TCA Question & Answer of the Day

Each weekday, you'll find a new question and answer. Check back for the new question and scroll down to see previous day's entries! Let us know what you think - - or question! -- by emailing us at tcanswer@osv.com.

For the Week of June 8-12, 2009

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Question of the Day for Friday, June 12, 2009

Validity of Annulments

Q. Do valid annulments depend on the jurisdiction of the annulment court? It would seem that the marriage is either valid or not valid, and a pronouncement does not make it valid or invalid. Does the validity depend on the court having jurisdiction?

E.G., Hilton Head, S.C.

A. Here’s a reply from TCA columnist Father Francis Hoffman, J.C.D.:

A marriage is either valid or not valid, but the declaration of that validity is the sole competence of the court (tribunal) that has jurisdiction. Something similar happens in civil law, and no one finds that strange.

With respect to matrimonial processes (trials), Canon 1673 establishes potentially four competent tribunals. In layman’s English here are the tribunals: 1) where the marriage took place; 2) where the husband lives; 3) where the wife lives; 4) where most of the proofs are to be collected.

If a tribunal determines that it is not competent to hear the case, it will refuse the case (after all, tribunals aren’t looking for extra cases!) and recommend it to the proper court. If a tribunal does not have jurisdiction, yet proceeds to make a decree on the case, that decree is invalid.

Question of the Day for Thursday, June 11, 2009

Why “Cardinals”?

Q. Why did the church choose the word “cardinal” for those who are members of the college of men whose choose the popes? Does it have any relation to the bird? I realize that the red in the cardinals’ hat is for blood, but a cardinal bird is also red.

N.N.,  via email

A. The word “cardinal” comes from the Latin cardinalis, which literally means “hinge” — that is, something so important that other things “hinge” on it, just as a door hangs and turns on its hinges, dependent upon them for its operation.

It’s in this sense that we speak both of “cardinal” virtues (the virtues of first importance) and of ecclesiastical “cardinals” (clergymen of prime importance to the operation of the Church).

 The name “cardinal” was given to the bird, not because that particular species is of primary importance, but simply because it has a red “hat” that is reminiscent of the ecclesiastical cardinal’s red hat. As you note, the cardinal’s hat is this color to remind him that he must we willing to shed his blood for the Church if necessary.

Question of the Day for Wednesday, June 10, 2009

“Co-Redemptrix”?

Q. Has the teaching that Mary is “co-redemptrix” been declared false?

P.H., via email

A. No, it has not. Pope John Paul II frequently used this term, as do many other theologians. This is a fairly common title among Catholics for our Blessed Mother, but it is not de fide.

 Keep in mind that in this context, the prefix “co-” means “auxiliary” (“serving as an aid) or “subsidiary” (“serving to assist”); it does not mean “equal.” A similar use would be the “co-“ prefix in the word copilot, an officer who is not equal to the pilot but rather an assistant under his command.

 To say that Mary is “co-redemptrix” is to speak of her unique and God-given role in redemption as the mother of the Redeemer. It is not to say that she is an equal and divine counterpart of her Son. 

 

Question of the Day for Tuesday, June 9, 2009

Alternate Penance on Fridays?

Q. Are Catholics allowed to eat meat on Friday without conditions? I was told that we could eat meat on Friday only if we made some other sacrifice. True or not true?

P.P., via email

A. To answer that question, let’s begin with the relevant canons from the 1983 Code of Canon Law (emphasis added here and in all citations below):
“Can. 1250: The days and times of penance for the universal Church are each Friday of the whole year and the season of Lent.

“Can. 1251: Abstinence from meat, or from some other food as determined by the Episcopal Conference, is to be observed on all Fridays, unless a solemnity should fall on a Friday. Abstinence and fasting are to be observed on Ash Wednesday and Good Friday.

“Can. 1253: The Episcopal Conference can determine more particular ways in which fasting and abstinence are to be observed. In place of abstinence or fasting it can substitute, in whole or in part, other forms of penance, especially works of charity and exercises of piety.”

Pope Paul VI, in the Apostolic Constitution Paenitemini (1966), declared that bishops’ conferences may “substitute abstinence and fast wholly or in part with other forms of penitence and especially works of charity and the exercises of piety.” He added that “it is up to the bishops — gathered in their episcopal conferences — to establish the norms which, in their pastoral solicitude and prudence, and with the direct knowledge they have of local conditions, they consider the most opportune and efficacious.”

