SEPTEMBER 6, 2017
Christian Burial & Canon Law by Phineas
Christian Burial & Canon Law
You have also stated that the Church’s constant custom and tradition of refusing Christian Burial to the catechumen who dies before receiving the Laver of Regeneration has no bearing on the Church’s teaching on Baptism of Desire, meaning that the custom of Christian Burial which deniessuch burial to the catechumen makes no comment on whether God chooses to effect salvation for a particular soul by saving that soul though an invisible sanctification. We agree – burial customs have little to do with the state of one’s salvation!
You also said that you could not perform a Christian Burial for such a non-baptized soul, but you realized your error after it was pointed out to you, and then corrected your statement by citing the 1917 Code of Canon Law. You also made another commentary on Fr. Feeney to the effect that he must have just “ignored” the 1917 canon which was “staring him in the face”.
But your argument is a bit self-serving. What previously had no bearing now has a bearing once you discovered that you were allowed to perform a Christian burial for a non-baptized catechumen?
For 19 centuries the Church forbade Christian burial to the catechumen who died without baptism. This perennial custom was based on the constant and traditional teaching that the catechumen who dies without the sacrament dies outside the Church:
“The reason of this regulation [forbidding ecclesiastical burial to all unbaptized persons] is given by Pope Innocent III (Decr., III, XXVIII, xii):‘It has been decreed by the sacred canons that we are to have no communion with those who are dead, if we have not communicated [unity in the sacraments] with them while alive.’” (The Catholic Encyclopedia, “Baptism,” Volume 2, 1907)
“Not in vain was it decreed by the Apostles that remembrance should be made in the awesome mysteries for the departed…But this is done for those who have departed in the Faith, while even catechumens are not reckoned as worthy of this consolation, but are deprived of every means of assistance except one. And what is that? We may give alms to the poor on their behalf.” (St. John Chrysostom, Homilies on the Epistles to the Philippians; Faith of Our Fathers, vol.2, cf. no.1206.)
It is clear that for 19 centuries, as decreed by the sacred canons, the catechumen was not reckoned as worthy of the consolation of ecclesiastical burial; and it is also clear that the 1917 Code overturned this immemorial custom by determining that the catechumen may now be reckoned (treated) as baptized and “worthy of this consolation”.
We are not wanting in proof texts for the rationale behind the immemorial former custom:
St. Gregory of Nyssa declared: "You are outside Paradise, O Catechumen! You share the exile of Adam!" (Patrologiæ Græcæ 417c)
St. Augustine (Sermon 27:6): “How many rascals are saved by being baptized on their deathbeds? And how many sincere catechumens die unbaptized, and are thus lost forever? When we shall have come into the sight of God, we shall behold the equity of His justice. At that time, no one will say: "Why did He help this one, and not that one? Why was one led by God's direction to be baptized while the other, though he lived properly as a catechumen, was killed in a sudden disaster and not baptized?" Look for rewards, and you will find nothing but punishments!”
St. John Chrysostom (Hom. in Io. 25, 3), (4th Century): “For the Catechumen is a stranger to the Faithful… One has Christ for his King; the other sin and the devil; the food of one is Christ, of the other, that meat which decays and perishes… Since then we have nothing in common, in what, tell me, shall we hold communion?… Let us then give diligence that we may become citizens of the city above… for if it should come to pass (which God forbid!) that through the sudden arrival of death we depart hence uninitiated [unbaptized], though we have ten thousand virtues, our portion will be none other than hell, and the venomous worm, and fire unquenchable, and bonds indissoluble.”
Trent declared infallibly that the "Church exercises judgment on no one who has not first entered it through the gateway of baptism" (Session 14, ch.2) and that "by the laver of baptism [not the metaphor for baptism] we are made members of Christ's own body.” (DNZ 895). The catechumen has not entered through the gateway of baptism and the Church cannot exercise judgment on him because he is not one of the Faithful under the jurisdiction of the Pope – he is not a baptized member of the Mystical Body of Christ.
Would you not agree that this was the “mind of the Church” for 19 centuries; no matter the fallible conclusion of a speculative theology which would open the possibility of salvation to a non-baptized catechumen?
Clearly this custom reflected the “mind of the Church” for 19 centuries, even if the soul was in fact actually baptized (but it was not known or recorded) and even if God should raise this soul from the dead at some future date to effect water baptism – as He has done so many times throughout history. The fact is that the Church did not want to give scandal by giving the appearance of the possibility of salvation to an un-baptized soul. In other words, for 19 centuries the Church forbade what she now permits; and what she forbade she forbade for very explicit reasons - the catechumen was not a member of the Mystical Body and the Church had no jurisdiction over him. This infallible teaching has not changed - and it never will.
