The following is an excerpt from the pope’s address yesterday to Bangladesh’s bishops. Seven bishops lead the 300,000 Catholics of Bangladesh.
The Church is Catholic: a community embracing peoples of all races and languages, and not limited to any one culture or particular social, economic or political system. She is at the service of the entire human family, freely sharing her gifts for the well-being of all. This gives her a connatural ability to foster unity and peace. My dear brothers, you and your people, as promoters of harmony and peace, have much to offer the nation. In your love for your country you inspire tolerance, moderation and understanding. By encouraging people who share important values to cooperate for the common good, you help to consolidate your country’s stability and to maintain it for the future. These efforts, however subtle, give effective support to the majority of your fellow citizens who uphold the country’s noble tradition of mutual respect, tolerance and social harmony. May you likewise continue to sustain and counsel Catholic lay people and all who wish to offer their service for the good of society in public office, social communications, in education, healthcare and social assistance. May they always rejoice in the knowledge that Christ accepts as a gesture of personal love whatever good is done to the least of his brothers.
I am aware of recent initiatives you have taken in the field of interreligious dialogue, and I exhort you to persevere with patient dedication to this essential component of the Church’s mission ad gentes. Indeed, much good can be accomplished when it is conducted in a spirit of mutual understanding and collaboration in truth and freedom. All men and women have an obligation to seek the truth. When it is found, they are compelled to model their entire lives in accordance with its demands. Consequently, the most important contribution we can bring to interreligious dialogue is our knowledge of Jesus of Nazareth, “the way, the truth and the life”. Dialogue, based on mutual respect and truth, cannot fail to have a positive influence on the social climate of your country. The delicacy of this task requires thorough preparation of clergy and lay people, first of all by offering them a deeper knowledge of their own faith and then by helping them to grow in their understanding of Islam, Hinduism, Buddhism and the other religions present in your region.
Baha’is often think that progressive revelation is easily demonstrable to a Christian. Simply point out that Christ abrogated many of the laws of Moses. If God’s law could be abrogated once, why not multiple times? Especially since the world keeps changing.
Deepened Christians will not find this argument compelling. In order to understand why, one must understand the different ways that Baha’is and Christians understand God’s purpose in revealing laws.
For Baha’is, there are two kinds of laws: spiritual and social. Spiritual laws, such as the necessity of prayer and fasting, remain constant from one dispensation to the next. Social laws, on the other hand, are not constant. They are tailored to the needs of each age, and can change for each new dispensation depending on what the new problems are.
By contrast, Christianity does not distinguish between spiritual and social laws in the Bible. Rather, it distinguishes between laws that prepared mankind for the coming of Christ, and laws that logically follow from God’s nature as revealed in Christ.
We do have social laws in Christianity, but they are not mandated by scripture. For example, fasting is a necessary part of living a Christian life. But the regulations of fasting may be set by the Church to suit the needs of a given culture, and therefore change over time. We don’t need a revelation from God to set new rules. The Church, in her role as shepherd of the faithful, can set new rules if they are necessary, and can even tailor those rules to the needs of a particular culture. Thus, the rules for fasting are slightly different in the U.S. than they are in other parts of the world.
Let’s take divorce for instance. Moses allowed divorce and Christ prohibited it. Seemingly a classic case of a social law. But look more closely. The Mosaic law of divorce is summarized in Deuteronomy 22 and 24. Note that scripture does not institute divorce. Rather, it recognizes that divorce exists and seeks to regulate it.
Then when Jesus came he had this exchange with the Pharisees:
The Pharisees approached and asked, “Is it lawful for a husband to divorce his wife?” They were testing him.
He said to them in reply, “What did Moses command you?” They replied, “Moses permitted him to write a bill of divorce and dismiss her.”
But Jesus told them, “Because of the hardness of your hearts he wrote you this commandment. But from the beginning of creation, ‘God made them male and female. For this reason a man shall leave his father and mother (and be joined to his wife), and the two shall become one flesh.’ So they are no longer two but one flesh. Therefore what God has joined together, no human being must separate.”
