Memorize the Reasons!

Defending the Faith with the Catholic Art of Memory

KEVIN VOST

Memorize the Reasons!

Defending the Faith with the Catholic Art of Memory

San Diego

2013

Memorize the Reasons!

Defending the Faith with the Catholic Art of Memory

© 2013 by Kevin Vost

All rights reserved. Except for quotations, no part of this book may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying, recording, uploading to the Internet, or by any information storage and retrieval system, without written permission from the publisher.

Unless otherwise noted, biblical citations are taken from the Revised Standard Version of the Bible (© 1971 by Division of Christian Education of the National Council of the Churches of Christ in the United States of America).

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To Kathy Ann Vost

Like the sun rising in the heights of the Lord, so is the beauty of a good wife in her well-ordered home.

Sirach 26:16

Acknowledgments

Without counsel plans go wrong, but with many advisers they succeed. To make an apt answer is a joy to a man, and a word in season, how good it is!

Proverbs 15:22–23

Many thanks to Karl Keating for providing me the honor of writing for Catholic Answers for the first time, while working yet again (the sixth time, if I recall correctly) with my ever-patient, ever insightful editor, Todd Aglialoro, and with the man who so deftly puts the ink to the images of the Catholic art of memory, my many-time illustrator, Ted Schluenderfritz. Thanks also to Tim Staples for his apologetics insights, and to everyone at Catholic Answers who helped bring this book to print. Special thanks also go to the authors, bloggers, and friends who read chapters and provided much helpful feedback. (You know who you are, Peggy Bowes, Brett Feger, Shane Kapler, and Jared Zimmerer...) With wise counselors such as these, I alone remain accountable for any remaining infelicities between the front and back covers.

Foreword

“I Should Have Said”

Unbelievers are frequently impressed by the goodness and kindness of some Catholic who has come their way—impressed to the point where they wonder if his excellence may be due to something in his religion. So they ask him to explain his religion to them. If he answers intelligently and winningly, then the result is all good, and the episode may end with the unbeliever receiving instruction from a priest. But if the Catholic talks nonsense, then the unbeliever can but depart, as sure as ever of that one Catholic’s goodness, but convinced that his religion has nothing to do with it.

Frank J. Sheed, Theology for Beginners1

Indeed there is never a moment when we do not wish to commit something to memory, and we wish it most of all when our attention is held by a business of special importance. So, since a ready memory is a useful thing, you see clearly with what great pains we must strive to acquire so useful a faculty. Once you know its uses you will be able to appreciate this advice.

Marcus Tullius Cicero, Ad Herennium (For Herennius)2

Have you ever been challenged about some doctrine of the Catholic faith, or met with a sincere inquiry from a non-Catholic Christian, and stood there slack-jawed? You had read or heard the answers before. They were there in the deep recesses of your long-term memory. Some may have made it to the tip of your tongue. But why didn’t they then come out in articulate, organized speech? Why couldn’t you remember the words—the reasons for the faith you hold—when it counted?

It would be great, you might have thought, if there were some way to lock down that information in your mind, ready to be recalled and shared with others when the need arose. Wouldn’t it be even better if this memory method were laid out in an illustrated step-by-step manual directly applied to apologetic arguments defending key Catholic doctrines? Better still if this memory method had been developed, enhanced, and passed on to us by some of the most profound Doctors of the Church?

Been There, Done That

I’ve been there myself. I’ve been asked about the reasons for particular Catholic beliefs—sometimes from people who bore ill will toward the Church, other times from those who asked out of benevolent curiosity. They’ve wanted to know things like where the pope or purgatory are found in the Bible, why Catholics “worship” Mary, and why we don’t recognize the Bible as the inerrant word of God.

If I were to have drawn solely upon the fund of the formal Catholic education of my childhood and adolescence, my responses would have been something like the following: “I don’t think they are in the Bible, but we have our reasons”; “We don’t really worship Mary, but we greatly respect her and pray to her”; and “We do believe in the Bible (though I’m not sure if all the stories are literally true), and we also believe in the authority of the Church.”

Since my return to the Church in 2004 and my subsequent immersion in study of Scripture, the Catechism, the Summa, and the works of so many wonderful ancient and modern Catholic apologists, I have been able to answer such questions at a deeper level, but I still could not lay out much of an organized response with specific reasons, and certainly couldn’t cite “chapter and verse” from the Bible or the writings of the early Christians. Maybe later, checking some of my books, I could figure out what I should have said, but the moment of opportunity had long passed.

What kind of witness was I, then, to the Catholic faith that we’re all called to share?

From Memorize the Faith! to Memorize the Reasons!

To shorten a long story that I have told elsewhere,3 when I came back to the Church at age forty-three I sought to share something I’d learned during my twenty-five years in the atheistic wilderness. While researching a master’s thesis on memory strategy instruction with adolescents, I examined not only the modern psychological research on memory improvement techniques but the history of those methods. In so doing I learned that Sts. Albert the Great and Thomas Aquinas studied, adapted, improved, and applied an age-old art of memory improvement first developed in ancient Greece and Rome. It struck me that I had never seen these methods discussed in any Catholic books, let alone actually applied to help modern-day Catholics memorize key tenets of the faith. So, shortly thereafter, I did what I could to remedy the situation by writing Memorize the Faith!

In the book I offered a guided tutorial helping readers apply that ancient memory method to all sorts of basic catechetical material: the Ten Commandments, the virtues and deadly sins, the Beatitudes, sacraments, mysteries of the rosary, names of all the books in the Bible, and much more. My barber suggested adding apologetics applications, but I ran out of space, and so I just mentioned apologetics in passing as a possibility for future applications.

Well, the future is here! In this book we will focus on memorizing essential topics of Catholic apologetics, so that the next time your faith is questioned or challenged, you won’t be left pondering what you should have said. Instead you’ll always stand ready to give good reasons for the hope that is within you (1 Pet. 3:15).

1 Frank Sheed, Theology for Beginners (New York: Sheed & Ward, 1957), pp. 235–236.

2 Ciceio, Rhetorica ad Herennium (The Loeb Classical Library, Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 2004), p. 225.

3 Kevin Vost, From Atheism to Catholicism: How Scientists and Philosophers Led Me to Truth (Huntington, IN: Our Sunday Visitor, 2010).

Introduction

Train Your Memory, Defend Your Faith

Train yourself in godliness; for while bodily training is of some value, godliness is of value in every way, as it holds promise for the present life and also for the life to come.

1 Timothy 4:7–8

For trained memory, two things are necessary, that is, firm locations and also images for the material; for the locations are like tablets on which we write, the images like the letters written on them.

Thomas Bradwardine, De Memoria Artificiali (On Artificial Memory)4

If you read carefully, concentrate intently, and use your imagination, by the time you have set this book aside you will have trained your memory for a godly purpose. You will have rendered yourself able to provide a defense for a host of essential Catholic beliefs, including the primacy of Peter, the establishment and authority of the Church, the hierarchy, and the priesthood, papal infallibility, the four marks of the Church, the de fide Marian doctrines, the authority of tradition, the canon of Scripture, and more. You will have deposited within the treasury of your memory a full 120 reasons—in order, literally forward and backward!

But there is more. You will master the sources of these reasons and be ready to recall where they can be found in the Bible (chapter and verse) and in the writings of the Church Fathers.

And you still won’t be finished. For there are many fine apologetics books out there—and I encourage you to devour them—but this book will not only teach you the reasons for your faith, it will also equip you with “cognitive tools” to continue building up your apologetic knowledge, leaving you ready to make your reasons even stronger and more compelling. You will be able to use those tools to memorize evidence and arguments in any other area where you may be called upon to defend Catholic truth: whether it’s the existence of God (or his trinitarian nature), Christ’s Real Presence in the Eucharist, or the importance of good works for salvation.

We were wondrously made by God, and the power of memory is certainly among those wonders. Indeed, St. Albert referred to memory as habitus animae rationalis, a habit of the rational soul. Habits are built by training, that is, by diligent practice. In this book, you will find practice aplenty. In every single chapter, we will give God thanks by working to develop our memory power to the fullest, literally training our memories on truths he has revealed to us.

But I’m getting ahead of myself. There is so much to consider in the pages ahead, I think it’s time to spell out more clearly just what we’re going to learn—and just how we’re going to be able to memorize it all so thoroughly.

A Pocket Guide for the Mind

After you finish this book you will always carry with you a handy pocket book of Catholic apologetics. No, you won’t be lugging this book around in your pocket (it probably wouldn’t fit, anyway). I’m talking about a book you will store within the pockets of your mind. In the words of St. Thomas, “a thing is said metaphorically to be written in the mind of anyone when it is firmly held in memory.”5 Ancient Greek and Roman experts on mnemonics (the art of memory) referred to their techniques as an “inner writing.”

The Ad Herennium, written sometime around 80 B.C. and long attributed to Marcus Tullius Cicero, is the oldest extant book bearing a complete treatise on the ancient art of memory based on locations (“backgrounds”) and images. Note its ancient metaphors involving writing:

For the backgrounds are very much like wax tablets or papyrus, the images like the letters, the arrangement and disposition of the images like the script, and the delivery is like the reading. We should therefore, if we desire to memorize a large number of items, equip ourselves with a large number of backgrounds, so that in these we may set a large number of images.6

And so our approach will involve a series of imagined locations that will serve as a notebook—or, to modernize things a bit, a data template—within your head. Vivid mental images will be your pen (or keyboard). When the book is finished, you won’t need it in your pocket. You’ll “read” it in your mind and be able to present its contents to others.

But of course, we’ve only just begun. Before we can read it in our minds, we need to get out some mental paper and sketch up some of the “backgrounds” that Cicero was talking about.

“Some Will Place a Church”

St. Albert the Great, a thirteenth-century scientist, philosopher, and Doctor of the Church, took the ancient Greco-Roman art of memory and applied it to the realm of ethics and practical wisdom. In doing so, he remarked that in practicing this art “some will place a church.” We’ll soon see exactly what “placing a church” means, for it lies at the heart of our method.

When the ancient Greek poet Simonides of Ceos (c. 556–468 B.C.) invented the ancient art of memory, he built it upon the power of visual images. Aristotle said that we think via images, and Simonides reckoned that we remember that way, too.

As the Roman authors Quintillian and Cicero tell the story, the poet Simonides of Ceos (also known as “Simonides Melicus” or “honey-tongued”) was called upon by one Scopas, a nobleman of Thessaly, to give a recitation. During the oration in honor of his host, Simonides included, as was common in his day, verses in honor of the twin gods Castor and Pollux. Afterward, the proud Scopas informed Simonides that he would pay him only half his fee, and he could get the other half from Castor and Pollux!

Shortly thereafter, a messenger informed Simonides two young men outside needed to see him about an emergency. When Simonides left the building, the men were nowhere to be found, but during his absence the roof of the hall caved in, and its large stones mangled the guests beyond recognition. Not even their families could identify them for burial, but Simonides discovered that he could! He was able to tell the authorities, “Socrates Smith was reclining right there, with Empodocles Jones on his right” (or something along those lines), working his way around the entire audience. Simonides realized that from his perspective as the speaker he was able to reproduce in his mind’s eye the visual image of the men in their seating arrangement during his oration.

As the story goes, those two young men who called Simonides away were, perhaps as you’ve guessed, Castor and Pollux themselves, and they rewarded Simonides not only with his life but with the invention of what is now known as the method of loci.7

Simonides came to realize two phenomena of fundamental importance to the way the human memory operates and to how we can perfect it. First, as the very name method of loci implies, is the importance of locations. We remember things best when they are arranged in an organized sequence of places. And secondly, there is the powerful effect of visual images. We take in information through all of our senses, but we tend to remember best things we have seen with our own eyes. Seeing is not only believing; seeing is remembering! The powerful effects of orderly arrangement and visual images are characteristics of the nature of human memory—what the ancients so aptly called natural memory.

But Simonides did not merely discover these features of natural memory. He used them to craft a system of artificial memory, that is, memory perfected by man-made methods. You see, by nature we can readily recall things we have actually seen in certain arrangements. But by art, by our own deliberate methods, we can also imagine things we have never actually seen, place them in arrangements we have only imagined, and remember those things as well as if we had actually seen them.

Long before the days of pens and paper (let alone iPads), ancient Greek and Roman poets, orators, lawyers, politicians, professors, and sundry public speakers of all professions made use of this powerful method of memory improvement. They came to realize that they could create imaginary systems of locations based on places they knew well (such as their own houses), and plant there, in a precise numerical sequence, images to remind them of things they wanted to be sure to talk about.

They would not memorize their speeches word for word, for they realized that memoria verbum (memory for exact words) was a rather cumbersome thing compared to memoria res—memory for things. By planting mental images of things to be remembered within their imaginary series of locations, they could easily memorize the outline or important points of their speeches in exact order. By memorizing key points or concepts instead of exact phrasings, they were free to speak spontaneously, to elaborate, and to keep their place in their talks (especially if confronted by hecklers, or perhaps by the ancient equivalent of tomatoes).

These techniques remained well-known throughout the classical period and were mentioned in the writings of the highly educated Church Fathers Jerome (c. 340-420) and Augustine (354-430). After Rome collapsed around the time of Augustine’s death, there were far fewer opportunities for public rhetoric as a part of political discourse. The use of the method of loci as a technique for public speaking waned and was nearly extinguished. When Charlemagne (742-814) asked his minister of education about methods to improve one’s memory, Bl. Alcuin of York (c. 735-804) was able to tell him that Cicero called memory “the treasure house of all things,” but as for the actual methods, he could only tell his king:

We have no other precepts about it, except exercise in memorizing, practice in writing, application to study, and the avoidance of drunkenness, which does the greatest possible injury to all good studies.”8

Though Alcuin’s advice remains sensible to this day, we see no signs of awareness of Simonides’ (or of Cicero’s) classical art of memory.

It would not be for another four centuries that Albert the Great and Thomas Aquinas revived and revised the ancient art of memory. These great thinkers synthesized Aristotle’s writings about what memory is with Cicero’s writings about how to improve it, and expanded the methods of artificial memory from the realm of rhetoric, or public speaking, into the realm of ethics, or moral living. They saw memory as a necessary part of the virtue of prudence, or practical wisdom; for to achieve moral goals in the future, we must be guided by what we have learned in the past. As Albert wrote:

Whence we say that among all those things that point toward ethical wisdom, the most necessary is trained memory, because from past events we are guided in the present and future, and not from the converse.9

Albert and Thomas were both familiar with the ancient Latin texts on artificial memory. Indeed, Albert wrote an extensive commentary on the Ad Herennium—which brings us to the mystery of our section heading. When I wrote Memorize the Faith! I used sixty locations within six rooms of an imaginary house (patterned loosely on my own). In the Ad Herennium, that most ancient of memory treatises, the first example of a system of locations is that of a house. So, the Ad Herrenium’s author beat me to the punch by more than 2,000 years. By the time he was talking about the way people were using the method of loci in his day (the thirteenth century), he simply noted, “Some will place a church.” So that is exactly what we’re going to do.

The first, in Part I, will be named after St. Peter, for it will house the reasons for our beliefs about the primacy of Peter, the papacy, and the authority of the Catholic Church.

Part II’s memory cathedral will be dedicated to Mary, like Notre Dame or the Cathedral of the Immaculate Conception. It will hold the reasons for the many ways in which we rightly hail and honor the Blessed Virgin Mary, the Mother of God.

In Part III we will visit the “First Catholic Bible Church.” For it was the Catholic Church that gave us the Bible, after all. And this church will contain the arguments that reveal the true relationship between the Bible and the Church and between Scripture and Tradition (and tradition—small “t”).

“But what,” you might ask, “does it mean ‘to place a church?’ And how will this help us become better evangelists and defenders of the faith?” Let us open up the doors of our first cathedral for a quick demonstration. (No ticket is required for admission, but seating is available only for those who agree to set their God-given powers of attention, concentration, and imagination on high. Remember, our memories are in training!)

Welcome to St. Peter’s!

Can you see in your mind’s eye the façade of a magnificent cathedral? Imagine, too, that the sign in front tells you this is “St. Peter’s Cathedral.”

Now, imagine you are walking through a piazza approaching this towering monument to God. At the first location of our memory cathedral, at the end of the piazza, right before the base of the steps, you look up at the great cathedral and notice that it sits upon a massive and indestructible rock. Take a few seconds to picture this in your mind’s eye.

Next, resting at the top of the steps (location 2), you find a giant golden key, like the oversized, symbolic “key to the city” that a mayor might give to a visiting dignitary. Now, you spy the massive central front door (location 3). You notice it is locked, but right as you turn to head back for the key, the door opens from the inside. You are greeted by a fully uniformed naval captain, with a hat on his head and a coat bedecked with shimmering medals.

Right above that central door, your eyes are drawn to a large, semi-circular stained glass window (location 4) depicting a muscular and hairy man fending off a slew of soldiers with the jawbone of an ass. You can tell by the long hair and the Herculean physique that this is none other than Samson.

Looking up to the left, over the doorway, you spy the inset statue of a rugged-looking older man wearing a medieval Dominican tunic and hooded cape. With book and quill in hand, determined look on his face, and “the shoulders of a giant,” it is the Universal Doctor, St. Albert the Great. And there, at location 5, you realize that this great medieval memory master is conversing with an ancient bearded shepherd, robe, sandals, staff, and all.

Got that? Good.

Now, let’s give our minds a breather as we review what we’ve learned. At the end of the piazza (location 1), you saw that St. Peter’s Cathedral was built upon a rock. At the top of the steps (location 2), you observed a golden key. The massive front door (location 3) was opened by a naval captain. Above the door was that window (location 4) depicting the mighty Samson. Finally, we saw above the door on the left side that statue of St. Albert the Great (location 5), conversing with a shepherd. All right, it’s time to move along, across, and then up to the top of that massive façade.

Have you seen images of the round rose window of the Cathedral of Notre Dame in Paris? Well, whether you have or you haven’t, it’s time to imagine it now, right next to St. Albert’s statue, because that’s our sixth location. Depicted within that window is what you think at first is a chalice; but no, it’s a beautiful golden athletic trophy. Engraved in bold letters across it are these words: “First Place.”

Moving right along to the right, opposite St. Albert’s statue on the other side of the rose window, is the statue of a large ox of a man in similar Dominican garb. He bears the emblem of the sun on his chest while holding a book and a miniature church in the palm of his outstretched left hand. Here, at our seventh location, is Albert’s great student, fellow Church Doctor, and memory master St. Thomas Aquinas. Like Albert, he is in deep conversation with a leader he knew quite well, St. Louis IX, King of France. Can you picture him there, too, fleurs de lis on his coat and great crown upon his head?

Now your neck cranes back as you admire the immense bell tower on the left (location 8), a good hundred feet above Albert’s statue. You hear a voice from the top, and standing up there you spy an orator declaiming his message to a crowd below him.

Your eye moves to the right and you see the other right bell tower (location 9). Upon it is a mailman, and he is tossing letters from his bag. The envelopes are carried by the winds in all directions.

Finally, your eye rests upon the great central spire and the crucifix at its apex (location 10). You notice perched precariously on top none other than mighty Atlas, that ancient Greek Titan who held up the sky. And what is he doing? Well, he’s holding up the sky, of course.

Take a minute now to review one more time the last five locations and their associated images. Drill yourself and make sure you have them.

Now that you do, perhaps you’re wondering just what it is that you have! Before I explain what all of those images mean, let’s list them all together.

LOCATION

IMAGE

1.

End of piazza

Giant rock

2.

Top of steps

Golden key

3.

Front central door

Naval captain

4.

Stained glass window

Samson

5.

St. Albert statue

Shepherd

6.

Rose window

First place trophy

7.

St. Thomas Aquinas statue

Leader (St. Louis IX of France)

8.

Left bell tower

Orator

9.

Right bell tower

Mailman

10.

Central spire

Atlas

Run through the locations in your mind a couple more times, for as St. Thomas reminds us, repetitio est mater memoriae (repetition is the mother of memory). And just to make sure that you’ve really gotten them inside and out, upside and down, see if you can recall them in reverse order. Hold your hand or a paper over the images and see if the locations will trigger them. Better yet, see if your spouse, or that person in the seat next to you on the airplane, will call out numbers between one and ten, and you can call out the locations and the images (or maybe just do it quietly yourself).

Okay, if you’ve gotten them now, let’s see just what you have.

You walk up to St. Peter’s and the rock visible from the walk at location one reminds us that Peter was the rock upon which Christ built his Church, as we learn from Matthew 16:18.

The golden key on the steps at location two reminds us that in the next verse we learn that Jesus also handed him the keys to his kingdom.

The naval captain, who opens the front door at location three, reminds us that in the fifth chapter of St. Luke’s Gospel, Jesus chose to preach from Peter’s boat, which is why the Catholic Church is called the “Barque of Peter.”

The depiction of the mighty Samson in the window at location four reminds us that Christ prayed that Peter would strengthen his brethren with his unfailing strength (Luke 22:32). Peter would become, as it were, Christ’s strongman. His strength would not only be used to pull down pagan pillars but would also strengthen that pillar and bulwark of the truth, the Church. (We’ll discuss 1 Timothy 3:15 later).

At location five, the site of the statue of St. Albert the Great, the shepherd reminds us of St. Peter’s call to become Christ’s shepherd on earth (John 21:17).

The image of the athlete’s first-place trophy in the rose window at location six reminds us that Jesus unquestionably gave to Peter primacy before all the other apostles. The “first first,” we might say, occurs in Matthew 4:18, when “Simon who is called Peter” is the first of Christ’s apostles mentioned in the Bible. There are so many of Peter’s firsts to consider (over fifty, in fact)10 that we’ll have to wait for our own first chapter to give them their full due.

At the site of St. Thomas’s statue (location seven) we found him conversing with a great leader. We’re using King St. Louis because he happened to be a great leader with whom St. Thomas actually conversed. Any other leader would do, though, for his job is simply to remind us of the many ways and places in which the Gospels and other books of the New Testament reveal St. Peter as leader of the apostles during Christ’s life on earth, and leader of the whole Christian community after Christ’s Resurrection.

Up now to the top on the left bell tower at location eight. The great orator reminds us that it was also St. Peter who first preached Christ’s message after the descent of the Holy Spirit at Pentecost, the birthday of the Church. (See Acts 2:14–36 for the entire oration.)

The image of the mailman at location nine, the other bell tower, takes us beyond the pages of the New Testament and the era of the apostles to a writing of the early Church. An early apostolic Father named Hermas, brother to the first Pope Pius, wrote a letter called The Shepherd somewhere in between A.D. 140 and 155. In it, he describes a vision in which an old woman advises him to send one of two books he would write to St. Clement, a pope of his youth, the third successor to Peter. “Clement shall then send it to the cities abroad, for that is his duty.”11 So, here we see evidence, even in the second century, of the bishop of Rome engaged in the papal work of sending encyclical letters to Christian communities throughout the world. It builds upon the tradition of the first “papal encyclicals” we find in Scripture in 1 and 2 Peter. Many early Christian assemblies would even read Pope St. Clement’s own Letter to the Corinthians during their liturgies.12

Finally, the image of Atlas atop the spire, holding up the heavens, helps us remember the words of another Church Father, Tertullian, who in the third century wrote that the Church was “built upon” Peter.13 Just as Atlas bears up the world, Peter is the foundation stone of the Church.

Memory That’s Ready When Opportunity Knocks

Now, let’s put this into practice. Imagine a knock at your front door. You open it, and there stands a clean-cut young man with a Bible. He asks if he might come in to tell you about Christ. When you tell him you’re a Catholic, he asks you why you revere and obey St. Peter and the popes who have followed him. Don’t you know that they’re just fallible, sinful men?

Before reading the previous section, you might have stammered out a couple of half-remembered arguments: maybe something from Catholic school or an apologetics video you saw once. The young man on the other side of the doorway would have smiled and invited you to abandon anti biblical “traditions of men” like the papacy.

But now you easily call to mind the façade of mnemonic church, complete with its rock, keys, captain, Samson, shepherd, first-place winner, leader, orator, mailman, and Atlas! Now you can let your visitor know that in Scripture and in the writings of the early Church, Peter was declared to be the rock upon which the Church was built, handed the keys to the kingdom, and made the captain of the ship that is the Christ’s true Church. Further, you can remind him that Christ himself prayed that Peter’s unfailing faith would provide strength to others; that Christ made him a shepherd of his sheep and commanded him to feed those sheep. You can politely point out that Peter was clearly placed first above the other apostles in more than fifty places within Scripture—shown to be the leader of the early Church and the first to preach the gospel after the descent of the Holy Spirit. As the testament of the early Christian Fathers shows, already in the second century it was the bishop of Rome’s duty to send encyclical letters to counsel and instruct Christian communities abroad, for it was clearly understood that Christ had built his church upon Peter’s back, so to speak.

You will have given a fluent account of some of the reasons for your belief in the Catholic papacy. Rather than seeing you as just another ignorant Catholic to be “saved” from the errors of Romanism, perhaps the young man at your door is led to consider for the first time that there just might be some truth to what the Church teaches.

Of course, this is only a start. Wouldn’t it be nice if you could also supply the key books of the Bible, or the relevant names and works of the Church Fathers? Even better, how about chapter and verse? And of course the young man at the door (or the lady at the office water cooler) will have responses to some of your reasons. Perhaps he will say that your rock refers to Christ, not Peter, or to Peter’s faith only (and not to Peter the man). Perhaps he will argue that your rock was really more of a pebble—with explanation that’s “all Greek” to you—or remind you that St. Paul once corrected Peter to his face. If he produces some proof-texts of his own, what will you say then?

Never fear. The memory system you will develop in the chapters ahead will enable you not only to store and recall reasoned arguments for the Catholic faith, it will help you remember the reference—the Bible book, Church Father, Church council, or other source—for the reason. And when you’re ready for advanced work, you can learn how to lock in the “chapter and verse,” too.

Memorable Quotations

A little bonus: At the close of each chapter, you’ll find a “Memorable Quotation” section featuring a passage from a great philosopher, theologian, saint, or Church Doctor, either on the art of memory or on defending the faith. As you progress through the chapters of this book, your knowledge of the nature of memory and of its improvement will grow alongside your command of the reasons for the hope that is in you.

4 Cited in Mary Carruthers, The Book of Memory: A Study of Memory in Medieval Culture (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1990), p. 281.

5 Ibid, p. 8.

6 Cicero, Ad Herennium, p. 209.

7 We have no mention of this incident in any of Simonides’ own surviving writings, though he was widely considered the founder of the method. Frances A. Yates notes in The Art of Memory (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, pp. 28–29) an ancient marble tablet from about 264 B.C. called The Parian Chronicle that cites among other legendary discoveries and inventions a chorus prize won in Athens in 477 B.C. by “Ceian Simonides son of Leoprepes, the inventor of the system of memory aids.”

8 Ibid, p. 53.

9 From De Bono (On the Good), cited in Carruthers, The Book of Memory, p. 275.

10 Dave Armstrong, A Biblical Defense of Catholicism (Manchester, NH: Sophia Institute Press, 2003), pp. 233–238.

11 William A. Jurgens, The Faith of the Early Fathers (Collegeville, MN: The Liturgical Press), vol. 1, p.34.

12 Eusebius, Ecclesiastical History (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 2001), III: xvi, p. 235.

13 Cited in Jurgens, The Faith of the Early Fathers, p. 158.

Part I

St. Peter’s Cathedral The Papacy and the Church

[The pope] is the perpetual and visible source and foundation of the unity both of the bishops and of the whole company of the faithful.

Catechism of the Catholic Church (882)

For the papacy, regarded in the light of the supernatural essence of the Church, is nought else but a personification of love, the manifestation of the unity of the Body of Christ on earth.

Karl Adam, The Spirit of Catholicism14

14 Karl Adam, The Spirit of Catholicism (New York: Crossroad Publishing Co., 1997), p. 42.

Chapter 1

Rocky I: The Primacy of Peter

So you are Simon the son of John? You shall be called “Cephas” (which means Peter).

John 1:42

The Lord made Simon alone, whom he named Peter, the “rock” of his Church.

Catechism of the Catholic Church (881)

Christ told us that the wise man builds his house upon a rock (Matt. 7:24), so that though the rains may come, and the floods, wind, and heat, his house will remain standing. Surely this is why Christ himself, the embodiment of God’s wisdom, built his Church upon the man he had named “Rock.” And indeed, despite 2,000 years of braving the elements, and through the rise and fall of nations and civilizations, the house of God that Jesus built upon Peter still stands.

We recall from the introduction that Peter was the rock upon whom the Church was built, was handed the keys to the kingdom, was made captain of the barque of the Church, the Church’s source of strength and chief shepherd, that he was first amongst the apostles, leader of all Christians, and the first to preach the Gospel, and how his early successors wrote letters of guidance to other bishops, as it was acknowledged from the start that he was the foundation of the Church.

But now it is time to go further. So join me as we return to the façade of St. Peter’s memory cathedral. Of course, you see the rock again, the rock upon which the Church was built, but now you’re aware of a supernatural presence as well. Standing next to you on the piazza outside of St. Peter’s is a winged man, the representation of the evangelist, St. Matthew.

From the days of the early Church Fathers, the four evangelists have been connected with and symbolized by the four creatures described in Revelation 4:7 as surrounding the throne of God and ceaselessly singing his praises. St. Matthew was associated with the human-looking creature, because his Gospel provides Christ’s genealogy and focuses on his Incarnation in human form. The reason he’s here, at location 1, is that the verse in which Christ calls Peter “rock” and foretells that his Church will be built upon him is in St. Matthew’s Gospel, verse 16:18 to be exact.

Remember that for now we will focus on the names of the books from which our core reasons come. But pay close attention to chapter and verse as we go along—this will give you a head start if you choose later to make use of a number/letter conversion system for locking them in your memory.

And speaking of locks, it’s time to make sure that we haven’t forgotten our keys! As you walk to the top of the steps (2) and see the golden key, imagine that the angelic figure of St. Matthew has now handed that key to you (as Christ had handed it to Peter). For in the very next verse (16:19), Jesus promises to give Peter the keys of the kingdom. Got that?

Next you head toward that front door (3) with the captain standing inside, except now you notice that he happens to be sitting upon a winged ox! How did that escape our attention the first time through? Anyway, he’s sitting on an ox, of course, because it is in the Gospel of St. Luke (5:3–10) that Jesus spoke from Simon’s boat and made him the captain and chief fisher of men as well.

Ancient Christians associated Luke with the winged ox of Revelation (and Ezekiel 1) for many reasons, including the fact that the ox was a symbol of sacrifice, and Luke’s Gospel starts with the ministrations of Zechariah in the Jewish temple. Luke also emphasizes Christ’s own sacrifice and the need for sacrifice among Christians who would follow him. For now, let’s be sure to recall that our captain is riding that ox representing St. Luke.

On now to location 4, to the window over the door that depicts the mighty Samson. Do you recall the legend of Paul Bunyan and Babe, his blue ox? Well, let’s give Samson an ox of his own. Of course, Samson’s ox won’t be blue, but then again, it will have wings. And Samson won’t be carrying an ax like Paul Bunyan either, since the jawbone of an ass served his purposes. The ox, of course, represents St. Luke again, since it is in his chapter 22, verse 32, that Jesus himself prayed that Simon’s faith would not fail and would serve to strengthen others.

Above that first window and over to the left (5), you’ll recall the statue of St. Albert the Great conversing with a shepherd, since Christ had told Peter to “feed my sheep.” But did you notice that upon Albert’s head sat a great eagle? There he is now. The eagle soars high and can look at the sun. It has also long represented St. John, for what other evangelist starts his Gospel with as lofty a subject as Christ’s eternal existence as the Logos, the Word of God? It is, of course, St. John, who also tells us that the Word-made-flesh made Peter his chief shepherd, emphatically telling him after his Resurrection to feed his sheep (21:15–17).

Immediately to the right of St. Albert is the great rose window (6), depicting the first-place trophy. But now you note that sticking out of the trophy is a very well-thumbed New Testament, brimming over with 195 bright yellow sticky notes! Someone has opened two packages of 100 and placed all but five of them in the New Testament. One sticky note remains stuck on each finger of the hand that placed them there. This serves to remind us that evidence of Peter’s primacy among the apostles is distributed among all of the Gospels and four other books of the New Testament as well (Acts, Galatians, 1 and 2 Peter). Those 195 sticky notes remind us how many times Peter’s name (including mentions as Simon and Cephas) appears in the New Testament. (And by the way, in “second place” is St. John, the evangelist and “beloved disciple,” whose name receives forty-eight honorable mentions. The names of the rest of Christ’s apostles combined are mentioned but 130 times.)15

On now to the statue of the great Angelic Doctor, St. Thomas Aquinas (7), where he’s chatting with King St. Louis. Imagine the good king is back from a crusade, still wielding an enormous ax. This ax will remind you of the book of Acts, since this book on the history of the early Church depicts Peter in a leadership role many times. See, for example, chapter 15, in which Peter led the first council of Jerusalem, the episcopal see of the apostle James. Peter proclaimed that the Mosaic Law was not binding on the Gentile converts, because both Jews and Gentiles were saved through the grace of Christ. And after Peter spoke, the matter ended. There was no further debate.

Up now to the left bell tower (8), our great orator gives his speech. This orator of course is St. Peter himself, and let’s imagine him wielding an ax as well, since it was reported in Acts 2:14 that after Pentecost, Peter was the first man to preach Christ’s good news.

Over now to the bell tower on the right (9) and here we see our mailman, but now you realize that this very tall and unseemly mailman looks a lot like the friendly Frankenstein monster, Herman Munster! You notice as well there’s a lamb resting around his large, bolted neck. Herman is a grotesque reminder of the early Church Father named Hermas. In his ancient text The Shepherd, he related that it was the duty of the bishop of Rome to send letters to other churches throughout the world.

Now, last for us, but not least (indeed, not really last either, since so many Church Fathers attested to Peter’s primacy), is location 10, the central spire, with Atlas holding the heavens. We recall that Atlas stands for Peter, for the Church was built upon him. Now, in an ancient Hindu system of cosmology, the earth ultimately rested on the back of an enormous turtle. For our image then, we’re going to mix a bit of Western and Eastern mythology and depict Atlas standing on the back of a turtle, because the early Father who wrote that the Church was built upon Peter was none other than Tertullian. Oh, and let’s picture Atlas wearing a wedding ring, because that book of Tertullian’s was entitled Monogamy.

All right, do you have our last batch of images now? If not, please go over them one more time in the text or in the table below. Pay special attention to the images that appear more than once. Note that the winged man is there at the piazza and the steps, that both our captain and Samson ride an ox, and that both St. Louis and the orator are wielding mighty axes. How easy this makes it to recall the sources of six of our ten reasons for Peter’s primacy, these coming from the Gospels of Sts. Matthew and Luke and the book of Acts.

THE PRIMACY OF PETER: THE REASONS AND THEIR SOURCES

LOCATION

IMAGES

REASON/SOURCE

1.

End of piazza

Giant rock

Winged man

Christ tells Peter he is the rock upon which he will build his Church (Matt. 16:18).

2.

Top of steps

Golden key

Winged man

Christ gives Peter the keys of the kingdom and the power to bind and loose (Matt. 16:19).

3.

Front central door

Naval captain

Winged ox

Christ teaches from Peter’s boat and tells Peter he will be “catching men” (Luke 5:3–4, 10).

4.

Stained glass window

Samson

Winged ox

Christ prays that Peter’s faith will strengthen the brethren (Luke 22:32).

5.

St. Albert statue

Shepherd

Eagle (winged, of course!)

Christ tells Peter three times, “Feed my sheep” (John 21:15–17).

6.

Rose window

First-place trophy

New Testament with 195 sticky notes

Peter’s name (also in the form of Simon and Cephas) occurs 195 times in eight books of the New Testament: Matthew, Mark, Luke, John, Acts, Galatians, 1 and 2 Peter.

7.

St. Thomas Aquinas statue

Leader (King St. Louis IX of France)

Ax

Peter takes charge after debate among the apostles as God had chosen him to do (Acts 15:7).

8.

Left bell tower

Orator

Ax

Peter is first to proclaim the gospel at Pentecost (Acts 2:14).

9.

Right bell tower

Mailman

Herman/sheep

Peter’s successor St. Clement of Rome noted to have duty to send letters to churches abroad (Hermas, The Shepherd, “Visions” Chapter 2.4.3).

10.

Central spire

Atlas

Turtle/wedding ring

The Church described as “built upon [Peter]” (Tertullian, Monogamy, 8.4).

An Exercise in Absurdity?

We’ve given our memories quite a workout already, and maybe you’re concerned that we could be overtraining—wondering if your memory muscles are really up to this task. Do you doubt that you can really remember all these crazy images? And why must they be so absurd?

First off, yes, you can remember all of these images with moderate effort. We will use the same basic locations throughout the remainder of the book, and the more you practice the method, the faster and easier you will recall them. As St. Thomas tells us, habits become as a “second nature.” So I urge you to carry on and make memory training a regular habit. As the wise author of the oldest extant memory treatise advised his ancient Roman readers:

In every discipline artistic theory is of little avail without unremitting exercise, but especially in mnemonics theory is almost valueless unless made good by industry, devotion, toil, and care. You can make sure that you have as many backgrounds as possible and that these conform as much as possible to the rules; in placing the images you should exercise every day.

While an engrossing preoccupation may often distract us from our other pursuits, from this activity nothing whatever can divert us. . . . So, since a ready memory is a useful thing, you see clearly with what great pains we must strive to acquire so useful a faculty. Once you know its uses you will be able to appreciate this advice.16

Rome wasn’t built in a day, and our memory cathedrals won’t be either, but every day we get out there and build, they will rise a little higher and stand a little more steady.

As for the absurdity of the images: Memory masters have long been aware that memory images function best when they are strange or exaggerated. We encounter so many objects, events, and bits of information every waking second that we cannot remember all of them. The ordinary ones tend to get lost in the shuffle, while the unusual, the fantastic, capture our imaginations and get stored in our memories.

This is why St. Thomas wrote that the first thing we should do to remember something is to “take some suitable yet somewhat unwonted illustration of it, since the unwonted strikes us more, and so makes a greater and stronger impression on the mind.”17 Unwonted means unusual, and in the original Latin, Thomas uses the word miramur to describe these images—things at which we marvel or wonder. St. Albert also drives home this point, advising us to make our images “as striking as possible,” to picture them “doing something” and having “exceptional beauty or ugliness.”18

As we progress through these pages, I will supply all the mnemonic images you need, but feel free to substitute images of your own at any time. For example, at location seven I chose the image of St. Louis, king of France, to remind us of a leader. But your image could be anyone you think of as a leader, or, for that matter, it could be based on a homonym or pun—someone holding a liter of soda, or, if you happen to be a fan of classic Bavarian attire, a German decked out in lederhosen. So, if any images I supply don’t seem “as striking as possible” to you, substitute your own, so long as they trigger the reason you’re trying to remember. This is the art of memory. Feel free to be the artist.

And here’s more good news for your memory muscles. As this book progresses, your memory burden will lighten. The same forty locations you will learn to memorize forty reasons for our beliefs about the papacy and the Church will also be used to lock in forty reasons for our beliefs about the Blessed Virgin Mary, and another forty reasons about our beliefs about the relationship between Scripture and Tradition. Memory cathedrals can hold all kinds of treasures!

Mnemonic images, too, are handy tools that can be used again and again. This is not the last time that we’ll use the symbols of the man, ox, and eagle for Matthew, Luke, and John. (Soon we’ll encounter St. Mark’s symbol too, and we we’ll see why he’s so leonine.) And any time you imagine an ax, for example, you’ll know that the verse or the scene or the lesson you see was presented in the book of Acts.

And so I hope you will be encouraged by the words of Albert and Thomas, and pursue memory mastery with diligence. It’s an “exercise in absurdity” that pays off with profound results.

Second Rehearse, Same As the First

Now, back in the days when I did daily testing of people’s memories at a neuropsychology laboratory, I saw that true memory retention was found in a person’s capacity to hold on to new information after a delay. If you have read along the last few pages, it has been at least a few minutes since you last tried to recall the reasons and sources placed on St. Peter’s façade. So now let’s review these ten reasons we have learned and memorized about the primacy of Peter.

