diary /  by Edward Mullany

Latin was the language of the Roman Empire, and is a dead language now, though it is still used by the Catholic Church in some official documents, and in fact was spoken by the priest in every Mass, in most parts of the world, from the very early centuries until, following the Second Vatican Council, in 1962, the vernacular was substituted for it.

diary /  by Edward Mullany

Jerusalem during the first century was a place where such a lingua franca would’ve been necessary. This is evident from the fact that Pontius Pilate, the Roman governor of Judaea at the time of Jesus, decided that the sign he had attached to the cross on which Jesus was executed (and that read “Jesus of Nazareth, King of the Jews”) should be written in Hebrew, Greek, and Latin. This, so that the many people passing by the site of the crucifixion, as it was near to the city, would be able to read the sign, and find it intelligible.

diary /  by Edward Mullany

The reason so much of Christian theology has a linguistic basis in Greek is that a particular dialect of Greek, known as Koine or Hellenistic Greek, was the lingua franca of the Mediterranean world during the time that the New Testament was written. A ‘lingua franca’ is a language that is adopted to make communication possible among groups of people who do not otherwise share a common language.

diary /  by Edward Mullany

There is a branch of Christian theology devoted to the study of the Holy Spirit. It is called pneumatology, from the Greek word pneuma, meaning “breath”.

diary /  by Edward Mullany

There is in that wording, I think, a wonderful expression of the relationship or dynamic among the persons of the Trinity. Anything the Son asks of the Father is granted, for the will of the Son is to do the will of the Father. When that ‘will’ is made manifest, it happens by way of the Holy Spirit.

diary /  by Edward Mullany

In the gospels, Jesus sometimes refers to the Holy Spirit as the Helper, or the Comforter. He tells the apostles that he will send it to them after he is gone. More specifically, he tells them that he will “ask the Father” to send it to them. This statement of his occurs in a conversation that follows the Last Supper, before they all go out across the Kidron Valley, to the Garden of Gethsemane, the night he is arrested.

diary /  by Edward Mullany

We use the word “persons” to describe the three distinct parts of the one divine nature, but really language is insufficient, and that is ok. It is a beautiful thing for a human to try to comprehend that which is not fully comprehensible. Saint Patrick is said to have used the shamrock to help explain the concept of the Trinity to the Irish people.

diary /  by Edward Mullany

The Holy Spirit is the third person of the Trinity. With the Father (the Creator) and the Son (the Logos) it shares the same nature, or substance, and participates equally in the same Godhood. Therefore it is not merely of God, but is God.

diary /  by Edward Mullany

The challenge for the Church, where the Holy Spirit is concerned, is in knowing how to harness it, or how to allow it to fill the sails of her masts without driving her too far forward, or off course. This is what we call prudence. Do not mistake it for timidity or fear. It is one of the four cardinal virtues, and, in the Catechism of the Catholic Church, is referred to, in the Latin, as auriga virtutum, meaning “the charioteer of the virtues.”

diary /  by Edward Mullany

The reason that change of some sort will always be possible within the Church is because she can never be rigid. And the reason she can never be rigid is because she is guided by the Holy Spirit. And it is the nature of the Holy Spirit to be endlessly and infinitely fresh and new, unconstrained, as we know the wind to be unconstrained.

diary /  by Edward Mullany

Does this mean that the Church believes men are more important than women? Of course not. Does it mean that the Church, because she exists in time, with its ever-shifting technologies, social dynamics, and cultural mores, will sometimes appear plodding, and out-of-step with what seems appropriate or fitting? Yes, very much. Does it mean that she can’t change the way she does things? Not necessarily.

diary /  by Edward Mullany

Now, I do not mean that the Church’s structure is ill-considered, because it isn’t. To begin with, much of the reason it looks the way it does has to do with what is called the apostolic succession, which originates in the fact that Christ himself commissioned twelve men to be his first apostles and to continue his work (after his death and resurrection and ascension) by dispersing themselves to the four winds, baptizing and spreading the gospel, and likewise commissioning other men to do the same, and so on; so that the Church, by maintaining a tradition of ordaining only men, through the sacrament of Holy Orders, has seen herself as extending backward in time to those first apostles, and, by way of them, to Christ.

diary /  by Edward Mullany

This does not even touch, however, on an entire other dilemma — that the patriarchal nature of the Church, at least as it exists among the clergy, and in their hierarchical structure, is alienating to many women, and can seem ill-considered to men and women alike.

diary /  by Edward Mullany

Although, I should also say this, that a truly Christian life, while not without joy, is not a comfortable life to lead, and thus the temptation to turn away from it, while in past centuries more obvious as exactly that, a temptation, now can be hidden in the argument, whether voiced aloud or not, that because the reputation of the Church has been sullied, so has the Church herself.

diary /  by Edward Mullany

I fear sometimes that any attempt now to reconcile the Christian story to the world, or to posit it as true, is to evoke indignation, if not outright dismissal, from those to whom one would speak, and maybe that is inevitable, I do not know. Christianity no longer has the reputation that I imagine it might have had in the first centuries of its existence, when it was outlawed by the Roman Empire, and was subject to persecution. Of course, whether or not it is outlawed does not alter the truths that have been entrusted to it, but any sympathy or interest that might once have accrued to it, among people who otherwise had no association with it, I think has vanished. That it has been, in no small way, the actions of those representing the religion, throughout the centuries, that have caused this sympathy or interest to vanish is a painful truth, though not necessarily a truth that the Church herself has ever been ignorant to the possibility of. For one of her most manifest or evident doctrines surely would be this: as long as humankind has free will, it is subject to error, temptation, and sin.

diary /  by Edward Mullany

I do not wish to have been walking where I have not been invited to walk, I guess is what I’m saying. Though perhaps that is what I’ve done.

diary /  by Edward Mullany

And they of course belong where they are to be found, these verses, and to the people for whom they were written. I comment on them only out of admiration, and in a spirit of truth-seeking.