Author: Odon De Castro

The teachings of the Catholic Church are said to be truths in the supernatural level. It cannot be studied the way Zoology or Physics are studied. Natural things can be studied by man’s natural abilities. It is impossible for man’s natural ability to study supernatural truths.

The way to study supernatural truths is for the natural man to rise up from the natural sphere to the supernatural sphere. And there the soul will effortless receive the truths of the Catholic Faith. These Catholic truths are given to the soul together with the graces and accompanying theological virtues.

In the seminary we must not teach the truths of the Catholic Faith. We teach seminarians how to rise up from the natural level to the supernatural level where graces with its accompanying theological virtues of Faith, Hope and Charity are received from God. These supernatural truths are taught by God by infusion and not learned from teachers in the seminary…….though God could use a holy professor as an instrument to infuse these truths. But it will be evident that it was God, and not the professor, who had given the knowledge.

The seminarians had been studying their theology in the wrong way. While remaining in the natural level they try to study a subject that is over and above their heads in the supernatural level. So they learn nothing, understand nothing and end up without wisdom which is needed to fully imbibe the truths.

Ignorance of the theology of grace is the root of this problem. To know the truths of Christ they must first live fully the life of repentance (which unfortunately many do not know how) after which they would receive graces with its accompanying theological virtues of Faith, Hope and Charity. It is in receiving Faith that they receive the infused knowledge of the teachings of Christ as proposed by the Church.

Many seminarians enter the seminary without knowing that they have lost the grace they have received at Baptism and do not have the capability to know any Catholic Truth. This is the reason Pope Benedict declared the Year of the Priest whose theme is Faithfulness of Christ. He was encouraging Priest to reach at least Faith and not even Hope and Charity. And reminded all that ‘the gift of divine grace precedes every possible human response and pastoral accomplishment..’ He was saying that you cannot become a priest or even begin your seminary training without knowing and putting into practice the theology of grace. And the problem is that most seminarians do not even know if they are in the state of grace or not when they begin their seminary training.

The Holy Father repeats: You must have “a clear and unmistaken judgment about the absolute primacy of divine grace, recalling what St.Thomas Aquinas wrote…” In short, we cannot learn the simplest Catholic truth without grace. And yet we have no idea if we have grace or not.
Then the Pope reminds us of his “Deus Caritas Est” actually saying if you cannot reach the theological virtue of Charity at least reach Faith. Then he encourages all to help the poor priest ‘to reach spiritual perfection’…..that is Charity, i.e. being perfect as the heavenly Father is perfect.

The state of the seminaries is this: we have seminarians who were baptized when they were babies and who during their lives in the world have lost that sacramental grace, probably without realizing it. Then they enter the seminary not knowing they do not have the grace to learn the supernatural truths. Presuming they are in the state of grace they study theology without knowing and understanding anything. The result priestly souls who are total slaves of their fallen nature.

Let us see how they did it in the early times when we could find holy priest in every corner. The seminarians should be taught to use their natural abilities to learn how to rise from the natural to the supernatural level. They must, then, know that entering the supernatural level is a work of grace a completely free act of God. When God raises them up to the supernatural level, God will give them the theological virtue of Faith with a little dosage of Hope and Charity that will enable them to effortless know the teachings of the Catholic Church. They will not need the entire seminary in the process. They only need, as Christ said, to enter their room and lock the door.

The Bishop, the Priest, and the Laymen in the Church TODAY.

1. The Holy Father, Pope Benedict XVI, would want to know how a Pope, a bishop, a priest and a layman should function within the Church TODAY. So his former thesis, the ‘Theology of History according to St. Bonaventure” is suddenly of great interest to him. There he described how the Church would look like now, that he is Head of the Church. All priests, too, must know how they must function within the Church today and not the Church 100 years ago.

2. The Church is a living being. She grows everyday. Though she looks essentially the same (one, holy, Catholic and apostolic) , there is a slight difference in her spiritual image as she grows into maturity. And depending on whether she is an adolescence or a young adult, the function of the Pope and priest would slightly differ within her. There is a slight difference in piloting a teenage from a young adult church to her eternal goal.

