Connexions 2003
January 30 - Feb 1st
Marcel Gervais
Archbishop of Ottawa


Introduction

Psalm 133 (A Song of Ascents.)

How very good and pleasant it is
when brothers (kindred) live together in unity!
It is like the precious oil on the head,
running down upon the beard,
on the beard of Aaron,
running down over the collar of his robes.


It is like the dew of Hermon,
which falls on the mountains of Zion.
For there the LORD ordained his blessing,
life forevermore.


This is a wonderful psalm to open our conference on "connexions." The prayer, and it is a prayer, though God is only indirectly referred to, turns on one simple fact: a little cone of perfumed, congealed oil. It was patted in place on the head of each of the priests participating at a banquet celebrating their common ministry. As the meal progressed, and the wine flowed more generously, the persons warmed up, the heat of their heads would melt the congealed perfumed oil and it would trickle down their heads over their beards and then over the collars of their robes. The effect would be a rich and pleasant aroma, instead of foul body odour.

Hermon is the tallest mountain in the region, from which the dew and the snows flow down and water the whole land. Mount Hermon is like the priest from whom the blessings of God flow through all the land, from north (Hermon) to south (Zion).

The whole country is blessed by the Lord through the ministry of the priests, but it is not only the ministry that is being celebrated, it is the sense of communion among the priests, their unity in ministry. The psalm acknowledges the joy of their relishing in this "odour of holiness."

All of us, disciples of Christ, share, by our baptism, in the priesthood of Christ. We are to be God's instruments to spread his blessing around the world. Would that we could rejoice in the pleasant odour of harmony, of cooperation, of unity among us who are called to cover the earth with the dew of Good News among the nations!

Condition for working together

The first condition for promoting peace and harmony among ourselves is to make the truth known. Truth, as someone important said, will make us free, and in this case, free to work together in daylight, not in darkness.

I will give one case of what I consider the very good example of ecumenical truth-seeking in recent decades. The Christian Reformed Church undertook a process of trying to discover whether their own Catechism was correct in its opinions about the Roman Catholic Church. They asked themselves: "Are Roman Catholics idolatrous, as our Catechism claims1." Christian Reformed Church in North America, Heidelberg Catechism Q. and A. 80 and the Roman Catholic Eucharist, 2002. Copies of this report can be obtained by calling 1-616-224-0744 or by email at reckerd@crcna.org. After careful consultation with Roman Catholic scholars, they concluded that neither today nor at any time in its history was the Roman Catholic Church idolatrous. That is progress!

It is in the interest of making our position clear, especially on the Bible, that I proceed to what follows. First of all, I would like to dispel the story that we chained our Bibles to prevent them from being read by the laity. In public buildings, they were chained to prevent theft, like we chain phone books to make them available to the next person. However, I have to say that since the majority of us Catholics were dirt poor, we could not afford the expensive hand-copied Bibles. Also, in those days, few of us could read (my own father could neither read nor write), it didntt matter where they were chained or not, we couldn't read.

With the invention of the printing press, Bibles became affordable to many people, access to them was more common, and of course, heresies sprouted almost everywhere.

The Roman Catholic Church became fearful of individuals reading and interpreting the Bible. It became important for the Church to give explanations to the people, and to defend itself against the "heresies of Protestantism." The Scriptures came to be used as the principal source for apologetics, for "defending the faith." This situation continued for many, many years, until the twentieth century.

Developments since 1900

What a difference a century makes!

The twentieth century, in spite of its innumerable horrors, was also a century of tremendous biblical breakthroughs, especially in the Roman Catholic Church. At the turn of the previous century, Fr. Marie-Joseph Lagrange, the founder of the Ecole Biblique in Jerusalem, made the statement: "There are three biblical languages every scholar must learn: Hebrew, Greek and German." He was immersed in the works of the German scholars. Through him largely, the Catholic Church was beginning to warm itself at the fireside of Protestantism.

Wonderful things were being discovered in the field of biblical scholarship. At first, the Church contended with it badly, forbidding Fr. Lagrange to teach anything more on the Old Testament, and forcing him into the New Testament, which was not his field. However, progress was being made and by 1943, Fr. Lagrange's work was vindicated by Pope Pius XII's document on Scripture2. Divino Afflante Spiritu, Rome, 1943

Progress continued steadily culminating in the Second Vatican Council (1962-65) where biblical scholarship was finally accepted by the Catholic Church as not being essentially opposed to the faith.3 Dei Verbum, On Divine Revelation, Rome, 1965 The Catholic Church finally removed its armour of apologetics and began to assimilate directly the message of the Bible.

This new science was being used not simply to defend the Church but to proclaim the Good News. As complicated and difficult as the transition was, it was absolutely necessary if the RC Church would ever overcome its own fundamentalism and arm itself to fight the good fight of proclaiming the Kingdom of God..

Present position of the Roman Catholic Church on Scripture

For understanding the Catholic approach to the Bible, we have to begin by saying that as a church we support the contemporary scholarly approach to the Bible. We are freed of the literal interpretation of the ages of the patriarchs, free of the strange versions of Jonah and the whale, of the biology of the Levitical rabbit, and the strange attempt that we were making to defend the historical and scientific accuracy of the creation narratives.

