INTRODUCTION BY JOHN SULLIVAN

       27 years had passed since the Resurrection, and although many people speak of a common source material in written form, the “Quelle – the sayings of Jesus” as the basis to construct Mark, Matthew, and Luke, this is and always has been an unsubstantiated hypothesis from those so deep in literary scholarship that they forget is that it’s far more likely that common eyewitness memories formed the common source material of the Gospels. Imagine 4 writers or groups or writers depending on eyewitness accounts and oral tradition during these years, and to complicate things, these four origins spoke to different Christian audiences well dispersed geographically from the Upper Room, where the Church had originated by the Pentecost. There were no reliable rapid communications systems between the scattered experts, and any contact made was made carefully and at great risk. All four Gospels were written by and to an underground Church whose members were incarcerated, persecuted, and sometimes even martyred by the Roman Empire just for proclaiming Jesus Christ their God, Lord and Savior. The Roman Empire was brutal and oppressive with no fear even of Jesus Christ, who they crucified without mercy. This Empire by then formed the macro-society surrounding all early Christians, and just as the Christians prayed that life would get better for them, for several decades it would only get worse. Paul’s head was saved several times, and he was successful often in appealing to the Romans to release him from prison because of his Roman citizenship. Yet in the end, as his severed head bounced 3 times near the Roman port city leading to Rome, he lived as a Roman, but died as a Christian.

       Even when composing the Gospels, all four writers, some less eloquently than others adhered to an unfair but perhaps necessary exoneration of the Roman Empire’s role in the execution of Jesus Christ, either by unfairly demonizing the Jews stereotypically or by taking the safe and technically accurate path of putting Rome’s responsibility not on the Emperor, but on the ousted Roman Procreator to Judea. Pontius Pilate was unpopular both in Jerusalem and in Rome. Eventually, long before any Gospel was written, Pilate had been discredited and sent into exile by Rome for incompetence and corruption. In other Gospels, Rome is likewise responsible but exonerated by shifting all blame for earlier travesties to King Herod, a Jewish proxy to Rome. Herod was likewise an easy target for Rome, for his son had been so incompetent and corrupt that he, too was exiled, resulting in direct appointments from Rome by Procreators, most of who only served three years before reassignment to better places - from a Roman perspective. Pilate must have always been an unpopular servant of Rome, for his assignment lasted a full decade without the normal reward of transfer to a better assignment, and when that transfer came, it was in the shadow of shame and disgrace. One can only speculate as to what happened to Pilate and his wife, but some believe his wife had converted him to Christianity, which would have made Pilate's demeanor as ruler far different than what Rome had expected, even if Pilate kept his conversion a secret. Both Herod “the Great” and Pilate are well sourced in other, non-biblical sources. The passage of time also is a factor, for Mark’s Gospel would be like trying to find eyewitness memories today, without notes, of the first three years of the Papacy of Pope John Paul II. Matthew and Luke would be written a decade from now on this scale, and John’s Gospel would come even later.

       For the good reason perhaps of keeping the focus on Jesus when speaking about the New Testament and not his surroundings, any description of the absolutely amazing historic and cultural environment centered on Europe, Africa, and the Middle East is glossed over or omitted entirely. The New Testament does contain a great deal of historical information with one caveat – the writers were not necessarily trained historians, and in some cases their memory of people and places is not precise, but only true to their own memories and understanding.

            We know a great deal about the Roman Catholic Church’s development out of the early Christian community in Rome, because these facts tie to our authenticity as the only Church that God ever commanded into existence, so naturally messengers of our Church would focus on this history, to the point of perhaps doing the history of Jesus a disservice. In the course of many centuries after the publication of the Latin Vulgate (a work of art produced when St. Jerome and his team made a translation of the Bible into the vernacular of the day), study and emphasis on the Bible had become secondary to Catholic culture with emphasis on litanies, scripted prayers, and developing ritualistic practices which intentionally or unintentionally took on a life of their own, elevated to importance because prior generations had been served well by them for so long. There are two versions of this phenomenon that basically says something is valuable because it is so old, or because a writer gifted in persuasion had written about the subject. Father Michael Morris ingeniously calls them the “Majors” and the “ Minors.” I call them “Big-T Traditions” and “little-t traditions.”