But you suggest that this change of “the mind of the Church” with respect to Christian burial supports Baptism of Desire because the 1917 Code now allows for the Christian burial of the catechumen who may now be “reckoned” (treated) as one of the baptized faithful. You seem to want to have it both ways. Let me attempt to summarize your position: “Baptism of Desire was always true even if it was not reflected in the Church’s long-standing custom of Christian burial; but now that the Church has changed this custom after 19 centuries, the Church’s teaching on BOD is reflected in this reversal of the custom prohibiting Christian burial for the catechumen!” That’s pretty convenient – don’t you think – you win either way! But let’s put this whole issue in perspective, shall we?
“Teaching pertains to the order of truth; legislation to that of justice and prudence. Doubtless, in the last analysis all ecclesiastical laws are based on certain fundamental truths, but as laws their purpose is neither to confirm nor to condemn these truths. It does not seem, therefore, that the Church needs any special privilege of infallibility to prevent her from enacting laws contradictory of her doctrine. To claim that disciplinary infallibility consists in regulating, without possibility of error, the adaptation of a general law to its end, is equivalent to the assertion of a (quite unnecessary) positive infallibility, which the incessant abrogation of laws would belie and which would be to the Church a burden and a hindrance rather than an advantage, since it would suppose each law to be the best. Moreover, it would make the application of laws to their end the object of a positive judgment of the Church; this would not only be useless but would become a perpetual obstacle to disciplinary reform.” (New Advent Catholic Encyclopedia)
Your attempt to link ecclesiastical burial to the “doctrine” of Baptism of desire(BOD) appears to be an attempt to equate this discipline with a positive infallibility and/or a positive judgment (teaching) of the Church. As the tract above so coherently surmises; however, this attempt is “useless” because ecclesiastical and changeable disciplines do not have as their purpose to confirm or condemn truths (but they are of course related to certain truths); their primary purpose pertains to justice and prudence.
Now, according to Bishop Fessler, changeable disciplines are in no ways infallible precisely because they are changeable. Accordingly, pontifical decisions relating to matters of justice and prudence may in fact reflect subjective errors in judgment because they are not part of the infallible teaching authority – they are the prudential decisions of fallible men, and while we hope and pray that the Holy Ghost assists them in making these acts and laws, some of the Church’s historical laws and disciplines have turned out to be unmitigated disasters in the eyes of many (think of the Novus Ordo Mass, the good-faith but naïve compromise of Pope Pius XI with the Masonic Mexican Gov’t resulting in the martyrdom of thousands of Catholic Cristeros, and the tragic end to the resoundingly successful Paraguay Reductions due to the politically motivated repression of the Society of Jesus). Each of these unfortunate Papal acts was a disciplinary act of the Church.
The point is that it is a matter of justice and prudence that caused the Church to relax her restrictions against ecclesiastical burial for the non-baptized catechumen – PERIOD. But it is also interesting to note that the Church reversed a centuries old custom just as the notion of BOD was gaining almost universal recognition (at least in Europe and America) by modern theologians and the Church - just a coincidence?
Allow me to place this change of custom into further perspective:
Here is a portion of a “Pastoral Letter of the Bishops of the Ecclesiastical Province of Quebec on the Subject of Liberalism” (Sept. 22, 1875); ECCLESIASTICAL BURIAL:
“It will perhaps be said that the privation of the honors of ecclesiastical burial brings with it disgrace and infamy, and that it thus comes within the province of the civil authority, which is responsible for protecting the honor of the citizens.”
“We answer that the dishonor and the infamy are found rather in the revolt of a child against its mother, and that nothing can wipe out a grievous disobedience persevered in at the hour of death. All the trials, appeals and sentences of the world will only serve to publicize the transgression and render the disgrace and infamy more notorious and more deplorable in the eyes of all true Catholics.”
Now, in the 1917 Code of Canon Law, some of the crimes that normally merited “interdictum ab ingressu ecclesiae” are:
“Ecclesiastical burial having been granted to infidels, apostates, heretics, schismatics, to those who have requested cremation, culpable suicides, or to those who are excommunicated or under interdict, as well as any publicly known sinners” (cann. 1240 §1, 2339, 1917 Code)
We should also consider that it has “further been recognized as a principle that the last rites of the Church constitute a mark of respect which is not to be shown to those who in their lives have proved themselves unworthy of it. In this way various classes of persons are excluded from Christian burial -- pagans, Jews, infidels, heretics, and their adherents, schismatics, apostates, and persons who have been excommunicated by name or placed under an interdict. Christian burial is [also] to be refused to suicides (this prohibition is as old as the fourth century; cf. Cassian in P.L., XL, 573)…It is also withheld from those who have been killed in a duel,…notorious sinners who die without repentance, those who have openly held the sacraments in contempt…monks and nuns who are found to have died in the possession of money or valuables … and finally those who have directed that their bodies should be cremated after death.” (Catholic Encyclopedia)
Now the Church, on the one hand, perhaps with its heart moved over the fate of the Catechumen who dies at the portal of the Church - yet is still outside of the Mystical Body; and on the other hand trusting in a merciful God who shall provide salvation for all of His elect, may have changed the immemorial custom of prohibiting ecclesiastical burial because she wanted to place the emphasis on mercy rather than on the appearance of a “severe justice” reflected in a custom whose “first splendor may have waned” and “through old age may have languished” such that “leniency and indulgence” may now have seemed necessary (St. Thomas Aquinas); without for a minute conceding the dogmatic Truth that sacramental baptism is necessary to all for salvation and only those baptized in the laver of regeneration are members of the Mystical Body, outside of which there is neither salvation nor the life of grace (though the “implied” rationale for this change cannot be denied).
