The Baptism of a Moth

Christians desire to draw near to God to know him and love him. Guilt and shame follow, and with it, the desire to hide from God Genesis 3: Eventually the spiritual hunger pangs are intense enough for us to return to God, seeking communion. God delights in the return of his wandering children, and restores us, where we can begin beholding him again.

Unfortunately, for many, here the cycle begins again.

Our problem is twofold: We imagine God to be as moody and temperamental as we are, and picture God turning from us in disgust, or coldly distancing himself from us. We also understand our relationship with God as the natural man does. Certainly, our sin does affect our communion with God, but to view our relationship with God as a kind of balance sheet of debits and credits is to fail to understand the position of the Christian life, and the new natures we have been given. The life of faith is impossible unless we have faith in the grace of God that changes our natures and establishes our position.

Unless we continually trust in this grace in which we stand, unless we continually meditate on the access we have through the finished work of Christ, we will lapse into discouragement, defeat and even despair. Some of the ancient theologians of the church spoke of perichoresis.

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This was the term to explain how the three Persons of the Trinity relate to one another. This mutual indwelling is what makes the intimacy, fellowship and love between the three Persons possible. Gloriously, Christians are brought into a form of this perichoresis. Jesus said that the mutual indwelling of Father and Son was to now extend to himself and believers. Christ is now in the believer, and the believer is in Christ.

Between believers and Christ is an organic union that Christ chose to illustrate with vine and branches. Branches are part of the vine, and the life of the vine flows through them. Though a Christian can in practice act in a way that is displeasing to God, the Christian is fundamentally clothed with the righteousness and merits of Christ.

For what man knows the things of a man except the spirit of the man which is in him? Even so no one knows the things of God except the Spirit of God. Now we have received, not the spirit of the world, but the Spirit who is from God, that we might know the things that have been freely given to us by God. This mutual, permanent position is a very hard concept for many Christians to grasp. Once again, we are legalists by nature. To understand this, look back to the gospel. To know God, as we are well aware, is not in the first place an abstract exercise of human reason, but an irrepressible desire present in the heart of every person.

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This knowledge comes from love, for we have encountered the Son of God on our journey cf. Those who love long to know better the beloved, and therein to discover the hidden richness that appears each day as something completely new.

Teaching the Writerly Life

For this reason, our Catechism unfolds in the light of love, as an experience of knowledge, trust, and abandonment to the mystery. In explaining its structure, the Catechism of the Catholic Church borrows a phrase from the Roman Catechism and proposes it as the key to its reading and application: Along these same lines, I would like now to bring up a subject that ought to find in the Catechism of the Catholic Church a more adequate and coherent treatment in the light of these expressed aims.

I am speaking of the death penalty. It must be clearly stated that the death penalty is an inhumane measure that, regardless of how it is carried out, abases human dignity. It is per se contrary to the Gospel, because it entails the willful suppression of a human life that never ceases to be sacred in the eyes of its Creator and of which — ultimately — only God is the true judge and guarantor.

No one ought to be deprived not only of life, but also of the chance for a moral and existential redemption that in turn can benefit the community. In past centuries, when means of defence were scarce and society had yet to develop and mature as it has, recourse to the death penalty appeared to be the logical consequence of the correct application of justice.

Sadly, even in the Papal States recourse was had to this extreme and inhumane remedy that ignored the primacy of mercy over justice. Let us take responsibility for the past and recognize that the imposition of the death penalty was dictated by a mentality more legalistic than Christian. Concern for preserving power and material wealth led to an over-estimation of the value of the law and prevented a deeper understanding of the Gospel.

Of Moths and Men

Nowadays, however, were we to remain neutral before the new demands of upholding personal dignity, we would be even more guilty. Here we are not in any way contradicting past teaching, for the defence of the dignity of human life from the first moment of conception to natural death has been taught by the Church consistently and authoritatively. Yet the harmonious development of doctrine demands that we cease to defend arguments that now appear clearly contrary to the new understanding of Christian truth.

Certainly; all possible progress. For who is there, so envious of men, so full of hatred to God, who would seek to forbid it? It is necessary, therefore, to reaffirm that no matter how serious the crime that has been committed, the death penalty is inadmissible because it is an attack on the inviolability and the dignity of the person.