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Humanae
Ultrajectine Orientalium Catolicam Ecclesia

Pastoral Letter On The Dignity of Human Life
Bishop Andre’ J. W. Queen, SCR, Vicar General of the Church

Catholic, In A Secular Society

In today’s Western Society, questions have been raised about why Christianity, in its true and unadulterated form, refuses to conform itself to the spirit of this current age. The many secular influences upon adult, adolescent and child, can obscure, and even obliterate a Christian understanding of the world around us. And so, it is imperative that every Christian man, women and child, be steeped in understanding and proper catechesis so that we all may always be ready to give an accounting of our hope and proper defense of our faith. As Catholics, we are called to evangelize to the world. The strongest form of evangelization is the Catholic faith expressed in the everyday life of the believing man or woman. Our faith is not something to be dusted off and paraded out on Sunday, in time for Mass. Our faith must guide and form every part of our life, or else it is not a true faith. We are called, not to be “cultural Catholics”, but true Catholics, with our faith operative in our lives. Our Catholic faith must be the basis for understanding and living our marriages, raising our children, going to work, relating to others, and indeed, every part of our lives. One can fool themselves, family or friends, but not God, who sees what is in the heart of man. A true faith is a lived faith, in every aspect of one’s life. I know of no other way to be Catholic.

Do Not Be Fooled

There is no need to concern or fear, at what society may say. There is no argument that can be put to the Church of God, that has not already been done so, and been utterly defeated, by the Word of God. You must not be afraid to live your faith, raise your children in the faith, and proclaim the faith in word and deed. Standing on the Lord’s side, who can prevail against you?

The Dignity of Human Life

God made man unique from the rest of creation. We are flesh and blood, but we are also spirit. Made in the image and likeness of God, each and every human life has an intrinsic value, not based upon false standards of worth or value seen today. Every human being is precious to God, and every individual has intrinsic worth and value to God. Every human life has value and is to be protected, sacrosanct from conception to natural death. Every human being, from conception, has an intrinsic, natural and sacred, right to life. Every human being, regardless of mental or physical disability, injury or ailment, has the unalienable right to life that no one may seek to prematurely terminate. It is a sin to murder the unborn child, the sick, the mentally or physically disabled, the elderly, or anyone else, particularly so, in order to avoid the commitment needed to care for such, or for any other concern of convenience.

The Death Penalty

In centuries past, societies had no sure method to prevent their worst criminals from being released into society to harm others, other than the death penalty. In addition, the death penalty had, for many centuries, been seen as a deterrent to the most violent crimes, but this deterrent has not prevented the many violent crimes that have occurred.

Artificial Contraception

The West is wallowing in its wealth and opulence. A society convinced that it can do whatever it wants, and justify it accordingly. As families have gotten smaller over the years, strangely enough, homes and cars have gotten considerably larger – and more expensive.

Excessive wealth and opulence can create a cold heart and closed arms. It requires us to close our heart to anything and anyone that requires us to sacrifice our creature comforts for the sake of others. God asks married couples to be open to the gift of life, and challenges us, as he will always give us the grace to make our way through life. How can we, at the end of our earthly existence, be so bold as to ask God to be open to giving us eternal life with him, if we cannot be open to cooperating in the gift of life here and now?

What compounds this great sadness in this lack of love and charity, are the practical global results we see. So-called “developed nations” are becoming rapidly concerned with a depleted birth rate, unable to maintain the economic and industrial infrastructures of the major cities in the very near future. These nations, with fewer and fewer of its own citizens each year to work the necessary jobs to keep it going, paradoxically react violently at the waves of immigrants who comes into these countries and provide the very labor these nations need and depend upon. It is truly ironic how a closed heart and being closed to life and not wanting to give of one’s financial resources and time, can so act to slowly kill a society, generation by generation.

Even devout Christian couples have been taught that artificial contraception is permissible, to the detriment of unknowing persons. Many have not taken the time to truly learn what the drugs and devices actually do, or what type of effect this can have on the physiology of the woman. Even worse, is the horror of understanding that all contraceptive drugs are also “Abortiofacients” – meaning that, while taking these drugs, if the woman does become pregnant, these drugs often cause a chemical abortion to occur, without the couple ever having been aware of the pregnancy, these drugs often cause a chemical abortion to occur, without the couple ever having been aware of the pregnancy. This means that a devout Christian husband and wife may have unknowingly had one or more chemically-induced abortions, without ever having known that they were unwittingly participants in the death of one or more of their unborn children.

In addition, there is profound damage done, emotionally and physically as a result of chemical and surgical sterilization. And within our own lifetime, we have seen the involuntary sterilization of women here in the United States, without their knowledge or consent, finding out years later that they can no longer have children.

God asks married couples to always be open to new life. It is in this openness, and indeed in the affirmative reception and care of this new life, that spouses further learn Christ-like, self-sacrificing love. To turn away from openness to new life, is to turn away from God’s call to you, as a married man or woman, to become more like Christ in our everyday life. As Christ was obedient to the Father, and did not withhold His self-sacrificing love from us, it is when we imitate His selfless love, that we truly fulfill the fullness of Christ’s sacrifice on the cross.

The Church has always taught that children are a blessing. Somewhere, our society has devolved into seeing children as either an economic burden or as objects to be obtained and maintained for the sole purpose of feeding the ego of the individual “possessing” them. Sadly, many parents in today’s society spend more time, energy and care with their pets, than with their own children. It is gravely sinful to be closed to new life in order to increase one’s individual wealth beyond what is needed and necessary, to extravagant and lavish extremes. Married couples who can have children should do so, and married couples who cannot, are urged to open their hearts and homes through adoption. I then beg you, for your own sake, to be open to God’s gift of life, for in molding young hearts and minds in Christ, you reap reward for your selflessness from the Father who sees all.

Abortion

When “human rights” only apply to a part of humanity, and not to all of humanity, then these are not human rights at all. These are merely prerogatives given to a select few, but not to all. True human rights, therefore, must apply to all of humanity. No human being’s life should continue or end at the whim of another.

The right to life is the foundation upon which all other human rights rest upon. There is no greater social justice issue, than the right to life. From the very moment of conception, human life is sacred and to be protected, through to natural death. There are those who think that the church errs in her absolute prohibition against abortion, on the grounds that since abortion is a relatively new “medical procedure” the Church is ill-prepared to address this. Nothing could be further from the truth, for even in the time of Christ, and well before, there existed many of the same social ills that we see today, including artificial contraception and abortion. Throughout the time of the Old Testament to the present, Church fathers have taught and written against the great evil of abortion. The position of the Church today is the same position of the church nearly two thousand years ago, and even before that, to her Judaic roots, that abortion is a grave sin.

The current “abortion movement” developed, not from a culture of life, but from a culture of death.

It is back to Nazi Germany, that we must go, to Hitler’s idea to promote a “Master race”, and to control the population of “undesirable persons”. In his rise to power, Hitler’s doctors carried out abortions and unspeakable experiments against pregnant women and their unborn children. In his writings, widely read, he advocated sterilization and abortion as a means to control the population of “undesirable races” while, at the same time, promoting an increase in pregnancies among Nazi-party women. Adolph Hitler’s writings on controlling “undesirable races”, found fertile ground for growth, in the mind of a woman named Margaret Sanger.

Margaret Sanger founded her own organization in the United States, dedicated to her ideals of an ideal American society. She quoted Hitler’s writings widely, until the atrocities at concentration camps, such as Auschwitz, were made known outside of Nazi-controlled territories. She advocated forced sterilization and abortion as part of her socially engineered society and eugenics plan.

In her vision of an ideal society, the population of minorities would be controlled through sterilization and abortion, and she sought to place an abortion clinic in every minority neighborhood. She founded Planned Parenthood, now an international promoter of the culture of death.

This shameful line of thought exists today, as abortion decimates the unborn in this country, a concept conceived in evil and hatred, and now carried out with near impunity. And this barbaric policy of social engineering and eugenics is being transmitted around the world.

God commands us not to murder. The Church has always taught that abortion is murder, and is a mortal sin. This is because all human live is precious and has intrinsic value, as we are all made in the image and likeness of God. No one individual’s life is more valuable than another. It is gravely sinful to value the life of one individual over another, with relation to basic human rights and social justice. The life of an unborn child is just as valuable as the life of the mother who bears that child. The unborn child has the same basic right to life that each one of us claims. It is gravely sinful to value one individual’s life over another, or to deem an individual’s very existence as undesirable, due to physical or mental disability, physical or mental injury, race, gender, economic or social status, or the circumstances surrounding an individual’s conception, and then act to deprive that individual of their inalienable right to life.

In this country, abortion is legal up to, and including, the ninth month of pregnancy. A thin biological membrane is all that separate a child from a life protected, or a life extinguished.

As if this evil needed to be more horrible, partial birth abortion murders a child while in the very process of birth. Abortionists deliver the child, feet first, and then, prior to the birth of the head, pierce the base of the skull with a surgical instrument, remove the brain, collapsing the skull, and murdering the living child.

There have even been reports of children who survived various types of abortion, and were born alive, only to be denied basic medical care, or left exposed to the elements, or swept into a hazardous materials bag and left to die, or even killed by the abortionist through some overt act.

Our federal lawmakers recently rejected a law designed to protect and mandate medical care for these babies who survive abortion. Today, our society would rather let fully delivered, alive babies die, rather than run to their protection. We must have the temerity and the audacity to loudly cry out against this injustice. The blood of countless innocents is on our hands as a society, and the lives of countless more in the future are at risk. If we do not cry out, we will one day find ourselves looking at the day when society deems our lives to be “inconvenient”, our personal care as “too expensive a burden for society to bear”. No member of this church who promotes, procures or supports abortion, or any of its’ horrific counterparts in the culture of death, should consider themselves in good standing, nor properly disposed to receive communion, nor should any member of the clergy feel compelled, under any pretext, to communicate to such persons the Precious Body or Blood of Our Lord.

Human Sexuality

God made us male and female. In the loving act of creation, He made each unique and special, and gave to each a unique set of physical, emotional and spiritual gifts that are inherent to the person of that gender. Even today, in spite of our society’s attempts to negate the uniqueness of the genders, scientists, psychologist, psychiatrists and other behavioral scientists are realizing that the differences of male and female, and seeing differences in brain activity, emotional responses and general ways in which male and female relate to the world around them.

