Matt C. Abbott
Apologist, AMU priest-professor clash over Seder meal; 'Catholic bashers spared Imus treatment'
By Matt C. Abbott
On April 5, 2007, Robert Sungenis, founder and president of Catholic Apologetics International, sent the following (slightly edited) e-mail to a number of faculty and staff at Ave Maria University (and others):
See the Catholic League's April 11, 2007 news release here.
© Matt C. Abbott
On April 5, 2007, Robert Sungenis, founder and president of Catholic Apologetics International, sent the following (slightly edited) e-mail to a number of faculty and staff at Ave Maria University (and others):
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The new twist in 'New Church' thinking is the incorporation of Jewish feasts and festivals into Catholic practice under the guise of 'growing closer to Jesus.' As a letter written by the chaplain of Ave Maria University stated on April 5:
Dear Ave Maria Community: After the Holy Thursday Mass, April 5, at 8pm, there will be a Seder Meal in the Ark of the Covenant Cafeteria. The invitation is limited to Ave Maria Students, Faculty, Staff, and their families. This Seder Meal will be a Christianized celebration of the Passover meal Christ ate throughout his life and for the last time with the apostles in the upper room. This is NOT a Communion service, nor is it meant to be. We are remembering the Jewish tradition so that we can grow closer to the Jewish Carpenter who gives his life for our salvation.
Perhaps Ave Maria's chaplain forgot that the way we 'grow closer to the Jewish Carpenter' is by obeying Him and the doctrinal proclamations of the Church he founded. Perhaps he forgot that Catholics are not to make up their own methods of worship that have not been specifically approved by the Vatican. Today, however, we have vigilante Catholics who think they can reinvent Catholic worship to suit their own tastes.
If the reasoning of the Ave Maria chaplain were to be followed to its logical conclusion, then there wouldn't be anything wrong for Catholics to practice circumcision for religious reasons, as long as we did our best to make it into a 'Christianized celebration.' For that matter, our Catholic priests could don Old Testament priestly garments and sacrifice a lamb on Holy Thursday and sprinkle the blood on the people, just as long as he made an effort to 'Christianize' the sacrifice. To any knowledgeable and sensible Catholic, all these notions are an abomination. But in today's Church, where we see it slouching toward apostasy, any novelty that can be sprinkled with a few dashes of Christian salt can find its way into Catholic practice.
Even more importantly, notice the ploy of the Ave Maria chaplain. He implants the fallacious idea in the mind of Ave Maria students that they are not as close to Jesus as they could be. In order to grow closer to Jesus, there is one specific way he recommends for its accomplishment — one must recognize and adulate the Jewish race of Jesus. Implicit in this directive is the idea that, although you thought you knew Jesus as the God-Man who came to break down racial distinctions and bring all peoples together, you were actually missing something very important. You forgot that Jesus wasn't really like you. He was not just a carpenter, he was a 'Jewish Carpenter.' If you don't get to know him as a 'Jewish' carpenter, then you really don't know Jesus as well as you think you do. Never mind that prior to this seder service you just met Jesus in Body, Blood, Soul and Divinity in the Eucharist. Since the Mass didn't emphasize Jesus' 'Jewish' Body, Blood, Soul and Divinity, you really didn't get as close as you could, so the seder meal is now going to supplement the inadequacy and show you the real Jesus.
What comes next follows naturally. Once you accept that Jesus' Jewish race is very important and cannot be ignored without detriment to His person and your relationship to Him, the next step is this: in order to accept the Jewishness of Jesus one must practice the same Jewish rites and festivals as He did! After all, don't you want to imitate whatever Jesus did? Sounds logical, does it not? Yes, of course it does. But eating of the forbidden fruit sounded logical to Eve. The devil made Eve believe, by an apparent logical deduction, that God was holding back on her and did not want her to share in his divine blessings. Likewise, suggesting to someone that they can get 'closer' to Jesus by adulating the Jewish race and by practicing Jewish rituals is a big lie. Jesus' Jewishness has nothing whatsoever to do with getting closer to Jesus. In fact, adulating his Jewish origin for the sake of worship and practicing Jewish rituals that are now obsolete will actually make you grow farther away from Jesus than grow closer to him, just as eating the forbidden fruit led Adam and Eve.
Ask yourself this important question, dear Catholic: Did Jesus ever tell us that the way we grow closer to Him is by accepting and adulating his Jewish race? Not once. Did St. Paul or any other New Testament writer ever tell us that we can grow closer to Jesus if we honor him as a member of the Jewish race? Not once. The only time Scripture emphasizes Jesus' Jewish origins is for the purpose of verifying that he came from the seed of David, and is thus the fulfillment of Old Testament prophecy (cf. Romans 1:1-5). That's all.
