Universal or Particular?

The article below, by American Catholic writer Matthew Schmitz, originally published on May 22 (five days ago) in the important American journal of ideas First Things (link), is noteworthy. (The journal calls itself “America’s most influential journal of religion and public life.”)

It is an interesting and useful, though by no means comprehensive or exhaustive, summary of the theological debate between then-Cardinal Joseph Ratzinger (now the 90-year-old Emeritus Pope Benedict XVI) and Cardinal Walter Kasper.

And it explains, briefly and synthetically, how that debate is in some way “reopened” in the current debate over Amoris Laetitia.

So a theological debate that was important for about two years in around the year 2000, 17 years ago, remains important today, 17 years later.

At stake? In a profound way, the identity of the Church.

And that is why this article is worth reading.

The key question the debate around the year 2000 raised — and continues to raise in 2017 — is whether the Church, in being “one” and “catholic,” can also be, without contradiction, “many” and “particular.”

Yes, or no?

To phrase the question in the opposite way: can a Church that becomes “many” and “particular” still be the “one” and “catholic” Church of the Creed.

Or… does such a Church, or Churches, become… something else.

No longer the Church of the Creed.

So it is a quite serious matter.

We know from the Creed that the four attributes of the Church are that she is “one, holy, catholic and apostolic.”

And we know that the Church, due to human frailty and human sin, can always “fall away,” in one way or another, from these four “characteristics” — dividing into many denominations rather than remaining “one”; becoming, or wishing to become, profane, idolatrous, or sinful rather than remaining steadfastly and faithfully “holy”; becoming local or national, “particular,” rather than remaining universal, “catholic”; and, via new insights and innovative theological arguments, breaking with the apostolic tradition rather than remaining firmly dependent on what the apostles taught, and not on what any other teachers or gurus of subsequent centuries have taught, in this way remaining “apostolic.”

One, holy, catholic, and apostolic.

We profess that these are the qualities or characteristics of the true Church.

And the debate between Cardinals Kasper and Ratzinger in about the year 2000 brought into question whether the Church could remain one, and catholic, or whether it could be somehow “multiple,” or “many” while still being “one” or “local” and “particular” while still being “catholic.”

The article by Schmitz notes that some Catholic theologians in the post-conciliar period (after the 1962-65 Second Vatican Council) had agreed that “doctrine might be universal and unchanging,” but went on to argue, nevertheless, that doctrines “could be bent to meet discrete pastoral realities — allowing for a liberal approach, say, in Western Europe and a more conservative one in Africa.”

Schmitz writes: “In order to guard against this idea, Pope John Paul II and Ratzinger, then head of the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith, insisted that the universal Church was ‘a reality ontologically and temporally prior to every individual particular Church.’”

So, it was Ratzinger, evidently partly at John Paul’s behest, who argued for the “universal Church.”

And Cardinal Kasper, a leader of the theological school seeking to “bend” doctrine to meet “discrete pastoral realities,” argued for the ontological validity, for the acceptability, of something he called the “particular Church.”

Schmitz’s article notes that this debate, which seems to deal with abstract theological concepts, actually has an important role to play in other debates which seem to play a more important role in the daily lives of ordinary men and women.

And, in particular, in the matter of marriage, divorce, remarriage, and receiving the sacraments — the matter which has become so controversial in light of the Apostolic Exhortation Amoris Laetitia, issue in April 2016, a little more than one year ago.

Schmitz notes that Ratzinger once wrote: “The basic idea of sacred history is that of gathering together, of uniting human beings in the one body of Christ, the union of human beings and through human beings of all creation with God. There is only one bride, only one body of Christ, not many brides, not many bodies.”

The point is that, because the Church is this “bride,” the Church is in some way a “nuptial” reality, and likewise, human marriage is in some way a mirror of the relationship between Christ and his bride, the Church.

That is, the debates over the two questions intertwine.

Schmitz writes of the Kasper-Ratzinger debate: “Ratzinger cited 1 Corinthians, where Paul describes the unity of the Church in terms of two sacraments — communion and matrimony. Just as the two become one flesh in marriage, so in the Eucharist the many become one body. ‘For we being many are one bread, and one body: for we are all partakers of that one bread.’”

But then Kasper responded, appealing to “pastoral reality.”

Kasper, Schmitz notes, “laments that Ratzinger does not see things his way.” Kasper says: “Regrettably, Cardinal Ratzinger has approached the problem of the relationship between the universal church and local churches from a purely abstract and theoretical point of view, without taking into account concrete pastoral situations and experiences.”

