Showing posts with label Judaism. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Judaism. Show all posts

Thursday, November 23, 2023

A Protestant Country. It's history, and what it means.


One of the blogs that's linked into the right on this site recently had this item:

The Declaration of Independence Founded a Theistic Republic

I should note, if you look at the items linked in on this site, over on the right, in the general interest category, there are things from the right and the left.  If you only looked at some of my posts,  you would assume that I'm a flaming liberal, maybe even a progressive.  If you look at others, you'd assume I'm a conservative (you wouldn't assume I'm a populist, and I'm not).  That probably means that I'm something else entirely, and indeed my views span right and left.  

A full reader of this blog would know that I'm a Catholic, however.

One thing that I think is obvious to serious observant Catholics, and likely observant Orthodox, is that this is a Protestant Country.  It really is. That's different from a "Christian Country".  It's Protestant. Even people who like to spout off that this country doesn't have a religious founding of some sort are, actually, some sort of cultural Protestant, by and large.  It's pretty obvious if you are a dedicated member of one of the minority religions, Catholic, Orthodox, Jewish, Muslim, etc.  As Protestants live in a Protestant culture, they don't realize that the culture is Protestant.  Indeed, one of the charming things about Americans in general is the belief that everyone all over the globe thinks just like we do.

To take it a step further, quite a few sort of adherent members of other faiths, or maybe just not really well-informed members of other faiths, are heavily Protestantized.  So you'll find Catholics that have heavily Protestant views, for example.

The deeply Protestant culture of the country impacts almost everything about it, from our economics to our foreign policy.  It may not be at all evident to average people, but an example of that can be found in the country's overall reaction to the two major ongoing wars being fought right now.

I've supported, as people here would note, the Israeli war against Hamas, which Hamas started.  But to be brutally honest, a lot of American support for Israel comes from two sources.  One is the country's Jewish population, which is actually quite small, but which has been historically influential since some point in the mid 20th Century. The other is due to Evangelical Christians who see the creation of the Jewish state in 1948 as a fulfillment of a promise in the book of Revelation, although they aren't the only Christian's, or perhaps individual Christians, to see that, that way.  Evangelical Christians, however, tend to see Israel in absolutist terms and many see supporting Israel as a way to directly bring about the Second Coming.  For its part, the Israeli government, which actually tends to be highly secular, has worked that pretty heavily over the years.

Catholics and the Orthodox have a much more nuanced view of this topic, however, as their relationship with the region goes all the way back.  Apostolic Christians were present in the region since day one.  Early on, Apostolic Christianity won many converts of the Jews in the region, but also of Arabs and other regional populations.  Christianity, and by that we mean Apostolic Christianity, largely converted the entire region before the Arab conquests of the 5th and 6th Century brought in Islam, but even then huge populations of Christians, and again we mean Apostolic Christians, as that is all that there were, remained.  What Protestants, not Apostolic Christians, termed the Crusade when they began to falsify history came about originally to try to protect the pilgrimage routes to the very region that is now being fought over.  At least up until fairly recently, 10% of the Palestinian population remained Catholic, and to the north, Lebanon was, up until fairly recently, predominately so.  Large populations of Orthodox Christians were also to be found.  Israel, in its relationship with out of the region Christians, however, reaches out mostly to Evangelical Christians who are pretty much completely foreign to the region.

The English Colonies were of course colonized by residents of Great Britain, who were, at the time they began to do that, Protestants.  They were not all members of the Church of England or the Church of Scotland, however, and that very much has its ongoing impact today.  Dissenters from the Protestant state churches, such as the "Pilgrims", took refuge in North America from whichever Protestant church was in control at the time, which was usually the Anglican Church in England, and the Presbyterian Church of Scotland in Scotland.  Immigrants from minority Protestant faiths didn't tend to have a concept of extending religious liberty in the New World, but rather escaping oppression for their minority views in the Old.  Once in North America, they tended to be just as intolerant as the established churches they had escaped from.  The one thing they could all agree on, however, is that they hated Catholics.

That was in large part because the English Protestant churches of all types had to rely on myths to justify their existence. The Church of England hadn't even really intended to separate long from the Catholic Church at first, but once things got rolling, it was hard to go back.  This was for a variety of reasons, and to at least some degree the Church of England remains uncomfortable with its separation.  It's made several attempts towards reversing it, and some significant sections of it basically pretend it didn't occur to a certain degree.  But an early feature of it was an attempt to justify what it had done, which it never really came up with a good thesis for.  Part of that simply devolved to creating a mythical history of Medieval Catholicism, a different approach than that taken by the norther European principalities that followed Luther, who also didn't mean to really separate at first.

Over time, the mythical history of the Medieval Church that the English created passed away in the UK itself.  Brave Catholic remnants hung on, and the fact that Ireland was part of the United Kingdom always meant that the fables had objections to them.  But in the English colonial experiments in North America, this was largely untrue.  Immigrants to the colonies were overwhelmingly Protestant, if in some areas not overwhelmingly Anglican.  Fables developed during the Reformation were carried over and instituted into the telling of American history and into American culture, which is why even now students at higher levels will hear stories of bloody Inquisitions and naked aggression in the Middle East that are simply untrue.

Part of the fable is that the country has always been supportive of "freedom of religion" and even that this is enshrined in the Constitution.  It isn't, and it hasn't been.  

At the time of the Revolution, almost all American colonist were Protestants.  Certainly exceptions existed, but Catholics were a distinct minority and members of other religions, such as Judaism, were nearly non-existent.  A significant exception had been Africans brought over as slaves prior to the 1700s, but during the 1700s they largely converted to Protestant faiths, reflecting the religion of where they were held, although often not the same varieties, exactly, of Protestantism of those who held them in bondage.  Certainly slaves when first brought over, which was still occurring at the time of the Revolution irrespective of its illegality, were members of African animist religions by and large. About 1/3d were Muslim, however, and a few were Catholic.  In terms of cultural myth, this is interesting in that it's commonly forgotten that most African slaves were animists at the time of their enslavement and also that the common excuse at the time that they would be introduced to Christianity actually wasn't true for all of them, some already being Christians.  Be all of that as it may, the legacy of pre enslavement religions dissipated relatively rapidly, although some remnant of it remains even today in terms of folk beliefs.1 

In 1776 when the nation rebelled against its Anglican monarch, King George III, most of the rebellious leaders in the Continental Congress were solidly Protestant.  Indeed, one of the Intolerable Acts they passed as causi belli was the Quebec Act, which allowed the Québécois to remain Catholic, which says volumes about just how anti-Catholic the country was.  A popular myth had developed that the founders of the republic and its constitution were largely non-Christian theists, but it's largely baloney.   The article linked in above sort of adopts that view, without really fully expressing it, in order to avoid, most likely, that the Founders founded a Christian nation, or a Protestant one.

That aside, they certainly did found a theistic republic, and their early thoughts and documents are shot through with it.  Nearly all of them, if not in fact all of them, believed in "natural law" which, as the article notes shows up in the Declaration of Independence, which states:

The unanimous Declaration of the thirteen united States of America, When in the Course of human events, it becomes necessary for one people to dissolve the political bands which have connected them with another, and to assume among the powers of the earth, the separate and equal station to which the Laws of Nature and of Nature's God entitle them, a decent respect to the opinions of mankind requires that they should declare the causes which impel them to the separation.

And it goes on from there.

Okay, well so what?

Part of this is just historical.  It's important to be accurate about a nation's history, and frankly the country was founded as a Protestant republic in which everyone, almost, was a Protestant.  That was its culture, and to an enormous degree, it remains its culture today.  Countries always have a culture, and beyond that, they deserve one.


But (and there's always a but), this also raises some important cultural, let alone, religious topics.

As to Protestants, one thing to keep in mind that while various Protestant denominations made up the majority of practice for Americans, there was not one single Protestant church and as the nation grew, this very much became the case. At the time of the  Revolution, it would have been highly likely that almost everyone in a community in which any one person lived was the same type of Protestant.  In Appalachians regions, for example, most were some type of Protestant.  In New England, most were (although not all0 were likely Anglicans.  There were Quakers and other sects of course, but people largely lived in a community in which everyone was a member of that sect, unless you were of a distinct minority community like Catholics and Jews.

As the country expanded, however, this began to change, a fact aided by the separation from the United Kingdom which now meant that immigrants from Norther Europe in general, rather than Great Britain in particular, were widely accepted..  European Protestant faiths that had not been in the country in large numbers began to come in, with no real opposition to that.  Lutherans became very common in areas with large communities of Germans.  Various Anabaptist groups, always present, likewise expanded and became very influential in some regions of the country, particularly the American South.

And into this distinctly American brands of Protestantism developed, something that Americans seem particularly ignorant of today.  The "village preacher" or the church that was only loosely affiliated with a denomination became common.

Gather at the River in eight different John Ford films.  Ford was a devout Catholic, and obviously saw this song as emblematic of American, and Protestant, Christianity.  I've heard it in a Catholic Mass exactly once, in Pennsylvania.

This in fact became a feature of American life.  Well into the 1980s, of course, most American towns were heavily represented by a wide variety of American Protestant churches, but almost all of them had what is now called  "non-denominational" church headed up by a pastor who likely also worked five days out of seven in something else.  That figure became such an iconic American that such pastors are portrayed again and again in American films, such as those noted above, but even in much more recent ones.

The fact that American Christianity became sufficiently separate from European Christianity mean that a sort of do it yourself Christianity took particularly strong root in the US, and also in Canada, in a way that it didn't elsewhere.  Those who separated, for example, from the Russian Orthodox Church in Imperial Russia tended to become Old Believers, or even Catholics, although populations of refugee Anabaptists came into the country as well.  You don't find big populations of minority in Protestant religions anywhere else, however, in North America, save for areas that American Protestants have sought to proselytize in, some of which are areas that are already heavily Catholic or Orthodox.  Unique nearly wholly American strains of Protestantism, or religions that came out of Christianity, developed.

As this occured, it had an impact on the culture noted above, and still very much does.  Demographers have wondered about the rise of the "nones", but in fact they've always been there.  Rank and file Protestants have often not worried much about pew hopping.  People baptized in a Baptist Church will go to an Assemblies of God Church, and not think much about it.  Beyond that, a fairly large group of Americans feels that they are really God-fearing Christians, even though they very rarely go to Church.  I've heard people who never darken the door of a church save for a funeral or wedding discuss in earnest terms how the country needs to turn back to its Christian values, and in fairness, some do in fact practice Christian virtues fairly notably.

As the same time, however, people who claim this sort of loose ill-defined American Christianity often have completely jettisoned huge tenants of actual Christianity.  People will live together without being married or otherwise engage in conduct that any conventional strain of Christianity regards as gravely sinful.  Divorce, specifically prohibited by Christ, is widely practiced by American Protestants who don't give it a second thought.  In some ways, the easy practice of the very loose American Protestantism ranges from religion made very, very easy, to those denominations which have very strict rules that never actually appear in the New Testament, or Old, at all.

The Pine Tree Flag, one of the flags used by American revolutionaries during the war for independence.  People can say what they like, but a rebel army flying a flag like this is not battling for a secular republic.  Currently, this flag is associated with a group of far right wing Evangelicals of the New Apostolic Reformation who are inaccurately defined as Christian Nationalist, but who do share significant amounts of their goals including the restoration or imposition of a Christian, by which they really mean Evangelical Protestant superstructure on the country. 