The recognition of the Word of God written in human words, has opened us up to a wonderful understanding of the biblical text: the beautiful poetic nature and structure of the first creation account, and the very delicately phrased poetic prose of the second account has increased the understanding and deepened the appreciation of these wonderful passages.

Modern scholarship has been a liberator. Unchaining us to literalist interpretation of texts, taking poetry for history. Respect for the nature of the writing, respect for the intentions of the sacred authors is the key to interpretation of Scripture. We will not go back to interpretations that contradict the very well-fought victories of the past 150 years.

Saint Augustine of Hippo once said that in giving us Scripture, " what God wanted was to make us Christians, not mathematicians." We say the purpose of the Scriptures is to promote our salvation, not to make us astronomers, biologists, paleontologists, geographers and other kinds of scientists, but to make us holy. We can say with certitude that in this regard, and only in this regard, the Scriptures are totally free of error.4 "Therefore, since everything asserted by the inspired authors or sacred writers must be held to be asserted by the Holy Spirit, it follows that the books of Scripture must be acknowledged as teaching firmly, faithfully and without error that truth which God had wanted put into the sacred writings for the sake of our salvation" The Documents of Vatican II, Abbot,Walter M., editor, Dei Verbum (On divine revelation) p. 119.

St Augustine also said that God placed enough problems in the Bible to keep us studying it to the end of time.

We believe as you do that our basic tenet is that God is a personal God, and he has spoken to us. We respond with faith, which is a loyal adherence to a personal God. This God has revealed himself, his will and his intentions, to his People. The People are the primary recipient of the Word of God.

The Church, the new People of God, received the revelation of God through Jesus Christ, preserving it as having been handed on both in its life and in the writings it accepted. When this is passed on orally, it becomes tradition, when it is passed on in writing it becomes Scripture.

Scripture contains revelation, but not all of Scripture is revelation; so much of Scripture is a record of the effect of revelation, its acceptance, its refusal, man's generosity and his obstinacy. All of Scripture is inspired, but not all of it is revealed. In the same way, much of tradition , venerable and valuable, is of human origin. "Hence the written record of the New Testament is vitally important - the permanent and unchanging testimony of the apostolic generation. The New Testament writings do not claim to be - in fact they obviously are not - a complete and balanced inventory of the early Church's beliefs. Nevertheless, they lay down what cannot be changed: the rule of faith as it was recorded, to which the Church is always bound, which she can develop and expand but never falsify.

On the other hand, a written record is a dead letter, needing constant interpretation and commentary in succeeding ages. It cannot of itself answer new questions, or explain what was once clear but has become obscure. But the writings transmitted in a living community, from one generation to another, are accompanied by a continuous tradition of understanding and explanation, which preserves and re-expresses their meaning, and which applies them, from time to time, to the solving of new problems. If this tradition were only human, it would be liable to grave error. But such a consequence is avoided by the Church's magisterium, which, however much exposed to human vagaries and mistakes in secondary matters, is preserved from going wrong in essentials by the indwelling presence of Christ's Spirit."5 Ibid, MacKenzie, pp.108-109.

So for Roman Catholics, there are three things involved : Scripture, Tradition, Magisterium. The three are inseparable. When the Council encourages our people to read the Scriptures, when it promotes easy access to the Scriptures to everyone, it is always with the accompanying and protecting guidance of its life history (tradition) and the teaching and help of its bishops (magisterium).

Catholic attempts to promote Bible reading and study

This meeting, with all the ecumenical possibilities, has to know the parameters within which we Roman Catholics function. I want to assure you that this does not prevent us from being willing to receive from others. We have depended in great part on Protestant, Anglican, scholars in the area of Scripture. We rely heavily on the Orthodox in our developing theology. Certainly, there are many other areas of Christian living in which we are weak or deficient.

We could use help in promoting the personal reading and study of the Bible. We could use help in promoting ways and means to encourage the daily reading of the Bible.

I myself was instrumental in creating a Bible study program that enjoyed some success. It is called Journey. It is forty lessons, 20 in the Old Testament and 20 in the New. It is some 1700 pages long, published in separate issues, something like a magazine.6 It has its own web site: www.journeywithbible.com.The overall structure of Journey is basically the same as the Bible's. We begin, at the beginning with Genesis and we end with the Apocalypse ( Revelation). The underlying theme that pulls the whole together is the People of God. The Scriptures were developed by the People and within the People of God. We follow the people from book to book, selecting passages that clearly indicate the passage of time, or the development of revelation.

Our readers tells us that they enjoyed the Old Testament lessons even more than the New, that's because the whole Old Testament was "new" to them.

We have no idea how many have been sold worldwide. We did not charge copyright. It is translated into some 14 languages. It has been used in many mission countries and is still in use here in Canada. Interesting that the first translation was not into French, but into Chinese.

