Precision and clarity are requisite in theology, a theme developed by the great Josef Pieper. One of the reasons for this, besides the great importance of understanding revelation correctly, is that the object of theology – that to which the terms refer – is not knowable by our sense. Hence, unlike, say, biology or chemistry, we cannot verify the proposed truths by our senses, or by some experiment. Theology is based on faith, on what God hath said is necessary for our salvation.
It’s in this light that I wondered about Michael Pakaluk’s reflection on 9-11, and his mention of the noble example of Todd Beamer. He’s the one on the last of the four doomed airplanes, on which some of the passengers – apparently – took on the hijackers. Whatever happened, the plane, instead of smashing into its apparent intended target (the White House), nose dived into a field in Pennsylvania, killing everyone on board. His last words, as he led the charge, were ‘Let’s roll’. He left a wife and family behind, was hard working, and by what is reported, a fervent evangelical Christian.
We may have hope he made it to heaven, in accordance with Christ’s words: Greater love has no man than this, that a man lay down his life for his friends. (John 15:13).
My quibble is not with that, nor with Mr. Beamer himself, but with Dr. Pakaluk’s implication that, in reflecting on Mr. Beamer’s last day on September 10th, 2001, in his normal everyday existence, that he was doing ‘just what God wanted’, and the ‘perfect will of God’:
Because he was doing just what God wanted (“to them that love God”), it follows, I think, that his being on that plane was in accordance with God’s perfect will. The evil hijackers did what they did only in accordance with God’s permissive will. But Todd was following God’s perfect will, and, when it became clear to him, as with the other heroes on Flight 93, that he must die, he could affirm that God put him on that flight for a reason.
Perhaps he was meant to be on that flight, I doubt even a great saint in Saint Teresa’s seventh mansion of the spiritual life would make a claim that he was ‘doing just what God wanted’, at least all of the time. I certainly wouldn’t make it for myself. I simply hope I’m sort of doing God’s will, and striving for the perfect variety. Does not such a statement put Todd Beamer in the ‘unitive way’? Is there not always a sliver of uncertainty that what we are doing, hic et nunc, may not quite be God’s ‘perfect will’, or ‘just what He wants’?
With all due respect for rhetorical expression, we should keep in mind that although Mr. Beamer was a ‘believing Christian’, he was so only in a limited sense: He had just returned from a trip to Rome, he was not a Catholic, and, hence, lacked the ordinary means of salvation and fullness of faith. Evangelicals such as Mr. Beamer do not have the grace of the Eucharist, nor Confession and having their sins sacramentally forgiven. They fulfil no holy days of obligation, nor the precepts of the Church. They do not have devotion to the Mother of God, or at least any properly ordered one, nor to any of the panoply of saints, and consider such ‘idolatry’. The more ‘fervent’ he was, the more he would have been against these Catholic, and quite necessary, paths to salvation, all of which are a large part not only of ‘doing God’s will’, but of discerning that will in other decisions.
Whatever Mr. Beamer’s devotion to his family and work, and his virtues – all laudable – how could his life on September 10th, and every day before that, possibly be God’s ‘perfect will’? God does not will other ‘denominations’ or religions, nor the acts thereof, except permissively, insofar as they share in or provide some sort of propaedeutic to or preparation for the one true religion.
A quibble? But we’re discussing the very means of salvation as revealed by God the Father through Christ, outside of which one treads in uncertainty. Extra ecclesiam nulla salus is still a dogma, even if there is allowance that one may still be saved through invincible ignorance of the salvific necessity of the Catholic Church. As the Dogmatic Constitution on the Church, Lumen Gentium, puts it clearly:
This Sacred Council wishes to turn its attention firstly to the Catholic faithful. Basing itself upon Sacred Scripture and Tradition, it teaches that the Church, now sojourning on earth as an exile, is necessary for salvation. Christ, present to us in His Body, which is the Church, is the one Mediator and the unique way of salvation. In explicit terms He Himself affirmed the necessity of faith and baptism and thereby affirmed also the necessity of the Church, for through baptism as through a door men enter the Church. Whosoever, therefore, knowing that the Catholic Church was made necessary by Christ, would refuse to enter or to remain in it, could not be saved.
We don’t know Todd Beamer’s state of mind or soul or conscience, nor what secret sins with which he may have been struggling (we scarcely even know our own!), nor even how he died or what happened on that airplane before it tragically careened into the ground. All we have are his last words, by which we may have hope. But we should be careful not to canonize anyone, especially those outside the visible Church.
The point here is that Dr. Pakaluk’s implicit claim that non-Catholics, and the rest of us non-saints, somehow do God’s perfect will just because we’re somewhere we might be doing or might do some good, would imply a quasi-syncretism (which I don’t think he intends): That to get to heaven it’s enough for one to be a vaguely ‘good Christian’, or even a ‘good person’. Natural virtue is not enough – one needs supernatural faith and the grace of God, both of which are found fully and with certainty only in the one, holy, catholic and apostolic Church.
Perhaps Todd Beamer had such supernatural faith and charity, but that is known only to God. We pray for him, his family, and all the victims of 9-11, and we hope they all made it somehow to heaven. Miserere eis et nobis, Domine.
One we can be sure did, and always did, God’s ‘holy and perfect’ will was, of course, Our Lady, whose will always corresponded with that of the Father and her Son, I heard a priest mention in a wedding homily recently (not in my own parish) that Our Lady wanted ‘lots of children’ and only had her mind changed at the Annunciation.
That would be as much a surprise to me as it was allegedly to the Virgin, for such is not traditional Mariological teaching. The consensus of the sources is that Mary of Nazareth had consecrated herself to virginity from childhood – and was so consecrated by God – giving up the opportunity to be the mother of the awaited Messiah. It’s in that light that the Church has understood her reply to the Angel Gabriel that – against expectation – she indeed was going to be given that grace, to which she replied “How can this be, since I know not man’?
Here is Saint Thomas Aquinas quoting Saint Augustine:
Augustine says (De Sanct. Virg. iv): “Mary answered the announcing angel: ‘How shall this be done, because I know not man?’ She would not have said this unless she had already vowed her virginity to God.”
The priest could do with a little refresher course in his Patristics and his Thomas. For if Our Lady was expecting to be married and have ‘lots of children’, the reply she made to the Angel makes no sense. She would simply have said right away her ‘Fiat’, or some other words to that effect. Thomas goes on to clarify that Mary always desired to live as a virgin, but only in accordance with God’s will. She made her consecration absolute after her marriage to Joseph, when that holy and perfect will was revealed. We can be certain that Our Lady fulfilled the divine will perfectly, for such has been defined by the Church – she never deviated, nor sinned. We cannot say that of anyone else (except, of course, her Son, but, then He was the divine Word).
God often chooses what is least expected. His ways are not ours, and we must conform to those ways, or, more properly, the Way, found in His one, holy, catholic and apostolic Church, of which our Lady, in her full virginity and motherhood, is both the exemplar and type.
May God be with you all!