Into this mix, however, we now have the New Apostolic Reformation, a Protestant movement that is confused by commentators with Christian Nationalism and even sometimes confused at to its American Protestant status.

The New Apostolic Reformation comes out of that branch of American Protestantism that has the concept that the United States itself has a particular Devine mission.  This sort of thinking has roots in American Protestantism that go fairly far back in the 19th Century, and it still is particularly strong in some branches of non-mainline, if that is a word, Protestantism, and also in Great Awakening religions that came out of Protestantism.  The followers of such thoughts tend to believe, for example, that certain figures (often George Washington) were charged by a Devine mission at the time of the Revolution, and also tend to believe that the U.S. Constitution was divinely inspired.  You can find such thoughts today amongst various American Protestant religions outside of those which have retained strongly European roots, and also, as noted, as offshoots from Christianity.  For example, you will sometimes hear the words common to the belief quoted by some Mormons, although it is not a tenant of the Mormon faith itself.

It was partially this line of thought that gave rise to the Manifest Destiny belief that many Americans held in the 19th Century, but it carried on until the 20th Century. Consider, for example, this 1900 statement after the US had taken the Philippines during the Spanish American War:
Mr. President, the times call for candor. The Philippines are ours forever, "territory belonging to the United States," as the Constitrltion calls them. And just beyond the Philippines are China's illimitable markets. We will not retreat from either. We will not repudiate our duty in the archipelago. We will not abandon our opportunity in the Orient. We will not renounce our part in the mission of our race, trustee, under God, of the civilization of the world. And we will move forward to our work, not howling out regrets like slaves whipped to their burdens, but with gratitude for a task worthy of our strength, and thanksgiving to Almighty God that He has marked us as His chosen people, henceforth to lead in the regeneration of the world.
* * *
Mr. President, this question is deeper than any question of party politics: deeper than any question of the isolated policy of our country even; deeper even than any question of constitutional power. It is elemental. It is racial. God has not been preparing the English-speaking and Teutonic peoples for a thousand years for nothing hut vain and idle self-contemplation and self-admiration. No! He has made us the master organizers of the world to establish system where chaos reigns. He has given its the spirit of progress to overwhelm the forces of reaction throughout the earth. He has made us adepts in government that we may administer government among savage and senile peoples. Were it not for such a force as this the world would relapse into barbarism and night. And of all our race He has marked the American people as His chosen nation to finally lead in the regeneration of the world. This is the divine mission of America, and it holds for us all the profit, all the glory, all the happiness possible to man. We are trustees of the world's progress, guardians of its righteous peace. The judgment of the Master is upon us: "Ye have been faithful over a few things; I will make you ruler over many thing."
From Congressional Record(56th Cong., 1st Session) Vol XXXIII, pp.705, 711.

The concept of the US as a New Testament "chosen people" remains surprisingly strong in some quarters of American Protestantism.

The New Apostolic Reformation, faced with a United States of the early 21st Century in which the openly strong Protestant connections are now highly muted in many places, have taken this one step further than most did in the past and openly seek to establish a new wing of Protestantism which advocates for the "restoration" of perceived "lost offices" of what they conceive to have been, inaccurately, in the early Church, such as prophet and apostle. There were indeed, of course, prophets in Judaism.  And there were apostles during the Apostolic Age.  Indeed, as a distinctly Protestant movement, it ironically fails to grasp that the Catholic and Orthodox Churches are true Apostolic Churches, and they were founded by the apostles.  Restoring the "office" of apostle is not possible, as the Apostolic Age is over and Apostolic revelation fixed, something acknowledged not only by the Apostolic Churches, but also those churches of the Protestant Reformation which arose during the Reformation, the latter of which differ on that point from the Apostolic Churches only in regard to their relationship to the Apostles.

The NAR has been particularly associated with current strains of Trumpist populism, and in a vague sort of way helps to explain what is going on.  As American Protestantism outside the mainline Protestant churches has always had sort of a "do it yourself" aspect to it, it's free to conceive of a mission like the NAR's while also free to ignore vast tracks of actual Christian doctrine.  Looked at that way, the NAR doesn't, at least for the time being, need to worry itself about divorce and remarriage as antithetical to Christianity, or even the requirement that Christians be their brother's keeper.  Rather, the thought is, that is, by some, that political success can be achieved, after which a society modeled in their view of Christianity can be imposed from the top down.

In this fashion, the life of a figure like Donald Trump can be flat out ignored in pursuit of what is imagined to be a greater goal, which is distinctly different from the view of some other Christians that they must vote for Trump as they have no other moral choice.  Looked at this way, Trump becomes some sort of latter day Cyrus the Great, a non congregant being used by God to achieve a greater goal.  It's a radical belief, but it is out there.

Speaker of the House Johnson flies the Pine Tree flag outside of his Congressional office.


The flag of Vatican City.  This flag can occasionally be found in Catholic Churches.  I can recall at one time a point at which American flags, which also occasionally could be found in Catholic Churches in the US, were removed.

An oddity in the US is that the largest single religion in the United States is a minority religion, that being Catholicism.  Most Americans are Protestants, but the single biggest faith is the Catholic faith.  And contrary to what some like to suggest, not only are Catholic numbers holding their own, but they're growing.  At the same time this is occurring, moreover, the second "lung" of the Church, Orthodoxy, is expanding as well.  

Because this is such a Protestant country in culture and outlook, one of the things about at least a lot of Catholics in the US is that they were heavily Protestantized, something that really took off once JFK told the country he could be a Catholic on Sundays, but the country didn't really need to worry about that for the rest of the week. A disaster for Catholics, Catholics rushed to acclimate and went from being seen as vaguely strange and threatening to the rest of the country to being just one denomination. At the same time that this occured, actual reforms in the Church, combined with the "Spirit of Vatican Two" in fact made Catholics seem that way to many "main line" Protestants and also to many rank and file Catholics.  Many distinctly Catholic practices that had deeply inserted themselves into Catholic culture disappeared.  Catholics Masses were now in English (most places) or Spanish in some.  Catholics no longer were bound to eating fish as a penitential observance on Fridays outside of Lent.  Distinctive female head coverings started to disappear (prior to Vatican II, we'd note).  Unique accordance of respect in a formal way towards Priests ended.  A fairly uniform Catholic education ended (one that I hadn't participated in, nor had my father).  A weak 1970 Catechetical set of instruction came in, leading to an entire generation, of which I am part, hardly knowing the ins and outs of their Faith by the time they passed through it.

By the 80s and 90s, members of the Church who would never have thought of marrying in a Protestant Church or church shopping were doing so. Divorce and remarriage, something long common in the Protestant churches, also came in.

In some ways, it's now easy, retrospectively, to see how this came about.  A lot of this was due to what might be regarded as cultural shell shock, or as one sociologist put it in a different context, "future shock".  A generally disdained people for the most part, in much of the country Catholics kept to themselves and lived in "Catholic Ghettos" where their cultural uniqueness wasn't open to the rest of the world up through the middle of the 20th Century. This was never wholly the case, of course, and there were always notable converts to Catholics who were out in the world.  In the West, which always tended to break down distinctions, this was much less the case once people were outside of big cities, like Denver and Salt Lake.  

Still, in that time period, most Catholics were also blue collar workers and very few, save for some in certain professional occupations, had attended university.  Those that did often tried to attend a Catholic university, which in those days were really Catholic.  So, in much of the country they worked blue collar jobs, if they were professional their clientele was Catholic as a rule, and they tended to live in Catholic Communities. This was true for the Orthodox as well.  And it was also true for Jews.  Indeed, in some ways, the overall situation of these communities resembled that of African Americans, all of whom were disdained by the Ku Klux Klan and other nativists. 

World War Two started to massively erode this.  For the first time large numbers of Catholics attended university and after the war, for the same reason, this continued on due to the GI Bill.  The walls of the Catholic (and Orthodox) Ghettos began to come down.  Vatican II came along and made institutional changes in the church. Separately, the Vatican change the liturgy to its current form, a definite improvement, and provided that it could be said in the vernacular.  Bishops and Priests who assumed a certain directly from this began to expand on it, and a Catholic President came in and told Americans that Catholics were just like everyone else, something a lot of Americans rapidly embraced. Similar developments happened north of the border where the Church itself started the process of dismantling institutional control of large areas of Quebec society, which in turn developed into the Quiet Revolution.

Looking back now, lots of younger Catholics wonder why their grandparents allowed so much to erode.  Why did they allow the incidents of Catholic culture to fade? Why did they put up with taking out the altar rails?  Why wasn't some Latin retained?  Why did the parishioners not balk when the Bishops lift year around penitential meatless Fridays?  The shock of it all seems like a likely answer.  Having gone from heavily Irish, or German, or Italian communities and practicing a religion that practically had its own language, and that meaning that your future in the larger, Protestant, American society was at least partially laid out for you, and limited, to one in which they were told that they were fully part of the larger consumerist limitless American society where the rules only loosely applied, and then having part of the old culture simply destroyed, they were shell shocked.

But, in application of Yeoman's First Law of Behavior and Third Law of History, they've gotten over it now.


We've discussed this a lot recently, but at this point, it seems pretty clear that something is going on, and maybe even clear what it is.  One big thing is that we Catholics are different after all.

Try as the American Church of hte 70s might, the fact of the matter is that CAtholic's remain stubbornly subject to the letter to Diogentus:
Christians are indistinguishable from other men either by nationality, language or customs. They do not inhabit separate cities of their own, or speak a strange dialect, or follow some outlandish way of life. Their teaching is not based upon reveries inspired by the curiosity of men. Unlike some other people, they champion no purely human doctrine. With regard to dress, food and manner of life in general, they follow the customs of whatever city they happen to be living in, whether it is Greek or foreign. 

And yet there is something extraordinary about their lives. They live in their own countries as though they were only passing through. They play their full role as citizens, but labor under all the disabilities of aliens. Any country can be their homeland, but for them their homeland, wherever it may be, is a foreign country. Like others, they marry and have children, but they do not expose them. They share their meals, but not their wives.  

They live in the flesh, but they are not governed by the desires of the flesh. They pass their days upon earth, but they are citizens of heaven. Obedient to the laws, they yet live on a level that transcends the law. Christians love all men, but all men persecute them. Condemned because they are not understood, they are put to death, but raised to life again. They live in poverty, but enrich many; they are totally destitute, but possess an abundance of everything. They suffer dishonor, but that is their glory. They are defamed, but vindicated. A blessing is their answer to abuse, deference their response to insult. For the good they do they receive the punishment of malefactors, but even then they, rejoice, as though receiving the gift of life. They are attacked by the Jews as aliens, they are persecuted by the Greeks, yet no one can explain the reason for this hatred. 

To speak in general terms, we may say that the Christian is to the world what the soul is to the body. As the soul is present in every part of the body, while remaining distinct from it, so Christians are found in all the cities of the world, but cannot be identified with the world. As the visible body contains the invisible soul, so Christians are seen living in the world, but their religious life remains unseen. The body hates the soul and wars against it, not because of any injury the soul has done it, but because of the restriction the soul places on its pleasures. Similarly, the world hates the Christians, not because they have done it any wrong, but because they are opposed to its enjoyments. 

Christians love those who hate them just as the soul loves the body and all its members despite the body's hatred. It is by the soul, enclosed within the body, that the body is held together, and similarly, it is by the Christians, detained in the world as in a prison, that the world is held together. The soul, though immortal, has a mortal dwelling place; and Christians also live for a time amidst perishable things, while awaiting the freedom from change and decay that will be theirs in heaven. As the soul benefits from the deprivation of food and drink, so Christians flourish under persecution. Such is the Christian’s lofty and divinely appointed function, from which he is not permitted to excuse himself.  

