Why Am I Called A Catholic?

At a home gathering in New York City hosted by my sister and attended by her friends from a denominational Christian community, a guest asked me politely why I identified myself as a Catholic and not as a Christian.

Just as politely I assured her that I felt just as honored and blessed to be called a Christian as the early Church faithful whose Christian identity was first confirmed publicly in Antioch (cf. Acts 11:26).

Then I drew her attention to the “mystery of Christ” that God revealed to St. Paul and the holy apostles:

When you read this you can understand my insight into the mystery of Christ, which… has now been revealed to his holy apostles and prophets by the Spirit, that the Gentiles are coheirs, members of the same body, and co-partners in the promise in Christ Jesus through the gospel…To me, the very least of all the holy ones, this grace was given, to preach to the Gentiles the inscrutable riches of Christ… (Eph. 3:4-8).

The same realization of the universality or catholicity of the Christian faith hit St. Peter like a rock when he received a mysterious vision in which he was asked to eat things that were considered profane under the Mosaic law (cf. Acts 10:9-16). When everything finally sank in, he confided his newfound understanding to the uncircumcised Gentiles whom he subsequently baptised:

In truth, I see that God shows no partiality. Rather, in every nation whoever fears him and acts uprightly is acceptable to him. You know the word (that) he sent to the Israelites as he proclaimed peace through Jesus Christ, who is Lord of all… (Acts 10:34-36).

Catholicity was the reason for the decision of the Council of Jerusalem to avoid “placing on the shoulders of the [Gentiles] a yoke that neither our ancestors nor we have been able to bear,” namely the burden of observing the Mosaic law, particularly the requirement of circumcision (Acts 16:10).

It was for the fulfillment of the catholicity of his Church that Jesus on his Ascension into glory mandated his disciples to “go, therefore, and make disciples of all nations, baptizing them in the name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the holy Spirit” (Mt. 28:19) – a mission faithfully and successfully carried out by the Church in her history of over 2,000 years; a mission so prominent to her identity and intrinsic to the core of her being that the Church Fathers had made a point of including it as one of the four marks of the Church in the Creeds: I believe in one, holy, catholic, and apostolic Church.

The term “Catholic Church” was already in use as early as St. Ignatius of Antioch (d. 108 A.D.), one of the five Apostolic Fathers (the earliest authoritative group of the Church Fathers): “Wherever the bishop appears, there let the people be; as wherever Jesus Christ is, there is the Catholic Church” (St. Ignatius of Antioch, Letter to the Smyrnaeans 8).

Without catholicity, without the firm belief in the unicity (as in Christ being the only Savior and his Church the only house of God that brings salvation) and salvific universality of the mystery of Christ, the Christian Church would have been just a sect of Judaism, restricted in many ways by local customs and one nation’s history and traditions.

The Rhythm of Life

Fall has its way of creeping up on you....

The temperatures are still warm, but you wake up to the morning chill that taps you gently on the shoulder to remind you that summer is on its way out.

The breezes are still balmy, but the green foliage of the Toogood Pond has clearly lost some of its summery lustre, spotting small patches of crimson, yellow, and maroon here and there.

Sneaky as a cat, fall has shown up at your doorsteps, unannounced, unnoticed, and probably somewhat unwelcome.

Should there be any doubt that fall is coming, just check out the usual suspects heralding its arrival: the completion of the U.S. Open, my son returning to university to begin another school year, RCIA inquirers reporting to class, another year of Catechism Revisited Program, a new commencement of the Bible Study Program, the resumption of the Living in the Holy Tradition Program, the church getting more crowded with the return of the vacationing parishioners….

Repetition and routines are often seen by many in a bad light: boring, annoying, same-old-same-old, no choice…Five years into early retirement and having done more or less the same church programs and routines for more than a decade, I’ve actually learnt to enjoy the magic of the repetitive rhythm of life.

For me, the repetition of the various activities and programs is actually a blessing. The person repeating it is able to do so only when his health does not get in the way, when the required resources are available, and when the demand for the repeated activity or program remains strong. The rhythm of life - whether it is the daily routines of getting up and beating traffic to go to work; or the everyday chores of shopping, cooking and cleaning; or the repetition of church activities and programs; or the seasons changing guards as summer turns into fall and fall ushers in winter - is a beautiful thing. It is a blessing! If you put your heart into it, if you follow through with the rhythm patiently day after day and year after year, if you listen to it intently and learn to enjoy the art of repetition, you will realize that the rhythm is not the monotone that so many people hear. It is, rather, a magnificent and resounding symphony that gives you peace and makes your life heavenly! Praise the Lord for helping me to enjoy the repetition and simplicity of the rhythm of life!

