Editor’s Note: In a soon-to-be-published biography, Pope Benedict XVI was asked about a phrase he uttered in his first homily as Pope in 2005. He had asked at that time that the faithful “Pray for me, that I may not flee for fear of the wolves.” Did this mean, Peter Seewald asked, that the Holy Father had foreseen what was coming? The Pontiff replied:
“The true threat for the Church, and thus for the Petrine service, does not come from this sort of episode — it comes instead from the universal dictatorship of apparently humanistic ideologies. Anyone who contradicts this dictatorship is excluded from the basic consensus of society. One hundred years ago, anyone would have thought it absurd to speak of homosexual matrimony. Today those who oppose it are socially excommunicated.
“The same holds true for abortion and the production of human beings in the laboratory. Modern society intends to formulate an anti-Christian creed — whoever contests it is punished with social excommunication. Being afraid of this spiritual power of the Antichrist is all too natural, and what is truly needed is that the prayers of entire dioceses and of the world Church come to resist it.”
Q. In a recent column about Enoch and Elijah being taken to Heaven at the end of their earthly lives, you said that you didn’t know if they went to what we call Heaven, or to some “intermediate state between the death of the righteous and the final judgment.” I think the answer can be found in John 1:18, which says that “no one has ever seen God. The only Son, God, who is at the Father’s side, has revealed him.” If you haven’t seen God, you haven’t been to Heaven….Where Enoch and Elijah were prior to Christ, I don’t know, but it wasn’t the heights of the Beatific Vision, which is what I think was the purpose of asking the original question. — M.K., Georgia.
A. We appreciate your thoughts, but don’t know if John 1:18 provides the answer to exactly where Enoch and Elijah went. Technically, no one can see God since He is pure spirit and cannot be seen with human eyes. We can, however, see the face of the Father in the face of Jesus. “Whoever has seen me has seen the Father,” Jesus said to Philip (John 14:9). And St. Paul called Jesus “the image of the invisible God” (1 Col. 15).
In the Beatific Vision we will contemplate God in all His glory, but we will see Him not with human sight but intuitively with our minds. “It is called vision in the mind by analogy with bodily sight, which is the most comprehensive of human sense faculties,” said Fr. John Hardon, SJ, in his Modern Catholic Dictionary.
“It is called beatific because it produces happiness in the will and the whole being. As a result of this immediate vision of God, the blessed share in the divine happiness, where the beatitude of the Trinity is (humanly speaking) the consequence of God’s perfect knowledge of His infinite goodness.”
While Heaven was not open to those who lived before the time of Christ, God could have made Enoch and Elijah a special case. “God is omnipotent,” said Jimmy Akin, “and He can make exceptions if He chooses” (Catholic Answers, May-June 2015, p. 5).
Q. In an interview published recently by Catholic News Service, Archbishop Wilton Gregory of Washington, D.C., said that he would give Holy Communion to incoming President Joe Biden, despite Biden’s longtime support for abortion and same-sex “marriage.” Gregory noted that Biden had received Communion throughout his eight years as vice president under Barack Obama, and “I’m not going to veer from that.” What kind of a shepherd is that, who would facilitate more sacrilegious Communions? — F.A., via e-mail.
A. Not a good shepherd, that’s for sure. But it’s what one would expect from the newly elevated and highly partisan Cardinal Gregory. Recall a few months ago that he denounced President Trump for praying at the John Paul II National Shrine, even though the president had been invited to visit the Shrine. “I find it baffling and reprehensible that any Catholic facility would allow itself to be so egregiously misused and manipulated in a fashion that violates our religious principles, which call us to defend the rights of all people, even those with whom we might disagree,” Gregory said at the time.
This from a man who invited pro-homosexual advocate Fr. James Martin, SJ, to speak at the Shrine of the Immaculate Conception about “Showing Welcome and Respect to LGBT Catholics.”
Cardinal Gregory apparently has no problem giving Holy Communion to a person who routinely violates Catholic moral principles and refuses to defend the rights of unborn babies. Just as he had no problem celebrating the funeral Mass of fake news, pro-abortion journalist Cokie Roberts and even allowing pro-abortion Speaker of the House Nancy Pelosi to deliver the eulogy. You can’t make this stuff up.
In the CNS interview, Wilton Gregory said that he hopes to have “a real dialogue” with Biden “because I think that’s the mantra of Pope Francis — that we should be a church in dialogue, even with those with whom we have some serious disagreements.” He said that the focus of the dialogue should be “on the argument, not on the demonization of the people with whom we disagree.”
Good luck dialoguing with someone who has been a fierce proponent of abortion up to the moment of birth, of same-sex “marriage” (Biden “married” two of his male aides in a ceremony at the vice president’s house), and of transgenderism (Biden has said that allowing persons to declare themselves a different sex from the one God gave them at birth “is the civil rights issue of our time”).
But this isn’t just about disagreements on key moral issues; it’s about safeguarding the integrity of the Holy Eucharist, something that you would think would be of concern to a cardinal archbishop of the Catholic Church. Canon 915 of the Code of Canon Law says that Holy Communion is not to be given to persons “who obstinately persist in manifest grave sin.” Joe Biden’s rejection of Catholic moral teaching is not a privately expressed opinion; it is an obstinate proclamation from the housetops.
It’s an in-your-face taunt to Catholic authorities, daring them to criticize or censure him. A few brave parish priests have denied Communion to Biden, but prelates like Cardinal Gregory don’t have the courage or the willingness to do so.
St. Paul says that “whoever eats the bread or drinks the cup of the Lord unworthily will have to answer for the body and blood of the Lord. . . . For anyone who eats and drinks without discerning the body, eats and drinks judgment on himself” (1 Cor. 11:27, 29). What does that say about those who facilitate the unworthy reception of the Body and Blood of the Lord? Are they not bringing down judgment on themselves? What kind of a shepherd puts dialogue ahead of sacrilege, or political correctness ahead of salvation?
Cardinal Gregory ought to heed these words of St. Paul to Timothy:
“Proclaim the word; be persistent whether it is convenient or inconvenient; convince, reprimand, encourage through all patience and teaching. For the time will come when people will not tolerate sound doctrine but, following their own desires and insatiable curiosity, will accumulate teachers and will stop listening to the truth and will be diverted to myths. But you, be self-possessed in all circumstances; put up with hardship; perform the work of an evangelist; fulfill your ministry” (2 Tim. 4:2-5).
Q. The quote from Boston’s Cardinal O’Malley in Fr. Breton’s column last month was right on the mark. I wish he had said it this year. What do you think? — R.C., Massachusetts.
A. We agree, and here is what Sean O’Malley said when he was bishop of Fall River, Mass., from 1992 to 2002 (Cardinal Gregory, take note):
“I will not vote for any politician who will promote abortion or the culture of death, no matter how appealing the rest of his or her program might be. They are wolves in sheep’s garments, the KKK without the sheets, and sadly enough they don’t even know it. If I were ever tempted to vote for simply selfish reasons, tribal allegiances, or economic advantages, rather than on the moral direction of the country, I should make a hasty retreat from the curtain of the polling booth to the curtain of the confessional.”
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