3. This difference in the image of the Church is clearly portrayed in the two fishing incidents in the lives of the apostles. The first fishing trip was during the public life of Christ before Easter where they caught both good and bad fishes. This image of the Church is repeated in the parable of the wheat and the cockle where both good and bad were together in the Church. Then there is the fishing trip after the resurrection of Christ where they caught only good fishes.

4. The two images of the Church are: when she was a teenager, with bad blood, therefore, filled with pimples. And when she is a lovely young adult ready to be wedded to the bridegroom Jesus Christ.

5. These two images of the Church were further described in the Apocalypse; where we see the woman clothed with the sun “in the world.” Then, after a while she was given two wings by which she flew to the desert to a place specially prepared by God for her protection. And the devil who is in the world vomits water to drown her in the desert. There is a church in the world and a church that has flown to the desert. There is a difference in which the Pope and the priests minister to the Church in the world and how they would minister to the Church in the desert.

6. The implication here is that when the Church, personified by the Woman clothed with the Sun, flies to the desert the world will not find the Church in the world. They have to go to the desert to find and be able to enter the Church. Of course, this is an allegorical description and its meaning must be figured out from the writings of the Fathers specially St. John Chrysostom.

7. The season of Advent is no longer a preparation for the first coming of Christ, Christmas, because that is over. Instead it is a preparation for the second coming of Christ, at the end times. The preparation is a life of repentance, which is Old Testament spirituality. But note that the 4 Sunday Gospels of Advent, the Mass for Vigil of Christmas and Christmas Mass do not deal with Christmas but with the parousia, the end of the world. And from the feast of Mary and the Holy Family preparation for the second coming continues ending with Christ the King and resuming with Advent.

8. It is for this reason that the Immaculate Conception is within Advent and only approved as a dogma recently. Because it will only make sense today. Mary, the Immaculate Conception is the symbol of the Church that contains only good fishes, all wheat without the cockle, the Woman in the desert – Immaculate, without sin. Didn’t Christ say that during these days, the angels will remove all the cockles thus leaving only the sinless within the Church? That was the Church St. Grignion de Montfort was trying to work on… a Church that was Immaculate like Mary, and which St. Bonaventure foresaw at the end times…and which Joseph Ratzinger took as topic for his thesis as a young priest.

9. Where is the Church now? How does she look like now? Is the Church today pre-Easter or post- Easter? In his thesis, Pope Benedict is hinting that we are in the post -Easter era. If so, are we inside the fish net that is made up of only good fishes….the symbol of the Immaculate Conception?

THE ACT OF FAITH
1. The act of faith is an act of the natural intellect set free by grace to roam the realm of the supernatural. Pope Benedict describes faith as a working reason elevated by grace to be free from its imprisonment by creatures.

2. Man has a body and a soul each one in constant attempt to control the mind and the free will. The body wants the mind to set itself on its desire (its concupiscence) while the soul wants the mind to focus itself on its natural desires (spiritual things). This is an interminable contest. Man, by nature, ought to have his superior nature, his soul, controlling his lower nature, the body. This is possible without grace but often very difficult without grace.

3. The intellect must be focused on its goal…that is the reason why God created us… to be united to Him by subjecting our spiritual faculties, the intellect and free will, to God.

4. The intellect must also be focused on the means to that end. The means had been laid down by God. And the means are laid down in the so-called commandments of the Father and the Son and the Holy Spirit. The problem is that the free will is constantly confronted with choices of means that do not lead to the goal. These are the whole created universe.

5. The act of the intellect focused on its final end as commanded by God and focusing itself on the means proper to that end as commanded by God is called the act of Faith.

6. This can easily be done by two people. A child who has not lost his initial innocence and an adult who has lost his innocence but have repented. Innocence in a child and repentance in an adult dispose them to receive the grace that will enable them to focus their intellects both to the God- given final goal and to the God- dictated commands that are the means to that final goal.

7. With this act of faith a soul is now in the first Beatitude and can already experience some degree of true happiness. Now it is a matter of going up to the higher Beatitudes to attain greater virtues and greater happiness.

8. The sign that one has reached Faith is Knowledge of all the teachings of the Catholic Church. And added to this is the first fruit of the Holy Spirit, the fear of God, consisting in great fear to do, say and think of things contrary to the will of God.