If anything, both Jesus and the New Testament seek to break down racial distinctives between Jew and Gentile (cf. Gal 3:28-29; 4:10-11; 5:1-4; Col 2:16; Eph 2:11-16; Heb 7:18; 8:1-13; 10:9; 2Cor 3:6-14). To emphasize that Jesus was not merely a carpenter but was a "Jewish" carpenter, and that because of this we can only grow closer to Jesus if we take on the identity markers of Jewish tradition, is little more than Jewish racism disguised in religious garb. It may seem holy and innocuous on the outside, but inside it is full of racism and deception.
The Catholic Church, for two thousand years, has been very clear about the status of Jewish rites and feasts. The Council of Florence declared:
All, therefore, who after that time observe circumcision and the Sabbath and the other requirements of the law, it declares alien to the Christian faith and not in the least fit to participate in eternal salvation, unless someday they recover from these errors. Denzinger 712.
Likewise, Thomas Aquinas stated:
I answer that...just as it would be a mortal sin now for anyone, in making a profession of faith, to say that Christ is yet to be born, which the fathers of old said devoutly and truthfully; so too it would be a mortal sin now to observe those ceremonies which the fathers of old fulfilled with devotion and fidelity (Summa Theologica, I, II, Q. 103, Art. 4).
Again, ask yourself the all-important question: Does official Catholic Church doctrine teach its members to practice Jewish rites and festivals? The answer is a resounding no. There was no provision to practice Jewish rituals even if someone claimed that the rituals were now 'Christianized,' much less under the guise that they would bring someone 'closer' to Jesus. No Catholic should be engaging in any new practice without express written approval from the Vatican.
For that matter, we don't even know for certain that Jesus and the Apostles had a seder meal at the Last Supper. It is just assumed to be the case simply because Jesus and the Apostles were Jewish and the Evangelists spoke of them wanting to celebrate the Passover. All we know for certain is that they had the Last Supper and that Jesus shared consecrated elements with the Apostles. In actuality, there is a distinct indication that the Jewish seder meal was deliberately by-passed at the Last Supper in favor of a new and better celebration under New Covenant parameters, the same parameters that St. Paul assures us he continued in the churches, without deviation, as he modeled what Jesus did on Holy Thursday (1 Cor 11:23-34). Even the Greek words chosen by the Evangelists show us this change in direction for the Church, although that is too technical a topic for this essay.
Don't be deceived, dear brothers and sisters, especially during this very holy time of our Easter celebration.
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Dear Friends,
Unfortunately, neither Mr. Sungenis nor Dr. Suter [M. Abbott note: I have not included the e-mails of Dr. Edgar Suter, to whom Lamb is referring, because it would be too much material for one column. Suter's position supports that of Sungenis.] have indicated in their emails any desire to know the truth when it comes to the meal we had on Holy Thursday evening after the Holy Sacrifice of the Mass. Dr. Suter does not inquire about the prayers and readings at the meal. Rather he takes the invitation that mentions one small part and concludes that it was a Jewish Seder meal. The empirical evidence for those who were present clearly contradicts his and Sungenis biased assertions. No Jewish Seder meal would have the following:
'So we ought to thank God for and praise him for all his goodness to us. As God delivered his people from slavery in Egypt through the blood of the Paschal lamb, so he has set us free from slavery to Satan, sin, and death by the precious Blood of His Son.'
'Jesus told us that John the Baptist was the 'Elijah' for whom God's people stood waiting....we ask [Elijah and John the Baptist] to pray for the Jews, that they may come to faith in Christ their Savior.'
'It was most probably at this moment that Christ took bread and blessed and broke it and gave it to His disciples, saying: 'This is my Body, which is given for you.' Then the reading of the text of the Gospel of Luke 22:14-23
'Commemoration of the Agony and Praise for the Eucharist. Leader: Before leaving it is fitting for all to recall this night the agony and arrest of Our Lord in the Garden of Gethsemane. The reader reads the Gospel of Matthew 26:31-56.'
The meal then closes with all singing the Pange Lingua. As I mentioned, many went from the meal to Eucharistic adoration.
But neither Sungenis nor Suter are bothered with the empirical evidence, nor do they ask for any before hurling charges of mortal sin.