Test yourself, please. Do you still have them? Can you recite the reasons and the books they come from literally forward and backward, from one to ten and from ten to one? That’s great if you can, but if you can’t, recall that repetition is the mother of memory. Review and rehearse them one more time, and soon I think you’ll be able to say, “By George (or by Peter), I do believe I’ve got them!”

Now it is time to move from the façade and to prepare to see what lies within our mnemonic cathedral of St. Peter.

15 Armstrong, A Biblical Defense of Catholicism, p. 236.

16 Cicero, Ad Herennium, p. 223.

17 St. Thomas Aquinas, Summa Theologica, II-II, Q. 49. a1.

18 From De Bono (On the Good), cited in Carruthers, The Book of Memory, p. 275.

Memorable Quotation 1

Painting Pictures in Our Minds

Now the reason for the necessity of finding these illustrations or images is that simple and spiritual impressions easily slip from the mind, unless they be tied as it were to some corporeal image, because human knowledge has a greater hold on sensible objects.

St. Thomas Aquinas, Summa Theologica, II-II, Q. 49. a. 1.

St. Thomas knew well the power of visual images, and his own memory powers were prodigious. Aristotle, the man Thomas called simply “the Philosopher,” wrote that “the soul never thinks without an image.” St. Thomas knew as well that when the ancient Greek poet Simonides discovered the ancient art of “artificial memory” in the fifth century B.C., he based it upon the crucial role that visual images play in our power to remember. It was Simonides, remember, who described poetry as “painting with words.” In the pages ahead, we will take some very important words from Scripture and the Church Fathers and use them to paint pictures in our minds, pictures that will be resistant to fading and easy to touch up, should the need arise!

As we embark on this course of memorable apologetics, these visible, external, pen-and-ink illustrations will play a crucial role—indeed, if you feel the need, you are welcome to grab a pad and a pencil to draw your own pictures of images that we don’t supply. Note well, though, that higher human psychological functions (like a trained memory) follow an “inward path.” The more proficient you become with this technique, the less you will depend upon these external illustrations, as the images and locations become engraved in the recesses of your own mind. I hope you will follow along and join me, then, on this inward path. And since we are addressing important truths of our Catholic Faith, our path will be not only inward but upward.

Chapter 2

The Establishment and Authority of the Church

He who hears you hears me, and he who rejects you rejects me, and he who rejects me rejects him who sent me.

Luke 10:16

The structure of the Catholic faith may be summarized in a single sentence: I find God, through Christ, in His Church. I experience the living God through Christ realizing Himself in His Church.

Karl Adam, The Spirit of Catholicism19

I’m sometimes amused by those “Question Authority” bumper stickers, wondering whether people ever question their own authority to give such advice to the poor souls driving behind them! But on a more serious note, I wonder, too, how many well-meaning Christians who deny the authority of the papacy and of the Catholic Church grasp how they thereby question Christ’s authority. “The Rock” himself warned us that a key characteristic of the “false prophets” and “false teachers among you, who will bring in destructive heresies” would be that they “despise authority” (2 Pet. 2:1, 10).

Is this “authority” simply Scripture itself? St. Peter did not write that it was, and at the time he wrote his epistles, the canon of the New Testament was still centuries from being determined. In this chapter, then, let’s enter our mnemonic cathedral to see what the New Testament reveals to us about the establishment and authority of the Church that Christ established upon the rock of Peter.

Welcome to the Household of the Living God

You have passed through the great central outer door of St. Peter’s Cathedral. Crossing a rich marble entranceway, you reach location 11, the door to the left side of the nave (the nave is the main body of the church, housing the pews, its name deriving from the Latin navis, ship).You are stunned by the beauty of the door itself, embossed in solid gold with a scene of Jesus with his apostles. Christ is making a knot in a rope as his apostles peer on intently.

You enter and spy the holy water font (12). As you begin to dip in your hand, you are amazed to see Christ’s face in the water, and even more amazed when he speaks to you, asking you if you hear him. You assure him you do, and proceed to head up the aisle, genuflect, and sit down in the left rear pew section (13). Immediately, you feel hands upon your shoulders: It’s a group of apostles praying over you to bless you on your journey when you go out from the church.

After the apostles have gone, you turn to your left and there, high upon an arch (14), is a painting of a group of shepherds—oddly enough, each with his own bodyguard, splattered in blood. Below the arch and against the wall in toward the rear on the left, you spy an ornate wooden confessional booth (15), and seated outside it is St. Paul himself, boasting aloud, while he signs copies of his books for churchgoers. Above the confessional is a stunning stained glass window (16), and depicted there is our cathedral, and resting atop it is a gargantuan Bible!

19 Adam, The Spirit of Catholicism, p. 46.

Now you arise and move up to the front left pew section (17). Strange as this may sound, an usher asks you to scoot in a space to make room for an old man who happens to be standing on a bull! But your eyes don’t linger on that strange sight; instead, they are drawn to the arch at the left front (18), upon which you are greatly surprised to see an image of your own bishop speaking to you, and you give him a courteous bow in acknowledgment of his authority. Can you vividly picture him there? Next, you notice the seventh Station of the Cross (19) under that arch. In this depiction of that station—Jesus falls the second time—you see that Jesus is being lifted to his feet by your own father and mother!

Finally, in the great stained glass window below that arch (location 20) is a vast multitude of people, some dressed in Greek tunics and others in barbaric furs. It is a night scene, with countless stars glistening above their heads. Oddly enough, the longer you gaze at the picture, the more Greeks and barbarians appear, and the universe of stars blazes all the more brightly.

That’s a lot to remember! Let’s see if this helps:

ON THE AUTHORITY OF CHRIST’S CHURCH

LOCATION

IMAGE

11.

Left door to nave

Jesus ties knot for apostles

12.

Left rear holy water font

Christ asks if you hear him

13.

Left rear pew section

Apostles lay hands on you and pray

14.

Left rear arch

Shepherds and bloody bodyguards

15.

Left rear confessional booth

St. Paul as boastful author

16.

Left rear stained glass window

Church of St. Peter supports huge Bible

17.

Left front pew

Scoot over for old man standing on a bull

18.

Left front arch

Your bishop speaks, you bow respectfully

19.

Left front station of the cross

Your father and mother

20.

Left front stained glass window

Greeks, barbarians, starry night

All right, let’s see just what we’ve added to our mnemonic cathedral. To set the stage, let’s say your own brother is considering leaving the Catholic Church for a more upbeat new church down the road with a dynamic, young pastor and really good music. He asks you what is really so special about the Catholic Church. “Didn’t we just happen to be born into a family of Catholics? Why should we acknowledge its authority and obey its rules once we’ve grown up and can think for ourselves?” Since these issues were not explicitly addressed during his catechesis, you must admit to him, “Good questions, brother!”

Then you can picture, in your mind’s eye, Jesus at the left rear door (location 11) tying a knot for his disciples: because right after explaining to them that if a sinful brother will not listen to any of them, they should bring the matter to the church, he proceeds to tell them, “Whatever you bind on earth shall be bound in heaven, and whatever you loose on earth shall on earth shall be loosed in heaven” (Matt. 18:15). He has invested that very same church that he built upon Peter with his own authority to settle disputes and to absolve men from sin.

A quick glance into Christ’s face in the left holy water font (12) and you remember that Jesus also said to the seventy men he handpicked that “he who hears you hears me, and he who rejects you rejects me, and he who rejects me rejects him who sent me” (Luke 10:16). So you remind your brother that when Jesus chose the men who would found his visible church on earth, he made those men his own representatives: They would stand in his place and with his authority.

On now to that scene in the left rear pew (13). The apostles praying over you are a reminder that when the Holy Spirit chose Barnabas and Paul to set out from Antioch to preach the gospel, the prophets and teachers of the church of Antioch fasted, prayed over them, laid their hands on them, and sent them off (Acts 13:3). Unto this day, when the Catholic Church ordains new ministers to go forth and preach the gospel it follows this scriptural precedent.

Up now on the arch (14), the reason we see shepherds and bloody bodyguards is to remind us that St. Paul told the elders at Ephesus, “Take heed to yourselves and to all the flock, in which the Holy Spirit has made you guardians, to feed the church of the Lord which he obtained with his own blood” (Acts 20:28). Through the instrumentality of Church leaders the Holy Spirit works to protect and to feed us all.

Over to the confessional (15), and again we find St. Paul. The reason we depict him as a boastful author is because this author of so many epistles wrote this: “For even if I boast a little too much of our authority, which the Lord gave for building you up and not for destroying you, I shall not be put to shame” (2 Cor. 10:8). Paul did not find it shameful to proclaim the authority that he had been given by Christ—a special authority that he possessed as an apostle of Christ’s Church.

And we come now to the crux of this matter. Recall that stained glass window (16) and the giant Bible resting upon St. Peter’s Cathedral. You remind your brother that although at the Evangelical church down the road they say the Bible is their only authority, that very Bible says that it is held up by—the church! St. Paul wrote that “the household of God, which is the church of the living God,” is “the pillar and bulwark of truth” (1 Tim. 3:15).

There is more to tell your brother. Your mind’s eye moves now into the left front pew (17). You scoot over for that old man standing on a bull because this reminds you of more words of St. Paul, advice to Titus in the land that was famed in days past for its Cretan bulls: “This is why I left you in Crete, that you might amend what was defective, and appoint elders in every town as I directed you” (Titus 1:5). Recall that hands had been laid upon Paul, and Paul then left a bishop (Titus) who would in turn appoint elders in every town. Since St. Paul’s day, hierarchy and apostolic succession have been the way of Christ’s Church. “Was the new minister down the street,” you ask your brother, “appointed by an heir of the apostles?”

And speaking of bishops, recall that at the left front arch (18) you saw your own bishop speaking to you and you gave him a courteous bow. Bishops, presbyters (from the Greek presbuteros, from which we get the word “priest”), and deacons appear in the New Testament. We remember our own bishop here to remind us of a statement from one of the earliest Church Fathers, St. Ignatius, who was bishop of Antioch. He wrote to the Ephesians around A.D. 110, “Let us be careful then, if we would be submissive to God, not to oppose the bishop.”20 Ignatius was an Apostolic Father, having heard firsthand the teaching of St. John the Evangelist. His letters to the Magnesians and Trallians also abound in admonitions to respect the authority of bishops (and presbyters and deacons as well). Remind your brother that the pastor of your parish was installed by a bishop with authority reaching back almost 2,000 years. What other church can say the same?

Hark back now to the Station of the Cross (19) depicting your own father and mother helping the fallen Christ to his feet. This scene calls to mind a passage from St. Cyprian of Carthage (ca. A.D. 255), found in his treatise The Unity of the Catholic Church: “He cannot have God for his father, if he does not have the Church for his mother.”21 Is your brother ready to deny the mother of you both?

Finally, see the strange scene in the stained glass window (20), the Greeks and barbarians under the starry sky. This reminds you of the gist of the eloquent prose of Eusebius of Caesarea, the father of Church history, who around the year 324 wrote, “But the brightness of the universal and only true Church proceeded to increase in greatness, for it ever held to the same points in the same way, and radiated forth to all the race of Greeks and barbarians the reverent, sincere, and free nature, and the sobriety and purity of the divine teaching as to conduct and thought.”22 Shall we forsake that great, universal, and only true Church for another?

These seven passages from Scripture show how Christ established a visible ecclesiastical institution that he intended to act in his stead: to speak for him, and to exercise his power and authority through a hierarchical structure with bishops, presbyters, and deacons who would guide, protect, instruct, admonish, and absolve Christ’s followers.

The three quotations from the Church Fathers, chosen from among many other possibilities, show how the members of that one Church understood and acted upon those scriptural truths. They recognized the Church as the pillar of truth, the bride of Christ, the consistent and unified teacher of divine thought and conduct: the Catholic Church.

Time to Get Well-Versed

All right, now, back to that potentially prodigal brother. Let’s suppose your brother is willing to give some thought to all this talk about the authority of the Church. Could you tell him where he could check out those reasons for himself? Well, let’s make sure you can guide him to the right books at least.

Below are suggested additional images that you can use to lock in the books from which the Scripture verses derive (and the names of the Church Fathers and their writings, where applicable). Now, let’s add each new image in an imaginary interaction with our first images.

Our familiar winged man is depicted on the door (location 11) along with Christ and his apostles. You notice that the holy water font (12), in which you saw and heard Jesus, rests upon the back of a winged ox. You sit in the pew (13) right next to an ax that is stuck in it. Up on the arch (14), each of the bishop’s bloody bodyguards carries an ax as well. Right behind St. Paul at the confessional (15) are two rich Corinthian columns. In the rear stained glass window (16), you notice that Timmy and his famous collie Lassie from the old TV show (or any Tim or Timmy that you may know) are running around the church that supports the great Bible. You see that the old man standing on a bull in the left front pew (17) is receiving a priestly, clerical collar from an enormous Titan. You notice that the staff of your bishop on the left front arch (18) ignites in flame and that he is surrounded by Parisians, all in berets and striped shirts. Your parents at the station of the cross (19) are both sipping coffee from one mug. Finally, all those Greeks and barbarians in the left front stained glass window (20) are pointing and asking in broken English, “You see bus?!” Oh, and lest I forget, they are all wearing elastic suspenders.

Now, let’s sum things up.

THE AUTHORITY OF CHRIST’S CHURCH: THE REASONS AND THEIR SOURCES

LOCATION

IMAGES

SOURCE

11.

Left door to nave

Jesus ties knot for apostles

Winged man

Jesus gives his apostles the power to bind and loose on heaven and earth (Matt. 18:18).

12.

Left rear holy water font

Christ asks if you hear him

Winged ox

Jesus tells apostles those who hear them hear him, and those who reject them reject him and he who sent him (Luke 10:16).

13.

Left rear pew section

Apostles lay hands on you and pray

Ax stuck in pew

The apostles, fast, pray, and lay hands on Saul and Barnabas before sending them to preach (Acts 13:3).

14.

Left rear arch

Shepherds and bloody bodyguards, each guard holds ax

Paul tells the elders at Ephesus the Holy Spirit has made them guardians and shepherds of the Church (Acts 20:28).

15.

Left rear confessional booth

St. Paul as boastful author

Two columns behind Paul

Paul “boasts” of the authority God gave him for building up the Church (2 Cor. 10:8).

16.

Left rear stained glass window

Church of St. Peter supports huge Bible

Timmy and Lassie

Paul mentions “the household of God, which is the church of the living God, the pillar and bulwark of truth” (1 Tim. 3:15).

17.

Left front pew

Scoot over for old man standing on a bull

Receiving a clerical collar from a Titan

Paul states he left Titus in Crete to appoint elders (presbuteroi—priests) in every town (Titus 1:5).

18.

Left front arch

Your bishop speaks, you bow

Staff ignites as Parisians look on

St. Ignatius of Antioch states that if we would be submissive to God, we will not oppose the bishop (Letter to the Ephesians, 5.3, ca. A.D. 110).

19.

Left front station of the cross

Your father and mother, both sipping from one mug

St. Cyprian declares that “he cannot have God for his Father who does not have the Church for his Mother” (The Unity of the Catholic Church, A.D. 251).

20.

Left front stained glass window

Greeks, barbarians, starry night, all saying, “You see bus?” and wearing elastic suspenders.

Eusebius states the brilliant, universal Church became great by radiating the same pure teaching to all the races (Ecclesiastical History, 4, 7, 13, fourth century).

Do you see how we are elaborating these images to memorize their sources? Our images for biblical books will remain consistent throughout this book. Any time you see the winged image of a man, a lion, an ox, or an eagle, you will know it refers to the Gospels of Matthew, Mark, Luke, or John, respectively. So, too, will an ax stand for Acts, and two Corinthian columns for 2 Corinthians (and just one, of course, for 1 Corinthians). Let Timmy of the old Lassie television program stand for Timothy (or an image of someone you personally know named Timothy, if that show was before your time!). An image of a Titan—a gigantic, primitive god from Greek mythology—will always call to mind St. Paul’s Epistle to Titus.

And as for Church Fathers, someone sipping will always mean St. Cyprian of Carthage, something igniting in flames will always tell us St. Ignatius of Antioch is about, and finally, as corny as it may sound, before long any image that features someone saying, “You see bus?” will immediately make you think of the Church historian Eusebius!

Remembering the Fathers’ writings should pose no problems either. That your parents were sipping from one mug calls to mind St. Cyprian’s book The Unity of the Catholic Church. And why are Parisians gawking at the bishop’s flaming crozier? Because Parisians rhymes with Ephesians. Of course, there is an even more famous letter to the Ephesians, and unless an image of St. Ignatius appears with them, any time those Parisians show up we’ll know they refer to St. Paul’s Letter to the Ephesians. Oh, and those elastic suspenders donned by the Greeks and barbarians remind us of Eusebius’s great book, the Ecclesiastical History.

All this may sound complicated at first, and of course, we are memorizing some rather complicated information here, but I promise that as your familiarity with the method grows, your yoke will lighten. Why, back in the days of my master’s thesis research on memory training techniques, I discovered that second-graders trained in imagery methods were able to memorize more words than untrained sixth-graders. In another study, trained fifth- and sixth-graders were able to outperform high school juniors and seniors. Surely you’re smarter than a fifth-grader!

Note, too, that even a little before my time, in the first century B.C., our unknown author of the Ad Herennium acknowledged that although great achievement in memory capacity requires natural ability, as do great achievements in any art or science, those of lesser ability still can profit from training:

The training here offered will therefore also be useful to those who by nature have a good memory, as you will yourself soon come to understand. But even if these, relying on their natural talent, did not need our help, we should still be justified in wishing to aid the less well-endowed.

Modern memory researchers bear out our ancient author. Memory experts classified as “strategists,” those who have diligently trained their memories, usually outperform “naturals” who have had exceptionally powerful memories from childhood but never did any formal training.23

In other words, with diligent practice, these techniques will make a bad memory good and a good memory great.

Once you, like our modern memory champion “strategists,” have persevered and mastered the material of these initial chapters, you will have twenty arguments for the primacy of Peter, the establishment of the papacy, and the authority of the Church tucked away, in order, in the pockets of your mind. But the professor in me can’t help but wonder if you have already tucked them away. And so . . .

Pop(e) Quiz!

Let’s suppose your Protestant-leaning brother, or any non-Catholic Christian, tossed at you questions such as:

1. Scripture tells us that “the household of God” was “built upon the apostles and prophets, Christ Jesus himself, being the cornerstone, in whom the whole structure is joined together and grows into a holy temple in the Lord” (Eph. 2:19–20). Where in Scripture do you find the alleged “primacy of Peter”?

2. Jesus Christ established a Church made up of a vast and invisible body of believers. Where in the Bible do we find the visible institution of the Catholic Church and its self-ascribed authority to speak for Christ on earth?

I’ll leave those answers up to you. It’s time now for some pre-test questions, too.

1. Scripture is clear and perspicuous. Why do you let the pope interpret the Bible for you?

2. Do you really believe that a mere fallen man can be infallible? Where’s that in the Bible?

Let’s compare how you did on this pre-test to how you do after reading our next chapter.

20 Cited in Jurgens, The Faith of the Early Fathers, vol. 1, p. 18.

21 Ibid, p. 221.

22 Eusebius, Ecclesiastical History 4, 7, 13, v.

23 “[I]ndividuals with exceptional memory (rather than merely very good memory) are made rather than born. In other words, the secret of their success is that they have spent numerous hours developing effective strategies.” Alan Baddeley, Michael W. Eysenck, and Michael Anderson, Memory (New York: Psychology Press, 2009), p. 362.

Memorable Quotation 2

From Pebbles of Memory to Mountains of Understanding

For just as a person with a trained memory, a memory for things themselves is immediately caused by the mere mention of their “places,” so these habits too will make a man readier in his reasoning, because he has his premises classified before his mind’s eye, each under its number.

Aristotle, Topics, Book VIII

The memory methods in this book will make you readier in your reasons to defend the faith by giving you easy, direct access to your mental cathedrals of orderly arguments. But it remains up to you to ensure that your cathedrals are sturdily built and completely adorned and updated. Aristotle wrote in the first line of his Metaphysics, “Men by their natures desire to know.” I pray that he is right, and that you will desire to know the reasons for your hope with ever greater depth. To that end I urge you to study further each apologetic argument housed within these pages.

Let’s take our first argument. Over the centuries many creative interpretations have been offered to clarify (or deny) the implications of the verse in which Christ seems to establish a Church and place Peter as its leader. Some argue, for example, that since the Greek word used for Peter—Petros—signifies a small pebble, not some great rock (in contrast with the petra on which Jesus said he’d build the Church), Peter himself could not be the foundation for the Church. With a little more study, however, you would be able to point out that Petros here merely reflects the application of a masculine noun declension to the feminine Greek word petra, meaning a massive stone. Besides, the more common ancient Greek words for small stones were psethos and lithos anyway. (My brother-in-law travels around the state doing lithotripsy procedures that break up small stones in the kidneys, bladder, or ureters.)

A little more study will reveal that Jesus spoke those words not in Greek but in Aramaic. In some places in Scripture, we see hints of the original Aramaic—and sure enough, we find that Peter is sometimes called Cephas, from the Aramaic kepha, meaning large rock. And of course, Jesus chose to speak these words at Caesarea Philippi, before the site of a massive boulder.24

So, then, for all of these arguments you will memorize and “classify under your mind’s eye,” I pray that you will, over time, use them as mere retrieval cues for increasingly rich and well-grounded bodies of apologetics knowledge—no mere pebbles, but veritable rocks of Gibraltar!

24 I refer readers to an excellent, straightforward discussion of these issues in the chapter “Bam! Bam! The Pebbles Argument Goes Down” in Tim Staples’ modern apologetics classic Nuts & Bolts: A Practical How-To Guide for Explaining and Defending the Catholic Faith (Irving Texas: Basilica Press, 2007).

Chapter 3

Rocky CCLXVI: Infallible, Not Impeccable

To err is human…

Alexander Pope, An Essay on Criticism

Thou art Peter, and upon this rock I will build my church, and the gates of hell shall not prevail against it. This same truth is expressed, only more explicitly, as follows: The sovereign pontiff, successor of St. Peter, is infallible when ex cathedra he teaches the universal Church in matters of faith and morals.

Reginald Garrigou-Lagrange, O.P., Reality: A Synthesis of Thomistic Thought25

Pope Francis is the first to choose the name of Francis and the 266th man to sit in the chair of St. Peter. All popes have been men, and all men are human, yet the Church declares that popes are “infallible.” What irony that it was a man named Pope who famously reminded us that “to err is human.” Of course, this line ends, “but to forgive is divine.” It is indeed only through the assistance of the divine that the popes have been blessed with their special and crucial inerrancy.

But many humans have erred regarding just what the Church means by infallibility. How many Catholics, let alone other Christians or nonbelievers, could provide an accurate explanation of what papal infallibility means? And, perhaps just as importantly, what it does not mean—namely, impeccability. Deriving from the Latin peccatum for sin, impeccability describes an inability to sin, a moral perfection with which none of our popes—not even Peter, who denied Christ three times—has been blessed. Indeed, throughout Christian history there have been popes of less than stellar moral character, and a handful of those were particularly accomplished sinners.

But their charism of infallibility is not in any way tied to their personal holiness (or lack thereof). The Catholic dogma of infallibility, defined after the First Vatican Council in 1870, says that through the special guidance of the Holy Spirit the pope is preserved from error when teaching ex cathedra (that is, officially—“from the chair” of St. Peter) on matters of faith or morals to be adhered to by all the faithful. Or as the Catechism puts it: “The Roman Pontiff, head of the college of bishops, enjoys this infallibility in virtue of his office, when, as supreme pastor and teacher of all the faithful—who confirms his brethren in the faith—he proclaims by a definitive act a doctrine pertaining to faith or morals” (891).

Note first the subject matter: issues of faith and morals. The Holy Spirit doesn’t help the pope do algebra or pick winning racehorses. Further, not everything the pope says or writes that may pertain in some way to faith or morals meets the conditions for infallibility; for example, pronouncements related to Church discipline and practices, which can be changed over time. Infallibility applies only to immutable truths given to all the faithful for their salvation. Over almost 2,000 years, on these crucial matters no pope—not even one of the scoundrels—has ever contradicted another one.

It is also important to realize that infallibility is a protection from error, an inability to make a mistake when formally presenting Christian teaching. It is a negative power, a power to avoid error, not a positive power—like divine inspiration, or even just some gift of special wisdom that would enable a pope to teach skillfully and persuasively. To do that he must study, pray, and practice like anyone else.

Even once we come to grasp the essentials of what papal infallibility means, most of us will, at one time or another, face questions such as:

• Where is papal infallibility in the Bible?

• How come the early Church Fathers don’t talk about infallibility?

• How come the Catholic Church, with its bounty of infallible popes, did not recognize this infallibility until the year 1870?

Our job here is to get ourselves off to a start, adding to our mnemonic cathedral ten good reasons for why our popes are blessed with infallibility. (Of course, we have a twenty-reason head start! For papal infallibility begins with the authority that Christ, the architect of his Church, gave to the rock upon which it was founded.)

Go back and look at the quote from Fr. Garrigou-Lagrange that begins this chapter. Note how it starts with Matthew 16:18-19 and ends with the dogma of papal infallibility. All the reasons we learned about Peter and the Church in chapters 1 and 2 build upon that scriptural foundation that leads to the defined dogma. Peter is the rock of the Church, and the Church is the pillar and bulwark of truth. How can a pillar and bulwark hold true when built on a shaky foundation?

It is time now to build upon the mnemonic foundation we’ve built up so far and find what new truths it supports. Since infallibility is only possible through the grace of God, what better place to store these reasons than the sanctuary of St. Peter’s Cathedral?

Picture This: The 2,000-Year-Old Sanctuary of St. Peter’s

We’ll emphasize this sanctuary’s antiquity, because though its careful construction began during the reign of Tiberius Caesar, some think it was whipped together during the presidency of Ulysses S. Grant!

Let’s genuflect then, make the sign of the cross, and go first to the altar rail (location 21). Here you are astounded to see Jesus himself. He comes out to you and tells you not to be afraid, saying, “I am with you always.”

Your eyes now move to the lectern on the left (22). It is decorated on the front with a beautiful white dove, so realistic you expect it to flap its wings—which it does. You notice around its neck a pendant in the form of a large golden triangle. At location 23, the liturgical book upon the lectern, who should be reading today but your own favorite grade-school teacher, dressed, of course, in a toga.

We move now to St. Peter’s high altar. You see a statue of an angel (24). Someone has just dumped a huge bucket of dye right on top of it, and yet it remains the purest white. At the base of the crucifix next to that angel, we find a great golden tabernacle (25). The tabernacle is engraved with a most unusual scene: A multitude of small churches encircle St. Peter’s Cathedral itself, which is held aloft in the center by the hands of Christ’s apostles. Above the tabernacle is a glorious crucifix (26). And, oddly enough, sitting on top of the crucifix is an ornate and ancient chair.

To the right of the crucifix we find a second angel (27). Resting in its hands—top hat, beard, and all—is Abraham Lincoln, commencing his famous Gettysburg Address.

25 Reginald Garrigou-Lagrange, O.P., Reality: A Synthesis of Thomistic Thought (U.S.A: Ex Fontibus Co., 2007), p. 57.

Let’s look now to the low altar on the right (28). Keeping with our presidential theme, engraved on the front sitting in his chair and opening a letter is President Harry S. Truman. Have you ever seen that famous photo of a beaming Harry Truman holding up a newspaper with the headline, “Dewey Defeats Truman”? (If not, simply enter the headline in your Internet browser and you will.) Well, it turned out that the pollsters were wrong, and we need the real winner for our image.

Upon the altar we find a shining golden paten (29), and next to the paten you are surprised to find a kneeling cow. Maybe it shouldn’t be so surprising, since according to pious legend a cow, after all, was not far from Christ’s first bodily appearance on earth in a manger. Still, odd it is, for this cow is dressed in silk. Last, but never least, we come to most glorious chalice (30), as beautiful as human hands can craft an object designed to hold the blood of Christ. As the chalice is lifted and the prayer of consecration is made, an earthquake rocks the Church, but you notice the massive priest’s hands and arms remain steady, completely unshaken.

Got all that? Can you picture the entire sanctuary with all of our imaginary scenes in their proper places? Can you mentally place, for example, your teacher and two U.S. presidents by scanning across the sanctuary with the eye of your imagination? Let’s review now the scene of the sanctuary, to make sure you’ve got the picture.

LOCATION

IMAGE

21.

Altar rail on left

Christ says, “I’m with you always”

22.

Lectern

Dove with triangle pendant

23.

Liturgical book on lectern

Grade-school teacher in toga

24.

Angel on left

Dye thrown on, but angel stays pure white

25.

Tabernacle

Churches, apostles hold St. Peter’s

26.

Crucifix

Chair rests on top of it

27.

Angel on right

Abraham Lincoln’s Gettysburg Address

28.

Front of low altar on right

Harry Truman in chair, opens a letter

29.

Paten on altar

Cow in silk

30.

Chalice on altar

Priest unshaken in earthquake

Now, what do these images mean? And how do they relate to papal infallibility? Before I reveal what reasons we’ve remembered, this time let’s first lock in our sources. They come from the good book, our forefathers (six Fathers, actually) in faith, three gatherings of hundreds of bishops across almost 600 years, and one Angelic Doctor.

The Sanctuary of Infallibility: Sources

Here we go: At location 21, recall Christ is on your right, and the winged man, symbolizing St. Matthew, on your left. At location 22, the dove on the lectern is now joined by an eagle, symbolizing the evangelist St. John. Reading from the liturgical book on the lectern (23), your teacher in the toga also happens to be eating a massive, juicy clementine orange. Now, as you gaze at that white marble angel at location 24, you see it ignite in flames that don’t consume it, much like the burning bush. At the site of the tabernacle (25) decorated with various churches, St. Peter’s Cathedral, and the apostles, you notice that the tabernacle is not actually made of gold but of iron.

You notice next that sitting on that chair on top of the crucifix (26) is St. Peter, sipping tea. And on the mug is emblazoned a large and bold numeral “1.” Next you see that running along the wings of the angel (27) on the right of the crucifix holding aloft Abe Lincoln is a little mouse.

And now on the front of the altar (28), it’s toga time again, for who should be sitting next to President Truman but a leader from some 1,950 years before, Roman Emperor Augustus Caesar. At 29, we find that cow in silk, and believe it or not, it is also accompanied by one of the most glorious of Roman emperors, Constantine the Great. Oh, and please don’t forget, of course you’ll want to picture Constantine surrounded by lions and florists.

Lastly, we come to the massive priest who stands unshaken in the midst of an earthquake. How can he stand so strong and so serene? Well, that ox of a man, holding the chalice (30) while reciting the prayer of consecration in Latin, is wearing medieval Dominican garb. He’s the Angelic Doctor, the great medieval memory master, St. Thomas Aquinas.

Here now is our full mnemonic tour:

ON PAPAL INFALLIBILITY: THE WORDS BEHIND THE REASONS

LOCATION

IMAGES

SOURCE

21.

Altar rail on left

Christ says, “I’m with you always”

Winged man

Christ commissions Peter and the apostles and tells them he will always be with them (Matt. 28:20).

22.

Lectern

Dove with triangle pendant

Eagle

Christ tells the apostles the Holy Spirit will come to lead them to truth (John 14:26, 15:26, 16:13).

23.

Liturgical book on lectern

Grade school teacher in toga

Clementine orange

Pope St. Clement, Bishop of Rome, writes to the Corinthian church to accept his counsel and says he writes through the Holy Spirit (Letter to the Corinthians 58, 2; 59, 1; 63, 2).

24.

Angel on left

Marble angel remains pure white

Angel ignites in white flames

St. Ignatius writes to the Romans stating their faith has remained free of “foreign stain” (doctrinal error), that they have “envied no one” (lacked none of the truth that other churches had), and have taught other churches (Letter to the Romans, Address; 3,1).

25.

Tabernacle

Churches, apostles hold

St. Peter’s Tabernacle made of iron

St. Irenaeus notes that all the faithful in the world know the Church at Rome is the greatest, is of “superior origin” because of its apostolic founding, and has maintained the apostolic tradition (Against Heresies 3, 3, 2).

26.

Crucifix

Chair rests on top of it

Peter sipping tea with a “1” on the mug

St. Cyprian writes, in condemning heretics who have appointed false bishops, that the chair of Peter of the principal Church at Rome is the source of sacerdotal (priestly) unity, and that among the Church at Rome, “perfidy” (breach of faith) is not possible

(Letter to Cornelius of Rome, 59 (55), 14).

27.

Angel on right

Abraham Lincoln’s Gettysburg Address

Jerry the mouse

St. Jerome writes to Pope St. Damasus that “with you alone the heritage of the Fathers will remain unimpaired” (Epistle to Pope Damasus, 15, 1 & 2).

28.

Front of low altar on right

Harry Truman in a chair receives a letter

Augustus Caesar

St. Augustine writes on the matter of the Pelagian heresy that since Rome has spoken, “the matter is at an end” (Sermons,131, 10).

29.

Paten on altar

Cow in silk

Pendant with Constantine

Lions, florists

These councils proclaimed the teaching primacy of the pope, leading to the formal proclamation of infallibility in 1870. Union Council of Constantinople (869-870), Lyons (1274), Florence (1438-450).

30.

Chalice

Priest unshaken in earthquake

St. Thomas Aquinas

St. Thomas writes that the papal office finally decides questions of the faith “so that they may be held with unshakable faith by all”

(Summa Theologica, II-II, Q. 1, a.10).

And now, at last, let’s delve into the apologetic (and apostolic) truths behind the mnemonics.

2,000 Years of Infallible Truth

At the altar rail on the left (location 21) you found Jesus on your right and St. Matthew on your left. Jesus said, “I am with you always.” This is from the last sentence of St. Matthew’s Gospel (28:20). The words that follow and that end the Gospel are, “to the close of the age.” In Christ’s parting words after his Resurrection and before his return to heaven, he gathered the eleven remaining apostles, reminded them of his authority, and commissioned them to teach and baptize in the name of the Father, Son, and Holy Spirit, making disciples of all nations. He promised to be with them always. Christ’s authority for baptizing, making disciples, and teaching the faithful would remain present on earth “to the close of the age,” first in the person of Peter and then in his successors, they whom the Church calls Vicarius Christi, the Vicar of Christ.26 Vicar means one who acts for another, and in English it is still a common term for pastors within the Anglican and Episcopalian traditions. Christ authorized Peter and his successors to speak and act for him on earth until the end of time. Does it make any sense that he would allow them then to indefinitely teach error in his name?

Now we spied the lectern (22) and its two unique winged decorations. The dove with its flapping wings represents the Holy Spirit. The triangle it wears calls to mind the Holy Trinity, as well as the fact that we are storing here three verses that feature the Holy Spirit. And where do we find them? Well, there is our eagle, so of course they’re in the Gospel of St. John: 14:26, 15:26, and 16:13. All three verses relate to Jesus’ promise to Peter and the apostles that he would send “the Counselor,” the Holy Spirit, “who will teach you all things,” who is “the Spirit of truth,” and who “will guide you into all the truth.” It is the Holy Spirit, who, as Christ promised, keeps our popes from teaching error.

Onward now to the liturgical book on the lectern (23). Reading from it was old Mr. or Mrs., or perhaps even Sr. Mary, So-and-So, your favorite grade-school teacher, for some reason clad in a toga and chomping a clementine orange. Recalling that many of the scriptural verses we addressed in previous chapters pave the way toward the doctrine of papal infallibility, once fully understood, here we begin to consider what some of the most prominent and earliest Christian leaders, the Church Fathers, had to say about it. It is true that none used the term “papal infallibility”; of course, the Bible nowhere uses the term “Holy Trinity,” yet no orthodox Christian denies that doctrine. Trinitarian dogma is deduced from scriptural passages referring to actions and interrelations of the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit; in a similar way, we infer papal infallibility of the succeeding bishops of Rome by Church Fathers around the early Christian world.

Okay, here’s why your toga-clad teacher is enjoying that orange. The Roman toga reminds us of Rome, and the orange must be a clementine. This is because we refer to St. Clement, bishop of Rome, and our fourth pope. We have seen him teaching and instructing other Christian assemblies in his Letter to the Corinthians. Recall that his letter was read throughout the ancient Christian world, even within the liturgical services of many early Christian churches.

Moving now to the angel on the left (24): The angel has remained pure white despite being drenched with dye, because another Church Father has written that the Christians (of Rome in particular) are “purified of every foreign color,” that is, free from doctrinal error, because they are led by the bishop of Rome. The angel has ignited in flames to remind us our source is St. Ignatius of Antioch. St. Ignatius notes as well that Rome has assumed the role of teaching other churches (for example, through St. Clement of Rome’s letters). Also, of all of St. Ignatius’s letters to other Christian churches, his letter to the Romans is unique in that he does not instruct them or warn them about errors. (Indeed, one might surmise he considered their bishop infallible!)

Onward now, to the tabernacle (25) with the apostles holding aloft St. Peter’s in the midst of other churches. This reminds us of an early Apostolic Father who wrote of the Roman church, “With this Church on account of its special eminence, every other church must agree . . . in her the apostolic tradition has always been kept pure.” And why is the tabernacle made of iron? These words were penned by St. Irenaeus, in his book Against Heresies. So here we see this great Church Father and bishop of Lyons (in modern-day France), in writing against heresy, looking to the Church of Rome as the standard of orthodoxy for the entire Christian world. As Ludwig Ott has noted, “the freedom of the Roman Church from error in faith presupposes the infallibility of her episcopal teachers of faith.”27

Above the tabernacle is the crucifix (26), and atop it sits the literal chair of St. Peter, for another Church Father referred to “the chair of Peter and to the principal church, in which sacerdotal unity has its source.”28 Further, he replied to his adversaries, “You do not bear in mind that it is the Romans, whose faith was praised by the commendatory testimony of the apostles (Rom. 1:8) and to which false teaching can gain no admittance.”29 This third-century Father acknowledges that it is the metaphorical “chair” of St. Peter, occupied by the pope, that preserves the sacerdotal (priestly) unity of all the Church and spares it from false teaching. Sitting in the chair, St. Peter was sipping a tea. Sipping, of course, is our mnemonic image for the author of the lines, St. Cyprian of Carthage. The “1” on his mug reminds us that this Petrine chair is also the source of priestly unity.

What about that angel on the right (27) holding in his hands Abraham Lincoln giving his Gettysburg Address? Is there rhyme or reason for this one? Sure—who can forget the opening line, “Four-score and seven years ago our fathers brought forth . . .”? Well, writing to Pope St. Damasus, one of the four Latin Fathers wrote: “With you alone the heritage of the Fathers will remain unimpaired,”30 signaling his belief in the pope’s unimpeachable fidelity to received Christian truth. Indeed, he continues, “I follow no leader but Christ and join you in communion with none but Your Blessedness, that is, with the chair of Peter. I know that this is the rock on which the Church has been built. Whoever eats the Lamb outside this house is profane.”31

Who wrote those words? We come now to our little mouse, named Jerry after his famous cartoon cousin. With my apologies to the great apologist and Doctor of the Church, Jerry is simply our mnemonic reminder for St. Jerome. He states emphatically that it is through his communion with the pope that he preserves the one unimpeachably true faith of the Church that Christ himself had built upon St. Peter. When he wanted certain truths about his faith, this exceptionally learned doctor turned to his pope.

Now we move to the low altar area (28) where, depicted on the altar itself, we saw another U.S. president: Harry S. Truman, the no-nonsense executive, seated in his chair opening a letter. On his desk, let’s imagine a placard with his famous motto, “The buck stops here!” In matters of faith and morals, the buck stops on the desk of the pope. And why is another no-nonsense leader, Augustus Caesar to be exact, sharing the scene with President Truman? To remind us of that most august of Latin Church Fathers and Doctors, St. Augustine. As he wrote concerning the condemnation of the Pelagian heresy, once the pope in Rome has spoken, the matter is ended—causa finite est.32

Next we arrive at perhaps the strangest scene so far: Right next to the paten (location 29) is that cow dressed in silk, staring placidly at Constantine the Great, who is, of course, surrounded by lions and florists. We have seen how the dogma of papal infallibility proclaimed by the Church in 1870 had deep historical roots, traceable to Scripture and growing into the writings of early Church Fathers. It can also be traced through prior Church councils. The “cow in silk” simply sounds like “council,” and that’s all she is doing there—reminding us of Church councils whose decrees advanced the understanding of papal infallibility. We’ll highlight three in particular.

