The hegemony of the historical-critical method of biblical study has taught two generations of Catholics that the Bible is too complicated for ordinary people to understand: so why read what only savants can grasp? Inept preaching, dissecting the biblical text with historical-critical scalpels or reducing Scripture to a psychology manual, has also been a turn-off to Bible-study. Then there is the clunkiness of the New American Bible, the pedestrian translation to which U.S. Catholics are subjected in the liturgy: there is little beauty here, and the beauty of God’s Word ought to be one of its most attractive attributes.

Credit: salon.com

But it was not until I read “Our Babel of Bibles” by Baylor University’s David Lyle Jeffrey, published in the March/April 2012 issue ofTouchstone, that I began to understand that the proliferation of modern biblical translations and editions is also part of the problem. Not only are there a plethora of different translations from which to choose; as Dr. Jeffrey points out, there are now “niche” Bibles:

“If you are tired of your mother’s old Bible, which printed the words of Jesus in red, you can choose a more trendy Green Bible, with all the eco-sensitive passages printed in green ink. If you are a feisty woman unfazed by possibly misdirected allusions, then maybe you would like the Woman Thou Art Loosed edition of the NKJB (New King James Bible). If you should be a high-end of the TV-channel charismatic, there are ‘prophecy Bibles’ coded in several colors to justify your eschatology of choice.”

And that’s before we get to the super-trendy editions like the Common English Bible, which renders Psalm 122:1 (“I was glad when they said unto me/Let us go to the Lord’s house”) as “Let’s go to the Lord’s house.” This is not just dumb;  as Dr. Jeffrey points out, is also “verges on a grotesque secularism at the level of ‘Let’s go to Joe’s place – he has the biggest TV.’” And lest you think Jeffrey exaggerates, please note that the CEB renders “Son of Man” as “the Human One.” Yuck.

Dr. Jeffrey’s dissection of our Bible Babel also makes an important point about the use of sacral vocabulary, noting that Venerable Bede and the other first translators of the Bible into Anglo-Saxon understood the limits of their own vernacular and borrowed words from Latin to express what the biblical text meant. A minor point? Not really, because these words came into English that way: alms, altar, angel, anthem, apostle, ark, canticle, chalice, creed, deacon, demon, disciple, epistle, hymn, manna, martyr, priest, prophet, psalm, Psalter, rule, Sabbath, shrift, and temple. Later in the process of making English English, more words entered our language via the Vulgate: absolution, baptism, beatitude, charity, communion, confession, confession, contrition, creator, crucifixion, devotion, faith, homily, mercy, miracle, obedience, passion, pastor, penance, religion, sacrament, saint, sanctuary, savior, temptation, theology, trinity, virgin, and virtue.

All of which is an answer to those who fretted that Anglophone Catholics couldn’t handle “consubstantial” in the new translations of the Roman Missal. As Dr. Jeffrey writes, “What would have happened if someone had said, in that time and place, ‘We just have to find dynamic equivalents in Anglo-Saxon?’ There weren’t any. Appropriately, the first translators were not intimidated by the prospect of teaching people the meaning of biblical and sacral terms not to be found anywhere in their ordinary language. They gratefully borrowed the language of Scripture as they found it in another tongue.”

What to do today? My suggestion is to get yourself the Ignatius Press edition of the Revised Standard Version, and read it over and over again until its language works its way into the crevices of your mind and the texture of your prayer. Maybe, some day, we can hear that translation at Mass.

George Weigel is Distinguished Senior Fellow of the Ethics and Public Policy Center in Washington, D.C. 

Cover Photo Credit: livingtext.wordpress.com

The Second Vatican Council taught us that the Eucharist is the “Source and Summit” of the Christian life.  Yet we must keep in mind that the same council makes clear that the Eucharist is not the sum total of the Christian life.

Indeed the Eucharist, and all the sacraments, are memorials of a dramatic act of mercy that occurred not in the serene majesty of the temple liturgy, but in history, amidst the hustle and bustle of everyday life.

Let’s pause for a moment to recall the reason for this Ultimate Work of Mercy.  The first members of the human race had renounced their freedom and dignity as sons and daughters of God and had fallen into bondage to a tyrannical master.  Suffering and death were the fruit of this slavery.  The price to redeem themselves from this miserable situation was beyond their means.  So in bondage they stayed, forging heavier chains for themselves with every passing generation.