These gifts that God has given to male and female specifically are mean to complement one another, and not compete with one another. Our society seeks to negate gender, in order to fix a societal imbalance and inequity between genders. What this does, is force women to deny or minimize the unique gifts God has given in order to be seen as the equal of men. Likewise men are forced to deny aspects of maleness in order to conform to a society that seeks to negate innate maleness in favor of “gender neutrality”. As a result, motherhood, the foundation of home and family, has been much maligned and downplayed. The size of families has decreased, and society has begun to look with disdain at those women who embrace motherhood. Fatherhood in this society has been downplayed, and instead of having male and female complementarity in the home, children are lacking, by design, one or more parent in the home.

Human sexuality is mean to be complementary, wherein each gives of themselves to the other in an expression of love, based not in what each can obtain for themselves, but rather what each can give of themselves to the other. God created male and female to be complementary to each other, each possessing gifts in proportions that, when coupled with the spouse, bring two whole people into a permanent union, which Christ describes as “one flesh”, in which the strengths of one offset the weaknesses of the other, and vice-versa. This union, with a bride and groom who have been properly educated in the nature of marriage in relation to God’s plan, is a formidable force, and the sacrificial love generated there from, creates new life. In a sense, the marital bond imitates the Holy Trinity, as individual persons also bonded together as one flesh.

Human sexuality in its’ deepest intimacy, is designed to be a physical manifestation of the life-long, permanent bond between man and woman within the bonds of sacramental, covenant marriage. Scientists today theorize that sexual intimacy between man and woman create a chemical bond between them, linking each to the other, on a subconscious level, as a result of that chemical bond. If true, this would seem to indicate that God’s design included means to promote the strengthening of the marital bond, as the man and woman grew closer in intimacy, through love. If not true, nonetheless, there is a bond created in the unique and intimate sexual relation between man and woman. For this reason, the only acceptable form of relationship in which intimate sexual conduct should be present, is within the bonds of sacramental matrimony.

An individual’s body is unique to them, it is a part of who they are, that is precious, necessary and intimate, and the sharing of this part of an individual should only be with another person who recognizes the uniqueness of the gift, and who has committed themselves to lovingly care and sacrifice for the good of that individual, and to promote the sanctification of that individual in accord with God’s plan.

God’s plan asks us to be chaste and continent, waiting for that individual that God has called to be our spouse for life. As our body is special and unique, it is a great and valuable gift. If that gift is shared with one person in our life, the special and unique nature of that gift is realized. If however, we share that gift indiscriminately, how valuable can it be, when it is finally presented to the individual to whom one wishes to share the rest of one’s life with? The intrinsic value of a gift is in the fact that it is unique, specifically for one person, and not simply for anyone to whom one may have a passing acquaintance with. How much more valuable is our body, which Scripture teaches us is the temple of our soul?

The male is designed to give of himself, in the both sexuality and in self-sacrificing love, to his beloved, who is designed to receive his love, and nurture the new life, born of their intimate love for one another. He is called to give his life, if necessary, for the sake of his beloved, in imitation of Christ who gave His life for His beloved, the Church, which Scripture describes as the “Bride of Christ”. The woman, in her nurturing, establishes and creates the very essence of self-sacrificial love in the relationship. Each teaches, guides, and learns from, the other, and also strengthens, empowers, sanctifies and emboldens the other, as is necessary for a successful and fulfilling marital relationship.

Sexual intimacy outside of marriage, as is seen in society today, is egocentric, where concern is about what the other person can do, can give, and can contribute to that individual’s gratification. It is sexual conduct that places the other person in the position of being a sexual tool, to be used for sexual gratification, and deprives that other of their inherent dignity as a human being. This creates a society in which the objectification of women is the norm, and young girls are raised to believe that their self worth is staked to physical appearance and sexual promiscuity. Likewise young boys are raised to see women as a collection of body parts, and not as human beings worthy of respect. These boys grow into men, who, lacking a proper understanding of a proper relationship with women, fail to understand how they dehumanize women, and disrespect themselves.

Men and women, although having different physical, emotional and spiritual gifts, are of co-equal dignity, and those gifts of both must be properly nurtured in order to have a proper relationship between the two within a marital bond.

It is in the misunderstanding and inability to understand how to relate to one another in society today, that has created the crisis we see, in which women are encouraged not to live in the fullness of their femininity and men are taught that inherent maleness is somehow wrong and distasteful. We see teenage girls engaging in violent combative behavior, savagely beating others, and adult women going to prison for violent crimes in increasing numbers. We see men afraid to appropriately express maleness, in a society that prefers men to imitate a docility that requires a relinquishing of the traditional place as protector and spiritual head of the home. Likewise, society ridicules the role of motherhood, the foundation of what a society will be in generations to come.

Pornography

The most dangerous epidemic in our country is that of pornography. With the advent of the internet, it is finding its way into homes, workplaces, libraries and even schools. There is an industry pushing pornography in the United States and abroad for profit. Those who wish to advocate the demise of marriage support the free-flow of pornography, in an effort to change the mind of society, and future generations, by keeping this degradation of humans accessible and easy to obtain.

Pornography is the single most dangerous poison successfully attacking families today. Men are particularly susceptible, as men respond at a very high rate to visual stimuli, although studies indicate that more and more women are also becoming addicted to pornography.

As today’s society seeks to demean femininity, and equate feminine traits with weakness, young women are being socialized into seeking to be sexually promiscuous, in imitation of young males who have also been taught to deny the dignity of humans, in favor of objectifying the opposite sex, and embracing a societal norm that sees women as merely a collection of body parts, with men’s only interest in terms of using women as sexual object to obtain sexual self-gratification.

The proliferation of internet-based pornography means that no home is safe, and no family can let its’ guard down for a moment. That pornography demeans and cheapens human intimacy is, in itself, gravely sinful, this is compounded, however, by the transmission of such images to others, who deliberately or accidentally are subjected to these images.

Spouses must protect each other from falling prey to this self-destructive and addictive behavior; parents must watch and monitor exactly what their children are watching on the internet, and what they may be exposed to in the homes of other children they are visiting. Christian employers must ensure that such sites are blocked, and computer activity monitored, and employees must be a sure and solid Christian guide to their peers.

We must not fail to act aggressively to protect our loved ones from this disease that seeks to infect and destroy the Christian family. If allowed to infiltrate our families, it will affect how our daughters see themselves, and regard their self worth, as seen in the dehumanization and objectification of women, the denies of respect for the dignity of women, and an assumption that sexual promiscuity is an acceptable way of life. Our young sons will mature believing that women are objects to be possessed and used, and that sexual promiscuity is an acceptable way of life for them. They will grow up believing that sexual intimacy outside of sacramental marriage is acceptable, cheapening the gift of their physical bodies that should be only for the spouse to whom they would be bonded to for life. A belief that sexual conduct outside of a permanent marital bond undermines the institution of marriage. Pornography, not only through the internet, but also in movies, dance videos, fashion shows and in many other public venues, where the envelope is pushed well beyond modesty and propriety into public acts that are, by nature, pornographic, threaten the fabric of our society. This threat is packaged in a manner that is appealing, and marketed to the youth today, who are very impressionable, in need of determining their personal identity and emotionally in a state of flux, vulnerable to a well-packaged message selling popularity, fame, fortune and even wealth if they emulate these standards.

The objectification of people as sexual objects is gravely sinful, and seeks to rob the individual who is objectified, as well the individual who objectifies the other person, of their humanity. As Christians, we must never be either, and we must always act against, and speak out against, the evils of pornography and the lack of propriety and modesty. We must always demand propriety and modesty, in dress, deportment, speech and behavior of ourselves, our spouses, children and those whom we come into regular contact with. Parents must never abdicate their responsibility to monitor the activities of their children, or allow video games, televisions or computers to act as surrogates for parental interaction and supervision.

Pornography is a great social ill, walking hand in hand with sexual slavery, prostitution, child sexual abuse, and a myriad of other gravely sinful actions, that we, as Catholics, must always be active in the fight against. As children of God, we must always be the light, shining in darkness. In this great darkness, we cannot fail to struggle against it.

Marriage

Marriage, properly understood and entered into, within the heart of the Church of Christ, is sacramental and holy. With proper form, matter and intent, marriage is indissoluble unto death.

The divorce rate in this country is over fifty percent, nation-wide. We have become a nation of “throw away people”, in this society. If your unborn child is conceived at a time conflicting with your social calendar, society says to “abort the pregnancy”, discard the body, and then go merrily on your way. If your spouse becomes ill or suffers some severely debilitating accident, society says not to waste the best years of your life caring for your spouse, simply “euthanize” them, and go on your merry way. Likewise, a spouse that does not make you happy, fulfill your every need, or otherwise fails to serve you completely, society says to “divorce” them, and go merrily on your way.

The inability of people to commit to long term relationships is based, in part, upon a concern that their significant other will see them as disposable. Afraid to give their heart fully, they are forever in short term relationships, waiting “for the other shoe to drop”. Society is constantly teaching anyone who will listen, that life is all about pleasing one’s self, getting what you can from others, and discarding them when you have no further “use” for them. People are valued only for what other individuals get from them, and nothing more.

As Christians, we cannot buy into a societal norm that is diametrically opposed to the core of our faith. Every human being had intrinsic value and worth, as a child of God. Our lives are not about what we can get from others, four our own selfish gains, but rather what we can give of ourselves to others, for the greater glory of God and the salvation of souls.

Applying this profound principle to sacramental marriage, the spouse is to be concerned for what he or she can give of themselves for the sake of the other, and the salvation of the soul of their spouse. This responsibility of each is to assist the other in developing the spiritual character and holiness that God calls us to. In addition, this responsibility, each for the other, is absolute, and organic to the marital covenant.

Christian marriage is then patterned after Christ’s relationship with the Church. Christ, as the bridegroom, was willing to lay down His life for His bride, the Church, so great is His love. True love, then, is not a feeling or emotion, bereft of conviction, but rather, love is what a spouse sacrifices or does for the sake of his or her beloved, without any expectation of anything in return, and solely for the sake of the beloved. The marital relationship is not about what one can get from one’s spouse, but rather is about love, the nature of which is in the sacrifice one spouse makes for the other. Marriage is rooted in what one spouse can do, in love, for the welfare and care of the other. Intellectual compatibility, cultural complementarity and physical attraction are all good things to be found within a marital relationship, and, rightly understood, are ingredients for a healthy marriage. However, without a true, sacrificial love for one another, no fruit of commitment can grow.

For us, as Catholics, we understand marriage to be a covenant bond. In secular society, marriage is seen as a contract. This is an incorrect understanding of marriage, because in a contract, one trades goods or services for currency. In a contractual agreement, the focus is about getting something from someone else. It is a simple business arrangement, designed to get what you want, and when you do, you have no further need of the other individual.

