Pints With Aquinas - What Even is A BISHOP?! | Fr. Gregory Pine, O.P.

Episode Date: October 21, 2023

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Hello, my name is Father Gregory Pine and I'm a Dominican friar of the province of St. Joseph and this is Pines with Aquinas. So in this episode I'd like to talk about bishops. Why? Well, why do I want to talk about bishops? Because I think it's an interesting time to talk about bishops. So there's a Synod of Bishops that's going on and you've probably heard news of said Synod of Bishops.

Maybe you are discouraged by that news, maybe you are discouraged by that news, maybe you are encouraged by that news, maybe you're depressed, maybe you're excited, regardless. Often enough it reveals a certain relationship to your bishop. Either you're like, yeah the bishop is the champion of my cause, or you're like, oh the bishop is against me, or you're like, I have no idea what to make of this relationship with the bishop. Now it's not something to be really taken on in the abstract. One ought to be concrete, but you can benefit from certain, you know, principles, certain arguments, which help us to appreciate what it is exactly that God is doing in these,

His servants, so as to promote the life of grace. I mean, to promote salvation amongst the faithful. So yeah, let's think about it. Here we go. salvation amongst the faithful. So yeah, let's think about it. Here we go. So I think I made mention of the fact that, yeah, I definitely made mention of the fact that we had a Dominican Rosary pilgrimage at the end of September, September 30th at the Basilica. And it's an annual, so mark your calendars, September 28th, 2024, the annual Dominican Rosary pilgrimage will be coming back to the aforementioned Basilica in Washington, D.C. But at the beginning of that pilgrimage, I gave two lectures or two kind of long homilies.

And at the beginning of it, I was thinking like, man, here we are, there's like 3,000 people there as boss, and we're all packed together under the same roof. And it felt like an opportunity in which to heal and grow beyond the whole COVID experience. Because I think for a lot of us, like the sadness and anger of that time is still clinging to our clothes, like the odor of smoke.

And we don't know how to cleanse ourselves of it. And so it's tough because we're just dragging that around with us and we just can't chase it. And I think there's some resentment associated with that whole experience and a kind of just resentment because I think a lot of people felt abandoned by the hierarchy. They felt abandoned by their priests and their bishops. And it's interesting to talk to priests. There's some resentment against bishops because not only were they told, you know, to be careful, but they were forbidden in many instances from doing the very things for which they were ordained. And so I think that you've had bishops in the time since

who have come out and said that was maybe not the right thing to do, or that was the wrong thing to do. Like thinking here of Archbishop Cortiglione in San Francisco or Cardinal Archbishop Dolan in New York. They've made admissions like, yeah, we probably went a little too far with this, or we probably were too much hand in glove with the state, or with the public health authorities in a way that caused scandal, in a way that yeah, just confused the lay faithful. And I think you see that with the reduction in church attendance as to, you know, who are those people who were going previously who are no longer going now? You know, it's hard to say, but certainly that was, it was a time of scandal. Um, it was a time of scandal.

But what you've seen some people do in the months and years since is just kind of what, resign themselves to a disposition of resentment vis-a-vis their bishop. And I just don't think that's the way forward. Um, I don't believe that's the way forward. Because if I were the evil one, and I wanted to undermine the good of the church, if I wanted to set Catholics against each other, or set Catholics against their God, or get Catholics thinking along a line which would end in perdition and damnation, it would probably be, you know, something like this, or varieties of a theme, or variations on a theme, I should say. So, I think that, yeah, I think that now is a time

to heal and to grow this relationship with our bishops, because it's such a fundamental relationship. You think of how fundamental the relationship is with our fathers, with our bishops because it's such a fundamental relationship. You think of how fundamental the relationship is with our fathers, with our earthly fathers, and how that kind of opens up to us or obscures from us our relationship with our Heavenly Father? Well, you know, our priests and our bishops are our fathers in the celestial hierarchy, right? Or they're our fathers in the ecclesiastical hierarchy. And so they, you know, give us divine things, and they offer to God our prayers and sacrifices. They are instruments of our salvation. They are conduits through which we have living contact with God, and so it's essential

that that relationship be whole and healthy, and if it's undermined, or if we kind of push back against you know the healing and growth which need be need be present or need take place then it's gonna really it's just gonna hurt us. So I think that it's helpful to kind of repropose the ideal so that we can reclaim something of its genius and I just want to talk about how one bishops are perfect as as that's understood by the church, and then how bishops give us God. So first, this idea of states of perfection, it might be a notion that you've come across previously. Often enough, we'll hear it used with respect to religious, like consecrated religious. So this is part of the church's tradition, and it's, you know,

present there from the earliest testimony. You can think of the sacred scriptures and the part of the church's tradition and it's present there from the earliest testimony. You can think of the sacred scriptures and the call of the rich young man in Matthew 19 in parallel texts. How he's told to go and sell all that he has and give to the poor and to come follow Jesus. This as an expression of, okay, I follow the law, like what should I do besides? And he says, if you would be perfect, dot, dot, dot. So there's this call to evangelical perfection, which he walks away from said, but which we are called to accede to, you know, gladdened. And so you see that, go sell all that you have and give to the port. You'll have the fathers of the church identifying their obedience and poverty, and then it's preceded in Matthew 19 by this disquisition on marriage, and then Saint