In other words, Catholics that came up after the 80s looked at what the World had given to accommodating Catholics of the late 60s, 70s, and 80s, and found it wholly wanting.  Like topics, we're otherwise writing on in slow motion, tradition, which turns out to be grounded in something real, and there's an effort to take it back. As that's being done, it's the case that the reforms that came in are being rejected, sometimes a little, sometimes a lot.

Trad girls in conservative skirts and wearing chapel veils, young men fairly conservatively dressed, parishioners attempting to secure Latin Masses, or going to Easter Rite Devine Liturgy, aren't seeking to reform the reform, which up until recently was the vanguard of a return to tradition. They're seeking to wholesale bring the incidents of Catholicism back in.  In doing that, they're making it plain that they're not just another denomination, and they don't want to really be part of the American religious scene.  Whether they're applying the Benedict Option or the Constantine one, they're not only not melting in, they're returning to wholesale different.  And that different doesn't look back to 1776, it looks all the way back.

So why does any of this matter?

Cyrus the Great.  Some far right Evangelicals tend to see Trump as a sort of Cyrus figure.  Cyrus was not Jewish, but his proclimations favored the Jewish faith in an existential sense.

Now in the first year of Cyrus king of Persia, that the word of the LORD by the mouth of Jeremiah might be accomplished, the LORD stirred up the spirit of Cyrus king of Persia, that he made a proclamation throughout all his kingdom, and put it also in writing, saying: 'Thus saith Cyrus king of Persia: All the kingdoms of the earth hath the LORD, the God of heaven, given me; and He hath charged me to build Him a house in Jerusalem, which is in Judah. Whosoever there is among you of all His people—his God be with him—let him go up to Jerusalem, which is in Judah, and build the house of the LORD, the God of Israel, He is the God who is in Jerusalem. And whosoever is left, in any place where he sojourneth, let the men of his place help him with silver, and with gold, and with goods, and with beasts, beside the freewill-offering for the house of God which is in Jerusalem.'

 Ezra 1:1–4

Well, it does, for a variety of reasons, some mild, and some a bit scary.

One thing is this.  It used to be particularly noted by some that the English-speaking world was particularly given to democracy, which it was.  Those with a limited horizon tended to associate this solely with the United States, but that was in fact extremely inaccurate.  The United Kingdom had a functioning parliament in 1776 when we abandoned the UK's overlordship, and in fact that is part of the reason that we did that. They had a Parliament, and they weren't letting us in.

A person can say what they want about that and try to disassociate it somehow from something particularly English, but it is there.  France, in 1776, wasn't democratic. Spain wasn't either.  You can't really find another major power that was.  And all of England's progeny took this path for a long time.  Canada never had a non-democratic moment.  Nor did New Zealand, or Australia.

Now, English democracy was not perfect, and the franchise was not even particularly large.  Major classes were completely excluded based on economic, and also in the case of Catholics, religion.  But it was there and that heritage was conveyed.  Moreover, when it took root in North America, it expanded beyond what it had been in the UK pretty rapidly.

Which leads us to a more radical proposition.

What was also conveyed early on was a certain culture, and part of that was a political culture. The overall culture, however, was Protestant.  And it remains so.  It's so Protestant that even the atheists are culturally Protestant.

An essential element of that American Protestantism is the concept of "I can make up my mind for myself and nobody can tell me what to do".  Lots of religious "reformers" in the US have done that, but that's a Protestant thing.  To Protestants, it's not strange to hop from one Protestant denomination to another, and to even include denominations that claim to have no denomination, even though the they do.  Catholics and Jews, on the other hand, are part of one, big, global, faith.  Moving from parish to parish, for Catholics, is no big deal, as Catholicism is the Church.  But going to another denomination is an extraordinarily radical move and an act of rebellion.

Democracy, of course, as a movement has spread well beyond the English-speaking world and indeed, there were democracies that spring up in various places in the non Protestant world, as for in example Italian city states.  Antiquarians will point out the example of ancient Athens, or even Germanic and Nordic raiding bands.  On the last item, all people are democratic at the tribal level, pretty much.  None of this really counters the point, however.

This brings us to the next reason this is important.  The most recent movement, which is threading through American Evangelicalism, is radically exclusionary in a way, and this too is part of the North American religious heritage.

It wasn't until after the Civil War that American society really started to view Catholics as suitable citizens,a and then only reluctantly. The huge Irish and German immigrant populations that fought in the war made Catholics impossible to really ignore.  Jewish Americans were really small in number, but they started to be accepted, very reluctantly, about the same time.  As this occured the word "Judeo-Christian" was invented to include everyone then in the country in a singular larger American Christian sort of world.  But the fact remains that hostility towards both religions, and more recently Islam, has been an ongoing feature of American life.

Catholics, and if there are any, Jews and Muslims (the latter two unlikely in any numbers) flirting with the new concepts of Christian Nationalism and National Conservatism really need to do so at their caution.  The New Apostolic Reformation forces may have a similar view on moral matters as mainstream and conservative Catholics do, but the NAR is definitely not Catholic.  And the history for Americans of general of politics and religion being welded together, and indeed coopting each other, is not a comfortable one at all.  Put another way, Donald Trump is not a deeply religious, or even moral, man, and there's no real reason to believe that he's some sort of Cyrus the Great.

But some clearly see him that way, explaining their actions, and even some of the odd propoganda in the Trumpist camp.

None of this is to say that faith shouldn't inform a person's politics.  It should.  But they are not the same thing.

Footnotes:

1. Native Americans of course had their own religions, but what was different about their history, up until the early 20th Century, is that unless highly assimilated, they weren't "Americans" at all.  It wasn't until 1924, a date which our 100 year retrospective posts haven't even yet reached, that all Native Americans were granted U.S. citizenship.

Related Threads:

Christian Nationalism, National Conservatism and Southern Populism. Eh?

Tuesday, October 31, 2023

Some more Hamas Israeli War observations

1. What is "proportionality" in a war with an opponent that's genocidal?

So what, exactly, is proportional to people who will do that?

We keep hearing the response should be proportional, but proportional to what? 

How far does being proportional with homicidal forces go?

What it doesn't mean is that "you killed ten, so we get to kill ten."

What was proportional to the Holocaust, if that was the measure during World War Two?  It wasn't, of course, but was proportional to being invaded by the Nazis?

2.  Why should the response be proportional?

Mind you, I think it should, but I'm a Catholic.  Catholics developed the theory of just war. 

Most peoples don't have a theory of just war, although the Israeli's by Jewish tradition would, as the Old Testament at least tangentially discusses it.

Does Islam?  I have no idea.

Anyhow, when people say a war should be proportional, what they're implying is that the war should be fought as if it's being fought by Christians, which implies that the Christian world view is correct.  It's an entire package.  If you adopt just part of it, you reject all of it, which means, in the end, accepting that fighting war the old way is just fine.

Most non-Christian people, when they fight wars, don't worry about proportionality.  We instinctively know that. That's why we are horrified by the Germans in World War Two, but pretty much yawn about Japanese atrocities. And that's why were are justifiably horrified by My Lai in Vietnam, but don't really worry that much about the NVA in Hue.

It's probably also, at least partially, why we worry about what the IDF does in Gaza, but are pretty acceptable of Hamas being willing to kill everyone, pretty much in Israel.

We ought not to think that way.

3.  Why does Hamas get a pass with so many people and Israel does not?

What the root of that?

It's either anti-Semitism (which a lot of it is) or that we, ironically, hold Israel to a higher standard, which means that we hold Hamas to  a very low one.  We discussed that above.

The most disturbing part is that there remains a lot of people who really hate the Jews.  And it comes out, strangely, in the left in recent years, which is more closely associated with that demographic than the right. 

But perhaps we should not be surprised. The extreme left has always surfaced in the popular left, and since the early 20th Century it's always been genocidal.  It loved bloody Lenin, then Stalin, and so on. That it would love Hamas, in the same spirit that it loved the Reds, isn't really too surprising.

4.  Why do we keep saying that "Hamas doesn't represent the Palestinians?".  

There's no evidence of that, except that the last election in Gaza was quite a few years ago.  So we really don't know.  Hamas might represent the views of the majority of Palestinians.  What if that's true?

And why do the Palestinians uniquely get a pass this way.  People would shout down somebody stating that "most Germans weren't Nazi's".

Saturday, October 21, 2023

Wednesday, October 21, 1943. Indian declaration.


The Provisional Government of Azad Hind ("Free India") was declared with Subhas Chandra as president.  Its territory, such as it was, were those portions of Indian occupied by Japan.

It immediately declared it was entering the war on the Japanese side, an example of really not grasping the direction things were headed in, and in fact already well advanced towards.

On the same day, Japan began drafting high school and university students.

The Germans began liquidating the Minsk Ghetto as they were retreating from Belarus.

The RAF made a highly destructive raid on Kassel.

Algerian Jews, 140,000 in number were restored French citizenship, which had been restricted, along with the same for Algerian Arabs, on March 17, 1942 by Gen. Henri Giraud.  Arabs had to apply for restoration of their French citizenship.

Thursday, October 19, 2023

Proportionality.

Everyone has the right to defend themselves.  Even Pope Francis, who is on the rather liberal end of many things, agrees with this.


But what is proportional to an enemy who has vowed to murder the populace and demonstrated that intent with murdering babies?

And let us be honest.  The claim, "the majority of Palestinian people do not support Hamas" is pretty much equivalent to "most Germans weren't Nazi's", isn't it?  It's thin.  Indeed, maybe for those in the Middle East today, it has even less credibility.  Certainly here in the US, in spite of separation from the artificial boundaries of the legacy of the Ottoman Empire and the Great War, plenty of Palestinians and their first generation descendants have rallied to the bloody cause as so many Palestinians have in the past, demonstrating that lamenting the results of bad decisions seems to be an intergenerational habit.

Congressman Rashida Tlaib, who was quick to accuse the IDF of rocketing a Palestinian hospital that in fact Islamic Jihad, which would regard her as an abhorrent example of a woman who should be out of government, accidentally rocketed.

But does that matter?

And did it in 1945?

And let us be further honest. The concept of proportionality is a Christian one.  No other culture worries about it to the same extent that Christian ones do, and if it is now a global concept, it's' due in no small measure to Christianity.  Everyone protesting for proportionality does so in hopes that it reaches a Christian audience. The historical global norm, outside of Judaism and Christianity (and I'll confess ignorance on Islam), was for slaughter.

It's the Christian influence that's made it unacceptable.  For pagan people, and non-Abrahamic people?  Well, that was what was done.

So we are left, then, with what is proportionality?

Was destroying Berlin in 1945 proportional to the Nazi genocidal imperial regimes?  Or would it have been better to say, well, not all Germans were Nazis?  Or did that, with a threat like Nazism, not really matter that much?

Questions that have to be answered. And the namby pampy "let's condemn overreaction" have to answer them most of all.

Or does it?

Does staying a hand, display more strength than using it? Turn, as it were, the other cheek?

And can we, even with the descent into liberal secularism, which seems to solely involve what's under our Fruit of the Looms, avoid answering them, in real, bloody, terms, rather than platitudes?

I offer no solutions, or answers.

I'm only posing the questions.  With, of course, the proviso that if you answer wrong, there's blood on your hands, one away, or the other.

Wednesday, October 11, 2023

Hamas v. Israel. Some observations, and How did we get here?