Constantine the Great reminds us of Constantinople, the city named after him, where a ninth-century council proclaimed the pope’s primacy as teacher for the faithful. It was affirmed there that “to follow in everything the Apostolic See of Rome and teach all its laws . . . in which communion is the whole, real, and perfect solidity of the Christian religion.”33 Again, we see the pope acknowledged as the source of orthodoxy, unity, and perfection of doctrine. How could perfection be found alongside error?

Constantine is surrounded by lions, to remind us that the Council of Lyons (1274) reaffirmed that primacy; and finally, the florists help us recall that the Council of Florence (1438-45) did the same in affirming the pope as the highest Christian authority in the world. Certainly Christ would not allow his highest representative on earth to lead his flock into error.

Last, but certainly not least, we come to the holy chalice (location 30). The priest remains unshaken, despite our imagined earthquake, to remind us that it is the pope who has the official power to “finally decide questions of faith, so that they may be held with unshakeable faith by all,” as St. Thomas Aquinas wrote. So then, more than 750 years ago, St. Thomas argued that as the Church is the pillar of truth (1 Tim. 3:15), the pope is the pillar of the Church.

He supported this notion with an appeal to the same verse we stored in the great rose window at location number 4. Recall that the image of Samson and the winged ox reminds us that St. Luke wrote, “Simon, Simon, behold, Satan demanded to have you, that he might sift you like wheat, but I have prayed for you that your faith may not fail; and when you have turned again, strengthen your brethren” (Luke 22:31–32). Christ’s prayers do not go unanswered. Satan will never prevail over the true faith taught by Peter and his successors. As Jesus promised, “the powers of death shall not prevail against it” (Matt. 16:18).

Very well, then. The contents of this chapter were probably none too easy, but if we hope to defend infallibly (or, at least, pretty accurately) the reasons and history behind papal infallibility, we must thoroughly train up our memories. And don’t forget, you will always be welcome to turn back to chapter 3 to get in more good memory workouts.

In the next chapter we’ll memorize ten reasons why Christ’s Church will remain forever unconquerable, being “one, holy, catholic, apostolic,” and all.

26 Not to be confused with Vicarius Filii Dei, the “Vicar of the Son of God,” a title that is never officially used for the pope but is popular among anti-Catholics, since its letters in the Roman alphabet add up to 666. See Karl Keating’s Catholicism and Fundamentalism for a thorough debunking of this numerology that doesn’t add up.

27 Ludwig Ott, Fundamentals of Catholic Dogma (Rockford, IL: TAN Books, 1974), p. 288.

28 Jurgens, The Faith of the Early Fathers, vol. 1, Fundamentals, p. 232.

29 Ott, Fundamentals, p. 288.

30 Ibid, citing St. Jerome’s Epistle to Pope Damasus, 15, 1.

31 Jurgens, The Faith of the Early Fathers, vol. 2, p. 183, citing St. Jerome’s Epistle to Pope Damasus, 15, 2.

32 St. Augustine, Sermons, 131, 10, cited in Jurgens, The Faith of the Early Fathers, p. 28.

33 New Advent Catholic Encyclopedia, Fourth Council of Constantinople, http://www.newadvent.org/cathen/04310b.htm, retrieved December 17, 2012.

Memorable Quotation 3

The Boy Who Speaks Papal

“Peter, Linus, Anacletus, Clement I, Evaristus, Alexander I, Sixtus I, Telesphorus, Hyginus, Pius I, Anicetus, Soter, Eleutherius, Victor I, Zephyrinus, Callistus I,Urban I, Pontain, Anterus, Fabian ,Cornelius, Lucius I, Stephen I, Sixtus II, Dionysius, Felix I, Eutychian, Caius, Marcellinus, Marcellus I, Eusebius, Miltiades, Sylvester I, Marcus, Julius I, Liberius, Damasus I, Siricius, Anastasius I, Innocent I, Zosimus, Boniface I, Celestine I, Sixtus III, Leo I, Hilarius, Simplicius, Felix III, Gelasius I, Anastasius II, Symmachus, Hormisdas, John I, Felix IV, Boniface II, John II, Agapetus I, Silverius, Vigilius, Pelagius I, John III, Benedict I, Pelagius II, Gregory I, Sabinian, Boniface III, Boniface IV, Deusdedit, Boniface V, Honorius I, Severinus, John IV, Theodore I, Martin I, Eugene I, Vitalian, Adeodatus, Donus, Agatho, Leo II, Benedict II, John V, Conon, Sergius I, John VI, John VII, Sisinnius,, Constantine, Gregory II, Gregory III, Zachary, Stephen II, Stephen III, Paul I, Stephen IV, Adrian I, Leo III, Stephen V, Paschal I, Eugene II, Valentine, Gregory IV, Sergius II, Leo IV, Benedict III, Nicholas I, Adrian II, John VIII, Marinus I, Adrian III, Stephen VI, Formosus, Boniface VI, Stephen VII, Romanus, Theodore II, John IX, Benedict IV, Leo V, Sergius III, Anastasius III, Lando, John X, Leo VI, Stephen VIII, John XI, Leo VII, Stephen IX, Marinus II, Agapetus II, John XII, Leo VIII, Benedict V, John XIII, Benedict VI, Benedict VII, John XIV, John XV, Gregory V, Sylvester II, John XVII, John XVIII, Sergius IV, Benedict VIII, John XIX, Benedict IX, Sylvester III, Benedict IX, Gregory VI, Clement II, Benedict IX, Damasus II, Leo IX, Victor II, Stephen X, Nicholas II, Alexander II, Gregory VII, Victor III, Urban II, Paschal II, Gelasius II, Callistus II, Honorius II, Innocent II, Celestine II, Lucius II, Eugene III, Anastasius IV, Adrian IV, Alexander III, Lucius III, Urban III, Gregory VIII, Clement III, Celestine III, Innocent III, Honorius III, Gregory IX, Celestine IV, Innocent IV, Alexander IV, Urban IV, Clement IV, Gregory X, Innocent V, Adrian V, John XXI, Nicholas III, Martin IV, Honorius IV, Nicholas IV, Celestine V, Boniface VIII, Benedict XI, Clement V, John XXII, Benedict XII, Clement VI, Innocent VI, Urban V, Gregory XI, Urban VI, Boniface IX, Innocent VII, Gregory XII, Martin V, Eugene IV, Nicholas V, Callistus III, Pius II, Paul II, Sixtus IV, Innocent VIII, Alexander VI, Pius III, Julius II, Leo X, Adrian VI, Clement VII, Paul III, Julius III, Marcellus II, Paul IV, Pius IV, Pius V, Gregory XIII, Sixtus V, Urban VII, Gregory XIV, Innocent IX, Clement VIII, Leo XI, Paul V, Gregory XV, Urban VIII, Innocent X, Alexander VII, Clement IX, Clement X, Innocent XI, Alexander VIII, Innocent XII, Clement XI, Innocent XIII, Benedict XIII, Clement XII, Benedict XIV, Clement XIII, Clement XIV, Pius VI, Pius VII, Leo XII, Pius VIII, Gregory XVI, Pius IX, Leo XIII, Pius X, Benedict XV, Pius XI, Pius XII, John XXIII, Paul VI, John Paul I, John Paul II, and Benedict XVI.”34

John Paul Fitzmaurice, age 11

In July of 2009 I received an e-mail from one Rebecca Fitzmaurice. It seemed that her ten-year-old son, John Paul, had become intrigued upon hearing about a challenge their pastor had issued to his former high school students. That yet-unmet challenge was merely to memorize the names of all 265 popes in order. The Fitzmaurices had read my book Memorize the Faith!, and they came to me for some advice. I must admit I was a little concerned that perhaps John Paul had bitten off more than his young memory could chew, but we laid out a plan to give it a shot.

We talked about adapting and expanding the memory house in Memorize the Faith! I recommended that he use the sixty locations in that book and that he also create as many locations as possible from his own house, and perhaps from his church, to arrive at a full 265 mnemonic locations—indeed, a location for every pope, and for every pope his own location! Now, this was not completely necessary, since locations can be reused, as they are in this book. I had experimented with memorizing the popes myself, using 100 locations and repeating again with a second round and with two-thirds of a third round, but I determined that learning the full 265 separate locations would make for readier recall. Also, I figured that with all those locations at his disposal, once they had become well-learned there would be few memory challenges in life that young John Paul could not handle!

The Fitzmaurices took my advice and fine-tuned things with memory strategies of their own, including creating a binder with printed depictions and descriptions of all the locations and images they devised based on the names of all the popes. This way, John Paul’s mastery of the locations and images gradually followed that “inward path” from the printed page to the deep recesses of his memory.

In October, I heard back again. John Paul had mastered the first thirty-three popes. That December, Rebecca informed me John Paul had mastered the first 120. (Almost three times the number of U.S. presidents, yet he was not even halfway there!)

One fine day in April 2010, I heard an unfamiliar young voice on my cell phone, telling me, “I got them all!” John Paul had memorized the names of all 265 popes in order. This included not just the twenty-three Johns and sixteen Benedicts, but popes with names like Eleutherius and Zozimas. In the end, young John Paul had mentally employed his own house, yard, the route to his parish, and the church itself—the last five pontiffs are concelebrating Mass at the altar! The Fitzmaurice family invited my wife, Kathy, and me to see John Paul recite all the popes at a homeschooling talent show in a Franciscan convent.

Young John Paul’s story caught on. It was carried by the national Catholic News Agency in May 2010, and the following year we were interviewed together for an ABC News affiliate. John Paul’s goal at the time was to recite the popes for the pope himself someday, though he told me recently that he would need some brushing up first. Repetition is the mother of memory, of course, and the more prodigious the feat of memory, the more likely that bits will fade over time, unless they are rehearsed.

But what might we glean from the story of the boy who speaks papal? Surely there is more to memory mastery than astounding an audience or performing on TV. Well, one thing John Paul’s story should do is impress us with the truly awesome power of a well-trained memory. John Paul is not a memory “natural.” Though certainly a bright and well-rounded young man, he was not blessed with a photographic memory. No, his long efforts showed he was a memory “strategist” of the first rank. And if he could memorize such an impressive list of popes, why couldn’t we perform perhaps less impressive but still practically useful feats of memory?

John Paul has inspired me to tackle some additional memory challenges, combining the methods of this book and of Memorize the Faith! Yesterday, as I wrote, I used the first fifty locations from the memory house in Memorize the Faith! to memorize the gist of the fifty scriptural reasons for the primacy of Peter described in Dave Armstrong’s A Biblical Defense of Catholicism. Today, I filled in the last ten locations of the memory house with the reasons for Peter’s primacy provided by ten Church Fathers in Jimmy Akin’s The Fathers Know Best. That makes a full sixty reasons. In the days ahead I will carefully read and re-read those scriptural verses and selections from the Church Fathers to solidify my memory system and to deepen my understanding of the reasons.

Now, I think the ten reasons for Peter’s primacy we mastered in chapter 1 should do quite well to get an apologetic conversation started. I doubt I’ll ever get to enumerate all sixty reasons in the course of a discussion, but the greater breadth and depth of understanding certainly should come in handy. (Besides, it will be nice to know that I could rattle off all sixty if such an unlikely occasion ever should arise!) So then, inspired by young John Paul’s example of the power of memory systems for learning things of the Faith, what apologetics memory challenges will you set for yourself—after you’ve mastered the contents of this book?

34 John Paul has now added Pope Francis to his list! Also, I’d like to acknowledge that I owe the phrase “speaks papal” to John Paul’s grandfather.

Chapter 4

The Church Remarkable

I believe in one, holy, catholic, and apostolic Church.

The Nicene Creed

All men are called to this catholic unity of the People of God. . . . And to it, in different ways, belong or are ordered: the Catholic faithful, others who believe in Christ, and finally all mankind, called by God’s grace to salvation.

Catechism of the Catholic Church (836)35

The Catholic Church is the most enduring institution on earth. Over the vast centuries nations and empires have come and gone, but the Catholic Church remains. (Christ had promised, after all, that the powers of death would not prevail against it.) Indeed, the Catholic Church of today is the living continuation of the visible institution of believers that Jesus Christ established nearly two millennia ago.

Catholic, Orthodox, and even many Protestant Christians recite a 1,600-year-old creed of belief in which they proclaim Christ’s Church to possess four “marks”: It is “one, holy, catholic, and apostolic.” What do these words mean? What did they mean to the ancient Christians who formulated that creed? And why do non-Catholics profess a small-c “catholic” church but deny the authority of the big-C Church by that name? In this chapter we will look at these questions, answer them in the words of Scripture and Church Fathers, and, of course, we will memorize the reasons!

Welcome to the One, Holy, Catholic, and Apostolic Church

Today is a new day, and we’re at St. Peter’s again to celebrate the sacrifice of the Holy Mass—only today we are going to enter the church from the door to the right of the nave (location 31). Engraved upon the door in shimmering gold is Jesus Christ himself, with his eyes looking up to heaven in prayer. You notice money at his feet—six perfect, crisp dollar bills.

Walking in the door, as you turn to dip your fingers in the holy water font on the right (32), you are startled to see the entire congregation gathered around it, smiling and nodding their heads up and down, as if in agreement with something or other. You cross yourself reverently, squeeze past the crowd, and reach the back right pew (33). A collection basket is sitting there brimming over, of course, with more ones! You count seven of them this time.

Next up is the rear right archway (34). You see depicted there a crowd that is very different from the group at that holy water font. They are shaking their heads in disagreement, shaking their fists at one another, and one of them is even nailing some kind of list on the door of a church.

Now your gaze is directed to the confessional on the right (35). You hear a trumpet blast, and then what sounds more like a clarinet and, finally, the distinctive, gritty voice of Louis Armstrong. You are surprised to see a whole group of saints marching in to the confessional. You can see them all in there, because the door is riddled with holes. (For readers younger than fifty: The song Armstrong is singing is “When the Saints Go Marching In.” Check it out on the Internet.)

Peering up now to the right stained glass window (36), you see the most stunning depiction of the resurrected Christ commissioning the eleven remaining apostles to preach his gospel throughout the world. (You weren’t expecting, though, to see under his feet a great, big cat36 licking its paws.)

Moving right along, next to the right front section of pews (37), you see an unlikely sight: a human pyramid of sorts. Standing on the shoulders of Christ are his apostles and also some prophets. They all hold aloft a model of a glorious temple.

Now we come to the right front arch (38) where you notice the door to an office, and the office is full of apostles. At the penultimate location in the Cathedral of St. Peter (39), we come to the last station of the cross, in which Christ is laid in his tomb. He is being prayed over by his apostles, and oddly enough, by their fathers as well.

35 Citing Lumen Gentium, 13.

36 It occurred to me that I couldn’t recall a single mention of cats in Scripture. A quick trip to The Catholic Bible Concordance: Revised Standard Catholic Edition (Steubenville, OH: Emmaus Road Publishing, 2009), p. 270, revealed they were there all the time: in Baruch 6:22.

Finally, at the great front right stained glass window (40) you see what appears to your eyes as a group of bearded ancient bishops reciting a familiar prayer, accompanied by a cow in silk. With arms on each other’s shoulders, you hear them start to chant, “Credo in unum Deum, Patrem omnipotentum…” (Okay, you don’t have to remember their words beyond the “Credo”—they actually prayed them in Greek at that time, and you actually already know them, albeit in English!)

Now let’s lay this out for review:

LOCATION

IMAGE

31.

Right door to nave

Jesus prays, six one-dollar bills at feet

32.

Right rear holy water font

Smiling, nodding congregation

33.

Right rear pew section

Collection basket with seven ones

34.

Right rear arch

Angry crowd, man with list

35.

Right rear confessional booth

Saints march in, door full of holes

36.

Right rear stained glass window

Jesus commission to apostles, cat licking

37.

Right front pew section

Pyramid of Jesus, apostles, temple

38.

Right front arch

Door opens into an office of apostles

39.

Right front station of the cross

Apostles and their fathers pray over Jesus

40.

Right front stained glass window

Bishops pray the Creed with a cow in silk

Second Rehearsal: Same As the First, But Now We Add the Verse

Please repeat them until you’ve got them all down. Bear in mind, too, that it may also help to rehearse them a time or two in reverse order. Got them now, both forward and backward?

Remember that the Catholic art of memory does not seek the rote retention of laundry lists. Rather, it seeks to help us create intense, visualize-able, three-dimensional mental spaces loaded with data-rich images. If you should get stuck on a reason, just look around the nave with your mind’s eye, and let the surrounding locations and images cue the recall of what you are looking for. This will be easier when you conceive of each group of ten images as part of a guided tour, one that forms a connected story. Ask yourself, “What did I see going on in the right nave of St. Peter’s one, holy, catholic, and apostolic cathedral?” That way, your mind’s eye will be more of a video camera than a static, single-shot one. If a picture is worth a thousand words, then a movie is worth far more.

When we train the visual, spatial powers of the brain’s right hemisphere to work happily in cahoots with the logical, linguistic powers on the left, the results can be truly memorable. You have my word (and images) on it.

Now that you’ve had a chance to rehearse, let’s add images to our locations for chapter and verse.

At location 31, where you saw the image of Christ and the six dollar bills on the door, there is an eagle hovering over Christ’s head. There by all those happy people you noticed nodding around the holy water font (32), imagine that the font bursts upward toward the ceiling, propelled from underneath by a single ornate Corinthian column. In that back, rear pew (33), you realize the collection baskets are actually merely upside-down berets supplied by some Parisians. Moving along to that arch (34) with the mob and that thesis-nailing gent, you see that a Roman centurion, horse-hair plume and all, has arrived to restore some order. As for that confessional (35) with the saints marching in and the door full of holes, you see that it, just like the water font, is being propelled toward the ceiling by one Corinthian column. (Form well the striking images of two separate, single Corinthian columns bursting through the floor at two different locations in the right nave of St. Peter’s. Can you see at which two locations those massive columns spring forth?)

Now our mind’s eyes move to the right rear stained glass window (36). Remember the depiction of Christ commissioning his apostles with the cat at his feet, licking its paws? Sure you do. Well, imagine now that the cat is joined by one of his cousins, a large winged lion. Next is the right front pew (37), where we saw that unusual pyramid of Christ supporting the apostles while they supported the prophets and the prophets held up the temple. Now have them all sport a nice French beret. (Très bien! You’ve observed that this is the second time that berets have appeared in this nave. Now where did one show up first?)

Up we go now to the right front arch (38), with that door opening up to an office full of apostles. Just imagine the door was shut tight at first, until Peter knocked it down with an ax! Next we move to that station of the cross (39) with the apostles and their fathers praying over the body of Jesus. And while we’re here, let’s imagine one father eating an orange, a second lighting a torch, and a third eating a whole bunch of fish—carp to be exact. Last but not least, let’s move to that group of bishops in the right front window (40), who are chanting that creed in unison, along with a cow in silk. Now they are joined by the Roman emperor who made his mnemonic debut in our last chapter. Coming to you again is Constantine the Great.

Now let’s see where we stand.

THE FOUR MARKS OF THE CHURCH: THE REASONS AND THEIR SOURCES

LOCATION

IMAGES

SOURCE

31.

Right door to nave

Jesus prays

Six dollar bills at feet

Eagle hovers above

Jesus prays emphatically that all who believe in him will be one as he and the Father are one, using the word one a full six times (John 17:11, 21–23).

32.

Right rear holy water font

Smiling and nodding congregation

Font stands upon column

St. Paul appeals to the Corinthians in Christ’s name that they will all agree without dissension, with the same mind and same judgment (1 Cor. 1:10).

33.

Right rear pew section

Collection basket with seven ones

Basket is beret

St. Paul emphasizes to the Ephesians oneness in body, Spirit, hope, the Lord, faith, baptism, God and Father, using the word one a full seven times (Eph. 4:4–6).

34.

Right rear arch

Angry crowd

Man with list Roman centurion

St. Paul warns the Romans to avoid those who create dissension and oppose apostolic doctrine (Rom. 16:15).

35.

Right rear confessional booth

Saints march in

Door full of holes

Confessional stands on column

St. Paul tells the Corinthians all who call on the name of the Lord are called to be saints (1 Cor. 1:2).

36.

Right rear stained glass window

Jesus commission to apostles

Cat licking

Winged lion

Christ tells his apostles to “go into all the world and preach the gospel to the whole creation” (Mark 16:15).

37.

Right front pew section

Pyramid of Jesus, apostles, prophets, temple

Apostles wear berets

St. Paul tells the Ephesians the household of God was “built upon the foundation of the apostles and prophets, Christ Jesus himself being the cornerstone, in whom the whole structure is joined together and grows into a holy temple in the Lord” (Eph. 2:20).

38.

Right front arch

Door opens into an office of apostles

Ax

Peter says regarding the deceased apostle Judas, “his office let another take” (Acts 1:20).

39.

Right front

station of the cross

Apostles and their father's pray over Jesus

Clementine orange, torch,

carp

Some of the earliest Church Fathers, such as St. Clement of Rome, St. Ignatius of Antioch, and St. Polycarp of Smyrna, were taught by the apostles and are known as Apostolic Fathers.

40.

Right front

stained glass window

Group of bishops and cow in silk pray the Creed

Emperor Constantine the Great

Nicene Creed containing four marks of the Church formulated at Councils of Nicaea in 325 and Constantinople in 381.

Now let’s examine more closely just what these images represent, as well as where on earth (and in heaven) they come from.

The Church Is One

Return with me now to the right door to the nave (location 31). The dollar bills (i.e., “ones”) at Jesus’ feet while he kneels in prayer are our first reminder of the first mark of the Catholic Church; that is, it is “one.” There are six bills there, because in John 17, during Jesus’ lengthy priestly prayer, he prayed to God that we, his followers, be “one”—and indeed, talk about emphasis: He uses the word one not once but six times: in John 17:11, “that they may be one, even as we are one,” and verses 21—“that they may all be one; even as thou, Father, art in me, and I in thee,” 22—“that they may be one even as we are one,” and 23—“that they may become perfectly one, so that the world may that thou hast sent me and hast loved them even as thou has loved me.” Jesus himself so clearly marked out the first mark of his Church, that of perfect or complete unity, the very oneness of himself and the Father setting the divine standard.

To remember where Christ’s desire for church unity is to be found in Scripture, we pictured on the door a glorious eagle hovering above Christ’s head bowed in prayer. The eagle, as you now know well, will remind us of St. John’s Gospel.

At the right holy water font (32), we find the smiling congregation to remind us of one of St. Paul’s many calls to unity within the Church. “I appeal to you brethren, by the name of our Lord Jesus Christ,” he tells us, “that all of you agree and that there be no dissensions among you, but that you be united in the same mind and the same judgment.” Imagine, too, that when you dip your hand in the font to bless yourself, you have to rise on your tiptoes and reach as high as you can. The right holy water font in St. Peter’s Church rests upon one Corinthian column, for Paul’s call to unity comes from 1 Corinthians 1:10. And while we’re here, if you wanted to lock in the concepts of “same mind and same judgment,” too, you might throw in an image of the congregation holding aloft in their hands a brain, and a judge.

On then to the right rear pew section (33). Why does the collection basket contain seven ones? Because in another call to unity from St. Paul, he uses the word seven times. “There is one body and one Spirit, just as you were called to the one hope that belongs to your call, one Lord, one faith, one baptism, one God and Father of us all, who is above all and through all and in all” (Eph. 4:4–6, italics added). Talk about emphasis—and making things memorable through repetition! Remember that as you take a closer look at that collection basket, it is really an upturned French beret, belonging to a Parisian. Not because St. Paul wrote to the Parisians, but because Parisians are a near-homophonic image for Ephesians. So, if you see a French beret anywhere in this book, or come across one in your apologetics memory bank, you’ll know it’s the Ephesians we have in mind.

Location 34 is our arch, and on it is painted a scene that depicts a crowd in a great ruckus. Why are they so angry and disagreeable, shaking their fists? And who is that guy nailing a list on the door? First let’s consider our additional image, and then I’ll tell you why.

Imagine that while the members of the crowd are shaking one fist at each other, they’re shaking the other fist at a Roman centurion with a horse-plumed helmet, guarding the church. The centurion reminds us of St. Paul’s Letter to the Romans (verse 16:15 to be exact): “I appeal to you, brethren, to take note of those who create dissensions and difficulties, in opposition to the doctrine which you have been taught: avoid them.” This angry mob is the body of dissenters, those who work against the Church unity for which Christ prayed. And the man with the list is a reminder of the man who struck one of the mightiest of blows against Church unity when he nailed his 95 Theses to a church door in 1517. In less than 500 years since Martin Luther’s fateful act, there have arisen thousands, by some counts tens of thousands, individual Christian denominations and confessions!37 Surely this is a far cry from oneness.

On now to the right confessional booth (35). The unmistakable brass of Louis Armstrong’s band accompanies our saints into the door of the confessional. The door of our confessional is full of holes, to remind us that now we touch upon the second mark of the Church: that it is holy. The saints will call to mind this verse: “To the Church of God which is at Corinth, to those sanctified in Christ Jesus, called to be saints together with all those who in every place call on the name of our Lord Jesus Christ, both their Lord and ours” (1 Cor. 1:2). Though the Church is indeed made up of sinners, we are all called to be saints, and Christ gave us the Church to help us get there. Our mnemonic image, of course, will involve another Corinthian column (easy enough for budding memory masters such as ourselves): the confessional is raised off the ground, sitting upon it.

This brings us to our right rear stained glass window (36). Here is Christ commissioning his eleven apostles, saying, “Go into all the world and preach the gospel to the whole creation” (Mark 16:15). The cat licking its paws at his feet is a reminder of the third mark of the Church, namely, that it is catholic, from the Greek katholikos, meaning “universal” (from kata, meaning “according to,” plus holos, “the whole”). The one, holy, Catholic Church has certainly taken Christ’s commission seriously, bringing his message to every nation across the whole globe. St. Mark is our lion, and so we picture our little, licking cat accompanied by his larger, winged cousin.

Now let’s review where we stand. We’ve memorized four reasons and sources for the first mark of oneness or unity. Few will dispute the Church’s role in promoting holiness (even though some of its members may not have attained it), or Christ’s clear call that his Church should be catholic or universal. That’s why we’ve memorized but one simple reason each. But what do we mean by apostolic? Well, in one sense we mean that Christ’s Church was founded upon the apostles. We found reasons aplenty for this in chapters 1 and 2. In another sense we mean that Christ intended apostolic succession: that the authority and teaching of the apostles would be passed down through their appointed successors unto the end of time. And what are a few of the reasons for that?

This takes us first to the front right pew section (37). How can you forget that image of Christ supporting the apostles upon his shoulders, who in turn are supporting prophets, who in turn are supporting a temple? Here is what the images recalls for us: “Built upon the foundation of the apostles and prophets, Christ Jesus himself being the cornerstone, in whom the whole structure is joined together and grows into a holy temple in the Lord.” Well, there you have it, clear as a day: Christ’s Church has an apostolic foundation. St. Paul himself tells us so, and since we imagined all of our apostles donning French berets, we know that this verse comes from his Letter to the Ephesians (2:20 to be exact).

Up to the last arch of St. Peter’s we go (38). Why was he opening a door to an office? In the words of St. Luke, “His office let another take” (Acts 1:20).

Perhaps you’ve heard of so-called “Acts 2 churches,” which emphasize the manifestations of the Holy Spirit (such as the gift of tongues) that were given on the day of Pentecost, or the early Church’s communal living arrangements described later in the chapter. But Christ’s Church needs to be an “Acts 1 church” as well, giving proper emphasis to apostolic structure and to Peter’s leadership role within it. For in the first chapter of Acts, it is Peter who stands up and reminds the apostles that “it is written in the book of Psalms, ‘Let his habitation become desolate, and let there be one to live in it’: and ‘His office let another take’” (1:20).

The apostle Judas had committed suicide after his betrayal of Christ, and the apostles nominated two possible successors: Matthias and Barsabbas the Just. After prayers and drawing of lots, Matthias “was enrolled with the eleven apostles.” So there from the start is apostolic succession in action, demonstrated to us by Christ’s original apostles. And how shall we remember this is in Acts? Let’s simply imagine the door to the office won’t open, so Peter knocks it down with an ax, better yet, with one ax to be precise.

On now to the last station of the cross at location 39. Here we saw the apostles and their fathers praying over the body of Christ in the tomb. This is a reminder that some of the earliest of the Church Fathers from the late first century and early second century, such as Sts. Clement of Rome, Ignatius of Antioch, and Polycarp of Smyrna, were directly taught by the apostles, and indeed are known as the Apostolic Fathers.38 Hence we have added to the scene a Clementine orange, a torch igniting, and many carp. Not fond of carp? I suppose a parrot named Polly eating carp, or simply a carp named Polly, either would work just as well.

Finally now, to our last stop in St. Peter’s. At the stained glass window (40), we found those ancient bishops with a cow in silk reciting a creed. Could it be the Apostles Creed? Close, but no cigar. It is the more fully developed Nicene Creed that we say at Sunday Mass. This creed, which affirms belief in all four marks of the Church, came from the proceedings of the Council of Nicaea in 325 and was confirmed by the Council of Constantinople in 381. The cow in silk, is of course, our (live)stock image for councils.

And so ends this mnemonic tour of St. Peter’s Cathedral. Can you now name ten reasons (along with sources) for the primacy of St. Peter, the authority of the Church, papal infallibility, and the four marks of the Roman Catholic Church? If you can’t right now, with a little more rehearsal and intense visual imagery you will! Once you’ve mastered these, you may want to add additional locations and images to recall even more, but before you do that, there’s another mnemonic cathedral through which I’d like to guide you. We’ve seen the Holy Father’s church in Part I. In Part II we’ll see what wonders await in the church of the Holy Mother.

37 See the denominational chart from (Protestant) Gordon-Conwell Theological Seminary for one head-spinning breakdown of denominational divisions: http://www.gordonconwell.edu/mentored-ministry/documents/DENOMINATIONALCHART2011-2012.pdf.

38 Sources including St. Irenaeus and church historian Eusebius report that St. Clement was taught by Sts. Peter and Paul, and that Sts. Ignatius and Polycarp studied under St. John, http://www.newadvent.org/cathen/01637a.htm.

Memorable Quotation 4

Are You Eating This Up?

Son of man, eat what is offered to you; eat this scroll, and go, speak to the house of Israel, and speak with my words to them. . . . Then I ate it; and it was in my mouth as sweet as honey.

Ezekiel 3:1, 3

Eating the book is the starting-point of reading and of basic history. When, by diligent meditation, we store away the book of the Lord in our memorial treasury, our belly is filled spiritually and our guts are satisfied.

St. Jerome, Commentary on Ezekiel39

St. Jerome knew a thing or two about the Bible. This fourth- and fifth-century translator of the Bible into Latin is not known as Doctor of Biblical Science for nothing. As a scholar, well-trained in classical Latin, and a great devotee of Cicero, St. Jerome also knew a thing or two about the treasured art of memory. Indeed, he once wrote that “nothing that you have seen or heard is useful, however, unless you deposit what you should see and hear in the treasury of your memory.”40

In his comments on “eating the book,” St. Jerome harks back to metaphors and images for human memory that go back to Old Testament days. Modern-day English professor Mary Carruthers notes that after his quotation that starts this section, “Jerome then links this action of eating the book to the story of Samson finding honey in the lion’s mouth (Judg. 14:8) and Proverbs 6:8 (‘Go to the bee’41), read as an admonition to store the honey of Scripture in one’s own memory/heart.”42 The “cells” or organized compartments of the bee’s honeycomb were used in ancient times as a metaphor for the compartmental organization of a trained memory. The honey Ezekiel refers to represents the sweet words of Scripture.43

How might this “eat the book” metaphor serve us in our pursuits? Well, if we seek to obtain optimal health and to practice the virtue of temperance as well, we will digest best and nourish our bodies most fully when we slowly and thoroughly chew on healthy foods and eat them in modest portions. So, too, whether we are studying the Scripture itself or storing reasons for the Faith within our memory cathedrals, we need to take our time—to meditate, to ruminate, to digest. Then later, at another time, we can return for another serving. Do this, and not only will our bellies be filled spiritually, but our guts, minds, and hearts will be satisfied with sound and sweet doctrine!

39 Cited in Carruthers, The Book of Memory (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1990), p. 44.

40 Ibid, p. 18.

41 The Clementine Vulgate actually uses formican (ant), rather than the word for bee (Prov. 6:6). Ant is used in English translations. Ants eat a great deal of food in the fall so they can hibernate without eating in the winter—not a practice recommended for humans! The proverb refers to this instinctual wisdom and industry that God has given the ant.

42 Ibid, p. 44.

43 How interesting to recall, in light of the scriptural and patristic comparisons of memories to honey, that the nickname of Simonides, the Father of the Art of Memory, was, in fact, the “honey-tongued!”

Part II

Notre Dame: On the Blessed Virgin Mary

Henceforth all nations will call me blessed.

Luke 1:48

And there is no controversy between Christians which needs to be so delicately touched as this. The Roman Catholic beliefs on that subject are held not only with the ordinary fervour that attaches to all sincere religious belief, but (very naturally) with the peculiar, as it were, chivalrous sensibility that a man feels when the honour of his mother or his beloved is at stake. It is very difficult so to dissent from them that you will not appear to them a cad as well as a heretic. And contrariwise, the opposed Protestant beliefs on this subject call forth feelings which go down to the very roots of all Monotheism whatever. To radical Protestants it seems that the distinction between Creator and creature (however holy) is imperiled: that Polytheism is risen again. Hence it is hard so to dissent from them that you will not appear something worse than a heretic—an idolator, a Pagan.

C. S. Lewis, Mere Christianity44

44 C. S. Lewis, Mere Christianity (New York: Touchstone, 1996), p. 7.

Chapter 5

Full of Grace, Mother of God

Honor your father and your mother.

Exodus 20:12

“Behold, your mother!”

John 19:27

We have seen how Jesus Christ chose a hot-headed fisherman named Simon Peter to spread his word throughout the world and to feed his sheep. Now we will consider how the Father chose a very different sort of person to bring his Word into the world and to feed and nurture the very Lamb of God.

Distinctive Catholic teachings on the Blessed Virgin Mary can be divisive among Christians. When C. S. Lewis wrote his classic apologetic work Mere Christianity, he focused on the fundamental issues of faith that all manner of orthodox Christians could agree upon, things such as the Trinity, the Incarnation, and the Virgin Birth. But we can infer from the quotation at the beginning of this section, Lewis steered clear of Marian doctrines—not because they were unimportant, because they were so unavoidably controversial.

Our focus here, though, is not on mere Christianity, but on the fullness of Christian truth, and specifically on those areas that arouse the most controversy and disagreement. Hence it is time now for the Mother of God to receive her rightful due.

The Catholic Church has defined four essential, or de fide, Marian doctrines throughout the ages. They are as follows:

1. Mary is truly the Mother of God.

2. Mary is a perpetual Virgin.

3. Mary was immaculately conceived.

4. Mary was assumed bodily into heaven.

The first dogma, on Mary’s divine maternity, was first defined as early as the year 431 by the Council at Ephesus, and the last within the lifetime of some readers, by Pope Pius XII in 1950. Each dogma warrants a full chapter, and a full ten locations of its own within our second cathedral, as we trace its sources in Scripture and Tradition and its development and definition by popes and councils, guided throughout the centuries by the Holy Spirit.

But first, I must issue a warning.

Between a Rock and a Hard Place

The façade of our Notre Dame Cathedral will look quite familiar, as will the nave and altar area—because they are laid out in exactly the same plan we used in St. Peter’s! That means the same forty locations you’ve already learned will now be ready at your disposal to hold brand new reasons and sources, this time for the Marian dogmas. We’ve designed things this way, so that if you have now mastered the locations, your memory task in Part II then is, in a sense, only half as hard as it was in Part I, since you need now learn only the new images.

Still, this shortcut is not without dangers of its own, and we hope to be sure to guide you around them. In Homer’s epic Odyssey, he told of twin perils named Scylla and Charybdis. Scylla was a many-headed monster with a taste for human flesh that lived in a cave on a cliff overlooking a narrow water passage. Charybdis was a beast on the other side that drank in and spit out such vast gulps of the sea that ship-swallowing whirlpools would form. It was no easy thing to navigate between these two—kind of like what we might call being stuck between a rock and a hard place. Fine then, but what, you ask, do Scylla and Charybdis have to do with the Catholic art of memory?

Good question. Memory researchers have long been aware of the twin perils called “proactive” and “retroactive” interference. Proactive interference (like a Scylla of the mind) can gobble up new material you are trying to learn, if you are not wary, and retroactive interference (not unlike a mental Charybdis) can suck down material that you previously learned. If this is all Greek to you, let me lay it out in plain English.

Sometimes information that we have already learned can interfere with our ability to learn new information, especially if the information is similar. That is “proactive interference.”45 Because you now know the forty locations of the memory cathedral in the context of Sts. Peter’s, with sources and reasons about the Church and papacy, you’ll have to be on guard not to get confused and come up with those images when you are trying to recall new reasons and sources for Mary. And once you have mastered our Marian dogmas, you’ll have to make sure that your grasp of the reasons for the Church and papacy remain on their firm foundation. “Retroactive interference,” you see, occurs when we learn new information and it weakens our hold on information that we have learned before.

Remember though, as Odysseus sailed past Scylla and Charybdis, so, too, can we sail past the perils of proactive and retroactive interference, if we know they are lurking there and take some precautions. Here are a few things to do:

1. Pay heed to the connections among all the images within each particular mnemonic cathedral. See them forming a story. Think of them in terms of a video, rather than just static scenes. See them as forming a connected chain. St. Thomas himself is famous for his Catena Aurea (“golden chain”) of memorized commentary from dozens of Church Fathers on the Gospels. Each quotation was like a link in a chain that touched on and helped bring forth recall of the other. In this way, all of your Part I images will hang together with each other, as will the images in Part II and Part III.

2. Make each cathedral distinctive, using as many senses as you can. For example, you might want to vividly imagine your St. Peter’s in Rome itself, like the magnificent St. Peter’s Basilica in Rome. Since Peter was a fisherman, imagine as well the invigorating scent of the salty sea, whenever you practice those images. Place Notre Dame in Paris, if you like, or associate it with a particular church you know that is dedicated to Holy Mary. Imagine all the Marian images as having a special glow or beauty, and feel free to imagine the scent of fresh roses. As for the First Catholic Bible Church, why not imagine it in some Midwestern American city or down in the heart of the Bible Belt? If you’d care to imagine an aroma, how about the smell of musty old books, since we address a whole lot of ancient tomes there? Or perhaps, since it features the early Church and liturgy, too, imagine that, as you memorize those reasons, you are imbibing the scent of incense, rising like ancient prayers toward heaven. In any case, do what you can to give distinctive associations among each of the three cathedrals and the particular images and information they contain.

3. Practice the contents of each particular memory cathedral until you have attained mastery and can rattle them off with ease. Remember how the author of the Ad Herennium exhorted ancient students of memory to diligent, daily practice. Even then, to retain the material for the long run, you’ll have to go back and review it now and then. Further, if you know in advance that you are going to have a debate or discussion on the material within one of the particular memory churches, be sure to rehearse that church, if at all possible, several times daily over several days.

4. Be confident that, with God’s help, you can do it! This book’s precursor, Memorize the Faith!, employed the same locations over again several times for brand new materials, and I can’t recall any e-mails, reviews, or complaints from any person claiming that either proactive or retroactive interference had eaten their memory homework!

So, without further ado, let’s ask that same Holy Spirit who guides the Church to its dogmas to guide us as we enter the next mnemonic cathedral.

Welcome to Notre Dame Cathedral

Set your powers of concentration and imagination on high once more as we approach the façade of our second mnemonic cathedral.

As you walk toward the cathedral, you notice the sign proclaiming this is Notre Dame (Our Lady) Cathedral out in front, and you sense that this cathedral is going to have a decidedly feminine touch. And indeed, at the end of the piazza (location 1) you meet a very pregnant woman. She is wearing one of those “Baby here” T-shirts, with an arrow pointing down to a very protuberant midsection. Depicted on her shirt, within a large circle, is an amazing photo of the universe, something akin to what the Hubble Space Telescope might produce. You can tell that the shirt is brand new.

