Dear Friends of the Kolbe Center,
Glory to Jesus Christ!
From time to time, we like to recall that virtually every major doctrine of the Catholic Faith makes its appearance in the sacred history of Genesis, so whenever a question comes up about a fundamental doctrine of the Faith, at least part of the answer can almost always be found in Genesis. Long-time readers of this newsletter may remember that many years ago, when Answers in Genesis first opened their Creation Museum in Kentucky, I was participating in a Catholic conference in Cincinnati and I was asked to lead a group of attendees to visit the Creation Museum. A few days later, I arrived at the Answers in Genesis Museum with two bus-loads of Catholics. When I checked in with the management, we were told to begin our tour by going to the auditorium to watch a film that would orient us for a tour of the museum. Since we were such a large group of Catholics, I was invited to get up on the stage and give an orientation of my own before the movie began.
Since I was not prepared for this opportunity, and since I knew that there would be separated brethren in the auditorium in addition to the members of our group, I prayed for guidance. The thought immediately came to me that I should speak about Genesis 38 and show that in regard to the true Christian doctrine of Holy Marriage and the inseparability of the primary procreative and secondary unitive dimension of the marital union—the ANSWER was indeed to be found IN GENESIS! When the staff gave me the nod, I got up on the stage and, after praying a short prayer to Our Lord and to the Blessed Mother, I explained that I had not expected to be asked to speak, but that I had prayed, and I had received a clear inspiration about what Our Lord wanted me to say.
I proceeded to recall the story of Onan as related by Moses in Genesis 38. I recalled that it was his duty according to the custom of his people to raise up children through his brother’s widow, Tamar, after Onan’s brother had died without having any children. I explained that Moses tells us that Onan did not want to discharge this duty, because he knew that the child of his seed would not belong to him but to his brother, so he spilled his seed on the ground in a deliberate act of “birth control,” so that he would not make his brother’s widow pregnant. According to Moses, this act of contraception offended God so greatly that He took Onan’s life as a punishment for what Our Lord considered a capital crime. Tamar was then forced to resort to subterfuge to become pregnant by Onan’s father Judas with the twins Phares and Zara, so that she, her father-in-law and their son Phares are all named in the genealogy of St. Matthew as the ancestors of Our Lord and Savior Jesus Christ (Matthew 1:3).
The Constant Teaching of the Church on Contraception Derives from Genesis 38
I went on to explain to our group and to the separated brethren in the auditorium that from the time of the Apostles Genesis 38 was understood by all of the Church Fathers and by all of the leaders of God’s Church to teach that contraception was a grave sin which separated the primary procreative from the secondary unitive purpose of the marital union. I explained that this interpretation of Genesis 38 was upheld by all of the Popes and Doctors of the Church and by all of the principal leaders of the Protestant sects, right up to modern times, including Martin Luther, John Calvin, Zwingli and John Wesley who remarked that in his day, in the eighteenth century, many Christians “destroyed their souls” by this sin. I reminded the audience that it was not until 1930 that the Anglican communion became the first self-identified Christian community to allow birth control to married couples, in opposition to the constant teaching of the Catholic Church and of all the principal leaders of the protestant communities up until that time.
I explained to the Catholic and non-Catholic members of my audience that the Catholic Church faced a crisis in which the overwhelming majority of her leaders and teachers had abandoned her constant, authoritative teaching on birth control, but that God would never permit that teaching to be overturned in an authoritative way. Indeed, I pointed out that when the Magisterium, the teaching authority of the Catholic Church as exercised by the Pope and the Bishops in union with him, finally produced an official document on the subject of birth control, that document, Humanae vitae, firmly upheld the constant teaching of the Church on Holy Marriage and the same interpretation of Genesis 38 that had been handed down from the Apostles. Thus, the rebellion of so many Catholic Bishops, priests and lay people against that fundamental teaching could not change the truth of that teaching—or the life and death consequences in time and in eternity of rejecting that teaching.