       “Big T” Traditions are those things that we all know through our own Pentecostal enlightenment are as true as the iron core of Earth which we also can’t see, but know to be true. Those touched by the Holy Spirit often debate those who are not listening to that voice in their head - those in a world of relativism that cherishes false pretenses about concepts which have no bearing beyond human social structures, such as the power of the democratic process. Thus, if society decides that God, heaven, and salvation are not important to human destiny, then under the democratic process, we all start to believe that whatever the majority says is true must be true. While this may serve mortal “temporal” society well, it does not change the facts in Truth. Some argue, and I believe this to be true, that human religions such as the Global Warming phenomenon and those that elevate developed homosexual lifestyle traditions to vehicles for social change have turned their efforts into a religion that in fact has no bearing on Truth, and no target to be manipulated beyond human society. I have said this elsewhere and I say it again – heaven has little use for religion, and in fact the Catholic Church in all honesty does not, either.

       The “Big-T” Traditions can’t change, because they are based in Revealed Truth. The Father in heaven radiates perfect love and light, and yet is glorified all the more when eternal spirits – angelic or human praise Him and love Him. We submit that we are finite in wisdom and understanding, while He is not. We can only guess why the Father in heaven bothered to create an imperfect Universe with perfect physical laws, flawed only by the choices made by creations with free will. A brilliant, unsurpassable sense of humor may be part of the reason – we just don’t know. We are incapable of knowing.

       We know that Jesus Christ is the Son of God. Not was, but is. We also know that He was and is fully human, and fully divine. By human, we mean that today ultimate characteristics and natural state for humans beyond the more easily observable ones such as childbirth, adolescence, maturity, and death. The resurrected human is just as human, yet nothing at all like we know today. And spawned from His Divinity, Jesus also lives with us as the Body and Blood of Christ, while simultaneously sitting in eternal resurrected form at the Right Hand of the Father in heaven – not to say the Father even has any utility for a right hand. It is not a literal statement, but one which adopts reality in heaven to our cultural importance for our “right-hand” people – the closest, highest admired, highest trusted advisors in our inner circle. We know all of this by the Holy Spirit, that third triad of God, the Trinity, Who is indivisible from the Father and from His Son who always existed as God, first as the Word and then as the flesh of humanity and then as the Transubstantiated Body of Christ at our Masses. I believe Jesus is simultaneously all three as God’s own heaven is His Universe and Realm without our need for the utility of linear time and such words that fit so well into our vocabulary but so poorly into His, such as ancestors, descendants, eons, generations, centuries, or millennia.

       These social agendas we see every day which attempt to define God’s will by how we shape and manipulate our human social structure come at a high price and are always far short of God’s plan. We now live in a nation that allows abortion of humans who did not get a chance to vote in the matter, but we call murder of a pregnant woman double-homicide. We imprison and fine those who shine light onto a beach containing turtle eggs, but we celebrate the freedom to shine darkness onto the unborn human. We give greater punishments if crime victims are judged by our standards to be different than an attacker, calling these hate crimes, yet justice goes more leniently if it is just a simple murder of someone more like us, as if that type of murder could be called a family dispute.

       The point is – and this goes to both sides – the so-called religious and the so-called secular - we will never serve God well by trying to do God’s will through forcing it into the human political process. Such efforts are a cop-out and one with no real benefit to God or God’s plan. I have often told a great hero of mine, Father Frank Pavone who attempts a top-down reform of our values through the force of government that he is playing the system well, but ultimately wasting his time.  Jesus Christ is a real leader in this area. In the time of His Mission one would have expected Jesus to spend His entire time lobbying the Sanhedrin and then Rome for social justice and reform. Many Zealots expected nothing less of Jesus.  Jesus had very little utility or use for geopolitics, because He knew exactly what they were – human fantasies that humans could really be in control of anything.

       Jesus instead concentrated on the “grass roots” from which politics would follow the lead of the collective outcome of good hearts converted beforehand, instead of the human fantasy that anything good can come out of societies built by government dispensing - by whatever means necessary - the standards of morality and ethics for others to follow as followers.

       There are also the “little t” traditions which serve some great purpose within our Church. We must be extremely cautious to never fool ourselves into believing they can ever be elevated to “Big-T” status, or that in our minds we should lose track of our priorities by deciding to do so. I think the Church has lost the distinction, and that amidst an ever evolving Church the increased complexities cause confusion about what is really important, and what is not so important.