A covenant is far beyond what a contract is. A contract creates temporary business partners. A covenant creates permanent familial bonds. The concept of “covenant bonds” comes from our Mosaic roots. In a covenant between a Hebrew master craftsman, for instance, and a young apprentice brought to him by his family to learn the trade, the master craftsman becomes as a father to the young apprentice and the young apprentice becomes as a son to the master craftsman, and is taken into his home and treated as a son. Even when the training is complete the bond between the two as father and son, remain throughout their lives. In addition, in the creation of a covenant, the two would call upon God to bless the bond, and solemnly state, before God and man, their obligations to each other. This calling upon God to bless and arbitrate the covenant would also necessarily bring God’s judgment upon a covenant-breaker. It was for this reason that no covenant could be made with a non-Israelite, who was not obligated under the Mosaic Law, and did not fear God.

The marital covenant creates the most basic, yet extremely essential, familial bond. Within the marital covenant are three parties who are bound by the vows; the bride, the groom, and God. In the sacrament of marriage, the bride and groom confer the sacrament upon each other, solemnly calling upon God to bless the union, and inversely subjecting themselves to God’s judgment if they violate the covenant vows. It is God who sanctifies this union and binds the two together as “one flesh” for life. The minister of the church, deacon, priest or bishop, acts as the official witness of the church, and to ensure that the proper, complete and necessary requirements for a sacramental, covenant marriage are present. Other witnesses and family are also present, as a covenant bond is, and has always been, attested to publicly by the parties binding themselves to it, in Judeo-Christian history and faith.

It is precisely because Christian marriage is a sacramental covenantal bond, protected by God, entered into for life, that it is indissoluble. A valid, sacramental marriage cannot be severed, sundered, or invalidated by any means, including divorce, and remains valid and binding until the death of one of the spouses. Not all marriages are sacramental covenant bonds, because not all who marry are Christian. Non-Christian marriages, called natural marriages, lack the sacramental covenant bond, and those who enter into such marriages, do so with the secular understanding of marriage as a contract, officiated by the state, and dissoluble by the state. Because of this, many people enter into marriage with the wrong understanding of what benefits they will receive from marriage, and what duties and responsibilities they have with respect to their spouse. Many married individuals seek counseling, for the purpose of changing something about their spouse, and later realize that it is they who must change, in order to effect a change in the status and composition of their marital relationship.

Unfortunately, not all marriages that appear to be sacramental are, in fact. There are cases in which one or both spouses entering the marital covenant without consenting to the conditions of the marital bond, deceiving their spouse-to-be and misrepresenting their convictions and intentions to the deacon or priest, as they progress through the preparation process. In such cases, where there is a defect of intent, the original marital bond was never created. Likewise, in the event where one of the spouses was not free to marry, but deceived their spouse into believing that they were, the marital covenant was never validly entered into. In cases such as this, when brought to the attention of the church, and thoroughly investigated, where there is a defect of form, matter or intent, the Church may determine that the defect is such that no sacramental marriage ever existed, and issue a Declaration of Nullity. In the case where no defect of form, matter or intent is found, the Church must abide by the permanent nature of the sacrament, and has no authority to separate or sunder, that which God has put together. Although a couple may obtain a secular divorce, they may still be sacramentally married. There are instances in which, for good reason, one spouse must live separately from the other, due to addition or spousal abuse, and for which the separation of the marital assets under secular law is permissible, through divorce, although the marital covenant remains. No spouse should be compelled nor coerced to remain in a relationship that is abusive.

Not every person is called to the married state. Some are called to the single, celibate state of life, given that charism by God. Such persons can also be open to life through the corporal works of mercy, and service to God through service to one’s fellow man. It is because of this unique charism, that the Church recognizes the value of both the single celibate and the married priesthood. In addition, the work of those in Religious Orders, as well as consecrated virgins, and widows and widowers in the Church, giving of themselves in love to others, as examples of Christ.

Euthanasia

Today, many feel that when an individual’s life has become complicated due to severe illness, mental disease or defect, debilitating injury resulting from an accident, or the ravages of old age, that person’s life has less value than those who do not suffer from these things; or worse, that the person’s life then has no intrinsic value, and that the person’s life should be ended. The late Pope John Paul II bravely showed the world that human beings who find themselves in such conditions still have much to give society, and that their lives maintain their God-given value. In spite of his illness, and its’ effects upon his body, he continued serving the People of God right up to his death.

Shameful also, is the practice of withholding the basic necessities of life to individuals who are unable to obtain them for themselves. This church, as did this bishop, join the struggle to try to save the life of Terri Schindler-Schiavo, who was senselessly deprived of food and water, to cause her death, at the order of her spouse, who was suppose to protect her.

People are being deprived of basic, life sustaining care, such as food and water, to ease the financial burden of others, or to release them prematurely from their responsibility and duty of care owed to their loved one in need. So selfish and self-centered people are becoming the norm, and this society is steadily creating an artificial standard, forcing people to measure themselves by it, and if found short, are being forced to “not be a burden to their friends or family”.

Physician-Assistance Suicide

So-called “physician-assisted suicide”, a grave sin, made notorious by Dr. Kevorkian, has now even evolved beyond its’ evil roots, going from suicide by persons suffering terminal diseases, to suicide by persons suffering from a chronic but curable disease, to now, assisted suicide by persons who are simple depressed and want to die.

No one’s life should be in jeopardy of any kind, especially not under pretext of economic loss of others related to one’s care and subsistence. Likewise, no one’s life should be in jeopardy due to issues of convenience of any other person. No one has the right to force or coerce another person into ending their own life, to alleviate the responsibilities of those responsible for that person’s care, nor any other reason. No one has the right to take the life of another person in order to eliminate a standard of care that is, by natural law and the grace of God alone, that person’s by divine right.

It is gravely sinful to engage in, participate in, or otherwise facilitate suicide. Life, as a gift from God, is to be cherished. The many challenges that people suffer in life are to be offered up to God, as Christ offered His suffering on the cross up to the Father. God will comfort all who suffer, all who are sick, and all who are infirmed. The joy and happiness that awaits us in the Kingdom of God, are such that all earthy discomfort is forgotten, and is replaced with the fullness of God’s love, as we behold the beatific vision.

In Sweden today, “Physician-Assisted Suicide” has become “Physician Directed Homicide”, as doctors there have been given legal authority to determine that a particular person’s life can be terminated, without their knowledge or consent, if involved in a major accident, or suffering from some severe illness, and the doctor determines that the quality of life of the patient, if he or she survives, would have little or no intrinsic value. If the “quality of life” of the patient, in the determination of the doctor, is poor, then the patient may very well be “euthanized” by the doctor, without consent.

Freedom

This society defines freedom as the ability to do whatever you want to do. It holds up as its’ battle cry, “Choice”. It states that people have the right to do whatever they want to do, as long as it is their choice to do it. This becomes a standard that overrides even the most basic foundations of society. In this version of choice, the exception becomes the rule, and society begins to decay, because it knows no absolute right or absolute wrong, everything is relative, subject to individual choice. What this creates, is a societal, institutionalized anarchy, in which people are children of their passions, and everyone does what is right in his own eyes. Society supports a mentality that states that life is all about getting what you want, at any cost, and at the expense of everyone else. All that matters, is that no one interferes with your right to do whatever you want.

This type of mentality leaves people devoid of any meaningful connections in their life, as they are constantly evaluating what they can get from others. When we treat other people as tools to get what we want, or as things to be used, we devalue not only others, but ourselves as well. We begin to see people as less than what they are, and as a “something” instead of a “someone”. We forego covenant type familial bonds in favor of impersonal contracts.

God’s law is that which truly liberates, and truly frees us. By living our life everyday in accordance with our Catholic faith, we avoid many of the pains and pitfalls that we would otherwise suffer, if we lived according to society’s concept of freedom. God’s law protects us from many physical, mental and spiritual dangers that we would otherwise face. What parent allows their child to go wherever they want, do whatever they want, and give in completely to their childish whim? When children grow into adulthood, suddenly we feel that we have no need for the very guide that has protected us thus far. The same is so for us spiritually, and people come up with a variety of ways to “explain away” God’s law, how it no longer applies to them, and why they do not need to live by it any longer. These people later find themselves deep in the danger that God’s law would have protected them from, had they chosen to adhere to it. This is the harvest of society’s view of freedom. A freedom which has no bounds places all of a society at risk. If a spouse is free to violate a marital bond, if a mother is free to have her unborn child murdered, if an adult child is free to “euthanize” an ailing parent, if a hospital is free to deny you life-saving medical care because you are poor or indigent, how really free are you? There is no freedom in a life that is constantly being devalued by others, in relationships that are temporary and transitory, in a life devoid of God’s grace and His emphasis on life, while society emphasizes death.

Society’s concept of freedom then, is a complete fabrication. A person who is free is one who lives according to God’s law. Such a person is truly free, because it is in living a Christ-like life that one finds love, fidelity, stability, family, and a profound sense of spiritual clarity in Christ. In living the Christ-like life, we see Christ in others, we recognize the unique gift of human life, and how precious it really is.

Embryonic Stem Cell Research

Creating human life for the purpose of destroying that life, in order to harvest that individual’s biological material is inhuman, immoral, and gravely sinful. This is a profound attack against the dignity of an individual human being, who can neither defend nor voice their protest, to their murder and illicit dissection.

Contrary to recent claims, there is no way to obtain embryonic cells without the death of the unborn child. And research into embryonic stem cells has not yielded any cures or medical treatments at all. In addition, very undifferentiated, yet scientifically useable stem cells can be obtained from umbilical cord blood, without harming the innocent.

Adult stem cell research, likewise, does not require the death of unborn children, because these stem cells come from adult human beings. Adult stem cell research has already yielded over seventy medical treatments for various medical conditions, and promises to provide far more.

Why is it, then, that with umbilical cord blood stem cells and adult stem cells, which have produced medical treatments and breakthroughs, is minimized, in favor of embryonic stem cell research, which has yielded absolutely nothing? In an attempt to emphasize the claimed “lack of humanity” of the human embryo, the abortion movement has thrown considerable weight behind embryonic research in an effort to gain public support for their view of the unborn child as a “non-person”. We have seen that the so-called “Pro-Choice Movement” is itself being controlled by an agenda favoring social engineering, population control, and eugenics.