9. The goal of the Year of St. Paul is to show lay people the direction that leads to Faith. The goal of the Year of the Priest is to direct the priest towards the goal of Faith.

THE LOST OF FAITH.
1. Faith is enlivened by the virtue of Charity. When one has Faith, he also has Charity. When Charity disappears due to a personal actual sin, faith is retained but it is a dead faith. This is what happened to most baptized person. During Baptism they received Sacramental grace and with it the virtue of Faith enlivened by Charity. But failure to develop this faith caused the lost of Charity with dead faith remaining. But it often happens that they also sin against Faith and loses the virtue of Faith which is the more common occurence. With dead Faith, the soul still has the hope of regaining the Charity that enlivens faith through repentance.

2. The Holy Father is worried that this is what is happening among the Catholics. Without realizing it they are living the church by losing their charity and even their dead faith. He described the situation in this way: that the Faith of the Church is like a dying flame running out of fuel. This prompted him to issue “Dominus Jesus” during the Pontificate of Pope John Paul II. Here he re-emphasized the importance in believing that Christ is God a fundamental truth of faith that was not even questioned in the recent past. If Catholics are not clear as to who Jesus is the Church is in real trouble.

3. The Holy Father must have gotten this notion from the strikes he experienced in the seminary where he saw that many of the seminarians had communist leanings. Since communist philosophy does not believe in God, then it is easy to conclude that these seminarians have lost their faith.

4. Add to this when he read the 3rd secret of Fatima where it is written that the world will lose its faith except in Portugal. Confirming the message of Our Lady of Good Success in Quito, Equador that in the 20th century the Church will experience total black out in matters of faith.
This is confirmed by Christ when describing the end times, He said “when I come shall I find faith upon the earth?”

5. This prompted the then Cardinal Ratzinger to write the Ratzinger Report around 1985 about the state of the Church. In short saying that the Church has a crisis of Faith which means in simple words, people are not reaching faith or people are unable to enter the Catholic Church or ……few are entering heaven.

6. How did this deplorable condition happened? Considering the fact that we have at present the best translation of Scriptures, we have the writings of the Fathers of the Church and numerous writings of the doctors of the Church. We have the countless encyclicals and other documents of the Popes and a vast network to learn what we need to have faith. How come there are few who have faith? St. Benedict of Nurcia, St. Pope Gregory the Great and quoting St. Ambrose of Aulpert, Pope Benedict pinpointed the culprit……greed!

7. Greed is a vice and like any vice prevents a soul from having Faith. Greed comes from Pride, the mother of vices. And pride was introduce by Lucifer himself. The pride of life is the most potent weapon of the devil in preventing souls from receiving the virtue of Faith. The desire to be like God is pride. The desire to run things the way they want; in contradiction to the teaching on Divine Providence that God is running all things. “They have become like us!” Looking around us, it is not difficult to see it. From governments to parents to the smallest child…. everyone is running their lives the way they want. It was the vice that caused the angels to fall. It was a vice that caused our first parents to fall.

8. Faith is possible. But Greed and its source, pride, is preventing intellects from knowing our final goal, which is God, and the means to that goal, both of which make up the act of faith.

The Holy Father is hinting that the problem is that many of the Faithful and the Priests are without Faith. In the same way that St. Paul was hinting to the Corinthians that they did not have the Holy Spirit. The goal of both the Year of St. Paul and the Year of the Priests is for all to attain Faith or at least recover lost Faith.

Vices are the obstacles to faith or what causes the loss of Faith. Virtues and vices cannot co-exist. Virtues presumes the presence of grace, while vices presumes a state of sin. Any vice can prevent a soul from having the virtues of Faith, Hope and Charity.

Virtues and vices are habits. Virtue is the habit of doing good while vice is the habit of doing evil. When there are vices the entrance of virtue becomes impossible. Today vices are rampant. They are the most saleable commodity and the greatest source of wealth. The biggest bulk of advertisements is about vice. Economies are based on greed, business on tourism and luxury items are for vanities, even food excites gluttons. Comforts and conveniences tempt the slothful, education fosters greed. Vice is the air that people breath today. The program for national ‘recovery’ consist in recovering the momentum of sliding down to the pit of vices that was temporarily slowed down by the recession. And there is sex education for all levels awaiting our children to further speed up the plunge into the depths of vices.

