Source of Revelation: Tradition or Scripture?

My lecture last Friday was the first attempt to re-express the Catholic faith in as simple way as possible to my audience. Following the format of the RCIA, we looked at the Christian revelation. The Catholic Church and the Orthodox Churches believe that revelation is expressed not only in Scripture but also and more importantly in Tradition. Tradition includes the liturgy, sacraments and unwritten doctrines of the Christian faith. The books of the Bible were not dictated by God, like some fundamentalists believe, but they were inspired by God in the community of His people. Furthermore, the sacred authors of the different books of the Bible wrote the books under God's inspiration using their own understanding, in the context of their culture at the time of writing. There are different literary forms and different styles in the books of the Bible. Look, for example, at Genesis and compare it with Song of Songs. One is a narration in figurative language about the origin of the human race and the other is poetry about God's relationship with his people. God does not force people. He always requires the cooperation of the human mind with the divine gift (grace).

To give you one example about the importance of Tradition, have a look at the last chapter of the Gospel of John. The author wrote "But there are also many other things which Jesus did; were every one of them to be written, I suppose that the world itself could not contain the books that would be written. " (John 21: 25). It is an expression that tells Christians two things: First, Jesus did many other things that are not written. Second, implicitly the reader needs to inquire the author about those other things. Note that the author is one of the apostles or a close companion. Note also the expression. It is not a scientific account because "the world itself could not contain the books that would be written." If the author refers the reader to the apostles, this means that he wants the reader to listen to the apostles, their close companions and successors.

How was the New Testament written? There are 3 phases. First, the disciples of Christ listened to his words and witnessed his miracles. Second, they preached what they experienced to the world around them. Third, when they were being martyred or getting older, the Christian community asked them to commit to writing what they were preaching.

Based on contemporary historical research, the first written accounts were some of the Letters of St. Paul around 49 C.A. The historical gap between the death and Resurrection of Christ around 30 C.A. and the letters of Paul is less than one generation. Many contemporary Biblical scholars and researchers using archeological evidence are boldly saying that there is very minimal chance of corruption of the text. But it is important to note that Tradition is recognized by almost all Biblical scholars to be the source of the written material in the Bible. Without the Church there is no Bible. The Second Vatican Council (1962-1965) authoritatively declares that the source of both Tradition and Scripture is God himself in his revelation (1). Since this lecture is meant to address the basic teaching of the Church, only this official reference is mentioned below.

Reference:

(1) http://www.vatican.va/archive/hist_councils/ii_vatican_council/documents/vat-ii_const_19651118_dei-verbum_en.html