45 Here’s an example that may hit close to home (or church, that is.) After the changes to the English translation of the Mass in 2011, I’ll wager that when the priest greeted you with “The Lord be with you,” a few of you (like me) answered “And also with you,” a time or two, until, through enough concentration and repeated practice, “And with your spirit” came flowing from your lips.

At the top of the steps (2) you see a group of carolers singing most harmoniously, “O Come, O Come, Emmanuel” (you know how, getting about six notes out of “Emmanuel”). Let’s move to the front door (3) then. Upon the door you see engraved in gold a magnificent blazing sun, resting upon a gigantic hand, and that hand, as you might surmise, is the hand of God.

Our next location is the stained glass window above the doors (4), and here you see a stately British lord, greeted by his elderly mother, while sipping his afternoon tea. Picture him dabbing his forehead with his kerchief as well, since that sun right below him can get rather hot.

On now we go to our statue of Albert the Great (5). St. Albert’s knowledge of medicine was extraordinary in his day, and we image him helping a woman give birth to a son. Next to Albert’s statue is the great rose window (6), and you are alarmed to see a huge crack down the middle, dividing it in two, separating an image of Mary on the left from an image of Christ on the right. (You notice, too, that the image of Mary is blurred. In fact, you can hardly recognize her.)

Next we come to the statue of St. Thomas Aquinas (7). I hope you are starting to feel at home with these locations now, beginning to see how they have become “notepads” within our own heads, waiting for us to write new things upon them with the “ink” of our images. And so what are we “writing” on St. Thomas this time? Well, not something you see every day, that’s for sure. Imagine St. Thomas with a quizzical look on his face because he has just observed a living, giant piece of O-shaped oat cereal taking other O-shaped pieces out of a bowl. St. Thomas calls out, “The O took O’s!” (Remember, St. Thomas told us “unwonted” or “marvelous” images help us memorize things. I do believe this will get the job done!) Up now we go, to the left bell tower (8), and here we find a man signing a Mother’s Day card. Across the way, on top of the right bell tower (9), are beautiful paintings of two nature scenes. (Mountains, forests, seas, jungles—it doesn’t matter. Picture them however you like.)

Finally, now we have arrived at the great central spire (10), and above it again you see, as you did at location three, a fiery sun, held in the outstretched hand of God.

Now it’s time for a little review.

LOCATION

IMAGE

1.

End of piazza

Pregnant woman, universe on brand-new “Baby here” T-shirt

2.

Top of steps

Carolers sing “O Come, O Come, Emmanuel”

3.

Front central door

Sun in God’s hand

4.

Stained glass window

British lord greeted by his mother

5.

St. Albert statue

Woman giving birth

6.

Rose window

Crack down center separates a blurry image of Mary from an image of Jesus

7.

St. Thomas Aquinas statue

O-shaped cereal takes more O’s—“The O took O’s!”

8.

Left bell tower

Mother’s Day card

9.

Right bell tower

Two nature paintings

10.

Central spire

Sun in God’s hand again

Second Course to Add Each Source

At the end of the piazza (location 1) we met a pregnant woman wearing a brand-new “Baby here” T-shirt. Depicted on her shirt, within a large circle, was an amazing photo of the universe, and now we notice that, oddly enough, hopping around this lady is one enormous bullfrog. At the top of the steps (2) we saw a group of carolers singing “O Come, O Come, Emmanuel,” and now you notice our familiar winged man has joined in the singing. (Imagine the other carolers’ looks of amazement as he flaps his wings to hit the high notes.) Upon the left door to the nave (3) we saw engraved in gold a blazing sun, resting upon the hand of God. Only now we notice that flying circles around the sun is our winged ox. Recall now the stately British lord, sipping his afternoon tea with his mother in the window over the door (otherwise known as location 4). Now we see that the winged ox has flown to the window and the lord is now sitting on him and offering the ox a sip of his tea. At the statue of St. Albert (5) we saw the great saint helping a woman give birth to a son, and now we can’t help but notice our saint’s big galoshes.

Next to Albert’s statue is the great rose window (6) with a crack down the middle separating images of Mary and Jesus. Now imagine your alarm while looking at the window, when a man you know named Gregory cries out, “The Nazis are on us!”

Then we came to the statue of St. Thomas Aquinas (7) where he saw that giant O-shaped cereal taking other O’s—“The O took O’s!” he exclaimed. Only now you notice that Thomas is eating some cereal too. Up on the left bell tower (8), we found that man signing a Mother’s Day card, and now you realize he looks just like Martin Luther King, Jr.! Across the way, on top of the right bell tower (9), were beautiful paintings of two nature scenes, and now you see the painter—young Calvin from the comic strip Calvin and Hobbes. If he was before your time, then I’m pretty sure my next suggestion of President Calvin Coolidge would be, too! In that case, you might as well try to form an image of the sixteenth-century Genovese reformer John Calvin himself. (I’ll reveal it right now: It was he who penned the lines of our reason.)

Last but not least, we arrive at the great central spire (10), where we saw above it (as we did at location 3) a fiery sun, held in the outstretched hand of God. Only now you see that the sun is swinging in a giant swing.

Go ahead and rehearse all these a time or two before we dig into their meanings.

MARY, MOTHER OF GOD: THE REASONS AND THEIR SOURCES

LOCATION

IMAGES

SOURCE

1.

End of piazza

Pregnant woman

Universe on T-shirt

Bullfrog

Jeremiah prophesies a “new thing. A woman shall compass a man” (Jer. 31:22 KJV).

2.

Top of steps

Carolers sing “O Come, O Come, Emmanuel”

Winged Man carols, too, and

flaps his wings to hit the high notes

An angel reminds Joseph that Isaiah prophesized that a Virgin would bear a son named “Emmanuel (which means God with us)” (Matt. 1:23).

3.

Front central

door

Sun in God’s hand

Winged ox circles sun

The angel Gabriel tells Mary, “the child to be born will be called holy, the Son of God” (Luke 1:35).

4.

Stained glass window

British lord greeted by his mother

Lord shares tea with winged ox

Elizabeth asks Mary, “And why is this granted me, that the mother of my Lord should come to me?” (Luke 1:43).

5.

St. Albert statue

Woman giving birth

Albert wears galoshes

St. Paul recounts that “when the time had fully come, God sent forth his Son, born of woman” (Gal. 4:4).

6.

Rose window

Crack down the middle separates images of Mary and Jesus

Gregory says, “Nazis are on us!”

St. Gregory Nazianzus writes, “If anyone does not recognize the Holy Mary as the Mother of God, he is separated from the Divinity” (Epistle 101, 4).

7.

St. Thomas Aquinas statue

“The O took O’s!”

Thomas eats cereal, too.

St. Cyril of Alexandria writes that if anyone does not confess that “the Holy Virgin is the Mother of God [theotokos]… let him be anathema” (Decretal 113).

8.

Left bell tower

Mother’s Day card

Martin Luther King, Jr.

Martin Luther writes, “Not only was Mary the mother of Him who is born [in Bethlehem], but of Him who, before the world, was eternally born of the Father” (On the Divine Motherhood of Mary).

9.

Right bell tower

Two nature paintings

Calvin of “Calvin and Hobbes” is painter

John Calvin notes, “Elizabeth calls Mary Mother of the Lord, because the unity of the person in the two natures of Christ was such that she could have said the mortal man engendered in the womb of Mary was at the same time the eternal God.”

10.

Central spire

Sun in God’s hand again

God’s hand swinging the sun

The reformer Ulrich Zwingli writes, “It was given to her what belongs to no creature, that in the flesh she should bring forth the Son of God” (In Evang. Luc).

Mary, Mother of God: The Reasons Behind the Images

I suspect that the reasons behind some of these images are not so easily guessed. Most are not quite as straightforward as, for example, a rock to represent St. Peter, or a key to represent the keys to the kingdom Christ gave him. With this set of images, I’ve got some ’splaining to do.

The pregnant woman with the T-shirt at the end of the piazza (location 1) represents Mary pregnant with Jesus Christ. The universe depicted on her brand-new shirt depicts something totally new and unique about her pregnancy: She carries in her womb an infinite divinity. This image speaks to one of the many “types” or “prefigurements” of the Blessed Mary that appear “hidden” or subtly suggested within the pages of the Old Testament. In this case, we refer to Jeremiah 31:22: “For the LORD has created a new thing on the earth; a woman protects a man.” In the King James Version, the translation reads, “a woman shall compass a man.” As I mentioned in my book St. Albert the Great: Champion of Faith and Reason, that Doctor of the Church noted the Latin word St. Jerome chose here for his Vulgate translation, circumdabit—meaning to encircle or enclose—to underscore the wondrous mystery that though Christ in his divinity is infinite and boundless, he was enclosed within the confines of his earthly Mother’s womb.

Recall that hopping around our pregnant Mary was a great big bullfrog. Anyone who has heard Hoyt Axton’s song made famous by the band Three Dog Night will never forget that “Jeremiah was a bullfrog!” And now you will never forget that this scriptural reason for Mary’s divine maternity is found in that prophet’s book.

At the steps (2), we came across a group of carolers singing “O Come, O Come, Emmanuel.” This was to remind us of Matthew 1:23, “Behold, a virgin shall conceive and bear a son, and his name shall be called Emmanuel (which means, God with us).” These words of the angel to Joseph echoed the prophecy of Isaiah (7:14). Now, if the name of Mary’s son was to be “God with us,” it seems very strange to argue that she would not thus be “the Mother of God.” To help remember that the angel’s words appear in St. Matthew’s Gospel, we call on our familiar image for St. Matthew as the winged evangelist, and picture him in the center of the carolers holding his own hymnal and caroling away (with that quirky behavior of flapping his wings to help him hit the high notes).

Next location was the center door (3) and there we saw that glorious sun held within the hand of God. It reminds us that “the child to be born will be called holy, the Son of God” (Luke 1:35). Now, elementary reason tells us that if the Son of God is God, and Mary is his Mother, then Mary can be called the Mother of God (not just the “mother of Christ’s human nature”—mothers give birth to persons, not natures). This in no way implies that she is a goddess, or that she existed before Christ. She’s a creature like us, but a creature graced with the greatest of all possible graces: to bring God-in-the-flesh into the world. We’ll examine her graces in chapters ahead. For now, we’ll simply recall that the sun simply stands for the son, and we will remember this verse comes from Luke by picturing a winged ox flying around that blazing sun that graces this church’s main door.

Next, above the door, at location 4, you’ll recall that British lord, his mother, hot tea, and all. This scene reminds us that her cousin Elizabeth called Mary “the mother of my Lord,” in Luke 1:43. There certainly weren’t any British nobles in Judah on that day, and in fact, all throughout the New Testament, the Greek word for Lord, Kyrios, refers only to God. To recall that this verse comes from Luke, we pictured our British lord sipping his tea on the back of that great winged ox, and indeed sharing with him a spot of his tea.

Up next we went to St. Albert’s statue (5). Albert was a master of medical knowledge for his time, so fittingly he was helping a woman deliver a male baby. In his lifetime, St. Albert acquired the nickname of “Bishop Boots” for declining to bow to fashion and upgrade from the clunky boots he wore as a poor Dominican friar. In our image, though, those clunky boots must be a great big pair of galoshes. Why? Because galoshes are a close enough phonetic match to remind us of Galatians, specifically verse 4:4: “But when the time had fully come, God sent forth his Son, born of woman.”

At the rose window (6) we moved ahead in time from Scripture to approach the time when the Church felt it necessary to clearly define that Mary was, indeed, the Mother of God. Our image here, you’ll recall, was that crack down the middle of the window, separating a blurred image of Mary from an image of Jesus. Now we’ll see why. In the year 381, the Eastern Father St. Gregory Nazianzus wrote, “If anyone does not recognize Holy Mary as the Mother of God, he is separated from the Divinity” (Epistle 101, 4). That’s a bold and powerful statement! To remember our source, we imagined that a man named Gregory called out, “The Nazis are on us!”46

Location 7 brought us to St. Thomas Aquinas’s statue.

Now, why on earth were he and a giant piece of O-shaped cereal eating O-shaped cereals? The reason for this image is to remind us that in the year 431 the Catholic Church made clear as a defined dogma that Mary is truly the Mother of God. The Greek word for this title is theotokos—literally, “God-bearer.” Theotokos does sound more than a little like “the O took Os!” (though its middle “O” is long), and once you’ve taken the trouble to remember that silly image, surely you are not going to let it get by without reminding you of the word theotokos!)

The need to define this dogma of Mary’s divine maternity arose because of heresies that denied Christ’s divinity. (Recall St. Gregory Nazianzus’s words that those who deny Mary’s maternity of God are separated from divinity.) Most notably, Nestorius, the patriarch of Constantinople, had denied the doctrine of the theotokos, claiming that Mary gave birth not to the person of Jesus Christ but only to his human nature. At the Council of Ephesus in 431, St. Cyril of Alexandria responded: “If any one does not confess that the Emmanuel (Christ) in truth is God and that on his account the Holy Virgin is the Mother of God (theotokos)—since according to the flesh she brought forth the Word of God made flesh—let him be anathema.”

The dogma confirms that Mary was truly a Mother, giving birth not to just a “nature” but to a human being who was the Second Person of the Trinity. And so it’s not just about an appropriate honorific for Mary, it’s about safeguarding the full meaning of the Incarnation. To recall that it was St. Cyril whose formula was adopted by the councils, we simply have St. Thomas joining right in and eating some cereal. How fortuitous that cereal was already a part of our image. (If you think you might forget this one, chew on it for a while. It’s not unlike “eating the book” to get at the honey of wisdom. Indeed, you could even make them honeynut O’s.)

Three more locations and we’ll have covered two handfuls of reasons and sources for Mary’s holy maternity.

Recall that at the site of the left bell tower (8) we saw that great big Mother’s Day card being signed by Martin Luther King, Jr. This is a happy occasion where we can count ourselves in unity with some major Protestant reformers: Martin Luther King, Jr., represents former the German father of the Reformation Martin Luther, who wrote, among other things, “Not only was Mary the mother of him who is born [in Bethlehem], but of him who, before the world, was eternally born of the Father, from a mother in time and at the same time man and God.”47

The right bell tower (location 9) held the two nature paintings. This reminds of us this quotation: “Elizabeth calls Mary Mother of the Lord, because the unity of the person in the two natures of Christ was such that she could have said that “the mortal man engendered in the womb of Mary was at the same time the eternal God.”48 We imagine the artist of those portraits as the “Calvin” of your choice because of another reformer who defended the doctrine that Mary is truly the Mother of God. John Calvin, of course, did not take the Catholic Church’s word for it, but he believed this was the clear interpretation from Elizabeth’s words in Luke 1:43 (which we have already stored in location 3).

Last but not least, we rounded out our ten reasons and sources as we looked to the great central spire (location 10). There again we saw the sun in God’s hand, but we also imagined the sun was sitting upon a great swing, and God’s hand was gently swinging it. Here is our quotation: “It was given to her what belongs to no creature, that in the flesh she should bring forth the Son of God.”49 Remarking here on the messages conveyed in Matthew, Luke, and Galatians was another major early Protestant reformer by the name of Ulrich Zwingli.

Indeed, though Luther, Calvin, and Zwingli each developed very different interpretations of Scripture and set off on different theological courses, these earliest Protestant leaders agreed that the Blessed Virgin Mary was truly the Mother of God! So then, have you memorized these reasons, and understood them, too?

The Mother of Us All

These are certainly not the only ten reasons we can offer in defense of the dogma that Mary is the Mother of God, but they are a substantial start. Many other Church Fathers, including Sts. Ignatius of Antioch and Irenaeus of Lyons, wrote in its defense.

St. Ephraim of Syria (ca. A.D. 306-373) even broke out in song about it:

Awake, my harp, your songs in praise of the Virgin Mary!

Lift up your voice and sing the wonderful history

Of the Virgin, the daughter of David,

who gave birth to the Life of the World….

And the handmaid and work of his Wisdom

became the Mother of God.50

After we’ve pondered the awesome mystery and unequalled gift that was Mary’s maternity of God, we need to leave some pondering aside for its incredible implications for us. While suffering on the cross near the fulfillment of his mission on earth, Jesus said to his Mother, “Woman, behold your son!” Then he said to the disciple, “Behold, your Mother!” (John 19:26–27). When Jesus used the word woman with his Mother here, as he did at the wedding feast in Cana (John 2:4), he meant no disrespect. Quite the opposite, in fact: Jesus was echoing Genesis 3:15, in which God told the devil, “I will put enmity between you and the woman, and between your seed and her seed; he shall bruise your head, and you shall bruise his heel.”

St. Paul tells us that her seed, Jesus Christ, was prefigured in Adam. While “the first man was from the earth, a man of dust: the second man is from heaven” (1 Cor. 15:47). Mary was also prefigured in Eve. As Eve was the physical mother of mankind, so, too, did Mary become the spiritual Mother of us all.

Jesus proclaimed to us the glorious message that as we are to become sons of God and brothers in Christ, so, too, shall we share Mary as our spiritual mother. “He Who Is” (cf. Ex. 3:14–15), he whom we worship, has called us to honor, to pray to, and to confide in she whom he chose from eternity to enflesh his only begotten Son. She is no goddess, but she is the queen mother, the very mother of God.

Now then, do you have those ten reasons for the dogma of Mary’s maternity down pat? Can you give them to me in reverse order? Once you can, let’s move ahead to see what wonderful doctrines await inside the mnemonic Cathedral of Notre Dame.

46 No, St. Gregory was not a Nazi. He is called Nazianzus or Nazianzen simply because he came from the region of southwest Cappadocia (modern-day Turkey) called Nazianzus.

47 Luther, Martin, The Works of Luther, vol. 7 (St. Louis: Concordia 1965), 572.

48 Calvin, John, Calvini Opera, Corpus Reformatorm, vol. 45 (Braunschweig-Berlin, 1863-1900), 335.

49 Zwingli, Ulrich, In Evang. Luc., Opera Completa, vol. 6. I (Zurich, 1828-42), 639.

50 1, 1 and the last two lines of 1, 20 from St. Ephraim’s Songs of Praise in Jurgens, The Faith of the Early Fathers, vol. 1, p. 312.

Memorable Quotation 5

The Practical Wisdom of a Trained Memory

Among all those things which point towards ethical wisdom, the most necessary is a trained memory, because from past events we are guided in the present and the future, and not from the converse.

St. Albert the Great, De Bono

When Sts. Albert and Thomas wrote about the Catholic art of memory, they did so in the context of their writings about the moral virtue of prudence: the practical, ethical wisdom that we use to choose the right means to attain ethical goals. After all, if we are to achieve noble goals in the future, we must act in the present, guided by the wisdom we’ve learned in the past.

Our memories are the repository of that wisdom. Sts. Albert and Thomas are among the most esteemed Doctors of the Church. St. Albert was called great in his own day because of the unmatched breadth of his knowledge of things both natural and supernatural. St. Thomas’s own angelic intellect was supported by a prodigious memory. Here was a man who could dictate to three or four secretaries in succession, each on a separate topic. Some have even proposed that he dictated the stupendous Summa Theologica from memory, since his own handwritten notes have never been found.

Certainly God blessed both men with unusually powerful intellects and memories, but we know from their own writings that they tried to enhance and employ them to the fullest for God’s glory. Both men endorsed in writing, and themselves used, the methods of ordering and imaging you find in this book. In the words of St. Thomas: Memoria non solum a natura proficiscitur, sed etiam habet plurimum artis et indusrtriae: “Memory not only arises from nature, but is also aided by art and diligence.” Next up, then, it will be time to get diligent and practice the art of memory on the reasons for the Blessed Mary’s perpetual virginity.

Chapter 6

Ever-Virgin

The deepening of faith in the virginal motherhood led the Church to confess Mary’s real and perpetual virginity even in the act of giving birth to the Son of God made man. In fact, Christ’s birth “did not diminish his mother’s virginal integrity but sanctified it.” And so the liturgy of the Church celebrates Mary as Aeiparthenos, the “Ever-virgin.”

Catechism of the Catholic Church (499)

“Is not his mother called Mary? And are not his brethren James and Joseph and Simon and Judas? And are not all his sisters with us?”

Matthew 13:55–56

Have you ever heard an argument dismissed as “mere semantics?” Well, much of what separates the Catholic Church from Protestant denominations regarding Mary’s virginity is not “merely,” but fundamentally, a matter of semantics—that is, of word meanings.

For example, what is the meaning of brother? And how about until, and firstborn? The Catholic Church, along with the eastern Orthodox Churches, interprets those words, (and many others), in such a way that Mary is rightly called Aeiparthenos, the “Ever-Virgin.” Most modern Protestant churches interpret these words to suggest that after the birth of Christ, Mary had additional children with Joseph.

Whether or not Mary was a perpetual Virgin has serious theological implications: for Mary’s proper veneration, for our interpretation of Old Testament Marian types, and for the way we regard both marriage and celibacy. So this is a matter that bears looking into, a matter worth addressing with the science of semantics—and with the art and science of memory!

Brothers and Sisters in Christ

Now we prepare to enter the nave of the Church of Our Lady through the left door (location 11), and before entering you allow the Blessed Virgin herself to enter first. She is accompanied by four younger men, and a group of young women as well, all dressed in first-century garb.

As you enter and prepare to dip your hand into the holy water font (12), you notice a stirring scene depicted in the water. The crucified Christ has just yielded his spirit, and many women are weeping from afar, including two women named Mary.

One Mary, two Marys, and as we genuflect and prepare to sit down in the left rear pew (13), what’s next, but three Marys! The two Marys you saw at the scene at the water font have now been joined by a third woman named Mary. They scoot in so you may sit next to them (and you are, of course, quite honored!)

And now for something completely different. Up on the left rear arch (14), you see your brother, your favorite uncle, cousins, friends, and neighbors welcoming you at the gates of Jerusalem. Looking below to the confessional booth (15), you notice a clock at the top. It strikes twelve and you hear a baby’s first cries from inside.

Moving along to the left rear stained glass window (16), you see a brilliant light coming through the window illuminating St. Michael the Archangel, sword in hand, standing guard over a tomb. Strangely enough, from within the tomb, you hear another baby cry. As in the last image, there is also a clock, and it, too, has just struck twelve.

Location 17 is the back pew of the left front section, and sitting there you see beaming parents, holding aloft their firstborn baby, who, oddly enough, is transparent. But you can hear his cries and see his swaddling clothes. (Surely you’ve noticed, this is our third baby image in a row. Each image will easily trigger the others when it comes time for recall.)

Up on the left front arch (18) you spy the Archangel Gabriel speaking to Mary, who has the most quizzical look on her face.

We’re nearing the end of our tour of the left nave, and at the station of the cross (19), you notice that in the right corner of the station Mary herself is now standing next to the gates of hell. Alas, the souls inside seem oblivious to her presence.

And finally now, at location 20, our left front stained glass window, you see three beautiful virgins, and kneeling before them are three sixteenth-century theologians dressed in the garb of their time.

Got them? Let’s see about that.

LOCATION

IMAGE

11.

Left door to nave

Mary with four men and several women

12.

Left rear holy water font

Two Marys at Crucifixion

13.

Left rear pew section

Three Marys sitting in pew

14.

Left rear arch

Brother, uncle, and others welcome you to Jerusalem

15.

Left rear confessional booth

Clock strikes twelve and baby cries

16.

Left rear stained glass window

Clock strikes twelve, St. Michael stands watch, baby cries from a tomb

17.

Left front pew

Transparent firstborn baby held aloft

18.

Left front arch

Gabriel speaks to a quizzical Mary

19.

Left front station of the cross

Blessed Mary next to gates of hell

20.

Left front stained glass window

Three virgins and three sixteenth-century theologians

Mary Ever-Virgin: The Sources Behind the Images

Back now we go to the nave on the right to make sure that we have all our sources down tight.

We saw Mary with four young men and several women at the door the left nave (11), and now we’ll imagine they are joined by our winged man with pen and scroll. In fact, he flies to the door so he can let them in. Moving next to the holy water font (12), we see that our two twin Marys at the scene of Christ’s Crucifixion are also joined by our familiar winged man, whose wings stir the water of the font. Moving along to the right rear pew (13), there by the three Marys, you hear more fluttering wings, but this is not our winged man. An eagle has come to rest. At the left rear arch (14) how can we forget your brother, uncle, and practically half of the town, welcoming you to Jerusalem? Now we need to remember as well that your brother is swinging an ax at the gate, since somebody had locked it. And at the scene of the confessional (15), the clock struck twelve, the baby cried, and now you see why: Our friend, the winged man, must have startled him when he opened the confessional door.

In the rear stained glass window (16), another clock struck twelve, and this time we saw St. Michael the Archangel, guarding a tomb, and from within we heard a baby cry. Now we see that on both sides of St. Michael are very familiar bearded gentlemen, all dressed in red, white, and blue. Yes, of course, it’s Uncle Sam—er, in this case, two Uncle Sams. Our next stop was the left front pew section (17), and there we found the transparent baby, lifted aloft. Now here’s an extra image you’re not likely to forget: Imagine that kneeling reverently beside this babe is an ancient statue, none other than the Colossus of Rhodes.

Up now to the left front arch (18) where Gabriel spoke to a quizzical Mary. How did we not notice the first time we went through that Gabriel was riding upon our winged ox, and both sets of their wings were flapping? Next to last is the left front station of the cross (19) where we saw Mary herself, standing next to the gates of hell. Now we notice that peering up at Mary is a little mouse who looks a lot like Jerry from chapter 3. Finally, looking up to the left front church window (20) we saw those three virgins and three sixteenth-century theologians. Well, now we notice one of the theologians looks just like Martin Luther King, Jr., the second’s a spitting image for Calvin from Calvin and Hobbes, and the third is swinging on a playground swing.

Do you have all ten additional images now? After double-checking in our table, it will be time to see what all this has to do with the reasons we have for rejoicing in the Blessed Virgin’s eternal virginity.

MARY’S PERPETUAL VIRGINITY: THE REASONS AND THEIR SOURCES

LOCATION

IMAGES

SOURCE

11.

Left door to nave

Mary with four men and several women

Winged man with pen and scroll flies to door

Questioners from the synagogue ask if Jesus’ mother is not Mary, and if his brethren are not James, Joseph, Simon, and Judas, along with sisters too (Matt. 13:55–56).

12.

Left rear holy water font

Two Marys at Crucifixion

Winged man stirs the water

“Mary Magdalene, and Mary the mother of James and Joseph” were among women viewing the crucified Jesus (Matt. 27:55–56, cf. Mark 15:40).

13.

Left rear pew section

Three Marys sitting in pew

Eagle lands in pew

John notes that “standing by the cross of Jesus were his mother, and his mother’s sister, Mary the wife of Clopas, and Mary Magdalene” (John 19:25).

14.

Arch with St. Matthew symbol (man)

Your brother, uncle, and others welcome you to Jerusalem

Brother uses ax on gate

St. Luke reports “when we had come to Jerusalem, the brethren received us gladly” (Acts 21:17).

15.

Left rear confessional booth

Clock strikes twelve and baby cries

Winged man opens door

“[B]ut he knew her not until she bore a son, and he called his name Jesus” (Matt. 1:25).

16.

Left rear stained glass window

Clock strikes twelve

St. Michael guards tomb, baby cries from within

Two Uncle Sams stand by St. Michael

“And Michal the daughter of Saul had no child unto the day of her death” (2 Sam. 6:23).

17.

Left front pew

Transparent firstborn baby held aloft

“He is the image of the invisible God, the firstborn of all creation” (Col. 1:15).

18.

Left front arch

Gabriel with a confused Mary

Gabriel sits on a winged ox

And Mary said to the angel, “How can this be, since I have no husband?” (Luke 1:34).

19.

Left front station of the cross

Mary next to gates of hell

St. Jerome wrote The Perpetual Virginity of the Blessed Virgin Mary Against Helvidius

20.

Left front stained glass window

Three virgins and sixteenth-century theologians

Luther, Calvin, and Zwingli all championed belief in Mary’s perpetual virginity.

Mary Ever-Virgin: The Semantics Behind the Mnemonics

Now let’s look at the meanings of our images and of the words they represent. We saw Mary entering through the door of the nave (location 11) with four young men and some women to remind us of when the crowd wonders about Jesus, “Is not his mother called Mary? And are not his brethren James and Joseph and Simon and Judas? And are not all his sisters with us?” (Matt. 13:55–56).

This is perhaps the verse most frequently cited as proof that Mary did not remain a Virgin, but had other children after the birth of Christ. But, my brothers and sisters, this verse is not as clear and simple as it would first appear in our modern English. It hinges upon the words used for brethren and sisters.

The Greek words (our English editions of the New Testament are translated from Greek) for “brother,” adelphos, “brothers,” adelphoi, and “brethren,” adelphon, derive from the prefix a, which means “connected together,” and delphus which means “womb.” Most literally, these words denote siblings born of the same mother, but in biblical times these words were not always used that way.

But we will examine this in more depth when we reach your brother, uncle, and all up on the arch at location 14. For now, if you will bear in mind the multiple meanings of the words “brethren” and “sisters” in Matthew 13:55–66, we will dig a little deeper into Scripture to find out just who was the mother of James, Joseph, Simon, Judas, and the others. Oh, and to remember this classic proof-text that purportedly disproves Mary’s perpetual virginity, as you made way for Mary and this crew to pass through the door of the nave (location 11), you imagined our familiar winged man (St. Matthew), flying ahead to open the door, a scroll and a pen in his hand, reporting on all the action.

Recall that at the left rear holy water font (12) you saw the Crucifixion scene reflected in the water, and you saw two Marys observing from a distance. This is our reminder of Matthew 27:55–56: “There were also many women there, looking on from afar, who had followed Jesus from Galilee, ministering to him; among whom were Mary Magdalene, and Mary the mother of James and Joseph.” So now we see mention of another Mary, who is the mother of James and Joseph mentioned in the proof-text we examined at location 11. Who is she? We’ll find out next at the left rear pew, but for now, let’s imagine that our winged man St. Matthew has also reached the holy water font. The image of the two Marys is blurred a bit, as the fluttering of his wings stirs the holy water.

Next you reach the left back pew (13) and you see that things are getting even more intriguing, because sitting there now are not two, but three Marys. Our first two have been joined by a third. (Clearly it was a popular name.) These three Marys will put an end to the confusion. St. Matthew wrote about “the other Mary” who was later with Mary Magdalene outside of Christ’s tomb. Who was this other Mary? Our image of the three Marys calls to mind the verse that tells us: “But standing by the cross of Jesus were his mother, and his mother’s sister, Mary the wife of Clopas, and Mary Magdalene” (John 19:25). John has revealed to us that this “other Mary”—mother to James, Joseph, and Salome (Matt. 27:55–56, Mark 15:40) is “Mary the wife of Clopas.” She is the Blessed Mother’s “sister,” bearing in mind that this may not mean her actual blood sibling. So then, our three Marys are Mary Magdalene, the Holy Virgin Mary, and her “sister” Mary, wife of Clopas and mother of James, Joseph, and Salome. To recall that St. John provides this clarification, let’s imagine that an eagle has just landed in that pew.51

Now that we have our Marys straight, let’s take a closer look at Christ’s “brethren.” Recall here that up on the left rear arch (14), you were being welcomed to the gates of Jerusalem by your brother, uncle, cousins, and neighbors. While we were there, we imagined your brother was wielding a large ax to break open the gate to the city, since our sample verse for this reason comes from the book of Acts.

Here our image depicts a scene from the pen of St. Luke, who wrote not only a Gospel but the Book of Acts. So, when he uses the word we in this verse, he’s including himself: “When we had come to Jerusalem, the brethren received us gladly” (Acts 21:17). Here we see the same word used to describe Jesus’ “brethren,” James and Joseph—the word adelphoi—used to describe not men with the same earthly mother but a congregation of Christian believers. This is nothing at all unusual, and we use the term in that way to this day. After all, it was Jesus himself who told the crowds and his disciples, “You are all brethren” (Matt. 23:8).

Within Scripture, you see, the word for brother is used to mean siblings, cousins, followers of Christ, or members of the same nation. In Genesis 14:14 and 14:16, Lot, the son of Abram’s brother Haran and thus Abram’s uncle, is called Abram’s “brother.”

So, let’s not that forget your ax-wielding brother, uncle, cousins, neighbors and all will remind us that this verse in Acts is but one of many to illustrate the many meanings of brethren.

Moving along to the left rear confessional booth (15), how can we forget the image of the sounds of a baby’s cries right as the clock strikes twelve? Here now is our verse of interest: “[B]ut he knew her not until she bore a son, and he called his name Jesus” (Matt. 1:25). The he in this passage refers to Joseph, and the she to Mary. Many Protestants assert that this verse proves Joseph had sexual relations with Mary some time after Jesus’ birth. After all, if I told you I did “not eat until twelve,” chances are you would assume that shortly after the strike of twelve I sat down to lunch or perhaps to a midnight snack—and chances are you’d be right!

But on the other hand, if I said to you, “Farewell, until we meet again,” I hope you wouldn’t think that it was fine by me if you stopped faring well after we’ve met again! Yes, the word until (or unto or till) can convey different meanings, depending on context. We will look at a few other examples directly, but first, to lock in our reference to Matthew 1:25, let’s recall that at the strike of twelve our familiar winged man has opened the confessional door to reveal to us the newborn baby Jesus. (Making his third appearance, St. Matthew has been busy in this chapter!)

Recall now St. Michael guarding the tomb from which we heard a baby’s cry at the strike of twelve, all shown in the great left rear stained glass window (16). We pictured those two Uncle Sams flanking Michael. The images remind us of this verse: “And Michal the daughter of Saul had no child unto the day of her death” (2 Sam. 6:23 KJV). St. Michael’s image and name will remind us of Michal, and please note well the unto. Clearly, it is not implied that Michal gave birth after the day of her death.

These images serve to remind us of this passage and of the existence of others (e.g., 1 Tim. 4:13 and Acts 25:21) in which until (Greek heos or heos hou) does not mean that the situation changes after. Still not convinced? Let’s look then at 1 Corinthians 15:25: “For he must reign until he has put all his enemies under his feet.” Will Christ no longer reign after his enemies have been defeated? Of course not.

You will recall that location 17, the left front pew, had the invisible firstborn baby boy held aloft in his parents’ arms. After Mary, brother, and until, we come to our fourth and final word of contention regarding Mary’s perpetual virginity, and that word is firstborn. We examined Matthew 1:25 in the Revised Standard Version at location 15. Let’s review this verse again in the wording of the favorite translation of many Protestants, the King James: “[A]nd knew her not till she had brought forth her firstborn son; and he called his name Jesus.” The KJV here includes the word “firstborn,”52 leading some to assume that there must therefore have been a child or children born after. But this is not how Scripture uses the term. In Exodus 13:1–2, God told to Moses that firstborn meant “whatever is the first to open the womb.” This says nothing about any second, third, or more. Every oldest child is a firstborn, and so is every only child.

For our image here, though, we look at another symbolic meaning of firstborn. St. Paul tells us, “He is the image of the invisible God, the firstborn of all creation” (Col. 1:15). The “he” refers to Jesus Christ, and yet we all know that a great many people had been created before Jesus was born! But “firstborn” was also a title of honor among the Jewish people. Consider Psalm 89:27: “I will make him the firstborn, the highest of the kings of the earth.” King David, the “firstborn” in terms of rank and honor, was actually Jesse’s eighth son! (1 Sam. 16:10–11).

So Jesus was firstborn in more than one sense, but none of them is proof that Mary bore any more children. To remember our verse for the meaning(s) of firstborn, we picture Joseph uplifting his transparent babe (to remind us that he is the image of the invisible God) while the Colossus of Rhodes kneels beside them in homage. The colossus will remind us that this verse comes from Colossians—1:15 to be exact.

Now, we have only three mnemonic locations left within Notre Dame’s left nave, and we’ve spent most of our time and our locations refuting verses used to deny Mary’s perpetual virginity. Are there other verses that can provide solid arguments supporting her perpetual virginity? Yes indeed! Consider, first of all, that in all the verses mentioning the “brothers” of Jesus, not once are his “brothers” called the “sons of Mary” or is Mary called their mother. Note, too, that these brothers admonish Jesus (John 7:3–5). These would have been younger brothers, of course, and in the Jewish culture of the time it was not for younger brothers to advise or rebuke their elders. Furthermore, when St. Luke informs us Jesus was lost at age twelve (Luke 2:41–52), no mention is made of any younger siblings.

In his adult ministry, Jesus condemned the practice of the Pharisees known as the korban rule, whereby donations to the temple allowed them to avoid the proper financial care of their own earthly parents (an abrogation of the fourth commandment). Why then did Jesus not leave his Mother Mary to the care of his younger siblings? Why, as we see at the scene of the Crucifixion in John 19:27, did he instead entrust her to the disciple John, who took her into his home?

Now, to limit ourselves to ten locations and ten reasons, we must be selective and get moving right along to location 18, the right front arch, where quizzical Mary speaks to the Archangel Gabriel. An often overlooked verse of fundamental importance is Luke 1:34: Gabriel has just revealed to Mary that she is to bear a Son. She immediately asks him, “How can this be, since I have no husband?”

Let’s consider this. Mary’s reference to a husband makes it obvious that she was undoubtedly aware of the earthly cause of pregnancy and childbirth. And yet we know from Luke 1:27 that Mary was “betrothed to a man whose name was Joseph.” Since a future marriage was already intended, why would she say, “How can this be?” about a future pregnancy, when she knew she was to be married? St. Augustine and other Church Fathers endorsed the view that Mary had already taken a vow of virginity, “on the ground of a special Divine enlightenment.”53 (After all, Gabriel declared in the verses immediately following that Mary was “full of grace” and the Lord was with her.) It makes sense. It stands to reason (and to faith). To remember that this fundamental verse is found in St. Luke’s Gospel, we simply imagine Gabriel, in all his glory, riding upon that great winged ox, and both of them flapping their wings.

Next we move to the station of the cross (19) showing Jesus falling the second time. Yet you notice, for the first time, that the right lower corner also depicts Mary next to the gates of hell. Oh, and next to her foot is a mouse. We’ve already mentioned St. Augustine’s defense of her perpetual virginity. (Other Church Fathers, including Origen, Sts. Ambrose, Athanasius, Basil, Epiphanius, and John Damascene also believed in it.) This particular image represents, as you may have deduced from the mouse, a writing of St. Jerome, whom we have represented again with Jerry, the mouse of cartoon fame.

But why is Mary next to the gates of hell? To remind us that St. Jerome wrote a book blasting the heresy that Mary had other children. One Helvidius, in the late fourth century, argued that Mary was not perpetually a Virgin, because, for example, the Gospels tell us that Jesus had “brothers” and “sisters.” (I do hope by now that this argument sounds familiar. Pun not at first intended.) St. Jerome, schooling Helvidius with some of the arguments we have addressed here, went on to pen The Perpetual Virginity of the Blessed Virgin Mary Against Helvidius. The gates of hell call to mind the name of Jerome’s opponent Helvidius.

As the centuries went by, the Church largely achieved consensus on Mary’s virginity before, during, and after the birth of Christ. The term Aeiparthenos (“Ever-Virgin”), used in our quotation from the Catechism at this chapter’s start, was promulgated in the official acts of the Fifth Ecumenical Council at Constantinople in 563. The Lateran Council of 649 also declared that Mary was “Ever-Virgin.” Fast forward nearly 900 years to the Reformation. What happened to this long-held dogma of Mary’s perpetual virginity in the hands of bold reformers, unrestrained by Church dogma?

Let’s take a look at the left front stained glass window (20) for our answer. Recall that we saw in the great window three virgins and kneeling before them were three sixteenth-century theologians. You see, the doctrine of Mary’s perpetual divinity was not “reformed” by the original reformers. Our three theologians should be familiar, for they are the same Luther, Calvin, and Zwingli we saw in the last chapter defending Mary’s maternity as the Mother of God. These three founders of Protestantism also upheld and defended Mary’s perpetual virginity!

Snippet quotations appear above in a footnote, but it should be enough at first to be able to remind modern Protestants that the three giants of the Reformation strongly agreed with this Catholic doctrine. Indeed, of the idea that Mary lived carnally with Joseph and had other children after Jesus, Calvin declares, “What folly this is!”54

Four Dogmas: One Son

As we ply our mnemonic arts upon the four de fide Marian dogmas, we do well to keep in mind that as we revere and love the Holy Mother of God, her glory comes from his. It is God, and God alone, whom Catholics adore and worship. Mary shines through the illumination of her Son, and as all the effects in creation point back to their cause and Creator, so, too, do all four Marian doctrines point back to him who created her, in the person of the Son.