Ratzinger argued during the debate with Kasper that Christian baptism is a truly trinitarian event; we are baptized not merely in but into the name of the Father, Son, and Holy Ghost.

We are not made members of one of various local Christian associations, but are united with God, Ratzinger stressed.

For this reason, he argued, “Anyone baptized in the church in Berlin is always at home in the church in Rome or in New York or in Kinshasa or in Bangalore or wherever, as if he or she had been baptized there. He or she does not need to file a change-of-address form; it is one and the same Church.”

And Ratzinger taught in this way during his papacy as Pope Benedict XVI.

Schmitz notes that the theological debate between Ratzinger and Kasper over “universal Church” vs. “particular Church” drew to a close in 2001, and that, after Ratzinger then became Pope in 2005 and up until 2013, when he resigned, he emphasized the ontological importance of the concept of the Church as “universal.”

But, Schmidt argues, since the election of Pope Francis in March 2013, and Francis’ public praise of the theology of Cardinal Kasper in his very first Angelus address, the pendulum has swung back again in favor the Kasper thesis of adapting doctrine, for pastoral reasons, to the situation of different “particular” Churches.

And for this reason, Schmitz argues, there has been a theological reversal over the past four years which has not been only about marriage, divorce and remarriage, but also about the very fundamental ecclesiological question of whether the Church is “one” and “universal” or “multiple” and “particular.”

To bring about this theological reversal, it has been necessary to downplay the theological arguments of Cardinal Ratzinger-Pope Benedict in favor of the “universal” Church, and to revisit Kasper’s arguments in favor of the “particular” church.

And that is why Schmitz, or his editors, gives a rather sensationalistic title to his essay: “Burying Benedict.”

So here we are… a 17-year-old theological debate of the most “abstract” sort that ends up having a very practical effect; a debate between theologians from about the year 2000 in different journals and magazines which ends up taking on new life 17 years later at the crossroads of many of the most critical theological and pastoral debates of our present time.

For this reason, the article is well worth reading.

Clearly, Schmitz’s position is polemical. He is attacking the position of Cardinal Kasper, and, by extension, of Pope Francis. He ends his article by saying: “For better or worse, Francis now seeks to reverse Ratzinger.”

But that very phrase “for better or worse,” reveals that Schmitz is allowing space for some sort of theological response from the Francis and Kasper camp. Such a response might argue that, in some way, the positions of Ratzinger and Kasper, though seemingly so different, are not in fact incompatible. And that is precisley, it appears, what they have argied.

But is that the case?

That is the question of the moment.

So it is a continuing debate.

With that as a preamble, the publication of this article is a welcome contribution to this continuing debate in the Church, a debate which, arguably, will have to be settled, for the sake of the Church, and to avoid continued confusion among the faithful, with considerably more clarity than up to now, in the months and years ahead…

Here is the text of the Matthew Schmitz article:

BURYING BENEDICT
by Matthew Schmitz
5 . 22 . 17

First Things
Though Benedict is still living, Francis is trying to bury him. Upon his election in 2013, Francis began to pursue an agenda that Joseph Ratzinger had opposed throughout his career. A stress on the pastoral over against the doctrinal, a promotion of diverse disciplinary and doctrinal approaches in local churches, the opening of communion to the divorced and remarried—all these proposals were weighed and rejected by Ratzinger more than ten years ago in a heated debate with Walter Kasper. For better or worse, Francis now seeks to reverse Ratzinger.

The conflict began with a 1992 letter concerning “the fundamental elements that are to be considered already settled” when Catholic theologians do their work. Some theologians had suggested that while doctrine might be universal and unchanging, it could be bent to meet discrete pastoral realities—allowing for a liberal approach, say, in Western Europe and a more conservative one in Africa.

In order to guard against this idea, Pope John Paul II and Ratzinger, then head of the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith, insisted that the universal Church was “a reality ontologically and temporally prior to every individual particular Church.” There would be no Anglican-style diversity for Catholics—not under John Paul.

Behind this seemingly academic debate about the local and universal Church stood a disagreement over communion for the divorced and remarried. In 1993, Kasper defied John Paul by proposing that individual bishops should be able to decide whether or not to give communion to the divorced and remarried. Stopping short of calling for a change in doctrine, he said that there ought to be “room for pastoral flexibility in complex, individual cases.”