Pope Francis' Happy Theology on the Church as the Holy Temple of God

As Catholic faithful who have been spoiled by several decades of strong and orthodox Catholic teachings since Vatican II, are you concerned that Pope Francis, while pleasant and outreaching, could be just an empty shell when it comes to scriptural knowledge and theology? Worse still, given his infamous comment of "Who am I to judge?" on the issue of homosexuality (see my post of July 31, 2013 Is Pope Francis Backing Down From the Church's Teaching Against Homosexuality?), could this Pope be a loose cannon - a crowd-pleaser - who is all too eager to compromise on the Church's teaching in order to conform to popular secular demands?

Just in case this is something that's bothering you, let me refer you to his General Audience of June 26, 2013 - an eloquent theological discussion on the Church as the Holy Temple of God. His immediate predecessors JPII and BXVI will be very pleased with this insightful and layer-by-layer exegetical discourse, in which the Holy Father explains how the ancient Temple of Jerusalem is a pre-figuration of the Church - the place of God's presence, the Temple that the Holy Spirit dwells; how the Incarnated Christ, Son of David, builds the Church as a visible sign of his presence among his people, thus fulfilling God's promise to King David in 2 Sam 7:1-29 that his heir would build a house for God’s name and his royal throne would be firm forever; how the House of God - the Church - is built using not material stones but living stones, which we are, on the foundation of the apostles and prophets with Christ himself being the cornerstone (cf. 1 Peter 2:4-5, Eph 2:20-22); and how, with the gifts of the Holy Spirit, granted us through baptism, each one of us, the living stones of the Holy Temple, is a useful brick of this beautiful Temple, a priest in our own right whose sacrifices are not animals but, following the footsteps of the Crucified Christ, our own bodies (cf. Romans 12:1).

I can't tell you how much I enjoyed this beautiful theological discourse! But that's not all. The Holy Father concludes his Wednesday Audience with an in-your-face exhortation for those Catholic faithful who are weary, bored, and indifferent; demanding that they COME ALIVE AND REJOICE as Christians. They need to remember who they are - the living stones and building blocks of the Church of Christ - and what they've been called to do - the important mission of building up the House of God!

What If the Human Soul Does Not Exist?

In an article named I Have No Soul (and I’m OK with That), published on the National Post yesterday, Patricia Smith Churchland, professor emeritus of the Philosophy Department of University of California San Diego, argued with the typical prejudice of a pure scientist who recognized nothing but laboratory researches and empirical data that there was no human soul that existed independently of the neurons of the brain. She called her scientific conclusion “profoundly shocking” to the Christians because “the central ‘truth’ of their universe may be falling apart”; she believed they would find this “reality” as proven by neuroscience “unnerving”.

The existence of the human soul is indeed central to the tenets of the Christian faith. Churchland is right in saying that the universe of the Christians will fall apart if it is true that the sole source of all human knowledge, activities, memories, social skills, and so forth is the neurons of the brain. If the human soul does not exist, there is no point in talking about life after death; and if there is no life after death, the whole spectrum of Christian beliefs of death and resurrection, divine judgment, heaven, purgatory and hell, and the moral standards that such beliefs require of the Christians in the way they live, think, and behave, are nothing but 2000 years of deception and falsity. As a Christian whose life centers around, and is empowered by, the Christian beliefs and values, I had to ask myself many questions after reading the Churchland article: Am I leading a life of deception?; are all these activities that I engage in to promote the Gospel just a feel-good exercise of futility?; at the end of the day when my life is over, will I wake up to find myself just a fool?

First of all, if Churchland is right, I will never wake up to realize what a fool I have been all my life. So at least I can put this potential embarrassment to rest.

Reason, particularly scientific reason, is not a human ability that stands in opposition to our faith. “Faith and reason are like two wings on which the human spirit rises to the contemplation of truth”, intoned the Blessed JPII (Fides et Ratio, introductory greeting). An empirical-minded and ontologically blind scientist like Churchland “seems to have forgotten that men and women are always called to direct their steps towards a truth which transcends them. Sundered from that truth, individuals are at the mercy of caprice, and their state as person ends up being judged by pragmatic criteria based essentially upon experimental data, in the mistaken belief that technology must dominate all” (Fides et Ratio, #5).

So there you go, now you have both the perspectives from an empirical scientist and from a mainstream theist.

Philosophers and theologians over the centuries have argued for the existence of a metaphysical reality that transcends our bodily being and the physical world around us. Long before St. Thomas Aquinas formulated his Five Ways, St. Paul had affirmed teleologically the existence of God as evident, understandable, and perceivable: “For what can be known about God is evident to them, because God made it evident to them. Ever since the creation of the world, his invisible attributes of eternal power and divinity have been able to be understood and perceived in what he has made” (Romans 1:19-20).

