Being Pastoral

I heard that a reporter once asked the late Pope John Paul II what his favorite scripture verse was, to whom he immediately replied, "If you continue in my word, you are truly my disciples; and you will know the truth, and the truth will set you free."

John Paul II was an amazing man; I have gotten the priviledge of seeing him twice. Although I am not normally very emotional, almost everytime he spoke, or glanced up from his notes during a speech, I was just about moved to tears. He was such a reflection of our Father in heaven, such a vessel of God's immense love, that seeing him those few times had truly solidified my relationship with God.

"You will know the truth and the truth shall set you free." It's interesting to hear this scripture verse in contrast to the current trends of society. The trends that say we cannot know truth and that truth is subjective to each person's experiences. People seem to have definitively stated the relativity of truth while being ignorant of the fact that their very own objections to objective truth is, in fact, objectively stated. It seems to me that their argument is intended to point the finger against the Catholic church and its stand for the truth. It is worth noting that everytime a Pope has spoken against particular decisions that society makes, and outlines concequences that will follow their actions, no matter how loud the "free-thinkers" mock the "archaic" and "out of touch" Popes, every single one of the Popes' predictions come into fruition.

Be that as it may, that is not what I want to talk about. What I want to talk about is people, within the Church, denying, watering-down, or ignoring particular truths for the sake of "being pastoral." Namely: inclusive language.

Sure, when scripture mentions words like "brothers" and "men," it more than often refers to both genders. However, when it comes to referring to God, we cannot assume that it really means, "gods" or "goddesses" or even "her." On this point, our liberty as creative thinkers needs to respect the Author's rights. Who is the author of sacred scripture? The Holy Spirit, aka: God.

A popular argument for gender-inclusive language regarding the Divine is that scripture was written by males, for males; hence, the countless references to God revealing himself as "Father" and spoken of with male pronouns. This includes Jesus' declaration that we ought to pray to God as "Father" during his discourse on a hill (the sermon on the mount).

Thier argument, however, presents many problems. First of all, the idea that scripture is a constrution by men for men, is in direct contrast with the doctrine of the inerrancy of scripture. In a nutshell, the doctrine states that when scripture is read within its proper context and in light of Church teachings (the traditons from the fathers of the Church), it is without error. It is important to note that the Bible is not a grammer or a science textbook, so don't get any strange ideas about telling your teacher that he is wrong simply because he teaches something that isn't mentioned in the Bible (like evolution). This doctrine is based on the premise that the Holy Spirit himself is the author of the sacred texts; that he inspired the writers to write whatever He wanted in the scriptures. So, ther is nothing in the scriptures that God did not want in them. Hence the problem of sexism. Why would God be condoning anything that is contrary to His Law of love? Therefore, I would say that an argument that states that the Bible is laced with sexism (i.e. written by men, for men), is more of an argument against the inerrancy of scripture and Christianity in general (due to its many scriptural roots).

Now, I want whomever is reading this to know that I am merely summing up the doctrine, for a thorough examination of what the Catholic Church teaches on the inerrancy of scripture, check out some of the links that I have listed on the right-hand side. Some of them are easier to read/understand than others so, pick whichever suits you best.