Lead Kindly Light by Thomas Howard

Author:Thomas Howard [Howard, Thomas]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: Spiritual & Religion
ISBN: 9781586170288
Publisher: Ignatius Press
Published: 2009-07-15T16:00:00+00:00

7

Becoming Catholic

On one evening each week I would drive in to Boston to meet with Father Sal. He recognized that the prescription for me was not the usual course of instruction offered by the Church to catechumens and candidates, since I had been instructed in the Bible since infancy and had been reading Church history and Catholic theology and spirituality for the last twenty-five years. But he patiently agreed to hear my questions.

I had, I suppose, the inevitable questions. While the Mass and even the papacy presented no difficulties for me, I could not yet find my way through the Marian doctrines, most notably the Immaculate Conception and the Assumption. The nub of my difficulties here was my residual adherence to the Protestant (and nonbiblical) notion of sola Scriptura: the Bible alone. And surely, from this point of view, the Marian doctrines are outrageous. “Where is the verse in the New Testament that teaches that?” goes the question ordinarily. And put that way, of course, the question begs the question.

The Catholic Church teaches, as did the early bishops and Fathers, that revelation has come to us supremely and finally in the Incarnation of the Word, and that revelation is then given, taught, and guarded by the Church, which both wrote and ratified the Bible. The Church has no warrant to cobble up quirky and adventitious doctrines ex nihilo; but the Church, reflecting on revelation and on the whole mystery of the gospel, unfolds doctrine organically from century to century under the authority and constraint of the Holy Spirit. The believers, for example, had only imperfect notions about the mystery of our Lord’s two natures in the early years; but at the early councils, in Ephesus, Chalcedon, and Nicaea, this doctrine was articulated, made explicit, and settled forever for Catholic orthodoxy. It does not constitute an addition to Scripture; but neither is it made explicit in any single passage of Scripture. The Church reflected on the revelation of God in Christ, and hammered out the doctrine of our Lord’s divine and human natures in one person. Very difficult words were brought into play, most notably the famous homoousion, as opposed to the (heretical) homoiousion. “Where is the simplicity of the primitive gospel!” a peasant zealot might cry out. “You are confusing us with mere theology!” The Church’s only answer to this earnest appeal is that the work of theology, thankless as it may sound and pettifogging as it may appear, is nevertheless one part of the whole pastoral office of the Church. What is it that we worship when we worship Jesus Christ in the liturgy? He is God and man.

By the same token, no one knows exactly what appreciation the first disciples had of Mary, the Mother of Jesus. Certainly they knew her well; and she was present at all the significant events—the Annunciation, the Nativity, the Crucifixion, the Resurrection, Pentecost. Whether this company of fledgling believers had much grasp of her unique participation in the drama of redemption is unrecorded.

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