The Essence of Existence - A Theory of Everything

If you are not ready to read contemporary scientific findings, then skip this post. I could have posted it on another one of my blogs. What I am saying here after all is not a dogma of the Church but only an opinion - a theory for the Catholic mind. The reason for this post is two-fold: 1. We cannot escape the advances of science with an appeal to the "God of Gaps" if you know what I mean. There have been advances in many branches of natural sciences. However, natural sciences without philosophy are like limping apes. 2. I am a member of the Catholic Church. I cannot pretend to belong to either the fundamentalist Protestant communions, nor the Eastern Orthodox Churches. The first believe in the Bible only-no tradition - and some of them interpret it fully literalistically. The second still live mostly in the spiritual treasures, liturgies, and Ecumenical Councils of the first millennium-by all accounts, a static spirituality that fails to take into account the development of doctrine and tradition which the Second Vatican Ecumenical Council proclaims. The entire essence of existence, God himself, is a relationship or relatedness, according to Joseph Ratzinger (Now Pope Benedict XVI) "God, too, is absolute permanence, as opposed to everything transitory, for the reason that he is the relation of three Persons to one another, their incorporation in the "for one another" of love, act-substance of the love that is absolute and therefore completely "relative", living only "in relation to". As we said earlier, it is not autarchy, which knows no one but itself, that is divine; what is revolutionary about the Christian view of the world and of God, we found, as opposed to those of antiquity, is that it learns to understand the "absolute" as absolute "relatedness", as relatio subsistens." (Introduction to Christianity, 1968). Relationship rests on communication. I will not be able to relate to you if I cannot communicate with you or if I do not have the intention of communicating with you. We know that the first communication in infants takes place when they suck on their mothers breasts. As little as one month, Children start imitating their parents and people around them and they learn how to communicate in gestures before they learn language. This research correcting the great Jean Piaget was confirmed by Giacomo Rizolatti, and his neuroscientists team in 1996 in their discovery of the mirror neurons. Imitation is the basic element in René Girard's theory of mimetic desire on which he argued since the 1970s to be the basis of human behaviour that was redeemed by Christ (Christ in Postmodern Philosophy, 2008). But communication goes deeper than using mere language. There is also body communication or body language. What matters in the end is the result: Relationship! John Polkinghorne, retired professor of nuclear physics at Cambridge University, wrote, in one of his latest books: Quantum Physics and Theology, about relationship as science is attempting to discover it at the subnuclear level: "Quantum theory brought to light a remarkable form of entanglement between subatomic particles that have once interacted with each other (the so-called EPR effect), which implies that they remain effectively a single system however far they may subsequently separate spatially- a counterintuitive togetherness-in-separation that has been abundantly confirmed experimentally as a property of nature. The physical world looks more and more like a universe that would be the fitting creation of the trinitarian God, the One whose deepest reality is relational" (Quantum Physics and Theology, p.104). Not only at the human level. Not even at the living cells level. But also at the microcosmic level there seems to be an inherent structure that calls for relationship. We started with God and we will end up with God. But in between we move from the Big Bang, the formation of the high energy singularity as Stephen Hawking likes to call it, into galaxies, hundreds of thousands, to arrive into the Sun, and eventually the Earth. In his popular formula, Albert Einstein thought that energy can be transformed to matter and vice versa. The Big Bang in its simplest explanation is nothing but the beginning of a process of transformation of energy to matter. In this entire process non-living matter has solidified. Wait a minute or, in fact, 10 billions of years. Life then starts on Earth. In some 3.7 billion years humans appear from apes. Here it is again to keep going: From God comes the universe, a highly concentrated energy in a singularity. The universe explodes and is accelerating while energy is transformed to matter. Matter is inanimate and in this inanimate matter there seems to be a certain reality of relationship at its deepest level. Fast forward...Life begets plants, fish and so on until animals appear. There is a complexification of life as it develops. Man is at the top of this chain. Where is God? He is not sitting back or resting as the ancients imagined. God is at work always as Christ teaches (John 5:17). God is within us supporting and developing his creation. God is not in heaven above but here within his creation guiding it into fruition. But He can't hide anymore. His inner being "relatedness" as Ratzinger says is starting to be seen, and in the "fullness of time" he is united to his creation in Christ. This is how far we understand the Mystery of the Incarnation. For he is not only with us but his kingdom, that is he himself, is within us (Christ). This is partly why we as Catholics and Orthodox eat him in the Eucharist. Not only do we eat the flesh but the living flesh of Christ united with his divinity (The Body of Christ.) With the appearance of humans there is not only complexification of life but of brain too. According to the 2009 Winter issue of "The Brain," the human brain is endowed with a neurochemical hormone called Oxytocin that is responsible for inducing social memory in humans. Oxytocin triggers the drive for social attachments. Moreover, recent studies in 2008 have shown that oxytocin is the agent for bonding between new mothers and their infants. It is also the agent that helps people find their life partners in monogmous love. The only other species that was found to carry oxytocin is the monogamous prairie voles. This leads us to contemplate the possibility that our love at the natural level is built in as much as it is a social encounter with the other. The scientific finding that oxytocin leads to a monogamous sexual life confirms what the Catholic Church has been teaching for nearly 2000 years. In the same publication, the well- known neuroscientist Antonio Damasio confirms that “our emotions are crucial for making good decisions” (The Brain, 2009). Of course, this does not at all exhaust love as a supernatural gift from God. Love of enemies is not found in any creature except in Christ's humanity and his saints. Since Original Sin, there is no other way to overcome human selfishness other than the gift of God's love which means self-emptying love. Now we have stretched the theory of everything from the pure Mind of God to the inanimate matter to living creatures to man who is the epitome of creation fully saved in Christ. And in Christ we know there is only self-emptying love that transcends matter yet joins it in his incarnation to the divine. This is the basis of the Trinitarian God of Christians. It is the power of not only collaboration as seen in lower creatures, and not only in communication as is seen in inanimate matter, and not only in natural love as is seen in humans, but after all in self-emptying love that the Father eternally gives to his only begotten Son and his Son, accepting it in gratitude, returns it back to the Father...That binding love that is the Holy Spirit.

This is my thought: The essence of existence is the relationship of love...The eternal Triune Love that slowly reflects his inner essence in creation and, in the loving redemptive cross of Christ, brings in this process this creation, in spite of its sin in the human race, to that eternal Love: God.