A mastery of the topic on virtues and vices from St. Gregory the Great and St. Thomas of Aquinas will show that practically everything man is doing today is a vice while virtues are practically non-existent. And as long as vice is present, Faith is unattainable.

Vices has also invaded the priesthood.
When the Pope as Cardinal wrote the “Ratzinger Report” whose sub-title is “Crisis in the Catholic Church” he put the blame for the crisis in the Church on the ‘restlessness of the priests.’ Now if we look for the place of ‘restlessness’ in the list of vices it is the last of the Capital sins. St. John Cassian in his “Institutes” states that if one is restless that means he has all the capital sins (i.e. all the vices). Now that is not a flattering description of our priesthood. Of course the Cardinal did not mean all priests. He said “the common problem” with our priests. A priest with seven vices cannot reach Faith in any near future. He is in fact plunging into hell, the final destination of vices. With “restlessness” that priest would have the pride of Satan.

A book became popular among young seminarians some time ago, especially at Regensburg. The title of the book was the “Secret Enemy of the Priesthood.” It contains the summary of the treatise of St. Thomas of Aquinas “On Virtues and Vices.”

Vices must be removed before virtues can exist. St. Gregory states in his “Moralia” that Pride is the mother of vices, the chieftain, the general. Under pride is a host of offspring or lower officers commonly called the Capital sins. And under each capital sins are a host of other vices. These are three categories of vices. Let’s take an example. Under pride would be the capital sins gluttony and lust. And under gluttony and lust would be talkativeness. A talkative person is a glutton, lustful and, therefore, proud. The proud talks much about food and sex. Any vice shows the presence of pride.

At the beginning of the year of the priest the Holy Father mentioned ‘vices’ again as the obstacle to reaching Faith.He mentioned some vices that were known to be in those “outside the Church.’ Because the early Christians who entered the Church were purified of their vices by the spirit of poverty while priests and religious were purified by their observance of the vow of poverty. Poverty prevented the entrance of certain vices, particularly Greed, into the Church. But now it has entered the Church due to lack of the spirit of poverty.

Quoting St. Ambrose of Aulpert, the Holy Father mentions the entry of “Greed” into the Church. The vice of “Greed” is the root of all evil. Before the 7th century Greed was mostly among those outside the Church. But in the 7th century St. Ambrose noticed that Greed had entered the Church. The root of all evil had entered the Church. He noticed this when greed had entered monasteries (he was a Benedictine Abbot.) Since what happens inside monasteries is reflective of what is happening inside the Church and vice versa, that is what made Ambrose think that it, too, had entered the Church.

If so greed would gradually erode the weak Faith of most Catholics. Quoting Ambrose, Pope Benedict believes the same thing is happening today, confirming what Pope Paul VI said that “Satan had entered the Church”….through greed and its mother, Pride.

With the faithful and priests infected with vices whose mother is pride, which is the very sin of Lucifer, the Pope fears that the institutional Church would look more like Satan than its founder Jesus Christ.

And so the Holy Father’s call for the Year of St. Paul (or year of Faith) and the Year of the Priests. The first step is to know what are vices and remove them. This effort will be rewarded by God with the gift of the first basic elemental virtue of Humility. This is the beginning of the Life of Repentance that leads to Faith. This was Pope Benedict’s message at Monte Cassino as he encouraged the priests after declaring the Year of the Priest. First, “Ora”- to pray for the grace for what you are about to do. Next “Labora”-to work for the salvation of your soul. “Lege”-to read or study the commands of Christ from the New Testament that you may know your vices. Having known your vices now you can repent; then grace will fill your soul. And with this grace are the virtues, especially of Faith.

Pope Benedict XVI knows that his main job is to confirm ‘the brothers in their faith.’ Faith is needed to enter the Church. And the Pope must help the Church maintain that Faith which in its initial stages can be lost (as had often happened to the Apostles.) As early as Pope Benedict’s pontificate, he had expressed his general plan to re-evangelize Europe in exactly the same way that it was first evangelized by Peter and Paul and later on in the 5th century by St. Benedict of Nurcia.