In the house the disciples again questioned him about this. He said to them, “Whoever divorces his wife and marries another commits adultery against her; and if she divorces her husband and marries another, she commits adultery.” (Mark 10:2-12)
This is not a social law designed for 1st-century Palestine. This is a statement about what is natural to us as human beings.
Jesus’ attitude toward divorce is different from Baha’u'llah’s. For Baha’u'llah, the phenomenon of divorce is in itself morally neutral. It is either appropriate or inappropriate purely on pragmatic grounds - what will best serve the social issues of the time. For Christ, divorce is fundamentally unnatural, always and everywhere. Moses merely permitted divorce to exist, “but from the beginning of creation, God made them male and female, and the two shall become one flesh.”
Other places where Christ talks about divorce are Matthew 5 (in the Sermon on the Mount), Matthew 19, and Luke 16.
As I said above, laws in the Bible either prepare for the coming of Christ or logically follow from God’s nature as revealed in Christ. The laws of Moses regulating divorce prepared Israel by restricting divorce under certain circumstances. But the Old Testament also condemns divorce as evil. In several places, God explains that just as marriage is meant to be permanent, so the relationship between God and his people is meant to be permanent.
Judah has broken faith; an abominable thing has been done in Israel and in Jerusalem. Judah has profaned the temple which the LORD loves, and has married an idolatrous woman. May the LORD cut off from the man who does this both witness and advocate out of the tents of Jacob, and anyone to offer sacrifice to the LORD of hosts!
This also you do: the altar of the LORD you cover with tears, weeping and groaning, because he no longer regards your sacrifice nor accepts it favorably from your hand. And you say, “Why is it?”
Because the LORD is witness between you and the wife of your youth, with whom you have broken faith though she is your companion, your betrothed wife. Did he not make one being, with flesh and spirit: and what does that one require but godly offspring? You must then safeguard life that is your own, and not break faith with the wife of your youth.
For I hate divorce, says the LORD, the God of Israel, and covering one’s garment with injustice, says the LORD of hosts. You must then safeguard life that is your own, and not break faith. (Malachi 2:11-16)
If you must use the spiritual-law/social-law distinction, then in Christianity, the prohibition of divorce is a spiritual law. It logically follows from the nature of God and from our nature, and is therefore eternal.
Here’s the Catholic doctrine of papal infallibility in a nutshell: If the pope speaks ex cathedra on matters of faith and morals, then what he says is protected from error. Let’s break that sentence down:
“If the pope speaks ex cathedra…” Ex cathedra literally means “from the chair”, meaning the chair of Peter. This means if the pope speaks in an official capacity as pope. Most of the time the pope is speaking for himself, or in his role as bishop of the diocese of Rome, or in his role (if he has one) as Catholic theologian, and under none of those circumstances would what he said be infallible.
“…on matters of faith and morals…”
That means he’s either talking about a doctrinal issue or a moral teaching of the Church. Most of what the pope does, even in his official capacity as pope, involves routine administrative matters like appointing people to various positions, conducting diplomacy with secular governments, meeting and chatting with visitors, and things like that. None of that falls under the protection of infallibility.
“…what he says is protected from error.”
The word “infallible” means “without error”. It should be distinguished from the word “impeccable” which means “without sin”. The Church does not claim that popes are impeccable.
The pope is the chief shepherd of the Church, in that he is chief among the bishops, and serving the Church as pope is a very demanding and time-consuming calling. But it is only on extremely rare occasions that a pope feels the need to exercise his infallibility, and most popes never do. The last time papal infallibility was exercised was in 1950, and the time before that was in 1854.
If you would like to read more, check out the article on catholic.com, Papal Infallibility. The old Catholic Encyclopedia, available online, has a lengthy article on the Church’s Infallibility in general, of which papal infallibility is only a part. If you’re a Baha’i who wants to teach Catholics, the Catholic Encyclopedia article is essential reading.