       The one common factor in defining “little-t” traditions is that 1) they would never be recognized by or even practiced by Jesus and the Apostles, and 2) They are completely man-made in origin as an attempt to form a devotional form of praise of God, often by use of symbols invoking substance, that can take on widespread cultural adoption and in time the force of custom (Rosaries, Votive Candles, Statues, Chants, Songs, Novenas, Holy Water … and yes the list can go on forever.)

       Each particular custom is usually perpetuated at the enthusiastic request of those who find their way close to God through them. In fact, each originated as a sincere form of worship and no condemnation can be passed onto any of them, because they all have their own objective weight in value.

        Yet, they also all have their own story in development which can too easily be lost when one attempts to elevate any “little t” tradition into a “Big T” Tradition.

       The Latin Mass originated as the attempt to turn the Last Supper, said in Aramaic and first written as Greek into one that would better serve the public speech of the day, which was of course Latin. Yet using the argument of the force of custom, once public speech of the day evolved into new languages, the Latin Mass was retained as somehow special, blessed, and perhaps even God’s will. These were foolish times for the Church but even today many Catholics have likewise been fooled into believing that a Mass in Latin is any more special or holy than a legitimate Mass in any other language. The actual purpose of the institution of the Latin Mass was to make it the “Novus Ordo” (New Way) of the day so that people could understand the Mass in their own language. Likewise, the purpose of saying the Mass in local languages today instead of ancient Latin is just as appropriate, and in line with the original intent for moving Masses to Latin in the first place.

       I must say this once, seven times, and seven times seventy times. What makes Mass special is that ordinary unleavened bread and wine are changed into the living Body and Blood of Christ. This happens with or without all of the glamour and theatrics of the Tridentate Rite that indeed are beautiful to watch and impressive and well-intended, but not necessarily the way Jesus celebrated the Last Supper with his Apostles,  (contrary to the opinion of many who have fallen into the little-t trap). Some of the smaller traditions are often made into more than what they are - the practice of celibacy for both Diocesan priests and the Religious Orders, the name Veronica whose veil of compassion showered Jesus on the Delarosa, the names of the Magi, and everything else from Holy Water to Votive Candles - these all pale in comparison to the Two Great Commandments, the Altar, and the Tabernacle.

        “Little t” traditions come and go. “Big T” Traditions are unchangeable and eternal, and can not be dismissed or altered, even if the Church desired to make these changes. One of the problems with the current Church is that old timers had long been trained that all tradition is “Big T” Tradition, and they can't handle the changes in the other, smaller traditions that were never set in stone to begin with as eternal definitions of Catholicism. On the other hand, given the state of Catholic spiritual upbringing at home and in our Parishes these days, the newer generation that comes and goes is a bit overwhelmed unnecessarily, without any good direction of true priorities distinguishing the “Big T” Traditions that can't change from the “little t” traditions which do change. Without the distinction, when the smaller traditions change, the bright young Catholic adults get the erroneous impression that we can't even keep our story straight. They become confused and perplexed when smaller traditions change or go away unceremoniously, because they lose faith in the solid and true immutability of the larger Traditions. Because of this, the younger generation figuratively throws the baby out with the bath water, not realizing the importance in first understanding that they are first there to understand and follow the “Big T” Traditions which have never changed, will never change, and can't change, because they are unchangeable Truths as revealed to the Church divinely by Jesus Christ, the Holy Spirit, or both.

     One of the focuses for 20-40 Vision will be to help educate Catholic and non-Catholic youth alike on the necessity of focusing on the “Big T” Traditions, and choosing or not to accept the lesser ones that often assume the force of custom only because of old age, with the clear definition that no good Catholic can ignore the “Big T” Traditions - the ones that count. Yet, so far as the overly complicated lesser traditions, anyone can take or leave them and still be a good Catholic, so no one should be overwhelmed or intimidated by the side shows that indeed distract from, instead of decorate the grand prize - Jesus Christ raised high upon the High Altar - the biggest of all “Big T” Traditions.  