In 1994, the Vatican rejected Kasper’s proposal with a letter signed by Ratzinger. “If the divorced are remarried civilly, they find themselves in a situation that objectively contravenes God’s law. Consequently, they cannot receive Holy Communion as long as this situation persists.” Kasper was not ready to back down. In a festschrift published in 1999, he criticized the Vatican’s 1992 letter and insisted on the legitimate independence of local churches.

Ratzinger responded in a personal capacity the following year. It is because of such responses that he gained his reputation as a rigid doctrinal enforcer, but this caricature is unfair. Benedict has always been a poet of the Church, a man in whose writing German Romanticism blooms into orthodoxy. We see it here in his defense of Christian unity. He describes the Church as “a love story between God and humanity” that tends toward unity. He hears the gospel as a kind of theological ninth symphony, in which all humanity is drawn together as one: “The basic idea of sacred history is that of gathering together, of uniting human beings in the one body of Christ, the union of human beings and through human beings of all creation with God. There is only one bride, only one body of Christ, not many brides, not many bodies.”
The Church is not “merely a structure that can be changed or demolished at will, which would have nothing to do with the reality of faith as such.” A “form of bodiliness belongs to the Church herself.” This form, this body, must be loved and respected, not put on the rack.

Here we begin to see how the question of the universality of the Church affects apparently unrelated questions, such as communion and divorce and remarriage. Ratzinger cited 1 Corinthians, where Paul describes the unity of the Church in terms of two sacraments—communion and matrimony. Just as the two become one flesh in marriage, so in the Eucharist the many become one body. “For we being many are one bread, and one body: for we are all partakers of that one bread.”

The connections Paul draws between marriage, the Eucharist, and Church unity should serve as a warning for whoever would tamper with one of the three. If the one body of the universal Church can be divided, the “one flesh” of a married couple can be as well. And communion—the sign of unity of belief and practice—can turn to disunion, with people who do not share the same beliefs joining together as though they did.

Kasper’s rejoinder came in an essay published in English by America. It is the earliest and most succinct expression of what would become Pope Francis’s program. It begins with a key distinction: “I reached my position not from abstract reasoning but from pastoral experience.” Kasper then decries the “adamant refusal of Communion to all divorced and remarried persons and the highly restrictive rules for eucharistic hospitality.” Here we have it—all the controversies of the Francis era, more than a decade before his election.

(It should be noted that overwrought terms like adamant and highly restrictive, for which Kasper has sometimes been criticized, were introduced by an enthusiastic translator and have no equivalent in the German text.)

Hovering in the background of this dispute, as of so many Catholic disputes, is the issue of liturgy. Ratzinger was already known as an advocate of the “reform of the reform”—a program that avoids liturgical disruption, while slowly bringing the liturgy back into continuity with its historic form.

Kasper, by contrast, uses the disruption that followed Vatican II to justify further changes in Catholic life: “Our people are well aware of the flexibility of laws and regulations; they have experienced a great deal of it over the past decades. They lived through changes that no one anticipated or even thought possible.” Evelyn Waugh described how Catholics at the time of the Council underwent “a superficial revolution in what then seemed permanent.” Kasper embraces that superficial revolution, hoping that it will justify another, profounder one.

He laments that Ratzinger does not see things his way: “Regrettably, Cardinal Ratzinger has approached the problem of the relationship between the universal church and local churches from a purely abstract and theoretical point of view, without taking into account concrete pastoral situations and experiences.” Ratzinger has failed to consult what Kasper calls the “data” of experience: “To history, therefore, we must turn for sound theology,” where we will find many examples of a commendable “diversity.”

Though Kasper’s language is strewn with clichés (“data,” “diversity,” “experience”), it has genuine rhetorical appeal. We want to believe that there can be peace, peace, though there is no peace between Church and world. Just as we can be moved by visions of unity, we can be beguiled by promises of comfort. The contrast between the two men is thus rhetorical as well as doctrinal: Ratzinger inspires; Kasper relieves.

America’s editors invited Ratzinger to respond, and he reluctantly agreed. His reply notes that baptism is a truly trinitarian event; we are baptized not merely in but into the name of the Father, Son, and Holy Ghost. We are not made members of one of various local Christian associations, but are united with God. For this reason, “Anyone baptized in the church in Berlin is always at home in the church in Rome or in New York or in Kinshasa or in Bangalore or wherever, as if he or she had been baptized there. He or she does not need to file a change-of-address form; it is one and the same church.”

Kasper closed the debate in 2001 with a letter to the editor, in which he argued that it “cannot be wholly wrongheaded … to ask about concrete actions, not in political, but in pastoral life.” There the controversy seemed to end.

Ratzinger became pope and Kasper’s proposal was forgotten.

