Catholic Replies
Q. I remember a nun telling us back in Catholic school that after God ejected Adam and Eve from the Garden of Eden, He promised that He would eventually send them a Messiah. Where is that in the Bible? — M.R., Indiana.
A. In chapter 3 of the Book of Genesis. Actually, the promise was made before God expelled our first parents from the Garden. After condemning the serpent for tricking Adam and Eve into disobeying the divine command not to eat the fruit of the tree of the knowledge of good and evil, God said to the Devil: “I will put enmity between you and the woman, and between your offspring and hers;/ He will strike at your head/ while you strike at his heel” (Gen. 3:15). Here is how the Catechism of the Catholic Church (nn. 410-411) explains that passage:
“After his fall, man was not abandoned by God. On the contrary, God calls him and in a mysterious way heralds the coming victory over evil and his restoration from his fall [cf. Gen. 3:9, 15]. This passage in Genesis is called the Protoevangelium (‘first gospel’): the first announcement of the Messiah and Redeemer, of a battle between the serpent and the Woman, and of the final victory of a descendant of hers.
“The Christian tradition sees in this passage an announcement of the ‘New Adam’ who, because he ‘became obedient unto death, even death on a cross,’ makes amends superabundantly for the disobedience of Adam [cf. 1 Cor. 15:21-22, 45; Phil. 2:8; Romans 5:19-20]. Furthermore, many Fathers and Doctors of the Church have seen the woman announced in the Protoevangelium as Mary, the mother of Christ, the ‘new Eve.’ Mary benefited first of all and uniquely from Christ’s victory over sin: she was preserved from all stain of original sin and by a special grace of God committed no sin of any kind during her whole earthly life” (cf. Pius IX, Ineffabilis Deus: DS 2803; Council of Trent: DS 1573).
Q. As regards the question of who were the first persons to see Jesus after His birth, you said the shepherds. I should like to share my speculation with you based on a close and repeated reading of Luke 2:16-18. The text reads, “So they [the shepherds] went in haste and found Mary and Joseph, and the infant lying in the manger. When they saw this, they made known the message that had been told them about this child. All who heard it were amazed by what had been told them by the shepherds.”
The words “all who heard” suggests to me that Mary, Joseph, and the Baby were not alone when the shepherds found them. If correct, this would mean that the shepherds were not, in fact, the first to see Jesus after His birth. I would appreciate your comments on this speculation. — V.M.U., Rhode Island.
A. Your speculation is interesting, but you might be reading more into the text than is there. Verse 20 says that “the shepherds returned, glorifying and praising God for all they had heard and seen, just as it had been told to them.” As we know, an angel of the Lord had appeared to the shepherds while they were watching their sheep, told them of the birth in Bethlehem of “a savior…who is Messiah and Lord,” and said that they would find this Infant “wrapped in swaddling clothes and lying in a manger.”
Once the shepherds had seen the newborn Child, Luke tells us, they returned to their place in the fields, glorifying and praising God for what the angel had told them, and then told their amazing story to all with whom they came into contact. So “all who heard” could just as well mean this latter group, who were not present at the manger but heard the story later from the excited shepherds. This is the explanation favored by Pope Benedict XVI in his book Jesus of Nazareth: The Infancy Narratives:
“The first witnesses of the great event are watchful shepherds. There has been much reflection on the significance of the fact that shepherds were the first to receive the message. It seems to me that we should not read too much into this. Jesus was born outside the city in an area surrounded by grazing grounds where shepherds would pasture their flocks. So it was natural that, as the people physically closest to the event, they would be the first to be summoned to the manger” (pp. 71-72).
The Holy Father went on to say that, “of course one could immediately develop this further: perhaps they were living not only outwardly but also inwardly closer to the event than the peacefully sleeping townsfolk. Inwardly too, they were not far from the God who had become a child. What is more, they were among the poor, the simple souls whom Jesus would bless, because to them above all is granted access to the mystery of God (cf. Luke 10:21f). They represent the poor of Israel, the poor in general: God’s first love” (pp. 72).
Q. Former New York Gov. Mario Cuomo, who defended a woman’s right to abortion, was given a funeral Mass recently at St. Ignatius Loyola Catholic Church. Wasn’t it wrong for the Church to give him a Mass? — N.A., Michigan.
A. According to canon 1184 of the Code of Canon Law, the following are to be denied the Church’s funeral rites unless they have given some sign of repentance before their death:
“1. notorious apostates, heretics, and schismatics;
“2. persons who had chosen the cremation of their own bodies for reasons opposed to the Christian faith;
“3. other manifest sinners for whom ecclesiastical funeral rites cannot be granted without public scandal to the faithful.”
A commentary on section 3 says that “a manifest sin is one for which there are eyewitnesses who can give testimony about it. If there is no public scandal, the right of burial is not to be denied even to manifest sinners.”
Mario Cuomo, who was governor of New York from 1983 to 1994 and who died on New Year’s Day, was a prototypical modern-day Catholic politician who said that he was personally opposed to abortion, but who never did anything publicly to oppose it. His best-known defense of that position was expressed in a speech (“Religious Belief and Public Morality: A Catholic Governor’s Perspective”) at Notre Dame on September 3, 1984. Though touted by the media as a shining example of how a Catholic politician ought to balance his private beliefs with public policy, in fact, Cuomo’s speech was filled with faulty logic and distortion of Catholic teaching.
For example, he said that “there is no inflexible moral principle which determines what our political conduct should be.” What about the natural law — Do good and avoid evil — which applies to all persons regardless of their religious affiliation or lack thereof? Even if there were no Catholic condemnation of abortion, the killing of unborn babies would still be a grave evil.
Gov. Cuomo said that “while we always owe our bishop’s words respectful attention and careful consideration, the question whether to engage the political system in a struggle to have it adopt certain articles of our belief as part of public morality is not a matter of doctrine; it is a matter of prudential political judgment.” Opposition to abortion is not just an “article of belief,” like the Communion of Saints, nor is it merely a matter of “prudential political judgment”; it is taking a stand against what Vatican II called an “unspeakable crime” (Gaudium et Spes, n. 51).
Cuomo said that “my Church and my conscience require me to believe certain things about divorce, birth control, and abortion. My Church does not order me — under pain of sin or expulsion — to pursue my salvific mission according to a precisely defined political plan.” Notice the clever attempt to suggest that the Church’s opposition to abortion is political, when it fact it transcends politics and can indeed determine one’s salvific fate.
Since Mario Cuomo was not, in our judgment, a manifest public sinner, there would be no reason to deny him a Catholic funeral. He was certainly guilty of publicly promoting and expanding the murder of the unborn, and will have to answer for that conduct, but we hope that he used his final years to repent of his role in this grave evil and injustice.