In the Christian tradition, the year is basically divided into three big chunks. There is the time associated with Christmas, the time associated with Easter, and then there’s everything else. Our whole year is structured around the timing of Christmas and Easter.
Christmas and Easter each have two seasons associated with them, one leading up to it and one after it. For Christmas there’s the seasons of Advent and Christmas, and for Easter there’s the seasons of Lent and Easter.
As I have discussed before, Christianity has three basic ideas, what you might call its “fundamental verities”. These are the incarnation, death and resurrection of Christ. The incarnation, when Christ took on a human body, is remembered at several times during the year, but especially at Christmas. The death of Christ is remembered every Friday, but in a special way on Good Friday. And the resurrection, commemorated every Sunday, is commemorated especially at Easter. That’s why Christmas, Good Friday and Easter are so important for Christians.
Although the secular culture makes a bigger deal of Christmas, within Christianity Good Friday and Easter are considered holier. Easter is so holy, in fact, that it does not occur on day only, but extends for an entire week. Every day this week is considered to be Easter.
The whole Easter season lasts 50 days. The fortieth day is Ascension, when Christ rose bodily into heaven 40 days after his resurrection. Ten days after that is Pentecost, when the Holy Spirit descended upon Mary and the Apostles.
The Congregation for the Propagation of the Faith, the Vatican department in charge of missionary work, gave the following instructions to Catholic missionaries in 1659 on how to deal with the cultures they were to encounter in the Far East:
Put no obstacles in their way; and for no reason whatever should you persuade these people to change their rites, customs, and ways of life, unless these are obviously opposed to religion and good morals. For what is more absurd than to bring France or Spain or Italy or any other part of Europe into China? It is not these that you should bring but the faith which does not spurn or reject any peoples’ rites and customs, unless they are depraved, but on the contrary tries to keep them … Admire and praise what deserves to be respected.
I feel we are now at a pivotal time in human history. Society is crying out for spiritual fulfillment and direction; the religious regimes of the past are no longer functional in that sense. We are in dire need of a drastic paradigm shift in order to align our understanding of existence in this world with that of what God has been telling us through His Manifestations
Shireen was just speaking for herself, of course, but I would be interested in hearing how other Baha’is react to this quote. The reason I single it out is that it raises some questions in my mind.
What is Baha’u'llah telling us that is different from what past Manifestations told us? How are the needs we face now different from the needs of past dispensations? What exactly is the paradigm shift that we have to undergo now?
When I wrote the post Shoghi Effendi and Christian authority, I came under criticism that I hadn’t expected. I mentioned as an aside that in the Baha’i Faith, religion is text-based, and this predisposes Baha’is to misunderstand other religions by assuming that they are always summed up in their text.
Well, a few days ago Marco Oliveira demonstrated my point.
Mr. Oliveira, a Baha’i and author of the blog Povo de Baha, was commenting on my reaction to his comments on Youtube (see A “very ironic” defense of the Pope). In the comment thread he observed,
Maybe it is important to define what do we mean by a “Catholic tradition”. Do we mean a set of teachings that exist on the Bible? Do we mean a set of teachings plus several dogmas? Do we add to that several teachings produced by Church Councils and theologians?
The Papacy is a human construction. Even if one claims it has divine guidance, it is a fact that it is not mentioned in the Bible.
it is not part of the Christian sacred writings. Unless one believes that a council-made-dogma has the same value as the Writings…
It is clear from these statements that he regards the Bible as the only valid source of Christian doctrine. He’s even telling me that, as a Catholic, I shouldn’t believe in the validity of ecumenical councils or obey the pope because these things aren’t found in the “Christian sacred writings”.