Lex Anteinternet: Some additional observations on the Hamas v. Israe...: 1.  "Was this an American intelligence failure?" Why does the press keep asking this really stupid question?  Hamas didn't att...

Some additional observations, yet again.

It was inevitable that the war in Israel would spill over to the United States in terms of internal politics.  That this makes it different from every war since the Anglo Irish War, which also did, makes it unique. North America does have a fairly large Ukrainian ex pat population, and a fairly large population of descendants of Ukrainians, but they're largely out of view, and therefore out of mind. Because of that, people like Matt Gaetz can choose to suggest that we leave Ukrainians to the tender mercies of the Russians, but he can't say the same thing about Israel.

But we now also have a large immigrant Palestinian population in the US, and a significant one in Australia as well.  Other Palestinian populations are in Europe. This has given us the shocking, to most people, example of people demonstrating either for Palestine or against Israel, depending upon how you think of it.

Which leads me to this:

I think people will not believe the reports of what happened in Kfar Aza and Kibbutz Beeri. Even though Hamas posted photos and videos on their own Telegram channel. Because these are ISIS tactics. Beheaded babies and burned corpses. Yes, I saw the photos.

I don't care if you are of Palestinian extraction or not, although I frankly feel that this adds fuel to the fire that the further away from the prevailing culture an immigrant population is, the harder it is for the "melting pot" (the antithesis of the currently popular but demonstratively false concept of "diversity is strength" ethos) to work.  It can, but it's harder.  At any rate, people had no sympathy at all with German immigrants and German Americans who were in support of the Nazis during the Second World War, and Hamas deserves no sympathy either.  It doesn't matter if you are of Palestinian extraction or not.

I'd also note that one member of Congress of Middle Eastern extraction keeps a Palestinian flag outside of her door, and as of yesterday, still was.  Frankly, no Congressman should keep any flag other than that of the U.S. or perhaps their state outside their door.  

None.

This causes me to recall my father, who never liked people using hyphens in their name to identify themselves as something other than American.  Half German and half Irish by descent, he didn't like, for example, when people called themselves "Irish Americans", a trait he shared with Theodore Roosevelt.

This also says something about preserving old fights, something many cultures and peoples do.

Palestinians are upset, in part, about something that took place running from the late 19th Century to the mid 20th Century, that being the return of Jews to what is now Israel, as well as the history that followed.  The spreading of Jews around the ancient world started as long ago as 586 BC but it got rolling in the modern era in the 60s and of course we can famously date it to 70, the year of the destruction of the Temple.  The Zionist movement began the return starting in 1897 with the creation of a modern Jewish state an expressed goal.  Palestine, part of the Arab world, but in a region that already had a Jewish and Greek population, was the old Israel, territory wise.  Its population was also not uniformly Islamic, having an Arab Christian population, which it still does, and which is hated by Hamas along with the Jewish Israeli population.  The Jewish population of the country doesn't necessarily get along that well with the Christian population either.  The Palestinian identity itself is hard to define, as the region was so mixed up to the point of Israeli independence.  The term apparently wasn't used in modern times, ironically, until 1898, although some argue that Palestinian nationalism was around as early as an 1834 rebellion against Egypt.  Like other regions of the coast Middle East during the Ottoman period, the region was inhabited by nomadic Bedouins, still not identified as Palestinians, and then more urban and agricultural people, something true of Lebanon and Syria as well.

For this reason It's occasionally suggested that the Palestinians are not a real people at all, and to some slight extent, and it would be slight, that would have been almost sort of true at one time.  Having said that, the people who inhabit Lebanon historically are a different ethnicity.  So the Palestinians are a real people, or came to be, and certainly are now.

Palestine, like the entire Middle East, east of Egypt, was an Ottoman possession prior to World War One. For that matter, things west of Palestine technically were as well, although the oddities of colonialism and international politics meant that the British controlled Egypt and the Ottomans really controlled nothing, at that point, further east.  World War One brought Palestine under British rule, as a League of Nation's mandate, and brought Syria and Lebanon under French rule the same way.  Jordan came to be administered by the British as well, through the Hashemite ruling family, as did Iraq.

Allenby entering Jerusalem.

Palestine always proved to be problematic for the British and between the wars there was increasing tension between its Jewish and Arab populations, in part brought about by the fact that the British had made promises in the Balfour Agreement which supported, more or less, the concept of Palestine becoming the home for a future Jewish state.


At the time of Balfour's declaration, the Jewish population, even with two decades if immigration, was pretty small and the declaration wasn't really very specific.  From a British prospective, they were really dealing with a sparsely populated land. At the same time, however, they made promises to Arabs through their leaders to support outright Arab independence in the Middle East.  The two sets of promises were not necessarily irrconcilable, but they weren't necessary easy to deal with on the ground.

The additional problem really was that the land was not the United Kingdom's to give and indeed, in 1917, when made, it was still an Ottoman possession.

Between World War One and World War Two the British had to live with this, which wasn't easy.

By the 1930s Palestinian populations were getting seriously agitated with the direction in which things seemed to be going.  In 1936 this lead to a revolt against the British in which the Palestinians demanded independence and an end to open ended Jewish immigration.  To an extent, because of the involvement of the local populations, this may be regarded as the first Arab Isreali War, or perhaps a proto war, a sign of things to come.  Interestingly, Bernard Law Montgomery had a signficant role in putting it down.

Perhaps because of this, during World War Two, while the British did have armed Arab formations, they were reluctant to really use them.  Also during World War Two, the Grand Mufti of Jersusalem came down on the side of the Germans.  The nature of the conflict as an ethnic one was clearly drawn.

World War Two created the drive towards an independent Jewish Israel as an unstoppable one, with refugees flooding ino the coutnry. The British saw the handwriting on the wall and looked for a way out of the region, which they succeeded in doing in 1948.  Before that, an attempt at imposing a sort of two state solution was made.

Israel delcared independence in 1948 and the Arabs opposed it. In spite of an advantage of arms on part of the Arab armies, and in spite of having established military units of some standing, and in the case of the Arab Legion, partial European leadership, Israel won the war.  The war had huge demographic consequences as 700,000 or more Palestinians became refugees and were later unable to return to the lands they'd abandoned or been forced out of. That's the root of the Palestinian discontent today.

The ultimate cause of Palestinian dispersal is mixed, some of it being due to fear, some of it being due to force, and some of it being Israel preventing their return by operation of law.  I'm not claiming it was just.  But an added factor to it was that the neighboring Arab states did not accommodate a permanent resettlement of the displaced, hoping instead to see Israel defeated in a series of subsequent wars. By the early 1960s the population was radicalizing and in 1964 the Palestinian Liberation Organization formed.  The PLO ended up going to war with one of its host nations, Jordan, in 1970 in a war which looked as if the PLO might overthrow the Hashemite kingdom and claim it for its own. Jordan prevailed in the Black September war and the PLO relocated to troubled Lebanon.  In 1982, it was driven out of that country, which had been created in the first place as a separate political entity for Christian Syrians, and it relocated to Tunis.  Ultimately the PLO came around to the political solution that's in place to day, with the Palestinian authority being a quasi independent Palestinian satellite territory, of which Gaza is part.

After the War of Independence.

What was never foreseen is that Hamas, which is more radical than the PLO and its political expression Fatah, would become the dominant political entity in the Palestinian parliament.  It is.  Backed by money brought in from the outside, and notably Iran, it thrives on the fantasy of driving the Jews out of what had been Palestine.

Israel has been independent for seventy-five years now.  Almost everyone who fought for or against its independence is now dead.  The youngest displaced Palestinians are 75 years old.  The land that they were displaced from has been in other hands for 75 years.  The legacy of this however goes on and on with both sides focusing on a narrow aspect of the history.  Israelis, and the country's supporters around the world, imagine an early Israeli history like that glamorized by Leon Uris which ignored the realities of Palestinian displacement. Palestinians remain bitter about being displaced, a bitterness which is aided by their untenable situation in some parts of the Palestinian Authority but fail to appreciate that they made a bad bargain in 1948 by insisting on taking all of the country. Part of that bad bargain is that there is no reason to believe that had the Arabs won in 1948, the result would have been murderous and certainly would have resulted in the expulsion of the Jews from Palestine, just as Europeans were expelled from Algeria (and their Berber allies murdered) and the Europeans from Libya. For much of the post 1948 period, and for Hams to this day, Arab goals have been been to expel the Jewish population rather than to live with it, although over time, Egypt and Jordan have relented. Hamas also fails to appreciate that they're as boxed in by the Arab neighbors who claim to support them as they are by Israel.

Impacting the entire matter, both sides, now 75 years into this, rely upon economic aid from the outside.  Israel, while often gaining the admiration of Americans for such things as "making the desert bloom" has consistenly relied on US aid from its independence, something that frankly does not make a great deal of sense in an era when US ecnomic fortunes have declined and there is no good reason why a capable foeign nation of this vintage is receiving US aid.  Ireland, for instance, was simply independent when it became independent.  Included in the aid is military aid, even though Israel is itself an arms manufacuturer.  The close economic link to the US makes the US a participant in the Middle East in a way that it would not otherwise be, which in turn has an impact on domestic politics.

Hamas depends entirely on aid from donors and regional states, with Iran being a signficant one.  Oddly enough, the relocation of Palestinians to the US is beginning to also have an impact on domestic U.S. politics.

Seventy-five years is not a long time in historical terms, but the reality of this is that Hamas is a murderous terrorist organization that is fighting for a fantasy against living people who are innocent of any wrongdoing, for the most part, against the Palestinians.  The murderous fantasy is helping to keep a real solution, if there is one, from occurring.  No sane people would enter into a bargain with a group whose goals are essentially genocidal. Also helping to prevent it from occurring is the fact that the Arabs are a group of people, not one people, and the other Arab nations really don't want the Palestinians on their land.  Egypt is not going to open up the border with Gaza and let them in. Jordan was happy to take the West Bank early on, but it's not clamoring for it back now.  Israel, by having the Palestinians within some sort of border, neatly keeps them from being within other Arab borders.

People have talked about a two-state solution for a long time, but no such solution can come about when one party will not think of it.  Hamas won't, and now surely Israel will not either.

So now what?

That's hard to say, but what seems certain is that Israel will go into Gaza and will be unwilling to let the enclave repeat this recent murderous history.  Hamas will cause the Palestinians to suffer for holding on to a pipe dream and allowing murder to be perpetrated in their name.  The Palestinians will be seemingly unable to grasp this and howl in rage and despair, rather than taking the example of other 20th Century displaced persons, such as the Germans and Poles, and build new lives in their new situation.  Of course, unlike the Germans and the Poles, there isn't much for them to build with, but by the same token, there was never much of a Palestine in the first place.  Other Arab nations that import labor, such as Saudi Arabia, are unlikely for their part to take in the Palestinian displaced population, even though they share, albeit more remotely than we might suppose, an ethnicity.

Friday, October 6, 2023

Saturday, October 6, 1973. The October War commences.

Egypt and Syria launched a surprise attack on Israel timed for the Yom Kippur holy day.  The attack oddly commenced at 2:05 p.m.


It would be the largest of the Arab Israeli Wars, and one in which the Israeli Defense Force fared much more poorly than it had previously.  Egypt's goals were limited, involving crossing the Suez Canal, which they succeeded in doing.  Israeli forces would ultimately repulse the invading forces and come very near the Syrian capital of Damascus, but the results allowed the Egyptians to bargain for peace terms with Israel in later years.