Finally, I observed that the Catholic Church leadership had reached a similar point in their handling of the traditional Catholic doctrine of creation and the traditional Catholic interpretation of the sacred history of Genesis as the Magisterium had reached on the eve of the publication of Humanae vitae. The overwhelming majority of Catholic Bishops and theologians have abandoned the traditional doctrine of creation and the traditional reading of Genesis, but they cannot change that authoritative teaching. The Church simply has not reached her Humanae vitae moment in relation to the doctrine of creation and the truth of the sacred history of Genesis, but it is inevitable that She will—and that in the end She will reaffirm the constant teaching of the Church on creation, just as She has reaffirmed her constant teaching on Holy Marriage and the evil of birth control.
At that point, I asked the audience to consider whether it was possible that the Holy Spirit would have allowed His Church to teach the same interpretation of Genesis 38 for 1900 years in what Wesley rightly considered a matter of spiritual and physical life and death. Was it possible that the entire Church leadership was wrong in its interpretation of Genesis 38 for almost two thousand years and that the Anglicans were the first to interpret the account of Onan correctly, thus paving the way for every self-identifying Christian community in the world except for the Catholic Church to renounce the constant teaching of the Church and to embrace the Anglican position?
The Traditional Reading of Genesis 38 Destroys Sola Scriptura
I have been all over the world, and I have put that question to many of our separated brethren, and I have never observed any but one of two responses: Either my interlocutor becomes a Catholic, or he abandons our dialogue! Recently, a well-known protestant creationist contacted me to respectfully challenge the Catholic practice of venerating relics, identifying himself as a believer in Sola Scriptura. After showing him, from Acts 19:12, that the veneration of relics is rooted in and fully approved by the Scriptures, I pointed out that Scripture itself denies Sola Scriptura and that St. Paul clearly teaches that the Church—the Catholic Church—is “the pillar and foundation of the Truth” (1 Timothy 3:15).
In light of our common commitment to upholding the fundamental importance of the sacred history of Genesis, I then asked him to consider that every Father of the Church and every founder of every protestant community from the time of the Apostles until 1930 held that Genesis 38 meant that contraception is a capital offense against our Creator and that He took Onan’s life as a punishment for that sin. That is why John Wesley said that this sin—whether in the form of birth control during the marital act or in self-abuse—destroys souls. So, I asked him:
If your Sola Scriptura theology is correct, could you please explain to me how the Holy Spirit could have inspired every Apostle, Father, and Doctor of the Church, and every founder of every major protestant community to interpret Genesis 38 as teaching that contraception is a deadly sin, if that interpretation is not 100% true?
Then, referring to evidence that I had given him from one of the main researchers at Human Life International, I added:
Moreover, I have given you the testimony of an expert from Human Life International that various forms of contraception often fail to prevent conception and instead murder a conceived child by making it impossible for him or her to survive in the mother’s womb, and that abortifacient contraception is the cause of five to ten times as many murders of preborn children as surgical abortion. So, I asked him:
How can you explain the fact that A) the overwhelming majority of non-Catholic Christian teachers now contradict the interpretation of Genesis 38 that was held by all Christians for 1900 years and B) this new interpretation makes them complicit in a) what John Wesley taught was the damnation of many souls (if they do not repent of their sin) and b) the destruction of billions of innocent preborn children?
My interlocutor proceeded to insult me in various ways, claiming that I just wanted to “win a debate.” I persevered in telling him that I did not want to win a debate, but that I loved him enough to want to help him to embrace the Truth that God Himself had revealed—both through the natural law and in the sacred history of Genesis. When he made it clear that he was not going to answer my questions, I showed one of my friends on the Kolbe leadership team our email exchange and asked if he thought I had been imprudent or uncharitable. He told me that he thought that I would have done better not to be so hard-hitting, and that protestants have so many bones to pick with Catholics that even if they concede to a Catholic argument on one point, they can bring up a dozen other points to justify their determination to remain outside the fold.
I thought and prayed about my friend’s advice, and the answer I got was that I was not wrong to focus on this specific point, above all others. Indeed, I saw that Genesis 38 concerns what every major Christian leader in the world considered a matter of spiritual and physical life and death since the time of the Apostles until very recently—and that it continues to be a matter of physical and spiritual life and death for billions of people to this day. Therefore, I remain convinced that this is a hill worth dying on, and that our separated brethren of good will who do not simply shut their ears will, through the prayers of Our Lady of Sorrows, eventually be convicted by the Holy Ghost and will return to the Catholic fold. Nevertheless, even though I am convinced that this form of dialogue with protestants is God’s Will for me, I would like to ask you, my beloved readers, for your thoughts. So, if you have any comments that you would like to share with me on this topic, please write to me directly at howen@shentel.net.