Peter's saying to our Lord, yikes, it seems really tough, maybe it's better not to get married, and he says some are born eunuchs, some are made eunuchs by men, and some are made eunuchs for the kingdom, or make of themselves eunuchs for the kingdom. This idea of chastity being present there. So you have the three evangelical councils in that chapter. And so in the 5th-6th century, Pseudodinus, who is a Syriac father writing in Greek, he talks about this, and you get it picked up by St. Thomas Aquinas, and in the subsequent tradition, people like Francisco Suarez,

and even in the modern Magisterium, you have language like this, and Vita Consecrata. But the idea is that religious are perfect because they adopt means to perfection. But what we're talking about with the state of perfection, it's not just consecrated religious. Traditionally, we would also include bishops in that. And the idea is that, you know, religious are stably and permanently affixed to or constituted by these ways of perfection, these means of perfection, the

evangelical councils, but there's also something stable, firm, fixed about the episcopal appropriation or embrace of perfection. Namely in that they've been given the fullness of orders, right, and they themselves are appointed to the perfecting of the church entrusted to their care. So you have this correspondence here between bishops and religious in Pseudo-Dionysius where the religious are perfect as being perfected and then the bishops are perfect as perfecting. And so they have this stable obligation to the things of perfection. And so far as possessing the fullness of orders,

they're meant to equip the local church with everything that it needs, not as the deliverance of their own personality, but as pertaining to their hierarchical position in the life of the church, their jurisdiction, and their exercise thereof. So then, okay, that's the first point. The second point then is, what do they give us? Well, bishops, in effect, they give us God. They ought to give us God. They give us grace, they give us enlightenment, and that's explained in a variety of ways. But the primary image here is that of a shepherd, right, who lays down his life for his sheep. The word in Greek Episcopal just means like overseer, right, one who administrates, but not just in the sense of, you know, like a bean counter,

but in the one who, again, provides for every need of those entrusted to his care. So he expresses, you know, highest pastoral care within the setting of his local church. And that's, that's real, that ought to be real. So why it's so important then for a bishop to preach and to teach the faith is that he is the principal preacher and teacher of the faith in his diocese. As a successor to the apostles, he's meant to enjoy a peculiar intimacy with our Lord Jesus Christ. He's meant to live that apostolic life with a kind of fervor and zeal such that as the deliverance of his friendship right he can testify to those who are you know arrayed around him in the

assembly of God that he has come to see and to love one who can save us from our sins right that's his that's his appointment that's his consecration so then you know like this is the point of hierarchy this is the point of a hierarchical power within the church is that it bestows upon us things from on high. As they flood from their fontal source through the conduits of the apostolic college, right, they come to us sweetened, as it were, by the transmission. So it's not to say like, you know, obviously God can do all of these things directly, but he prefers to do them through mediation.

So the mediation of our Lord Jesus Christ, who is the sole and unique mediator of salvation. But then our Lord Jesus Christ associates with himself, you know, his church as sacraments and the bishops and priests, you know, those who are meant the ministers to give the sacraments and to constitute the life of the church in its hierarchical sense, precisely so that these graces come to us through those by whom we are known and loved with a particular pastoral solicitude and care. So God could tend to all sheep in all times and places, but he appoints shepherds so that the sheep might know his love through the love of the shepherd. And so one cool thing that comes from this is that bishops are typically conceived as illuminators, right?

So they have this kind of sharing in the divine light. All of us have a sharing in the divine light. I mean, every person in the world has a sharing in the divine light because we all have an intellect, which is a kind of light, you know, which illumines the things that we encounter and draws forth from them their intelligible life or their intelligible contents. But then by grace one has a fuller participation in that divine light and so one gains deeper access with the eyes of faith to the very interior of mysteries themselves. And then with glory one has a yet more perfect participation in that intelligible light because God gives a light to the mind to

strengthen it so as to take him in in the vision of heaven. But you see in the bishops by virtue of their ordination this kind of sharing in the intelligible light of God such that they can illumine. And so it's you know taught that the bishops have a kind of plenary knowledge of Scripture. That doesn't necessarily mean that they're all scripture scholars or it doesn't necessarily mean that they have the most penetrating or like grasping insight into sacred Scripture. But it does mean that they have the most penetrating or like grasping insight into sacred scripture, but it does mean that they're meant to preach and to teach it in its entirety, you know, in its integrity to their people.