Embryonic stem cell research devalues human life, by equating the life of the unborn child to the pain or disability of an individual suffering from an injury or debilitating disease. While it is certainly not the wish of God for us to suffer, yet sin brought suffering into the world, we must not compound one tragedy with a mortal sin, and put to death an innocent human being, to enhance the comfort, or even cure a debilitating sickness. The life of the unborn child is just as important, as valuable and containing within it, the same intrinsic value, as every other human being. It is always gravely sinful to take the life of the unborn, valuing it as less than that of a fellow human being who has been born. It is always intrinsically evil to create human life, for the purpose of killing that person and harvesting their organs or other biological materials, for the purpose of experimentation, or any other purpose, stated or otherwise, that denies or denigrates the inherent dignity of that human life. No human being should be brought into this world for the sole and singular purpose of being a medical slave of another person or persons, to be biological stock for experimentation or as simple spare biological parts for others.

Eugenics

No human being should be deprived of their God-given right to life on the pretext that, due to a physical or mental disease or defect, their life would have no intrinsic value, would not be productive (according to societal norms), or would be an economic burden upon society, nor any other false social construct that would deny their fundamental right to life.

The technology available today requires also this admonition; It is likewise grave matter to procure or facilitate an abortion of a child based upon race, color, physical features, hair or eye color, projected physiology or any other external feature.

Dignity Is Universal To Human Life

All human life is sacred. What an individual does in their lifetime may not be intrinsically evil or intrinsically good, but neither affects the value of the person’s God-given life, and it is God, and God alone who is All Righteous and All Just, who will judge the deeds of men accordingly, and give just verdict as a Judge. He will too, also give perfect mercy as our Divine Father, in ways in which we are far from capable.

Repentance, Restoration and Renewal

To those who had been mislead by the culture of death, and later realized the tragic error made, have been, as a result of their repentance and reconciliation, restored to their place in the family of God, and their spirits have been renewed by the love of God. I ask all such persons to be a public witness to the glory of God, for the salvation of souls and to defend and protect the lives of those who, in the future, will have no voice of their own, and will desperately need a voice to speak in their defense.

In The Image And Likeness Of God

We are called, as Catholics, to live out our faith in everyday life. It is not enough to attend Mass on Sunday and call ourselves faithful; we must embrace our faith in every aspect of our life, and honor the dignity of human life, as an unmerited gift from God, our heavenly Father. And so, I implore each of you to live out your faith in every aspect of your everyday life. Let us be Christ, not only to one another, but, more especially to those we do not know.

Given at my Provincial See in the City of Chicago, on Monday, February 19nth, the Monday after Quinquagesima Sunday, in the year 2007 of Our Lord, in the Ninth Year of my Episcopate.

Andreas Ioannes Gulielmus Reginius

Editor's Note: It was recently reported that two (RC) Australian priests have been baptizing hundreds of children incorrectly, using feminist-inspired language in the baptismal formula:

"Two days ago, Archbishop John Bathersby of Brisbane (RC) stated that children baptized at the South Brisbane church using non-traditional words — ‘creator, liberator and sustainer’ instead of "Father, Son and Holy Spirit" — would have to be re-baptized."

One of the priests, Fr. Kennedy, has stated: "It’s fundamentalism to argue that the actual words are all-important. That's the trouble with the Church; under the present Pope you’re not allowed to have different opinions."

But what Fr. Kennedy doesn’t seem to understand is that words are important and that the use of certain words in the Church, especially in the ministry of the sacraments, is not about "opinion," but rich theological and doctrinal truths.

In the following essay, "Father, Son, and Spirit–So What’s In A Name?" (excerpted from The Politics of Prayer: Feminist Language and the Worship of God, edited by Helen Hull Hitchcock), Deborah Belonick demonstrates that referring to God as "Father, Son, and Holy Spirit" is not rooted in hatred of women or narrowmindedness, but in the very nature of the Triune God.

Father, Son, and Spirit–So What’s In A Name?
by Deborah Belonick

The last few years have seen vast changes in many churches in liturgical rites and educational instruction in regard to proper language for God. The United Church of Christ, to give just one example, has published "Inclusive Language Guidelines" urging members to "avoid the use of masculine role names for God, such as ‘Lord, King, Father, Master, and Son"’, and instead to "use nonexclusive role names, such as ‘God, Creator, Sustainer, Mother/ Father’. Or use non-sex-specific words relating to the qualities of God, such as ‘Spirit, Holy One, Eternal One, Rock"’. Feminist theologians chide those using the traditional terms as being sexist, ignorant of feminine images for God in Scripture, or unaware of the "oppressive patriarchal structure" which "invented" these terms for God.

A study of history proves that questioning language for God is not a new pursuit. We must not think that we in the twentieth century are the only ones who ever wrestled with the traditional doxology for God: "Father, Son, and Holy Spirit". The ways that the issue has been raised, and the ways Christians in the past have responded to it, have much to teach us today as we seek to respond to accusations by feminist theologians that patriarchalism and human imagination are responsible for the traditional trinitarian terms for God.

Specifically, Christians of the fourth century have much to teach us. The fourth century was the period of the all-consuming questions: Who and what is Jesus Christ? His humanity, divinity person, and nature were the topics of great debates, which examined his relationship to humanity, as well as to the other members of the Trinity. During these fourth-century debates, the traditional doxology for God–"Father, Son, and Holy Spirit"–was also challenged and debated.

A study of the Christian controversies of the fourth century leads to two important conclusions. First, the terms "Father, Son, and Holy Spirit" have a precise theological meaning which is not communicated by any other terms for God. Second, the traditional doxology did not emerge as a reflection of patriarchal culture.

IS "CREATOR" ENOUGH?

On the first point, two fourth-century theologians who were embroiled in controversies over the proper terms for God, Athanasius and Gregory of Nyssa, are especially worthwhile for our study.

Athanasius was defending the traditional trinitarian names against the Arians, a group which preferred to call the First Person of the Trinity "Creator" rather than "Father". Arians claimed that Jesus Christ was not the Son of God but merely a superior creature; therefore, "Father" was a fleshly, foolish, improper term for God. In reply to the Arians, Athanasius tried to explain the importance of the biblical divine names, "Father, Son, and Holy Spirit".

Using a term such as "Creator", said Athanasius, makes God dependent on creatures for his existence. If creation did not exist, he asked, would this Creator-God cease to be? If creation had never existed, what would be the proper term for God?

In addition, Athanasius argued, the word "Creator" could be used to describe any of the members of the Trinity. It would be wrong to refer to the Father alone as Creator because the Bible states:

"In the beginning God created the heavens and earth. The earth was without form and void, and darkness was upon the face of the deep; and the Spirit of God was moving over the face of the waters" (Gen 1:1-2).

"In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God. He was in the beginning with God; all things were made through him, and without him was not anything made that was made" (Jn 1:1-3).

According to Scripture, the Trinity acts in concert. They all create; they all save (Jn 5:21; Acts 2:24; Rom 1:4); they all sanctify (Eph 5:26; 1 Th 5:23).

Athanasius argued that the names of God had to describe more than God’s action toward creation. There are, as it were, two different sets of names which may be used for God, explained Athanasius. One set (Creator, Savior, Sanctifier) refers to God’s deeds or acts, that is, to his will and counsel. The other set (Father, Son, Holy Spirit) refers to God’s own essence and being. Athanasius insisted that these two sets should be formally and consistently distinguished.

In Athanasius’ view, we should use the terms "Father, Son, and Holy Spirit" when speaking about the existence of God as three persons in a community of love, when speaking about the relationships among members of the Trinity without regard to their acts toward creation. God’s "being", Athanasius reasoned, has priority over God’s action and will: "God is much more than just ‘Creator’. When we call God ‘Father’, we mean something higher than his relation to creatures" (Against the Arians).

THREE DISTINCT PERSONS

Gregory of Nyssa faced similar problems when dealing with a sect known as the Eunomians, who believed that Christ was unlike God the Father by nature and instead was a "created energy". For this reason, Eunomians refused to call God "Father". In response, Gregory sought to explain the character of the Holy Trinity, and the Church’s insistence on the traditional terms, "Father, Son, and Holy Spirit".

First, said Gregory there was no more adequate theologian than the Lord himself, who without compulsion or mistake designated the Godhead "Father, Son, and Holy Spirit" (See Mt 28:19).

Further, Gregory said, these names are not indications that God is a male or a man; for God transcends human gender. Rather, these names imply relationships among the Persons of the Trinity and distinguish them as separate Persons who exist in a community of love. The names lead us to contemplate the correct relationships among the three Persons; they are clues to the inner life of the Trinity.

Gregory wrote: "While there are many other names by which the Deity is indicated in the historical books of the Bible, in the prophets, and in the law, our master Christ passes by all these and commits to us these titles as better able to bring us to the faith about the Self-Existent, declaring that it suffices for us to cling to the titles ‘Father, Son, and Holy Spirit’ in order to attain to the apprehension of him who is absolutely Existent" (Against Eunomius, Book 2).

Gregory states that it is with the terms "Father, Son, and Holy Spirit" that men can enter into the depths of God’s life, somewhat equipped to understand the inner relationships and Persons of the Trinity.

DIVINE FATHERHOOD

Of particular interest in our own day is Gregory’s explanation of the term "Father", which is under scrutiny by feminist theologians as a harmful metaphor that resulted from a patriarchal church structure and culture.

The name "Father", said Gregory, leads us to contemplate (1) a Being who is the source and cause of all and (2) the fact that this Being has a relationship with another person–one can only be "Father" if there is a child involved. Thus, the human term "Father" leads one naturally to think of another member of the Trinity, to contemplate more than is suggested by a term such as "Creator" or "Maker". By calling God "Father", Gregory notes, one understands that there exists with God a Child from all eternity, a second Person who rules with him, is equal and eternal with him.

"Father" also connotes the initiator of a generation, the one who begets life rather than conceiving it. and bringing it to fruition in birth. This is the mode of existence, the way of origin and being, of the First Person of the Trinity. He acts in trinitarian life in a mode of existence akin to that of a father in the earthly realm. Before time, within the mystery of the Holy Trinity, God generated another Person, the Son, as human fathers generate seed.

Nowhere does Gregory, suggest that this "Father" is a male creature: "It is clear that this metaphor contains a deeper meaning than the obvious one", he notes. The deeper meaning, is found in a passage of Paul to the Ephesians:

"For this reason I bow my knees before the Father, from whom every family (patria, fatherhood) in heaven and on earth receives its true name" (Eph 3:14-15). This passage implies that God is the one, true, divine Father, whose generative function human fathers imitate in a creaturely imperfect way. When God generates a Child, the generation is eternal and transcends time and space, unlike human fathers, who imitate this generative function but arc bound in time space, and creaturely "passions," as Gregory notes (Against Eunomius, Book 4).

All the patristic writers insist that God is not male, but God possesses a generative characteristic, for which the best analogy in the human realm is that of a human father generating seed. Hence, the word "Father" for God is the human word most adequate to describe the First Person of the Holy Trinity, who possesses this unique characteristic.