Mary is revered above all the saints because she has been given the highest possible honor for any human being, to become the very Mother of God. Before, during, and after birth of Christ, she was given the gift of a state of perpetual virginity. In preparation for bearing God in the flesh, Mary always figured into God’s plan of salvation and was spared of all sin for such an incomparable honor. As we strive to honor our father and mother, so, too, did Christ, bodily assuming his holy Mother into heaven with him. The Marian doctrines, you see, are all with Christ, by Christ, and for Christ, and with this situation, both Mother and Son could not be more pleased.

Well, there’s no disputing we’ve done a lot of disputing. Hopefully we’ve done a little understanding and memorizing as well. Please take your time now and review the table for this chapter to lock in forward and backward our sample of reasons for believing with the certainty of faith in the Blessed Mother, Ever-Virgin.

51 Some have argued against this conclusion, noting that in another Gospel James is called the son of Alphaeus, not Clopas (Matt. 10:3). Therefore, Mary would have been married to both Clopas and Alphaeus. This ignores the possibilities that she was widowed and remarried, that both Clopas and Alpheaus were the same person whose name was rendered differently from Aramaic into Greek, or that Alphaeus took on a new Greek name, similar to the way Saul became Paul. For a detailed discussion on this issue and on Mary’s perpetual virginity in general, see chapter 22 on Marian beliefs in Karl Keating’s, Catholicism and Fundamentalism: The Attack on “Romanism” by “Bible Christians” (San Francisco: Ignatius Press, 1988).

52 An examination of multiple English translations of Matthew 1:25 shows that many include “firstborn,” including the Douay-Rheims and the Knox Bible translations, while many, including the New Jerusalem Bible, the Revised Standard Version (Catholic Edition), and the Protestant New International Version do not. In any case, since the verse undisputedly relates the Virgin Birth, Jesus clearly was the firstborn. Whether or not this implies there were subsequent births is the issue at hand.

53 Ott, Fundamentals, p. 207.

54 John Calvin, Sermon on Matthew 1:22–25.

Memorable Quotation 6

The Four Things of Memory Perfection

There are four things whereby a man perfects his memory.

St. Thomas Aquinas, Summa Theologica, II-II, Q. 49, a.4.

Have you ever known a boy who could rattle off the names, positions, and statistics of his favorite baseball players, yet can’t seem to master the states and their capitals, the U.S. presidents, or maybe the basics of the Catechism? Maybe you’ve heard of a similar story, or were a bit like that boy yourself. What do we normally assume is the reason for this scenario?

“Well, he likes those ball players. He’s interested in them, but finds the states, the presidents, and the basic lessons of the Faith to be a bit on the boring side.”

There is much truth to this explanation, but it accounts for just one of those four things St. Thomas says we need to perfect the memory.

The first of the four is attention. We pay attention to and concentrate upon things that interest us. We all know this is central to memorization. When things do not naturally interest us, perhaps the facts of a history lesson we must memorize for a test, we realize that we need to remove ourselves from distractions to buckle down, focus, and make ourselves pay attention!

What else do you do when memorizing information for a test? I’m willing to bet that you read and then re-read your book and your notes. As we’ve seen already (and you will be reminded again), repetitio est mater memoriae—repetition is the mother of memory. Now let’s look again at our young baseball fan’s situation. His favorite team plays 162 games every season. Now there’s some repetition. The second of the four, then, is repetition.

Most everyone knows about these first two. They are central to what the ancient Greek and Roman memory masters called “natural memory,” the normal everyday processes through which we remember things. It is with the third and fourth things that we move into “artificial memory,” that is, into the art of memory. The third thing is already hardwired into the young baseball fan’s memory scenario, too: the use of images. By this point in this book, surely you’ve seen the power of striking visual images. But note the role that images play for our young baseball fan. He sees his favorite players on television, on the Internet, in the newspaper, and on baseball cards. Even in the days of radio, fans created mental images of the players as they listened along.

But what is the fourth thing we need? The fourth thing we need to perfect memory is some system of order or organization. And this is why we’re building memory cathedrals. See how order locks everything in place? The power of visual imagery is strong, but placing our images within easily pictured places makes them all the more powerful aids to retention. Let’s look again at our young sports fan. See how all his favorite players have an assigned place on the field and within the batting order. No wonder he knows them so well—all four memory-perfecting components of attention, repetition, imagery, and order are built right into the game!

By our applying the Catholic art of memory, our reasons for the Faith can be built right in, too.

Chapter 7

Conceived Without Sin

“Hail, full of grace, the Lord is with you!”

Luke 1:28

Through the centuries the Church has become ever more aware that Mary, “full of grace,” through God, was redeemed from the moment of her conception. That is what the dogma of the Immaculate Conception confesses.

Catechism of the Catholic Church (491)

The seat of my own diocese of Springfield, Illinois, is the Cathedral of the Immaculate Conception, dedicated in 1928, masterfully refurbished in 2010, and maintained with the help of a little professional plastering work from my own father in between. The focal point behind the altar is a massive wall of black marble adorned with a colorful portrayal of the Blessed Mother surrounded by angels. The Basilica of the Immaculate Conception in Washington, D.C., is a focal point for our entire nation, for we are most blessed to have Mary, full of grace, as our national patroness.

But not only is the dogma of the Immaculate Conception of particular significance to my home country and home diocese, I think it’s also a beautiful illustration of how doctrines develop over centuries under the guidance of the Holy Spirit, and it gives us an example of the relationship between Scripture and Tradition that we will address in depth in the last part of this book.

As a special bonus, I can promise you that after our heavy semantic labors in the last chapter on Mary’s perpetual virginity, the yoke of the arguments and sources in this chapter will seem relatively sweet and light. For the lion’s share of scriptural arguments for Mary’s Immaculate Conception are found within the confines of two books of the Bible, and indeed most of them from one chapter of one Gospel.

Although that Gospel was written almost 1,800 years before, the dogma of the Immaculate Conception was formally defined in 1854—by Pope Pius IX in the papal bull Ineffable Deus. Behold, if you will, the key passage:

The Most Holy Virgin Mary was, in the first moment of her conception, by a unique gift of grace and privilege of Almighty God and in view of the merits of Jesus Christ the Redeemer of mankind, preserved free from all stain of original sin.

Right away these words clear up a still-too-common confusion many people suffer from: mixing up the Immaculate Conception and the Virgin Birth. This doctrine refers not to Jesus’ conception but to Mary’s, declaring that unlike every human being who had ever been conceived since the fall, when Mary came to be she did not suffer from original sin. Not being subject to the effects of original sin, which include concupiscence, or the tendency to sin, furthermore Mary never committed an actual sin in her life.

Now, some people—especially Protestants—will ask, “How can this be?” After all, St. Paul makes it clear that “all have sinned” (Rom. 3:23) and “are under the power of sin” (Rom. 3:10). To many of our separated Christian brethren, this dogma only confirms the sneaky suspicion that Catholics worship Mary as a kind of goddess.

Well, we’re going to answer that charge and more. For now, please set your powers of concentration and imagination on high, as you prepare to write the reasons for the Immaculate Conception on the tablet of your heart.

Welcome to the Tabernacle of the Living Son of Mary

Now we move to the beautiful sanctuary of our Cathedral of Notre Dame. Imagine that you are so stunned by its beauty that you trip on your way up and fall, just short of the altar rail (location 21). You hesitate to go any further when you see a big sign on the front of the lectern (22) that says in bold letters, “No one admitted!”

You ignore the ill-placed sign, however, when the spirit of God leads you to lift up the lectionary (23). As you try to focus on the lectionary, you notice that the entire lectern is bobbing about as if in a turbulent sea. Behind it you see Mary herself, and Jesus is handing her a life preserver. Mary calls out, “My Savior!” Your attention is soon drawn to the angel on the left of the high altar (24). You recognize this mighty, muscular angel as Gabriel (his very name means “strength of God”), and you see him salute and address Mary herself, with a resounding, “Hail, full of grace!”

Your eyes are drawn next to the tabernacle (25) and you see that somehow an actual cloud is hovering over it. Can you picture all that? Please go back and review these first five once more, just to make sure they’re locked in.

On now to the crucifix (26), where you are surprised to see your relative or friend named Elizabeth (Betty or Beth will work) touching her chin with a quizzical look on her face. Now you see that Mary has arrived at the foot of the cross, and you realize that Elizabeth is wondering why Mary was brought to her.

Next, you notice that the angel on the right (27) has jumped for joy, perhaps because, like Gabriel, he, too, can now hail Mary!

Your gaze moves now to the low altar (28), where, spread out on top, are three pages from a monthly calendar. You are all the more surprised to see that lying on the top of the paten (29) is not a host but a rather enormous electrical fuse, and in the fuse is not bread, but a piece of pure white fish, filet of sole to be precise. (Please bear with me on this one. It may seem a little fishy, but you’ll soon see it makes nearly perfect phonetic sense.)

Finally, we move to the chalice (30) that will contain Christ’s blood. You see Mary there, looking as if she’s about to faint, but Jesus her Son catches her before she can fall.

Well, there we have it. Please read this again a time or two if need be, or study it with the chart below to be sure that you’ve got all ten.

LOCATION

IMAGE

21.

Altar rail on left

You fall just short of the altar rail

22.

Lectern

Sign with slash, “No one admitted!”

23.

Liturgical book on lectern

Book is bobbing at sea. Jesus hands Mary life preserver and she says, “My Savior!”

24.

Angel on left

Angel Gabriel salutes Mary

25.

Tabernacle

Cloud hangs over the tabernacle

26.

Crucifix

Elizabeth has quizzical look on her face when Mary arrives there

27.

Angel on right

Angel statue jumps for joy

28.

Front of low altar on right

Calendar with three pages

29.

Paten on altar

Pure white filet of sole in a fuse

30.

Chalice

Christ saves his Mother from falling

See, so far our mnemonic burden has been relatively easy, just as I promised. Now that our mnemonic muscles have been thoroughly warmed up, let’s work up to a little bit heavier yoke. I’m sure you will find that it’s well worth the effort and it will become lighter with time.

Conceived Without Sin: The Images for the Sources

Come to think of it, even our next yoke is going to feel rather light. Our first eight reasons all derive from careful interpretations of merely two chapters of two books of the Bible. That leaves us two remaining source images—and you’ve already encountered one of them before. You’ll see what I mean very shortly, as we wind our way through the Church of Our Lady’s sanctuary for the second time.

Do you recall falling just short of the altar rail (location 21)? Well imagine now that a powerful Roman soldier, horse-hair plume and all, catches you before your fall. Next please recall the “No one admitted!” sign on the lectern (22). You thought it was out of place, so you’re quite relieved when that same Roman soldier tears it down.

As Mary saw the bobbing lectionary (23), she rejoiced in Christ as her Savior when he tossed her a life preserver. Now, you look at the Gospel reading and see printed there an image of a great winged ox. Indeed, the pages flutter as the ox flaps its wings. Next the left angel (24) caught your attention. It was Gabriel hailing Mary, and now you see Mary sits on the back of the same great winged ox.

Oddly enough, the tabernacle (25) was overshadowed by a cloud. Now imagine that great winged ox has genuflected before it. At the crucifix (26) you saw your relative or friend named Elizabeth touching her chin with a very quizzical look on her face. Now you see that Mary has been carried to the foot of the cross, yes, on the back of that same winged ox. (Elizabeth, you will recall, was wondering why Mary was brought to her.) Do you recall the right angel (27) that had leapt in joy? Well, now you observe that he leapt all the way over the back of that winged ox!

That ox is turning up all over the place, and he has one more appearance to go. On the top of the altar (28) were those three monthly calendar pages. Well, the winged ox must be hungry, because you see that he’s started to eat them! You will recall that lying on the top of the paten (29) in a fuse is a pure white filet of sole. Only now you are surprised to see that paten lifted from the altar, not by a priest, but by the Rev. Martin Luther King, Jr. Can you picture him there in his familiar suit and tie?

Last, but not least, is the chalice (30), where Jesus saved Mary from falling. Now you notice that a priest has performed the Consecration, but instead of the usual priestly garments, he happens to be wearing a kilt!

Now do you have all of the second set of images? They are our Roman soldier for locations 21 and 22, the winged ox for locations 23 through 28, Rev. Martin Luther King, Jr., for 29, and a kilted priest for location 30.

By now you’ve surely deduced that the first two images relate to St. Paul’s Letter to the Romans, the next six to St. Luke’s Gospel, the next to last to the writings of the reformer Martin Luther, and the very last to the writings of somebody somehow linked to a priest in a kilt! (You’ll have to keep reading, or perhaps skip ahead, to find out who he represents.)

For now, though, we need to learn what those images mean, how they relate to Mary’s Immaculate Conception, and where the ideas come from. Please examine this table and then I’ll have some explaining to do.

THE IMMACULATE CONCEPTION: THE REASONS AND THEIR SOURCES

LOCATION

IMAGES

SOURCE

21.

Altar rail on left

You fall just short of the altar rail

Roman catches you

St. Paul writes “all have sinned and fall short of the glory of God” (Rom. 3:23).

22.

Lectern

Sign with slash “No one admitted!”

Roman tears down sign

St. Paul writes “all men, both Jews and Greeks, are under the power of sin, as it is written: ‘None is righteous, no, not one’” (Rom. 3:9–10).

23.

Liturgical book on lectern

Lectern is at sea

Jesus hands Mary life preserver and she says, “My Savior!”

Lectionary has picture of winged ox

Mary said to Gabriel, “my spirit rejoices in God my Savior” (Luke 1:47).

24.

Angel on left

Angel salutes Mary Angel rides ox

Gabriel said to Mary, “Hail, full of grace!” (Luke 1:28).

25.

Tabernacle

Cloud hangs over the tabernacle

Ox genuflects

And the angel said to her, “The Holy Spirit will come upon you, and the power of the most High will overshadow you” (Luke 1:35).

26.

Crucifix

Elizabeth has quizzical look on her face when Mary arrives there

Mary rides ox

Elizabeth said, “and why is it granted that the mother of my Lord should come to me?” (Luke 1:43).

27.

Angel on right

Angel statue jumps for joy

Angel jumps over ox

Elizabeth said to Mary, “for behold, when the voice of your greeting came to my ears, the babe in my womb leaped for joy” (Luke 1:44).

28.

Front of low altar on right

Calendar with three pages

Ox eats pages

“And Mary remained with her about three months, and returned to her home” (Luke 1:56).

29.

Paten on altar

Pure white filet of sole in a fuse

Rev. Martin Luther King, Jr., raises the paten

Luther said in a homily, “The infusion of the soul . . . was without any sin . . . in the very moment of which she (Mary) began to live, she was without all sin.”

30.

Chalice

Christ saves his Mother from falling

Kilted priest done with Consecration

Duns Scotus writes, “It is more noble to forgive one’s guilt by preserving that person from it, than by permitting that person to fall into guilt and then to remit that person’s guilt” (Lecture 3, Sent. 126).

Conceived Without Sin: The Meanings Behind the Images

We enter our Marian sanctuary with two verses typically used by non-Catholics as proof-texts against the Immaculate Conception. But our images will help us recall that not only are these verses quite consonant with that Marian dogma, in fact they underscore the critical point, that even the ever-sinless Mary required a Savior—the very same one you and I need! With no room for sin in her soul, God made her soul full of grace. So let’s give our first two verses special attention, for the glorious truths about Mary that they make stand out in bold relief.

You fell short of the altar rail at location 21 to remind you that St. Paul wrote that we’ve all sinned and fallen short of the glory of God. The Roman caught you to remind you that this verse from St. Paul is found in his Letter to the Romans (3:23). (There is also deeper meaning symbolized by his catching you, but that must wait until we expound what we’ve stored in location 30.) For now, please know that this verse is often used to refute the doctrine of the Immaculate Conception, since how could Mary be sinless, when Scripture confirms that all have sinned? Good question! We’ll answer it after we looked at the related verse next up at the lectern (22).

Surely you remember that uninviting “No one admitted!” sign torn down by the Roman soldier. It was there as a reminder of St. Paul’s uncompromising words in Romans 3:9–10: “None is righteous, no, not one.” How then can the Church proclaim that Mary was righteous and did not come “under the power of sin?” Here’s how.

In recalling the language of Psalm 14:3—“they have all gone astray, they are all alike corrupt; there is none that does good, no, not one”—Paul echoes King David’s lamentations over rebellions within the nation of Israel, and not just threats from the Gentile nations outside of it. He contrasts groups of people, not individuals, and Paul does the same here regarding Jews and Greeks. He clearly couldn’t have meant that there could be no individuals who never sinned: We know Christ (who was fully human) never sinned, and children below the age of reason cannot sin. So, St. Paul’s words here do not disprove Mary’s Immaculate Conception, but they do underscore the extraordinary grace that God gave her.

You saw the bobbing lectionary (23) with the winged ox symbol, saw Christ hand his Mother a life preserver, and heard her exclaim, “My Savior!”—all to represent these words of Mary: “My spirit rejoices in God my Savior!” (Luke 1:47). Doubters of the Immaculate Conception are quick to ask why Mary would need God to save her from sin if she were completely sinless. This is another of those important verses, used by some to refute Mary’s sinlessness. We’ll unravel this mystery, to the limits of our human understanding, when we arrive at location 30.

I know you’ll remember who the angel on the left (24) was and what he was doing. Of course, this was Gabriel saluting Mary at the scene of the Annunciation. The angel was on the ox to remind us once more that our source is St. Luke (as it was for location 23, and will be for locations 24, 25, 26, and 27.) His words “Hail, full of grace!” are found in Luke 1:27. These words are rendered as “highly favored one” in some translations, but something is truly lost there. The original Greek word, kecharitomene, is a perfect passive participle meaning that Mary had been endowed with a fullness of God’s grace—grace that utterly transformed her. She was not merely “highly favored,” as many great scriptural personages were. The angelic salutation given to her was given to no one else. She was not just graced, she was filled with grace, leaving no room for sin, or even concupiscence—the desire for or tendency towards sin. Here is the scriptural seed from which the dogma of the Immaculate Conception would blossom. Let’s look next at another stage in its growth.

Bear in mind that the Church Fathers were deeply immersed in the texts of what would become the canons of the Old and the New Testaments. They were most astute interpreters of the allegorical sense of Scripture, perceiving within the Old Testament prefigurements of the people and events of the New.

We’ve noted before how Mary was prefigured in the Ark of the Covenant. This holiest of objects contained the tablets of the Ten Commandments, a golden pot holding manna, as well as the rod of Aaron. As Church Fathers such as St. Ambrose pointed out many centuries ago, the Ark held God’s written word, Mary held the very Word of God; the Ark held the bread with which God fed the Israelites, Mary held he who would become the Bread of Life for all. Furthermore, the Ark was so holy and pure that God struck Uzzah dead just because he touched it (2 Sam. 6:6–7). And Mary?

At location 25 (the tabernacle), you saw a cloud overshadowing the tabernacle and our familiar winged ox genuflecting before it. And surprise, here in our cathedral a key image to be associated with our tabernacle location just happens to be a tabernacle! (It was a one-in-forty chance.) This is our first of four prefigurements of Mary in the Ark of the Convent. We read in Luke 1:35: “And the angel said to her, ‘The Holy Spirit will come upon you, and the power of the most High will overshadow you.’” Compare to Exodus 40:34: “Then the cloud covered the tent of meeting, and the glory of the LORD filled the tabernacle,” and to Numbers 9:15: “On the day that the tabernacle was set up, the cloud covered the tabernacle.” At the Annunciation, the cloud of God overshadows the holiest of all tabernacles: the Virgin Mary.

At the crucifix (26), your friend or relative Elizabeth had a quizzical look on her face, wondering why Mary had come to her on that winged ox. Well, this is because Mary’s cousin Elizabeth says in Luke 1:45, “Why is it granted that the mother of the Lord should come to me?” Compare this now to King David’s words in 2 Samuel 6:9, “How can the ark of the Lord come to me?” Here again we see acknowledgment of Holy Mary’s prefigurement in the Ark of the Covenant.

On now to location 27 and that angel on the right jumping with joy right over the back of that winged ox (making his fifth appearance in a row). Here is the verse: “For behold, when the voice of your greeting came to my ears, the babe in my womb leaped for joy” (Luke 1:44). (It’s actually young John the Baptist jumping for joy in Elizabeth’s womb.) Let’s look back next to 2 Samuel 6:16: “As the ark of the LORD came into the city of David, Michal the daughter of Saul looked out of the window, and saw King David leaping and dancing before the LORD.” Jumping Jehoshaphat! Now that’s an interesting coincidence!

Location 28 takes us to the top of the low altar. Surely you’ll recall that our most familiar winged ox (in his sixth and final appearance in this chapter) was chewing on three monthly calendar pages. Now let’s see why, by going first to our verse: “And Mary remained with her about three months, and returned to her home” (Luke 1:56). The “her” refers to Mary’s cousin Elizabeth. This passage may appear a bit mundane on the face of it, until you consider 2 Samuel 6:11: “And the ark of the LORD remained in the house of Obededom the Gittite three months; and the LORD blessed Obededom and all his household.” Recall that God had blessed Elizabeth, and her household as well, with the conception of John the Baptist, he who leapt for joy within the womb at the arrival of Mary and his yet unborn cousin.

As the Ark that prefigured her was holy and inviolate for the sake of the divine objects it carried, Mary is fittingly called sinless from the moment of her conception, for the sake of the divine Son she bore.

Next we move on to the paten on the altar (29), and here we saw the pure white filet of sole in a fuse, held up by the Rev. Martin Luther King, Jr. The familiar civil rights leader is our standard image for his namesake, of course, the reformer Martin Luther. And now for the trickier parts: The fuse represents infusion and the sole represents the soul—Mary’s soul, to be precise. Once again we note a prominent reformer upholding a doctrine that Protestants today reject. As Luther remarked in a 1527 sermon:

But the other conception, namely the infusion of the soul, it is piously and suitably believed, was without any sin, so that while the soul was being infused, she would at the same time be cleansed from original sin and adorned with the gifts of God to receive the holy soul thus infused. And thus, in the very moment in which she began to live, she was without all sin.55

The Immaculate Conception was reasonable then, even to the Father of the Reformation, 327 years before the spiritual father of the Catholic Church declared it dogma.

At the site of the chalice (30), you’ll recall that Jesus himself saved his Mother from falling in a faint as the wine was changed into his blood. And how odd that the priest, having just done the Consecration, was wearing, of all things, a kilt. First let me reveal the priest. The kilt should call to mind Scotsmen, and the fact that he was done with his sacred duty should remind us of the name of Duns Scotus. This thirteenth-century Franciscan theologian resolved the seeming contradiction in saying that Mary, conceived without taint of original sin, nonetheless needed a Savior.

What is Jesus doing in our image? He is preventing her from falling, much like our imaginary Roman soldier prevented you from “falling short” at the altar rail. Christ is our Savior in that he saves us from the condition of original sin and from the personal sins we have committed. The blessed Mary, the holy Ark of the New Covenant, full of all graces in preparation for divine maternity, was given by God a conception without taint of sin. In other words, Christ redeemed Mary not by picking her up after her fall into sin, but by his same salvific merits preventing her fall in the first place. In the words of Duns Scotus himself, “It is more noble to forgive one’s guilt by preserving that person from it, than by permitting that person to fall into guilt and then to remit that person’s guilt.”56

Recall once more the words of Pope Pius IX that we read at this chapter’s start:

The Most Holy Virgin Mary was, in the first moment of her conception, by a unique gift of grace and privilege of Almighty God and in view of the merits of Jesus Christ the Redeemer of mankind, preserved free from all stain of original sin.

Now can you remember that? And the reasons we believe it?

55 Martin Luther, The Works of Luther, vol. 4 (St. Louis: Concordia, 1965), 694.

56 Duns Scotus, Lectura III Sent., 126: “Nobilius est remittere alicui culpam ipsum praeservando ne insit, quam permittere offensam inesse et eam postea remittere.”

Memorable Quotation 7

Stone-Cold Apologetics: Remembering God’s Role

When a man who has been trapped in an argument hardens to stone, how shall one any longer deal with him by argument?

Epictetus, Discourses, I.5., Against the Academics

There is an old saying that “a man convinced against his will is a man of the same opinion still.” Regardless of our knowledge of the Faith, our skill at argumentation, and even the gentleness and reverence of our demeanor, it is not us but God who converts a soul to himself. When a person “turns to stone” in a discussion of the Faith, when he evades or refuses to answer a simple question (for example, “Where is the doctrine of the ‘Bible alone’ within the Bible itself?”), when he fails to yield an obvious point, when he can provide no reason for his belief besides that he “just knows,” it is probably not time to let loose our apologetic sledgehammers. Our seeds of truth may have fallen on rocky ground, but perhaps, who knows when, the seed will one day wind its way through a crack and come bursting forth unexpectedly.

Epictetus was a wise old Stoic philosopher of the first century A.D. His famous little handbook, the Enchiridion, begins with this observation: “Some things are under our control, and some things are not under our control.”57 We can present the best apologetic arguments in the kindliest fashion, but we cannot control another person’s response. Ultimately it is between him and his Maker. If he should decide to honestly seek truth, he cannot help but to eventually find him. Of course in the meanwhile, we can pray for him, too, and exercise charity toward him.

57 Epictetus, The Enchiridion, in The Loeb Classical Library’s Epictetus, vol. II (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 2000), p. 483.

Chapter 8

Assumed into Heaven

Arise my love, my fair one, and come away . . .

Song of Solomon (2:10, 14)

If the distant moon moves all the surging tides of earth, then the love of Mary for Jesus and the love of Jesus for Mary should result in such an ecstasy as to “lift her out of this world.”

Archbishop Fulton J. Sheen58

To understate things a bit, there appears to be a difference in perspective between Catholics and Protestants regarding the fourth Marian dogma. Why do Protestants assume that our belief in Mary’s Assumption is a groundless . . . assumption? Well, primarily because “it’s not in the Bible.” But this objection has at least two replies.

The first regards whether or not all Christian truths must be found in the Bible, but this is the subject of our next chapter. For this chapter we will note that although Scripture does not directly and explicitly spell out the dogma of the Assumption, it does indirectly and implicitly evince it. (In a similar way, neither the word Trinity nor the complete doctrine of God’s nature is found in the Bible, but Scripture clearly supports the doctrine, and so all Christians believe it.) And so Catholics believe as a revealed teaching of the Faith that God raised Mary, body and soul, to reside with him and the heavenly hosts.

58 Fulton J. Sheen, The World’s First Love (San Francisco: Ignatius Press, 1996), p. 134.

On November 1, 1950, nineteen hundred years after Mary’s last days on earth, Pope Pius XII defined the doctrine—with the infallible certainty granted by the Holy Spirit—as follows:

Mary, the immaculate perpetually Virgin Mother of God, after the completion of her earthly life, was assumed body and soul into the glory of heaven.

Note the Holy Father’s astounding economy of words: In his declaration of the fourth de fide Marian doctrine he reaffirms the first three as well. Surely, all familiar with our mnemonic Cathedral of Notre Dame will recognize the full and glorious implications of the phrase “immaculate perpetually Virgin Mother of God.” (If not, then I have no choice but to assign you to re-read chapters 5, 6, and 7!)

But now we turn to the last two phrases, namely, “after the completion of her earthly life, was assumed body and soul into the glory of heaven.” There we have the dogma of the Assumption—indeed, the only ex cathedra infallible statement made by a pope apart from the definition of the dogma of papal infallibility in 1870.

Let’s move on then to our mnemonic tour, where we will reacquaint ourselves with some holy locations, fill them with memorable images, and, finally, examine the compelling reasons they represent and the heavenly sources from which they derive.

Mary, I Assume?

The right door to the nave is our location 31. When you open the door, a giant eyeball winks at you and you hear a trumpet sound. Can you see and hear that? Next, as you enter the nave and get ready to dip your hand into the holy water font (32), you see in the water a little man in ancient Middle-Eastern garb knocking on a door marked “God’s door.” He knocks on the door, it opens with a blinding light, and there stands God in all his glory. The man who knocks then goes for a walk—with God! Next, you move to sit down in the right rear pew section (33), and there is the same guy again. This time he knocks on a cemetery gate (which happens to be in that pew) and rises up toward the sky.

As you look up toward the right rear arch (34) you see painted there an image of a boy on the ground, gazing at his father in a chariot flying in a whirlwind up to heaven. Two men put their hands on the forlorn boy’s shoulder and call out to him, “He likes ya!” (Those words also appear in a comic-book speech bubble above their heads.) Looking below at the open door of the right rear confessional booth (35), you notice a number of gravestones. As odd as that is, it seems even odder when some very happy people begin to arise from their graves. Let’s take a little breather now and check to see if the first five images have been written yet on the tablets of our memories.

Looking up next to the right rear stained glass window (36), you find depicted there a vast multitude of Christians rising in the air toward Christ.

Our next stop brings us to the right front pew section (37), and there you see the most astounding image so far. Sitting there in resplendent glory is the most beautiful woman you have ever seen, with a crown of twelve stars, a cloak that illuminates like the sun, and the moon as her footstool. Looking up to the right front arch (38), you see the very same woman, this time passing through a billowy cloud on her way toward heaven.

Next, at the site of the last station of the cross (39), the same woman sits before an ancient text, translating it into English. The original looks Greek to you (because it is). Now we arrive at the very last location within our Cathedral of Our Lady—the right front stained glass window (40). And here you see the most glorious image in the whole cathedral: The light from outside is illuminating an image of this same beautiful woman, this last time sitting on a throne above a choir of singing angels.

Do you have the whole right nave down now, both forward and backward? Let’s take a look and see.

LOCATIONS

IMAGES

31.

Right door to nave

Eye winks at trumpet sound

32.

Right rear holy water font

Man in Middle-Eastern garb knocks on God’s door to go for a walk

33.

Right rear pew section

He knocks on cemetery gate and rises into sky

34.

Right rear arch

Men say, “He likes ya!” as a chariot flies boy’s father to heaven

35.

Right rear confessional booth

Opening tombs with waking saints

36.

Right rear stained glass window

Crowds of Christians rise in the air

37.

Right front pew section

Crowned woman with stars, sun, moon

38.

Right front arch

Mary’s body rises through a cloud

39.

Right front station of the cross

Mary at desk translating old text

40.

Right front stained glass window

Mary sits above singing angels

Assumed into Heaven: The Images for the Sources

Again we enter the nave through the door on the right. There, at location 31, we saw the great winking eye and heard the trumpet sound. Only now you notice the great winking eye rests upon a single Corinthian column. And yes, I sense your nod and your knowing smile. Indeed, this means that our verse comes from 1 Corinthians (15:51–52 to be exact).

Peering into the pool of holy water in the font on the right (32), you recall that a man knocked on the door on the door of God, and went for a walk. Now you notice that he and God are not alone—two women, Jen and her sis have come along too, since our verse here comes from Genesis (5:24). (“He knocks” is simply our reminder for Enoch, by the way.)

At the site of the right rear pew (location 33), we saw that the same man was knocking on a cemetery gate, and then he rose up in the sky. Oddly enough, now you notice that he’s holding one of those little one-mug coffeemakers and is brewing some coffee on his way up. Obviously, this verse comes from Hebrews (11:5).

Location 34 is the right rear arch, and depicted upon it were those men comforting a boy whose father was rising into the clouds on a whirlwind in his chariot. They said, “He likes ya!” to remind us of Elijah. You notice now there are crowns on both men’s heads. They are indeed two kings, because our verse comes from, yes, you guessed it—2 Kings (2:12). (And if you’d like to recall the son’s name was Elisha [eh-LEESH-a], just picture him holding a leash.) Our location 35 is the right rear confessional booth, and how can we forget that it was surrounded by tombstones with people arising from their graves? And who should be with them but our familiar winged man, St. Matthew the evangelist, because our verse is from his Gospel (27:52–53).

Up and away now to our great rear stained glass window (location 36) where crowds of Christians are rising in the air toward Christ. Strangely enough, you notice one woman among them, freshly made up and sporting a fancy hairdo. This woman has clearly come straight from the beauty salon, which cannot help but remind us that this verse came from 1 Thessalonians (4:17).

At the site of the right front pew section (37), we encountered the majestic woman who appears within our last four images. This woman clothed with the sun and wearing stars in her crown represents, of course, the Blessed Mother. You notice as well that she’s reading aloud from a great, golden Bible and she has it open to one of the very last pages. That’s a pretty straightforward reminder that this image comes from the book of Revelation (12:1).

There she was again, upon the right front arch (38). As Mary’s body passes through a cloud on the way to heaven, you notice that depicted under the image is a group of bicyclists taking a break from the Tour de France, singing Gregorian chant as they watch her miraculous Assumption. Whether you expected that or not, the reason they are there is to remind us that our source is St. Gregory of Tours.

There again was Mary, depicted in the last station of the cross (39) translating Greek texts. Only now you notice that someone you know named John is there with her. You all look up and are shocked to see that behind the ancient tomb is gigantic hydroelectric dam. Odd as this may seem, adding John and a dam to the scene will undoubtedly help us recall that our source for this reason is the great Greek Church Father, St. John Damascene. (And if you’d like to recall that the words from this saint are from his Second Homily on the Dormition of Mary, imagine that while translating the text Mary has nodded off and fallen asleep—twice.)

Last, but never least, we come to the right front stained glass window (40). Here was Mary seated above a choir of angels. Only now you notice that singing among the angels is a familiar man in Dominican garb “with the shoulders of a giant.” It’s the great medieval memory master, St. Albert the Great himself, who wrote that Mary was assumed to just such a state in heaven.

Whew! By George (and by Mary), we’ve done it again! We’ve completed a second entire round through a mnemonic cathedral. Now, are all of your images firmly in place? Assuming they are, let’s examine the sources they point to.

MARY’S ASSUMPTION: THE SOURCES BEHIND THE REASONS

LOCATIONS

IMAGES

SOURCES

31.

Right door to nave

Eye winks at trumpet sound

Eye sits on column

St. Paul writes that at the last judgment, “in the twinkling of an eye,” a trumpet with sound and the dead will be raised (1 Cor. 15:51–52).

32.

Right rear holy water font

He knocks on God’s door to go for a walk

Jen and sis come along

“Enoch walked with God; and he was not, for God took him” (Gen. 5:24).

33.

Right rear pew section

He knocks on cemetery gate and rises into sky

He brews coffee too

“By faith Enoch was taken up so that he should not see death; and he was not found, because God had taken him” (Heb. 11:5).

34.

Right rear arch

Men say, “He likes ya!” as chariot flies boy’s father to heaven

The two crowned men are kings

“And Elijah went up by a whirlwind into heaven. And Elisha saw it and cried, ‘My father, my father! The chariots of Israel and its horsemen!’ And he saw him no more” (2 Kings 2:12).

35.

Right rear confessional booth

Opening tombs with wakening saints

Winged man is with them

Matthew reports that tombs opened and sleeping saints awoke and appeared to many after Christ’s Resurrection (Matt. 27:52–53).

36.

Right rear stained glass window

Crowds of Christians rise in the air

The salonian rises too

St. Paul reports that “we who are alive, who are left, will be caught up together with them in the clouds to meet the Lord in the air; and so we shall always be with the Lord” (1 Thess. 4:17).

37.

Right front pew section

Crowned woman with stars, sun, moon

She reads the last book in the Bible

“And a great portent appeared in heaven, a woman clothed with the sun, with the moon under her feet, and on her head a crown of twelve stars” (Rev. 12:1).

38.

Right front arch

Mary’s body rises through a cloud

Tour de France cyclists sing Gregorian chant

St. Gregory writes that God commanded that Mary’s body be taken up in a cloud to paradise. St. Gregory of Tours, Eight Books of Miracles

39.

Right front station of the cross

Mary at desk translating old text

John and a dam in the scene and Mary falls asleep twice

St. John Damascene writes that God was so pleased with Mary that he honored her body with incorruption and translation to heaven before the universal resurrection. St. John Damascene, Second Homily on the Dormition of Mary

40.

Right front stained glass window

Mary sits above singing angels

St. Albert the Great chimes in

St. Albert writes in the thirteenth century that based on many proofs and authorities, “it is manifest that the most blessed Mother of God has been assumed above the choirs of angels. And this we believe in every way to be true” (Mariale, question 132).

We saw the twinkling eye upon the column and heard the trumpet blast at the door to the nave (location 31) to remind us of what St. Paul wrote about being raised to heaven: “[W]e shall all be changed, in a moment, in the twinkling of an eye, at the last trumpet. For the trumpet will sound, and the dead will be raised imperishable, and we shall be changed” (1 Cor. 15: 51–52). Now, because it mentions the last trumpet, this verse is sometimes cited as evidence against Mary’s Assumption. But nowhere does it indicate that no bodies will be glorified until the Second Coming. Does Scripture mention any such exceptions? Let us continue our tour through Mary’s cathedral.

Our images at the right rear holy water font (32) recall Genesis 5:24: “Enoch walked with God; and he was not, for God took him.” The New Testament confirms this story, which is why, at the right rear pew section (33) we saw Enoch rising into the air brewing coffee, after he’d knocked on a cemetery gate. Here’s the verse: “By faith Enoch was taken up so that he should not see death; and he was not found, because God had taken him” (Heb. 11:5).

And Enoch was not the only holy person of Old Testament times to be bodily assumed by God. At the right rear arch (34), the kings said, “He likes ya!” to remind us of the sound of the name Elijah. He, too, was assumed into heaven by God—body and all without dying—as is written in 2 Kings 2:12: “And Elijah went up by a whirlwind into heaven. And Elisha saw it and cried, ‘My father, my father! The chariots of Israel and its horsemen!’ And he saw him no more.” If God assumed Enoch and Elijah, why could he not do the same for the most fully graced person in all of creation?

Remember the opened tombs and the risen bodies surrounding the confessional at location 35? The winged man was there to remind us of these verses from Matthew 27:52–53: “[T]he tombs also were opened, and many bodies of the saints who had fallen asleep were raised, and coming out of the tombs after his resurrection they went into the holy city and appeared to many.” We see here again, in the interpretation of early Church Fathers, and before the end of time, the resurrected, transfigured, and glorified bodies of holy Old Testament saints.

As Ludwig Ott points out in his discussion of these verses, though there are no “direct and express scriptural proofs” for Mary’s bodily Assumption, “according to the more probable explanation, which was already expounded by the Fathers, the awakening of the ‘saints’ was a final resurrection and transfiguration.”59 He continues, “[I]f, however, the justified of the Old Covenant were called to the perfection of salvation immediately after the conclusion of the redemptive work of Christ, then it is possible and probable that the Mother of the Lord was called to it also.”60

One of those Fathers, St. Jerome, comments on these verses that “we ought therefore to believe without hesitation that they who rose from the dead at the Lord’s resurrection, ascended also into heaven together with him.”61

So then, indeed, why not Mary?

We saw the great crowd of rising Christians (including one straight out of the salon) depicted in the right rear stained glass window (36) to remind us that “we who are alive, who are left, will be caught up together with them in the clouds to meet the Lord in the air; and so we shall always be with the Lord.” (1 Thess. 4:17). This is a verse sometimes cited by non-Catholics who adhere to the false and novel doctrine of the “Rapture.” The important thing for our purposes, though, is that here again Scripture describes humans being bodily assumed into heaven (this time at the Second Coming).

The remaining four images in this cathedral all depict the beautiful Virgin Mary herself.

You saw the sun-clothed woman with stars in her crown (37), reading the last book of the Bible to remind you of this verse: “And a great portent appeared in heaven, a woman clothed with the sun, with the moon under her feet, and on her head a crown of twelve stars” (Rev. 12:1). So what does this verse reveal about the bodily Assumption of Mary?

Early biblical commentators often interpreted the woman of Revelation as a representation of the Church itself, but by the Middle Ages she was most commonly seen to represent Mary. Although God may well have inspired St. John the evangelist to write with multiple levels of meaning, many holy pontiffs, including Blessed Pope John Paul II, have stressed the Marian connection. As he wrote in his 1987 encyclical Redemptoris Mater (Mother of the Redeemer), paragraph 24:

She who was the one “full of grace” was brought into the mystery of Christ in order to be his Mother and thus the Holy Mother of God, through the Church remains in that mystery as ‘the woman’ spoken of by the Book of Genesis (3:15) at the beginning and by the Apocalypse (12:1) at the end of the history of salvation.