       The history leading up to the Tridentate Rite is a fascinating one, which as I will always insist served the Church well for the generation of Catholics to which it pertained. If those interested in the promotion of this Rite did not value change of ancient ways in support of the modern changes in society and the lives of Catholics it touched, then they would have insisted upon saying Mass “at Table” in Aramaic filled with Hebrew songs recounting the Passover just as Jesus did, in homes and “Upper Rooms.” So by moving towards that Rite with all of the bells and whistles that were not surrounding the Last Supper, modern society in those days was served well indeed. Their modernity is now our buried past, and their generations are now our buried ancestors.

       Yet, once society evolved from that, and became culturally more and more foreign to the Latin Mass, there came a time (as there came when letting go of the comfortable but outdated Aramaic and Greek) to keep the Mass relevant to the living, and not the long dead. Therefore, Jesus celebrated in Aramaic because it related to his audience. Roman priests celebrated in Latin for the same reasons. We celebrate in our languages today for the same reasons, and if culture shifts to some other language, be it Chinese or Ebonics, Mass will be no less sacred or relevant so long as it speaks to the audience in a language they can understand.

       The validity of the Eucharist comes from the Sacrifice at the Altar – a “Big T” Tradition, and not the smaller, “little t” traditions. I am solidly convinced that one of the biggest reasons modern 20-40 year old young adults are missing from Mass is because what is relevant about it is getting lost in all of the “little t” distractions thrown upon them, confused with and often overshadowing the “Big T” Traditions - their main reasons to attend Mass, pardon the pun – religiously. 

       The history leading up to the arrival of Jesus is nothing less than a geopolitical earthquake that warrants some discussion, because it helps to explain why the Father in heaven would chose then and there, of all times and places to send the Son of God into the world. Given all of the uncertainties and changes happening to the region at the time, we should all take a clue from God whenever we are tempted to believe that geopolitics rule the governing of the Universe around it. It doesn’t, and most often, it only rules humans entrapped in these systems by removing freedoms and forcing the "will of God” upon them under the force of the government hammer.

       As temping as it might sound "to praise God by forcing servitude onto Him," in fact the evidence is in, both in the fallen angels and in the fallen man that God always wanted us to have the chance to walk away if we chose. The reason is obvious - praise of the Father means a lot more when it comes sincerely and generously as a true gift, as opposed to simply a mechanical response to satisfy an obligation. (This is why there is so much sincere disdain within 20-40 Vision for the Catholic term "Holy Day of Obligation." A much better term would be "Bonus Round available within the limited heartbeats given in our limited mortal lives to give unified Catholic Praise and Thanksgiving to Our Father in heaven through Mass  - the Highest form of Prayer.") This cultural slavery to religion opposes the very freedoms and liberties that the Church and God cherish so much, but some religious non-Christian communities (and some Christian Communities) believe that hearts have to be changed through "God's Nation," dispensing discipline of the heart and soul outward throughout the lands from a centralized central government. Up to the French and American Revolutions this was pretty much the way of the world, including even some of the Catholic nations or conquered colonies. This was also the mindset in the land of the Zealots in the times of Jesus, who expected Jesus to be there, from the top-down, to force geopolitical changes upon the landscape. Even the Apostles, as we have noted before, had some expectation that Jesus would force change onto princes and principalities directly, instead of forcing that change by first changing the hearts of humanity from the bottom-up, in a “grass” roots style of evangelization. If there is anywhere where freedoms should be restricted, it is, of course, by the immediate family who has primary responsibility over ensuring the correct set of priorities in their mush-brained and blessedly ignorant children. This is not a function for governments, nor for government educational systems, nor, I dare say, even for the Church. This is a function for parents. Only when there are no parents will there be the Church to guide them as a substitute parent, because the Holy Spirit is particularly eager to form a young life through direct inspiration. Some even say that most children in the womb and in their youth, before they grow up to dumb-down to the ways of the world, always hear angels singing to them. I believe this. 

       Wiser modern Catholics likewise realize that the world will not change from the top-down by Vatican declarations, but rather by Catholics all over the world in tune with prayer and the Holy Spirit. This is how God changes the world – one family at a time … one neighborhood at a time … one community at a time. This change does not come from Washington D.C. or Vatican City, but from families and Parishes.

       Jesus spoke eloquently and often about this subject. So what role does the Vatican and the Magisterium play in all of this?  The answer might surprise you. Jesus Christ, as wise as He is, helped St. Matthew's Gospel come to an end with incredible words of promise from God onto His Church. This Church has, straight from Jesus, unique gifts of interpretation and His delegated power to speak with authority on behalf of that Holy Spirit who touches all of us, personally, via "Private Revelation." 