Last year during the Year of St. Paul (otherwise known as the year of Faith) Pope Benedict encouraged the laymen to repent and believe. Now, the Year of the Priests, he is encouraging the Priests to go all the way, i.e. to repent, to believe, to hope and to love. He made this call during Vespers saying that the priest must tend constantly towards sanctity. Keeping in mind that the contemplative and mystical lives are within the ordinary way towards sanctity, that is a tall order. It means re-learning a whole theological course akin to the “Three stages of the interior life” by Garrigou Lagrange.

Let us look at the game plan of the Holy Father. He first gave us the encyclicals”Deus Caritas est” and now “Caritas in veritate.” Then, in between, he declared the “Year of St. Paul” (which was a call to Faith) and the “Year of the Priests” (which is a call to Charity.) And he hinted clearly that both the laity and the priest should first check if they have Faith (or if they have entered the Catholic Church.) How do we find that out? If we put together the two above encyclicals and the two years he declared (the Years of St. Paul and of the Priests) we would see what an act of Faith is.

Faith is primarily an act of the intellect prompted by the will under the influence of grace. Let us first look at faith as an act of the intellect. Then we shall see how the free will prompts the intellect. To make an act of faith the intellect must be focused on two things: first, on its final goal Charity (which is expressed in “Deus Caritas Est;” and secondly, on its immediate or proximate goal Truth (which is the ‘veritate’ in “Caritas in Veritate.”) The mind, made by God to reflect on Himself, must be sure that it has a right concept of God (“Deus Caritas Est”.) And the mind must also be sure that its immediate or proximate goal lead to that ultimate goal (“Caritas in Veritate”). Both these are unattainable without the grace of God; we cannot understand the two encyclicals without the grace of God.

Grace is given to us when we are free from all mortal sins. And so before anything else we must repent, putting into practice in our lives the three elements of repentance, namely, Prayer, Fasting and Good Works. This is why the “Year of St. Paul” addressed to lay people puts emphasis on the “pure life” that must be attained through a life of repentance.

After living a life of repentance, we receive the grace that we need to be able to focus our intellect on both our final goal and the means towards that goal. It is like thinking of “Deus Caritas Est” as our final goal and thinking of “Caritas in Veritate” as the numerous proximate goals that lead to our final goal.

When we are able to constantly focus our minds on these two goals (as expressed in the two encyclicals) we have not yet reached Faith. The next step is needed.

The faculty of the soul that moves man to perform a human act is the Free Will (symbolized by the Heart.) The intellect has to convinced the free will to approve its final goal (‘Caritas) and the means to that goal (the ‘Veritate’) that it knows. The free will will then instruct the intellect to make an intellectual assent to both the means (Veritate) and the final goal (Caritas) When the intellect prompted by the free will obeys and makes its assent to the first truth (Veritate) that leads to Charity….. that is an act of Faith….little faith, at first.

But that is only the first truth. There are still many other truths which the intellect must learn. It must follow again the same process of the intellect informing the free will of these truths and wait for it to be prompted by the will to assent to these next truths. This is a long process and must constantly be aided by grace.

When the intellect has learned all the truths (veritate) mainly expressed in the Commandments of Christ now he is ready to summarize all these truths in the one commandment of Christ “To love God above all things” and put it into practice. When he learns and obeys all the commandment of Christ…… this is Charity (“If you love Me keep my commandments.”)

1. The Holy Father has just called for a ‘Year of Faith,’ under the auspices of St. Paul who was the apostle who wrote most eloquently and extensively on Faith. The papal instruction was sent to Bishops to be shared with parish priests and their parishioners. The goal was to ask each Catholic to find out if they have Faith. With the culmination of the Year of Faith many Catholics have not answered this question.

2. The steps towards eternal life may be summarized into four steps; first, to live a life of repentance, secondly, to live a life of Faith. Thirdly, to live a life of Hope and fourthly to live a life of Charity. Faith brings us into the Church, into the Mystical Body of Christ and in some way gives us Hope for our salvation, “he who believes is already saved.”

3. During the Year of Faith the Pope is asking us to find out if we have reached the second step, Faith. The Catechism gives a concise definition of Faith and St. Thomas gives a clear and elaborate description of it. But most of us do not have the time to study this.