Twelve years later, a newly elected Pope Francis gave Kasper’s proposal new life. In his first Angelus address, Francis singled out Kasper for praise, reintroducing him to the universal Church as “a good theologian, a talented theologian” whose latest book had done the new pope “so much good.” We now know that Francis had been reading Kasper closely for many years. Though he is usually portrayed as spontaneous and non-ideological, Francis has steadily advanced the agenda that Kasper outlined over a decade ago.

In the face of this challenge, Benedict has kept an almost perfect silence.

There is hardly any need to add to the words in which he resoundingly rejected the program of Kasper and Francis. And yet the awkwardness remains. No pope in living memory has so directly opposed his predecessor—who, in this instance, happens to live just up the hill. This is why supporters of Francis’s agenda become nervous whenever Benedict speaks, as he recently did in praise of Cardinal Sarah. Were the two men in genuine accord, partisans of Francis would not fear the learned, gentle German who walks the Vatican Gardens.

And so the two popes, active and emeritus, speaking and silent, remain at odds. In the end, it does not matter who comes last or speaks most; what matters is who thinks with the mind of a Church that has seen countless heresies come and go. When Benedict’s enraptured words are compared to the platitudes of his successor, it is hard not to notice a difference: One pope echoes the apostles, and the other parrots Walter Kasper. Because this difference in speech reflects a difference in belief, a prediction can be made.

Regardless of who dies first, Benedict will outlive Francis.

Matthew Schmitz is literary editor of First Things.

===================

The Last Battle

THE MOYNIHAN REPORT

American journalist Diane Montagna published an interesting interview with Cardinal Carlo Caffara, 78, the now retired Archbishop of Bologna in central Italy, on May 19 on the website Aleteia.

At the same time, Caffara (photo) gave a very clear and powerful address on May 19 in Rome, against the attack on the traditional family, which is also published below, after the interview.

These two texts will give an insight into his mind, and that seems important, because Caffara is one of the four cardinals who signed the “dubia,” the five “doubts” (questions) regarding the text of the Apostolic Exhortation Amoris Laetitia submitted privately to Pope Francis and to the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith last September. After the dubiawere not answered, they were made public in November. They have still not been answered.

(Below, the four cardinals who posed the five questions, or “dubia” (“doubts”) to Pope Francis last September: from left, Cardinal Walter Brandmueller, Cardinal Carlo Caffara, Cardinal Raymond Burke, and Cardinal Joachim Meisner)

So who is Caffara?

He was the choice of St. John Paul II in 1981 to be the first head of the John Paul II Institute for Studies on Marriage and the Family in Rome. John Paul made him a bishop in 1995 and appointed him archbishop of Bologna at the end of 2003. Pope Benedict made him a cardinal in 2006. He retired in 2015. He will turn 79 on June 1, in four days.

Caffara has spoken out on the immorality of contraception, and for this has been criticized by more progressive Catholic theologians. “Even the smallest moral wrong is so much greater than any physical wrong,” he has said. “I know this is hard for some to accept when the dangers are great, but the Church is here to combat moral wrongs.”

(Here, Caffara with Pope Francis)

Caffara in this interview goes into some detail about a correspondence in the early 1980s that he had with Sister Lucy, one of the three children to whom Our Lady of Fatima appeared in 1917. (The other two children, St. Jacinta and St. Francisco, both died very young, and were just canonized two weeks ago in Fatima, Portugal, by Pope Francis. Sister Lucia lived until February 2005, dying just before Pope John Paul II died.)

It is not new information. Some of the things Cardinal Caffara says were said already nine years ago, in 2008. He spoke on February 16, 2008, to the Italian radio station Tele Radio Padre Pio, after celebrating Mass at the shrine of Padre Pio in San Giovanni Rotondo, on the eastern coast of central Italy.

The interview was published in the Voce di Padre Pio bulletin in March of 2008.

And the Rorate Caeli website translated portions of the interview two years ago, in June of 2015, here.

“At the start of this work entrusted to me by the Servant of God (now St.) John Paul II,” Caffara said in 2008, “I wrote to Sister Lucia of Fatima through her Bishop as I couldn’t do so directly. Inexplicably however, since I didn’t expect an answer, seeing that I had only asked for prayers, I received a very long letter with her signature — now in the Institute’s archives. In it we find written: the final battle between the Lord and the reign of Satan will be about marriage and the family. Don’t be afraid, she added, because anyone who works for the sanctity of marriage and the family will always be fought and opposed in every way, because this is the decisive issue.”