And while this new discipline, which is a clear exception to the prohibition of Canon 1239 of the 1917 Code against Christian burial for the un-baptized, and a reversal of the previous immemorial custom, is based on certain fundamental truths (truths the Church did NOT specify); again, the Church’s purpose in her disciplines “is neither to confirm nor to condemn these truths”, so she has no need of justifying her change in custom by citing the fundamental truth on which the discipline is based; and in this case she didn’t.
So when commentators or “experts” speculate that "The reason for this rule is that they are justly supposed to have met death united to Christ through Baptism of Desire"; to be “united with Christ” without being “united to the Mystical Body as one of the Baptized Faithful” is a dangerous speculation for we know that truth cannot contradict truth. You may believe that the Church is teaching or sanctioning “Baptism of desire” through this new custom, and by all appearances this may be a justifiable opinion, yet nowhere did the Church declare BOD as the primary or even secondary object of faith for this custom – and again, she doesn’t have to reference an object of faith because to make “the application of laws to their end the object of a positive judgment of the Church; this would not only be useless but would become a perpetual obstacle to disciplinary reform.”
We have no reason to believe that this “mark of respect” is not based on the object of faith reflecting the omnipotence of God and His divine mercy without rendering a judgment on the water baptism of this soul, so one should not find anything too terribly objectionable or contradictory in, on the one hand, the Church confirming the dogma of sacramental baptism and, on the other hand, the Church deciding to relax the traditional discipline barring catechumens from Christian burial. Cannot the Church recognize after all of these centuries that it would cause no harm for the Church to consider that there is a difference between one “whom the Church has judged unworthy of its prayers” (a scandalous sinner) - and the catechumen? Has the catechumen committed “dishonor and infamy” or is he “found rather in the revolt of a child against its mother, and that nothing can wipe out a grievous disobedience persevered in at the hour of death”?
Is the catechumen in the same category as “infidels, apostates, heretics, schismatics; those who have requested cremation, culpable suicides, or those who are excommunicated, under interdict, or any publicly known sinners”? For 19 centuries, when considering EENS and membership in the Mystical Body, the Church said yes without regard to “severity” of such a prohibition – only the Baptized Faithful could receive the mark of respect of Christian burial.But cannot the Church change a discipline so as to shift the emphasis to mercy from the traditional “severe justice” of having it appear that the un-baptized catechumen was in the same category of hardened sinners such as infidels, heretics and apostates? That's totally up to the Church on where she places the emphasis in these prudential decisions - and we know where she stood for 19 centuries.
Here is another example in a change of custom introduced by the 1917 Code which some believe was entirely imprudent and an unfortunate “error” in judgment:
Canon 1258, 1917 Code: “1. It is not licit for the faithful by any manner to assist actively or to have a part in the sacred [rites] of non-Catholics. 2. Passive or merely material presence can be tolerated for the sake of honor or civil office, for grave reason approved by the Bishop in case of doubt, at the funerals, weddings, and similar solemnities of non-Catholics, provided danger of scandal is absent.”
Here is the traditional teaching of the Church:
“No one must either pray nor sing psalms with heretics, and whosoever shall communicate with those who are cut off from the communion of the Church, whether clergy or layman: Let him be excommunicated. (Council of Carthage III, 397 A.D.)
“It is excessively blameworthy to take part in the religious ceremonies of Protestants. (Pope Pius IV, "Ecclesiastical Annals," Venerable Cardinal Caesar Baronius)
“If any clergyman or layman shall go into the synagogue of the Jews or to the meetings of heretics to join in prayer with them, let them be deposed and deprived of Communion. (Pope St. Agatho the Wonder worker at the Sixth Ecumenical Council of Constantinople III, 681 A.D.)