The divine Father is as different from earthly fathers as the divine is from the human. Nevertheless, it is fatherhood and not motherhood which describes his mode of life, his relationship to the Second Person of the Trinity, and even his personal characteristics. The First Person of the Trinity does not just act like a father (though he sometimes acts like a mother!). Rather, he possesses divine fatherhood in a perfect way. That God’s fatherhood transcends and is the perfection of human fatherhood is part of the meaning of Jesus’ statement in Matthew 23:9: "And call no man your father on earth, for you have one Father, who is in heaven."

Clement of Alexandria, another fourth-century Christian teacher, expressed this idea most aptly: "God is himself love, and because of his love, he pursued us. [In the eternal generation of the Son] the ineffable nature of God is father; in his sympathy with us he is mother" (How Will the Rich Be Saved?).

SON OF THE FATHER

In his explanation of the term "Son", which is also a term often considered non-inclusive in our era, Gregory of Nyssa reiterates that this also is a precise theological term leading one to the inner relationships of the Godhead. It has primacy over other scriptural terms. He says:

"While the names which Scripture applies to the Only-begotten are many, we assert that none of the other names is closely connected with reference to him that begot him, for we do not employ the name ‘Rock’ or ‘Resurrection’ or Shepherd’ or ‘Light’ or any of the rest, as we do the name ‘Son of the Father’, with a reference to the God of all. It is possible to make a twofold division of the signification of the divine names, as it were, by a scientific rule: for to one class belongs the indication of his lofty and unspeakable glory; the other class indicates the variety of providential dispensation" (Answer to Eunomius’ Second Book).

All sorts of epithets for God are available to man through revelation–goodness, love, mother, fire. But none of these is exchangeable or comparable to the revelation of God as Father, Son, and Holy Spirit. These are the terms by which man enters trinitarian life to discover the unique Persons of the Trinity and their distinguishable marks.

The traditional trinitarian terms arc precise theological terms, not easily exchangeable for any others. They lead us to the Persons of the Trinity, as well as defining relationships between them. To be unbegotten, begotten, and in procession are characteristics of the Persons of the Father, Son, and Holy Spirit. Paternity, generation, and procession are the unique marks of the respective Persons.

"MALE" THEOLOGY?

What about the feminist allegation that the traditional doxology is the product of a patriarchal structure, of a "male" theology? Did the patristic writers harbor animosity toward women or femininity? Did they use masculine terms for God, the source of all life, because they mistakenly thought that human fathers are the sole source of human life? Indeed, the opposite appears to be true.

First, some women did have opportunities to express their understanding of the Godhead. Macrina, elder sister of two of the greatest theologians of the fourth century) Basil the Great and the aforementioned Gregory of Nyssa, was referred to by her brothers as the "teacher". It was she who raised them in the Faith and instructed them in the theology of the Father, Son, and Holy Spirit. She defended these titles as revelations recorded in Scripture (A Select Library of Nicene and Post-Nicene Fathers of the Christian Church. second series, eds. Philip Schaff and Henry Wace. Vol. 5: Gregory of Nyssa: Dogmatic Treatises, etc, [Grand Rapids, Mich.: William B. Eerdmans, 1892], pp. I6).

Likewise, Nina, the evangelizer of the Georgians, converted that nation by her teaching of Jesus Christ and of the Holy Trinity-Father, Son, and Holy Spirit. She did so by her own will; she was not commissioned by the bishops (Lives and Legends of Georgian Saints, by David Marshall Long [Crestwood, N.Y.: SVS Press, 1956], pp. 13-39)

PRAISE FOR WOMEN

Second, the most accurate way to describe the Church Fathers’ attitude toward women would not be animosity but ambivalence. One can indeed find passages in their writings deriding women for their weak wills and for leading the human race into sin (John Chrysostom writes that "the woman taught once and ruined all"). But one also finds Passages extolling women for being of great character and teaching the gospel better than men. Gregory of Nazianzen, in writing of his parents, explains that his father’s virtue was "the result of his wife’s prayers and guidance, and it was from her that he learned his ideal of a good shepherd’s life.... They [his parents] have been rightly assigned, each to either sex; he is the ornament of men, she of women, and not only the ornament but the pattern of virtue" (Funeral Oration on His Sister Gorgonia).

Jerome says his reader may laugh at him for so often "dwelling on the praises of mere women. . ., [but] we judge of people’s virtue not by their sex but by their character and hold those to be of the highest glory who have renounced both rank and wealth" (Letter 127, To Principia).

It must also be noted that ‘in several instances the Church was much fairer toward women than the surrounding culture. Gregory of Nazianzen exemplified this by upbraiding the men of his flock in regard to a civil law which meted out strict punishment for wives committing adultery but disregarded husbands committing the same crime: "[Let me discuss] chastity, in respect of which I see that the majority of men are ill-disposed and that their laws are unequal and irregular. For what was the reason why they restrained the woman but indulged the man, and why a woman who practices evil against her husband’s bed is an adultress (and the legal penalties for this are very severe), but if a husband commits fornication against his wife, he has not account to give? I do not accept this legislation; I do not approve this custom. Those who made the law were men, and therefore the legislation is hard on women" (On the Words of the Gospel).

Fourth, it appears that it was not unknown to the leaders of the fourth-century Church that mothers as well as fathers contributed as sources to the making of a child. John Chrysostom wrote:

"A man leaving them that begat him, and from whom he was born , is knit to his wife. And then the one flesh is, father and mother, and the child from the substance of the two commingled. For indeed, by the commingling of their seeds the child is produced" (Homily 20, On Ephesians 5:31).

Yet, even with this knowledge of mothers and fathers both acting as "sources" in the life process, the Church insisted on using the exclusive term "Father" for God.

THE SPIRIT AND THE FEMININE

Perhaps even more interesting, patristic writers never excluded the ideas that women were made in the image of God or that human femininity had some relationship to God. In many texts, there appears the idea that women, with their femininity, are closely associated with the Person of the Holy Spirit and the Spirit’s mode of life. In the patristic period, the Fathers compared the procession of the Holy Spirit from the Father with the "procession" of Eve from Adam.

Later, in the seventh century, Anastasius of Sinai wrote: "Eve, who proceeded from Adam, signifies the proceeding Person of the Holy Spirit. This is why God did not breathe in her the breath of life; she was already the type of the breathing and life of the Holy Spirit" (On the Image and Likeness). Especially in Syriac hymnody, the association between human femininity and the mode of existence of the Holy Spirit was stressed. Therefore, the "masculine" terms used in the trinitarian names are not the result of disdain for the feminine.

With this evidence, it is clear that the patristic writers were interested in preserving the scriptural terms of "Father, Son, and Holy Spirit" as revelations from God rather than reflections of patriarchal culture. This is evident from their frequent appeals to Scripture for the bases of their arguments.

PRECISE THEOLOGICAL TERMS

In view of this historical background, it appears the arguments supporting "non-exclusive" language changes for God arc untenable–incompatible with Scripture, apostolic teachings, and Christian experience. Against the historical backdrop of Church life, the terms "Father, Son, and Holy Spirit" appear not as exchangeable metaphors, human imaginings, or pillars of a patriarchal culture, but rather as precise terms revealed by Jesus Christ through the Holy Spirit and preserved in the canon of Scripture.

The challenge to Christians today compares to the challenge to Christians in the fourth century; to preserve these names as gifts from God which give us clues to his inner life, for us as adopted children through his Son, Jesus Christ, our Lord.

Why God is Father and Not Mother | Mark Brumley | IgnatiusInsight.com

"The Fatherhood of God and the brotherhood of man" is how the 19th century liberal Protestant theologian Adolph Harnack once summarized the Christian faith. Nowadays Harnack would find his brand of reductionist religion dismissed as hopelessly sexist and exclusive by many feminist theologians. The "brotherhood of man" might be reworked into "the family of humanity" or its equivalent. But what would they do about the Fatherhood of God? Can we replace the allegedly "sexist" language of Divine Fatherhood with so-called gender-inclusive or gender-neutral terms such as Father/Mother or Heavenly Parent without further ado?

Many people–including some Catholics–say "yes." "We not only can," they contend, "we must. God is, after all, beyond gender. Calling God ‘Father’, without adding that God is also Mother, unfairly exalts one image for God above all others and ignores the culturally conditioned nature of all our images of God," they argue.

A Consensus of the Many and the One

Of course, not everyone agrees. While most "mainline" Protestant churches have acquiesced, Evangelicals, the Orthodox churches and the Catholic Church have maintained traditional language for God–although even within these communions some people’s sympathies run in the other direction.

That the Catholic Church and these churches and ecclesial communities would agree on a point of doctrine or practice presents a formidable unity against feminist "God-Talk." How often do we find that kind of united witness among that range of Christians? Yet as solid a prima facie case as that makes, a more serious obstacle to feminist revisionism exists–an insurmountable one, in fact. Not the witness of this group of Christians or that, but of Christ Himself. The commonplace manner in which Christians address the Almighty as Father comes from Him. In fact, Jesus actually used a more intimate word, Abba or "Daddy."

Unfortunately, twenty centuries of Christian habit has eclipsed the "scandal" of this. For the Jews of Jesus’ day, however, it stunned the ear. They did not usually address the All Powerful Sovereign of the Universe in such intimate, familiar terms. Yes, God was acknowledged as Father, but usually as Father of the Jewish people as a whole. Jesus went further: God is (or can be at least) your or my Father, not mere our Father or the Father of our people. Anyone who wants to fiddle with how we talk of God must reckon with Jesus.

But did Jesus really call God "Father"? Few things in modern biblical scholarship are as certain. Skeptics may question whether Jesus turned water into wine or walked on water. They may doubt that He was born of a Virgin or that He rose from the dead. But practically no one denies that Jesus called God "Abba" or "Father." So distinctive was the invocation in his day, so deeply imbedded in the biblical tradition is it, that to doubt it is tantamount to doubting we can know anything about Jesus of Nazareth.

What is more, not even most feminists deny it. What then to make of it?

Since Christians believe that Jesus is the fullest revelation of God, they must hold that He most fully reveals how we, by grace, should understand God: as Father. Otherwise they tacitly deny the central claim of their faith–that Christ is the fullness of God’s self-disclosure to man. Non-Christians may do that, of course, but Christians cannot–not without ceasing to be Christians in any meaningful sense of the word.

"But surely we must hold," someone will object, "that Jesus’ view of God was historically conditioned like that of his contemporaries? His masculine language for God cannot be part of the ‘fullness of God’s self-disclosure,’ as you suppose. It was merely a residue of first century Jewish sexism. We must look instead to the ‘transhistorical significance’ of his teaching. And that is not the Fatherhood of God but the Godhood of the Father–that God is a loving Parent."