Arab forces fared very well at first, catching the IDF off guard.  Syrian advances caused the Israeli government to distribute Israel's small stock of nuclear weapons to is air force in case Arab forces advanced inside Israel itself, making this a non superpower war that came relatively close to becoming a nuclear one.

Sunday, October 1, 2023

Saturday, September 30, 2023

Thursday, September 30, 1943. Ancient languages

During World War Two cartoonist Will Eisner had a series of cartoons featuring "Joe Dope", who routinely made terrible maintenance goofs.  He'd reprise that role, but without Dope, during the Vietnam War.

Naples was freed from German occupation by the arrival of British troop.  The city had been in rebellion against the Germans for four days.

Pope Pius XII issued Divino affiante Spiritu which directed Catholic scholars of the Bible to acquire a knowledge of ancient languages.  The document has been called the "Magna Carta" for Biblical progress.

It states:

DIVINO AFFLANTE SPIRITU

ENCYCLICAL OF POPE PIUS XII

ON PROMOTING BIBLICAL STUDIES, COMMEMORATING

THE FIFTIETH ANNIVERSARY OF PROVIDENTISSIMUS DEUS

TO OUR VENERABLE BRETHREN, PATRIARCHS,

ARCHBISHOPS, AND OTHER LOCAL ORDINARIES

ENJOYING PEACE AND COMMUNION WITH THE APOSTOLIC SEE

Inspired by the Divine Spirit, the Sacred Writers composed those books, which God, in His paternal charity towards the human race, deigned to bestow on them in order "to teach, to reprove, to correct, to instruct in justice: that the man of God may be perfect, furnished to every good work." This heaven-sent treasure Holy Church considers as the most precious source of doctrine on faith and morals. No wonder herefore that, as she received it intact from the hands of the Apostles, so she kept it with all care, defended it from every false and perverse interpretation and used it diligently as an instrument for securing the eternal salvation of souls, as almost countless documents in every age strikingly bear witness. In more recent times, however, since the divine origin and the correct interpretation of the Sacred Writings have been very specially called in question, the Church has with even greater zeal and care undertaken their defense and protection. The sacred Council of Trent ordained by solemn decree that "the entire books with all their parts, as they have been wont to be read in the Catholic Church and are contained in the old vulgate Latin edition, are to be held sacred and canonical." In our own time the Vatican Council, with the object of condemning false doctrines regarding inspiration, declared that these same books were to be regarded by the Church as sacred and canonical "not because, having been composed by human industry, they were afterwards approved by her authority, nor merely because they contain revelation without error, but because, having been written under the inspiration of the Holy Spirit, they have God for their author, and as such were handed down to the Church herself." When, subsequently, some Catholic writers, in spite of this solemn definition of Catholic doctrine, by which such divine authority is claimed for the "entire books with all their parts" as to secure freedom from any error whatsoever, ventured to restrict the truth of Sacred Scripture solely to matters of faith and morals, and to regard other matters, whether in the domain of physical science or history, as "obiter dicta" and - as they contended - in no wise connected with faith, Our Predecessor of immortal memory, Leo XIII in the Encyclical Letter Providentissimus Deus, published on November 18 in the year 1893, justly and rightly condemned these errors and safe-guarded the studies of the Divine Books by most wise precepts and rules.

2. Since then it is fitting that We should commemorate the fiftieth anniversary of the publication of this Encyclical Letter, which is considered the supreme guide in biblical studies, We, moved by that solicitude for sacred studies, which We manifested from the very beginning of Our Pontificate, have considered that this may most opportunely be done by ratifying and inculcating all that was wisely laid down by Our Predecessor and ordained by His Successors for the consolidating and perfecting of the work, and by pointing out what seems necessary in the present day, in order to incite ever more earnestly all those sons of the Church who devote themselves to these studies, to so necessary and so praiseworthy an enterprise.

3. The first and greatest care of Leo XIII was to set forth the teaching on the truth of the Sacred Books and to defend it from attack. Hence with grave words did he proclaim that there is no error whatsoever if the sacred writer, speaking of things of the physical order "went by what sensibly appeared" as the Angelic Doctor says,speaking either "in figurative language, or in terms which were commonly used at the time, and which in many instances are in daily use at this day, even among the most eminent men of science." For "the sacred writers, or to speak more accurately - the words are St. Augustine's -  the Holy Spirit, Who spoke by them, did not intend to teach men these things - that is the essential nature of the things of the universe - things in no way profitable to salvation"; which principle "will apply to cognate sciences, and especially to history," that is, by refuting, "in a somewhat similar way the fallacies of the adversaries and defending the historical truth of Sacred Scripture from their attacks. Nor is the sacred writer to be taxed with error, if "copyists have made mistakes in the text of the Bible," or, "if the real meaning of a passage remains ambiguous." Finally it is absolutely wrong and forbidden "either to narrow inspiration to certain passages of Holy Scripture, or to admit that the sacred writer has erred," since divine inspiration "not only is essentially incompatible with error but excludes and rejects it as absolutely and necessarily as it is impossible that God Himself, the supreme Truth, can utter that which is not true. This is the ancient and constant faith of the Church."

4. This teaching, which Our Predecessor Leo XIII set forth with such solemnity, We also proclaim with Our authority and We urge all to adhere to it religiously. No less earnestly do We inculcate obedience at the present day to the counsels and exhortations which he, in his day, so wisely enjoined. For whereas there arose new and serious difficulties and questions, from the wide-spread prejudices of rationalism and more especially from the discovery and investigation of the antiquities of the East, this same Our Predecessor, moved by zeal of the apostolic office, not only that such an excellent source of Catholic revelation might be more securely and abundantly available to the advantage of the Christian flock, but also that he might not suffer it to be in any way tainted, wished and most earnestly desired "to see an increase in the number of the approved and persevering laborers in the cause of Holy Scripture; and more especially that those whom Divine Grace has called to Holy Orders, should day-by-day, as their state demands, display greater diligence and industry in reading, meditating and explaining it."

5. Wherefore the same Pontiff, as he had already praised and approved the school for biblical studies, founded at St. Stephen's, Jerusalem, by the Master General of the Sacred Order of Preachers - from which, to use his own words, "biblical science itself had received no small advantage, while giving promise of more" - so in the last year of his life he provided yet another way, by which these same studies, so warmly commended in the Encyclical Letter Providentissimus Deus, might daily make greater progress and be pursued with the greatest possible security. By the Apostolic Letter Vigilantiae, published on October 30 in the year 1902, he founded a Council or Commission, as it is called, of eminent men, "whose duty it would be to procure by every means that the sacred texts may receive everywhere among us that more thorough exposition which the times demand, and be kept safe not only from every breath of error, but also from all inconsiderate opinions."Following the example of Our Predecessors, We also have effectively confirmed and amplified this Council using its good offices, as often before, to remind commentators of the Sacred Books of those safe rules of Catholic exegesis, which have been handed down by the Holy Fathers and Doctors of the Church, as well as by the Sovereign Pontiffs themselves.

6. It may not be out of place here to recall gratefully the principal and more useful contributions made successively by Our Predecessors toward this same end, which contributions may be considered as the complement or fruit of the movement so happily initiated by Leo XIII. And first of all Pius X, wishing "to provide a sure way for the preparation of a copious supply of teachers, who, commended by the seriousness and the integrity of their doctrine, might explain the Sacred Books in Catholic schools . . ." instituted "the academic degrees of licentiate and doctorate in Sacred Scripture . . .; to be conferred by the Biblical Commission"; he later enacted a law "concerning the method of Scripture studies to be followed in Clerical Seminaries" with this end in view, viz.: that students of the sacred sciences "not only should themselves fully understand the power, purpose and teaching of the Bible, but should also be equipped to engage in the ministry of the Divine Word with elegance and ability and repel attacks against the divinely inspired books"; finally "in order that a center of higher biblical studies might be established in Rome, which in the best way possible might promote the study of the Bible and all cognate sciences in accordance with the mind of the Catholic Church" he founded the Pontifical Biblical Institute, entrusted to the care of the illustrious Society of Jesus, which he wished endowed "with a superior professorial staff and every facility for biblical research"; he prescribed its laws and rules, professing to follow in this the "salutary and fruitful project" of Leo XIII.

7. All this in fine Our immediate Predecessor of happy memory Pius XI brought to perfection, laying down among other things "that no one should be appointed professor of Sacred Scripture in any Seminary, unless, having completed a special course of biblical studies, he had in due form obtained the academic degrees before the Biblical Commission or the Biblical Institute." He wished that these degrees should have the same rights and the same effects as the degrees duly conferred in Sacred Theology or Canon Law; likewise he decreed that no one should receive "a benefice having attached the canonical obligation of expounding the Sacred Scripture to the people, unless, among other things, he had obtained the licentiate or doctorate in biblical science." And having at the same time urged the Superiors General of the Regular Orders and of the religious Congregations, as well as the Bishops of the Catholic world, to send the more suitable of their students to frequent the schools of the Biblical Institute and obtain there the academical degrees, he confirmed these exhortations by his own example, appointing out of his bounty an annual sum for this very purpose.

8. Seeing that, in the year 1907, with the benign approval of Pius X of happy memory, "to the Benedictine monks had been committed the task of preparing the investigations and studies on which might be based a new edition of the Latin version of the Scripture, commonly called the Vulgate, the same Pontiff, Pius XI, wishing to consolidate more firmly and securely this "laborious and arduous enterprise," which demands considerable time and great expense, founded in Rome and lavishly endowed with a library and other means of research, the monastery of St. Jerome, to be devoted exclusively to this work.

9. Nor should We fail to mention here how earnestly these same Our Predecessors, when the opportunity occurred, recommended the study or preaching or in fine the pious reading and meditation on the Sacred Scriptures. Pius X most heartily commended the society of St. Jerome, which strives to promote among the faithful - and to facilitate with all its power - the truly praiseworthy custom of reading and meditating on the holy Gospels; he exhorted them to persevere in the enterprise they had begun, proclaiming it "a most useful undertaking, as well as most suited to the times," seeing that it helps in no small way "to dissipate the idea that the Church is opposed to or in any way impedes the reading of the Scriptures in the vernacular." And Benedict XV, on the occasion of the fifteenth centenary of the death of St. Jerome, the greatest Doctor of the Sacred Scriptures, after having most solemnly inculcated the precepts and examples of the same Doctor, as well as the principles and rules laid down by Leo XIII and by himself, and having recommended other things highly opportune and never to be forgotten in this connection, exhorted "all the children of the Church, especially clerics, to reverence the Holy Scripture, to read it piously and meditate it constantly"; he reminded them "that in these pages is to be sought that food, by which the spiritual life is nourished unto perfection," and "that the chief use of Scripture pertains to the holy and fruitful exercise of the ministry of preaching"; he likewise once again expressed his warm approval of the work of the society called after St. Jerome himself, by means of which the Gospels and Acts of the Apostles are being so widely diffused, "that there is no Christian family any more without them and that all are accustomed to read and meditate them daily."