Here is the text of Montagna’s May 19, 2017 interview with Caffara…

From Aleteia

(Exclusive) Cardinal Caffarra: “What Sr. Lucia wrote to me is being fulfilled today”
Diane Montagna | May 19, 2017
The Fatima visionary told him: “A time will come when the decisive battle between the kingdom of Christ and Satan will be over marriage and the family.”

VATICAN CITY — Sr. Lucia’s prophetic words that “the decisive battle” between the Lord and Satan would be over marriage and the family “is being fulfilled today,” Cardinal Carlo Caffarra has told Aleteia.

The Italian cardinal was speaking on Friday afternoon, May 19, at the fourth annual ‘Rome Life Forum,’ a gathering which brings together over 100 life and family leaders from over 20 nations to discuss how to defend and strengthen marriage and family life around the world.

Cardinal Caffarra is the Archbishop emeritus of Bologna and the founding president of the Pontifical John Paul II Institute for Studies on Marriage and the Family. He has also served as a Member of the Supreme Tribunal of the Apostolic Signatura, Member of the Presidential Committee of the Pontifical Council for the Family, and Member of the Pontifical Academy for Life.

He was created a cardinal by Pope Benedict XVI in March 2006. Cardinal Caffarra was one of Pope Francis’ 45 handpicked delegates chosen to attend the Ordinary Synod on the Family in 2015.

In this exclusive interview, given prior to his talk, Cardinal Caffarra also describes how Satan is attempting to destroy the two pillars of creation, so as to fashion his own “anti-creation”; and why, in this battle, woman is “the human being who must be defended the most.”
Your Eminence, what can you tell us about the letter you received from Sr. Lucia while you were working to found the Pontifical John Paul II institute for Marriage and Family in Rome?

Cardinal Carlo Caffara: In 1981 Pope John Paul II founded the Institute for Studies on Marriage and the Family. The first years (1983-1984) were very difficult. The Institute was not wanted.

Who didn’t want it?

Caffara: It was not wanted within and outside of the Church, because of the vision it was proposing. And so I was very concerned. Without asking anyone, I thought: “I will write to Sr. Lucia.”

How did that come to mind?

Caffara: Just like that. But as you know, from the beginning the patroness of the institute has been Our Lady of Fatima. It is contained in the Apostolic Constitution. There the pope places the institute under the patronage of the Blessed Virgin of Fatima. So much so — I hope it is still there — that when one enters the institute, at the end of the corridor there is a statue of Our Lady of Fatima, and the chapel of institute is dedicated to Our Lady of Fatima.

And so, I thought to write to her. So I wrote, but simply saying: “The pope wanted this Institute. We are going through a very difficult time. I ask you only to pray.” And I added: “I do not expect a reply.” Her prayers were enough for me.

As you know, in order to have any contact with Sr. Lucia, even by letter, one needed to go through her bishop. So I sent the letter to the bishop, and he passed it on to Sr. Lucia.

To my great surprise, after not more than two or three weeks, I received a reply. It was a hand-written letter and quite long. I have given sworn testimony of what the letter said. The letter ended, saying (in 1983 or 1984): “Father, a time will come when the decisive battle between the kingdom of Christ and Satan will be over marriage and the family. And those who will work for the good of the family will experience persecution and tribulation. But do not be afraid, because Our Lady has already crushed his head.”

This remained engraved on my heart, and amid all of the difficulties we have encountered — and there have been so, so many — these words have always given me a great strength.

When you initially read Sr. Lucia’s words, did you think she was speaking of that moment in history?

Caffara: I began thinking a few years ago, after almost thirty years: “Sr. Lucia’s words are taking place.” This decisive battle will be the thesis of my talk today. Satan is constructing an anti-creation.

An anti-creation?

Caffara: If we read the second chapter of Genesis, we see that the edifice of creation is founded on two pillars.

First, man is not something; he is someone, and therefore he deserves absolute respect. 

The second pillar is the relationship between man and woman, which is sacred. Between the man and the woman. Because creation finds its completion when God creates the woman. So much so, that after he created woman, the Bible says God rested.

{Emphasis added by Abyssum}

Today, what do we observe? Two terrible events. First, the legitimization of abortion. That is, abortion has become a subjective right of woman. Now, ‘subjective right’ is an ethical category and therefore we are here entering into the world of good and evil, and we say that abortion is a good; it is a right.

The second thing we see is the attempt to equate homosexual relationships with marriage. You see that Satan is attempting to threaten and destroy the two pillars so that he can fashion another creation. As if he were provoking the Lord, saying to Him: ‘I will fashion another creation, and man and woman will say: we like better here.’