Genesis 3:15 relates that God said of the serpent in the garden, “I will put enmity between you and the woman, and between your seed and her seed; he shall bruise your head, and you shall bruise his heel.” Revelation 12:9 tells us that “the great dragon was thrown down, that ancient serpent, who is called the Devil and Satan.” Later, Satan “pursued the woman who had borne the male child” (12:13) and “then the dragon was angry with the woman, and went off to make war on the rest of her offspring,” a war he was destined to lose (20:2–3).

You’ll recall that on the right front arch (38), Mary was rising through the clouds toward heaven, along with the Tour de France bicyclists singing Gregorian chant. (Now that’s something you don’t see every day.) Those images recall for us the words of St. Gregory of Tours: “He commanded that [Mary’s body] be taken in a cloud into paradise; where now, rejoined to the soul, [Mary] rejoices with the Lord’s chosen ones, and is in the enjoyment of the good of an eternity that will never end.”62 St. Gregory was a sixth-century bishop of Tours in Gaul (modern France), and here he’s writing about Mary’s Assumption some 1,400 years before the official proclamation of the dogma. St. Gregory was influenced by even earlier traditions and writings on the Mary’s Assumption. One notable example was the fourth-century apocryphal writing The Dormition of Mary, which for a time was attributed to St. John the Evangelist.

On now we go to our second-to-last location. Surely you’ll recall that in the lower right hand corner of the last station of the cross (39), Mary was depicted translating Greek texts, and she fell asleep—twice. She was there with St. John and a dam was in the scene. This was all to remind us of St. John Damascene’s Second Homily on the Dormition of Mary. Here are his words: “[God] was pleased even after her departure from life to honor her immaculate and undefiled body with incorruption and with translation prior to the common and universal resurrection.”63 St. John Damascene (676-749) was the last of the Greek Church Fathers, and as a member of that group of wise and holy early Christians will command the attention and respect of many Protestants. The Greek word metathesis, rendered in English as “transposition,” means a change in place, in this case, from earth to heaven—in other words, the Assumption. (And while we’re here, we might as well make note of his mention of her “immaculate and undefiled body” as well.) St. John preached this homily on a feast day commemorating Mary’s Assumption—a feast that had already been around for a century or more.

Last, but not least, just to show the continuity of the belief over time (and to pay homage to another of your author’s favorite saints—and memory experts!), let’s turn to our last location (40), the right front stained glass window. Here we saw Mary seated above singing choirs of angels, with St. Albert the Great chiming in. It was Albert who, after combing the writings of Scripture as well as Church Fathers and Doctors, wrote, “[F]rom these proofs and authorities and from many others, it is manifest that the most blessed Mother of God has been assumed above the choirs of angels. And this we believe in every way to be true.” When, 700 years later, Pope Pius XII defined the fourth Marian dogma in Munificentissiums Deus, he cited this very passage from St. Albert.

Why We Hail Mary

This completes our tour of the Cathedral of Notre Dame. I hope you will revisit this mnemonic cathedral again and again to immerse yourself in the mysteries of the Virgin Mary.64 The Church rightly honors Mary as the most fully graced of all of God’s creatures. Three days of holy obligation for Mass attendance pay tribute to Mary’s divine maternity (January 1), to her Immaculate Conception (December 8), and to her Assumption (August 15). Of course, the Virgin Birth comes in to play in the Feast of the Nativity (December 25—Christmas!).

All of Mary’s bountiful graces and honors flow from her predestination as the Mother of God, from the singular part she played in the life and mission of her son. St. Albert once wrote that Blessed Mary is “the dawn of all grace unto our glory—the dawn rising in the fullness of grace yet growing even into the perfection of day.”65 The night that precedes the dawn was Mary’s eternal predestination. Mary was the dawn who ushered in the light of the day, in the person of him who would say, “I am the light of the world!” (John 8:12). Not even the angels have received such favor.

Truly, the Mother of God deserves special honor. When Catholics hail Mary, we are echoing the great Archangel Gabriel, “Hail, full of grace, the Lord is with you!” (Luke 1:28). We echo her cousin Elizabeth when we say to her, “Blessed are you among women, and blessed is the fruit of your womb!” (Luke 1:43). We call her blessed because just as she predicted, all generations would do (Luke 1:48), at that time when her soul magnified not herself, but the Lord.

Hail Mary, full of grace,

the Lord is with thee,

Blessed art thou among women,

and blessed is the fruit of thy womb, Jesus.

Holy Mary, Mother of God,

Pray for us sinners,

Now, and at the hour of our death.

Amen.

59 Ott, Fundamentals, pp. 208–209.

60 Ibid, p. 209.

61 As cited in St. Thomas Aquinas, Catena Aurea: The Gospel of St. Matthew (New York: Cosimo Books, 2007), vol. I, part III, p. 964.

62 Jurgens, The Faith of the Early Fathers, vol. 3, p. 306.

63 Ibid, p. 350.

64 The Assumption is the fourth of the five Glorious Mysteries of the rosary. The Annunciation, Visitation, and Nativity are the first three Joyful Mysteries. Mary also plays a prominent role in the second Luminous Mystery, namely, the wedding at Cana.

65 Cited in Joachim Sighart, Albert the Great: His Life and Scholastic Labors, from original documents (Charleston, SC: Bibliolife, 2009), p. 168; also cited with commentary in my own St. Albert the Great: Champion of Faith and Reason (Charlotte, NC: TAN Books, 2011), p. 118.

Memorable Quotation 8

Remembering the Best of the East and the West

We must show people the beauty of memory.

Blessed Pope John Paul II, Orientale Lumen

Well, I’ll fess up right at the start: In the quote above, John Paul II was not talking specifically about our Albertian/Thomistic memory techniques. The context of his comment was the 1995 letter Orientale Lumen (Light of the East), in which he honored the living memories, traditions, and rites of the Eastern Christianity. And yet, the very art of memory itself is a story of East-West collaboration.

Sts. Albert and Thomas pored over the ancient Latin texts of Cicero and others on the art of memory, which were the oldest such complete texts in existence, but the art itself actually goes back to the Greeks. As we saw in the introduction, the man considered the father of the “method of loci” that we are using here was the Greek poet Simonides (556-468 B.C.). The Greek word for locations was topoi, but we use the Latin loci because those ancient Greek memory manuals that are lost to us were described in the books of the Romans.

Now, moving along to the twenty-first century, I found that my book Memorize the Faith! generated some interest in memory techniques on some Byzantine Catholic Web forums. This was not surprising, since Eastern Christianity has long been known for its use of iconography to educate and edify. And within the last year I was pleased to receive e-mails from a certain Brother Seraphim of a Byzantine monastery, proposing adaptations to our method for use by Eastern Christians.

For example, he crafted drawings not of buildings but of a mnemonic helicopter with six locations, a mnemonic flying saucer with seven, and a mnemonic elephant with fifteen—useful for remembering smaller amounts of data than our cathedrals could hold. (Indeed, the first mnemonic loci system I ever came across was based on a car with twenty locations.) Brother Seraphim came up with images for remembering data specific to Eastern-Rite Catholicism, including liturgical feasts, characteristics of icons, names and histories of particular churches, prominent events—such as councils and heresies—of the Patristic era, and more. He also suggested that the magnificent church of Hagia Sophia in the former Constantinople would have plenty of room to be used as a very grand memory cathedral.

Br. Seraphim’s efforts remind me of our lessons in chapter four. How truly catholic (universal) is our Church, how magnificent in its diversity and yet how wonderful that it is still one. Following the good brother’s lead, what other things might you learn by heart with the great Catholic art of memory?

Part III

The First Catholic Bible Church

All scripture is inspired by God and profitable for teaching, for reproof, for correction, and for training in righteousness, that the man of God may be complete, equipped for every good work.

2 Timothy 3:16–17

For the Holy Mother Church, relying on the faith of the apostolic age, accepts as sacred and canonical the books of the Old and the New Testaments, whole and entire, with all their parts, on the grounds that, written under the inspiration of the Holy Spirit, they have God as their author and have been handed on as such to the Church herself.

Catechism of the Catholic Church (105)

Chapter 9

Ubi Est Sola Scriptura?66

In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God.

John 1:1

The Christian faith is not a “religion of the book.” Christianity is the religion of the “Word” of God, a word which is “not a written and mute word, but the Word which is incarnate and living.” If the Scriptures are not to remain a dead letter, Christ, the eternal Word of the living God, must, through the Holy Spirit,“open [our] minds to understand the Scriptures.”

Catechism of the Catholic Church (109)

As important as it is for every Catholic to know and understand the authority of the one, holy, catholic, and apostolic Church, and to know why we so rightly venerate Mary, I believe that the most fundamental and useful reasons we should memorize in order to defend the Faith are those stored within our third and final cathedral—“The First Catholic Bible Church.”

Don’t have one in your town, do you? Well, I’m pretty sure you don’t. I just checked, and even Google has never heard of one. There are plenty of “Bible churches” out there though, plus numerous Protestant denominations, “nondenominational” churches, and “interdenominational” churches that describe themselves as “Bible-based,” “Bible-centered,” or something along those lines. Many of them declare that the Catholic Church, in contrast, is about as far from a true Bible church as you can get.

So which church, if any, is the true Bible church? The issue boils down to the question of authority. Who or what determines the Christian truths upon which our salvation depends? Most Protestants say it is the Bible and only the Bible.

Many issues must be considered as we look at the fundamental ideas that cleaved Christendom in twain at the Reformation and that have divided it since into thousands of pieces. This is the stuff of our final four chapters. Of all these issues, perhaps none is as crucial as this idea that the Bible itself—clear, self-interpreting, complete—is the Christian’s only final authority. And so in this chapter we will examine the reasons why Catholics reject the Protestant tradition of sola scriptura, that is, that Scripture alone is the sole rule of faith, and other evidence that points to where true Christian authority is to be found.

First, let us acquaint ourselves with the façade of the First Catholic Bible Church.

Welcome to the First Catholic Bible Church! (Est. A.D. 33.)

As you stroll down the sidewalk of an unfamiliar city in the heart of Midwestern America, you’re a bit surprised to behold a sign proclaiming, “Welcome to the First Catholic Bible Church!” Ready for a break from the noisy bustle of the city streets, you decide that this merits a closer look. As you reach the end of the piazza approaching the church (location 1—as you know by now!), you realize that you no longer hear the bustling city. In fact, there is almost dead silence. You notice some crickets a few feet ahead and hear nothing but their chirping. Ascending next to the top of the steps (2) you are amazed to see a gargantuan pillar emerging from the ground and arising upward to the heavens.

66 Where is “Scripture Alone?” (i.e., Where is the doctrine of “Scripture alone” written in Scripture itself?).

You next see the central door (3), and standing there waving you in is a friendly old country parson. When he sees you are heading his way, he excitedly starts to thump his old, well-worn Bible. But you’re not quite ready to go inside. There is still much to see on the church’s façade. Right above the door you spy a beautiful stained glass window (4). Depicted thereon is a hospital room full of patients, and all are refusing treatment from their doctors and nurses.

Up now on the left is our statue of St. Albert the Great (5). It’s familiar by now, but you weren’t expecting him to reach down and hand you a wrapped Christmas present! Next, in the great round rose window (6), you see a large African man dressed in ancient robes, primly sipping a cup of hot tea. You weren’t expecting him to say, “I say, old man!” in the most perfect of British accents, but he did. Across from St. Albert on the other side of the window stands of course another statue of a sublime and saintly Church Doctor, St. Thomas Aquinas (7). How odd to see our normally calm and unruffled saint tearing the stripe off a military private’s shoulder.

Upward again goes your glance, as you look up to the left bell tower (8). Who should be up there but St. Peter himself, and he’s scratching his head while reading a letter. And as he looks down, he sees a violent mob below, attacking the church with pick-axes, some bringing stones down upon their own heads. Can you picture that chaotic scene? Next, part of the mob has gathered atop the right tower (9), and it seems that each and every one is arguing with one another. Finally, on top of the central spire (10), you see a great hunchback with a wide grin on his face. He has one hand on the cross, while holding in his other hand the tail of a scared-looking donkey. The donkey, of course, is wearing a crown. (You wonder, perhaps, if this is the wrong church. “Didn’t we already do Notre Dame?” Well, it just worked out this way, and I’ll explain in due course.)

Now, I’ll wager that you mastered this set of images rather easily. Can you recall them now (or perhaps after one more review)?

LOCATIONS

IMAGES

1.

End of sidewalk

Crickets chirping

2.

Top of steps

Gigantic pillar emerges

3.

Front central door

Bible-thumping parson

4.

Stained glass window

Hospital patients refuse treatment

5.

St. Albert statue

St. Albert hands you Christmas present

6.

Rose window

Large African sipping tea says, “I say, old man!”

7.

St. Thomas Aquinas statue

Military private loses his stripe

8.

Left bell tower

St. Peter reads letter, scratching his head; stones fall on mob attacking church

9.

Right bell tower

Mob of people arguing

10.

Central spire

Hunchback holds crowned donkey

Second Time Through the Façade of Sola Scriptura

Now, back to the end of the piazza (location 1) where you saw those chirping crickets. This time you notice that at your feet is a book that looks like a Bible. You thumb through the pages, but find that they are empty. Got that?

At the top of the steps (2), that huge pillar had emerged from the ground. You notice a boy standing next to you, staring up at it, also in awe. You recognize him as young Timmy from the old TV show Lassie (or, remember, any other Tim or Timmy you know). Now we come to our Bible-thumping parson at the door (3). You now see that Timmy stands next to him too—no, there are actually two Timmies with him, one on his right, and one on his left. Above the door was our first window (4), where hospital patients refused medical treatment. It seemed odd to you, and now you notice that it seems odd to Jesse James too. Can you picture that old outlaw from the Wild West, all dressed in black, scratching his head at their poor judgment?

All right, we’re back to St. Albert (5) and now you can unwrap his gift. For some reason (a good one, as you’ll soon see), St. Albert has given you an ax. Right next to Albert in the great rose window (6), we saw that large African man with the perfect British accent, who said, “I say, old man!” You notice he’s sitting on a stack of firewood, so, moved by St. Albert’s generosity, you hand this man your ax. How can you forget the strange scene of Thomas Aquinas (7) demoting a private by removing his stripe? (Yes, there’s a good reason for this image, too!) But now you notice that both Thomas and the private are standing upon two huge rocks.

Speaking of rocks, as we return now to the left bell tower (8), we found old “Rocky” himself, St. Peter, apparently befuddled, scratching his head while reading a letter. Next, he looked down and saw that violent mob attacking the church, even bringing stones to rain down on their own heads. Now you see that even as St. Thomas and the private were each standing on a rock, atop the tower St. Peter is standing on two large rocks, one for each foot. On to the right bell tower (9), where things were sure getting noisy. Not a single person in that mob could agree. Now this has become so annoying that movie actor Vincent Price (or painter Vincent van Gogh, or some other Vincent you can recognize) is yelling at them to be quiet, to the point that he hurts his larynx and grabs at his throat. Finally, how could you forget the grinning hunchback atop the church spire (10)? He was holding the tail of a crowned donkey, and now you see that Martin Luther King, Jr., has climbed up and is shaking his head at the hunchback, in clear disapproval.

REFUTING SOLA SCRIPTURA: THE REASONS BEHIND THE IMAGES

LOCATION

IMAGES

SOURCE

1.

End of sidewalk

Crickets chirping

Empty page of Bible

Nowhere does the Bible itself teach “Bible alone.”

2.

Top of steps

Gigantic pillar emerges

Timmy standing next to you

St. Paul writes that the Church (not the Bible) is “the pillar and bulwark of the truth” (1 Tim. 3:15).

3.

Front central door

Bible-thumping parson

Two Timmies

St. Paul writes that all Scripture is inspired by God, profitable, and makes the man of God complete (2 Tim. 3:16–17).

4.

Stained glass window

Hospital patients refuse treatment

Jesse James scratches his chin

St. James writes that patience makes you perfect and complete, lacking nothing (Jas. 1:4).

5.

St. Albert statue

St. Albert hands you a Christmas present; it’s an ax!

St. Paul wrote that Jesus said, “It is more blessed to give than to receive” (Acts 20:35).

6.

Rose window

Large African sipping tea says,

“I say, old man!”

He sits on firewood and you give him your ax

The Ethiopian tells Philip he cannot understand the book of Isaiah without guidance (Acts 8:30–31).

7.

St. Thomas Aquinas statue

Military private loses his stripe

Two massive rocks

St. Peter warns against private interpretation of scriptural prophecy (2 Pet. 1:20–21).

8.

Left bell tower

St. Peter reads letter, scratching his head; Mobs brings stones down on own heads

Two massive rocks again under his feet

St. Peter warns that some of Paul’s letters are hard to understand, and the unstable twist them to their own destruction, as they do other Scripture (2 Pet. 3:15–16).

9.

Right bell tower

People in mob arguing among themselves

Vincent Price hurts his larynx

St. Vincent of Lerins (died c. 435) writes that the Church’s understanding of Scripture is necessary because “it can almost appear there are as many opinions as there are men.”

10.

Central spire

Hunchback holds crowned donkey

Martin Luther King, Jr., shakes head in disapproval

Luther wrote: “There is no smearer but whenever he has heard a sermon or can read a chapter in German, makes a doctor of himself and crowns his ass, convincing himself that he knows everything better than all who teach him.”

Now it is time to consider more deeply the meanings behind the images, and the words behind the reasons.

The crickets at the end of the piazza (location 1) are a classic representation of silence, of stillness, of nothing going on. The blank pages of the Bible further illustrate, that, for the first time in this book, we have no source, because there is no biblical source for the concept of sola scriptura.67 We have noted that some doctrines, such as the Trinity or Mary’s Assumption, are not explicitly written down in the pages of Scripture either (though they are present implicitly in Scripture and nowhere contradicted by it). But of course the Catholic Church does not maintain that Scripture is the sole rule of faith. But for those who do believe that Scripture teaches clearly and explicitly every Christian truth needed for salvation, isn’t it kind of important to be able to point to that particular belief in Scripture? Where is sola scriptura in the Bible? It is entirely devastating to the doctrine to find that the answer is nowhere.

On we go now to the top of the steps (2) and the pillar that burst through the ground. There you were with Timmy, looking at it in awe. That pillar stands for “the church of the living God, the pillar and bulwark of the truth” (1 Tim. 3:15). With your growing powers of memory you probably recall that we came across this verse in chapter 2: for the Church that Christ built upon Peter, not the Bible, is the ultimate Christian authority.

So, should you find yourself engaged on the topic of sola scriptura, ask your non-Catholic friend first, “Where is sola scriptura prescribed in the Bible?” and second, “What does the Bible say is the pillar and bulwark of the truth?” If you remember our images on the sidewalk and steps of this church, you will know that sola scriptura is not in the Bible, and that the Church is that pillar of truth. Oh, and one Timmy will remind you this key verse is in St. Paul’s First Letter to Timothy.

But perhaps your interlocutor is astute and he says he has a sola scriptura proof text or two up his sleeve. What then? Well, let’s move to the front door (3), where we found our Bible-thumping parson and those two Timmies at his side. First let me say thank God for “Bible-thumpers”! They “thump” God’s written word because they love it, and this gives us a great deal of important common ground. Catholics can appeal to the Bible to show how it guides us to that pillar of truth that is the Church. But this parson is appealing to a different verse, the closest thing to a biblical endorsement of sola scriptura he can find: “All scripture is inspired by God and profitable for teaching, for reproof, for correction, and for training in righteousness, that the man of God may be complete, equipped for every good work” (2 Tim. 3:16).

There is so much that could be said in reply that again I urge you to consult other apologetics books to supplement your knowledge. I’ll just make a few quick points here. First, of course, we Catholics are in full agreement that Scripture is inspired by God and useful for all the things this verse says it is. But the verse does not say Scripture alone; nor does it say that Scripture is sufficient. Either would have sealed the argument; but it says, all Scripture, not only Scripture.68

Finally, perhaps you’ve heard it said “a text without a context is a pretext.” So what’s the context of this verse? When St. Paul was providing this counsel to Timothy, most of the New Testament had not even been written, and it was hundreds of years before the canon would be definitively established. To say that this verse supports the sufficiency of Scripture alone is then to say that the Old Testament—the only Scripture that Paul could have been referring to—is the sole rule of faith. Is this what a Christian believes?

On now to our stained glass window (4), where we found those hospital patients refusing medical treatment as a befuddled Jesse James looked on. Well, Jesse James is there to remind us of something a much more saintly James had to say: “But let patience have her perfect work, that ye may be perfect and entire, wanting nothing” (James 1:4).69 Our patients, of course, remind us of patience, and their refusal of treatment implies that they felt they were already perfect, and needed nothing else.

Note well the similarity in phrasing between this verse and 2 Timothy 3:16–17, which our Bible-thumping parson brought up in location 3: “All scripture is given by inspiration of God, and is profitable for doctrine, for reproof, for correction, for instruction in righteousness: That the man of God may be perfect, thoroughly furnished unto all good works” (KJV). The parson, like Protestant apologists, argues that this verse says the Bible is all we need for spiritual perfection and thus is the sole rule of faith. If we were to apply that same interpretive principle to the almost identical phrasing in James 1:4, then to become “perfect and entire” all we’d need is the virtue of patience. (Surely, such an interpretation would try anyone’s patience.)

Again we turn to St. Albert’s statue (5). Now, finally, we’ll see why he gave us that ax for Christmas! Who is not familiar with Christ’s famous dictum, “It is better to give than to receive?” Do you know where this is found in the Gospels?

Answer: nowhere. It’s not in them. This verse is found in Acts 20:35 (hence our ax), where St. Paul quotes a saying of Christ’s—almost offhand, as if his hearers would naturally be familiar with it—that Paul did not read in any Scripture, but had heard through the oral tradition passed on by Christ’s apostles.70 How many other words and deeds of Jesus similarly are not recorded in the Gospels, or even mentioned secondhand in a biblical narrative, like this one?

Truly, the number is vast: “But there are also so many other things which Jesus did; were every one of them to be written, I suppose that the world itself could not contain the books that would be written” (John 21:25).

Next is the great rose window (6) and that tea-sipping African with a British accent. Why is he an African? Because he represents an African: the Ethiopian eunuch from Acts 8. Why does he say, “I say, old man?” Because this reminds us he was reading the book of Isaiah when a disciple named Philip passed by and asked him if he understood what he was reading. The eunuch’s answer was, “How can I, unless someone guides me?” (Acts 8:31).

A necessary component of sola scriptura is the idea that the Bible is perspicuous, or clear in its meanings, such that we do not need another authority in order to understand it. Yet here we have Scripture itself showing us that Scripture is not always clear. It does not interpret itself. A guide is needed—and thank God that Christ provided it in his Church. Oh, and this time you gave the man your ax (for Acts, of course) because you were inspired by Christ’s message that it is better to give than to receive!

We move over now to the statue of St. Thomas (7), and that odd scene of him removing a stripe from the uniform of a private. Oh, yes, and each man was standing upon a great rock. So, what gives? Let’s start with the two rocks. Taking our cue from Jesus, a rock is our fitting symbol for St. Peter. There are two rocks here to remind us that our next verses come from his second letter: “First of all you must understand this, that no prophecy of scripture is a matter of one’s own interpretation, because no prophecy ever came by the impulse of man, but men moved by the Holy Spirit spoke from God” (2 Pet. 1:20–21). Here the Bible itself warns us against relying on private interpretation (hence our military private), because the pillar and foundation of the truth is the Church, not our own interpretations of Scripture. If the Bible and the Bible alone were the sole and sufficient authority for Christians, we would have to regard not the pope but ourselves as infallible.

Granted, most adherents to the doctrine of sola scriptura would argue that, despite what the Ethiopian eunuch said, or perhaps because they think Scripture’s meaning was hidden from him because he was not yet a believer, when Christians interpret the Bible they are guided by the Holy Spirit. So it’s not our private interpretation, but the Holy Spirit’s making sure we don’t miss Scripture’s clear meaning.

With all due respect, then, with thousands of Protestant churches around the world reflecting tens of thousands of differing interpretations of Scripture, it would seem that the Holy Spirit hasn’t quite made up his own mind yet!

Next stop, where we found St. Peter on the left bell tower (8), standing upon two rocks, scratching his head while reading a letter. And how can we forget the angry mob down below, taking axes to the church and bringing stones down upon their own heads? Let’s imagine now that St. Peter looks directly at us, and he has this to say: “So also our beloved brother Paul wrote to you according to the wisdom given him, speaking of this as he does in all his letters. There are some things in them hard to understand, which the ignorant and unstable twist to their own destruction, as they do the other scriptures” (2 Pet. 3:15–16).

The doctrine of sola scriptura holds that Scripture is perspicuous: that its meaning is clear. We don’t need any priests or theologians to tell us what it means. And yet here we have Christ’s foremost apostle himself declaring, in Scripture itself, that sometimes Scripture is “hard to understand,” leading to the destruction of ignorant readers who twist it. So not only is Scripture sometimes unclear—it is perilously so! All the more reason why we need the learned and stable to guide us in its meaning.

St. Peter’s words were prophetic. What sad destruction would ensue fifteen centuries later when the Protestant reformers, ignorant of Scripture’s true meaning, began twisting it to suit their own designs. And indeed, it all would break loose over those very letters “our beloved brother Paul” wrote. (Stay tuned for location 10!)

For now, we hop across the top of the First Catholic Bible Church to that crowded and boisterous right bell tower (9). Everyone was arguing with one another, and movie actor Vincent Price (or some other Vincent you know) had hurt his larynx (he was holding his throat), trying to quiet them down. Their argument calls to mind this passage:

Here, perhaps, someone may ask: “If the canon of the scriptures be perfect, and in itself suffices for everything, why is it necessary that the authority of ecclesiastical interpretation be joined to it?” Because, quite plainly, Sacred Scripture, by reason of its own depth, is not accepted by everyone as having one and the same meaning. The same passage is interpreted in one way by some, in another by others, so that is can almost appear as if there are as many opinions as there are men.71

These words were penned by St. Vincent of Lerins (hence the larynx) in his Notebooks, around A.D. 435. Here, as we near the end the tour of our church façade, we see a wise early Christian saint who anticipated the folly of sola scriptura a good 1,100 years before it was proclaimed in the Reformation—and only decades after the canon of Scripture was firmly fixed. History bore out St. Vincent’s insight, as we’ll see at the last location.

How can you forget the image of a hunchback atop our central spire (10), along with his crowned donkey and the Rev. Martin Luther King, Jr.? (I hope you can’t forget it—that’s the whole point.) Again, the familiar image of Martin Luther King, Jr., represents Martin Luther, the man who made sola scriptura one of the pillars of Protestantism. The hunchback and donkey serve to remind us of but one of his many observations on what sola scriptura and private interpretation of Scripture had wrought upon Christendom even within his own lifetime: “There is no smearer but whenever he has heard a sermon or can read a chapter in German, makes a doctor of himself and crowns his ass and convincing himself that he knows everything better than all who teach him.”72

Our hunchback merely represents those ignorant of Scripture; one of those who, as Luther observed bitterly but somehow without irony, “understand the Evangelicum better than I or St. Paul; they are now wise and think themselves more learned than all the ministers.”73

I invite you to take a quick peek back to the verse from 2 Peter from the left bell tower (8). I find Luther’s comment an amazing confirmation of it, even down to the specific reference to St. Paul (alongside whom he places himself!). Simply add now unstable men promoting the doctrine and their unlearned followers playing it out and you have a real-life, live-action argument ad absurdum against sola scriptura. Even in Luther’s lifetime, the Pandora’s box of sola scriptura had let loose many Reformation leaders who interpreted Scripture far differently than Luther—Calvin and Zwingli most notable among them. (Indeed, they considered each other heretical!)

The sixteenth century saw much infighting and self-destruction within Christendom, but Christ had foretold that death itself would not prevail against the Church that he established. The Church was then, as now, full of sinners. Some reforms were truly needed within the practices of the Church of that day, and many of them came about. The Catholic Church remained one, holy, catholic, and apostolic, while the communities born of the Reformation quickly splintered and splintered again in geometric progression, all under the banner of Scripture Alone. (St. Peter saw it coming.)

Traditions of God and Traditions of Memory Masters

Now then, have you mastered the façade of the First Catholic Bible Church? (If not, it is time for some practice, for surely you remember that “repetition is the mother of memory.”) Do you see that Scripture itself does not attest to its own sole and sufficient authority? What, then, do we need in addition? Why, it appears many times in the Bible itself. In the next chapter we will take a close look at the much maligned idea of paradosis, traditio—or perhaps you’d prefer plain old “Tradition.”

67 The concept of sola scriptura was not introduced until the fourteenth century, in the writings of English dissident theologian John Wycliffe.

68 Interesting side note: The Greek word pasa, generally translated “all,” actually means “every,” referring singly to each member of the class denoted by the associated noun. “If the doctrine of sola scriptura were true, then based on the Greek in verse 16, each and every book of the Bible could stand on its own as the sole rule of faith, a position which is obviously absurd,” Joel Peters, Scripture Alone: 21 Reasons to Reject Sola Scripture (Rockford, IL: TAN Books, 1999), p. 5.

69 King James Version. The RSV uses “steadfastness” rather than “patience,” conveying a similar meaning.

70 And thank God that St. Paul passed this down to us! I think the gift giving of Christmas makes this truth ever so clear. When we are children, there are few things more exciting than receiving those gifts on Christmas morning. I was always an early riser, and my parents and siblings would dread with apprehension how early I might arise every 25th of December. But by the time I’d become an adult, I found myself more excited waiting for our kids to get up so they could receive the gifts that their parents (and Santa) had given them!

71 Cited in Jurgens, The Faith of the Early Fathers, vol. 3, p. 262.

72 Msgr. Patrick F. O’Hare, The Facts About Luther (Rockford, IL: TAN Books, 1994), p. 208.

73 Johann Walch’s edition of Luther’s Works, XIV, 1360.

Memorable Quotation 9

Four Living Creatures Bearing Good News

And round the throne, on each side of the throne, are four living creatures, full of eyes in front and behind: the first living creature like a lion, the second living creature like an ox, the third living creature with the face of a man, and the fourth living creature like a flying eagle. And the four living creatures, each of them with six wings, are full of eyes all around and within, and day and night they never cease to sing, “Holy, holy, holy, is the Lord God Almighty, who was and is and is to come.”

Revelation 4:6–8

In the last Memorable Quotation section I mentioned Br. Seraphim; now we come to his namesakes. These four six-winged heavenly figures who circle God’s throne singing praises first appear in the book of Isaiah. We have already seen how they have been used within the Church for more than a millennium as symbols of our four evangelists, and indeed in this book they serve as our own memory images for the four Gospels they wrote.

The seraphim also play a most interesting role in the history of the Catholic art of memory. In the year 1470, a little “blockbook” made from wood carvings, today the Ars memoranda, was fashioned, perhaps in a monastery, in the land of Bavaria.74 Within this ancient text with very little commentary are multiple woodcut figures of our four familiar seraphim (the winged man, lion, ox, and eagle). These figures themselves serve as systems of mnemonic locations, just like the façade, naves, and sanctuary of our mnemonic cathedrals.

Upon a total of five woodcuts of the great winged man, for example, are depicted a total of twenty-eight images. The first image, on top of his head, depicts a baby and an angel; the second, on his chest, depicts three crowns; the third, on his stomach, shows a baptismal font. So what’s this all about? Well, St. Matthew’s Gospel has twenty-eight chapters, and each of these images recalls a key event from the chapter of the same number. In chapter 1 (location 1 on the seraph’s head) we learn of the baby Jesus’ genealogy and of how an angel appeared to St. Joseph in his sleep. In chapter 2 of Matthew’s Gospel we learn of the three wise men, or kings, hence the crowns at location 2 (upon the seraph’s chest). Finally, at location 3, (the seraph’s stomach) we find the baptismal font, because in the third chapter we learn of the baptisms of John and Christ.

Do you get the picture(s) now? The traditional symbols of the evangelists serve as the mnemonic systems housing the images that represent the events in their own Gospels! This is yet another possible application of the Catholic art of memory, and you need not memorize the seraphim to do this. In my own book on St. Albert the Great, I demonstrated how to do this for the first ten chapters of the Gospel of St. John, using not a seraph but (you’ll never believe this) a church!

74 My knowledge of this book derives from Mary Carruthers and Jan Ziolkowski (eds.), The Medieval Craft of Memory (Philadelphia, PA: University of Pennsylvania Press, 2002).

Chapter 10

Traditions of Men and of God

Tradition is a transmission of the faith and Christian life, which in our own lives is transformed into Christian behavior, profession of faith before men and praise of God.

Yves Congar, O.P., The Meaning of Tradition75

The Tradition here in question comes from the apostles and hands on what they received from Jesus’ teaching and example and what they learned from the Holy Spirit. The first generation of Christians did not yet have a written New Testament, and the New Testament itself demonstrates the process of living Tradition.

Catechism of the Catholic Church (83)

“And how do we keep our balance? That I can tell you in one word: Tradition!” Those words may sound familiar if you’ve ever seen the musical Fiddler on the Roof. In the rousing opening sequence, main character, Tevye, admits that he does not know where his community’s traditions came from, but he revels in the way they provide order and joy within their little Russian Jewish community.

And how do we Christians keep our balance? That I can tell you in three words—and one of them is “Tradition!” As for the other two words, let’s go to the documents of Vatican II (and see if you can pick them out):

It is clear, therefore, that Sacred Tradition, Sacred Scripture and the teaching authority of the Church, in accord with God’s most wise design, are so linked and joined together that one cannot stand without the others, and that all together and each in its own way under the action of the one Holy Spirit contribute effectively to the salvation of souls.76

Congratulations if you have discerned all three, since this was actually a bit of a trick question! Those three all-important things that provide us our balance are Tradition, Scripture, and “the teaching authority of the Church,” or magisterium (deriving from the Latin word magister, “teacher”).

These three fundamental gifts God provides for our salvation do not balance each other out in the sense of pulling in opposing directions—such as how political parties might do before settling on some in-between compromise. No, indeed, they all work together in harmony toward the same end, like the three legs that balance a tripod, because they are all guided by the divine will of one ultimate harmonizer: the Holy Spirit.

Sacred Tradition is not merely a matter of ancient customs or habitual ways of doing things over time—small-“t” traditions—but rather is a gift from God that flows from the teaching authority he gave his Church. Tradition acts to complement, contextualize, and interpret Sacred Scripture for Christians of every era. One meaning of the word tradition (from the Latin traditio, from tradere, to hand over) emphasizes “a body of unwritten religious precepts.”77 We will see that unwritten precepts passed on by word and by deed do play a very important role in Sacred Tradition, but written precepts have their role as well. Indeed, as we saw in our quotation from the Catechism at this chapter’s start, Scripture itself “demonstrates the process of living Tradition.” The nature of that fundamental relationship between Tradition and Scripture will fill the altar area and right nave of this very cathedral; that’s why we call it the First Catholic Bible Church. But first let’s go to the left nave and take a good look at Tradition itself.

Tradition! A Nave Full of Reasons

How odd, but fitting, that the left door to left nave (location 11) of the First Catholic Bible Church is not made of wood but of a huge stone tablet. You notice that the Ten Commandments are engraved upon the stone, and that Jesus himself is chiseling on top of them a giant question mark. Stepping inside, as you prepare to dip your hand in the left rear holy water font (12), you are stopped by a massive Roman soldier who asks if you have heard of Christ. You’re impressed by his impeccable outfit, especially his solid gold sandals.

Moving along to the left rear pew section (13), you are met by an ancient philosopher—one of the ancient Sophists, in fact. He is looking at an empty seat with the letter “D” on it. He smiles, bows, and motions for you to sit down there. Next you look up at the left rear arch (14), and you are amazed to see St. Paul there. He congratulates you for memorizing all this information on Sacred Tradition!

Walking over to the left rear confessional booth (15), you stumble and fall. Fortunately, St. Paul stands you firmly on your feet. Not only that, but he hands you one of those old wax candies shaped like human lips (remember those?), and also a letter.

75 Yves Congar, O.P., The Meaning of Tradition (San Francisco: Ignatius Press, 2004), p. 50.

76 Dei Verbum, Dogmatic Constitution on Divine Revelation, 10, http://www.vatican.va/archive/hist_councils/ii_vatican_council/documents/vat-ii_const_19651118_dei-verbum_en.html.

77 The American Heritage Dictionary of the English Language, New College Edition.

Okay, we’re halfway through and it’s time for a quick rehearsal. Do you recall the Ten Commandments with the question mark at the door (11), the Roman soldier with golden sandals asking if you had heard of Christ (12), the philosopher with the empty seat with a “D” in the left rear pew (13), St. Paul up on the arch (14) commending you for your memorization, and finally, over by the confessional (15), St. Paul again standing you up firmly and giving you wax lips and a letter?

Good, I thought you would. Now let’s continue our tour.

Depicted on the left rear stained glass window (16) we find a large idol of a foreign god. You hear a voice from within the hollow statue depicted in the glass, which you recognize as that of your own brother, and you’re so startled that you run away! You run to the left front pew section (17), and open up a hymnal. The page is illustrated with the loving face of Christ, and you notice the notes are actually moving as you follow the pattern of the sounds they make. Looking up to the left front arch (18) again you find St. Paul talking to you. A courtroom’s witness stand is behind him and you realize that you are surrounded by your old high school teachers.

Location 19 is the station of the cross, and depicted within it, right next to Jesus falling for the second time, is an ancient chair with the name Moses written upon it. You notice the chair is covered with dew. Last but not least, we come to the left front stained glass window (20), where you see a scene that you might well find depicted in real life: The resurrected Jesus is with his disciples, sharing some of his last words with them; the caption below the glass artwork reads, Go preach!

Now then, do you have all ten images? If in doubt, please review the first table, and practice them forward and backward—from 11 to 20, and then in reverse from 20 backward to 11.

LOCATION

IMAGE

11.

Left door to nave

Jesus chisels question mark on tablets with commandments

12.

Left rear holy water font

Roman soldier with solid gold sandals asks if you have heard of Christ

13.

Left rear pew section

Philosopher looks at empty seat with “D” on it

14.

Arch with St. Matthew symbol (man)

St. Paul congratulates you for remembering this material on Tradition

15.

Left rear confessional booth

St. Paul stands you up and hands you wax lips and a letter

16.

Left rear stained glass window

You find your brother living in an idol, and you run

17.

Left front pew

Hymnal notes move, page illustrated with the loving face of Christ

18.

Left front arch

St. Paul stand before a witness stand, talking to you and your teachers

19.

Left front station of the cross

Moses chair covered with dew

20.

Left front stained glass window

Jesus tells disciples, “Go preach!”

Tradition! The Sources Behind the Traditions

We return to the door on the left (location 11), and you notice that the door with the Ten Commandments with the big question mark chiseled by Jesus is opened for you by our familiar winged man. At the left rear water font (12) you were stopped by the huge Roman soldier in solid gold sandals who asked you if you had heard of Christ. Well, that gives us all that we need. Your brain gets a breather here, because we don’t need a new image! At location 13 was the philosopher offering you that empty seat with a “D” on it. And now you see a giant hand reach down, as the philosopher is lifted from the neck of his robe by an irritated-looking statue, the mighty Colossus of Rhodes.

Recall how from the left rear arch (14) St. Paul commended you for memorizing all this material on Tradition. Well, now he sets you up on a pedestal. In fact, it is a Corinthian column. And how can you forget that you fell down heading over to the right rear confessional (15)? St. Paul stood you firmly back on your feet, and then, for some yet unknown reason, handed you wax lips and a letter. Now you notice that there are two ladies with curlers in their hair flanking St. Paul. (Yes, they are two more women from the salon.) How odd it was to hear the voice of your brother coming out of that idol shown on the great right rear window (16). And it’s odder still now that when you run away from his voice, you are flanked by the same two “salonians.”

Now to the front left pew section (17) and that hymnal beautifully illuminated with the loving face of Jesus, and with the notes that move and make sound. Again you realize that you are flanked by two people, this time by two Timmies. One on your left, and one on your right, they also follow the pattern of those sounds. Up now again to the left front arch (18), where you saw was St. Paul in front of a witness stand. You were also surrounded by your former teachers there; now let’s add two more to the group, because those two Timmies remain by your side.

