Dear Friends of the Kolbe Center,
Pax Christi!
Our separated brethren at Creation Ministries International recently reported on a Barna study which showed that:
Evolution and the idea of millions of years is the single biggest excuse given for why most people reject Christianity
Another Barna report looked specifically at how teens (13–17 years old) viewed the Bible.
Of the teens who professed to be Christians, only 58% said that the Bible is ‘The Word of God’, and only 12% said the Bible is the ‘inspired word of God and has no errors’!
A mere 12% of professing ‘Christian’ teens believe that the Bible is the inspired, infallible, true, and therefore authoritative Word of God.
The study goes on to show that even among the ‘Christian’ teens who were confident of their answer (i.e., those who chose “strongly agree”), many of them still have doubts about the Bible.
Most ‘Christian’ teens today, including even 1 in every 5 who profess that the Bible is ‘very true’, still have festering doubts about the inerrancy, authority, and relevance of the Bible.
Only 61% believe that the Bible is fully inspired by God, holy (63%), good (59%), trustworthy (53%), true (54%), important (59%), and relevant (53%).
Scriptural Inerrancy: A Dogma of the Faith
While we do not know of any comparable survey of Catholic young people, our experience has been that very few Catholic young people are taught the truth: that unrestricted Scriptural inerrancy is a dogma of the Faith, defined as such by Vatican I and upheld by Vatican II. Moreover, we have been deeply dismayed to discover that even otherwise traditional Catholics in positions of leadership in Catholic seminaries, universities, schools and other educational institutions rarely believe in Scriptural inerrancy as defined by Vatican I and proclaimed by all of the Fathers and Doctors of the Church. Even more shocking have been the examples offered to us by Catholic academics, even professors from conservative Catholic institutions, of alleged contradictions in the Bible—shocking because of the way that in almost every case a cursory survey of the commentaries of the Fathers, Doctors, and great commentators would suffice to show how these apparent errors and contradictions could be resolved without impugning the inerrancy of the Word of God.
In his book on the Dead Sea Scrolls, Dr. John Bergsma gives a glaring example of this kind of carelessness on the part of popular Biblical scholars who have abandoned the Faith because of alleged errors in Scripture. Commenting on the work of Dr. Bart Ehrman, Dr. Bergsma writes:
Sporting an ear stud, dark T-shirt, and sport coat, he’s definitely photogenic and resembles more of a Hollywood celeb about to go on a talk show than your typical stuffy academics in tweeds and sweater vests. Since divesting himself of faith, he’s made a name for himself—and doubtless a good bit of profit, too—by writing popular books that undermine Christian faith in the Bible by pointing out apparent errors and inconsistencies. One of Ehrman’s favorite examples is the disagreement between the Gospels over the dating of the Last Supper and Crucifixion . . .
Here Dr. Bergsma refers to the apparent contradiction between the synoptic Gospels (Matthew, Mark and Luke) and the Gospel of St. John over the date of the Passover during the week of Our Lord’s Passion and Death. After discussing various ways that have been proposed over the centuries to resolve this apparent contradiction, Fr. Ferdinand Prat in his monumental work Jesus Christ explains how the apparent contradiction can be resolved:
A tradition (halakah) raised to a principle by the Pharisees in the time of Hillel, taught that the Passover, since it was a public sacrifice, took precedence over the Sabbath; the Sadducees, on the contrary, faithful to ancient custom, considered it to be a private sacrifice which would yield to the Sabbath. Furthermore, they understood the regulation about the time of the immolation, “between the two evenings,” in the strict sense as the very brief interval of the Jerusalem twilight. Therefore, when the 15th of Nissan fell on a Saturday, they slew the Paschal lamb, not on the 14th of Nissan, which would involve a violation of the Sabbath already begun, but on the 13th of Nissan. They ate the lamb the same evening, together with the obligatory accompaniments of unleavened bread and bitter herbs. According to this theory, Jesus followed the practice of the priestly caste (the Sadducees), who were in possession of authority . . . The Synoptics [reflected] the opinion of the Pharisees and the mass of the people, who ate the Passover on Thursday evening; and St. John would be holding to the official date decreed by the priesthood, which fixed the eating of the Paschal lamb on Friday evening.