“Is it permitted for Catholics to be present at, or take part in, conventions, gatherings, meetings, or societies of non-Catholics which aim to associate together under a single agreement all who in any way lay claim to the name of Christian? In the negative! It is clear, therefore, why this Apostolic See has never allowed its subjects to take part in the assemblies of non-Catholics. There is only one way in which the unity of Christians may be fostered, and that is by furthering the return to the one true Church of Christ of those who are separated from her.” (Pope Pius XI, Mortalium Animos, January 6, 1928)
What was clearly prohibited for centuries is now allowed and how does one not appear to take active part or avoid the danger of scandal by participating in these events? Will you condemn or at least advise against such “passive participation” by members of the SSPX who wish to participate “at the funerals, weddings, and similar solemnities of non-Catholics, provided danger of scandal is absent”? After all, the 1917 Code gave its approval.
Furthermore, what possible Church “teaching” was the Church confirming by this change of custom? If the allowance of Christian burial for non-baptized catechumens was changed in order to reflect the “doctrine of BOD”, are we not allowed to hold that attendance and “passive participation” at the religious ceremonies of “good-willed” non-Catholics confirms the Church’s “doctrine” that certain “Truth’s of the Faith”, Sanctifying Grace, the Holy Ghost and the possibility of salvation exist in false religions? Did the Church finally recognize after 19 centuries that the teaching passed down to and expressed by AB Lefebvre and Bishop Fellay should be reflected in this change of custom?
Or is it possible that compromising liberal leaning theologians of the day influenced the ear of Benedict XV who perhaps did not give adequate thought to the repercussions of changing the perennial customs of the Church rooted in solid Catholic teaching?
The 1917 Code changed several Laws and many consider these changes imprudent and regrettable in that they either reversed centuries old customs or opened the door to “exceptions” which soon became the rule or were easily abused. Here is one more example:
The 1917 Code also mitigated the punishment for adultery, abortion, murder and sacrilegious acts in that these sins are no longer punished with the automatic sanction of legal infamy. (Vincent Anthony Tatarczuk, “Infamy of Law: a historical synopsis and a commentary”, 1925, Catholic University of America. Canon law studies, no. 357)
The argument goes that “In actual practice, there are each year thousands of Catholics who fall into heresy or apostasy… Even when the offense is notorious in fact, so that the whole community knows that a former Catholic is now a heretic, the Bishop may consider that the general welfare will be better served by leaving the delinquent to his own conscience, than by instituting a judicial process which may be misunderstood in our non-Catholic age, as savoring of bigoted persecution… The penalties inflicted by the Councils may seem exceedingly severe to modern readers…” (Rev. Eric F. MacKenzie A.M., S.T.L., J.C.L., “The Delict of Heresy”, “in its Commission, Penalization, Absolution”, 1932, pgs 6 &. 51)
This commentary was written in 1932 and there may be merit to such change, but it sounds like the case of the modern “PC” Novus Ordo Bishops who will not, for example, take action against the scandalous reception of Novus Ordo communion by John Kerry (The Church mustn’t cause “scandal with modern readers” in a “non-Catholic age”).
There can be no doubt that the Catholic Church of 1917 began to relax its once rigorous strictures and penalties with an almost uncharacteristic penchant for being a respecter of men and a respecter of false religions. The Church was being sensitive to the welfare of Catholics and non-Catholics alike by avoiding or mitigating laws and practices which may be misunderstood by non-Catholics as “bigoted persecution” or “exceedingly severe”. We all recognize that accommodation to civil authority to avoid a greater evil is sometimes necessary, but where does one draw the line with respect to compromising the Faith?
However one judges this apparent letting down of the guard which may have facilitated the greater intrusion and acceptance of more liberal policies and teachings over the succeeding years, VCII did not happen overnight. There are many scholars and theologians who did not cast a favorable light over these changes to the 1917 Code (though they would have no problem with the apparent sanctioning of so-called “Baptism of Desire”). Give an inch and a mile will be taken. Perhaps it was by reason of our dilution of the faith, our indifferentism and our hardness of hearts that God allowed his Pontiffs to “open the doors” to novel practices and thinking, to permit the attendance of Catholics at the services of non-Catholics; allowed for the confusion resulting from the reversal of an immemorial custom prohibiting the ecclesiastical burial of the catechumen (without explaining these actions), and allowed for the mitigation of automatic punishments for the commission of heinous sins - but from the beginning it was not so and from the beginning “Unless a man be born again of water…he cannot…”
By the way, what authority do you concede to the 1983 Code of Canon Law – A Code which replaced the 1917 Code?
Enough said on “changeable customs”.
"And another one bites the dust!"
When next we meet, we will engage in the sometimes seemingly inconsistent teachings of St. Augustine. What will be shown was not necessarily inconsistencies, but mere growth in understanding, much as some of you have gone through since reading the Phineus Reports, which reveal the true Catholic teaching on the exclusive nature of Baptism and it's necessity in salvation.
-Phineus-
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