The Scriptures say the devil is the father of lies, who presents himself as an angel of light…

In my talk, I will explain the words of Jesus, when he says of Satan: “When he lies, he speaks according to his own nature, for he is a liar and the father of lies.” (John 8:44).

And so in my opinion — and I do not know if John Paul II had already seen this — in this sort of situation the human being who must be defended the most is the woman. In fact, early on in his pontificate he wrote Mulieris Dignitatem (August 15, 1988, “On the Dignity of Women”). There he sought to develop a theology of femininity, because he understood that this was a delicate point.

Is woman the battlefield then?

Caffara: There is a detail in the Bible that has always struck me. After the original sin, God addresses the serpent and says: “I will place enmity between you and the woman.” That is, God puts a particular enmity between the woman and evil, as if woman had a kind of instinct for the good, because God has put this enmity between woman and evil. The text continues: ‘and between your seed and her seed,’ and here the theologians see the foretelling of the Son of Mary. Therefore, woman has a particular involvement that has consequences for culture, society, and the family.

We are commemorating the 100th anniversary of the apparitions of Our Lady to the children of Fatima. What is the message today?

Caffara: For me, the originality of Fatima is this: At Fatima, Our Lady prophesied. In other apparitions, she doesn’t prophecy; she exhorts. Like at Lourdes: do penance, pray, tell the priests to build a chapel in this spot. She exhorts and recalls the strong exhortations of Jesus to penance and prayer. But at Fatima she prophesies; that is, she enters into and interprets human events. She had never done this before.

Did Sr. Lucia also prophesy?

Caffara: Yes, she fully entered into [Our Lady’s prophecy] and has left her Memoires. Some are very impressive. She sensed that this was the task Our Lady had given her, that is, to hand on and interpret this prophecy.

And were Sr. Lucia’s words to you about the “decisive battle” also a prophecy?

Caffara: Yes, absolutely. What Sr. Lucia wrote to me is being fulfilled today.

==============

And here is the text of the address Cardinal Caffarra gave at the Rome Life Forum on May 19.

CARDINAL CAFFARRA: “WE ARE NO LONGER WITNESSES, BUT DESERTERS, IF WE DO NOT SPEAK OPENLY AND PUBLICLY”
May 19, 2017
This address was given by His Eminence Carlo Cardinal Caffarra on May 19, 2017 at the fourth annual Rome Life Forum, which is organized by Voice of the Family.

By Carlo Cardinal Caffara

“When I am lifted up from the earth, I will draw all people to myself” [John 12, 32]. “The whole world is under the power of the Evil One” [1 John, 5, 19].

Reading these divine words gives us perfect awareness of what is really happening in the world, within the human story, considered in its depths.

The human story is a confrontation between two forces: the force of attraction, whose source is in the wounded Heart of the Crucified-Risen One, and the power of Satan, who does not want to be ousted from his kingdom.

The area in which the confrontation takes place is the human heart, it is human liberty.

And the confrontation has two dimensions: an interior dimension and an exterior dimension. We will briefly consider the one and the other.

At the trial before Pilate, the Governor asks Jesus whether he is a king; whether – which is the meaning of Pilate’s question – he has true and sovereign political power over a given territory.

Jesus responds: “You say that I am a king. For this I was born, and for this I came into the world, to testify to the truth. Everyone who belongs to the truth listens to my voice” [John 18, 37].

“Jesus wants us to understand that his kingship is not that of the kings of this world, but consists of the obedience of his subjects to his word, to his truth. Although He reigns over his subjects, it is not through force or power, but through the truth of which he is witness, which ‘all who are from the truth’ receive with faith.” [Ignace De La Potterie].

Thomas Aquinas puts the following words into the mouth of the Saviour: “As I myself manifest truth, so I am preparing a kingdom for myself.”

Jesus on the Cross attracts everyone to Himself, because it is on the Cross that the Truth of which he is witness is resplendent.
Yet this force of attraction can only take effect on those who “are from the truth.” 

That is, on those who are profoundly available to the Truth, who love truth, who live in familiarity with it. 

Pascal writes: “You would not seek me if you had not already found me.”

He who holds the entire world under his sway, instead dominates through lies.

Jesus says of Satan: “He was a murderer from the beginning and does not stand in the truth, because there is no truth in him. When he lies, he speaks according to his own nature, for he is a liar and the father of lies.” [John 8, 44].

The wording is dramatic.