       Now I will be the first to admit that the Magisterium does a woefully pitiful job of describing its role or function, and that when so many Protestants find they are so distant from, and even vehemently against the Magisterium of Vatican City, no one deserves more blame for this than the Magisterium itself. Firstly, the Magisterium rarely makes a clear distinction between “Big T” and “little t” traditions, and the language used with historic forces of tradition does not easily translate easily beyond Vatican City. Secondly, the Magisterium celebrates a biblical source for their authority while at the same time downplaying the significance of that same Holy Bible, considering it just another small piece of the puzzle they call Divine Revelation, and which we call Revealed Truth.

     And lastly, and perhaps the most significant to me, the Magisterium rarely adequately tells us what exactly they are doing - interpreting the Holy Spirit and unequivocally doing so by the directly appointed authority of God. No one - starting with me, is overly impressed by high-priced expensive college degrees as a basis of spiritual value. We are impressed with God, and with what comes through them to us from God. In short, it seems that this Magisterium knows what they are talking about, but they don't have a clue what they're doing. They claim to assemble all sorts of very smart people with Doctorate degrees - usually in Theology to academically conjure through philosophies and ancient writings so that that they can decipher God's message to us today. What they claim to do is so far off-base that it erroneously paints Truth to be written by human minds - well educated and bright minds, but far short of the Glory of God.

       What they actually do - and I am not even sure they realize it any more, has nothing to do with academic training. Rather, it is geared towards prayerful contemplation as the Holy Spirit moves their own spirits, and our souls as well. As humans, despite all modern trends to the otherwise, our first and greatest nature is our spiritual one. Living spirit over mind, and then mind over body gives us the priorities for a balanced life that leads to heaven when practiced in the correct order of those priorities.

       The actual greater mission of the Magisterium distinguishes them from all other religions or denominations on the planet. That great mission is to just listen to what the Holy Spirit is actively telling them - and then and only then, to interpret for us - usually in concert with our own independent interpretations through our own private revelations anyway - definitively what this God in heaven is telling the generation of today as Revealed Truth for our generation. Without the company of Catholics also in tune with this already, there would be no willing followers of the difficult challenge of living as a Catholic Christian. In short, the Magisterium leads us to where we already want to go - and it is not a blind faith we place in them, but one that over time after time has proven to be inspirational, divine, and proven by nature in creation and the tests of time. The lesser role - the abstract academic one, is fine for "slow days," in Divine Revelation or when the world appears static and in no need of new interpretations for new generations, but almost every Christian religion on the planet has their own group of smart people at the top, too, who can comb through the minor academic inner debates and try to find meaning out of the chaos in life. So the lesser role is not what makes us special as Catholic Christians. The larger role - the one directly handed down by the Lord, as Paul would say, is what the Magisterium is there to do. I don't think they make themselves clear about that role often enough - if ever in modern times.

       Saint Paul was perhaps the most colorful crayon in the box, but far from the brightest one. Clearly working with St. Peter in the earliest form of the Magisterium, St. Paul pulled no punches about what his authority or role was, and that's why whole coliseums filled in places like Ephesus whenever he spoke to Christians or potential Christians who were, in their heart of hearts, already hearing this same message from the Holy Spirit about God's love, God's commandments, and God's intentions for the Church and all of humanity - no matter what the origin or custom of that humanity in the audience may be. And that authority was not there because Paul stated it was, but because Jesus Christ Himself stated it was.

       And now to defend the Magisterium - in fact, as we have stated elsewhere, the Bible is nothing but sheet music. It only becomes inspirational and relevant when played as music by our souls in full inspired connection with the available and very real Holy Spirit. Only then does the Bible attain its intended role in our society. Otherwise, it’s just another book indistinguishable from all the rest. Likewise, every aspect of life has an equally powerful potential to be inspirational in our lives, whether or not Rome has decided and directed that we go through certain obligatory motions of joy or sorrow on their prescribed calendar that day.