Water as an agent of sanctification

This past Friday we watched a very good documentary movie on "Water - a great mystery." The movie presents new scientific research backed by such scientists as Prof. Kurt Wuthrich, Nobel Prize winner in chemistry (2002), and Dr. Martin Chaplin of London South Bank University. According to the theory of this research, water is fundamentally restructured at the molecular level when blessed with a good intention to others. It also insists on good intentions between people are reflected in a beautiful molecular restructuring of the structure of water even though it remains chemically the same. The reverse intention causes destructive results. Good music such as those of Mozart, Bach, and Beethoven have a positive effect while heavy rock metal music will reflect restructuring of water molecule in a negative way.

The movie also brought testimonials from a Christian perspective including such high ranking authorities as Orthodox Patriarch Kiril I of Moscow (elected in Feb. 2009).

Following the scientific work, the movie attempted also to present water as a main source of good energy in most religious traditions including Judaism, Christianity, Islam, and Eastern religions.

In the Biblical account, Moses crossed the Red Sea. According to the theory of this research, he transformed water in his prayer. Jesus Christ used his own divine power to transform water to wine. Water is an agent for goodness and joy. In baptism by John the Baptist, he used water to help people repent. Baptism is a sacrament in the Christian Church where the baptized is immersed in water. Baptism is related to the Resurrection. The New Testament tells us we have been buried with Christ to rise again with him (the act we go through in Baptism). Moreover, water is a symbol of life not only material but also at a deeper spiritual level, it symbolizes and materializes the work of the Holy Spirit of God. In Genesis 1, the Spirit of God was said to be moving on water to bring about order out of chaos and create the entire universe.

We must understand that the movie presents theories and not necessarily facts. Here is what I think: 1. The most important thing that the movie said is that the essence of every thing is true love coupled with gratitude. This is the basis of Christianity in the deepest sense, coupled with Truth. 2. I do not believe that water itself blesses us. It is only an agent that the Spirit of God uses to sanctify us. The ideas that water has a power and memory by itself can be dangerously pantheistic as in Hindu and Buddhist religions. 3. It is good to know that other religious traditions use water as an essential part of their devotions. The Catholic Church believes that other religious traditions may have part of the truth and grace that fully exist and are expressed only in the Catholic Church. The closest to Catholics are of course the Orthodox Churches which are true Churches with probably 99% agreement on everything. These are followed by Protestant Christians with whom there is much in common based on the Creed. Next in the scale are Jews, our elder brothers from whom Jesus came. Next are Muslims whose religion is arguably based on ancient Jewish and Christian schismatics. Next are people of main world religions including Hindus. Next are atheists including Buddhists, and all agnostic beliefs. The fullness of truth exists only in the Catholic Church. Christ is risen - He is truly risen

The Truth of the Resurrection by Joseph Ratzinger

To the Christian, faith in the Resurrection of Jesus Christ is an expression of certainty that the saying that seems to be only a beautiful dream is in fact true: "Love is strong as death" (Song 8:6). In the Old Testament this sentence comes in the middle of praises of the power of eros. But this by no means signifies that we can simply push it aside as a lyrical exaggeration. The boundless demands of eros, its apparent exaggerations and extravagance, do in reality give expression to a basic problem, indeed the basic problem of human existence, insofar as they reflect the nature and intrinsic paradox of love: love demands infinity, indestructibility; indeed, it is, so to speak, a call for infinity. But it is also a fact that this cry of love cannot be satisfied, that it demands infinity but cannot grant it; that it claims eternity but in fact is included in the world of death, in its loneliness and its power of destruction.

Only from this angle can one understand what "resurrection" means. It is the greater strength of love in face of death. At the same time it is proof of what only immortality can create: being in the other who still stands when I have fallen apart. Man is a being who himself does not live forever but is necessarily delivered up to death. For him, since he has no continuance in himself, survival, from a purely human point of view, can only become possible through his continuing to exist in another. The statements of Scripture about the connection between sin and death are to be understood from this angle. For it now becomes clear that man's attempt "to be like God", his striving for autonomy, through which he wishes to stand on his own feet alone, means his death, for he just cannot stand on his own. If man--and this is the real nature of sin--nevertheless refuses to recognize his own limits and tries to be completely self-sufficient, then precisely by adopting this attitude he delivers himself up to death.Of course man does understand that his life alone does not endure and that he must therefore strive to exist in others, so as to remain through them and in them in the land of the living.