The first proposition – “He was a murderer from the beginning” – is explained by the second: “and he does not stand in the truth.”

The murder which the devil performs consists in his not standing in the truth, not dwelling in the truth. It is murder, because he is seeking to extinguish, to kill in the heart of man truth, the desire for truth. By inducing man to unbelief, he wants man to close himself to the light of the Divine Revelation, which is the Word incarnate. 

Therefore, these words of Jesus on Satan —  as today the majority of exegetes believe — do not speak of the fall of the angels. They speak of something far more profound, something frightful: Satan constantly refuses the truth, and his action within human society consists in opposition to the truth. Satan is this refusal; he is this opposition.

The text continues: “because there is no truth in him.” The words of Jesus go to the deepest root of Satan’s work. He is in himself a lie. From his person truth is completely absent, and hence he is by definition the one who opposes truth. Jesus adds immediately afterwards: “When he lies, he speaks according to his own nature, for he is a liar and the father of lies.”

When the Lord says “speaks according to his own nature,” he introduces us to the interiority of Satan, to his heart. A heart which lives in darkness, in shadows: a house without doors and without windows.

To summarize, this therefore is what is happening in the heart of man: Jesus, the Revelation of the Father, exerts a strong attraction to Himself. Satan works against this, to neutralize the attractive force of the Crucified-Risen One. The force of truth which makes us free acts on the heart of man. It is the Satanic force of the lie which makes slaves of us.

Yet, not being pure spirit, the human person is not solely interiority. Human interiority is expressed and manifested in construction of the society in which he or she lives. Human interiority is expressed and manifested in culture, as an essential dimension of human life as such. Culture is the mode of living which is specifically human.

Given that man is positioned between two opposing forces, the condition in which he finds himself must necessarily give rise to two cultures: the culture of the truth and the culture of the lie.

There is a book in Holy Scripture, the last, the Apocalypse, which describes the final confrontation between the two kingdoms. In this book, the attraction of Christ takes the form of triumph over enemy powers commanded by Satan. It is a triumph which comes after lengthy combat.

The first fruits of the victory are the martyrs. “The great Dragon, serpent of the primal age, he whom we call the devil, or Satan, seducer of the whole world, was flung down to earth… But they [= the martyrs] overcame him by the blood of the Lamb and by the word of the testimony of their martyrdom” [cfr. Ap. 12, 9.11].

{Glory and thanks be to God for the witness of the Christian Martyrs (Copts in Egypt  and Syria) who are giving this testimony through their martyrdom!!!       – Abyssum}

In this second section, I would like to respond to the following question: in our Western culture, are there developments which reveal with particular clarity the confrontation between the attraction exerted over man by the Crucified-Risen One, and the culture of the lie constructed by Satan? 

My response is affirmative, and there are two developments in particular.
The first development is the transformation of a crime [termed by Vatican Council II nefandum crimen], abortion, into a right. 

Note well. I am not speaking of abortion as an act perpetrated by one person. I am speaking of the broader legitimation which can be perpetrated by a judicial system in a single act: to subsume it into the category of the subjective right, which is an ethical category. This signifies calling what is good, evil, what is light, shadow. “When he lies, he speaks according to his own nature, for he is a liar and the father of lies.” This is an attempt to produce an “anti-Revelation.”
What in fact is the logic which presides over the ennoblement of abortion?

Firstly, it is the profoundest negation of the truth of man. As soon as Noah left the floodwaters, God said: “Whoever sheds the blood of a man, by a man shall that person’s blood be shed, for in his own image God made man” [Gen. 9, 6]. The reason why man should not shed the blood of man is that man is the image of God. Through man, God dwells in His creation. This creation is the temple of the Lord, because man inhabits it. To violate the intangibility of the human person is a sacrilegious act against the Sanctity of God. It is the Satanic attempt to generate an “anti-creation.”

By ennobling the killing of humans, Satan has laid the foundations for his “creation”: to remove from creation the image of God, to obscure his presence therein.

St Ambrose writes: “The creation of the world was completed with formation of the masterpiece which is man, which… is in fact the culmination of creation, the supreme beauty of every created being” [Exam., Sixth day, Disc 9, 10.75; BA I, page 417].

At the moment at which the right of man to order the life and the death of another man is affirmed, God is expelled from his creation, because his original presence is denied, and his original dwelling-place within creation – the human person – is desecrated.