       Today as always, the Holy Spirit guides the Church, cultivating and inspiring the living Body of Christ, and that same Jesus is still the owner and the landlord. One example I use often is St. Paul’s scathing first letter to the Church in Corinth, where it takes a real connection to the Holy Spirit to figure out when Paul is speaking out of divine inspiration, or out of his colorful personal opinion. Both appear side by side, and to the untrained uninspired spirit, we can all too easily confuse Paul’s thoughts with God’s Word. Just the same, without discernment it is too easily to fall into the trap that many Catholics have fallen into, and that many former Catholics have justifiably cited as their reason for leaving the Church. The Magisterium often confuses the term “teaching” of the Church with “divine inspiration” through the Church that relays Revealed Truth.

       Teachings have come and gone, just as the head coverings for women that Paul went on a protracted rant about have come and gone. Teachings change from generation to generation, and it is not necessarily disingenuous to suggest that men in the role of teaching have more than once misplaced God’s own textbooks, even when speaking in positions close to the center of the Church. Several of our modern Cardinals fall into this list, but they do not, I should add, include Cardinal Levada nor Cardinal Arinze. Others working today in Vatican City in top positions who I won't mention by name clearly do, as well as some of America's most prominent Archbishops and Bishops - who will also remain nameless. Their words and actions speak for themselves regarding their priorities and agenda, and you don't have to be the brightest star in the galaxy to figure it all out. Enough said on that.

       Revealed Truth is unchanging, and in fact is more grounded in fact and eternal in nature than even the apparently unchanging, yet not completely understood laws of physics set into stone by God’s Creation. In the end, it really doesn’t matter that the Church mistakenly placed the origin of Matthew prior to Mark, because the Church finds these type of things just “little t” traditions. Although there have been horrible rare instances of abuses in the past, for the most part the Magisterium has been right, wise, and liberating rather than constraining in their proclamations.  The Church has expressed sincere contrition for aberrations of the past, and no good Christian can in this light do anything less than fully forgive them and move on.

       When Jesus spoke of the unforgivable sin against the Holy Spirit, He may have well been talking to the mortal danger his Church would face if ever speaking for God when using the invented thoughts of man.  These profanities, so far as I can tell, have never happened – knock on wood – yet. Have they been truly infallible? We are asked to believe that, but only time and God will tell. We know the message is infallible, because we often hear the same messages in our own souls. The truth is, we should never be surprised as Baptized, Confirmed Catholics at anything that the Magisterium pronounces, for we too have heard the same message. There is a time and place for private revelation, and in fact it only amplifies and reiterates the same message the Magisterium is processing. Can there be revelation to the Magisterium that does not come through the Holy Spirit to all of us? Rarely, I suppose, but yes. In these matters we must have faith that the Church still has Jesus Christ as our actively involved landlord and He knows what He's doing, even if communications of that process in the Vatican often need some refinement and simplification in order to be understood and accepted by the intended audience - the humans of this planet.

       Are there cases when private revelation is available to humans and not the Magisterium? Rarely, yes as well, as evidenced by heavenly visitations to some on the planet where the Vatican would least expect them, but which after through investigation, the Vatican accepts as real. St. Bernadette would be one such example when the Magisterium had to react to unanticipated events in the world, and not simply to the messages from heaven, before giving a canonical blessing to what she had seen - leaving no doubt in any heart not directly convinced through personal experience that yes, these things really did happen. But the Magisterium reserves the final decision in these matters, only because mental states or illusions through Satan's trickery can seem to deliver so-called heavenly messages that are not always what they seem to be. The burden of proof through a truly thorough and critical process of evaluation, prayer, and inspired thought must be very high indeed. A decision not to make findings to the positive never denies an event, but only fails to reach a definitive, irreversible, final decision in the mind of the Church. Again, these decisions have no bearing on the truth of what happened, but only on whether these events, real or perceived, rise to the level of Revealed Truth beyond any doubt - as opposed to truth beyond a reasonable doubt.  While the Church has apologized for many errors - and often belatedly so - all errors happened because of lapses in human judgment, or finite human abilities of contemplation or understanding. Regarding the important things, the “Big T” Traditions, no apology will ever be necessary, because no error is possible. The Church as a whole does a terrible job in getting the word out about these distinctions, so I'll do their job for them. (One might say, as a satirist using figurative thought, that in this case it is okay to shoot the messenger, but never the message).