4. So why don’t we just read the ‘prayer’ of Faith at the end of the Compendium of the Catholic Catechism by Pope Benedict XVI. His prayer goes this way: “Domine Deus, firma fide credo et confiteor omnia et singula quae sancta Ecclesia Catholica proponit, quia tu Deus, ea omnia revelasti, qui es aeterna veritas et sapientia quae nec fallere nec falli potest. In hac fide vivere et mori statuo. Amen.”

5. The prayer says :’ I believe all and every truth that you (Christ) have revealed because You are the eternal truth.’ Do we really know ‘all and every truth’ Christ has revealed in Scriptures? How many truths are there in Divine Revelation? Putting aside the Doctrinal truths, let us just look at the so-called ‘Commandments of Christ.’ In Chapters 4, 5 and 6 of Matthew in the so-called ‘Sermon on the Mount’, aside from the Beatitudes, Christ enumerates around 35 commands. In the entire Gospel of St. Matthew there are more than 80 commands. If we add to this the commands in the Gospels of Mark, Luke and John plus the commands of Christ as described in the Epistles, Acts and Apocaplypse guess how many commands there could be? And we are not supposed to study these commands directly from Scriptures. We must learn and believe these commands as proposed by the Magisterium of the Church. That is practically hinting that we must know how the Fathers of the Church or Tradition interpreted these commands. Does that sound like having a degree on Exegesis and Patrology? Not really. There is a way of learning these in a faster and shorter way which the Holy Father had been hinting since the beginning of his pontificate.

6. Faith is an act of the intellect. It is knowing, with the help of grace all the commands of Christ and how to obey them. But it is chaos if every priest interprets these commands. So Christ gave the role of interpreting these commands to His Church with the Holy Father as its official spokesman. And so Faith is believing with our intellect the teachings of Christ ‘as proposed by the Church’ through her spokesman, the Pope. And the reason for believing the Pope is because Christ who revealed the truths ‘cannot deceive nor be deceived.’

7. The crisis of Faith is caused by ignorance of those commands the knowledge of which is the object of Faith. Some wh0 know ‘what’ are the commands do not know the ‘how’. Knowledge of both is necessary for the act of Faith.

8. The act of Faith is not possible until all the commands of Christ are known by the intellect. That is the only time when the soul can see that put together all the commands make up the command ‘To love God and neighbor’. Knowing this the soul can now motivate his Faith with the virtue of Charity. Thus the Pope’s 3rd encyclical Caritas in veritate simply states that Charity can only be attained by knowing the truths that lead to Faith.

9. If at the end of the Year of Faith we have not yet known if we have the true faith or not that would be a sign that we do not have Faith. Because with the virtue comes the certainty that we have it.

8. During the year of Faith few were able to find out if they had Faith. Most do not know how to check on it though they could have checked it basing it on the Year of the Liturgy (during the 24 Sundays between Pentecost and Christ the King.) If the people are doubtful if they had Faith who is to blame? The Bishops and priest who were commanded by Christ to instill the knowledge that brings about Faith. So a Year of the priest should be in place….for the priest to find out if they have Faith.

9. So now in the ‘Year of the Priest’ the Holy Father is calling on all priests, religious, nuns and laymen to go once more through the steps that enable us to enter the Church and find out once and for all if we are inside or still outside the Catholic Church.

The way to Heaven may be described simply in four steps: repentance, Faith, Hope and Charity. These steps are taught to us by Holy Mother the Church throughout the Liturgical year.

We begin with Advent when we are taught the repentance of the Old Testament and as taught by St. John the Baptist. In Lent we are again taught repentance, as perfected by Christ. It is by this New Testament repentance that Faith is given us, by which we become true Catholics, or members of the Catholic Church.

Having reached Faith (by God’s grace), God leads us to Hope and Charity.

The reason few souls reach faith (or enter the Church) is because of a wrong concept of Repentance. We think repentance is that brief moment we spent before confession; examining our conscience, saying our sins to the priest, receiving absolution and saying our penance. That is called the Sacrament of Penance. The life of repentance is to develop the Virtue of Penance which is necessary for the forgiveness of sins in the Sacrament of Penance.