Two Errors

At least two false claims lie hidden in that objection. The first is that Jesus’ own concept of God was "historically conditioned." The second, that we can strip away a patriarchal "coating" to His notion of God to get at the gender-inclusive idea of the Divine Parent beneath. In other words, God’s Fatherhood, per se, is not central to Jesus’ revelation of God, only those qualities which fathers share with mothers–"parenthood," in other words.

But was Jesus’ view of God "historically conditioned"? Not if you mean by "historically conditioned" "wholly explicable in terms of the religious thinking of His day." We have no reason to think Jesus uncritically imbibed the prevailing ideas about God. He certainly felt free to correct inadequate ideas from the Old Testament in other respects (see, for example, Matt. 5:21-48) and to contravene religio-cultural norms, especially regarding women. He had women disciples, for example. He spoke with women in public. He even allowed women to be the first witnesses of His resurrection. How, then, on this most central point–the nature and identity of God–are we to suppose He was either unable, due to His own sexism and spiritual blindness, or unwilling, to set people straight about God as Father? Even if you deny Jesus’ divinity or hold to a watered-down notion of it, such a view remains impossible to maintain.

Furthermore, even if Jesus had "picked up" the notion of God as Father from His surrounding culture, we can not simply dismiss an idea as false merely because it happens to have been held by others. Otherwise Jesus’ monotheism itself could be as easily explained away on the grounds that it, too, was generally affirmed by the Jews of the day and therefore must, on this view, be only ‘historically conditioned.’

Nor can we simply ignore Jesus’ teaching about God’s Fatherhood, as if it were peripheral to His revelation. Time and again Jesus addresses God as Father, so much so that we can say Jesus’ name for God is Father. If Jesus was wrong about that, so fundamental a thing, then what, really, does He have to teach us? That God is for the poor and the lowly? The Hebrew prophets taught as much. That God is loving? They taught that as well.

Notice too that these truths–still widely held today–are subject to the "historical conditioning" argument. They are just as liable to be wrong as Jesus’ views about the Fatherhood of God, are they not? They, too, can be explained away as "culturally conditioned."

Furthermore, Jesus’ way of addressing God as Father is rooted in His own intimate relationship to God. Now whatever else we say about God, we cannot say that He is Jesus’ mother, for Jesus’ mother is not God but Mary. Jesus’ mother was a creature; His Father, the Creator. "Father" and "Mother" are not, then, interchangeable terms for God in relation to Jesus. Nor can they be for us, if Catholicism’s doctrine that Mary is the "Mother of Christians" is correct.

The Real Issue

Undergirding Jesus’ teaching about God as Father is the idea that God has revealed Himself as to be such and that His revelation should be normative for us. God, in other words, calls the theological shots. If He wants to be understood primarily in masculine terms, then that is how we should speak of Him. To do otherwise, is tantamount to idolatry–fashioning God in our image, rather than receiving from Him His self-disclosure as the Father.

Many Feminist theologians seek to fashion God in their image, because they think God is fashionable (in both senses of the word). Many feminists hold that God is in Himself (they would say "Herself" or "Godself") utterly unintelligible. We can, therefore, speak only of God in metaphors, understood as convenient, imaginative ways to describe our experience of God, rather than God Himself. In such a view, there is no room for revelation, understood as God telling us about Himself; we have only our own colorful, creative yet merely human descriptions of what we purport to be our experiences of the divine.

Whatever this is, it is not Christianity, which affirms that God has spoken to us in Jesus Christ. C.S. Lewis, in an essay on women’s ordination in Anglicanism, put the matter thus:
But Christians think that God himself has taught us how to speak of him. To say that it does not matter is to say either that all the masculine imagery is not inspired, is merely human in origin, or else that, though inspired, it is quite arbitrary and unessential. And this is surely intolerable: or, if tolerable, it is an argument not in favor of Christian priestesses but against Christianity.
Cardinal Ratzinger made a similar point in The Ratzinger Report: "Christianity is not a philosophical speculation; it is not a construction of our mind. Christianity is not ‘our’ work; it is a Revelation; it is a message that has been consigned to us, and we have no right to reconstruct it as we like or choose. Consequently, we are not authorized to change the Our Father into an Our Mother: the symbolism employed by Jesus is irreversible; it is based on the same Man-God relationship he came to reveal to us."

Now people are certainly free to reject Christianity. But they should be honest enough to admit that this is what they are doing, instead of surreptitiously replacing Christianity with the milk of the Goddess, in the name of putting new wine into old wineskins.

Taking Another Tack

Here proponents of feminine "God talk" often shift gears. Rather than argue that Jesus’ teaching was merely the product of a patriarchal mindset to which even He succumbed, they say that Jesus chose not to challenge patriarchalism directly. Instead, He subverted the established order by His radical inclusivity and egalitarianism. The logical implications of His teaching and practice compel us to accept inclusive or gender-neutral language for God, even though Christ Himself never explicitly called for it.

This argument overlooks an obvious point. While affirming the equal dignity of women was countercultural in first century Judaism, so was calling God "Abba." Some feminists counter with the claim that the very idea of a loving Heavenly Father was itself a move in the feminist direction of a more compassionate, intimate Deity. The first century Jewish patriarch, they contend, was a domineering, distant figure. But even if that were so–and there is reason to doubt such a sweeping stereotype of first century Judaism–revealing God as a loving, compassionate Father is not the same as revealing Him as Father/Mother or Parent. That Jesus corrected some people’s erroneous ideas of fatherhood by calling God "Father" hardly means we should cease calling God "Father" altogether or call Him Father/Mother.

Feminists also sometimes argue that Scripture, even if not Jesus Himself, gives us a "depatriarchalizing principle" that, once fully developed, overcomes the "patriarchalism" of Jewish culture and even of other parts of the Bible. In other words, the Bible corrects itself when it comes to male stereotypes of God.

But this simply is not so. Granted, the Bible occasionally uses feminine similes for God. Isaiah 42:14, for example, says that God will "cry out like a woman in travail." Yet the Bible does not say that God is a woman in travail, it merely likens His cry to that of a woman.

The fact is, whenever the Bible uses feminine language for God, it never applies it to Him in the same way masculine language is used of Him. Thus, the primary image of God in Scripture remains masculine, even when feminine similes are used: God is never called "She" or "Her." As Protestant theologian John W. Miller puts it in Biblical Faith and Fathering: "Not once in the Bible is God addressed as mother, said to be mother, or referred to with feminine pronouns. On the contrary, gender usage throughout clearly specifies that the root metaphor is masculine-father."

In fact, the Bible ascribes feminine characteristics to God in exactly the same way it sometimes ascribes such traits to human males. For example, in Numbers 11:12 Moses asks, "Have I given birth to this people?" Do we conclude from this maternal image that Scripture here is "depatriarchalize" Moses. Obviously, Moses uses here a maternal metaphor for himself; he is not making a statement about his "gender identity." Likewise, in the New Testament, both Jesus (Matthew 23:37 and Luke 13:34) and Paul (Galatians 4:19) likened themselves to mothers, though they are men. Why, then, should we think that on those relatively rare occasions when the Bible uses feminine metaphors for God anything more is at work there than with Moses, Jesus and Paul?

Of course there is a crucial difference between God and Moses, the Incarnate Son and Paul. The latter possess human natures in the male gender, while God, as such, is without gender because He is Infinite Spirit. Furthermore, the biblical authors obviously knew that Moses, Jesus and Paul were male and intended to assert as much by referring to them with the masculine pronoun and other masculine language. The same cannot be said about the biblical writers’ notion of God. Even so, they speak of God as if He were masculine. For them, masculine language is the primary way we speak of God. Feminine language is applied to God as if it were being used of a masculine being.

Why the Masculine Language to Begin With?

Which brings us to a more fundamental issue, namely, "What is the masculine language about in the first place?" Since Christianity, as St. Augustine was overjoyed to learn, holds that God has no body, why is God spoken of in masculine terms?

We could, of course, merely insist that He has revealed Himself in this way and be done with it. That would not, however, help us understand God, which presumably is why He bothered to reveal Himself as Father to begin with. No, if we insist that God has revealed Himself as Father, we must try to understand what He is telling us by it.

Why call God Father? The question is obviously one of language. Before we can answer it, we must observe a distinction between two different uses of language–analogy and metaphor.

Sometimes when we speak of God, we assert that God really is this or that, or really possesses this characteristic or that, even if how He is or does so differs from our ordinary use of a word. We call this way of talking about God analogy or analogous language about God. Even when we speak analogously of God, however, we are still asserting something about how God really is. When we say that God is living, for example, we really attribute life to God, although it is not mere life as we know it, i.e., biological life.

Other times when we speak of God, we liken Him to something else–meaning that there are similarities between God and what we compare him to, without suggesting that God really is a form of the thing to which we compare Him or that God really possesses the traits of the thing in question. For example, we might liken God to an angry man by speaking of "God’s wrath." By this we do not mean God really possesses the trait of anger, but that the effect of God’s just punishment is like the injuries inflicted by an angry man. We call this metaphor or metaphorical language about God.

When we call God Father, we use both metaphor and analogy. We liken God to a human father by metaphor, without suggesting that God possesses certain traits inherent in human fatherhood–male gender, for example. We speak of God as Father by analogy because, while God is not male, He really possesses certain other characteristics of human fathers, although He possesses these in a different way (analogously)–without creaturely limitations.

With this distinction between analogy and metaphor in mind, we turn now to the question of what it means to call God "Father."

The Fatherhood of God in Relation to Creation

We begin with God’s relationship to creation. As the Creator, God is like a human father. A human father procreates a child distinct from and yet like himself. Similarly, God creates things distinct from and like Himself. This is especially true of man, who is the "image of God." And God cares for His creation, especially man, as a human father cares for his children.

But does not what we have said thus far allow us to call God Mother as well as Father? Human mothers also procreate children distinct from yet like themselves, and they care for them, as human fathers do. If we call God Father because human fathers do such things, why not call God Mother because human mothers do these things as well?

No doubt, as the Catechism of the Catholic Church (no. 239) states, "God’s parental tenderness can also be expressed by the image of motherhood, which emphasizes God’s immanence, the intimacy between Creator and creature." Scripture itself, as we have seen, sometimes likens God to a mother. Yet, as we have also seen, Scripture never calls God "Mother" as such. Scripture uses feminine language for God no differently than it sometimes metaphorically uses feminine language for men. How do we explain this?