And so they're thought of as illuminators. And so if you've ever been to an Episcopal ordination, they hold the book of the Gospels over the head of the candidate as part of his consecration to symbolize and in symbolizing to affect this reality. And so Pseudo-Dionysius will pair bishops with monks as illuminators and illuminated. So there's a kind of, again, we talked about that, perfecting and being perfected.

So then I think that we ought to see this ultimately in preaching and teaching. And here, I often return to this little text from St. Thomas Aquinas, surprise, surprise, in which he describes different modes of preaching. So I'm just going to read you a little bit of it and then a final word on bishops. So this is from Summa Theologiae, Tertsioparas, question 71, article 4, response to the third objection. And St. Thomas is talking about instruction and he outlines four different kinds of instruction. He

says instruction is manifold or multiplex is the word that he used. One leads to the embracing of the faith and is ascribed by Dionysius to bishops, alright? So in Dionysius' writing, Pseudo-Dionysius' writing, he gives it to bishops. He says though that this can be undertaken by any preacher or even by any believer, right? So any of the faithful. So this would be like Charismatic preaching, the announcement of the gospel, alright? And we're all constit constituted as charismatic preachers by virtue of our baptism. Dionysius associates in a particular way with the bishop because the bishop ought to be the first evangelizer. He ought to be the first proclamer of the good news in the local church. And then he says, another is that by which a man is taught the rudiments

of the faith and how to comport himself in receiving the sacraments. This belongs secondarily to the ministers, primarily to the priests." So there we're thinking of like catechesis, okay? So, yeah, this idea here is like the last one we saw, principally bishops but to any preacher and to all the faithful. And this one we're talking about ministers, so you think about those ordained and their minor orders and major orders. But, yeah, principally the priests themselves would be responsible for this type of catechesis, though you can see the wide sharing in this in the life of the church. And then he goes on, a third is instruction in the mode, oops, sorry about that.

Dropped my lens cap. Is in the mode of Christian life and this belongs to sponsors. So he's thinking here of like baptismal sponsors or those who are responsible for the moral upbringing of an individual. All right, so we've got at this point, charismatic preaching, catechetical preaching, moral preaching, and then the last. A fourth is the instruction in the profound mysteries of faith and on the perfection of Christian life. This belonged to bishops ex officio in virtue, that is to say in virtue of their office. So in the Dominican tradition we'll often call this sacra predicatio, a holy preaching. Not to

say that other preaching isn't holy, but that this preaching is especially such because it partakes of the holiness of God in peculiar fashion. And what you give people is God, right? When you give people the profound mysteries of faith, you give them God, because the profound mysteries of the faith are just God spun out or God articulated in various fashions. And then it says, on the perfection of the Christian life. So the bishop as perfect is meant to make perfect, and so he's first meant to, you know, inspire a faith and a hope that such a thing is, that it is possible for us, and that we can incline to it or embrace it in love. And then He ought to furnish us with those very things which suit us to perfection or

which make us to be perfect. So I just love this. You know, like, you can give the profound mysteries of the faith, and you can give the perfection of Christian life as a bishop. I mean, you're made such by virtue of your office. You're constituted stably as one meant destined to do so. So I think that part of how we're meant to like heal and grow in our relationship with the bishops is to ask them for God. We might feel a

little bit jaded or we might feel a little bit exasperated, but we ought ultimately to ask them for God. So pray for your bishops, fast for your bishops, offer the Mass for your bishops, offer the mass for your bishops, offer reparation for your bishops, but also ask your bishops to give you God because that's ultimately what you want, that's ultimately what all of us want, and we can only have it in so far as we ask for it because those who ask will receive, those who seek will find, those who knock at the door will have it opened unto them, and the Lord promises to do that. And he promises to do that through those whom he has ordained to precisely that task.

So cheers. I hope that's helpful. This is Pints of the Quinas. If you haven't yet, please do subscribe to the channel and push the bell, get other email updates when things come out. And then if you haven't yet do check out, um, God's Plaining, which is a podcast which I contribute with four other Dominican friars. We've got an episode coming out this week about what a priest thinks at mass, which is a podcast which I contribute with four of the Dominican friars. We've got an episode coming out this week about what a priest thinks at mass,

which I think you, you might enjoy. Uh, and then we've also got a retreat, a young adult retreat, November 3rd through 5th at Malvern retreat house in Malvern, Pennsylvania. I think the deadline for it was like yesterday or the day before, but if you get your application in the next two days, then you can come. It's for people 21 through 33. Alright, that's all I got. So, thanks so much. Know my prayers for you, please pray for me, and I will look forward to chatting with you next time on Pines with Aquinas.