The Overwhelming Need for Reparation
One of the most remarkable saints in the history of the Church is known as “Christina the Astonishing.” According to one account:
Born to a peasant family, orphaned as a child, and raised by two older sisters. At age 21, she experienced a severe seizure of what may have been epilepsy. It was so severe as to be cataleptic, and she was thought to have died. During her funeral Mass, she suddenly recovered, and levitated to the roof of the church. Ordered down by the priest, she landed on the altar and stated that she had been to hell, purgatory, and heaven, and had been returned to earth with a ministry to pray for souls in purgatory.
Her life from that point became a series of strange incidents cataloged by a Thomas de Cantimpré, Dominican professor of theology at Louvain who was a contemporary who recorded his information by interviewing witnesses, and by Cardinal Jacques de Vitny who knew her personally. She exhibited both unusual traits and abilities. For example, she could not stand the odor of other people because she could smell the sin in them, and would climb trees or buildings, hide in ovens or cupboards, or simply levitate to avoid contact.
She lived in a way that was considered poverty even in the 13th century, sleeping on rocks, wearing rags, begging, and eating what came to hand. She would roll in fire or handle it without harm, stand in freezing water in the winter for hours, spend long periods in tombs, or allow herself to be dragged under water by a mill wheel, though she never sustained injury. Given to ecstasies during which she led the souls of the recently dead to purgatory, and those in purgatory to paradise . . .
Christina the Astonishing has been venerated as a saint since the 12th century, and her cult was subsequently recognized locally and she was included in the calendars of at least two Catholic bishops in the 17th and 19th centuries. The Fasti Mariani of 1630, for example, records her among the saints. She was never formally beatified or canonized by the Catholic Church. Nevertheless, she is included in the current edition of the Roman Martyrology under 24 July, where she is described as “Blessed Christina, known as the Astonishing.”
I mention St. Christina because of the overwhelming sorrow I experience as I travel around my beloved country and realize that the abandonment of the Church’s traditional, unchangeable interpretation of Genesis 38 has opened the floodgates of impurity, resulting in a deluge of diabolical perversion and the desecration of a huge number of Catholic marriages and families. On our recent annual visit to our daughter, Sister Pauline of the Theotokos at the Priory of St. Joseph of the Benedictines of Mary in Ava, Missouri, I could literally experience the purity of the atmosphere in the priory in an almost physical way. I realized that one could actually think and pray much more easily in that atmosphere because it was free from the dark cloud of demonic spirits that congregate wherever the natural law and the Church’s teaching on Holy Marriage are desecrated—which is to say in almost every part of the so-called “developed world” and even in many of the so-called “developing nations” whose poor people have been corrupted by the landlords of the world. One wonders whether St. Christina would be able to bear the atmosphere even in the rafters of many Catholic churches where Our Lord goes down continually into hearts corrupted by habitual impurity and confirmed in their sin by the very shepherds who should lay down their lives to confirm them in the Truth.
My brothers and sisters, let us make reparation to the Holy Face of Our Lord Jesus Christ, while there is still time for repentance. Through the prayers of the Mother of God, of St. Joseph, and of all the Holy Angels and Saints, may God quickly restore the traditional teaching of the Church on Creation and Holy Marriage, and pour out His grace upon the whole world so that all souls will embrace and live these teachings—and all of the doctrines of the one, holy, Catholic and apostolic Church!
Yours in Christ through the Immaculata in union with St. Joseph,
Hugh Owen
P.S. Today is a First Saturday. Please be sure to answer Our Lady’s appeal for the First Saturday devotions as described by the Fatima Center at this link.
P.P.S. Please give generously to our Give, Send, Go fundraiser, so that we can continue to bear witness to the Catholic Faith, whole and entire, on the foundation of the true Catholic doctrine of creation, the only firm foundation for a culture of life. Those who give generously will be able to receive many amazing gifts, including Michael D. Warner’s wonderful new recording of Loved, Lost and Found as an audio book.
