This topic on Faith is important for Pope Benedict and for us. For the Pope, this is his most important job, to lead us to the door of Faith. For us we must enter the door of Faith otherwise we are damned. For the rest of the world it is either salvation or damnation. Logically, there is nothing more important for any of us. But this is not the case for most people. Not even for priests and nuns. Yet the Pope’s plan to come out later with a letter on Faith shows the urgency of this call. It even sounds like a last call.
In the last post we saw the obvious difference between Pope Benedict’s schema on the “New Evangelization” that leads to “Porta Fidei” the door of Faith…. and the schema or ‘Instrumentum laboris” of the Preparatory Commission for the Bishop’s Synod on the same topic scheduled for this October. Pope Benedict’s schema is in accordance with the Liturgy, Scriptures, the Fathers of the Church and the Magisterium from the earliest time up to the Council of Trent, at least. The Instrumentum Laboris is not, confirming further the lost of Faith and the need to review the Catholic Church’s evangelization efforts which the Holy Father had been harping at.
The Holy Father is trying to pin point a problem for which his’new evangelization’ towards the door of Faith is the solution. The problem is based on his analysis of the Gospel on the feast of St. Peter and Paul when he first announced the need for this program to tackle the problem of the near complete lost of Faith.
The Gospel speaks about two levels of understanding. The first level is the natural level in which everything can be understood by the natural mind. The Old Testament falls under this level. Everything in the Old Testament, like the 10 Commandments can be understood by the natural mind. The prophecies about the coming Messiah, the moral virtue and all of natural theology can be understood by the natural mind because they all fall in the natural level. So when Christ asked the disciples who the crowd think He is the crowd gave answers that are naturally known, like He is a prophet. And Christ described their answer as a knowledge that can be taught by flesh and blood, i.e. by human teachers. Human teachers are teachers who teach Algebra, Physics, Philosophy and Natural theology and other natural sciences.
The second level is the supernatural level. The knowledge in this level cannot be taught or learned by flesh and blood. Only God can teach this to souls. Divine Revelation and/or the teachings of the Catholic Church would fall under this category. Natural man can read and know the words of these truths but not the deep meaning of the Word of God which contains supernatural mysteries, precepts and counsels. The deep breath of divine truths which comes from God can be taught by God alone. Though the New Testament teachings is a written law that can be learned by the mind, its divine meaning can only be infused in the soul by God. And this is how St. Peter answered Christ’s question. Christ said: flesh and blood had not taught you this but My Father in heaven.
In short, the Old Testament and all man- made scientific knowledge fall under the natural level that can be taught by men. The New Testament and all knowledge after Pentecost fall under the supernatural level that is taught by God alone. To know supernatural knowledge like the teachings of the Catholic Church a soul must be raised up to the supernatural level and in that level God takes over and teaches him. We do not teach souls the Catholic Truths. We teach them how to rise to the supernatural level where God, Himself teaches the soul. The process of teaching the soul how to rise up to the supernatural level is called Evangelization. An Evangelizer does not teach Catholic Truths. He teaches souls how to rise to the supernatural level where God teaches the soul. We cannot over emphasize this because there lies the problem of Evangelization….we are teaching souls Catholic Truths instead of teaching them how to rise up to the supernatural level and become co-natural with Divinity. Pope Benedict noted this defect and described it as ‘wrong method’ of Evangelization.’ The inability of Evangelizer to rise up to the supernatural level (the contemplative life) and as a consequence not to be able to raise their listeners to the supernatural level resulted in the second defect mentioned by the Pope as ‘wrong contents’ in Evangelization. Those are the two general defects mentioned by Pope Benedict in his ‘New Evangelization.
It is impossible to teach Catholic Truths without teaching souls how to rise to the supernatural level because supernatural truths are taught in that level. If we go the Christ’s ‘Apostolic Commission’ to the Apostles at the end of Matthew’s Gospel, His instruction is to ‘teach all nations’ how to rise to the supernatural level and not the teaching of Catholic truths.
To teach listeners to rise up to the supernatural level so God can teach them Divine Revelation is to teach them to become contemplatives. The Evangelizer has to be a contemplative himself. This is an important element of the “New Evangelization” that the Pope had been repeating but which is lacking in the schema for the Bishop’s Synod this October.
The error that Pope Benedict is correcting is this: preachers who are merely in the natural level and, therefore do not understand the deeper meaning of the teachings of Christ are teaching souls doctrines with words in the natural level which the hearers cannot understand the deeper meaning because they are not in the supernatural level. Neither the Evangelizer nor the hearer are learning about Faith. The Holy Father suspects that this was the cause of the nearly total lost of Faith today.
The Documents of the Council of Trent were superb morally and dogmatically because they were documents based of the Holy Tradition of the Catholic Church. But they were living on bad days. The Protestant reformation was at full swing. The Council was pressured to rush the training of priests in the seminary for the Evangelization of the Church that was being swept by Protestantism. In the rush, they employed priests in the natural level trying to teach supernatural truths which they did not understand to seminarians who could not understand supernatural truths because they were not taught how to rise to the supernatural level. Since Faith is in the supernatural level we have a scenario where both the teachers and seminarians in the seminary had no Faith. If there were few contemplatives who could have done a good job of teaching seminarians how to rise to the supernatural level, they would all be gone after two generations. That was the root of today’s problem of a near total absence of Faith or the ‘Crisis of Faith’ the former Cardinal Ratzinger described as the state of the Church in his ‘Ratzinger Report.” There ought to be a few contemplatives in the Church otherwise Satan would have triumphed over the Church which cannot happen.
The schema prepared for the Bishop’s Synod this October lacks the first two steps in the Holy Father’s schema. These are the elements that teaches souls how to rise to the supernatural level. The topics for the bishop’s synod were mostly natural, human topics.
The Holy Father’s schema has the first two steps which are the provision in raising souls to the supernatural level so God can teach them Divine Revelations. The Bishop’s schema does not contain these two provisions. Unless their schema is improved souls will not attain the supernatural virtue of Faith and eternal Life. Bishop Fisichella, head of the Congregation for the New Evangelization probably pin pointed the crux of the problem when he said: what we need is not new ways of evangelization but new Evangelizers. Preachers who are not bogged down in the spirituality of the Old Testament, the level of the natural. But souls who have risen up to the supernatural level into the spirituality of the New Testament and thus truly have Faith. Putting it the Holy Father’s words: only contemplatives can teach other souls to become contemplative where God alone can teach them the truths of the Catholic Church. That is the ‘New Evangelization’.