10. But it is right and pleasing to confess openly that it is not only by reason of these initiatives, precepts and exhortations of Our Predecessors that the knowledge and use of the Sacred Scriptures have made great progress among Catholics; for this is also due to the works and labors of all those who diligently cooperated with them, both by meditating, investigating and writing, as well as by teaching and preaching and by translating and propagating the Sacred Books. For from the schools in which are fostered higher studies in theological and biblical science, and especially from Our Pontifical Biblical Institute, there have already come forth, and daily continue to come forth, many students of Holy Scripture who, inspired with an intense love for the Sacred Books, imbue the younger clergy with this same ardent zeal and assiduously impart to them the doctrine they themselves have acquired. Many of them also, by the written word, have promoted and do still promote, far and wide, the study of the Bible; as when they edit the sacred text corrected in accordance with the rules of textual criticism or expound, explain, and translate it into the vernacular; or when they propose it to the faithful for their pious reading and meditation; or finally when they cultivate and seek the aid of profane sciences which are useful for the interpretation of the Scriptures. From these therefore and from other initiatives which daily become more wide-spread and vigorous, as, for example, biblical societies, congresses, libraries, associations for meditation on the Gospels, We firmly hope that in the future reverence for, as well as the use and knowledge of, the Sacred Scriptures will everywhere more and more increase for the good of souls, provided the method of biblical studies laid down by Leo XIII, explained more clearly and perfectly by his Successors, and by Us confirmed and amplified - which indeed is the only safe way and proved by experience - be more firmly, eagerly and faithfully accepted by all, regardless of the difficulties which, as in all human affairs, so in this most excellent work will never be wanting.

11. There is no one who cannot easily perceive that the conditions of biblical studies and their subsidiary sciences have greatly changed within the last fifty years. For, apart from anything else, when Our Predecessor published the Encyclical Letter Providentissimus Deus, hardly a single place in Palestine had begun to be explored by means of relevant excavations. Now, however, this kind of investigation is much more frequent and, since more precise methods and technical skill have been developed in the course of actual experience, it gives us information at once more abundant and more accurate. How much light has been derived from these explorations for the more correct and fuller understanding of the Sacred Books all experts know, as well as all those who devote themselves to these studies. The value of these excavations is enhanced by the discovery from time to time of written documents, which help much towards the knowledge of the languages, letters, events, customs, and forms of worship of most ancient times. And of no less importance is papyri which have contributed so much to the knowledge of the discovery and investigation, so frequent in our times, of letters and institutions, both public and private, especially of the time of Our Savior.

12. Moreover ancient codices of the Sacred Books have been found and edited with discerning thoroughness; the exegesis of the Fathers of the Church has been more widely and thoroughly examined; in fine the manner of speaking, relating and writing in use among the ancients is made clear by innumerable examples. All these advantages which, not without a special design of Divine Providence, our age has acquired, are as it were an invitation and inducement to interpreters of the Sacred Literature to make diligent use of this light, so abundantly given, to penetrate more deeply, explain more clearly and expound more lucidly the Divine Oracles. If, with the greatest satisfaction of mind, We perceive that these same interpreters have resolutely answered and still continue to answer this call, this is certainly not the last or least of the fruits of the Encyclical Letter Providentissimus Deus, by which Our Predecessor Leo XIII, foreseeing as it were this new development of biblical studies, summoned Catholic exegetes to labor and wisely defined the direction and the method to be followed in that labor.

13. We also, by this Encyclical Letter, desire to insure that the work may not only proceed without interruption, but may also daily become more perfect and fruitful; and to that end We are specially intent on pointing out to all what yet remains to be done, with what spirit the Catholic exegete should undertake, at the present day, so great and noble a work, and to give new incentive and fresh courage to the laborers who toil so strenuously in the vineyard of the Lord.

14. The Fathers of the Church in their time, especially Augustine, warmly recommended to the Catholic scholar, who undertook the investigation and explanation of the Sacred Scriptures, the study of the ancient languages and recourse to the original texts. However, such was the state of letters in those times, that not many - and these few but imperfectly - knew the Hebrew language. In the middle ages, when Scholastic Theology was at the height of its vigor, the knowledge of even the Greek language had long since become so rare in the West, that even the greatest Doctors of that time, in their exposition of the Sacred Text, had recourse only to the Latin version, known as the Vulgate.

15. On the contrary in this our time, not only the Greek language, which since the humanistic renaissance has been, as it were, restored to new life, is familiar to almost all students of antiquity and letters, but the knowledge of Hebrew also and of their oriental languages has spread far and wide among literary men. Moreover there are now such abundant aids to the study of these languages that the biblical scholar, who by neglecting them would deprive himself of access to the original texts, could in no wise escape the stigma of levity and sloth. For it is the duty of the exegete to lay hold, so to speak, with the greatest care and reverence of the very least expressions which, under the inspiration of the Divine Spirit, have flowed from the pen of the sacred writer, so as to arrive at a deeper and fuller knowledge of his meaning.

16. Wherefore let him diligently apply himself so as to acquire daily a greater facility in biblical as well as in other oriental languages and to support his interpretation by the aids which all branches of philology supply. This indeed St. Jerome strove earnestly to achieve, as far as the science of his time permitted; to this also aspired with untiring zeal and no small fruit not a few of the great exegetes of the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries, although the knowledge of languages then was much less than at the present day. In like manner therefore ought we to explain the original text which, having been written by the inspired author himself, has more authority and greater weight than any even the very best translation, whether ancient or modern; this can be done all the more easily and fruitfully, if to the knowledge of languages be joined a real skill in literary criticism of the same text.

17. The great importance which should be attached to this kind of criticism was aptly pointed out by Augustine, when, among the precepts to be recommended to the student of the Sacred Books, he put in the first place the care to possess a corrected text. "The correction of the codices" - so says this most distinguished Doctor of the Church - "should first of all engage the attention of those who wish to know the Divine Scripture so that the uncollected may give place to the corrected." In the present day indeed this art, which is called textual criticism and which is used with great and praiseworthy results in the editions of profane writings, is also quite rightly employed in the case of the Sacred Books, because of that very reverence which is due to the Divine Oracles. For its very purpose is to insure that the sacred text be restored, as perfectly as possible, be purified from the corruptions due to the carelessness of the copyists and be freed, as far as may be done, from glosses and omissions, from the interchange and repetition of words and from all other kinds of mistakes, which are wont to make their way gradually into writings handed down through many centuries.

18. It is scarcely necessary to observe that this criticism, which some fifty years ago not a few made use of quite arbitrarily and often in such wise that one would say they did so to introduce into the sacred text their own preconceived ideas, today has rules so firmly established and secure, that it has become a most valuable aid to the purer and more accurate editing of the sacred text and that any abuse can easily be discovered. Nor is it necessary here to call to mind - since it is doubtless familiar and evident to all students of Sacred Scripture - to what extent namely the Church has held in honor these studies in textual criticism from the earliest centuries down even to the present day.

19. Today therefore, since this branch of science has attained to such high perfection, it is the honorable, though not always easy, task of students of the Bible to procure by every means that as soon as possible may be duly published by Catholics editions of the Sacred Books and of ancient versions, brought out in accordance with these standards, which, that is to say, unite the greatest reverence for the sacred text with an exact observance of all the rules of criticism. And let all know that this prolonged labor is not only necessary for the right understanding of the divinely-given writings, but also is urgently demanded by that piety by which it behooves us to be grateful to the God of all providence, Who from the throne of His majesty has sent these books as so many paternal letters to His own children.

20. Nor should anyone think that this use of the original texts, in accordance with the methods of criticism, in any way derogates from those decrees so wisely enacted by the Council of Trent concerning the Latin Vulgate. It is historically certain that the Presidents of the Council received a commission, which they duly carried out, to beg, that is, the Sovereign Pontiff in the name of the Council that he should have corrected, as far as possible, first a Latin, and then a Greek, and Hebrew edition, which eventually would be published for the benefit of the Holy Church of God. If this desire could not then be fully realized owing to the difficulties of the times and other obstacles, at present it can, We earnestly hope, be more perfectly and entirely fulfilled by the united efforts of Catholic scholars.

21. And if the Tridentine Synod wished "that all should use as authentic" the Vulgate Latin version, this, as all know, applies only to the Latin Church and to the public use of the same Scriptures; nor does it, doubtless, in any way diminish the authority and value of the original texts. For there was no question then of these texts, but of the Latin versions, which were in circulation at that time, and of these the same Council rightly declared to be preferable that which "had been approved by its long-continued use for so many centuries in the Church." Hence this special authority or as they say, authenticity of the Vulgate was not affirmed by the Council particularly for critical reasons, but rather because of its legitimate use in the Churches throughout so many centuries; by which use indeed the same is shown, in the sense in which the Church has understood and understands it, to be free from any error whatsoever in matters of faith and morals; so that, as the Church herself testifies and affirms, it may be quoted safely and without fear of error in disputations, in lectures and in preaching; and so its authenticity is not specified primarily as critical, but rather as juridical.

22. Wherefore this authority of the Vulgate in matters of doctrine by no means prevents - nay rather today it almost demands - either the corroboration and confirmation of this same doctrine by the original texts or the having recourse on any and every occasion to the aid of these same texts, by which the correct meaning of the Sacred Letters is everywhere daily made more clear and evident. Nor is it forbidden by the decree of the Council of Trent to make translations into the vulgar tongue, even directly from the original texts themselves, for the use and benefit of the faithful and for the better understanding of the divine word, as We know to have been already done in a laudable manner in many countries with the approval of the Ecclesiastical authority.

23. Being thoroughly prepared by the knowledge of the ancient languages and by the aids afforded by the art of criticism, let the Catholic exegete undertake the task, of all those imposed on him the greatest, that namely of discovering and expounding the genuine meaning of the Sacred Books. In the performance of this task let the interpreters bear in mind that their foremost and greatest endeavor should be to discern and define clearly that sense of the biblical words which is called literal. Aided by the context and by comparison with similar passages, let them therefore by means of their knowledge of languages search out with all diligence the literal meaning of the words; all these helps indeed are wont to be pressed into service in the explanation also of profane writers, so that the mind of the author may be made abundantly clear.

24. The commentators of the Sacred Letters, mindful of the fact that here there is question of a divinely inspired text, the care and interpretation of which have been confided to the Church by God Himself, should no less diligently take into account the explanations and declarations of the teaching authority of the Church, as likewise the interpretation given by the Holy Fathers, and even "the analogy of faith" as Leo XIII most wisely observed in the Encyclical Letter Providentissimus Deus. With special zeal should they apply themselves, not only to expounding exclusively these matters which belong to the historical, archaeological, philological and other auxiliary sciences - as, to Our regret, is done in certain commentaries - but, having duly referred to these, in so far as they may aid the exegesis, they should set forth in particular the theological doctrine in faith and morals of the individual books or texts so that their exposition may not only aid the professors of theology in their explanations and proofs of the dogmas of faith, but may also be of assistance to priests in their presentation of Christian doctrine to the people, and in fine may help all the faithful to lead a life that is holy and worthy of a Christian.

25. By making such an exposition, which is above all, as We have said, theological, they will efficaciously reduce to silence those who, affirming that they scarcely ever find anything in biblical commentaries to raise their hearts to God, to nourish their souls or promote their interior life, repeatedly urge that we should have recourse to a certain spiritual and, as they say, mystical interpretation. With what little reason they thus speak is shown by the experience of many, who, assiduously considering and meditating the word of God, advanced in perfection and were moved to an intense love for God; and this same truth is clearly proved by the constant tradition of the Church and the precepts of the greatest Doctors. Doubtless all spiritual sense is not excluded from the Sacred Scripture.