Nine months later, the American bishops responded to the new rules by making several modifications in the discipline for Catholic in the U.S. One of these changes referred to abstinence from meat on Fridays outside of Lent. Here’s the relevant text from their “Pastoral Statement on Penance and Abstinence” (National Conference of Catholic Bishops, Nov. 18, 1966; for the complete text, go online to www.usccb.org/lent/2007/Penance_and_Abstinence.pdf). 

“22. Friday itself remains a special day of penitential observance throughout the year, a time when those who seek perfection will be mindful of their personal sins and the sins of mankind which they are called upon to help expiate in union with Christ Crucified.

“23. Friday should be in each week something of what Lent is in the entire year. For this reason we urge all to prepare for that weekly Easter that comes with each Sunday by freely making of every Friday a day of self-denial and mortification in prayerful remembrance of the passion of Jesus Christ.

“24. Among the works of voluntary self-denial and personal penance which we especially commend to our people for the future observance of Friday, even though we hereby terminate the traditional law of abstinence binding under pain of sin, as the sole prescribed means of observing Friday, we give first place to abstinence from flesh meat.

“We do so in the hope that the Catholic community will ordinarily continue to abstain from meat by free choice as formerly we did in obedience to Church law. Our expectation is based on the following considerations:
“a. We shall thus freely and out of love for Christ Crucified show our solidarity with the generations of believers to whom this practice frequently became, especially in times of persecution and of great poverty, no mean evidence of fidelity to Christ and His Church.

“b. We shall thus also remind ourselves that as Christians, although immersed in the world and sharing its life, we must preserve a saving and necessary difference from the spirit of the world. Our deliberate, personal abstinence from meat, more especially because no longer required by law, will be an outward sign of inward spiritual values that we cherish.”

In 1983, the National Conference of Catholic Bishops issued the pastoral letter “The Challenge of Peace: God’s Promise and Our Response.” In it, they reaffirmed the normal penitential status of Fridays throughout the year:

“As a tangible sign of our need and desire to do penance we, for the cause of peace, commit ourselves to fast and abstinence on each Friday of the year. We call upon our people voluntarily to do penance on Friday by eating less food and by abstaining from meat. This return to a traditional practice of penance, once well observed in the U.S. Church, should be accompanied by works of charity and service toward our neighbors. Every Friday should be a day significantly devoted to prayer, penance, and almsgiving for peace” (no. 298).

It seems to me abundantly clear from all these documents that observing the penitential nature of Fridays throughout the year remains an essential part of Catholic discipline, in the U.S. as elsewhere, and that abstinence from meat on those days is still the preferred form of that discipline. Nothing in these statements even remotely suggests that Catholics who choose not to abstain from meat on Fridays are not obliged to substitute some other penance instead.

Question of the Day for Monday, June 8, 2009

Maverick St. Patrick?

Q. At an online forum I frequent, several Anglicans and Eastern Orthodox contributors claim St. Patrick had no connection with Rome — that he was a free agent, a maverick, a proto-Anglican or Eastern Orthodox. They claim the view that he was sent by Pope St. Celestine is Roman Catholic revisionism, unsupported by the primary sources (notably Bede). Could you point me to some resources which might shed light on this question? -- D.N., via email

A. Here’s a reply from TCA columnist Father Ray Ryland, Ph.D., J.D.:

In the fifth century there were only two kinds of Christians: Catholics and heretics. If St. Patrick had no connection with Rome, he would have been a heretic. “Anglicans” appeared only 1100 years later, when King Henry VIII attempted to make himself head of the church in England. For about six centuries or so after St. Patrick, all the Eastern churches now known as Orthodox were Catholic, all of them under the jurisdiction of Rome.
You will find a careful summary of modern scholarship regarding St. Patrick in “The Building of Christendom,” which is volume 2 of Warren Carroll’s 5-volume “History of Christendom” (Christendom College Press, 1987), pages 121–124 and especially 129–131.

Briefly, in 429 Pope Celestine sent St. Germanus of Auxerre to Britain to report on the state of the Church there. Evidently after St. Patrick’s return from Ireland, St. Germanus met him and ordained him to the diaconate as a missionary to Ireland. Five or six years later St. Patrick was consecrated a bishop for Ireland.