Rules

So why does the Church have so many rules anyway? Didn’t Jesus say that all we have to do to be saved is to follow Him? Where does the Church get off imposing all these man-made rules? Don’t I have free will?

Those are all good questions; questions that many Catholics struggle with every day. An awful lot of people have even left the Church because they disagree with the Church’s teaching on one thing or another, and that’s too bad. It’s too bad because the Catholic Church is Christ’s bride. Remember that when He established the Church, He said to Peter “You are Peter and on this rock I will build my Church”.

The word Peter means “rock”. When Jesus changed Simon’s name to Peter, He was indicating that Peter would indeed be the rock, the cornerstone, of His new Church. He also told the Apostles, “Whoever hears you, hears me.” In other words, He gave his first Pope and Bishops, the twelve Apostles, and their successors the authority to speak for Him.

What about those successors? Just because Jesus gave powers to the twelve, why do we think that the current Bishops have any power? Another good question. Here's the thing. After Jesus was crucified and Judas had committed suicide, the remaining eleven Apostles were together. They weren't really sure what had just happened and for all they knew, they were the next ones to die. So what did they do? Did they come up with a plan to escape? Did they say "we're all going to have to work harder now that there are only eleven of us? No, Peter said "we must appoint a successor to Judas." He knew, they all knew, that their office must continue on, even after their death.

Remember that while God doesn’t control the future, He does know what’s going to happen because He exists outside of the concept of time. He knew that we would have a hard time understanding the Scriptures. He knew that in our weak human nature, we would never agree about what Jesus said, or what would be written in the Bible.

So, Jesus gave us a Church which is protected by the Holy Spirit from making errors in matters of faith and morals. That’s the basis for our entire belief system. Today, many Catholics like to think of themselves as “cafeteria Catholics”. They believe some, or even most of what the Church teaches, but they want to pick and choose. Pick one from column A and two from column B.

Why “cafeteria Catholics”? It’s as if they’re saying “I’ll have three desserts but I’ll pass on the meat and the vegetables.” We all know that that kind of diet will eventually destroy our health. Well, a diet of spiritual desserts with no meat and vegetables will destroy our spiritual health.

When Martin Luther nailed his ninety-five theses on the door of the Cathedral, he opened the floodgates. For the first fifteen hundred years of the Church, Catholics accepted Church teaching with very little question. Luther’s criticism along with Gutenberg’s invention of the printing press, led to wide-spread questioning of the Church’s authority. Luther’s translation of the Bible became widely available. Because some of the books of the Bible contradicted Luther’s ideas, they were left out of the “new” Bible.

Up until this time, Bibles were copied by hand. They were very rare and very expensive; far out of reach of the average person. With the advent of the press, more people had access to the new Bible and were drawn into Luther’s new religion. In effect, Luther substituted his interpretation of the scriptures for the Church’s official interpretation. This acceptance of different interpretations of the Sacred Word of God has led us to the point where today we have over 20,000 protestant denominations, each with its own idea of what the scriptures mean.

And that brings us back to the question of the “rules” of the Church. Actually, there are two types of Church rules. One is called “doctrine”. Doctrine deals with matters of faith and morals. It’s non-negotiable. It can never change. The truth doesn’t change to fit the times. Some say that the Church is inflexible and they’re right! When it comes to the truths of the faith, the Church is extremely inflexible and we should be glad that it is.

The other type of rule is called a “discipline”. Disciplines cover things that are more administrative in nature. A celibate priesthood is a discipline. Abstaining from meat on Fridays during Lent is a discipline. These things can change. For example, it used to be a discipline that Catholics abstain from meat on all Fridays. That discipline was dropped.

Doctrines are necessary for salvation. Disciplines help us along the way.

But that still doesn’t answer the “rules” question we started with. For example, why did Archbishop Burke suppress the Polish parish of St. Stanislaus in north St. Louis? Isn’t he just after their money? Why did he excommunicate their priest?

That’s really two questions. Let’s look at them one at a time. Every parish in a diocese is under the leadership of the “local ordinary”. That’s the Bishop or the Archbishop. The ordinary is responsible for the well-being of every parish in his area. Through a series of actions, the leaders of St. Stanislaus parish made it clear that they had no intention of following Archbishop Burke’s leadership. The Archbishop had removed the priests from the parish because the parish’ board of directors had refused to give them the money needed to operate the parish. After several attempts by the Archbishop at reconciliation, the parish board hired their own pastor from another diocese.

This is a gross violation of one of those disciplinary laws. The Archbishop really had no choice but to suppress the parish. There are a billion Catholics in the world who belong to thousands of parishes. The Roman Catholic Church is far and away the oldest organization in the world, existing for more than 2,000 years, with more than one billion members. There is no way any organization can survive that long without rules that everyone must follow. If every Catholic and every parish “did their own thing” the Church would have disappeared many centuries ago. If every priest decided to choose which parish he was going to serve, the priest shortage in the Caribbean would most likely disappear, but the rest of us would be out of luck.

As far as the pastor’s excommunication, the Archbishop didn’t excommunicate him. Excommunication is automatic when a member of the Church commits certain violations. The priest’s actions certainly fell into the category. He didn’t defy just one Bishop, he defied two. He abandoned his assignment in another diocese in direct violation of his Bishop’s instructions and he violated the instructions of the Archbishop of St. Louis. He excommunicated himself. Because his actions were very public, the Archbishop was required to make a public announcement of the priest’s excommunication.