26. For what was said and done in the Old Testament was ordained and disposed by God with such consummate wisdom, that things past prefigured in a spiritual way those that were to come under the new dispensation of grace. Wherefore the exegete, just as he must search out and expound the literal meaning of the words, intended and expressed by the sacred writer, so also must he do likewise for the spiritual sense, provided it is clearly intended by God. For God alone could have known this spiritual meaning and have revealed it to us. Now Our Divine Savior Himself points out to us and teaches us this same sense in the Holy Gospel; the Apostles also, following the example of the Master, profess it in their spoken and written words; the unchanging tradition of the Church approves it; and finally the most ancient usage of the liturgy proclaims it, wherever may be rightly applied the well-known principle: "The rule of prayer is the rule of faith."

27. Let Catholic exegetes then disclose and expound this spiritual significance, intended and ordained by God, with that care which the dignity of the divine word demands; but let them scrupulously refrain from proposing as the genuine meaning of Sacred Scripture other figurative senses. It may indeed be useful, especially in preaching, to illustrate, and present the matters of faith and morals by a broader use of the Sacred Text in the figurative sense, provided this be done with moderation and restraint; it should, however, never be forgotten that this use of the Sacred Scripture is, as it were, extrinsic to it and accidental, and that, especially in these days, it is not free from danger, since the faithful, in particular those who are well-informed in the sciences sacred and profane, wish to know what God has told us in the Sacred Letters rather than what an ingenious orator or writer may suggest by a clever use of the words of Scripture. Nor does "the word of God, living and effectual and more piercing than any two-edged sword and reaching unto the division of the soul and the spirit, of the joints also and the marrow, and a discerner of the thoughts and intents of the heart"[27] need artificial devices and human adaptation to move and impress souls; for the Sacred Pages, written under the inspiration of the Spirit of God, are of themselves rich in original meaning; endowed with a divine power, they have their own value; adorned with heavenly beauty, they radiate of themselves light and splendor, provided they are so fully and accurately explained by the interpreter, that all the treasures of wisdom and prudence, therein contained are brought to light.

28. In the accomplishment of this task the Catholic exegete will find invaluable help in an assiduous study of those works, in which the Holy Fathers, the Doctors of the Church and the renowned interpreters of past ages have explained the Sacred Books. For, although sometimes less instructed in profane learning and in the knowledge of languages than the scripture scholars of our time, nevertheless by reason of the office assigned to them by God in the Church, they are distinguished by a certain subtle insight into heavenly things and by a marvelous keenness of intellect, which enables them to penetrate to the very innermost meaning of the divine word and bring to light all that can help to elucidate the teaching of Christ and to promote holiness of life.

29. It is indeed regrettable that such precious treasures of Christian antiquity are almost unknown to many writers of the present day, and that students of the history of exegesis have not yet accomplished all that seems necessary for the due investigation and appreciation of so momentous a subject. Would that many, by seeking out the authors of the Catholic interpretation of Scripture and diligently studying their works and drawing thence the almost inexhaustible riches therein stored up, might contribute largely to this end, so that it might be daily more apparent to what extent those authors understood and made known the divine teaching of the Sacred Books, and that the interpreters of today might thence take example and seek suitable arguments.

30. For thus at long last will be brought about the happy and fruitful union between the doctrine and spiritual sweetness of expression of the ancient authors and the greater erudition and maturer knowledge of the modern, having as its result new progress in the never fully explored and inexhaustible field of the Divine Letters.

31. Moreover we may rightly and deservedly hope that our time also can contribute something towards the deeper and more accurate interpretation of Sacred Scripture. For not a few things, especially in matters pertaining to history, were scarcely at all or not fully explained by the commentators of past ages, since they lacked almost all the information which was needed for their clearer exposition. How difficult for the Fathers themselves, and indeed well nigh unintelligible, were certain passages is shown, among other things, by the oft-repeated efforts of many of them to explain the first chapters of Genesis; likewise by the reiterated attempts of St. Jerome so to translate the Psalms that the literal sense, that, namely, which is expressed by the words themselves, might be clearly revealed.

32. There are, in fine, other books or texts, which contain difficulties brought to light only in quite recent times, since a more profound knowledge of antiquity has given rise to new questions, on the basis of which the point at issue may be more appropriately examined. Quite wrongly therefore do some pretend, not rightly understanding the conditions of biblical study, that nothing remains to be added by the Catholic exegete of our time to what Christian antiquity has produced; since, on the contrary, these our times have brought to light so many things, which call for a fresh investigation, and which stimulate not a little the practical zest of the present-day interpreter.

33. As in our age, indeed new questions and new difficulties are multiplied, so, by God's favor, new means and aids to exegesis are also provided. Among these it is worthy of special mention that Catholic theologians, following the teaching of the Holy Fathers and especially of the Angelic and Common Doctor, have examined and explained the nature and effects of biblical inspiration more exactly and more fully than was wont to be done in previous ages. For having begun by expounding minutely the principle that the inspired writer, in composing the sacred book, is the living and reasonable instrument of the Holy Spirit, they rightly observe that, impelled by the divine motion, he so uses his faculties and powers, that from the book composed by him all may easily infer "the special character of each one and, as it were, his personal traits."[28] Let the interpreter then, with all care and without neglecting any light derived from recent research, endeavor to determine the peculiar character and circumstances of the sacred writer, the age in which he lived, the sources written or oral to which he had recourse and the forms of expression he employed.

34. Thus can he the better understand who was the inspired author, and what he wishes to express by his writings. There is no one indeed but knows that the supreme rule of interpretation is to discover and define what the writer intended to express, as St. Athanasius excellently observes: "Here, as indeed is expedient in all other passages of Sacred Scripture, it should be noted, on what occasion the Apostle spoke; we should carefully and faithfully observe to whom and why he wrote, lest, being ignorant of these points, or confounding one with another, we miss the real meaning of the author."[29]

35. What is the literal sense of a passage is not always as obvious in the speeches and writings of the ancient authors of the East, as it is in the works of our own time. For what they wished to express is not to be determined by the rules of grammar and philology alone, nor solely by the context; the interpreter must, as it were, go back wholly in spirit to those remote centuries of the East and with the aid of history, archaeology, ethnology, and other sciences, accurately determine what modes of writing, so to speak, the authors of that ancient period would be likely to use, and in fact did use.

36. For the ancient peoples of the East, in order to express their ideas, did not always employ those forms or kinds of speech which we use today; but rather those used by the men of their times and countries. What those exactly were the commentator cannot determine as it were in advance, but only after a careful examination of the ancient literature of the East. The investigation, carried out, on this point, during the past forty or fifty years with greater care and diligence than ever before, has more clearly shown what forms of expression were used in those far off times, whether in poetic description or in the formulation of laws and rules of life or in recording the facts and events of history. The same inquiry has also shown the special preeminence of the people of Israel among all the other ancient nations of the East in their mode of compiling history, both by reason of its antiquity and by reasons of the faithful record of the events; qualities which may well be attributed to the gift of divine inspiration and to the peculiar religious purpose of biblical history.

37. Nevertheless no one, who has a correct idea of biblical inspiration, will be surprised to find, even in the Sacred Writers, as in other ancient authors, certain fixed ways of expounding and narrating, certain definite idioms, especially of a kind peculiar to the Semitic tongues, so-called approximations, and certain hyperbolical modes of expression, nay, at times, even paradoxical, which even help to impress the ideas more deeply on the mind. For of the modes of expression which, among ancient peoples, and especially those of the East, human language used to express its thought, none is excluded from the Sacred Books, provided the way of speaking adopted in no wise contradicts the holiness and truth of God, as, with his customary wisdom, the Angelic Doctor already observed in these words: "In Scripture divine things are presented to us in the manner which is in common use amongst men." For as the substantial Word of God became like to men in all things, "except sin," so the words of God, expressed in human language, are made like to human speech in every respect, except error. In this consists that "condescension" of the God of providence, which St. John Chrysostom extolled with the highest praise and repeatedly declared to be found in the Sacred Books.

38. Hence the Catholic commentator, in order to comply with the present needs of biblical studies, in explaining the Sacred Scripture and in demonstrating and proving its immunity from all error, should also make a prudent use of this means, determine, that is, to what extent the manner of expression or the literary mode adopted by the sacred writer may lead to a correct and genuine interpretation; and let him be convinced that this part of his office cannot be neglected without serious detriment to Catholic exegesis. Not infrequently - to mention only one instance - when some persons reproachfully charge the Sacred Writers with some historical error or inaccuracy in the recording of facts, on closer examination it turns out to be nothing else than those customary modes of expression and narration peculiar to the ancients, which used to be employed in the mutual dealings of social life and which in fact were sanctioned by common usage.

39. When then such modes of expression are met within the sacred text, which, being meant for men, is couched in human language, justice demands that they be no more taxed with error than when they occur in the ordinary intercourse of daily life. By this knowledge and exact appreciation of the modes of speaking and writing in use among the ancients can be solved many difficulties, which are raised against the veracity and historical value of the Divine Scriptures, and no less efficaciously does this study contribute to a fuller and more luminous understanding of the mind of the Sacred Writer.

40. Let those who cultivate biblical studies turn their attention with all due diligence towards this point and let them neglect none of those discoveries, whether in the domain of archaeology or in ancient history or literature, which serve to make better known the mentality of the ancient writers, as well as their manner and art of reasoning, narrating and writing. In this connection Catholic laymen should consider that they will not only further profane science, but moreover will render a conspicuous service to the Christian cause if they devote themselves with all due diligence and application to the exploration and investigation of the monuments of antiquity and contribute, according to their abilities, to the solution of questions hitherto obscure.

41. For all human knowledge, even the nonsacred, has indeed its own proper dignity and excellence, being a finite participation of the infinite knowledge of God, but it acquires a new and higher dignity and, as it were, a consecration, when it is employed to cast a brighter light upon the things of God.

42. The progressive exploration of the antiquities of the East, mentioned above, the more accurate examination of the original text itself, the more extensive and exact knowledge of languages both biblical and oriental, have with the help of God, happily provided the solution of not a few of those questions, which in the time of Our Predecessor Leo XIII of immortal memory, were raised by critics outside or hostile to the Church against the authenticity, antiquity, integrity and historical value of the Sacred Books. For Catholic exegetes, by a right use of those same scientific arms, not infrequently abused by the adversaries, proposed such interpretations, which are in harmony with Catholic doctrine and the genuine current of tradition, and at the same time are seen to have proved equal to the difficulties, either raised by new explorations and discoveries, or bequeathed by antiquity for solution in our time.

43. Thus has it come about that confidence in the authority and historical value of the Bible, somewhat shaken in the case of some by so many attacks, today among Catholics is completely restored; moreover there are not wanting even non-Catholic writers, who by serious and calm inquiry have been led to abandon modern opinion and to return, at least in some points, to the more ancient ideas. This change is due in great part to the untiring labor by which Catholic commentators of the Sacred Letters, in no way deterred by difficulties and obstacles of all kinds, strove with all their strength to make suitable use of what learned men of the present day, by their investigations in the domain of archaeology or history or philology, have made available for the solution of new questions.

44. Nevertheless no one will be surprised, if all difficulties are not yet solved and overcome; but that even today serious problems greatly exercise the minds of Catholic exegetes. We should not lose courage on this account; nor should we forget that in the human sciences the same happens as in the natural world; that is to say, new beginnings grow little by little and fruits are gathered only after many labors. Thus it has happened that certain disputed points, which in the past remained unsolved and in suspense, in our days, with the progress of studies, have found a satisfactory solution. Hence there are grounds for hope that those also will by constant effort be at last made clear, which now seem most complicated and difficult.