       So in defense of the Magisterium, their power and authority, abused or not by the humans in the role, have always been 100% accurate and correct when proclaiming Revealed Truth – which they rarely do in actual practice. The authority is biblical and inherited from generation to generation, for each generation. The authority is specifically delegated by Jesus Christ Himself, and each generation of human messengers of Revealed Truth relay only what the Holy Spirit is telling them pertaining to how eternal, unchanging Revealed Truth is, by God’s will, to be applied to passing sequences of human generations who have never lived in a static, unchanging world as the Truth itself is.

     To this day, there is still an internal battle over the saintliness of St. Christopher, and this entire argument has always rested in the “little t” traditions, as (believe it or not), almost the entire process of formal sainthood is, when we the living hand-pick and cherish with emphasis the dearly departed who we believe are close to God and capable of and willing to serve us as lobbyists working on our behalf in the Capitol of all capitol cities, the eternal Jerusalem in heaven. We do believe, given the promise of the authority of the Church that God will "have our back" in these matters, under the auspices of "what (the Church) bounds on Earth is bound in heaven," but these assumptions are based far more on prayer and a stated preference to the Father in heaven than Revealed Truth.

     Yet, there are a few Saints about whose favor and miracles we can be absolutely and confidently certain, none equal to our appropriate devotion and prayer to Santa Maria, Mother of God. Even so, Pope Paul VI had to keep the "Marian cults" in line when some praised her at the expense of any devotion of praise towards her beloved Son, Jesus Christ, Who actually is the one who works miracles through her motherly influence in His ear, anyway. While the Church can excommunicate its members by solid authority for due cause, final judgment, against mistaken beliefs in the past is reserved by Jesus. There was a day when excommunication was considered to be condemnation to hell. They were wrong, and it is no wonder so many Protestant churches grew from these terrible mistakes. In fact, Jesus made an uncomfortable Revealed Truth available to the First Covenant ... to the leaders of Judaism who wanted to hear nothing of it, especially since Jesus challenged their most cherished distinction of favor above all other nations. Jesus told them nations can be righteously pleasing or hideously offensive to God, but nations can't issue membership cards to be used as tickets to salvation and entry into heaven.

       We correctly surmise - and this goes religions as well as nations, (and in fact Jesus was addressing both a favored and just religion as well as a nation under siege and badly in need of God's protection and intervention). Jesus made these comments that individual people - not families, religions or nations get into heaven.  Christianity arrived as "the Good News," that salvation was at hand, and the Church organized as a vehicle to get the word out, and to assemble together to praise God and organize ways to love our neighbors in force as a unified, Apostolic, Universal, and hopefully efficient and effective effort. The current Pope's first Encyclical brilliantly reminded us not to just "do the work," but to "work at love, and to love the work of loving others," to paraphrase the entire Encyclical into a single bullet point. Our Church is not about making everyone the same. St. Paul ingeniously described our Church as "One Body of Christ, in Christ, of one body with many parts." Perhaps this can also be extended to an ever-increasing number of variants serving as alternatives to Catholicism, and in this case, if true, Paul would say "One Body of Christ, many parts - many parts fractured." Given the emphasis on Christian unity Jesus earnestly prayed to see in His Church, you have to admit He's probably a little disappointed at the world right now.

     Jesus is the way and the life - if He didn't think His Popes could handle things and get "the Good News" out, He would have never left for heaven. He trusts the Popes, and so we should too. Things change in the Church, and that is natural because society advances and evolves, and the Church is a part of that greater world. God always tailors His Church to the evolving world, and if it looks like the Church is behind the times, it has to do with the care and caution always taken – in fear of offending God their source – when making decisions. Certainly, laws of unintended consequences must be pondered, yet even so Revealed Truth has not always been popularly received. That's okay. This reaction does not change the validity or applicability of Revealed Truth. Sometimes Jesus wasn't well received, either - but that didn't change the validity of His Truths. Otherwise, especially regarding Revealed Truth, there is no point in changing the Church to adopt to new generations simply to appease the mass insanity of sin in popular culture, because Revealed Truth is eternal, unchanging, and infallible in presentation from God’s mouth to our ears. Therefore, if there is a disconnect between Revealed Truth and society, then clearly the humans in society are the ones who need to get with the program.