But what can we say to a person who, like Churchland, absolutely refuses to accept any arguments, no matter how eloquent and logical, that lack empirical evidences? What empirical argument can we make to convince a Churchland-like mind to see beyond the physical world the existence of a metaphysical reality that includes God, the human soul, and the Christian beliefs and values? I think there is only one such empirical evidence: the Bible.

The Bible is where all these Christian teachings, including the existence of the human soul, come from. The Bible commands the total submission of the inquisitive human mind and all rational faculties of human reason because the claims and teachings made by one historical person - Jesus Christ - and his apostles are factually and theologically irrefutable. My reasoning is simple: I accept that the Bible, while not a history book, does contain history; it provides us with the empirical and historical truth of the life of a man called Jesus; after many years of intense studies and intellectual examinations, I have found no errors - both factual and theological - in his claims and teachings as presented in the Bible; therefore, I conclude and accept that his teachings, including the existence of the human soul, are correct and the doubts and agonies of unbelievers such as Churchland unwarranted.

EPILOGUE: There are many reasons for God to choose to reveal Himself to us through the incarnate Word (i.e. Jesus taking a human body through a woman and living in the space and time of human history), all of them theologically significant. The above discussion leads me to believe that in God’s unfathomable wisdom and all-encompassing omniscience, He knew before creation that a historical Jesus, a Jesus who actually lived and breathed in a human body within human history, was the only irrefutable way to convince the empirically-inclined human mind to accept the ontological reality that He wanted so eagerly to reveal to man for his own good.

Is Pope Francis Backing Down From the Church's Teaching Against Homosexuality?

“If someone is gay and he searches for the Lord and his good will, who am I to judge?” - Pope Francis on board the papal plane while returning from the World Youth Day in Brazil.

The media are quick to take the Pope’s remark above to mean that the Church is showing signs of backing down from its position against homosexuality; that after the election of a new Pope the Church is now back paddling on this very touchy issue; and that unlike his predecessor Pope Benedict XVI who taught that people with homosexual inclination should not be allowed to become priests, the new Pope is reaching out to the gay clerics. This is a typical example of how people are inclined to hear the way they want to hear.

It’s no secret that the media and the secular world dislike the Church’s teaching against homosexuality, i.e. its teaching that the homosexual acts are "acts of grave depravity" and that they are “intrinsically disordered” (CCC #2357). They also believe - in a very ignorant and naïve way, I must add - that given the pressure and momentum of the worldwide gay movement, which has won battle after battle in the courts of law and legislatures, the Roman Catholic Church and its “bigoted view” against homosexuality will eventually buckle. As a result, anything that the new Pope says that bears the remotest resemblance of a friendly comment on the issue of homosexuality will immediately be reported - or misreported - as the Church changing its position.

If one reads the Pope’s remark more closely, one will realize that what he says is really nothing new. Following the Scripture, the Church has always maintained that God, who is merciful and kind, will always forgive a sinner if he truly repents his sins and opts to follow God’s will (cf. Mt. 4:17, 1 John 1:9). What the Pope is saying is that if someone repents the sins of his gay behaviors and chooses to follow the will of God, which is for the homosexual persons to exercise self-mastery and live in chastity (CCC #2359), who am I – Pope Francis – to say that God will not forgive?

One pro-gay National Post reader was smart enough to pick up another comment that the Pope said in the same breath, namely, that “when someone sins and confesses, God not only forgives but forgets.” The pro-gay reader expressed dissatisfaction that in spite of the soft tone, the Pope saw homosexuality as a “sin”. But that’s exactly what the Pope is saying, just as the Church has always been saying: homosexuality is a sin, a grave sin that is intrinsically disordered. The Pope is also saying, just as the Church has always been saying, that if the sinner – the homosexual person in this case – is prepared to repent and follow God’s will (stop the homosexual behaviors in other words), how can we say or judge that God will not forgive him?

Living in the Holy Tradition《活在聖傳中》on Dominus Iesus, Fall 2013

In the coming fall (September 2013 to December 2013 inclusive) Living in the Holy Tradition《活在聖傳中》 will study Dominus Iesus (Declaration on the unicity and salvific universality of Jesus Christ and the Church). This important Church document was released in August 2000 by the Offices of the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith, which was headed by Joseph Cardinal Ratzinger who subsequently became Pope Benedict XVI. For those interested in Ecclesiology (Church studies), this is a landmark document that simply must be read carefully and properly understood. It touches on many practical issues that continue to baffle many Catholic faithful including:

- Are all religions the same? Is one religion just as good as another?
- Can non-Christians be saved?
- How do we see the sacred writings, historical figures, and rituals of other religions?
- Is Jesus' salvation the only salvation available to all mankind?
- How do we explain the "good elements" contained in other religions' teachings and traditions? Aren't they just as good, or even better, than those in Christian teachings?
- Can salvation be achieved outside of the Church?
- What is the Church? A collection of Christian churches?
- If there is only one Church of Christ, who is that Church?
- If the Church is one, how do we explain the existence of so many churches? Is the Body of Christ shattered?
- What is the "Kingdom of God"? Where is it?
- Is it OK to say that the Church of Christ is just "one of many ways that lead us to heaven"?
- If salvation is possible in other churches/religions, why bother to preach the Gospel?
- Is it wrong to encourage the members of the reformed churches to join the Catholic Church?