The second development is the ennoblement of homosexuality. This in fact denies entirely the truth of marriage, the mind of God the Creator with regard to marriage.
The Divine Revelation has told us how God thinks of marriage: the lawful union of a man and woman, the source of life. In the mind of God, marriage has a permanent structure, based on the duality of the human mode of being: femininity and masculinity. Not two opposite poles, but the one with and for the other. Only thus does man escape his original solitude.

One of the fundamental laws through which God governs the universe is that He does not act alone. This is the law of human cooperation with the divine governance. The union between a man and woman, who become one flesh, is human cooperation in the creative act of God: every human person is created by God and begotten by its parents. God celebrates the liturgy of his creative act in the holy temple of conjugal love.

In summary. There are two pillars of creation: the human person in its irreducibility to the material universe, and the conjugal union between a man and woman, the place in which God creates new human persons “in His image and likeness.”

The axiological elevation of abortion to a subjective right is the demolition of the first pillar. The ennoblement of a homosexual relationship, when equated to marriage, is the destruction of the second pillar.

At the root of this is the work of Satan, who wants to build an actual anti-creation. This is the ultimate and terrible challenge which Satan is hurling at God. “I am demonstrating to you that I am capable of constructing an alternative to your creation. And man will say: it is better in the alternative creation than in your creation.”

This is the frightful strategy of the lie, constructed around a profound contempt for man. Man is not capable of elevating himself to the splendor of the Truth. He is not capable of living within the paradox of an infinite desire for happiness. He is not able to find himself in the sincere gift of himself.

And therefore — continues the Satanic discourse — we tell him banalities about man. We convince him that the Truth does not exist and that his search is therefore a sad and futile passion. We persuade him to shorten the measure of his desire in line with the measure of the transient moment. We place in his heart the suspicion that love is merely a mask of pleasure.

The Grand Inquisitor of Dostoevsky speaks thus to Jesus: “You judge of men too highly, for though rebels they be, they are born slaves… I swear to you that man is weaker and lower than You have ever imagined him to be! Man is weak and cowardly.”

How should we dwell in this situation? In the third and final section of my reflection, I will seek to answer this question.
The reply is simple: within the confrontation between creation and anti-creation, we are called upon to testify. This testimony is our mode of being in the world.

The New Testament has an abundantly rich doctrine on this matter. I must confine myself to an indication of the three fundamental meanings which constitute testimony.

(i) Testimony means to say, to speak, to announce openly and publicly. Someone who does not testify in this way is like a soldier who flees at the decisive moment in a battle. We are no longer witnesses, but deserters, if we do not speak openly and publicly. The March for Life is therefore a great testimony.

(ii) Testimony means to say, to announce openly and publicly the divine Revelation, which involves the original evidence, discoverable only by reason, rightfully used. And to speak in particular of the Gospel of Life and Marriage.

(iii) Testimony means to say, to announce openly and publicly the Gospel of Life and Marriage as if in a trial [cfr. John 16, 8-11]. 

I will explain myself. I have spoken frequently of a confrontation. This confrontation is increasingly assuming the appearance of a trial, of a legal proceeding, in which the defendant is Jesus and his Gospel. As in every legal proceeding, there are also witnesses in favor: in favor of Jesus and his Gospel.

Announcement of the Gospel of Marriage and of Life today takes place in a context of hostility, of challenge, of unbelief.

The alternative is one of two options: either one remains silent on the Gospel, or one says something else.

Obviously, what I have said should not be interpreted as meaning that Christians should render themselves… antipathetic to everyone.

St Thomas writes: “It is the same thing, when faced with two contraries, to pursue the one and reject the other. Medicine, for example, proposes the cure while excluding the illness. Hence, it belongs to the wise man to meditate on the truth, in particular with regard to the First Principle… and to refute the opposing falsehood.” [CG Book I, Chapter I, no. 6].

In the context of testimony to the Gospel, irenics and concordism must be excluded.

On this Jesus has been explicit. It would be a terrible doctor who adopted an irenical attitude towards the disease.

Augustine writes: “Love the sinner, but persecute the sin.” Note this well. The Latin word per-sequor is an intensifying verb. The meaning therefore is: “Hunt down the sin. Track it down in the hidden places of its lies, and condemn it, bringing to light its insubstantiality.”

I conclude with a quotation from a great confessor of the faith, the Russian Pavel A. Florenskij. “Christ is witness, in the extreme sense of the word, the witness. At His crucifixion, the Jews and Romans believed they were only witnessing a historical event, but the event revealed itself as the Truth.” [The philosophy of religion, San Paolo ed., Milan 2017, page 512].

“When I am lifted up from the earth, I will draw all people to myself.” [John 12, 32].

===================