Two ways in particular have been tried. First, living on in one's own children: that is why in primitive peoples failure to marry and childlessness are regarded as the most terrible curse; they mean hopeless destruction, final death. Conversely, the largest possible number of children offers at the same time the greatest possible chance of survival, hope of immortality, and thus the most genuine blessing that man can expect. Another way discloses itself when man discovers that in his children he only continues to exist in a very unreal way; he wants more of himself to remain. So he takes refuge in the idea of fame, which should make him really immortal if he lives on through all ages in the memory of others. But this second attempt of man's to obtain immortality for himself by existing in others fails just as badly as the first: what remains is not the self but only its echo, a mere shadow. So self-made immortality is really only a Hades, a sheol": more nonbeing than being. The inadequacy of both ways lies partly in the fact that the other person who holds my being after my death cannot carry this being itself but only its echo; and even more in the fact that even time other person to whom I have, so to speak, entrusted my continuance will not last--he, too, will perish.

This leads us to the next step. We have seen so far that man has no permanence in himself. And consequently can only continue to exist in another but that his existence in another is only shadowy and once again not final, because this other must perish, too. If this is so, then only one could truly give lasting stability: he who is, who does not come into existence and pass away again but abides in the midst of transience: the God of the living, who does not hold just the shadow and echo of my being, whose ideas are not just copies of reality. I myself am his thought, which establishes me more securely, so to speak, than I am in myself; his thought is not the posthumous shadow but the original source and strength of my being. In him I can stand as more than a shadow; in him I am truly closer to myself than I should be if I just tried to stay by myself.

Before we return from here to the Resurrection, let us try to see the same thing once again from a somewhat different side. We can start again from the dictum about love and death and say: Only where someone values love more highly than life, that is, only where someone is ready to put life second to love, for the sake of love, can love be stronger and more than death. If it is to be more than death, it must first be more than mere life. But if it could be this, not just in intention but in reality, then that would mean at the same time that the power of love had risen superior to the power of the merely biological and taken it into its service. To use Teilhard de Chardin's terminology; where that took place, the decisive complexity or "complexification" would have occurred; bios, too, would be encompassed by and incorporated in the power of love. It would cross the boundary--death--and create unity where death divides. If the power of love for another were so strong somewhere that it could keep alive not just his memory, the shadow of his "I", but that person himself, then a new stage in life would have been reached. This would mean that the realm of biological evolutions and mutations had been left behind and the leap made to a quite different plane, on which love was no longer subject to bios but made use of it. Such a final stage of "mutation" and "evolution" would itself no longer be a biological stage; it would signify the end of the sovereignty of bios, which is at the same time the sovereignty of death; it would open up the realm that the Greek Bible calls zoe, that is, definitive life, which has left behind the rule of death. The last stage of evolution needed by the world to reach its goal would then no longer be achieved within the realm of biology but by the spirit, by freedom, by love. It would no longer be evolution but decision and gift in one.

But what has all this to do, it may be asked, with faith in the Resurrection of Jesus? Well, we previously considered the question of the possible immortality of man from two sides, which now turn out to be aspects of one and the same state of affairs. We said that, as man has no permanence in himself, his survival could only be brought about by his living on in another. And we said, from the point of view of this "other", that only the love that takes up the beloved in itself, into its own being, could make possible this existence in the other. These two complementary aspects are mirrored again, so it seems to me, in the two New Testament ways of describing the Resurrection of the Lord: "Jesus has risen" and "God (the Father) has awakened Jesus." The two formulas meet in the fact that Jesus' total love for men, which leads him to the Cross, is perfected in totally passing beyond to the Father and therein becomes stronger than death, because in this it is at the same time total "being held" by him.

From this a further step results. We can now say that love always establishes some kind of immortality; even in its prehuman stage, it points, in the form of preservation of the species, in this direction. Indeed, this founding of immortality is not something incidental to love, not one thing that it does among others, but what really gives it its specific character. This principle can be reversed; it then signifies that immortality always proceeds from love, never out of the autarchy of that which is sufficient to itself. We may even be bold enough to assert that this principle, properly understood, also applies even to God as he is seen by the Christian faith. God, too, is absolute permanence, as opposed to everything transitory, for the reason that he is the relation of three Persons to one another, their incorporation in the "for one another" of love, act-substance of the love that is absolute and therefore completely "relative", living only "in relation to". As we said earlier, it is not autarchy, which knows no one but itself, that is divine; what is revolutionary about the Christian view of the world and of God, we found, as opposed to those of antiquity, is that it learns to understand the "absolute" as absolute "relatedness", as relatio subsistens.