I can go on and on, but you get the idea. This is a Church document that answers all of the above questions and more with authority and convincing biblical explanations. I think this is a study all of us will find thoroughly enjoyable and beneficial.

The document can be printed from the internet free of charge (about 26 pages including footnotes):
Dominus Iesus

Copied below is the time schedule for 《活在聖傳中》Fall 2013 - Dominus Iesus. Please help us spread the word and invite more people to join. If you are interested in joining us, just email me (edmondkclo@yahoo.ca) to let me know and you are in!

Look forward to meeting with you come September! In the meantime, have a safe and wonderful summer!




Time Schedule for Living in the Holy Tradition
Ref: Dominus Iesus (Ecclesiology)
September 29, 2013 to December 29, 2013
9:15 to 10:45 a.m., Sundays, at St. Vincent De Paul School


Sept 29, 2013 Introduction and the Fullest and Definitiveness of Jesus’ Revelation, paragraphs 2-8

• Introduction: The Church must preach the Gospel. How to do so in connection with the religious traditions of the world.
• The danger of religious pluralism, i.e. all religions are the same.
• Reassert the definitive and complete character of Jesus’ revelation.
• Difference between faith and belief
• How the Church sees other religions’ sacred writings.

Oct 13, 2013 (in room 203) Unicity and Universality of the Salvific Mystery of Jesus Christ para 13-15

• The unicity (the only one) and salvific universality of the mystery of Jesus must be firmly believed as a truth of Catholic faith.
• How do we view the historical figures and positive elements of other religions?
• Jesus has a significance for the human race and its history, which is unique, proper to him alone, universal and absolute.

Oct 27, 2013 Unicity and Unity of the Church, paragraphs 16-17

• Christ and Church are inseparable = whole Christ; just as there is one Christ, so there exists a single body of Christ, i.e. the Church.
• There is a historical continuity – rooted in the apostolic succession - between the Church founded by Christ and the Catholic Church.
• The single Church of Christ subsists in the Catholic Church.
• How do we view the other churches?
• The Church of Christ is not deprived of unity in spite of the lack of unity among Christians.

Nov 3, 2013 The Church: Kingdom of God and Kingdom of Christ, paragraphs 18-19

• The Church is the seed and beginning of the kingdom of Christ.
• Kingdom of Christ is not identified with the Church in her visible and social reality.

Nov 24, 2013 The Church and the Other Religions in Relation to Salvation, paragraphs 20-21

• The Church is necessary for salvation
• Non-Church members can also have salvation in Christ by virtue of a special grace.
• The Church is NOT just one way of salvation alongside other ways
• Prayers and rituals of other religions have no divine origin or ex opera operato salvific efficacy.

Dec 1, 2013 The Church and the Other Religions in Relation to Salvation, paragraphs 22-23

• It is not true that “one religion is as good as another”.
• Therefore, the Church must be missionary.
• Conclusion

Dec 15, 2013 TBD

Dec 29, 2013 (in room 203) TBD

Topics and contents may be changed or adjusted in accordance with actual progress and delivery needs. For further information, contact Edmond Lo, email: edmondkclo@yahoo.ca

Fountain of Love and Life Documentary on the Papacy

I hope you would take 27 minutes to watch this TV episode on the Papacy, recorded recently by the Fountain of Love and Life (FLL) in response to Pope Benedict XVI's resignation and the election of Pope Francis. It is an excellent documentary featuring interviews with many guests, including parishioners from the Greater Toronto Area Chinese Catholic community, Chinese clergy, Thomas Cardinal Collins, and yours truly. I also like its graphic illustration of the conclave. Strong in content, factual, scriptural, understandable and very convincing in all regards, the documentary is a great learning tool for those who either don't know much about the Papacy or have reservation about it. Whoever were involved in producing and editing the episode, I think they deserve a good pat on their backs for a job well done! As always, the FLL host, Christina Leung, asked all the right questions and did so in an engaging manner and with clarity. This is no question one of the strongest FLL TV episodes I've ever seen, done with substance and professionalism. Enjoy!

FLL Documentary on the Papacy - Part I

Part II of this series will be aired this weekend (April 27-28, 2013).