      As stated before, as tempting it is to view otherwise, the Gospels were not a running narrative of the biography of Jesus Christ. They are more like autobiographies of the witnesses of someone else’s lives that happened to include Jesus Christ in them – a Jesus Christ that turned their own lives upside down and rocked their world - with their editorial choices and selective, if not sometimes flawed memories intact. More than one Biblical Scholar has more than irked me more than once the second that they speak – and most of them do – of some attempt by Christians to write about Jesus as some uninvolved, third party when the writers constructed the Gospels. These scholars almost eliminate any distinction between the Gospels and a good work of Hollywood fiction, because they seem to believe Jesus to be, for lack of a better term, a good character in a good story about human morality, and nothing more. Sadly when listening to many Homilies of today’s priests, they fall in this same trap.

       Some priests even accuse writers of the Gospels of embellishing or inventing stories (beyond the obvious parables) to support some theological argument that Jesus did not necessarily express during His time on Earth. Like yeah, the God who walks on water and can co-create a Universe with his Father in heaven needs embellishment to get a point across of what He can do. If anything, the life of Jesus was scaled back to something that would be easier to accept. If they had written what Jesus might have revealed to them about Earth, the third ball spinning around a Sun moving with the Local Star Group around the galaxy that is just one of billions of galaxies in an increasingly rapidly expanding Universe, one must wonder how effective the Gospels would have been in the first thousand years or so in reaching out to ordinary people in need of salvation.  As inquisitive as we are, perhaps it is best if Revelation comes to us only as fast as we can handle it.

       Yet, forget that any inner cult, such as Gnostics, would have some "secret knowledge" available for price of events that escaped the Gospels. These "fringe Gospels" were all junk science, and junk religion that were nothing less than malevolent, let alone uninspired. It was, perhaps early capitalism at its best. Jesus clearly wanted the whole world to know of the Good News - freely and not through secret knowledge banks to be purchased for a price. This clearly rules out any legitimacy for anything the Gnostics had to offer. And in my opinion, the non-Gospel gospels weren't wasn't even good fiction, and they seemed more like profane graffiti by bored juveniles in those days - perhaps extremely market-savvy capitalists who wanted to get in on the expansion of the legitimate Gospels. They read like something from "The Doors," or "The Grateful Dead," with a twist of the mysticism of Pink Floyd. Maybe more profitable than Taizé  styles, but devoid of class or meaningful content.

       Yet, we have these theologians and priests who see Jesus as some unknown person whose sayings and wisdom were transmitted into the Gospels by believers who had only heard of Jesus because of the stories passed down from others, like would result if I were to write about Pope John Paul II's early days, even if I never met him until 1984, and we didn't exchange a lot of meaningful conversation worth writing about to define his life out of that meeting. What these scholars imply, and it grates me to no end, is that the source writers of the Gospels were not people who had personally known Jesus intimately. In fact, despite all of the common sense reasons to do otherwise, most of the source writers never denied Him again. This certainty eventually cost almost all of them their lives ahead of their time.

       So the scholars begin most commentaries about the Gospel of St. Mark by commenting about how an omission of the earlier life of Jesus can be read as “Mark didn’t find it worth the reader’s time.” On the contrary, and let’s be clear about this, Simon Peter, the primary source of this Gospel did not even meet Jesus until an event only preceded by the Baptism of Jesus by John the Baptist. As such, as the primary eyewitness contributing to the story, Peter would have had no eyewitness account of anything that happened in Jesus’ life prior to that but from what he gleaned from personal experience later, such as what he learned from the events that happened when Jesus returned to Nazareth, or in this case some nearby place where Joseph's family and work would be known to the point that Jesus the Son of God would be rejected by people who had known him as the carpenter. Matthew does find some early history for Jesus, but not a history that related to things that were not available to many survivors who had known Jesus in his youth. It is unlikely that Matthew's research went very far in interviewing key witnesses, as Luke's Gospel did. (By key witnesses, we mean, for instance, private moments without other witnesses, such as events that only Mary could have described in such great detail, because they happened to her when others were not around to take notes).

Only later does Luke, something of an investigative reporter depend on hearsay accounts and eyewitnesses from multiple stories who corroborated each other's eyewitness accounts. As brilliant as Luke was in finding credible sources, probably to even include Mary the Mother of God before her death, (based on the unique detail of her life as it could only be told by her), it is very unlikely he ever personally met Jesus. That’s why the coverage on Luke’s Gospel – by far my favorite, is going to be so fun and to me at least, so interesting. 

The Gospel of St. Mark on-line