To return to our argument, love is the foundation of immortality, and immortality proceeds from love alone. This statement to which we have now worked our way also means that he who has love for all has established immortality for all. That is precisely the meaning of the biblical statement that his Resurrection is our life. The--to us--curious reasoning of St. Paul in his First Letter to the Corinthians now becomes comprehensible: if he has risen, then we have, too, for then love is stronger than death; if he has not risen, then we have not either, for then the situation is still that death has the last word, nothing else (cf. I Cor 15:16f.). Since this is a statement of central importance, let us spell it out once again in a different way: Either love is stronger than death, or it is not. If it has become so in him, then it became so precisely as love for others. This also means, it is true, that our own love, left to itself, is not sufficient to overcome death; taken in itself it would have to remain an unanswered cry. It means that only his love, coinciding with God's own power of life and love, can be the foundation of our immortality. Nevertheless, it still remains true that the mode of our immortality will depend on our mode of loving. We shall have to return to this in the section on the Last Judgment.

A further point emerges from this discussion. Given the foregoing considerations, it goes without saying that the life of him who has risen from the dead is not once again bios, the biological form of our mortal life within history; it is zoe, new, different, definitive life; life that has stepped beyond the mortal realm of bios and history, a realm that has here been surpassed by a greater power. And in fact the Resurrection narratives of the New Testament allow us to see clearly that the life of the Risen One lies, not within the historical bios, but beyond and above it. It is also true, of course, that this new life begot itself in history and had to do so, because after all it is there for history, and the Christian message is basically nothing else than the transmission of the testimony that love has managed to break through death here and thus has transformed fundamentally the situation of all of us. Once we have realized this, it is no longer difficult to find the right kind of hermeneutics for the difficult business of expounding the biblical Resurrection narratives, that is, to acquire a clear understanding of the sense in which they must properly be understood. Obviously we cannot attempt here a detailed discussion of the questions involved, which today present themselves in a more difficult form than ever before; especially as historical and--for the most part inadequately pondered--philosophical statements are becoming more and more inextricably intertwined, and exegesis itself quite often produces its own philosophy, which is intended to appear to the layman as a supremely refined distillation of the biblical evidence. Many points of detail will here always remain open to discussion, but it is possible to recognize a fundamental dividing line between explanation that remains explanation and arbitrary adaptations [to contemporary ways of thinking].

First of all, it is quite clear that after his Resurrection Christ did not go back to his previous earthly life, as we are told the young man of Nain and Lazarus did. He rose again to definitive life, which is no longer governed by chemical and biological laws and therefore stands outside the possibility of death, in the eternity conferred by love. That is why the encounters with him are "appearances"; that is why he with whom people had sat at table two days earlier is not recognized by his best friends and, even when recognized, remains foreign: only where he grants vision is he seen; only when he opens men's eyes and makes their hearts open up can the countenance of the eternal love that conquers death become recognizable in our mortal world, and, in that love, the new, different world, the world of him who is to come. That is also why it is so difficult, indeed absolutely impossible, for the Gospels to describe the encounter with the risen Christ; that is why they can only stammer when they speak of these meetings and seem to provide contradictory descriptions of them. In reality they are surprisingly unanimous in the dialectic of their statements, in the simultaneity of touching and not touching, or recognizing and not recognizing, of complete identity between the crucified and the risen Christ and complete transformation. People recognize the Lord and yet do not recognize him again; people touch him, and yet he is untouchable; he is the same and yet quite different. As we have said, the dialectic is always the same; it is only the stylistic means by which it is expressed that changes. For example, let us examine a little more closely from this point of view the Emmaus story, which we have already touched upon briefly. At first sight it looks as if we are confronted here with a completely earthly and material notion of resurrection; as if nothing remains of the mysterious and indescribable elements to be found in the Pauline accounts. It looks as if the tendency to detailed depiction, to the concreteness of legend, supported by the apologist's desire for something tangible, had completely won the upper hand and fetched the risen Lord right back into earthly history. But this impression is soon contradicted by his mysterious appearance and his no less mysterious disappearance. The notion is contradicted even more by the fact that here, too, he remains unrecognizable to the accustomed eye. He cannot be firmly grasped as he could be in the time of his earthly life; he is discovered only in the realm of faith; he sets the hearts of the two travelers aflame by his interpretation of the Scriptures and by breaking bread he opens their eyes. This is a reference to the two basic elements in early Christian worship, which consisted of the liturgy of the word (the reading and expounding of Scripture) and the eucharistic breaking of bread. In this way the evangelist makes it clear that the encounter with the risen Christ lies on a quite new plane; he tries to describe the indescribable in terms of the liturgical facts. He thereby provides both a theology of the Resurrection and a theology of the liturgy: one encounters the risen Christ in the word and in the sacrament; worship is the way in which he becomes touchable to us and, recognizable as the living Christ. And conversely, the liturgy is based on the mystery of Easter; it is to he understood as the Lords approach to us. In it he becomes our traveling companion, sets our dull hearts aflame, and opens our sealed eyes. He still walks with us, still finds us worried and downhearted, and still has the power to make us see.Of course, all this is only half the story; to stop at this alone would mean falsifying the evidence of the New Testament. Experience of the risen Christ is something other than a meeting with a man from within our history, and it must certainly not be traced back to conversations at table and recollections that would have finally crystallized in the idea that he still lived and went about his business. Such an interpretation reduces what happened to the purely human level and robs it of its specific quality. The Resurrection narratives are something other and more than disguised liturgical scenes: they make visible the founding event on which all Christian liturgy rests. They testify to an approach that did not rise from the hearts of the disciples but came to them from outside, convinced them despite their doubts and made them certain that the Lord had truly risen. He who lay in the grave is no longer there; he--really he himself--lives. He who had been transposed into the other world of God showed himself powerful enough to make it palpably clear that he himself stood in their presence again, that in him the power of love had really proved itself stronger than the power of death.Only by taking this just as seriously as what we said first does one remain faithful to the witness borne by the New Testament; only thus, too, is its seriousness in world history preserved. The comfortable attempt to spare oneself the belief in the mystery of God's mighty actions in this world and yet at the same time to have the satisfaction of remaining on the foundation of the biblical message leads nowhere; it measures up neither to the honesty of reason nor to the claims of faith. One cannot have both the Christian faith and "religion within the bounds of pure reason"; a choice is unavoidable. He who believes will see more and more clearly, it is true, how rational it is to have faith in the love that has conquered death. -----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