Our Heavenly Bridegroom Is Faithful and True
No private revelation is infallible, but every -Church-approved private revelation helps to illuminate some aspect of Divine Revelation. For example, the private revelations of Venerable Maria of Agreda helped to illuminate the mystery of the Absolute Primacy of Christ and the Immaculate Conception. Blessed Anne Catherine’s private revelations have helped to illuminate the inerrancy of Scripture in regard to chronology and geography. In Genesis Through the Eyes of the Saints, we have documented how the visions of the Augustinian nun and victim soul Blessed Anne Catherine Emmerich were used by the local Church authorities to officially identify the site of the Holy House of Ephesus where Our Blessed Mother and St. John lived together. In her visions of Holy Week, Blessed Anne also confirmed Fr. Prat’s hypothesis in a number of ways. She was shown Our Lord and the Apostles celebrating the Passover on Holy Thursday as a private sacrifice, before Our Lord’s institution of the Holy Eucharist as the fulfillment of the Passover and the New Covenant in His Blood—and before the public sacrifice of the Passover lambs in the Temple which coincided with the crucifixion of Our Lord on Good Friday. In many of her visions, Blessed Anne was also shown Our Lord associating with the community of the Essenes, long before the discovery of the Dead Sea Scrolls confirmed the existence of this sect and the orientation of many of their beliefs and practices towards the coming of the Messiah as High Priest and King of Kings. Moreover, as explained in a previous newsletter, a meticulous correlation of Blessed Anne’s visions with astronomical data has made it possible to confirm the exact timing of all of the major events in Our Lord’s life.
A number of great saints have prophesied that in our times the members of the Mystical Body of Christ must prepare to endure what our Head endured for us in His Passion and Death, prior to a restoration of a resurrected Church and the advent of the social reign of Christ Our King throughout the world. Seen in that light, it seems strangely appropriate that just as two parallel liturgical calendars seem to have existed side by side at the time of the Passion and Death of Our Lord, so in our time, within the Roman Rite, two parallel liturgical calendars exist side by side. At the same time, it is important to recognize that Our Lord superintends the Passion of His Church, just as He superintended His own Passion and Death two thousand years ago. Just as Our Lord created Adam and formed his immaculate bride from Adam’s side as he slept on the First Friday of the world, so did Our Lord bring forth His Immaculate Bride the Church from His wounded side, when He slept the sleep of death on the Cross for us on the Friday we call “Good.”
Nor do the parallels end there.
Having finished the work of Redemption for us at the end of the sixth day of the week, at the same time of the same day when He had finished the work of Creation, Our Lord “rested” from His finished work of Redemption, just as He had “rested” from the work of creating a perfectly beautiful, complete, and harmonious universe for us in the beginning. Then, just as had He made light shine forth in the darkness on Sunday, the First Day of Creation, so did Our Lord begin a New Creation on Easter Sunday, shining forth the light of His glorious Resurrection in the darkness of the tomb. In the words of the ancient Syriac Liturgy:
When we ponder, O Christ, the marvels accomplished on this day, the Sunday of your holy Resurrection, we say: “Blessed is Sunday, for on it began creation.”
(Fanquith, The Syriac Office of Antioch, vol. VI, first part of Summer, 193 B. (CCC, 1167).
Nothing in God’s providential plan is ever superfluous or unimportant.
In times of severe persecution and trials, it is especially important to remember that Our Heavenly Bridegroom is Faithful and True. So, let us reject every suggestion from the Enemy that Our Heavenly Bridegroom or His Bride the Church have taught—or ever could teach—anything that is not perfectly true. As Our Lord told St. Teresa of Avila:
All the harm that comes to the world comes from its not knowing the truths of Scripture in clarity and truth... Alas, daughter, how few there are who truthfully love Me!... Do you know what it is to love Me truthfully? It is to understand that everything that is displeasing to Me is a lie.
Yours in Christ through the Holy Theotokos, in union with St. Joseph,
Hugh Owen