Many feminists simply dismiss this as sexism by the biblical writers. But the real answer rests with the difference between God and human beings, between fathers and mothers and between metaphor and analogy. The Bible sometimes speaks metaphorically of God as Father. But it would be strange for Scripture so often to call God Father and so seldom to use maternal language, if the whole thing were merely a difference in metaphor. By never calling God "Mother" but only likening God to a human mother, Scripture seems to suggest that God is really Father in a way He is not really Mother. In other words, that fatherhood and motherhood are not on equal footing when it comes to describing God. To understand why this is so, let us look at the difference between fathers and mothers.

Father and Mother

What is the difference between fatherhood and motherhood? A father is the "principle" or "source" of procreation in a way a mother is not. To be sure, both father and mother are parents of their offspring and in that sense both are causes of their offspring’s coming-to-be. But they are so in different ways.

Both mother and father are active agents of conception (contrary to what Aristotle thought). But the father, being male, initiates procreation; he enters and impregnates the woman, while the woman is entered and impregnated. There is an initiatory activity by the man and a receptive activity by the woman. Furthermore, modern biology tells us that the father determines the gender of the offspring (as Aristotle held, though for a different reason).

Thus, while father and mother are both parents of their offspring and both necessary for procreation, the father has a certain priority as the "source" or "principle" of procreation. (This "priority as source" is complemented by the mother’s priority as first nurturer, due to her procreating within herself and carrying the child within herself for nine months.)

This difference between fathers and mothers for the Fatherhood of God is crucial. As Dominican Fr. Benedict Ashley has argued, so long as we compare God’s act of creating to a human father’s act of procreation through impregnating a woman, we speak only metaphorically of God as Father. For God does not "impregnate" anyone or anything when he creates; He creates from nothing, without a partner. But if we move beyond the particulars of human reproduction, where a father requires a mother to procreate, and instead speak of the father as "source" or "principle" of procreation, then our language for God as Father becomes analogous rather than merely metaphorical. As a human father is the "source" or "principle" of his offspring (in a way that the mother, receiving the father and his procreative activity within herself, is not), so God is the "source" or "principle" of creation. In that sense, God is truly Father, not merely metaphorically so.

Can we make a similar jump from the occasional metaphorical likening of God to human mothers in Scripture to an analogical way of calling God Mother? No, and here is why: A mother is not the "principle" or "source" of procreation the way a father is. She is a receptive, active collaborator in procreation, to be sure. But she is not the active initiator–that is the father’s role as a man in impregnating her. A father can be an analogue for the Creator who creates out of nothing insofar as fathers–while not procreating out of nothing–nevertheless are the "source" or "principle" of procreation as initiators, as God is the source of creation. But a mother, being the impregnated rather than the impregnator, is analogous neither to God as Creator from nothing, nor God as the initiating "source" or "principle" of creation. As a mother, she can be likened to God only in metaphorical ways–as nurturing, caring, etc., as we see in Scripture.

One reason, then, Scripture more often speaks of God as Father than likens Him to a mother is that fatherhood can be used analogously of God, while motherhood can only be a metaphor. We can speak of God either metaphorically or analogously as Father, but we can speak of Him as maternal only metaphorically. Thus, we should expect that masculine and specifically paternal language would generally "trump" feminine and specifically maternal language for God in Scripture. For an analogy tells us how God truly is, not merely what He is like, as in metaphor.

But we can go further. Even on the metaphorical level, it is more appropriate to call God Father rather than Mother. To understand why, we return to the difference between father and mother, this time introducing two other terms, transcendence and immanence.

Transcendence and Immanence

Transcendence here refers to the fact that God is more than and other than His creation–indeed, more than and other than any possible creation. This is part of what it means to call God "the Supreme Being" or "that than which no greater can be thought" (to use St. Anselm’s description). Immanence, on the other hand, refers to the fact that God is present in His creation–as the author is "in" his book or the painter "in" his painting, only more so. God created the world and it is marked by His creation of it. But God also continues to sustain the world in being. If He ever withdrew His power, the cosmos would cease to be. In that sense, God is closer to the cosmos than it is to itself–closer than its very own existence is, for God gives the cosmos existence, moment by moment.

Now back to fathers and mothers. We said a father "initiates" procreation by impregnating the mother, while the mother "receives" the father into herself and is impregnated. The obvious difference here is that the man procreates outside and "away from" himself, while the woman procreates inside and within herself. Symbolically, these are two very different forms of procreation and they represent two different relationships to the offspring.

Because the father procreates outside of himself, his child is symbolically (though in reality not wholly) other than his father. Likewise, the father is other than his child (though also not wholly). In other words, the father, as father, transcends his child. Fatherhood, in this sense, symbolizes transcendence in relation to offspring, though we also recognize that, as the "source" of his child’s life, the father is united or one with his child and therefore he is not wholly a symbol of transcendence.

On the other hand, because the mother procreates within herself–within her womb where she also nurtures her child for nine months–her child is symbolically (though in reality not wholly) part of herself. And similarly, the mother is symbolically (though in reality not wholly) part of her child. In other words, the mother, as mother, is one with her child. Motherhood, in this sense, symbolizes immanence, though we recognize that as a distinct being, the mother is also other than her child and therefore not wholly a symbol of immanence.

Now God is distinct from and the source of His creation. He is infinitely greater than and therefore infinitely other than His creation (transcendent). As Creator and Sustainer of creation, He is also present in creation (immanent). And we, as creatures who are both part of creation and distinct from the rest of it, can understand God as transcendent (more than creation) or immanent (present in creation). If we go a step further and use "father" for transcendence and "mother" for immanence, we can say that God’s transcendence is represented by fatherhood, which symbolizes God’s otherness and initiating activity (His being the "source" of creation). Meanwhile, God’s immanence is represented by motherhood, which symbolizes intimacy and union with the things God created. Which leaves us with the obvious question, "If this is so, why does traditional theology use only male language for God?"

The answer: because God’s transcendence has a certain priority over His immanence in relation to creation. And this is for at least two reasons. First, because transcendence, in a sense, also includes the notion of immanence, although the reverse is not true. When we speak of God transcending creation we imply a certain relationship of immanence to it. For Him to transcend creation, there must be a creation to transcend. And since creation resembles its Creator and is sustained by Him, He is present in it by His immanence.

But the opposite is not necessarily so. We do not necessarily imply transcendence by talking of divine immanence. Pantheism (Greek for "all is God"), for example, more or less identifies God with the cosmos, without acknowledging divine transcendence. To prevent God’s transcendence from being lost sight of and God being wrongly reduced to, or even too closely identified with, His creation, language stressing transcendence–masculine terms such as father –is necessary.

A second reason for putting God’s transcendence ahead of His immanence, and therefore fatherly language ahead of motherly language for God, has to do with the infinite difference between transcendence and immanence in God. God is infinitely transcendent, but not, in the same sense, infinitely immanent. Although God is present in creation, He is above all infinitely more than the actual or any possible created order and is not defined or limited by any created order. The cosmos, however vast, is ultimately finite and limited because it is created and dependent. Therefore God can be present in it only to a finite extent–not because of any limitation in God, but because of limits inherent in anything that is not God.

Thus, in order to express adequately God’s infinite transcendence and to avoid idolatrously identifying God with the world (without severing Him from His creation, as in deism), even on the metaphorical level we must use fatherly language for God. Motherly language would give primacy to God’s immanence and tend to confuse Him with His creation (pantheism). This does not exclude all maternal imagery–as we have seen even the Bible occasionally employs it–but it means we must use such language as the Bible does, in the context of God’s fatherhood.

In other words, God’s Fatherhood includes the perfections of both human fatherhood and human motherhood. Scripture balances transcendence and immanence by speaking of God in fundamentally masculine or paternal terms, yet also occasionally using feminine or maternal language for what is depicted as an essentially masculine God. This helps explain why even when the Bible describes God in maternal terms–God remains "He" and "Him."

The Fatherhood of God in the Trinity

We see, then, that God is Father because He is the Creator and creating resembles human fathering in some important ways. But what if God had never created the world or man? Would He still have been Father? Or what about before God created the world or man? Was God Father then?

The doctrine of the Trinity tells us the answer to these questions is "yes." The First Person of the Trinity, Trinitarian doctrine reminds us, is the Father. He is, in fact, Father of the Son, the Second Person of the Trinity (CCC 240). Before all worlds and from all eternity, the First Person "begot" the Second Person, who eternally proceeds from the Father, "God from God, light from light, true God from true God," as the Creed puts it (CCC 242). In the Trinity, the Father is the Underived Principle of the Son (and through Him, of the Spirit as well); He is the Source or Unoriginated Origin of the Triune God.

Again, we draw on the analogy of human fatherhood. As we have seen, a father is the "source" of his offspring in a way a mother is not. The First Person of the Trinity is the "source" of the second Person. Thus, we call the First Person "the Father" rather than "the Mother" and the Second Person, generated by the Father yet also the Image of the Father, we call the Son.

Although the Son is also God and the Image of the Father, He is also distinct from and other than the Father. The Son is begotten; the Father, unbegotten. The Son is originated, the Father, unoriginated. Father-Son language expresses this relationship better than Father-Daughter; Mother-Daughter or Mother-Son language.

Of course because we use analogy, there are crucial differences between God the Father and human fathers. In the Trinity, God the Father begets the Son without a cooperating maternal principle, unlike how human fathers beget their sons. Moreover, God the Father does not precede His Son in time as a human father does his son. Both Father and Son are eternal in the Trinity, hence neither Person existed before the other. Finally, while human fathers and sons share a common human nature, they each have their own human natures. The father does not know with his son’s intellect; the son does not choose with his father’s will. And while they may have similar physical makeup, their bodies are distinct and genetically unique.

Yet in the Trinity, the Father and the Son do possess the same divine nature, not merely their own, respective divines natures as humans possess their own, respective human nature. This is because there can be no such thing as divine "natures"; there can be and is only one divine nature, just as there can be and is only one God. The Father and Son each wholly possesses the divine nature, though each in his distinctive way. The Father possesses it as unreceived and as giving it to the Son; the Son, as received from the Father.

Thus, within the Trinity, there is fundamental equality–each Person is wholly God–and basic difference–each Person is unique and not the Others, not interchangeable. And there is also sacred order, with the Son begotten of the Father and the Spirit proceeding from the Father and the Son. This shows that equality and difference, and even equality and hierarchy, need not be understood as opposed to one another, as some feminists claim.