The word “excommunicated” means out of communion. It’s not the same thing as “banishment” which is practiced by some protestant denominations. Banishment is imposed on a member by church leadership. Excommunication is self-imposed. There’s a big difference. A person can be “out of communion” even though no one in the Church leadership has publicly said so. I’m afraid there are hundreds of thousands of nominal Catholics who are anonymously out of communion with the Church. Some of them don’t even know it. Is a “non-practicing” Catholic in communion with the Church? Think about it.

What about some of the other so-called rules? Marriage rules give people a lot of trouble. There is an entire industry of former priests who have left the Church, usually because of some sort of scandal, or because they wanted to get married, who rent themselves out to couples who want to have a “Catholic” wedding but who have been turned down for one reason or another.

The reason people resort to these “rent-a-priests” is usually because they are still in a valid marriage and want to marry again, or because they want to have their ceremony on a beach, or on top of a mountain, or while they’re jumping out of an airplane, or in some other “exotic” location.

In the first case, we as Catholics believe that marriage is forever. However, a marriage can be declared null if it’s determined that it wasn’t valid in the first place. Some people don’t want to go the trouble of having their first marriage investigated, so they go another route. Jesus clearly stated that a second valid marriage is adultery. The Church exists to help all of us get into heaven. How can anyone expect the Church to sacramentalize an adulterous union? It can’t and it won’t.

As far as the beach/mountain/skydiving wedding is concerned, Catholics “do” sacraments in Church. When someone says they were married “in the church”, that’s what it means. In the church. Not in the backyard. Not at a casino in Las Vegas. In the church.

But, why is that? First, sacraments are public. Anyone should be allowed to attend. The church building is our public place. A wedding at a country club is going to exclude people. Well, you may say, a city park is a public place. Why can’t I be married there? Because the Church understands human nature. If she gives us an inch, we’ll take a mile. Once you make an exception, then everyone will want an exception and you end up with people being married on the Boss roller coaster at Six Flags.

As someone who witnesses weddings I can tell you that many modern brides are much more concerned with the pomp and circumstance that goes along with a wedding than they are with the ceremony itself. It's not unusual at all to have the bride and groom approach the church with the date picked out for the wedding because it's the only day they could book their favorite hall. They've chosen the dresses and the tuxedos, picked out the band and the food for the reception and the members of the wedding party. God help the priest or deacon who tells them that the Church isn't available that day. How dare we??? It would take a priest or deacon with a lot of courage to tell the couple that they just aren't ready to get married. Sadly, if one minister turns a couple down, or tells them they should wait, they can almost always find someone else who will let them go ahead.

It's hard enough to get the couple focused on the business at hand when the ceremony is going to take place in God's house. I can't imagine what it would be like if the ceremony was going to be held elsewhere. If couples spent as much time planning their marriage as they spend planning their wedding, the divorce rate wouldn't be 50%.

There's nothing wrong with wanting to have a nice wedding. After all, it only happens once in a lifetime (we hope). But when the focus is on the reception, the clothes, the pictures, the guest list, the honeymoon, and all the other incidentals, with the wedding itself almost an afterthought, that's a big problem. At least, when the wedding is held in God's house, there's some possibility that the message of the sacramental union may get through all the clutter.

According to a recent story in the St. Louis Post Dispatch, a local couple is planning to be married in a cemetery! Is there any wonder why so many marriages fail? I'm sure the couple means well. Apparently the cemetery offers a great view of the surrounding countryside. But, if you're planning to be looking at the scenery while you make your marriage vows, how serious can you be about those vows? There's really no place for so-called out-of-the-box thinking when it comes to making a lifetime commitment to an institution that was created by God eons ago. You wouldn't rent an apartment without reading the lease. Should you agree to live with someone for the rest of your life while you're concentrating on the hills and trees?

What about the guests? Of course the marriage ceremony is for the bride and groom but it's also for the guests. The exchange of vows reminds all of us of our own commitments and commitments to come. I don't know about you, but if I were to attend a wedding in a graveyard, my mind would not be focused on the topic at hand. There would just be too many distractions.

As I said, I'm sure the couple mean well. I assume that they're in love. None of us are in a position to judge what's in someone else's heart. But clearly this couple could use some guidance. That's why Holy Mother Church, in her great wisdom, lays down rules for important events. By specifying that marriages must take place in a church, there is no question about what is or isn't allowed. The minister doesn't have to decide that a park's ok, but a cemetery isn't. Or that one park is alright, but another one is off limits. If I can get married under the Gateway Arch, why can't I tie the knot on the carousel at Faust Park?

There are no rules covering the rehearsal dinner or the reception. The choice of clothing is left up to the bride and groom (within reason). They can choose the music, and the number of bridesmaids, and whether to have a flower girl and ring bearer or not. No one tells them where to go on their honeymoon. There are plenty of opportunities for the prospective bride and groom to exercise their creativity. But you can't mess with the sacrament itself. That's just the way it is.

"Free" is a popular word today, especially in the United States. Everyone wants to be free. Freedom of this; freedom of that. But freedom has a flip side. It's called responsibility. You can't have one without the other. God has given us free will. But first, he gave us responsibility.

Freedom doesn't mean the absence of rules and regulations. You can't yell "fire" in a crowded theater and claim freedom of speech. The freedom of the majority of the audience to enjoy the movie without fear of being trampled to death trumps the individual's freedom of speech.

Christ left us a Church to guide us, sometimes gently, sometimes not so gently, which gives us the greatest freedom of all. I don't have to spend time deciding whether or not abortion is evil or whether or not I should go to mass on Sunday. Those things have been decided for me before I was even born. Many learned, holy people have spent untold hours studying the scriptures and the writings of the Church Fathers. Church "rules" are based on their findings, always guided by the Holy Spirit. My faith in God, in His Son, and in His Church gives me the freedom to concentrate on living my life, which is the greatest freedom of all.