I wonder if either know Latin. The Council of Florence uses the phrase that Suter quotes in the context of circumcision: 'Omnibus igitur, qui Christiano nomine gloriantur, praecipit omnino, quocunque tempore, vel ante vel post baptismum, a circumcisione cessandum; quoniam sive quis in ea spem ponat, sive non, sine interitu salutis aeternae observari omnino non potest.' The 'in ea' refers to circumcision. Moreover, most sound theologians faithful to the Magisterium indicate that this prohibition against circumcision is in the context of the Jacobites, and are within the previous sentence I quoted regarding the errors of seeing any ceremonial rites or prayers as necessary for salvation. As a colleague pointed out: 'Due to controversies with the Jacobites, the practice of circumcision could offer scandal to the weak even if those circumcising meant no harm; and those who did in fact place hope in circumcision could hide their true motive in observing the ceremony. A blanket command to cease takes care of these sorts of problems. Since that situation no longer pertains, and since the magisterium has never since that time indicated that the command is still in force, it seems most reasonable to say that the command has lapsed. The Church no longer forbids circumcision under pain of eternal damnation.' Indeed, that would be strange indeed as many today are performed as part of a medical trend. In any event, I can assure all that no circumcisions were performed during the Holy Thursday meal.
As for Thomas Aquinas, it is clear from the Latin text of I-II, 103, 4c that I quoted in full that the second phrase depends upon the first because of the 'ita etiam': Sicut igitur peccaret mortaliter qui nunc, suam fidem protestando, diceret Christum nasciturum, quod antiqui pie et veraciter dicebant; ita etiam peccaret mortaliter, si quis nunc caeremonias observaret, quas antiqui pie et fideliter observabant. Of course, the Holy Thursday meal was not such a ceremonial rite.
I commend Mr. Sungenis and Dr. Suter to our prayers. As I wrote, it worries me that their vigilantism is tinged with a crypto-Marcionism.
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Dear Ave Maria Students and Faculty,
Praise to Jesus Christ for his resurrection! I wish I could write to you on a more positive note this Easter season, but alas, Father Lamb does not make that possible. If Father Lamb insists on exonerating himself by inventing a distinction between a Jewish seder and what he calls a 'Catholic seder,' the least he could do before he perpetrates this novelty on a Catholic university is obtain approval from the Vatican. If anyone is practicing 'vigilantism' (the accusation Father Lamb used against me and Dr. Suter), it is someone who introduces novel practices into the Church without getting Church approval, for that is the definition of a vigilante.
Unfortunately, Father Lamb also seeks to marginalize faithful Catholics by accusing them of 'crypto-Marcionism,' but Marcion wasn't opposed for his desire to rid the Church of Jewish infiltration, but for his ideas that merged Greek philosophy and Christianity. Along these lines, perhaps Father Lamb would also call St. Athanasius a 'vigilante' and a 'crypto-Marcion' simply because he stood alone in trying to uphold Catholic doctrine in the face of hordes of heretics, many of them bishops and priests, who wanted to change Catholic doctrine.
As for the Council of Florence, Father Lamb already bound himself to its instruction by claiming in his first letter that the council was only prohibiting the practice of Old Testament rituals if one tried to use them for salvific purposes. At that time, Father Lamb wasn't claiming that there was a distinction between a Jewish seder and a Catholic seder. He already admitted at that time that his version of the seder was borrowing from the Jewish model, but that this borrowing was allowed because the Council of Florence wasn't concerned about such borrowing just as long as Father Lamb didn't use it for salvation.
But since we have shown him that his premise was wrong and that the council did not teach that Old Testament rituals could be practiced for even non-salvific reasons, Father Lamb subsequently changed his reasoning and now claims that the council doesn't affect him because there is a 'difference between a Jewish seder and a Catholic seder.' His inconsistency speaks for itself. On his second attempt to justify his actions, all we need ask is: where has the Catholic Church ever taught or even used the terminology 'Catholic seder' as a justification to mix and match Jewish rituals with Catholic doctrine? The answer is: nowhere. That is a simply fact of history. As such, if anyone is assuming the role of 'vigilante' and 'Marcionism,' it is Father Lamb.
Considering Pope Benedict XVI's recent solemn words in Ex Quo Primum 61: 'The first consideration is that the ceremonies of the Mosaic law were abrogated by the coming of Christ and they can no longer be observed without sin after the promulgation of the Gospel,' don't you think that Father Lamb should give it top priority to obtain the Vatican's approval on his novel approach to Old Testament rituals before he makes it a practice for a Catholic university?
Think about it, my dear Catholic brothers and sisters.
See the Catholic League's April 11, 2007 news release here.
© Matt C. Abbott
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