Thus, for Mr. Oliveira, it is writings that determine Christianity. A Christian must have a written revelation to justify any belief or practice. Like I said in the thread Shoghi Effendi and Christian authority, not all religions work this way. But Mr. Oliveira doesn’t seem to know that, probably because he has been taught as a Baha’i that there are Manifestations and they bring revelations and those revelations form the basis, and the only basis, for everything that goes on in that religion.
Marco Oliveira, author of the popular Baha’i blog Povo de Baha, has posted some comments on Youtube regarding the recent flap at La Sapienza University. (I embed his comments here, but I may at some point change this to a link to Youtube if I need more disk space in the future.) Here is Mr. Oliveira:
I agree with the spirit of his comments. Freedom of expression is a good and should be protected, and what the small group of radical students and professors at La Sapienza sought to accomplish was censorship and, as Mr. Oliveira put it, “an attack against freedom of expression”.
He offered two observations on the episode. The second one is very well put: “Fanaticism and radicalism do not only exist within religions. They exist also amongst those who think that religion is the source of all evil.” Consider how strange this is: opponents of Church teaching seek to silence Christians and prevent us from practicing our religion, all in the name of tolerance. Strangest of all, they seem to be entirely unaware of their own hypocrisy.
By the way, that has always been the position of the Catholic Church, and theologians throughout our history have expressed the Christian truth by means of human philosophy, such as Platonism and Aristotelianism. Recent theologians have used recent philosophies. For example, John Paul II expounded his Theology of the Body (a theological explanation of Christian sexuality) through the philosophical language of Phenomenology.
Many Christian groups accuse the Catholic Church of having corrupted the purity of the Gospel with human philosophies. They have a very narrow understanding of truth. Catholics believe that truth can be found throughout the world and in all human societies. Naturally human philosophies contain some error along with the truth, but it does not corrupt the Gospel to express Christianity in terms of a given philosophy or cultural paradigm. The truth of Christ remains, and all Christian theologians, philosophers, pastors and laymen, whether they lived in Ancient Rome, medieval Ethiopia or modern Peru, are all part of the same Catholic tradition because they all express the same truth.
This brings me to where I disagree with Mr. Oliveira. He claims that Benedict XVI is a member of a “conservative faction” in the Church. He further states that it is ironic for the Pope to be portrayed as a victim of censorship since he and his faction enforce censorship on others, giving as examples Hans Kung and Leonardo Boff.
Here Mr. Oliveira is applying a double standard. Given that he is a Baha’i in good standing and loyal to the Baha’i Covenant, he must have some appreciation for such Baha’i practices as literature review, administrative sanction and declaration of covenant breaking. Literature review ensures that literature written by Baha’is conforms to the teachings of the Faith. Critics of the Faith (notably the ex-Baha’is mentioned in Dr. Momen’s recent article) frequently claim that this practice amounts to censorship. Yet what the Church did with Hans Kung was milder even than literature review.
In literature review, all Baha’is without exception must get approval for any book or article they publish on the Faith. I’m not saying this is a bad policy; I have no problem with it. I point it out only for the sake of comparison. In Catholicism, there is no such literature review. If you are licensed as a Church theologian, though, it is expected that what you say about Catholic beliefs conform to Church teaching.
Hans Kung had such a license, meaning the Church endorsed him as qualified to explain Catholic doctrine. When he insisted on publishing ideas contrary to Catholic doctrine, the Church (more specifically Cardinal Ratzinger) revoked his license. He was not excommunicated, and he is still a priest in good standing.
If Mr. Oliveira regards this as censorship, then does he regard literature review as censorship? Will he speak as disparagingly of the disenrollment of Sen McGlinn, a harsher punishment than Hans Kung received?
The same goes for Leonardo Boff. In fact, these two theologians have some basic ideas in common. They both question the legitimacy of the Church’s hierarchy. They both question the divinity of Christ. They both question the effectiveness of the sacraments. But without these things, there is no Catholicism.