Furthermore, a proper understanding of the Trinity also helps us to see why we cannot just substitute "Creator, Redeemer and Sanctifier" for "Father, Son and Holy Spirit," as some feminists propose. Traditional theology allows us to associate creation with the Father in a special way because of a similarity between the act of creation and the fact that the Father is the Unoriginated Origin of the Son and the Holy Spirit. Likewise, we can associate Redemption with the Son because He became incarnate to redeem us, and Sanctification with the Holy Spirit, because the Spirit proceeds in love from the Father and the Son and the gifts of the Spirit which sanctify are gifts of Divine love. This process of associating certain divine works in the world with a particular Person of the Trinity is called appropriation.

But in all these cases what is associated with or attributed to a particular Person of the Trinity–whether Creation, Redemption or Sanctification–really belongs to all three Divine Persons. In other words, the Three Divine Persons of the Trinity are not "defined" as Persons by these actions, since Creation, Redemption and Sanctification are common to all Three. What defines them as Persons are their unique relations among one another, with the Father begetting, the Son being begotten and the Spirit being "spirated" from the Father and the Son. To reduce each Person of the Trinity to a particular function–Creator, Redeemer, Sanctifier –is to succumb to the ancient heresy of Modalism, which denies that there are Three Persons in God and instead holds that there is really only one Person in God who acts in three different modes–Father, Son and Spirit. Or in this case, Creator, Redeemer, Sanctifier.

The Father of the Incarnate Son

But we must not stop with the First Person of the Trinity’s Fatherhood of the Son before all worlds. For the Triune God has revealed Himself in history. The Son united Himself with human nature. He is the Son of the Father in His human nature as well as His divinity. This, in part, is the meaning of the Virginal Conception of Jesus in the womb of Mary (Lk 1:35). Jesus has no human father–St. Joseph is His "foster-father." Jesus’ Father is God the Father and He alone. That is why Jesus refers to God as "Abba"–a highly personal and intimate form of paternal address. Jesus’ existence in time and history parallels His eternal, divine existence as God the Son. For this reason, we must not speak of God as Jesus’ Mother, as if the terms "father" and "mother" are interchangeable when it comes to Jesus’ relation to God. God is Jesus’ Father; Mary is Jesus’ Mother and she is not God.

Fatherhood of God by Divine Adoption and Regeneration in Christ

We come now to God and humanity. Is God the Father of all mankind? In a sense He is, because He created us and, as we have seen, to create is like fathering a child. Yet God also made rocks, trees and the Crab Nebula. How is He Father of man but not also Father of them? Granted, humans are spiritual, as well as material, beings, which means they are rational beings–capable of knowing and choosing. In this, they more closely resemble God than the rest of visible creation. Nevertheless, human beings, as such, do not share God’s own life, as children share the life of their fathers. Thus, we are not by nature "children of God" in that sense, but mere creatures. And, as a result of sin, we are fallen creatures at that.

Yet Jesus tells His followers to address God as Father (Mt 6:9-13). He says the Father will give the Holy Spirit to those who ask (Lk 11:13) and that the Spirit of their Father will speak through them in times of persecution (Mt 10:20). He tells His disciples to be merciful as their heavenly Father is merciful (Lk 6:36). He speaks of being "born from above" through baptism and the Holy Spirit (Jn 3:5). On Easter Sunday, He directs Mary Magdalen to tell the other disciples, "I am going to my Father and your Father . . ." (Jn 20:17).

Elsewhere in the New Testament, God is also depicted as Father to Christians. Through Jesus Christ we are more than mere creatures to God; by faith in Him we become the children of God (1 Jn 5:1), sharing in Jesus’ own Divine Sonship, albeit in a created way (Rom 8:29). God is our Father because He is Jesus’ Father (Jn 1:12). What God is for Jesus by nature, He is for us by grace, Divine Adoption (Rom 8:14-17; Gal 4:4-7; Eph 1:5-6), and regeneration and renewal by the Holy Spirit (Tit 3:5-7).

Behind this language of Divine Adoption and regeneration is the idea that God is our Father because He is the "source" or "origin" of our new life in Christ. He has saved us through Christ and sanctified us in the Spirit. This is clearly more than a metaphor; the analogy with earthly fatherhood is obvious. God is not merely like a father for Christ’s followers; He is really their Father. In fact, God’s Fatherhood is the paradigm of fatherhood. This is why Paul writes in Eph 3:14-15, "For this reason I kneel before the Father, from whom every family in heaven and on earth is named . . ." (RNAB). It is not that God the Father is earthly fatherhood writ large; rather, earthly fatherhood is the faint copy of Divine Fatherhood. This is why Jesus says, "Call no man on earth father. For you have but one Father in heaven" (Mt 23:9). In other words, no earthly father should be seen as possessing the fullness of patriarchal authority; that belongs to God the Father. All earthly fatherhood is derivative from Him.

Thus, God is not Father of those who have not received the grace of justification and redemption in the same way as those who have. Yet they remain potentially His children, since the Father wills the salvation of all (1 Tim 2:4) and makes sufficient grace necessary for salvation available to all. God desires that all men become children of the Father through the Son in the Holy Spirit, hence the universal mission of the Church (Mt 28:19-20; Mk 16:15; Acts 1:8). We can speak, then, in general terms of God as the Father of all men, inasmuch as He created all men to be His children by grace and makes available to them the means of salvation.

Language Given by God

We see now that there are good theological reasons for why we call God "Father," not the least of which is that such language is not ours to adapt or abolish to begin with. God gave us this language–admittedly through a particular culture and its images–but it was God who nevertheless gave it. God wants us to understand Him as the Transcendent Source of creation, a truth better expressed using the language of fatherhood than motherhood. Within the Triune Life of God, the First Person is Father because He is the Unoriginated Origin of the Son and the Holy Spirit. Furthermore, He is also Father of the Son in history, through the Incarnation. And, by Divine Adoption and regeneration, He is Father of those who are united to Christ in the Holy Spirit–"sons in the Son." Finally, as a result of God’s universal salvific will, all human beings are potentially children of God, for all are called to share in the Divine Life of grace through Christ in the Holy Spirit.

This article originally appeared in the July/August 1999 issue of Catholic Faith magazine.

The Divinity of Jesus Christ

Some quasi-Christian sects today deny the divinity of Christ, contrary to the witness of the Church for nearly two thousand years. The divinity of Christ is unequivocally taught in Scripture and in Tradition, from before the birth of Christ, going back to the proto-evangelium in Genesis 3:15. The divinity of Christ is affirmed consistently:

"For to us a child is born, to us a son is given; and the government will be upon his shoulder, and his name will be called ‘Wonderful Counselor, Mighty God, Everlasting Father, Prince of Peace’" (Is. 9:6).

"Simon Peter replied, ‘You are the Christ, the Son of the living God.’ And Jesus answered him, ‘Blessed are you, Simon Bar-Jona! For flesh and blood has not revealed this to you, but my Father who is in heaven.’" (Matt. 16:16-17)

"In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God." (John 1:1)

"Jesus said to them, "Truly, truly, I say to you, before Abraham was, I am" (John 8:58). In a very clear way here, Jesus is identifying Himself as God, by referring to the name that God identified himself to Moses, “I Am Who I Am”, which the Jews would immediately recognize as an affirmation of Jesus’ divine nature.

"I and the Father are one." (John 10:30)

"For in him the whole fullness of deity dwells bodily." (Col. 2:9) In the physical body of Jesus lives not part of God, but God in His fullness in ways both wonderful and mysterious.

"In many and various ways God spoke of old to our fathers by the prophets; but in these last days he has spoken to us by a Son, whom he appointed the heir of all things, through whom also he created the world. He reflects the glory of God and bears the very stamp of his nature, upholding the universe by his word of power . . ." (Heb. 1:1-3)

"But of the Son he says, "Thy throne, O God, is for ever and ever, the righteous scepter is the scepter of thy kingdom. . . . And, "Thou, Lord, didst found the earth in the beginning, and the heavens are the work of thy hands." (Heb. 1:8, 10)

[Taken from the CANC Catechism, Chapter 6]

Learning Through Explaining and Defending The Faith

The Catholic Apostolic National Church has much in common with our Eastern Orthodox, Oriental Orthodox, and Roman Catholic brethren, including Scripture, Apostolic Tradition, the Eucharist, as well as the common lines of Apostolic Succession flowing from each into our own Church. These three ancient families of Christ trace their spiritual heritage back to their founding by the Apostles, in various places around the world, and ultimately through them to Christ Himself.

We profess and give witness to the very same faith that these ancient families of faith all profess, in a common core of Christian beliefs that are held by all. Our faith and belief is that same faith and belief professed from the Apostles, in the Early Church, down to our own day. It is important to learn the faith well, in order to be able to explain it to those who are uninformed, misinformed, or unchurched, as well as to defend the faith against those persons who seek to attack the Church, her sacraments, priesthood, Apostolic Traditions, and teaching authority. To do this, you must be well instructed in the faith and well-versed in Holy Scripture. You must live out the faith in your life and engage in great prayer and devotion. The single best explanation of Catholic Apostolic National Churchs is found in the faithful child of God who lives out his or her faith every day in their life, so that the Light of Men can be seen operating in them. A faith that is alive is lived out in the life of the believing man – it is not found only on his lips, but also in his heart, and so glorifies his Father in Heaven.

In explaining the faith to others, it is of the utmost importance that it be done with respect, humility and charity. One does not convince another of a spiritual truth through belligerence or arrogant disposition. Patience is required, and a well-annotated Bible will assist you in illustrating the issue being discussed.

Rather than presume to know another individual’s faith or theology, it is better to concentrate on being able to accurately explain and defend the teachings of the Church from mistake misunderstanding, misinformation or those simply seeking to make a name for themselves by attacking the Church. Through faithful study and prayer, your ability to understand more and explain to others, what we believe will increase. In explaining the faith to others, it is important also to understand that when we use words, such as prayer, worship, salvation, and justification, we are using them with the meaning that we normally attribute to them within our community of faith. This may not be the same meaning attributed to these words by other faiths, and you must always explain exactly what we mean when we use these terms (and others), and where this meaning comes from. In this way, some misunderstanding can be avoided at the onset, and perhaps eliminated, if past misunderstandings exist.

Ultimately, the knowledge and understanding of the faith obtained is nothing, if we do not live it in love in our daily lives. In this way, we become a living explanation of our faith. Others see and learn what we believe in the manner in which we live. We are saved by the grace of God, justified by faith, working in love in our lives.

Authority

In most cases, particularly when speaking with many Protestant groups, the primary issue is one of authority. Most Protestant Christians will quote several verses of Scripture to make their point, usually that the “Bible alone” is the only rule and guide for Christians, and that a Church although helpful, is not necessary.

The problem with this reformation-based concept is that Christ did not teach it, and the Bible itself does not say it. Usually the response is to show, from Scripture, that Scripture is “useful” for teaching an