Until, that is, the God of Justice manifested Himself as the Father of Mercy.  Justice renders to each their due and calls each to assume responsibility for themselves.  Mercy goes beyond the issues of who is responsible.  Mercy is simply love’s response to suffering.  So the Father of Mercy, to relieve our suffering, sent his Eternal Son to be made flesh by the power of the Holy Spirit.  God the Son, by nature incapable of suffering, became vulnerable for us.  He bound the strong man who had tyrannized the human race and paid the debt that the human race hadn’t been able to cover.  His rescue mission succeeded at the cost of his life.

This is what the Mass commemorates and makes present again.  The one who once gave himself in mercy to relieve our suffering continues to give himself to us, holding nothing back, in the sacrament of sacraments, the sacrament of divine mercy.

But why does he so give himself under the form of food?  That we may become what we eat.  That we may grow in holiness, which is to say, become more perfect in that divine love that we call charity.  Mercy is just what charity does when it encounters suffering.

The Eucharist, then cannot exist in isolation from life.  It is the liturgical commemoration of a Work of Mercy that is designed to issue in works of mercy.  Thus mercy is essential to the life of every member of the Church until evil and suffering are no more.  St James reminds us that Christianity that responds to suffering with no more than kind words and tender sentiments is neither true love nor even authentic faith: “If a brother or sister is ill-clad and in lack of daily food, and one o f you says to them, “Go in peace, be warmed and filled,” without giving them the things needed for the body, what does it profit?”(James 2:14-17)

Some things to keep in mind about the work of mercy in the Church:

1) Mercy is for everyone.    One of the greatest misconceptions of my early years as a Catholic was that Catholicism is a two-track system.  Lay people just need to worry about keeping the precepts of the church and the Ten Commandments.   The Sermon on the Mount and real holiness is the territory of those called to priesthood and religious life.  Knowing that this misconception was pervasive, the Second Vatican Council affirmed in its Dogmatic Constitution on the Church that the call to true holiness is absolutely universal (Lumen Gentium Chap V).  And holiness means love, and love means mercy.  Therefore, works of mercy can’t just be relegated to those who belong to the social justice committee or the Missionaries of Charity.  Everyone, without exception, is called to the work of mercy.

2) Mercy relieves suffering, and there are different kinds of suffering.  I once heard a Catholic in France offer a striking petition in the prayer of the Faithful: “let us pray for all those suffering from the pain of not knowing the love of God.”  The lack of bodily necessities certainly causes great distress. But so does lack of the things of the spirit.  It is important to keep in mind that the Church enumerates not only corporal works of mercy but spiritual works of mercy as well, and that the latter actually have a certain preeminence.  Perhaps not all are quite ready to instruct the ignorant or admonish sinners.  But at least one of the spiritual works of mercy is something that virtually all of us can do, regardless of our location or state of health: interceding for the living and the dead.  Indeed this is the work of mercy performed by the glorified saints in heaven.

3) Charity begins at Home.   That Angel of Mercy, Blessed Mother Teresa of Calcutta, was often approached by people who were moved to want to share in her apostolate to the poorest of the poor.  Her advice was often “go home and love your own family”.  If we open our eyes there are people all around us who are lonely, sick, overworked, and troubled.   They very much need our compassion and attention.  This is where we must start.  “If any one does not provide for his relatives, and especially for his own family, he has disowned the faith and is worse than an unbeliever.” (I Tim 5:8).

4) Charity can’t end at Home   The story of the Good Samaritan is striking for a number of reasons, not the least of which is the fact that the hero of the story has no natural bond with the victim.  Jews and Samaritans actually had great antipathy for each other.  So we can’t restrict our works of mercy to family, friends, and those who belong to our Church or political party.  As Jesus tells us in the Sermon on the Mount, our works of mercy must extend even to our enemies.

5) Mercy is not always Convenient.  There are times that works of mercy can be planned and fit in an orderly way into our schedule.  But suffering and crisis are often unpredictable.  And responding to them can often be very inconvenient.  The Good Samaritan took a lot of time and went through no small expense to make sure the victim in the story was provided for.  He was probably late for an appointment as a result.