45. And if the wished-for solution be slow in coming or does not satisfy us, since perhaps a successful conclusion may be reserved to posterity, let us not wax impatient thereat, seeing that in us also is rightly verified what the Fathers, and especially Augustine, observed in their time viz: God wished difficulties to be scattered through the Sacred Books inspired by Him, in order that we might be urged to read and scrutinize them more intently, and, experiencing in a salutary manner our own limitations, we might be exercised in due submission of mind. No wonder if of one or other question no solution wholly satisfactory will ever be found, since sometimes we have to do with matters obscure in themselves and too remote from our times and our experience; and since exegesis also, like all other most important sciences, has its secrets, which, impenetrable to our minds, by no efforts whatsoever can be unraveled.

46. But this state of things is no reason why the Catholic commentator, inspired by an active and ardent love of his subject and sincerely devoted to Holy Mother Church, should in any way be deterred from grappling again and again with these difficult problems, hitherto unsolved, not only that he may refute the objections of the adversaries, but also may attempt to find a satisfactory solution, which will be in full accord with the doctrine of the Church, in particular with the traditional teaching regarding the inerrancy of Sacred Scripture, and which will at the same time satisfy the indubitable conclusion of profane sciences.

47. Let all the other sons of the Church bear in mind that the efforts of these resolute laborers in the vineyard of the Lord should be judged not only with equity and justice, but also with the greatest charity; all moreover should abhor that intemperate zeal which imagines that whatever is new should for that very reason be opposed or suspected. Let them bear in mind above all that in the rules and laws promulgated by the Church there is question of doctrine regarding faith and morals; and that in the immense matter contained in the Sacred Books - legislative, historical, sapiential and prophetical - there are but few texts whose sense has been defined by the authority of the Church, nor are those more numerous about which the teaching of the Holy Fathers is unanimous. There remain therefore many things, and of the greatest importance, in the discussion and exposition of which the skill and genius of Catholic commentators may and ought to be freely exercised, so that each may contribute his part to the advantage of all, to the continued progress of the sacred doctrine and to the defense and honor of the Church.

48. This true liberty of the children of God, which adheres faithfully to the teaching of the Church and accepts and uses gratefully the contributions of profane science, this liberty, upheld and sustained in every way by the confidence of all, is the condition and source of all lasting fruit and of all solid progress in Catholic doctrine, as Our Predecessor of happy memory Leo XIII rightly observes, when he says: "unless harmony of mind be maintained and principle safeguarded, no progress can be expected in this matter from the varied studies of many."

49. Whosoever considers the immense labors undertaken by Catholic exegetes during well nigh two thousand years, so that the word of God, imparted to men through the Sacred Letters, might daily be more deeply and fully understood and more intensely loved, will easily be convinced that it is the serious duty of the faithful, and especially of priests, to make free and holy use of this treasure, accumulated throughout so many centuries by the greatest intellects. For the Sacred Books were not given by God to men to satisfy their curiosity or to provide them with material for study and research, but, as the Apostle observes, in order that these Divine Oracles might "instruct us to salvation, by the faith which is in Christ Jesus" and "that the man of God may be perfect, furnished to every good work."

50. Let priests therefore, who are bound by their office to procure the eternal salvation of the faithful, after they have themselves by diligent study perused the sacred pages and made them their own by prayer and meditations, assiduously distribute the heavenly treasures of the divine word by sermons, homilies and exhortations; let them confirm the Christian doctrine by sentences from the Sacred Books and illustrate it by outstanding examples from sacred history and in particular from the Gospel of Christ Our Lord; and - avoiding with the greatest care those purely arbitrary and far-fetched adaptations, which are not a use, but rather an abuse of the divine word - let them set forth all this with such eloquence, lucidity and clearness that the faithful may not only be moved and inflamed to reform their lives, but may also conceive in their hearts the greatest veneration for the Sacred Scripture.

51. The same veneration the Bishops should endeavor daily to increase and perfect among the faithful committed to their care, encouraging all those initiatives by which men, filled with apostolic zeal, laudably strive to excite and foster among Catholics a greater knowledge of and love for the Sacred Books. Let them favor therefore and lend help to those pious associations whose aim it is to spread copies of the Sacred Letters, especially of the Gospels, among the faithful, and to procure by every means that in Christian families the same be read daily with piety and devotion; let them efficaciously recommend by word and example, whenever the liturgical laws permit, the Sacred Scriptures translated, with the approval of the Ecclesiastical authority, into modern languages; let them themselves give public conferences or dissertations on biblical subjects, or see that they are given by other public orators well versed in the matter.

52. Let the ministers of the Sanctuary support in every way possible and diffuse in fitting manner among all classes of the faithful the periodicals which so laudably and with such heartening results are published from time to time in various parts of the world, whether to treat and expose in a scientific manner biblical questions, or to adapt the fruits of these investigations to the sacred ministry, or to benefit the faithful. Let the ministers of the Sanctuary be convinced that all this, and whatsoever else an apostolical zeal and a sincere love of the divine word may find suitable to this high purpose, will be an efficacious help to the cure of souls.

53. But it is plain to everyone that priests cannot duly fulfill all this unless in their Seminary days they have imbibed a practical and enduring love for the Sacred Scriptures. Wherefore let the Bishops, on whom devolves the paternal care of their Seminaries, with all diligence see to it that nothing be omitted in this matter which may help towards the desired end. Let the professors of Sacred Scripture in the Seminaries give the whole course of biblical studies in such a way, that they may instruct the young aspirants to the Priesthood and to the ministry of the divine word with that knowledge of the Sacred Letters and imbue them with that love for the same, without which it is vain to hope for copious fruits of the apostolate.

54. Hence their exegetical explanation should aim especially at the theological doctrine, avoiding useless disputations and omitting all that is calculated rather to gratify curiosity than to promote true learning and solid piety. The literal sense and especially the theological let them propose with such definiteness, explain with such skill and inculcate with such ardor that in their students may be in a sense verified what happened to the disciples on the way to Emmaus, when, having heard the words of the Master, they exclaimed: "Was not our heart burning within us, whilst He opened to us the Scriptures?"

55. Thus the Divine Letter will become for the future priests of the Church a pure and never failing source for their own spiritual life, as well as food and strength for the sacred office of preaching which they are about to undertake. If the professors of this most important matter in the Seminaries accomplish all this, then let them rest joyfully assured that they have most efficaciously contributed to the salvation of souls, to the progress of the Catholic faith, to the honor and glory of God, and that they have performed a work most closely connected with the apostolic office.

56. If these things which We have said, Venerable Brethren and beloved sons, are necessary in every age, much more urgently are they needed in our sorrowful times, when almost all peoples and nations are plunged in a sea of calamities, when a cruel war heaps ruins upon ruins and slaughter upon slaughter, when, owing to the most bitter hatred stirred up among the nations, We perceive with greatest sorrow that in not a few has been extinguished the sense not only of Christian moderation and charity, but also of humanity itself. Who can heal these mortal wounds of the human family if not He, to Whom the Prince of the Apostles, full of confidence and love, addresses these words: "Lord, to whom shall we go? Thou hast the words of eternal life. "

57. To this Our most merciful Redeemer we must therefore bring all back by every means in our power; for He is the divine consoler of the afflicted; He it is Who teaches all, whether they be invested with public authority or are bound in duty to obey and submit, true honesty, absolute justice and generous charity; it is He in fine, and He alone, Who can be the firm foundation and support of peace and tranquillity: "For other foundation no man can lay, but that which is laid: which is Christ Jesus." This author of salvation, Christ, will men more fully know, more ardently love and faithfully imitate in proportion as they are more assiduously urged to know and meditate the Sacred Letters, especially the New Testament, for, as St. Jerome the Doctor of Stridon says: "To ignore the Scripture is to ignore Christ"; and again: "If there is anything in this life which sustains a wise man and induces him to maintain his serenity amidst the tribulations and adversities of the world, it is in the first place, I consider, the meditation and knowledge of the Scriptures."

58. There those who are wearied and oppressed by adversities and afflictions will find true consolation and divine strength to suffer and bear with patience; there - that is in the Holy Gospels - Christ, the highest and greatest example of justice, charity and mercy, is present to all; and to the lacerated and trembling human race are laid open the fountains of that divine grace without which both peoples and their rulers can never arrive at, never establish, peace in the state and unity of heart; there in fine will all learn Christ, "Who is the head of all principality and power" and "Who of God is made unto us wisdom and justice and sanctification and redemption."

59. Having expounded and recommended those things which are required for the adaptation of Scripture studies to the necessities of the day, it remains, Venerable Brethren and beloved sons, that to biblical scholars who are devoted sons of the Church and follow faithfully her teaching and direction, We address with paternal affection, not only Our congratulations that they have been chosen and called to so sublime an office, but also Our encouragement to continue with ever renewed vigor with all zeal and care, the work so happily begun. Sublime office, We say; for what is more sublime than to scrutinize, explain, propose to the faithful and defend from unbelievers the very word of God, communicated to men under the inspiration of the Holy Spirit.?

60. With this spiritual food the mind of the interpreter is fed and nourished "to the commemoration of faith, the consolation of hope, the exhortation of charity." "To live amidst these things, to meditate these things, to know nothing else, to seek nothing else, does it not seem to you already here below a foretaste of the heavenly kingdom?" Let also the minds of the faithful be nourished with this same food, that they may draw from thence the knowledge and love of God and the progress in perfection and the happiness of their own individual souls. Let, then, the interpreters of the Divine Oracles devote themselves to this holy practice with all their heart. "Let them pray, that they may understand"; let them labor to penetrate ever more deeply into the secrets of the Sacred Pages; let them teach and preach, in order to open to others also the treasures of the word of God.

61. Let the present-day commentators of the Sacred Scripture emulate, according to their capacity, what those illustrious interpreters of past ages accomplished with such great fruit; so that, as in the past, so also in these days, the Church may have at her disposal learned doctors for the expounding of the Divine Letters; and, through their assiduous labors, the faithful may comprehend all the splendor, stimulating language, and joy contained in the Holy Scriptures. And in this very arduous and important office let them have "for their comfort the Holy Books" and be mindful of the promised reward: since "they that are learned shall shine as the brightness of the firmament, and they that instruct many unto justice, as stars for all eternity."

62. And now, while ardently desiring for all sons of the Church, and especially for the professors in biblical science, for the young clergy and for preachers, that, continually meditating on the divine word, they may taste how good and sweet is the spirit of the Lord; as a presage of heavenly gifts and a token of Our paternal goodwill, We impart to you one and all, Venerable Brethren and beloved sons, most lovingly in the Lord, the Apostolic Benediction.

Given at Rome, at St. Peter's, on the 30th of September, the feast of St. Jerome, the greatest Doctor in the exposition of the Sacred Scriptures, in the year 1943, the fifth of Our Pontificate.

PIUS XII

Catholics are sometimes oddly accused by Protestants of not reading the Bible, when in fact not only is that false, but the Canon of the Bible in the West was fixed by the Catholic Church.  Many Protestants use a somewhat smaller Bibles due to Luther having disapproved of some of the Old Testament books included by Catholics.  Also, contrary to what is sometimes assumed, the Bible was translated into English in a Catholic edition prior to the King James Protestant edition   That particularly translation is held in very high esteem by many Protestants, but it's worth noting, as some fail to do, that the Bible was originally written in Greek (with some of the New Testament potentially having been written first in Aramaic), and then first translated into Latin by St. Jerome.

Simon Landman, one of Wyoming's fewearly Jewish settlers, who had been a resident of Huntley, died in Cheyenne.