Imagine a comparable theologian in the Baha’i community - he questions the legitimacy of the Universal House of Justice, he questions whether Baha’u'llah really was a Manifestation. If he’s like Boff, he might promote worship of Bahiyyih Khanum as a goddess, or he might promote an alternate meeting in place of the Nineteen Day Feast, where the poor Baha’is can talk about the value of armed revolution to overthrow their wealthy oppressors, including members of the Baha’i administration.
Baha’is would naturally be horrified to see a Baha’i theologian expounding such views. But when a Catholic theologian does it, he’s just contributing to Christian diversity and to sanction him is censorship. Can someone explain this to me?
This double standard becomes even more stark when we consider Hans Kung. Kung’s approach to his faith is very much like that of the Baha’i dissidents discussed in Dr. Momen’s recent article. Do Baha’is think that it’s okay for the Baha’i administration to sanction dissidents, but it’s not okay for the Catholic Church to do so?
In short, would Mr. Oliveira characterize the members of the Universal House of Justice and the International Teaching Centre as a “conservative faction” within the Baha’i community?
I have a question about this passage in The Promised Day Is Come, pages 117-118:
This will indeed be the fitting climax of that process of integration which, starting with the family, the smallest unit in the scale of human organization, must, after having called successively into being the tribe, the city-state, and the nation, continue to operate until it culminates in the unification of the whole world, the final object and the crowning glory of human evolution on this planet.
Does each specific stage correspond exactly to a specific Manifestation? Did one Manifestation bring about the unification of families, and a later one of tribes, and so on? And if so, which Manifestation is responsible for which stage?
As many Baha’i blogs as exist out there (and there are plenty) there is an egregious gap in blogging content. As far as I can tell, there seems to be no Baha’i blog that defends the Baha’i position on controversial issues.
There are certain issues that many seekers will have trouble when they learn of them. Any Baha’i with experience teaching can rattle off a litany of them. Some seekers are motivated by social justice concerns. For them, the prohibition on involvement in partisan politics can be very confusing. Some can’t understand why lifestyle choices should have anything to do with spirituality. Others are attracted by the Faith’s message of religious unity and inclusiveness, and then they’re disturbed that non-Baha’is can’t attend Nineteen Day Feast, or that the readings at feast are supposed to be only from the Baha’i Writings. Many find the Faith’s emphasis on equality of women and men appealing, only to find out that women can’t serve on the Universal House of Justice.
I have not found a single blog dedicated to exploring these issues directly. There are a number of very good Baha’i blogs out there. Many of them are personal blogs that happen to be written by Baha’is. Martin’s Quest is by far the best example, an excellent blog. Others combine personal material with observations on current events as they bear on the Baha’i Faith. These include doberman pizza and Barnabas Quotidianus.
Another set of Baha’i blogs take on social issues from a Baha’i perspective, like Baha’i Thought and Black America and Correlating. (I wish Correlating would post more often, though.) There are blogs aimed at seekers, like 1863 Unity Road, but these take more of a fireside approach. There’s nothing wrong with that. What we also need, though, is a blog that handles doctrinal issues, and that directly engages non-Baha’is’ questions and objections. The nearest thing out there is Arise. It is relatively new, and I look forward to seeing how it develops.
All these, and other blogs I haven’t mentioned, are good at what they do and should keep doing it. It’s good to see so many blogs aimed at a non-Baha’i audience. What seems to be lacking in them, though, is a willingness to confront controversy. It’s easy to tout the Baha’i Faith’s teachings on the unity of women and men, for example. It’s much harder to explain why there are no women on the Universal House of Justice.
A Baha’i might be concerned that airing these issues in public could turn people off to the Faith. Better to help them fall in love with Baha’u'llah first, and then that love can sustain them as they look at these issues. But these issues are being aired anyway, especially by Baha’i dissidents and disaffected former Baha’is. If there is no Baha’i presence on the web to discuss these matters honestly and frankly and to explain the Baha’i position, then the Baha’is’ position will be explained for them.
John Henry Newman
St. Augustine
