarations of 10 000 serious doctors.
As an aside, the Church, has not yet made an official statement on the question of the miracles of Lourdes, but there is every reason to believe that in these miraculous events, too, Jesus’ promise is fulfilled (Mk. 16:17) that the gift of miracles in His Church will never cease.
The Catholic Church, like the Greek [Orthodox], carves crucifixes and holy statues and hangs images in her churches.
The law of God does not say not to make a graven image, but: not to make a graven image for the purpose of worshipping it. This is a typical example of the arbitrary and mutilated interpretation of Scripture that is otherwise a constant phenomenon in anti-Catholic debates. They take a scriptural quotation out of context, omit the circumstances necessary for a correct interpretation, or other clearer scriptural passages that contradict their thesis – and their argument is complete. Thus indeed everything can be “proven” from Scripture.
The difference between idolatry and Christian veneration of images is that the idolater worships the statue or the idol, i.e., he regards it as a god and endows it with divine powers; the Catholic Christian, on the other hand, does not worship the images, statues, or crucifixes, and does not regard them as divine beings, but only reveres them as a sign of God and His saints. When we kneel before the crucifix, it is not the tree or the stone that we venerate, but the One whom the crucifix represents: Jesus Christ. Every child in our country knows this, and the Protestants know it too, but their clever, over-zealous people are always stirring up this bad-faith fairy-tale.
By the way, we find crosses, statues and holy images in Lutheran churches: how is it, then, that the Calvinists never thunder against this, but are only scandalized if Catholics do it? It is a clear sign, then, that it is not reason or religious fervor that speaks here, but passion and hatred.
Is it idolatry to display a picture of one’s dead mother in one’s room, or a picture of the head of state in one’s office, as a sign of respect?
The Catholic people have a cult of holy images that is superstition.
It is possible that a Catholic believer goes too far in his veneration of the saints, and among the images and statues he hardly notices the most important and most important: God, the Lord Jesus in the Blessed Sacrament. But this is the mistake of some people, and it would be a pity to deprive our churches and our religious life of those holy signs which are so lovely and inspiring to devotion, and often so artistically excellent, whose very purpose is to make us, following the inspiring example of the saints, think more and more of God and love and adore him more and more.
Does the Church therefore believe that the veneration of the saints is also veneration of God?
[…] We honor and love the saints not primarily because they were virtuous and excellent men – although they deserve respect for that too – but mainly because they loved and served God with wonderful devotion, and therefore we can approach God with greater confidence in their company. In the saints, we Catholics also ultimately honor and love God.
I don’t need saints to step in front of God.
True, you can come before God alone. In fact, even if you ask for the help of the saints, it is important that you yourself should come before God with all your soul. But you cannot object if a man prefers to come before the king, having first asked the king’s mother and his intimate servants to say a good word on his behalf.
God already knows what I would ask of him; it is useless that the saints should then first tell him what I want.
I don’t ask for the help of heavenly patrons to “tell” God what he already knows, but that they may pray for me, because that way I can have greater hope that God will be more willing to hear my prayer in response to their pleas.
So is there protectionism in heaven?
If by protection we mean merit support based on brotherhood or camaraderie, of course there is no such thing in God. But if we take the word “protection” in its original sense (“protegere” = to protect), yes, we do well to seek the protection of God’s friends.
The veneration of relics is also a superstition.
Is it? Then why do we open Petőfi rooms, János Arany rooms, Goethe rooms? And why do we guard with piety, for example, Lehel’s horn or other historical relics? Or perhaps we Catholics worship the relics of the saints? This is such a vulgar and childish notion that shame falls on those who dare to come up with such nonsense even today. We venerate relics, but only in so far as they were related to holy persons: that is to say, we venerate the people to whom they relate. If I keep a lock of my mother’s hair, or a piece of my father’s favorite furniture, why should I not guard with piety a relic of this or that martyr or other saint, or even a fragment of the sacred cross on which Christ redeemed the world and which was watered by His holy blood?
There are a lot of fake relics in circulation.
Unfortunately, this is true, because at one time, especially during the Crusades, many unscrupulous and conscienceless people circulated fake relics to make a living. In order to prevent such abuse, the Church decreed some time ago that relics may only be accepted as such after due examination and with the documented testimony of the competent diocesan bishop. Besides, even if someone were to venerate a false relic, that would not be so bad, because the true object of veneration is not the material object that is considered a relic, but the holy person whom we wish to venerate through the relic, and ultimately God Himself, whom we venerate in the saints.
How is holy water different from ordinary water?
Physically and chemically, of course, the two of them are no different. But it differs in that one is associated with the prayer of Holy Mother Church, the other is not. When I use holy water (which is not a sacrament, but only a sacramental), I am actually asking for the blessing of the praying Church, because the Church prays at the time of the consecration of water that whoever uses it with a believing spirit may be blessed by the good God.
It is impossible for a few drops of water to be a condition of God’s blessing.
It is not the water as such, but the prayer of the Church, which is attached to it as a visible sign. Why not? It is just like a bank note or a ticket to the theater. Here too, some wise person might say: it is impossible that a piece of worthless, dead paper should give me the right to buy something, to attend a great theater performance or a concert! The piece of paper as such does not give me a right, of course, but as a ticket it can be a means and a condition of the right attached to it.
Ultimately, the Church considers eternal life to be the most important thing. What is important is not what is beyond the grave, but what is here on earth!
This is an incredibly narrow-minded and biased speech! Of course it is also important what is here on earth; no one doubts that. But if we compare the two: what is greater, what is more important, what is more vital, there can be no doubt that the infinite is far more than the finite, the eternal is a million times more and is more important than the transience of minutes or years. Whoever forgets this is like the senseless child who values a shiny copper coin more than a crumpled document about a fortune worth millions.
Eternity! Do you know, man, what it is? Do you know what it means: to live forever, in overflowing happiness or in unspeakable unhappiness? Do you know how much more eternity is than not just a lifetime, not just a thousand or a million or ten billion years, but any amount of time imaginable or conceivable? To exist in such a way that we never cease to exist, our existence never finishes, never ends, never turns into non-existence? To enjoy the blessed treasures of the kingdom of God, its love and light, its abundance of beauty and sweetness, its knowledge and appreciation, the fulfillment of all our desires forever and ever and ever? Or to wallow in agony, despairing, moaning, screaming in pain, gnashing our teeth in the flaming prison for eternity? Year after year, millennium after millennium, billion after billion and beyond… For all time, for all time to come… As long as God remains God and the laws of existence remain.
Do you know, man, what this is? Dare you deny it? You can deny it, only then you’ll be confronted by the One who knows a hundred times better than you do: God Himself. Jesus Christ. You can’t deny that Jesus, the Word of God, preached the doctrine of eternal life and eternal punishment, in the most solemn and unmistakable way. In the face of such a possibility, such a certainty, simply to play dumb, to look away from it, to close your eyes: oh, yes, you can do that, for man is capable of all kinds of madness; but you cannot do it soberly, rationally, without terrible harm to yourself!
And that is why you cannot say such nonsense as that life on earth is more important than eternity!
This text is in released under the Creative Commons Zero License. The original author died in 1939, therefore the original Hungarian text is in the public domain.