* Joseph Ratzinger, now Pope Benedict XVI, was for over two decades the Prefect for the Congregation of the Doctrine of the Faith under Pope John Paul II. He is a renowned theologian and author of numerous books.

The above text can be found here:

http://www.ignatiusinsight.com/features2007/ratzinger_resurrectionitc_mar07.asp

The core of the above text was explained to the young adults in a lecture at Jesus the King Church in 2007.

Is Armageddon Here?

If you look at our world today this is what you will see:
1. A global economic recession, never seen in world history. Millions have lost their jobs or are going to lose them.
2. A financial crisis, where America and Europe have hardly been able to agree on strategies for its future and Russia and the Far East are bringing back memories of the Cold War, while North Korea is again playing with nuclear weapons.
3. Israel (headed by a violent leader) and Radical Muslims (headed by another violent Iran) are making every effort to escalate the situation in the Middle East to a violent war.
4. A global food crisis continues to rage in Africa, South America and the underdeveloped countries caused in part by insufficient resources that are already controlled by local dictators and an increasing imbalance between the wealth of the North and that of the South caused in part by an imperialistic American and Western European free-market monopoly.
5. The most influential moral voice in the world, Pope Benedict XVI, following his initiative to regain the radical Catholic Lefebvrists in January, was unable to prevent another round of mutual accusations between their leaders and Jewish leaders on sensitive issues over the Holocaust. He is scheduled to visit Israel in May.
Can we read the beginning of the end in today's events? We know that, according to modern Biblical scholarship, the book of Revelation was written in the late 90s, as Apocalyptic literature to warn Christians and give them hope in the persecutions of the 1st century. Having said that, let's look afresh at Revelation and see whether there can be any interpretation for our world today as well. Sometimes the same text can reflect a myth and a literal event too. Can this be the case here? The U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops in the introduction to the Book of Revelation says "The Book of Revelation had its origin in a time of crisis, but it remains valid and meaningful for Christians of all time. In the face of apparently insuperable evil, either from within or from without, all Christians are called to trust in Jesus' promise, 'Behold, I am with you always, until the end of the age' (Matthew 28:20)"
Revelation is a complex book, so I intend only to show similarities from the Book to what we are seeing today. According to the Catholic Encyclopedia, there are 5 important symbolic figures: The Lamb, the woman, and her seed; and opposed to them, the dragon, the beast from the sea, and the beast from the land. The main idea is taken from Genesis 3:15. "I will put enmities between you (the serpent) and the woman, and your seed and her seed". The woman is arrayed in heavenly splendour; a crown of twelve stars on her head and the sun and the moon under her feet (cf. Genesis 37:9-10). She is in travail. Her first-born is destined to rule all the nation (Psalms 2:8, 9). She herself, and her other seed, are persecuted for three and a half years by the great dragon who tries to kill them. The great dragon is Satan (Genesis 3:1). He is cast out of heaven. With his tail he drags after him one-third of the stars. Taken from Daniel 8:10. The fallen stars are the fallen angels. The beast from the sea is in great part taken from Daniel's description of the four beasts (Daniel 7). It arises from the sea; has seven heads marked all over with blasphemies. It had also ten horns, like the fourth beast of Daniel; it resembled a leopard, the third beast of Daniel, it had feet like a bear, the second beast of Daniel; and teeth like a lion, the first beast of Daniel. The great dragon gives full power to the beast, where all the world worship it. The followers of the beast have its mark on their head and hand. The beast from the land has two horns like a ram. Its power lies in its art of deceiving by means of tokens and miracles. Throughout the remainder of the book it is called the false prophet. Its office is to assist the beast from the sea, and to induce people to adore its image. The first act of the drama concludes with a promise of victory over the beast by the Lamb of God. We can safely see in the woman Mary immaculate whose seed is Jesus the Lamb of God. Other interpretations think of it as a symbol of the Church in its suffering and ultimate glory. We can see in the Dragon the Devil. But who are the Beast and the False Prophet? The New Jerome Biblical Commentary in 1990 gives a contemporary interpretation pointing out that the beast from the sea and the beast from the earth have both mythic and historical references. Sea in the Old Testament is an opponent of God (Cf. Ps. 74:13). In Revelation, the beast from the sea is a mythical symbol of chaos and rebellion. The beast from the earth (13:11-18) is also a counter image to the Lamb. The beast from the earth is described as a false prophet, probably an agent of the Roman empire who promoted the cult of the emperor and the goddess Roma. The following is my own interpretation based on my readings, but mostly based on what we are seeing today. I think, and I stand to be corrected, that the False Prophet is Radical Islam and the Beast is the materialist postmodern world of the West. We can consult the "Clash of Civilizations" that Samuel Huntington wrote in the 1990s, although this is not necessary.