We saw that depicted within the left front station of the cross (19) was an ancient chair with Moses’ name on it, and it was all covered with dew. Let’s imagine now that our familiar winged man has landed and sat upon it. Now we come to the last spot in the left nave section. At the left front stained glass window (20) we saw that glorious scene of the resurrected Christ instructing his disciples to go forth and preach to all nations. “Go preach!” he proclaims. Imagine now that as soon as Christ finishes saying that, a great winged lion produces a thunderous roar!

TRADITION IN THE SCRIPTURES: THE SOURCES BEHIND THE IMAGES

LOCATION

IMAGES

SOURCE

11.

Left door to nave

Jesus chisels question mark on tablets with commandments

Winged man with him

Jesus asks Pharisees, “And why do you transgress the commandment of God for the sake of your tradition?” (Matt. 15:3).

12.

Left rear holy water font

Roman solider in gold sandals asks

if you’ve heard of Christ

“So faith comes from what is heard, and what is heard comes by the preaching of Christ” (Rom. 10:17).

13.

Left rear pew section

Philosopher looks at empty seat with “D” on it

Colossus of Rhodes grabs philosopher

St. Paul warns, “See to it that no one makes a prey of you by philosophy and empty deceit, according to human tradition” (Col. 2:8).

14.

Arch with St. Matthew symbol (man)

St. Paul congratulates you for remembering this material on tradition

He sets you on a Corinthian column

St. Paul commends you “because you remember me in everything and maintain the traditions even as I have delivered them unto you” (1 Cor. 11:2).

15.

Left rear confessional booth

St. Paul stands you up and hands you wax lips and a letter

Two “salonians”

St. Paul advises the brethren, “stand firm and hold to the traditions which you were taught by us, either by word of mouth or by letter” (2 Thess. 2:15).

16.

Left rear stained glass window

You find your brother living in an idol, and run

Two more salonians

St. Paul warns us to, “keep away from any brother who is living in idleness and not in accord with the tradition that you received from us” (2 Thess. 3:6).

17.

Left front pew

Hymnal notes move, page illustrated with the loving face of Christ

Two Timmies

“Follow the pattern of the sound words which you have heard from me, in the faith and love which are in Christ Jesus” (2 Tim. 1:13).

18.

Left front

arch

St. Paul stand before a witness stand, talking to you and your teachers

Two more Timmies

“[W]hat you have heard from me before many witnesses entrust to faithful men who will be able to teach others also” (2 Tim. 2:2).

19.

Left front station of

the cross

Moses chair covered with dew

Winged man hovers over

Jesus says, “The scribes and the Pharisees sit on Moses’s seat; so practice and observe whatever they tell you, but not what they do; for they preach, but do not practice” (Matt. 23:2–3).

20.

Left front stained glass window

Jesus tells disciples, “Go preach!”

Winged lion roars

Jesus said to his disciples, “Go into all the world and preach the gospel to the whole creation” (Mark 16:15).

The Reasons Behind Tradition

Now let us learn what we have remembered! Our first image at the left door to the nave (11) showed Jesus chiseling a question mark on the tablet of the Ten Commandments, and the winged man opening the door, to remind us of this verse, “And why do you transgress the commandment of God for the sake of your tradition?” (Matt. 15:3). This is one of the classic texts used to argue against the Catholic idea of Sacred Tradition. Here we see the commandments of God pitted against the traditions of men—and the traditions of men clearly lose!

But we must examine this passage in context. Jesus was speaking out specifically against the korban rule devised by the Pharisees, whereby Jews could “donate, “dedicate,” or “consecrate” their financial resources to God via the Jewish temple, to avoid the financial obligation of caring for their own parents. In actual practice, they still had access to their funds, but used this “tradition of men” to violate one of God’s clear commandments, especially the fourth one—“Honor your father and your mother” (Ex. 20:12). Jesus, then, here speaks out not against all traditions, nor against the general concept of tradition, but against one particular pharisaical practice (“your tradition”) invented to circumvent one of God’s commandments.

We come across this scene again in St. Mark’s Gospel. Jesus tells the Pharisees, “You have a fine way of rejecting the commandment of God, in order to keep your tradition!” (Mark 7:9). Jesus goes on to make his point clear, “If a man tells his father or his mother, what you would have gained from me is Corban (that is, given to God)—then you no longer permit him to do anything for his father or mother, thus making void the word of God through your tradition which you hand on. And many such things you do” (Mark 7:11–13). Here Jesus he condemns an abuse of this particular tradition, and indeed, “many such things,” but he clearly does not condemn all traditions.

We arrived next at the holy water font (12) and were stopped by that huge Roman solider clad in armor, including some striking golden sandals. He asked if you’d heard about Christ. We didn’t need another image for the source of our reason, since the Roman soldier means it came from St. Paul’s Letter to the Romans, of course. Now let’s take a look at the verse that contains our reason: “So faith comes from what is heard, and what is heard comes by the preaching of Christ” (Rom. 10:17). Note how St. Paul emphasizes the crucial role of hearing and preaching of Christ, not merely of reading and writing. Surely, what St. Paul preached about Christ and what he did by his extensive travel in person to spread the Good News was as important as what he wrote. The earliest of his disciples heard St. Paul’s words long before anyone would be able to read them (if they could read).

And what about those golden sandals? Well, a couple of verses before our memory verse we find this striking one: “How beautiful are the feet of those who preach the Good News!” (Rom. 10:15). Clearly, then, St. Paul exceedingly valued those Christians who by their preaching and their actions knew how to “walk the talk” of Christ. From such words and deeds Sacred Tradition grew.

On we go now to the left rear pew section (13). The philosopher entices you to sit down in that empty seat marked with a “D,” and raises the ire of the Colossus of Rhodes thereby, as a reminder of this critical verse: “See to it that no one makes a prey of you by philosophy and empty deceit, according to human tradition” (Col. 2:8). Surely you’ll forgive the lame wordplay if the empty “D” seat does indeed call to mind the phrase “empty deceit.” And remember that we made the philosopher in our image one of the Sophists, who made a business of selling “wisdom” (sophia is Greek for wisdom). They were derided by Plato and Socrates for their deceptive practices, giving rise to our modern term “sophistry.” Some Protestants interpret this passage from St. Paul as a condemnation of all philosophy. How corrupt must the Catholic Church have become for the likes of St. Thomas Aquinas to declare philosophy “the handmaiden of theology!”

But two things a true philosopher will strive not to do are to judge without careful reasoning and to overgeneralize principles based upon particular cases. With this in mind, let us consider the remainder of the verse. St. Paul warns against a philosophy that is empty and deceitful, “according to human tradition, according to the elemental spirits of the universe, and not according to Christ” (Col. 2:8). In yet another bit of evidence against the doctrine of sola scriptura and the perspicuity of Scripture, for 2,000 years scholars have found it difficult to determine exactly what St. Paul meant by “the elemental spirits of the universe.”78 (Surely, St. Peter knew what he was talking about in 2 Peter 3:16 when he said that St. Paul’s letters had passages that were “hard to understand”!) Perhaps a clue can be found in Galatians 4:3, where Paul also mentions these “elemental spirits of the universe” (stoichea tou kosmou); but for our purposes the important thing to remember is that the philosophy St. Paul warns against—the empty, deceitful philosophy associated with traditions of men—is one that is contrary to Christ. Sound philosophy—the love of wisdom that comes from God and serves as theology’s handmaiden—is as different from empty deceit as day is from night, or as truth is from falsehood.

Our left rear arch (14) provides clear proof from St. Paul himself that we are not to over generalize and condemn all tradition. He stands there on that column congratulating us for memorizing the information in this chapter to remind us that he wrote to the Corinthians, “I commend you because you remember me in everything and maintain the traditions even as I have delivered them unto you” (1 Cor. 11:2). He wants the Corinthians to maintain traditions—he praises them for doing it—so there’s simply no way to conclude that Scripture’s other warnings about traditions amount to a blanket condemnation.

Here I should mention a puzzling practice found in some modern Bible translations.79 As we are beginning to see in our samples of verses, in the New Testament the word tradition is sometimes spoken of negatively and sometimes positively. Some translations render the Greek word paradosis (a handing-on or giving-over to others), as “traditions” when it is condemned, and as “teachings” (which should actually translate the word didaktikos—we see this in the English word “autodidact” for a self-taught person) when it is praised. “Caveat lector!”80 I say. That practice is one tradition of men that I certainly hope will not continue to be handed over to others.

On now we go to the confessional (15). St. Paul, accompanied by those two “salonians,” stands you up firmly after your fall and hands you those wax lips and that letter. For it was he who wrote, “So then, brethren, stand firm and hold to the traditions which you were taught by us, either by word of mouth or by letter” (2 Thess. 2:15). Here again we find St. Paul not condemning traditions but in fact directly commanding the early Church to hold them fast. Those silly wax lips and the letter simply remind us that he said “by word of mouth or by letter,” lest anyone try to claim that he’s referring to the written word only.

As we saw in the quotation from the Catechism that started this chapter, the Church Christ established teaches us that “capital-T” Tradition represents the deposit of faith that has been handed down by the apostles, based upon what they learned from the teachings and example of Christ, and preserved by the Church. All of the apostles spread Christ’s gospel via their words and their actions; some of them also did it by writing. As Christians we should honor and adhere to all of their teachings, whether “by word of mouth or by letter.”

Upward now to the left rear stained glass window (16). Here was that bizarre scene of your brother calling from inside the idol and you running away, accompanied by those two “salonians.” Here is our verse: “Now we command you, brethren, in the name of our Lord Jesus Christ that you keep away from any brother who is living in idleness and not in accord with the tradition that you received from us” (2 Thess. 3:6). Now do you see why your brother was living in the idol, and why you wanted to run away from him?

To put this passage in context (and into the vernacular), St. Paul was advising the Thessalonian Christians to get off their duffs and get to work! He adds, just four verses later, “for even when we were with you, we gave you this command: if anyone will not work, let him not eat.” Able-bodied Christians were not to be idle and expect “to eat any one’s bread without paying,” thereby burdening others.81 Here again we see this great apostle advising Christians to keep a tradition that had been given to them—in person by St. Paul himself, not in writing but by word and by example.

So then, you’ve run away from your idol (idle) brother, to the left rear pew section (17), and along with two Timmies you’re following the pattern of moving notes within the hymnal with Christ’s loving face. All this helps us recall this verse: “Follow the pattern of the sound words which you have heard from me, in the faith and love which are in Christ Jesus” (2 Tim. 1:13). Here St. Paul explicitly exhorts Timothy to keep and to act on the words what he had heard from him in the name of the faith and the love of Christ.

Our tour takes us next to the left front arch (18), and here we saw St. Paul in front of the witness stand, and you and two Timmies, surrounded by all of your teachers. This is because St. Paul wrote, “[W]hat you have heard from me before many witnesses entrust to faithful men who will be able to teach others also” (2 Tim. 2:2). Here he describes the ordinary means of Christian instruction: handing on received truth through the witness and teaching of faithful men—not through mere consultation of sacred text.

Allow me here to point something out about this left nave we are in. Some of the images feature Christ himself, and virtually all are crowded with other human figures as well. This is significant when contemplating the very nature of Tradition. Christ has called us all into a personal relationship with him, but the faith to which he calls us is not a matter of “Scripture alone!” or “me and Jesus alone!” He calls us to love him through our love of our neighbors and as members of one body in him. The very idea of Sacred Tradition embodies this living, communal relationship. We do not unite with Christ only as individual readers of a holy book but as brothers and sisters within the Church, cherishing that book and all the Tradition the Church itself has given us.

Next to last in this half of the nave, you will certainly recall Moses’ dewy chair, and the great winged man sitting down on it, all depicted within the station of the cross (19). Here is our reason: “The scribes and the Pharisees sit on Moses’s seat; so practice and observe whatever they tell you, but not what they do; for they preach, but do not practice” (Matt. 23:2-3).

In this verse it is not St. Paul but Jesus advising people to honor an extra-biblical tradition that he takes for granted as true and binding. The chair or seat of Moses (which may be metaphorical, like the chair of St. Peter, signifying teaching authority) is not found in Scripture, yet Jesus references it as something with authority. By approving of this particular extra-biblical tradition, he implicitly endorses the idea of others.

Finally, at location 20, the last great stained glass window, we saw the resurrected Jesus, exhorting his disciples to go preach his gospel to the whole of creation. We added the flourish of the roaring winged lion, to remind us that these words were recorded by St. Mark. He was one of Christ’s four disciples who spread the gospel via a written text, but the vast majority of Christ’s disciples, to this very day, were called by Jesus not to write but to preach. We are to go out among others and spread Christ’s good news by our words and our actions. Accordingly, it was the oral and living traditions that built Christ’s Church on earth and saw it flourish for nearly 400 years before its canon of Scripture was ratified.

This completes our mnemonic tour of Traditions of Men and of God. I can’t help but point out that for this particular chapter, all of our ten reasons for Tradition came from the Bible. The two, as we’ve seen, are certainly not in opposition. We’ll always bear in mind too that our sample “tens” are always merely a sample. Much more could be said and read on the subject of Tradition and traditions, but it’s time now to lock and load as we prepare to take aim at a canon.

78 “Elemental spirits of the world: The meaning of stoichea tou kosmou (4:9; Col. 2:8, 20) is quite disputed; stoichea could mean “elements, rudiments (of learning, as in Heb. 5:12); or “elemental substances” (earth, air, fire, water); or “elemental signs” (of the Zodiac); or “spirit-elements” (celestial beings controlling the physical elements of the world [cf. Ap. 16:5]). In the first case it would mean “slaves to rudimentary ways of thought and conduct.” Opinion today seems to be in favor of the fourth interpretation: “slaves to the spirit-elements.” They seem to be personal beings parallel to the “guardians and trustees” and are described (4:8) as “by nature not gods.” In Col. 2:8–20 they are contrasted to Christ and seem to be like the principalities and powers.” From The Jerome Biblical Commentary, (Englewood Cliffs, NJ: Prentice-Hall, 1968), vol. 2, New Testament, p. 243.

79 For example, for our memory verse here (1 Cor. 11:2) the New International Readers Version (NIrV) and the New Living Translation (NLT) are among translations that render paradosis “teaching” instead of “tradition.” As for our next two memory verses, 2 Thessalonians 2:15 is rendered “teachings” by those two versions, as well as the New International Version (NIV), while 2 Thessalonians 3:6 is rendered “teachings” in the NIV and NIrV. Readers can check the King James Version published in the early 1600s for an accurate and “traditional” Protestant translation of these verses. (All can be found free online.)

80 “Let the reader beware!”

81 2 Thessalonians 3:8. Cf. Sirach 7:15: “Do not hate toilsome labor, or farm work, which were created by the Most High.”

Memorable Quotation 10

The Crafts of Memory (and Apologetics)

What else shall we observe on the craft of memory? We must not fall into the habit of making allowances for ourselves; for it is a great fault to need prompting and, when speaking, to consult a book. If by nature memory is very hard and time does not permit, what shall I do? You will not oblige yourself to know everything word for word; for forgetting one word might bring either an unattractive hesitation or even silence.

Consultus Fortunatianus, On Memory82

Consultus Fortunatianus was a pre-medieval Catholic memory master. Judging from a later text that drew from his writings, scholars deduce that he wrote his three-volume book on the art of rhetoric sometime before A.D. 435. The snippet above tells us much about the nature and history of the art or “craft” of memory. First, note that he was a rhetorician: a public speaker. Recall that the earliest development and widespread use of our memory techniques came from such speakers and their teachers.

Indeed, memory was considered one of the five parts of rhetoric, along with invention (the discovery of valid arguments), arrangement (the structuring or sequencing of the arguments), style (the way in which the arguments are delivered—purity, clarity, ornamentation, and propriety being ancient ideals), and delivery (the modulation of the voice and gestures). Finally, all of these parts were seen to depend on “the treasure-house of the ideas supplied by Invention . . . the guardian of all the parts of rhetoric, the Memory.”83

Greek and Roman orators did not tote notes or cheat sheets when they spoke. Rather, they entrusted all the key points of their talks to their memories, very possibly depositing their images in designated locations within the very forums in which they delivered their speeches, much in the same way that we’ve built our memory cathedrals.

This brings us to another essential part of Consultus Fortunatianus’s quotation. He warns against memorizing a talk “word for word” because this can bring pauses, hesitation, and the thing that the public speaker most dreads—silence—when words escape him. This recalls the ancient distinction between memoria verbum (memory for words) and memoria rerum (memory for things). The ancient art of memory we are applying here is not best suited for memory for words, that is, word for word rote memorization. It may be used to assist in such verbatim memorization if difficulties arise in a particular verse, prayer, or some other material a person may care to memorize exactly, but its main function lies within the realm of memoria rerum.

In this book, the things we have memorized are key reasons for our beliefs, and the sources from which they derive. Exact word-for-word memorization of the scriptural verses is not a necessary element, as long as you have grasped their fundamental messages and have a key word or phrase in mind for each verse. This is the important thing in apologetics and evangelization. St. Augustine, a first-class rhetorician himself, made this point many centuries ago, noting that if you were to defend or explain your faith to someone, even if you had memorized every word of Scripture, you would not stand there and recite it verbatim. You would share with him the most essential ideas in your own words, though perhaps peppered with choice scriptural phrases. If you spoke to a learned and literate man, he would then go and read Scripture on his own. (Of course, if lured to Mass, he would also hear them there, even in Augustine’s day!)

When those ancient public speakers “memorized” their speeches then, they did not typically memorize them word for word. Rather, they would form images representing their key ideas, and put them in an orderly arrangement of places, picking up each key idea as they went along, but leaving them to elaborate freely without any fear of forgetting or freezing on some specific phrase. (And believe me, though I’ll leave my powers of invention, arrangement, style, and delivery up to the judgment of my audiences, I do my own talks this way, and the memory part has rarely failed me!)

So then, you need not worry about memorizing the verses of our reasons verbatim to effectively “apologize” and evangelize. (Of course if you’d like to, I suppose there are far worse things you can do than memorize the words of God!)

82 Translated and cited in Mary Carruthers and Jan Ziolkowski (eds.), The Medieval Craft of Memory: An Anthology of Texts and Pictures (Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 2002), p. 297.

83 Cicero, Ad Herennium (The Loeb Classical Library, Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 2004), p. 205.

Chapter 11

Who Loaded the Canon?

It was by the apostolic Tradition that the Church discerned which writings are to be included in the list of the sacred books. This complete list is called the canon of Scripture. It includes forty-six books for the Old Testament (forty-five if we count Jeremiah and Lamentations as one) and twenty-seven for the New.

Catechism of the Catholic Church (120)

Indeed, when you accept the Bible as the Word of God, you are obliged to receive it on the authority of the Catholic Church, who was the sole Guardian of the Scriptures for fifteen hundred years.

James Cardinal Gibbons, The Faith of Our Fathers84

I had first titled this chapter, “Who Wrote the Good Book?” It occurred to me, though, that most Christians would agree that the author was God, working through many earthly co-authors. Surely, he holds the original copyright! Catholic and most non-Catholic Christians clearly agree that Scripture is the divinely inspired words of God, brought to us by his chosen holy men. They were not sitting there taking word-for-word dictation, but the Holy Spirit moved them to reveal God’s own messages in their own words.

Sure, there is some debate regarding who here on earth actually wrote each of the good books that together make up the Bible (from the Greek word biblion, meaning book). Did St. Paul write the Letter to the Hebrews, for example? Is the Song of Solomon truly Solomon’s song or someone else’s? Is the evangelist St. John the St. John who wrote the Apocalypse? But this issue is not the concern of this chapter, either, since God may surely inspire whomever he chooses to reveal to us his good news.

The real issue here is who chose the books of the Bible in the first place, that is, the canon of Sacred Scripture. The word canon derives from its Greek meaning of “measure stick” or “rule,” borrowing from the even earlier Babylonian qanu for “reed.” Who decided which of many ancient religious books “measured up” to be placed in the Bible as divinely inspired texts? In other words, the question is not so much “Who wrote the Bible?” as “Who wrote the Bible’s table of contents?” It was not given to us engraved on stone tablets, and even old King James of England was not around in the early centuries of Christianity’s infancy.

We’ll examine the Old Testament canon in our next chapter, but here we will focus on the New Testament, and it was much newer, all right. This is a historical issue, and we’ll do well to keep things in historical perspective. The first record we have, for example, of the use of the actual term “New Testament” was in the writings of Tertullian around A.D. 200. When the books of what we call the New Testament refer to the value of Scripture, they are referring to what Christians would later come to call the Old Testament. So when did Christians decide there was a new body of divinely inspired Scripture?

It so happens that it was the first bishop of Rome who talked about St. Paul’s letters in comparison with “the other scriptures,” indeed, within the very pages of the scriptures that would come to be called the New Testament (2 Pet. 3:16). As we’ll see soon, and remember as well, those Roman bishops would continue to play an important role in loading the New Testament canon.

84 James Cardinal Gibbons, The Faith of Our Fathers: A Plain Exposition and Vindication of the Church Founded by Our Lord Jesus Christ (Rockford, IL: TAN Books, 1980), p. 72.

Before we get down to business, memorizing key arguments used to deny the Catholic Church’s role in establishing the New Testament canon, along with some fundamental historical developments in the consolidation of the New Testament canon, I just have to mention a Web site I came across just yesterday. In it was written “Without the Bible, there is no Church!” (Hmm, now where’s that in the Bible?) Indeed, as history bears out, it took the early Church a few hundred years to put together the Bible. Further, it was not the Bible that founded the Church, but the Word himself, Jesus Christ. The apostles themselves had no Bible to read like we do, but they formed that Church that would later give us the Bible.

So now, without further delay, let’s begin to load our memories and learn about many good books, and many good men, but only one holy canon.

Welcome to the Sanctuary of the New Testament Canon!

As you look up to the altar rail on the left (location 21) you are surprised to see sitting upon it an open book of Scripture, and you find depicted on the two pages not words, but a striking image of a human face with a very prominent nose. You note as well that half of the face is in a dark shadow and the other have is showered with bright light. Moving right along, you observe the largest Bible you’ve ever seen, learning against the lectern (22). You open it up, and are surprised and frustrated to find that it has no table of contents. The next thing you know, it’s time for the first reading of Mass, and who should stand up to read from the liturgical book (23) but a runaway slave, shackles and all. He is surprised, too, because instead of the liturgical book he finds only a postcard.

Up now to our left angel (24), and you are startled to see him tending a burning pile of straw. A book of games on top of it is starting to burst into flames. Location 25 is our tabernacle and you see depicted on it in gold a man kneeling before a church that looks a lot like a fort, since it has a massive cannon on top!

OK, drill time now! Do you have our first five locations locked in your memory treasure chest?

Now that you do, let’s move on to the crucifix above the tabernacle (26). You were not expecting to see in the background behind it a baseball game in progress. The batter has just hit a ball that has toppled three large stacks of books. The crowd roars out, “Foul ball!” while the umpire declares, “It’s in!” To our right is the other angel (27). He points his finger at your chest, telling you to stop looking around at the Church but instead to look into your heart.

Down now to the low altar (28) and you see what looks at first like a very ancient book, but when you clear away many centuries worth of dust and cobwebs, you are amazed to find there a modern e-book reader. Sitting upon the paten (29), too, you see two ancient copies of the entire New Testament. Lastly, sitting upon the top of the chalice (30) we find a small, shiny, golden cannon, and when the cannon “fires” a salute at the time of the Consecration, out comes not a cannonball but a beautiful, leather-bound book emblazoned with the words Holy Bible.

Got those? Let’s see.

LOCATION

IMAGE

21.

Altar rail on left

Scripture page with prominent nose; half in shadow, half in light

22.

Lectern

Copy of Bible with no table of contents

23.

Liturgical book on lectern

Runaway slave with a postcard

24.

Angel on left

Scriptural books burning on a pile of straw

25.

Tabernacle

Man kneels before a cannon atop a cathedral

26.

Crucifix

Baseball topples three stacks of books; crowd yells, “Foul ball,” while ump declares, “It’s in!”

27.

Angel on right

Angel diverts your view from the church and points to your heart

28.

Front of low altar on right

Modern e-book reader under layers of dust

29.

Paten on altar

Two ancient copies of New Testaments

30.

Chalice

Cannon fires salute at Consecration and out comes “Holy Bible”

The Canon Reloaded: The Sources Behind the Images

Now let’s lock in where these images come from. We saw at the altar rail (21) that book of Scripture open to pages that showed a human face with a prominent nose. One half was in shadows, the other in bright light. Now we see young Calvin of the Calvin and Hobbes cartoon gleefully pointing out this page to us. Next, in front of the lectern (22) we saw that huge Bible with no table of contents. You notice now on the cover is a picture of the façade of our own mnemonic cathedrals. You open the Bible again, and there is your table of contents! Upon the lectern, where the liturgical book (23) usually sits, we found a postcard instead, being read by a runaway slave in shackles. Oddly enough, you see a figure from Greek mythology peering over his shoulder. You think at first it is a centaur—half-horse and half-man—except you notice a large pink ribbon in the horse’s tail. You see that this is half young female horse and half man, and you figure this must be a “filly-man.” And crowding the area with the slave and filly-man, you also see a group of five men who all look just like your friend John. (Got all that?)

Up we then went to the angel on the left (24). There was a book of games burning on a pile of straw. Now you are quite surprised to see Martin Luther King, Jr., vigorously fanning the flames. At the site of the tabernacle (25) we saw a man kneeling before a church that looked like a fort, because it had a huge cannon on top. Only now you realize the kneeling man is the same man who was just fanning the flames (Martin Luther King, Jr.), and now you hear him talking about our familiar eagle that’s hovering over his bowed head.

Next we saw a live baseball game in the background behind the crucifix (26). A ball that was hit toppled three stacks of books. The crowd yelled out, “Foul ball!” but the umpire countered with, “It’s in!” We get a little breather here, since we do not need another image (and I’ll tell you why we don’t in due course.)

Over we went to see the right angel (27), who pointed at your chest and told you to stop looking at the church but instead to look into your own heart. As you look at your chest, you are even more surprised to see an image of this scene: A minister in a cowboy hat is hearing a confession and he grabs his own heart in alarm.

Down now to the low altar on the right (28) where we were surprised to see a modern e-book reader buried under what seemed to be many centuries’ worth of dust. Now you see the screensaver come on and it shows a dam crossed by a long train of donkeys (but we must use the biblical word asses to be precise). We saw two New Testaments sitting on the paten (29). Now as we remove them and peer into the paten itself we see yet another strange image. Depicted within are two cows in silk, walking upon what appears a strange and bumpy green road. Right behind the cows is a hippo, up on two legs, pushing a cart along that road. You discern that the road is actually the top of an enormous, bushy hedge.

Finally we came to the chalice (30), and sitting atop it was a golden cannon. When it fired at the time of the Consecration, out from the barrel shot a golden “Holy Bible.” Finally now, strange as this may seem, after Communion you see three priests in medieval garb standing in front of that chalice and cannon, holding up a banner for the congregation that reads, “Have you tried Dentyne gum?” (You can just as easily make this Trident gum, if you happen to prefer it.)

Now, let’s chew on these last images a bit and then see what they all mean.

LOADING OF THE CANON: THE REASONS AND THEIR SOURCES

LOCATION

IMAGES

SOURCE

21.

Altar rail on left

Scripture page with prominent nose; half in shadow, half in light

Calvin gleefully points to it

Calvin argues for the clear self-attesting or self-authenticating nature of Scripture “upon the face of it” (Institutes, 1.7.2).

22.

Lectern

Huge Bible with no table of contents

Church appears on cover and table of contents appears inside

The Bible does not indicate what writings belong in it, which renders sola scriptura untenable. The Catholic Church affirmed the canon.

23.

Liturgical book on lectern

Runaway slave has postcard instead of book

“Philly-man” and five Johns look on

It’s hard to argue that the books of Philemon and 2 and 3 John, for example, show any “self-attesting” qualities.

24.

Angel on left

Scriptural books burning on a pile of straw

Martin Luther King, Jr., fans the flames

The first reformer decides some NT books are not Scripture. “Therefore the St. James epistle is really an epistle of straw.”

25.

Tabernacle

Martin Luther King, Jr., kneels before a cannon atop a cathedral

Begins to talk about the winged eagle hovering over his head.

Luther also conceded “that the papacy has God’s Word” and that we received Scripture from the Church (Sermons on John 16).

26.

Crucifix

Baseball topples three stacks of books; crowd yells, “Foul ball,” while ump declares, “It’s in!”

One famous Protestant formula holds that all we can say is that the canon is a “fallible collection of infallible books.”

27.

Angel on right

Angel asks you to look at your heart instead of the church

Image of a minister in cowboy hat hearing a confession and suffering a painful heart attack

Some Protestants argue that the canonicity of Scripture is revealed by the Holy Spirit bearing witness in our hearts.

28.

Front of low altar on right

Modern e-book reader under layers of dust and cobwebs

Screen saver shows dam crossed by train of asses

Pope St. Damasus wrote a decree listing the present New Testament canon at the prompting of the Council of Rome late in the fourth century.

29.

Paten on altar

Two ancient copies of New Testaments

Two cows in silk, hippo, cart, hedge

Two Church councils, at the end of the fourth century (Hippo) and early fifth century (Carthage), listed our current New Testament canon.

30.

Chalice

Canon fires salute at Consecration and out comes “Holy Bible”

Three priest hold banner “Have you tried Dentyne gum?”

At the Council of Trent the Catholic Church confirmed the canonicity of the twenty-seven books of the New Testament and forty-six books of the Old Testament.

Unloading the Arguments That Show Who Loaded the Canon

Perhaps you’ll recall that in chapter 10 all of our reasons for defending Tradition came from, well, Scripture. Well, here all our reasons for defending the canon of Scripture come from Tradition! For although God inspired men to write the books of the Bible, he did not inspire any of them to compose the table of contents. Surely God intended for us to come to know and cherish the words of Sacred Scripture, but how did he expect us to discern which ancient books (among many) truly contained those holy words?

Recall the lectern and liturgical book of St. Peter’s mnemonic cathedral: Christ told his apostles that he would always be with them “to the close of the age” (Matt. 28:20) and that the Holy Spirit would come to guide them “into all the truth” (John 16:13). We believe that the Holy Spirit graced Christ’s Church with his infallible guidance in determining which books truly contained the inspired words of Sacred Scripture. Whether or not they recognize it, Protestants share with Catholics a belief in the part of Tradition that canonized the twenty-seven books of the New Testament.

But most won’t admit that the canon is a product of Tradition! Here it is as important to remember their alternate rationales for trusting the canon as it is to remember the reasons for Catholic belief in it. Some Protestants believe instead that Scripture is “self-attesting” or “self-authenticating,” while others believe that the early Church did indeed select the canon through some temporary authority it no longer possesses. Some think that the Holy Spirit tells us in our hearts what is or isn’t Scripture, whereas still others hold that all we can know for sure is that the Bible is “a fallible collection of infallible books,” which somehow, through some special providence, is the right collection.

Well, it’s time now to look at those arguments, to examine a little history, and to memorize the reasons why we believe the Holy Spirit led the one, holy, catholic, and apostolic Church to bestow upon the world a truly infallible collection of truly infallible books!

We started our tour of the altar area with the open book of Scripture on the altar rail (21). The pages showed a human face with a prominent nose, and the Calvin cartoon character was gleefully pointing it out to us. This image is intended to help us recall this quotation from the sixteenth-century Protestant reformer, John Calvin, referring to the canon of Scripture:

How shall we be persuaded that it came from God without recurring to a decree of the church? It is just the same as if it were asked, How shall we learn to distinguish light from darkness, white from black, sweet from bitter? Scripture bears upon the face of it as clear evidence of its truth, as white and black do of their color, sweet and bitter of their taste.”85

Calvin has put forth the Protestant argument that Scripture is “self-attesting” or “self-authenticating.” The Church had no need for infallible guidance from the Holy Spirit in selecting the books of the Bible, because the canonicity of those books is as plain on the nose on your face. It’s a plain and bold statement, indeed, but is it true? Among the hundreds of religious texts that were circulating in the first centuries after Christ’s death, is it so clear on the face of them which books were inspired by God? We’ll consider this more in a minute, after we move on to our next location.

We saw in front of the lectern (22) that huge Bible lacking a table of contents. An image of the Church appeared on the cover and then the table of contents appeared. This is a fundamental image that shows a fatal flaw in the Protestant arguments against the Church’s role in the establishment of the canon of Scripture, and indeed it shows a fatal flaw in the tradition of sola scriptura. The Bible is, of course, a diverse collection of books from different authors and time periods, and no book within it provides a list of the other books it comprises. Using the Bible alone as our guide, there’s no way to recognize that these and these books alone are true Scripture inspired by God. The table of contents appears in our image only after the image of the Church appears, in order to drive home that the Catholic Church wrote that table of contents by confirming the books that constituted the canon, infallibly under the guidance of that Holy Spirit.

Let’s consider again the idea espoused by Calvin and his followers that the contents of Scripture are plainly self-attesting. We move to the site of the liturgical book (23) that was replaced by a postcard and, read by a runaway slave, accompanied by that strange filly-man, along with those five Johns. What is this is all about?

Consider, for example, the Letter of Paul to Philemon (yes, that’s why we have a filly-man), a brief letter regarding one particular runaway slave—so brief that it, like 2 and 3 John (hence our five Johns), would just about fit upon a modern postcard. Yes, it was written by the apostle Paul, but Paul himself tells us that there are other letters he wrote that are not a part of the Bible (1 Cor. 5:9, 2 Cor. 10:10, Phil. 3:1, Col. 4:16). But test it out for yourself, if you will. Read other early Christian documents, especially longer and more content-rich ones such as the letters of Ignatius or perhaps the Didache, and see if it is plain on the face of them that they are “dark” and “bitter” compared with whatever supposedly makes Philemon or 2 and 3 John so “light” and “sweet.”

Our reason stored with the angel on the left (24) pokes another hole in the “self-authenticating” argument, though it was offered by another major Protestant reformer, and it in itself is erroneous too. We saw the angel burning a book of games upon a pile of straw and the flames were being fanned by Martin Luther King, Jr. The “book of games” is our reminder for the biblical book of James. Once again the Rev. King reminds us of his namesake, Martin Luther. The entire image then serves to remind us of these lines (and more, as you’ll soon see):

Therefore, the St James epistle is really an epistle of straw, compared to these others, for it has nothing of the nature of the gospel about it.86

Martin Luther had his own ideas about which books were and were not truly the inspired words of God. To him it depended on whether or not they taught about the gospel according to the opinion of . . . Martin Luther. I’ve seen some nuanced defenses of Luther’s statements, but in his original German translation of the Bible he nonetheless placed James at the end (along with Hebrews, Jude, and Revelation) as books he did not consider canonical. Some defenders note that Luther backed off his critical statements later on, but there is also a reason that he’s fanning the fire in this image. It reminds us of another of his statements about James:

The epistle of James gives us much trouble, for the Papists embrace it alone and leave out all the rest. . . . Accordingly, if they will not admit my interpretations, then I shall make rubble also of it. I almost feel like throwing Jimmy into the stove, as the priest in Kalenberg did87 (italics added).

In case his feelings are not clear, let’s consider one last quotation:

We should throw the epistle of James out of this school [i.e., Wittenburg], for it doesn’t amount to much. It contains not a syllable about Christ. Not once does it mention Christ, except at the beginning. I maintain that some Jew wrote it who probably heard about Christian people but never encountered any. Since he heard that Christians place great weight on faith in Christ, he thought, “Wait a moment! I’ll oppose them and urge works alone.” This he did.88

Regardless of Luther’s ultimate position on the book of James (plus Hebrews, Jude, and Revelation), his own words and actions are clearly at odds with the idea of “self-authenticating” Scripture—unless, that is, each person may decide for himself which books authenticate themselves! If Calvin implies that the authenticity of the canon is as plain as the nose on your face, then Luther suggests you go get a nose job and cut out the parts you don’t like!

Let’s move along now to our tabernacle (25), to a somewhat conflicting statement from that same reformer. We saw Martin Luther King, Jr., kneeling before an image of a church upon the tabernacle. He was chatting with our winged eagle hovering over his head. The image serves to remind us of these words of Luther’s:

We concede . . . that the papacy has God’s Word and the office of the apostles, and that we received Holy Scripture, Baptism, the Sacrament, and the pulpit from them. What would we know of these if it were not for them?89

So here we see a father of the Reformation and champion of sola scriptura acknowledging the Catholic Church’s role in giving us the canon—though he believed that by his time the Church had lost its authority and needed some correction from him, indeed even regarding the contents of that same canon. We have noted how little he thought of James, Hebrews, and Jude, and will see next chapter that he outright denied the canonicity of seven books of the Old Testament. But here at our tabernacle location we remember that one of the fathers of Protestantism acknowledged that the Catholic Church gave us Sacred Scripture.

What a strange scene that was, in the background behind the crucifix (26). The baseball had toppled three stacks of books. The crowd yelled, “Foul ball!” while the umpire fired back, “It’s in!” We did not provide a source image here because this has become a common, modern Protestant view of the canon. Protestant theologian R. C. Sproul is a proponent of this view, which he sums up like this:

Roman Catholic view: The Canon is an infallible collection of infallible books. Classical Protestant view: The Canon is a fallible collection of infallible books.90

Protestants who subscribe to this notion believe that the books of Scripture they see as infallible and the sole guide to faith, morals, and salvation might have been selected in error. To admit that the Holy Spirit granted the Church inerrancy in forming the canon would raise the thorny question of why he would let them go astray in other fundamental matters, such as Christ’s Real Presence in the Eucharist or the primacy of the papacy. It puts Protestants in the logical quandary of trusting inspired Sacred Scripture to be the sole rule of faith without any assurance that the books of our Bible in fact are inspired Sacred Scripture.91

One need only read Eusebius, the father of Church history, to see that as the canon was gradually forming in the early centuries there was a fair degree of agreement—and substantial disagreement—over its contents. Here is where our three stacks come in. Writing in the early fourth century, Eusebius classified three categories of books: 1) recognized, 2) disputed, and 3) spurious (not genuine).

Recognized books included “the holy tetrad of the Gospels,” the Acts of the Apostles, the epistles of Paul, the first epistles of John and Peter, and the Revelation of John (though he noted that he would need to argue for the inclusion of Revelation, and that some groups also recognized Hebrews). Disputed books included the Epistle of James, Jude, 2 Peter, and 2 and 3 John. Spurious books included, among others, the Acts of Paul, the Shepherd (of Hermas), the Apocalypse of Peter, the letter “called of Barnabas,” and the “so-called Teachings of the Apostles.”92

Here again we see that Scripture was not clearly and completely “self-attesting” to our Christian forebears, and yet we do see beginning to form what we know today as the New Testament. More than a thousand years later Luther would reignite in a big way the dispute about “disputed” books, and in recent times a growing popular interest in apocryphal writings, spurred on by Hollywood conspiracy theories about “lost Christianities,” has challenged the Church’s rejection of spurious books such as the gnostic Gospel of Thomas. Here is a taste of a “saying of Jesus” reported in that book:

Simon Peter said to him, “Let Mary leave us, for women are not worthy of Life.”

Jesus said, “I myself shall lead her in order to make her male, so that she too may become a living spirit resembling you males. For every woman who will make herself male will enter the kingdom of heaven.”93

So much for the idea that a crusty, patriarchal early Church squelched a more “enlightened” version of Jesus! So much, too, for the concept of a “fallible collection of infallible books.” How can we know for sure that a rejected, spurious book was a not “false negative” that truly belongs in the canon? How can we know that a recognized book was not a “false positive” that is not truly inspired? How can we know that the dispute over the disputed books was not resolved in error? If we can’t know these things, then how can we put our trust in Scripture?

“Classical Protestants” reply that the Church could have made a mistake in its selection of the canon, but in fact it did not. But who are we to pass judgment? Who are we to say for sure that the early Church got it right? Some will assert that we can be sure it was correct because some kind of a special providence must have been at work, making sure that Christianity got the right Bible.94 Of course, this is what Catholics believe—but we believe it not out of wishful thinking but because Christ established a Church and sent his Holy Spirit to protect it from error as it selected the canon.