We have had considerable success in countries that are in the third world. On the Catholic Biblical Federation web site, you can find an article called A "Liberating Reading" of the Bible, it describes the group work being done in thousands of communities in Brazil. This approach to the Bible lays the emphasis on the community. "The way in which Christians live in the Base Ecclesial Communities is the source of the "liberating reading" of the Bible. This type of reading is a means of absorbing strength and light from the Bible in order to cope with the daily struggles and the paths people follow in their lives. With the help of the Bible, the people discover a new experience of God and a new vision of the transformatory and liberating action of the Word of God in their lives."7 Catholic Biblical Federation; Biblical-pastoral ministry;. A Liberating Reading of the Bible, Mesters, Carlos, O. Carm.

This approach has been in use in a number of third world countries with wonderful effect. In Brazil, and in many other parts of South America, there is a strong development of Base Ecclesial Communities, which has the potential of influencing the very course of history in those countries.8 The recent election of Luis Inacio Lula da Silva, founder of the Workers`Party was sworn in as Brazil`s president on New Year`s Day. 150 thousand people swarmed the capital to welcome him. He is the hope of the poor for this up-and-coming nation. His election is partly due to the base ecclesial communities who have been reading the Bible as a book for their own liberation. See, The Tablet, "The President is Ours", 11, January, 2003. However, in countries like ours, there is no way that I know of to bring the reflection of a group to the level of maturity where they are questioning and challenging the very forces that rule our lives. Our people are much more likely to intellectualize their reflections and spiritualize their resolutions, leaving these groups with nowhere to go.

In spite of our many efforts, 9 One of the more popular is the Little Rock Scripture Study program. See, http://littlerockscripture.org we still do not reach many. With the ordinary church-goer, the Bible is only familiar through the liturgy. They hear short selections on Sundays. When we preach, even the mention of Samuel, is met with a blank stare. So much more could be done, can you teach us? We have tried promoting group study and reflection on the scripture text with limited effect in Canada. There must be a way to do it better. Can you help us here? Can you help us in forming groups that are truly in this world but not part of it?

Conclusion

When I was young, my brother Charlie and I took piano lessons from a wonderful woman who lived in the village with her parents. We went after school to her house and waited for our turn. Sometime we had to wait after our lessons for someone to pick us up and take us home. We were often still waiting when suppertime came around. We noticed that they did something which to us was rather strange, it was quite different from what was done in our house. The food was placed on the table, everyone at table sat bolt upright, then the father opened his Bible and began to read and he didn't stop until he had read one entire chapter. The devotional atmosphere was impressive. Sometimes, it was a long chapter, and sometimes very mysterious. Who ever heard of the Book of Leviticus? Let alone Deuteronomy!

Our house had a different routine. We could not help comparing the Protestant family with our own. We said the Rosary every night, after supper. We prayed on a full stomach, our friends on empty stomachs. We ate supper hot, they ate theirs lukewarm. We knelt down to pray, some leaning on backs of chairs, others bent over on the seats of chairs. No one sat upright. We tried to meditate on the mysteries of our Lord's life - we recited ten Hail Marys reflecting on the birth of Jesus, ten on his presentation in the Temple, and so on. We covered five mysteries a night - five joyful, five sorrowful and five glorious mysteries. Our routine lasted longer than theirs, though on a full stomach, it could be endured more easily.

That was around 1950. These customs, Catholic and Protestant, were very common in most homes. Today, things have changed very drastically. I know of very few homes, Catholic or Protestant, where anything like these customs has survived. I do not know what brought an end to it in Protestant homes, but with us, it was dealt the death blow by the coming of television and organized sports.

I think we can do more together than we can do alone. As long as you know that Roman Catholics have very strong feeling about the importance of the People of God, the Church, we can work together. The Church is the repository of the Word of God, without it we have nothing, not even the Bible.

Without the Church, and its structures, we are left without any defence against error, we are left without any way of handling the forces of division that can tear us into a hundred different parts. With the People of God, the Church, we have a security in which we can learn from, can reflect on, we can profit from the Word of God that strengthens our unity and makes of it our surest proof that Jesus is the Christ, the Son of the Living God.

The powers that are present in our world today are more threatening than many of us suspect. Not only are we on the brink of war, we are exactly on the borderline between being real Christians and fake Christians. Living as we do in a country that is committed to materialist goals, we can no longer support a genuinely Christian approach to the Bible without strengthening our unity, uniting our forces and fighting for our souls together.

Our Holy Father in addressing a meeting in Rome of UBS and the Bible Societies of Europe and the Middle East was able to say: "Whatever differences remain between (the churches), the promotion of the Bible is one point where Christians can work closely together for the glory of God and the good of the human family." He also said the urgency of the task demanded that Christians commit themselves to the cause of unity.10 http://biblesociety.org/latestnews/latest 196.html

We are a priestly people. We stand before the world as Aaron of old, down our heads runs the fragrance of the Gospel, and it flows through all the world. Let us join hands to make this ever more possible. Once, when we were still very much at odds with each other, we didn't dare dream of what has already happened today: our sharing together at the table of the Word of God. We now look forward to our sharing together at the table of his Bread and Wine, then we will be really like the oil that flows down the beard and over the collar of our distinctions and covers the whole land.