The False Prophet: From a historic perspective, I do note that the human race was warned in 1917 by Our Lady at Fatima and that the "Third Secret of Fatima" was officially interpreted as the assassination attempt on the life of John Paul the Great. But may be that attempt was only the first of calamities that humanity will have to suffer as the sons and daughters of Abraham, Jews and Muslims, fight to death. Recall also that for 60 years now, Israel is back as one Jewish nation, and since 1967 it has reoccupied Jerusalem thus fulfilling the prophecy of the end of time attributed to Christ "and Jerusalem will be trodden down by the Gentiles, until the times of the Gentiles are fulfilled." (Luke 21: 24). Furthermore, we can go back to the early 1930s and find the established "Muslim Brotherhood" which claim support from Muslims worldwide. In addition since 1979, the Islamic Republic of Iran has been tirelessly exporting its strict Shiite doctrine to the entire Islamic world. In 1972, Egyptian President Sadat released Muslim extremists from jail and was subsequently assassinated by one of their groups in 1981. By 1982, the motto "Islam is the Solution" had appeared in Egypt. I saw it there. It is no accident that the revival of fundamentalist Islam has spread in all the Arab world and the Muslim nations in spite of persecution by governments loyal to the West. From Sudan, Algeria, Libya, Tunisia, Egypt, Palestine, Saudi Arabia, Lebanon, Iraq, Pakistan, Afghanistan, and India there is a huge following of fundamentalist Muslims. There have been incidents of fundamentalist rebellion in the Philippines (Abu Sayyaf). This is only a general picture. Now, I would like to give some details: Although many people are driven to think that this is a Western propaganda and political conflict, I believe that the Vatican would not have protested repeatedly in recent years against persecution and killing of Christians in Iraq, Nigeria, India, Algeria, and Egypt. Fr. Henri Boulad, S.J. who lives in Egypt explained in 2002 that Christians there are being forced to convert to Islam and up to 20,000 conversions are taking place according to Pope Shenouda of the Coptic Orthodox Church. Fundamentalist Islam today, spreading in Europe at a huge rate of 230%, is one of the major forces that Western Europe had to deal with since 9/11 and is still unable to contain. The Libyan leader Qaddafi is quoted to have said in 2007 that by 2050 Europe will be completely Muslim. Huge money is spent on building mosques and Islamic schools and supporting Muslim organizations in the entire world. Financing is coming from Saudi Arabia, Iran, and Libya. In Ontario, Canada, the Muslim community attempted, in 2007, to have its own Sharia legalized for Muslims living in Ontario, but their attempt was declined. Add to this the violent character of such organizations as Hamas, governing Gaza in Palestine and until now refusing to recognize the right of Israel to exist, and Hizbullah which has a majority support in Lebanon since its victory over Israel in 2006. The latest is that Iran is attempting to build its nuclear power and for this its president has vowed to extinguish Israel. Is this enough for describing a false prophet? The Beast: This is the great desolation of Western civilization. If I have to explain it in detail it will take me a full week. Just briefly: It started with the Reformation in the 16th century. Martin Luther thought that every individual Christian is free to interpret Scriptures according to what he feels the Holy Spirit is telling him. This idea created "individualism." Individualism is rampant today, thanks to other modern philosophers such as the existentialist Sartre. Only me counts. "The other is my hell." It is interesting to note how this has been applied successfully in contemporary thought and technology too. Nothing is done in a vacuum. One thing you must understand is that we are all related in this cosmos. Following Luther, Calvin thought that God predestined people as he willed so if they were destined to heaven they will also be blessed here on earth. His idea went with the immigrants to America. Soon enough the idea of individualism combined with the idea of blessedness on earth and produced the idea of Capitalism long before Adam Smith thought of it in economic terms. In simple terms, if I am blessed here as a Christian, I