6) Charity is not the same as Social Work.  While people often refer to anything that benefits the disadvantaged as “charity,” the word actually means divine, supernatural love.  It is action that springs from the love of God which has been poured into our hearts by the Holy Spirit (Ro 5:5) and must involve not just giving things but giving of ourselves.  We must see God’s image and likeness in the person that benefits from our act and love that person for God’s sake.  There is nothing wrong with making a year-end charitable gift, but if this is to be a true work of mercy, the motivation must be deeper than the wish for a tax write-off.  For St. Francis and Mother Teresa, serving the poorest of the poor was serving Jesus Himself (Mat 25:34ff).  The work of mercy can and should be a deeply spiritual encounter.

7) Mercy is Never Condescending.  The goal of the Ancient Enemy of mankind is to use suffering to rob those made in God’s image of their human dignity.  Our goal in the work of mercy is always to restore that dignity and honor it.  “Charity” that belittles the recipient is never true mercy.  It may relieve some bodily suffering but only causes a deeper suffering of alienation and humiliation.  The Divine Word emptied himself of glory and stood shoulder to shoulder with us.  The one giving mercy cannot look down on the recipient of mercy.  In fact the merciful humbly understand that they always receive as much or more as they give when they work to alleviate the suffering of the needy.

The late John Paul the Great wrote an Encyclical on God the Father near the beginning of His Pontificate.  With all the possible descriptions and titles for God used in Scripture and Tradition, what was he to title such an encyclical?  The answer for him was simple: “Rich in Mercy” (Ephesians 2:4).  God is preeminently the Father of Mercies and the God of all Consolation (2 Corinthians 1:3).  The way we can be recognized as his authentic offspring is by living a lifestyle of mercy.  It is interesting that in the only description of the last judgment in the Bible, salvation or damnation hangs not on how much religious art people have in their houses or how many Masses they’ve attended, but how they’ve treated the least of Jesus’ needy brothers and sisters (see Matthew 25:34-46).

Dr. Marcellino D’Ambrosio writes from Texas.  For his Lenten resources or info on his pilgrimages to Rome and the Holy land, visit www.crossroadsinitiative.com or call 1.800.803.0118.

This article originally appeared in Our Sunday Visitor and is reproduced here by permission of the author.

The most obvious is that Catholicism has barely begun to digest the teaching of Vatican II on the nature of the Church, the universal call to holiness, and the reform of the episcopate, the priesthood, consecrated life, and the lay vocation in the world. Until the dramatic change in Catholic self-understanding that Vatican II mandated is fully internalized and implemented—until the Church understands itself as a mission, not as an institution that has a mission (as one among many things it does)—there seems little sense in convening Vatican III.

One might also argue that another ecumenical council would be a distraction from the evangelical mission to which Vatican II called the Church, and especially the Church’s bishops. As it is, bishops spend far too much of their time in meetings. Would the preaching of the Gospel, which, according to Vatican II, is the first responsibility of bishops, be advanced by gathering the entire world episcopate into a global mega-meeting for three or four months of the year, over a period of years?

Then there’s the question of resources. Any Vatican III would cost vast sums of money: would such an expenditure be the best use of the Church’s resources? (As Father John O’Malley reports in “What Happened at Vatican II?,” one of the reasons Pope Paul VI was determined to conclude Vatican II in December 1965 was that the Council was simply costing too much.)

These are all good reasons why a general council would be a bad idea for the foreseeable future. But there’s another issue here, one that raises an intriguing question about any future council, no matter when it’s convened: Where could Vatican III (or Lateran VI, or Trent II, or Lyons III, or whatever-the-future-council-is called) possibly be held?

Vatican I (1869-70) met in one transept of St. Peter’s, because there were only 737 bishops attending. Some 2,800 bishops participated in the four sessions of Vatican II, which met in the fall months of 1962, 1963, 1964 and 1965, although at any one session there were between 2,000 and 2,500 bishops present—and they filled the entire, vast nave of St. Peter’s, seated on bleachers built high above the basilica’s marble floor. Add the ecumenical observers, the Council periti (advisers), and other functionaries with access to the Council aula (as the reconfigured basilica was called), and St. Peter’s was packed full.