All unbaptized children go to Heaven when they die, Pope Benedict had finally declared. Earlier saints believed otherwise; but they were not writing “de Fide,” — from faith. In early Christianity, that doctrine was not yet well defined. This contradiction was understandable as explained by St. John Newman in his “Development of Christian Doctrine.” Just as the complete man is not recognized while still in the womb, it is the same with Catholic Doctrine: the early saints did not comprehend the full form of certain doctrines at first. Then because of need to defend doctrine (as in defending life) when heresies arise, it becomes a common occurrence in the Catholic Church that knowledge or explanation of doctrines increases as a response to those heresies. In the case of the doctrine about unbaptized children, there were little errors to clarify in the past; it was just a lack of understanding of the most difficult doctrine of the Catholic Church: the theology of grace.

What Pope Benedict announced about this doctrine should not encourage abortion. Someone could say, ‘since anyway the child would go to heaven, let’s kill it.’ Well, true, the child would indeed go to heaven, but you will surely go to hell. All efforts to stop abortion consist in refuting the stupidity of this reasoning. Efforts are not meant to save the soul of the child but to save the soul of the parents, the abortionist doctors, the cooperating nurses, the owners of drug companies and the advertisers. The announcement of the Holy Father is meant to console all who are stricken by the great tragedy of children being aborted, children dying in wars and children starving in famine-stricken areas. And it is meant to stop those who would ask: why would a good God allow this? Obviously, it is a better arrangement to bring those souls sooner to Heaven, if we consider that they would be growing up in an evil modern culture or a pagan country or heretical family.

St. Augustine was one of those who thought that unbaptized children were condemned to hell if they die in that state. Of course, his reasoning was logical: If grace was needed to go to heaven and that this grace can only come earliest to us through baptism, therefore without baptism we would be without grace and death would mean condemnation. But St. Augustine himself began to have some reservations. And if we follow his trend of thoughts regarding those reservations, we would see that it leads to the same conclusion as Pope Benedict’s.

St. Augustine’s thoughts went this way: God gives graces to all men because His will is the salvation of men. These graces are given without man meriting it. So it is given ‘gratis.’ However, man has to co-operate with this grace. God gives these graces to a child who can not yet co-operate at baptism that’s why the child has god-parents standing by to answer for him. The unfortunate pagan child, on the other hand, has no god-parents . Will not both deserve the same graces since both cannot cooperate with God’s grace? St. Augustine believes both children deserve the same graces. And in his treatise on anti-Pelagianism, the presence or absence of a god-parent (or parents) cannot influence God’s will of giving that needed grace; and to believe otherwise would be heresy.

To be able to respond favorably to that grace that will enable the child to benefit from Baptism, he has to consent to the grace WITH HIS WILL. But the baptized child has no will just like the unbaptized pagan child. The accompanying parent or god-parent cannot be a variable to dictate the worthiness or unworthiness of the child to receive the needed grace which God is so desirous to give all men.

But wait, weren’t the heroes of the Old Testament unbaptized adults? They not only had original sin but actual sin. Yet, after a short stint in Limbo they all went to heaven at the Resurrection of Christ! St. Augustine repeatedly stated ‘how deep are the ways of God,” as an excuse why he could not explain it fully.

Scriptures often repeated the three main things we must do to have eternal life. First, to be born again through Baptism, secondly, to eat the Body and Blood of Christ and, thirdly, to believe. These are the three common ways to get God’s graces. Shall we limit God’s greatness to these three ways of giving graces? God could have a thousand other ways to give graces that we do not know of. Maybe Pope Benedict has found one.

That unbaptized children go to heaven, as taught by Pope Benedict, is a very consoling teaching. We see the children of the world dying because of man’s inhumanity to man; dying within a pagan or heretical religion and even without religion. But we also see that, as God always does, He produces great good from what seems to be a great evil. But that would be another blog.

Everybody is talking about Pope Benedict’s next encyclical. It seems to be a social encyclical. And the suspicion is that it has been signed and waiting to be promulgated. Meanwhile the entire world is going into recession and the people’s question is how long will this recession last; and will there be a rebound as in past recessions?
What could the Pope be saying or hinting recently with regards to the present world economy?

Popes are well known to predict many human events way ahead. The rise of communism and its spread around the world has been seen by the Popes of the last two centuries. We wonder, will there be a recovery in the present recession?