would rather use all the resources available to me to realize this blessing on earth as much and as wide as possible. This is greed in the form of Capitalism. Sure I will help the needy but I will also help myself much more from what they have. The earth is mine and I will explore its richness to the end! Today, Capitalism rules the earth. Free market enslaves people. Recall the political and economic pressure by the IMF on the underdeveloped countries to free their economy in the 1980s and 1990s. What is the financial crisis but the result of that greed globally? Why is the globe in economic recession today but because of the powerful wanting more power and meanwhile robbing the nations of Africa and Asia from their resources? It is part of the nationalist movements claims in the underdeveloped world. The entire U.N. charter is only ink on paper...Along with Capitalism a twin ideology was born: materialism. Since the Enlightenment in the West in the 19th century, philosophers and scientists have been asking whether there is indeed any reality beyond matter. Some great materialist/atheist philosophers include Hume, Voltaire, Marx, Carnap, Wittgenstein, Derrida, Michel Foucault and many others. Today we see how our consumerist society has invested in this ideology. Businesses flourish based on selling products to consumers. The more we consume the more business flourishes. This is the child of materialism married to capitalism. With globalization in the 1980s-1990s and beyond, large businesses and huge investors were able to reach the entire globe. Europe and the Far East imitated America and did the same. Who paid the price? Small business, and ordinary people like you and me. Materialism also bore the ideology of Communism which was carried out in Russia and persecuted religion from 1917 to 1989 in the USSR and Eastern Europe. Today Communism still lives in political pockets in Europe and is widely known under a more moderate name as socialism. Communism robbed people of their rights to private property. People became enslaved to the government of their land. It engulfed a whole generation of thinkers, even within the Church particularly in Latin America where people remain quite poor. Capitalist America supported dictatorial regimes in Latin America in order to suppress these movements. Another twist of the moral order took place in the two World Wars. Because many men were sent to the battlefield women were forced to work in order to support their families. The radical feminist ideology was born and grew quickly in the 1940s. Women started building their own career like men. Equality with men, not in dignity as known in traditional Christianity, but in all aspects of roles in business as well as at home was furiously demanded. This started the collapse of the family as we know it. Today we know many men and women who are, contrary to the moral Law, legally divorced. The feminist movement also produced legalization of abortion as the right of woman according to the land's law has a priority over the existence of the fetus in her womb. The Western civilization lost millions of unborn babies in this genocide. By the 1960s the sexual revolution was in the making, this time freeing people from the sex complex as defined by Freud. Soon afterwards, it became common that young people practice their intimate sexual "love" in the public with no shame. Today we know of couples who live together a life of sexual promiscuity and adultery without marriage or within marriage by prior agreement. The last evil came under the influence of the philosopher Friedrich Wilhelm Nietzsche (died 1900). The ideology is known as Moral Relativism: Nietzsche sees the slave-morality as a social illness that has overtaken Europe — a derivative and resentful value which can only work by condemning others as evil. In Nietzsche's eyes, Christianity exists in a hypocritical state wherein people preach love and kindness but find their joy in condemning and punishing others for pursuing those ends which the slave-morality does not allow them to act upon publicly. Nietzsche calls for the strong in the world to break their self-imposed chains and assert their own power, health, and vitality upon the world. In Relativism (called also Postmodernism), everyone is right. There is no absolute right and absolute wrong. This helps political correctness in the pluralistic world of today. In my humble opinion, we need to pray. We seem to have lost our way between the False Prophet (Radical Islam) and the Beast (Western Civilization). The world needs a lot of prayer to avoid a clash of civilizations, and a third World War. We hope that the warnings of Fatima will be avoided. She is the mother of both Christians and Muslims, and as Bishop Fulton sheen said, Mary will bring them all to her Son. But more prayers are needed to save the civilization of the West from destroying itself internally. This is the harder one. We believe in what the Saviour said 'Behold, I am with you always, until the end of the age' (Matthew 28:20).