But today? At the end of 2009, the last year for which complete Church statistics are available, there were 5,065 Catholic bishops in the world. A general or “ecumenical” council is, by definition, one in which all bishops have the right to participate (Canon 339). Where would this throng of over 5,000 bishops, literally twice the size of the episcopate that attended the most jam-packed session of Vatican II, meet? It certainly couldn’t meet at St. Peter’s, or at any of the other Roman basilicas. Indeed, is there a Catholic church in the world that could readily accommodate more than 5,000 bishops, their advisors, the ecumenical observers, and all the others who would rightly claim at least some place in a council hall?

One wag to whom I mentioned this conundrum spoke of a future council as “Metroplex I,” with the Council Fathers, the observers, the advisers, the translators, and all the rest of the apparatus meeting in Cowboys Stadium, graciously donated for the occasion by Jerry Jones. Bad jokes aside, however, the fact that the world episcopate has doubled in number over the past 50 years raises important questions for the future. How can this large a body function as the episcopal “college” of Vatican II’s Dogmatic Constitution on the Church? Is it possible to imagine a “virtual council,” or some other technological mechanism that would allow the world episcopate to meet as a whole?

There’s far more, literally, to any future council than typically meets the eye.

The hope offered by the New Evangelization is not mere optimism, but authentic hope. In his wonderful essay on hope, “The Yes of Jesus Christ,” Joseph Ratzinger defines optimism as naïve, shallow, and easily subverted by dominant trends and ideologies. Hope, on the other hand, understands the trials and tribulations of a given period. Hope allows us to situate ourselves in the broader scheme of history. When we hope in Jesus Christ, we know where we are, we know where we came from, and we know where are going. This confidence, particularly in the belief that Jesus Christ will have the final word at the end of our pilgrimage, is the reason why the Church has the audacity to call for a New Evangelization.

So, what is this New Evangelization that John Paul II proposed and Benedict XVI has asked the Church to reflect on and implement? What began as a call for missionary activity outside the Church has matured into a call for missionary activity within the Church and within a formerly Christian culture.

This has led to the notion of a re-proposal of the Christian message, which was the thrust of John Paul’s challenge to the South American bishops in 1983. It remains true to this day. “The commemoration of this half millennium of evangelization will have full significance if, as bishops, with your priests and faithful, you accept it as your commitment; a commitment not of re-evangelization, but rather of a new evangelization; new in its ardour, methods and expression.” This re-proposal of the Gospel must fundamentally reawaken in the baptized the true nature of the sacramental character of their initiation into the Body of Christ.

As Pope Benedict has said, “The rediscovery of the value of one’s baptism is the basis of the missionary commitment of every Christian, because we see in the Gospel that he who lets himself be fascinated by Christ cannot do without witnessing the joy of following in his footsteps.” It is this fundamental fascination with Jesus Christ that the New Evangelization aims to provoke in the fallen-away Catholic, the non-Catholic, and even the practicing Catholic.

What is new about the New Evangelization is that it is not directed toward the non-believer alone but is at the same time an all-encompassing renewal of the life in Christ for all Christians. The Lineamenta, a document used to prepare Bishops for the upcoming Synod on the New Evangelization in October 2012, reminds us that “the Church does not give up or retreat into herself; instead, she undertakes a project to revitalize herself. She makes the Person of Jesus Christ and a personal encounter with him central to her thinking, knowing that he will give his Spirit and provide the force to announce and proclaim the Gospel in new ways which can speak to today’s cultures.”

At its heart the New Evangelization calls us to share the fundamental decision of the Christian life. Our efforts as evangelizers should seek to lead us more deeply into the encounter with Jesus Christ and the stunning ways in which this encounter changes our lives. Most importantly (and this is one of the biggest challenges of the New Evangelization) we must ensure that the Church witnesses to the encounter with Christ instead of standing as an obstacle to it.

This has been a long-standing concern of Pope Benedict. In 2004, he warned, “Many people perceive Christianity as something institutional — rather than as an encounter with Christ — which explains why they don’t see it as a source of joy.” This should serve as constant reminder to us that we cannot forget the reason for the Church, which is to reveal the joy of life in Christ.

The New Evangelization is nothing less than a new beginning. What makes it new is that this is a new time, a new place, new challenges, and new hope. The New Evangelization is laden with the potential to bring the truth of Jesus Christ to a world in constant need of the healing renewal that transformed the world with the birth of a baby in Bethlehem 2000 years ago. The Church—whether as a minority presence (as in the West) or as a rising influence in Africa and other parts of the Global South—is uniquely equipped to address the wounds of our world.

In addition to bringing the healing of Christ through the sacraments, the Church’s 2000 year history brings with it the scars and lessons of basic human problems. The Church can bring its older institutions, like monasticism, and its newer movements and ministries to bear on the challenges we face. In this day and age we are particularly well-equipped with a host of tools for evangelization.

These tools include The Catechism of the Catholic Church, which will play a vital role in the upcoming “Year of Faith”. Established events like World Youth Day and new events like The Courtyard of the Gentiles present fresh opportunities to witness to the joy of the Catholic faith. Finally, the ongoing witness of the saints continues to bring the Catholic faith alive. With these tools in hand, the New Evangelization provides the Church with the opportunity to once again “launch out into the deep” (Luke 5:4).

The progressive version goes like this. Fifty years ago, in the time of Pope John XXIII and Vatican Council II, ecumenism was going great guns. Indeed, the speedy reunion of separated Christians was a real possibility. But soon after the council things stalled, and under Popes John Paul II and Benedict XVI a reaction set in. Due to foot-dragging by Rome, the ecumenical movement is now at an impasse.

The traditionalist story is hugely different. Starting with Vatican II and continuing since then, it holds, Catholic ecumenism has been a mistake. There’s been no significant progress, there’s been no reunion, and the practical result of it has been mainly to encourage the relativistic notion that one religion is as good as another. Better we admit our mistakes, cut our losses, and concentrate on encouraging people to convert.

Neither in theology nor in matters of fact is either the progressive or the traditionalist account correct. It’s the great merit of Kenneth D. Whitehead’s helpful new book, The New Ecumenism (Alba House, 2009), to show in concrete detail why that’s so.

Writing from the perspective of an eminently orthodox Catholic, Whitehead argues that the formal commitment of the Catholic Church to the ecumenical movement which began some four decades ago conforms to Christ’s will for Christian unity as well as to the Church’s own solemn teaching. Individual conversions to Catholicism are much to be desired and should be encouraged. But the “new ecumenism” of ecumenical dialogue in a search for common ground isn’t merely permissible but necessary.

Nor is it reasonable to put the blame for slow progress on the Vatican. Take the Catholic relationship with the Anglican Communion. Generally speaking, the gulf between Rome and Canterbury hasn’t been widened by the Vatican’s words and deeds but by the Anglicans’ well publicized inability to put their house in anything approximating even a semblance of order.

The Orthodox? Recall that Orthodoxy isn’t one body but a grouping of autocephalous — independent — national churches, each with its own historically-conditioned relationship to the Church of Rome. Among these bodies, the prickly nationalism of the largest, the Russian Orthodox Church, remains an especially serious huge obstacle to entente with Catholics.

To be sure, in some cases Rome hypothetically might gain an appearance of unity by abandoning one or another dogma or authoritative teaching. Progressive voices in Catholicism sometimes urge that. But this kind of political compromise would be, Whitehead notes, a dishonest way of handling substantive differences about doctrinal truth. It contains the seeds of its own collapse.

As matters stand, Rome has gone pretty far. In 1995 John Paul II reached out to the Orthodox in the encyclical Ut Unum Sint (That They May Be One), inviting suggestions on how to exercise papal primacy of jurisdiction in a way they would find more congenial. If there have been significant responses to date, it’s a well-kept secret.

Yes, half a century ago there were expectations that unity would be quick and easy. “We wanted to do ourselves what only God can do,” Pope Benedict says. Now we know better. When and if unity comes, it will be in God’s good time.

Meanwhile, the Pope says, “we have to be prepared to keep on seeking, in the knowledge that the seeking itself is one way of finding….[It is] the only appropriate attitude for the person who is on a pilgrimage toward eternity.”