Moving to our right, you saw the angel there (27) point to your chest and ask you to stop looking around the church but to look into your heart instead. When you looked down at your heart, you were surprised to see the odd image of a minister with a cowboy hat, hearing a confession. Hear now this confession:

The authority of the Holy Scripture, for which it ought to be believed and obeyed, depends not upon the testimony of any man or Church; but wholly upon God (who is truth itself), the author thereof; and therefore it is to be received, because it is the Word of God. We may be moved and induced by the testimony of the Church to an high and reverent esteem for the Holy Scripture . . . yet, notwithstanding, our full persuasion and assurance of the infallible truth and divine authority thereof, is from the inward work of the Holy Spirit, bearing witness by and with the Word in our hearts.95

Here we see another version of Calvin’s idea of a “self-authenticating” Scripture, this time through an appeal to our emotions. It says we just know that the Bible is truly God’s inspired, authoritative word because when we read it the Holy Spirit provides confirmation in our hearts.

Yet are not millions of good people’s hearts also moved by the Book of Mormon, the Qur’an, and other books that proclaim themselves the inspired words of God? In fact, Mormonism and Islam both assert that readers of their holy books can receive interior assurance of their divine inspiration just by reading them. No Protestant would say that these other scriptures are also God’s inspired word; how do we know that our hearts are telling us the truth but Mormon and Muslim hearts are misguided? In that same vein, would the Holy Spirit move some of us to find some books canonical and others to find them inauthentic (à la Luther)?

The minister’s heart attack in the image is simply our reminder of the fallibility of the human heart. We know all too well that as our physical hearts can fail us in our quest for perfect health, so too can our spiritual “hearts”—even with the purest intentions—fail us in our quest for perfect truth. That’s why we have cardiologists—and the Church!

At the low altar (28), we saw that what appeared to be a dusty ancient tome was actually a modern e-book reader. The screensaver, you’ll recall, showed a great dam crossed by a long train of asses. Well, the book displayed in that e-book reader happens to be the New Testament. The dust and cobwebs represents the fact that we are referring to a New Testament canon proclaimed a long time ago, in the year A.D. 382. The dam and the asses serve to remind us of the name of Pope St. Damasus, the man who provided that ancient list of the canon.

We saw represented in the three stacks of books behind the crucifix (26) that about fifty years before the time of Damasus’s decree that Eusebius wrote of the recognized, disputed, and spurious books. Wise and devout Church Fathers were not in complete agreement on the exact contents of the New Testament canon. Writing in the third and fourth centuries, St. Clement of Alexandria, for example, considered the Epistle of Barnabas and the Apocalypse of Peter to be canonical books, while Sts. Cyril of Jerusalem and Gregory Nazianzus did not include the Apocalypse of John (Revelation). St. Athanasius listed our current canon of twenty-seven books.96

Who, then, would decide definitively the books of the New Testament canon? Christ’s Church would of course, through its God-given authority and infallibility, and Pope St. Damasus was the first leader of that Church to provide the list of our present canon. The dust and cobwebs in our image represent how ancient his list of the canon is (1,631 years old as I type), and the modern e-book reader reminds us it is the same list we use this day. Just download the New Testament as an e-book and you’ll see for yourself!

Consider, too, that Pope Damasus was not a prolific theologian and Doctor of the Church, as were Athanasius and Gregory Nazianzus. Yet in his special role as successor of Peter and Christ’s vicar on earth, he was graced with the authority to select the canon, which he did at the request of the Council of Rome. Other popes and councils would reaffirm this same canon. Pope St. Innocent I, for example, approved the complete biblical canon of both the Old and New Testaments in A.D. 405. Our last two locations will call to mind a few of the most important councils.

So, now we move on to our last two locations. We need to find out why this area is bristling with loaded cannons!

We moved up to the paten (29), and saw upon it two copies of the New Testament. After gazing into the paten itself, we made out those three large animals—two cows and a hippo. Our cows were in silk, as our simple reminder that we’re talking here about two councils. We also saw right behind the cows a hippo pushing a cart on top of a hedge. So, these images will remind us that at the local Councils of Hippo in A.D. 393 and of Carthage in 419, the same list of twenty-seven canonical books for the New Testament was approved. St. Augustine, the bishop of Hippo at the time, presided over the Council of Carthage and would list this canon in his own writings shortly after.

On now to our last location! At the site of the chalice (30), we saw a golden cannon and medieval priests holding a banner that said, “Have you tried Dentyne gum?” (Trident gum was also an acceptable option.) Well the time has come to chew on this one. Some Protestants claim that the Catholic canon of the Bible was not actually declared until the time of the Council of Trent (1545-1563). But our tour through the sanctuary of the First Catholic Bible Church has shown us that the Bible, in its canon as we know it today, had been around a good 1,200 years before that Tridentine Council. (Ergo, the tried Dentyne gum/Trident gum phrase. The Latin name for what we now call the city of Trent was Tridentinum.)

The antiquity of the complete New Testament canon was evidenced, for example, by that most orthodox of Church Doctors, the “Doctor of Orthodoxy,” St. Athanasius, in the year 367. His New Testament “table of contents” reads just like our own. Further, we saw that popes including St. Damasus in 382 and St. Innocent in 405 had identified the same books in their writings.

Well then, what about Trent? The canon of Scripture had been established and used around the world for over a millennium. No serious challenge to it came from within Christendom until the Reformation. Details will come in the following chapter, but let us note for now that at the ecumenical Council of Trent, the Church discerned the need, for the first time, to define and defend the complete canon of both testaments of Scripture.

85 John Calvin, Institutes on the Christian Religion, 1.7.2.

86 Luther, The Works of Luther, vol. 35 (St. Louis: Concordia, 1965), 362.

87 Luther, The Works of Luther, vol. 34 (St. Louis: Concordia, 1965), 317.

88 Luther, The Works of Luther, vol. 54 (St. Louis: Concordia, 1965), 424.

89 Luther, The Works of Luther, vol. 24 (St. Louis: Concordia, 1965), 304.

90 R. C. Sproul, Essential Truths of the Christian Faith (Tyndale House Publishers: Carol Stream, IL, 1992), p. 22.

91 This position also creates a slippery slope that leads to a lack of confidence in the content of the books themselves. Sproul even notes this when he recognizes “the Liberal Critical View” that the canon is “a fallible collection of fallible books.”

92 Eusebius, Ecclesiastical History, xxiv, p. 257.

93 Gospel of St.Thomas, 114. James M. Robinson (ed.), The Nag Hammadi Library, revised edition (HarperCollins, San Francisco, 1990), as cited in http://www.gnosis.org/naghamm/gthlamb.html.

94 As a popular Protestant Internet resource puts it: “God’s providence gave us the 27-book New Testament Canon, not the church. God, not men, decided the canon. This providence does not mean that church leaders were inspired in their selecting the canon, only that God had his eye on the scriptures the whole time and brought about His will to form the Bible we see today!”, http://www.bible.ca/canon.htm.

95 The Westminster Confession of Faith, I, 4–5, http://www.reformed.org/documents/wcf_with_proofs/. This confession of the Church of England from 1646 is professed in whole or in part by the Church of England, the Church of Scotland, and Presbyterians worldwide. It declares in chapter 25, 6 that the pope is the Antichrist.

96 For a chart summarizing the early development of the New Testament canon, I refer readers to Shane Kapler, The God Who Is Love: Explaining Christianity from Its Center (St. Louis: Out of the Box Records, 2009), pp. 221–224.

Memorable Quotation 11

A System of Loci That’s Good for 500 Reasons

Dear Professor Vost,

Three weeks ago I was on a trip and I found your book in a bookstore and managed to read or survey more than half of it. I have been learning Chinese for a year and a half, so I am not new at memorizing things, and I have tried many different methods. Memorizing vocabulary in Chinese is maybe much more difficult than a list of things in your mother tongue, since it involves a character (among many thousands), meaning, grammar, and pronunciation (in Mandarin a two-syllable word can have twenty different intonations). So this week I have mixed the method of the places or “loci” with my own methods, with the following results:

1. In very short-term memory, increase of 100 percent.

2. In short-term memory (like five hours), increase of maybe 400 or 500 percent.

3. In five days memory, I have increased much more. For instance, I can study on Monday, practice a few minutes (less than ten) every day, and take a test a week later with excellent results. Before, I only dared to study the day before, lest I forget everything.

Now I can repeat, for instance, the vocabulary of a lesson (thirty to forty words) in the right order, write the character, and remember the intonation. I have used it only for two lessons and a half, but I am really surprised. I still have to improve a lot and sharpen the method. I heard about the method of Ricci, which is somehow famous here in the East, and tried to apply it last year, but I didn’t understand it well. That’s all for now. Thank you for your attention.

That was from an e-mail I received in March of 2010 from one Guillermo, then a student and now a priest. In the years since the publication of Memorize the Faith! in 2006, I’ve been graced with many e-mails, letters, phone calls, and social media postings from people who have applied the methods of the Catholic art of memory to all sorts of things. A teacher in Florida adapted the methods to teach Spanish vocabulary to his high school students. Two different men are applying the methods to learn Latin. One man told me the methods helped him pass his legal bar exam. (They helped me pass my own psychology licensing exam.) One home-schooling mom wrote that she was able to apply the memory methods to help her five-year-old learn numbers, letters, shapes, and colors. Of course, you’ve already met young John Paul, the “boy who speaks papal,” and Brother Seraphim, the monk with the memory elephant, helicopter, flying saucer, and perhaps someday, the Hagia Sophia!

Guillermo is one of those dedicated students of memory with whom I’ve developed an ongoing correspondence. In September of 2011 he shared with me an Excel spreadsheet detailing his “big house”—a system of memory locations built into a depiction of a five-story house with ten rooms per story. Within the rooms are particular locations; if he should choose to place ten locations within each room (as we have done for the façade, each nave, and the sanctuary herein), his house would hold 500 reasons—or all 266 popes with room for perhaps another millennium or two of them!

This is clearly the most elaborate system of loci I’ve seen put to use. The point is not that you will need such an elaborate system, but to give a taste of the awesome potential of these ancient memory methods. When Guillermo mentions Ricci, by the way, he refers to Jesuit Fr. Matteo Ricci, who used memory methods to help evangelize the Chinese in the sixteenth century.97 I’ll note, too, that Fr. Guillermo, is, as I write, still learning Chinese. He prefers me not to refer to him as a “memory master,” so I’ll ask that we remember this self-described “beginner” in the Catholic art of memory in our prayers.

97 See Jonathan Spence, The Memory Palace of Matteo Ricci (Haimondsworth, U.K.: Penguin, 1985).

Chapter 12

Apocrypha Now

These are books which are not held equal to the Sacred Scriptures and yet are useful and good for reading.98

Martin Luther, Preface to the Apocrypha in his Bible translation of 1534

The Principles of the Society exclude the circulation of those books or parts of books which are usually termed Apocryphal.99

The British and Foreign Bible Society, 1827

The word apocrypha derives from the Greek for “hidden away,” and since the time of the Protestant reformers it has also developed connotations of “questionable” and “spurious.” Indeed, many Protestants, rejecting as noncanonical books of Scripture they call apocryphal but which Catholics call deuterocanonical, would prefer that these books had remained “hidden away” forever!

These books were made part of the Old Testament canon at the end of the fourth century but then became subject to dispute in the sixteenth, when the reformers removed them from the canon. Today, accordingly, Catholic Old Testaments have forty-six books but Protestant Old Testaments have only thirty-nine, omitting Tobit, Judith, Baruch, 1 and 2 Maccabees, Wisdom, and Sirach, plus parts of Daniel and Esther. We’ll get to know them better soon, along with the reasons why some reject them (and why we should cherish them).

Welcome to the Apocrypha Now!

Now we embark on our last tour in this book. Let’s strive to make it most memorable. At the right door to the nave (location 31), you’re amazed to see it guarded by 450 ancient Greek soldiers. Are you familiar with the movie 300, about the valiant stand at Thermopylae? There, in 480 B.C, 300 Greeks, mostly Spartans, held the pass for a time against an army of tens of thousands of Persians. Well, there they all are at the right nave door, and in fact they’ve been able to recruit another 150 soldiers!100

As you prepare to dip your hand into the right rear holy water font (32), you see you are joined by our now familiar trio of sixteenth-century reformers (Luther, Calvin, and Zwingli), along with a large crowd of ancient Jewish rabbis. As you prepared to sit in the right rear pew section (33), you see sitting there a scholar of ancient Greek. He’s holding a text and scratching his head, saying, “This is all Hebrew to me!” You notice as well a modern coffeemaker on the pew next to him and he brews you a cup. As your eye shifts to the right rear arch (34), you notice it’s adorned with a very straight stick made of solid gold. You notice its twelve markings and realize that it is a golden ruler.

98 The Jerome Biblical Commentary, vol. II, p. 524.

99 Ibid.

100 Whoa, Nelly! An image of 450 soldiers? How can we be sure that our image won’t contain maybe 437 or 462? Admittedly, once you get over a dozen or so it’s just too many items for our imaginations to count. Let’s do this: Imagine that a Spartan in the first row holds up a copy of the DVD for 300 and the Spartan to his immediate right holds up another copy of the DVD cover, but it is torn exactly in half. Just do the math (using mnemonic imagery logic) and 300 plus 150 will yield exactly 450 soldiers, courtesy of merely two!

No sooner do you turn to the right rear confessional (35), than do the doors burst open and a whole flock of sheep rushes out. You wonder where their shepherd is. Soon though, your gazed is directed higher, toward the right rear stained glass window (36). There you see a very disconcerting sight: some hooded pagans about to sacrifice a goat to demons.

Now you head to the right front pew section (37) and to a much holier scene. There you see the hand of God descend to save someone’s son who has been harassed by a crowd. At the left front arch (38) you see more gold—this time it’s a great stack of treasure. In fact, it protrudes through the church’s roof, as if reaching to heaven.

Next to last in our tour is the last station of the cross (39). There you see the great patriarch Abraham. You know it’s Abraham and not Moses because there’s a big “A” on his robe. You notice that Abraham is looking at a test he has taken, which, he’s happy to see, is marked with another large “A.”

On now to location 40, the right front stained glass window. Here you see a large gathering of ancient Jewish people. They are on their knees in a cemetery, praying for the dead, and you see the sun rising on the horizon.

Well then, do you have this last ten? Let’s make sure that you have these images, both forward and backward, and then we’ll proceed to draw pictures within our mind’s eyes that will provide these reason’s sources.

LOCATION

IMAGE

31.

Right door to nave

The 300 Spartans—and 150 more (The DVD cover and half of another)

32.

Right rear holy water font

Reformers with ancient rabbis

33.

Right rear pew section

Ancient texts “all Hebrew” to Greek scholar as he brews you some coffee

34.

Right rear arch

Golden ruler

25.

Right rear confessional booth

Sheep pour out. “Where’s the shepherd?”

36.

Right rear stained glass window

Pagans sacrificing to demons

37.

Right front pew section

God rescues son seated on the right

38.

Right front arch

Treasure stacked through roof to heaven

39.

Right front station of the cross

Abraham gets “A” on test

40.

Right front stained glass window

Jews pray for dead at sunrise

Apocrypha Now: The Sources Behind the Images

Now let’s give our imaginations a peek at the sources behind the images. How can we forget “The 300” (+150) stalwart Spartan soldiers guarding the right door to the nave (31), along with their copy and a half of the 300 DVD? Now we simply imagine that in addition to his sword and shield, each warrior carries a copy of the New Testament, in the original Greek, of course! And there inside the door, at the holy water font (32), was our trio of reformers surrounded by a crowd of ancient rabbis. How odd the first time through that we failed to notice they were all clad in their “jammies” (yes, pajamas).

Moving now to the right rear pew section (33) was the scholar of Greek befuddled by a text all in Hebrew. Remember how he said, “It’s all Hebrew to me?” and how he brewed you some coffee? Well, now we must imagine that right next to his seat is a churning and gurgling sea. He rolls up the scroll and stabs at the waves, and you’re surprised to see them turn still. At the site of the right rear arch (34) was that ramrod straight golden ruler. But now you yell out in pain as you admire it, sensing that something just bit your toe! You look down at your aching big toe as some strange furry critter scurries away.

Next, at the confessional on the right (35), we had all those sheep pouring out, running rampant without a shepherd. Next you notice a Jewish person emerging from behind them (you can tell from the yarmulke on his head), carrying a most succulent dish. Can you see the fragment steam rising from it, and smell its enticing aroma? Up and away on the right rear stained glass window (36) we saw those hooded pagans sacrificing a goat to demons. Now you notice that they’re all standing upon an enormous bearskin rug.

Next to the right front pew section (37) where the hand of God has reached down to rescue someone’s son who has been harassed by persecutors. How strange that after he’s been plucked away, nothing remains in the pew but a very large wisdom tooth? Now we move up to the right front arch (38), where you saw treasure stacked through the ceiling. You now notice, oddly enough, a man rummaging through it, casting gold and jewels aside, saying he lost some kind of rack. He says with an accent, “Zee rack was here!”

You spied in the right front station of the cross (39) a depiction of Abraham glorying in the “A” he’d received on the test. His happiness is soon interrupted, through, when he’s attacked by a swarm of bees. Not one to take such an assault lying down, he responds by smacking at them! Lastly we come to our right front stained glass window (40), where we saw Jewish men in prayer on their knees in the cemetery with the sun appearing on the horizon. Well, now these men are attacked by two swarms of bees, and as you might guess, they also smack at the bees!

Behold—you’ve done it! Let’s rehearse as needed to make sure you have both images at each and every location.

LOCATION

IMAGES

SOURCE

31.

Right door to nave

The 300 Spartans—and 150 more (The DVD cover and half of another)

Holding New Testaments

300 Septuagint citations, 150 deuterocanonical allusions

The New Testament

32.

Right rear holy water font

Reformers with ancient rabbis

All are in their pajamas

The Jewish Council that reformers agree with for OT canon rejects NT all together The Council of Jamnia

33.

Right rear pew section

Ancient texts “all Hebrew” to Greek scholar as he brews you coffee

Sea is stabbed with a scroll

Hebrew text of some deuterocanonicals found The Dead Sea Scrolls

34.

Right rear arch

Golden ruler

Something bit your toe!

A strange furry critter scurries away

“And what you hate, do not to anyone” (Tob. 4:15; cf. Matt. 7:12).

35.

Right rear confessional booth

Sheep pour out. Hey, “Where’s the shepherd?”

Jewish person carries dish

“And you will lead them like sheep that have no shepherd” (Judith11:10; cf. Matt. 9:36).

36.

Right rear stained glass window

People sacrificing to demons

Standing on bear rug

“For you provoked him who made you, by sacrificing to demons and not to God” (Bar. 4:7; cf. 1 Cor. 10:20).

37.

Right front pew section

God rescues son on the right

Giant wisdom tooth

“[For] if the righteous man is God’s son, he will help him, and will deliver him from the hand of his adversaries” (Wis. 2:18; cf. Matt. 27:43).

38.

Right front arch

Treasure stacked through the roof to heaven

Man looks for rack

“Lay up your treasure according to the commandments of the Most High, and it will profit you more than gold” (Sir. 29:11; cf. Matt. 6:19–20).

39.

Right front station of the cross

Abraham gets “A” on test

Then he smacks at bees

“Was not Abraham found faithful when tested, and it was reckoned to him as righteousness?” (1 Mac. 2:52; cf. Jas. 2:23).

40.

Right front stained glass window

Jews pray for dead at sunrise

Then they smack at bees, too

“Therefore, he made atonement for the dead, that they might be delivered from their sin” (2 Mac. 12:45; cf. Rev. 21:27).

Apocrypha Now: The Reasons Behind the Images

So why were “the 300” (and 150 more) guarding the right rear nave door (location 31)? And why were they holding New Testaments? Well, one Protestant argument for excluding the deuterocanonical books (as well as portions of Daniel and Esther) is that they claim these books are not cited by Christ nor his disciples within the New Testament. But even a Protestant scholar has found a good 150 allusions to these books within the New Testament. (You will come to remember seven of these allusions within this very chapter.)

But what about the 300? Well, when New Testament writers quote from the Old Testament—about 350 times—the great majority of those quotations (some 300) come from the Septuagint, the Greek translation of the Old Testament that contained the deuterocanonicals. In other words, when the New Testament quotes the Old Testament, about 85 percent of the time it’s quoting the “Catholic” Old Testament! Got all that?

To remember the meaning of our first image in a nutshell, recall that within the New Testament books that Protestants and Catholics agree on there are 300 quotations from the deuterocanonical-containing Septuagint, and 150 allusions to the deuterocanonical books themselves. If the “apocrypha” were not part of the Bible, it appears that word never made it to the New Testament authors!

Now on to the holy water font (32) crowded with both reformers and rabbis, all wearing what? Yes, their “jammies”—to remind us of the Jewish Council of Jamnia, late in the first century. Some Protestant writers argue that when Jewish leaders in the first centuries A.D. settled their official canon of what Christians call the Old Testament, they rejected the Septuagint used by Hellenistic Jews in favor of a shorter Hebrew canon. Their canon, they say, is thus in closer agreement with how the Jews themselves defined the Old Testament canon.

There are many problems with this argument, including doubts about whether there ever was a Council at Jamnia, and the fact that the Jewish canon continued to vary up to the fourth century. Most importantly, we must remember that the Jews rejected not only the canonicity of the Septuagint but of the entire New Testament! Why then should we make them the last word on the canon? Catholics, instead, base their canon on the authority of the Church that Christ built upon Peter.

Next we move to the right rear pew (33), where we saw that befuddled scholar of Greek trying to decipher an ancient Hebrew scroll. A generous gent, he brewed you some coffee as well, and then he stabbed a raging sea with the scroll. This somewhat violent image will help us remember another classic Protestant argument against the deuterocanonicals: namely, that we had only Greek versions of them instead of the more ancient Hebrew versions of all of the other Old Testament books.101 But in 1947, at Qumram on the West Bank, archeologists discovered the first batch of hundreds of ancient Jewish scrolls—the famous Dead Sea Scrolls—among the caves a mile or so inland from the Dead Sea. Among the findings were the books of Tobit and Sirach in Hebrew. Sirach has also been found in Hebrew in the ruins of the hilltop fortress of Masada, besieged by the Romans in A.D. 72.

Up on the right rear arch (34) you saw that golden ruler, and in our second run-through, well, some furry little critter bit your toe. Now you see that we refer to the book of Tobit (also called Tobias). As for the golden ruler, we read in Tobit 4:15, “And what you hate, do not to anyone.” If that sounds familiar, it is probably because it reminds you of the more eloquent, positive prescription that goes, “So whatever you wish that men would do to you, do so to them; for this is the law and the prophets” (Matt. 7:12).

Here then is one of those 150 New Testament allusions to a deuterocanonical text. For the rest of the chapter we’ll learn to memorize six more. Not only will those examples help strengthen your arguments for the canonicity of the deuterocanonical books, they’ll also (I hope) give you a taste of some of the wisdom to be found within them. These books truly are like hidden gems. Until recently, my own knowledge about several of them had been slim, but now I cherish them. Tobit, for example, is an intriguing mix of legend and storytelling with inspiring ethical exhortations to virtue and charity. It is also a paean to the value of the family.

It is time now for confession (35), where the Jew with the dish will remind us of Judith, and the sheep will remind us that in Judith it is written, “and you will lead them like sheep that had no shepherd” (11:10). Of Jesus it would later be said, “he had compassion on them because they were harassed and helpless, like sheep without a shepherd” (Matt. 9:36).

A real page-turner, Judith tells the fascinating story of a desperate Jewish town besieged by the mighty general Holophernes, who was laid low by the unmatched beauty, feminine wisdom, and heroic bravery of the widow Judith. You’ll have to check it out, but now we must move on.

You’ll recall the hideous sight depicted on the right rear stained glass window (36): hooded pagans sacrificing a goat to demons, with the whole scene taking place atop a great bear rug. This verse will show why we’ve remembered it: “For you provoked him who made you, by sacrificing to demons and not God” (Bar. 4:7). This verse echoed in these words of St. Paul to the Corinthians: “No, I imply that what pagans sacrifice they offer to demons and not to God” (1 Cor. 10:20).

Baruch (hence, the bear rug) was one of the “minor” prophets who wrote shorter prophetic books. He was the scribe of the “major” prophet Jeremiah and includes within his book a letter attributed to Jeremiah. This book has been found only in Greek, but some of its language points to a Hebrew origin.102

On we go now to the right front pew section (37), where the hand of God rescued someone’s son from an angry crowd. Do you recall that after God whisked him away all that was left was a wisdom tooth? Now in our mnemonic vocabulary, a wisdom tooth means the book of Wisdom (also called the Wisdom of Solomon). And the verse: “[For if the righteous man is God’s son, he will help him, and will deliver him from the hand of his adversaries” (Wis. 2:18). Perhaps this calls to mind a taunt Jesus received while upon the cross: “He trusts in God; let God deliver him now, if he desires him; for he said, ‘I am the Son of God’” (Matt. 27:43). The son God rescued in our image turns out to be his only begotten Son.

St. James advises, “[I]f any of you lacks wisdom, let him ask God, who gives to all men generously and without reproaching, and it will be given him” (James 1:5). We would also be wise to acquaint ourselves with the book of Wisdom that God has provided to us so generously.103 In countless memorable phrases it beautifully personifies wisdom and exhorts us to eschew the folly of worldliness in favor of her. It also provides the forerunner of St. Paul’s First Letter to the Romans, in which he states that God “has been clearly perceived in the things that have been made” (1:19). This great foundation of the Catholic truth that reason leads to God was voiced in these earlier “words of wisdom,” so to speak: “For from the greatness and beauty of created things comes a corresponding perception of their Creator” (Wis. 13:5).

Next we move up to the right front arch (38). There was that great mound of treasure that burst through the ceiling toward heaven. And there too was that accented man, rooting around in the mound, saying “Zee rack was here!” “Zee rack” will remind us of the Book of Sirach. And here is one of the things Sirach wrote: “Lay up your treasure according to the commandments of the Most High, and it will profit you more than gold” (29:11). Do you hear the voice that Sirach heard echoed in Matthew 6:20: “Lay up for yourselves treasures in heaven”?

The Book of Sirach tells us that it is a translation of a book written in Hebrew and that the translator is one Jesus, who appears to be the son of Eleazar, who was the son of a great scribe and teacher name Sira (we get Sirach from Greek translation). The book itself has also been known historically as Ecclesiasticus, “the Church Book,” from the Greek word ecclesia for “church.” Your author could not help being fond of this book, knowing how St. Thomas Aquinas so frequently cites it in his Summa Theologica, but you needn’t take the word of even such a wise saint as he. You have the Church’s word that it is canonical. So just open its pages and revel in its practical wisdom—a most worthy companion to the book of Proverbs.

Our penultimate site is the last station of the cross at the right front of the nave (39). Here we noticed Abraham (remember the big “A” on his chest?) beaming at the “A” that he got on a test. We saw how he then was annoyed by a swarm of bees and started to smack them. Now let’s see why. “Was not Abraham found faithful when tested, and it was reckoned to him as righteousness?” (1 Mac. 2:52). If you’ll forgive the sloppy wordplay, I feel confident than whenever you imagine a biblical figure smacking bees you’ll know we’re referring to one of the books of the Maccabees! James 2:23 alludes to this verse: “And the scripture was fulfilled which says, “Abraham believed God, and it was reckoned to him as righteousness.”104

The books of the Maccabees are named after one Judas Maccabeus, a son of the priest Mattathias, who began the Jewish revolt in 167 B.C. against the Greek Seleucid Empire formed after the death of Alexander the Great in the early fourth century B.C. There are four books of the Maccabees, and the Church has defined the first two as canonical.105 They are books of gripping history, telling of the heroic virtues of Jews who would not waver for their faith in God despite atrocious oppression. See for example, the story of the seven brothers and their mother in 2 Maccabees 7. Come to think of it, 2 Maccabees is our next and final stop.

Finally now we reach the right front stained glass window (40). Here we saw the Jewish men kneeling in prayer in a cemetery as the sun rose, until they were set upon by two swarms of bees and had no choice but to smack at them. Behold now the verse that makes sense of this: “Therefore, he made atonement for the dead, that they might be delivered from their sin” (2 Mac. 12:45). If we read the verses that precede this one, we will see a group of Jewish soldiers praying that the sins of their fallen brothers might be forgiven. It is made clear that praying for the dead is not foolishness, but “a holy and pious thought.” Indeed, they take up as well a collection of silver to serve as a “sin offering.”

This last example is not another New Testament allusion but an emblem of why the reformers discarded these deuterocanonical books in the first place—the doctrines they preached were much too Catholic! Here we see prayers for the remissions of the sins of the dead, “taking account of the resurrection” (2 Mac. 12:43). Here we have prayers for the suffering in purgatory! Elsewhere Scripture tells us that “nothing unclean shall enter” the heavenly temple of the Lord (Rev. 21:17). The cleansing comes in purgatory, and those there need our prayers.

What About the Apocrypha Now?

The Church has placed the deuterocanonical books within the Old Testament Canon since the end of the fourth century, and they stayed nestled between the older texts of the Old Testament and the texts of the New Testament for all of Christendom for a good 1,100 years. Along came the Reformation, and by the time Luther produced his German biblical translation in 1534, those books were placed at the end of the Bible, with the statement we saw at this chapter’s start. These books, per Luther, were not indeed part of Scripture, though “useful and good for reading.”

About eleven centuries before, St. Jerome had some questions about the books’ canonicity, yet, great man that he was (he would later be named the “Doctor of Biblical Science”), he submitted his personal judgment to the authority of Christ’s Church. And so those books appear in his great Latin translation known as the Vulgate Bible.

Not only did Luther put his own judgment first by excluding the deuterocanonicals, recall from our previous chapter that he even considered excluding books from the canon of the New Testament, such as the Letter of James, which he notoriously called an “epistle of straw.” (James’s passages on the need for both faith and works did not mesh with the Reformation doctrine of “faith alone.”) Nonetheless, in 1534 the deuterocanonicals were still considered “good books” by Luther himself, and included as extras in the foundational Reformer’s Bible.

Move ahead now to 1647 in England, when the Presbyterian Westminster Confession declared that these books, “not being of divine inspiration, are no part of the Canon of Scripture and are of no authority in the Church of God, nor to be any otherwise approved, or made use of than other human writings.”106 In 1827, as we saw in the second quotation that started this chapter, the British and Foreign Bible Society decided “to exclude the circulation of those books or parts of books which are usually termed Apocryphal.”

In my teen years I happened to purchase a handsome copy of The Thompson Chain-Reference Bible, Fourth Improved Edition, based on the King James Version. It was published in 1964. Tobit, Judith, Wisdom, Sirach, Baruch, and the books of Maccabees are not in it. There is a drawing in there though that depicts books of the Old and New Testament along the banks of a “River of Inspiration.” The Old Testament River flows into a great rock before emerging into the New Testament River, and the rock is labeled “400 Silent Years.”

Did God remain silent during those 400 years before the days of Christ, or were the words of God silenced by a new tradition of men first published in the year 1534? The Catholic Church teaches that the latter is the case, and you have just memorized some of the reasons why.

101 For example, here is the second of a series of arguments against the canonicity of the deuterocanonicals on a modern Protestant “Interactive Bible” Web site: “Not one of them is in the Hebrew language, which was alone used by the inspired historians and poets of the Old Testament,” http://www.bible.ca/catholic-apocrypha.htm.

102 Aloysius Fitzgerald, F.S.C., in his chapter on Baruch in The Jerome Biblical Commentary (vol. 1, Ch. 37, p. 614), notes that a precise translation of the Greek in Baruch 6:71–72 would imply that the gold- and silver-plated pagan idols were clothed with both the marble and linen cloth, and that both were rotting. Of course, marble is not worn like clothing, and neither does it rot. A solution is suggested by considering that there is in fact a Hebrew word that can mean both “marble” and “linen.” This and other examples suggest that at least parts of Baruch were translated from an original Hebrew text.

103 If I might interject a personal note here, this is one of the deuterocanonicals with which your author has had some measure of familiarity and has profited thereby. In fleshing out St. Thomas Aquinas’s writings on the intellectual virtue and the gift of the Holy Spirit of Wisdom for my previous book, Unearthing Your Ten Talents, I found Wisdom invaluable. The same can be said for Sirach. In fact, the opening quotation from my aforementioned book that builds from the parable of the talents in Matthew 25 is this one: “The mind of the intelligent man will ponder a parable” (Sir. 3:29).

104 This phrase first appears in the Bible in Genesis 15:6.

105 Ancient Church Fathers attesting to their canonicity include Clement of Alexandria, Hippolytus, Tertullian, Origen, Cyprian, Eusebius, Aphraates, Jerome, Augustine, and Theodoret, The Jerome Biblical Commentary, II, p. 462.

106 Cited in The Jerome Biblical Commentary, vol. II, p. 524.

Memorable Quotation 12

How the Catholic Art of Memory Seconds That Emotion

But memory takes in an event that is past as though it stayed ever-present in the soul as an idea and as an emotional effect on us, so this event can be very effective for providing for the future.

St. Albert the Great107

The human memory works naturally in connection with so many other powers of the human soul. The events we remember start with the information that comes in through our senses, such as hearing and vision. The powers of the imagination then come into play, creating images that represent things we have seen and heard, even when they are no longer present.

Then the powers of the memory hold on to those images and add temporal component. Memory places these images in their chronological context as events from some time in the past. Memory works with our rational, intellectual capacities when we devise specific means and strategies to recall and retrieve information, such as when we employ the Catholic art of memory. But memory is not only in our eyes, and our ears, and our brains, and our minds, it resides in our hearts as well.

As St. Albert notes, the memories we retain in our souls do indeed have “an emotional effect on us.” For a simple, dramatic example, consider what psychologists call “flashbulb memories.” Depending on your age, where were you when JFK was shot, when the space shuttle Challenger exploded, or when the towers came down on 9/11? Chances are you remember those moments as if your mind had taken an instant, indelible photograph of the event and of your surroundings at the time. Events that have a powerful emotional impact on us tend to be the most memorable. The downside of this effect is the emotional distress experienced by victims of trauma who can’t let go of the bad memories. But there is a very positive side as well to the emotional impact of good memories.

As we practice the Catholic art of memory, we purposefully create striking images that create an emotional impact as a means to remember facts and events that themselves should stir our emotions in a positive way. When we “memorize the reasons,” we are not just memorizing points to win arguments. We are memorizing the great truths and events of salvation. Our memories and reasons for the papacy and the Church, the Marian dogmas, and the relation between Scripture and Tradition treat of the unparalleled acts of love and wisdom of Christ, his Mother, his apostles, and of his adopted sons and daughters who established his Church on earth.

Whenever we employ the Catholic art of memory, it should speak not only to our minds but to our hearts as well, touching our emotions, filling us with gratitude and awe for all that God has given us. Our memories will then become “very effective for providing for the future,” providing sound knowledge and burning desire to spread and defend the Faith.

107 From St. Albert, On the Good, tract 4, question 2, “On the Parts of Prudence,” cited in Carruthers, The Book of Memory, p. 269.

Conclusion

On Remembering Truth, Beauty, and Goodness

The practice of goodness is accompanied by spontaneous spiritual joy and moral beauty. Likewise, truth carries with it the joy and splendor of spiritual beauty. Truth is beautiful in itself.

Catechism of the Catholic Church (2500)

Within the pages of a modest tome like this one we obviously can’t cover and remember every reason for every element of the hope that lies within us. There is so much more we can and ought to remember—for example, the reasons behind our belief in that “summit and source of ecclesial life,”108 the holy Eucharist itself. Indeed, that is a topic that may warrant a mnemonic cathedral of its own someday—perhaps a Church of the Blessed Sacrament. In fact, the good Lord willing (James 4:15), we hope to provide you with just such additional memory aids in the not too distant future. Downloadable “memory modules” will address a whole new series of “top ten reasons” for many other beliefs that we cherish about the existence of God, the veneration of saints, the sacraments, purgatory, faith and works, and more. So stay tuned!

But still, I think we’ve gotten off to a good start in applying the Catholic art of memory to the Catholic art of apologetics, since we’ve addressed at least a few little things of some great importance—namely, the papacy and the Church, the Blessed Virgin Mary, and the Bible and Tradition, or, from another perspective, truth, beauty, and goodness.

Truth

Nothing but truth can satisfy the intellectual strivings of human beings, who are blessed by God with reflective and rational souls. Our capacity to know truth is one of the ways we were made in the image of God. In the tour of our mnemonic St. Peter’s Cathedral we memorized forty reasons why we believe, as St. Paul tells us, that the Church is the pillar and bulwark of the truth, and that, as Jesus said, the powers of death shall not prevail over that Church (or that truth).

Classical philosophers tell us that truth is a correspondence between belief and reality, between what we think is true and what really is. Christ literally is the Truth, with a capital “T,”109 and he has also provided a means for us to find the truths necessary for our salvation, through the Church he established. Centuries later, sons of his Church, including Sts. Albert and Thomas Aquinas, honed the methods for retaining these truths in our memories. These are the methods we’ve applied in these pages. We must remember though, in sharing these truths with our separated Christian brethren, we should also acknowledge the important truths that we already share in common, most importantly, Truth himself! Our goal should be to share with them “with gentleness and reverence” that fullness of truth of the Catholic Church he established, and the 2,000 years full of reasons for the hope that is in us.

Beauty

St. Thomas tells us that that God is supremely beautiful, and that beauty is characterized by wholeness or integrity, by harmony or proportion, and by claritas—radiance, brilliance, or illumination. The beauty within creatures derives from their participation or sharing in the light of God’s divine beauty.110

Pope Pius XII wrote that “the human body is, in its own right, God’s masterpiece in the order of visible creation.”111 Our great memory master, Albert the Great, wrote seven centuries before that “in heaven we shall behold not her image in marble or on canvas, but her own most beautiful soul and body. We shall gaze on her sweet countenance, and its beauty shall ravish us throughout eternity.”112 And speaking of the claritas or radiance that Albert’s great student St. Thomas considered so central to beauty, Albert would write as well that she is “the dawn of all grace unto our glory—the dawn rising into the fullness of grace and yet growing even into the perfection of day.”113 But who is the “her” and the “she?” Blessed Mary, of course, the exemplar of beauty whose dogmas we stored in the mnemonic Cathedral of Notre Dame.

God uses his Blessed Mother’s holy beauty to help draw us to him, for her created beauty reflects the creator. Beauty stirs our minds and our hearts—and also our memories! Notice that as we have practiced this Catholic art of memory, our locations have been based on beautiful churches befitting houses of God. Our images too should be striking (if not always strictly beautiful), for we tend not to remember the mundane. Indeed, one fifteenth-century memory master, Peter of Ravenna, recommended using images of beautiful women as mnemonic aids—begging the pardon of “chaste and religious men!”114

As you have surely seen by now, beautiful and effective mnemonic imagery need not at all entail anything to offend the “chaste and religious.” Our goal in this book has been to use beautiful images to retain beautiful truths, especially where those truths concern the woman who was “blessed,” “full of grace,” and surely full of beauty.

Goodness

As beings made in God’s image we also seek to obtain and to do the good, through the exercise of the will. We read in Scripture that when God made the world, he declared it “good,” (Gen. 1:4, 9, 12, 18, 21, 25). Indeed, after the creation of man, he declared everything “very good” (Gen. 1:31). And speaking of goodness, what is “the good book?” The Bible itself, of course, the subject of this book’s Part III, “The First Catholic Bible Church.”

If we come to understand that Bible as God’s own very good gift to us through the workings of his Church, we will be in the best possible situation to absorb and pass on the full measure of the good book’s goodness, not “as a matter of one’s own interpretation” (2 Pet. 1:20) but according to the infallible teaching magisterium of the Catholic Church, made infallible by the guidance Christ promised through the Holy Spirit.

From Memorizing the Reasons to Living Their Lessons

As we near this book’s end, I hope you stand better prepared to give a good many reasons for the true, beautiful, and good hope that is in you. We must bear in mind, though, that for most of us the short-term memory capacity is about seven pieces of information. Now, in this book we’ve stored 120 reasons and another 120 sources to boot. (Some of you more ambitious souls may be itching to dig into the appendix to find out how to lock in the chapter and perhaps even verse numbers as well!) Our hope, then, is to retain this information over time in the stores of our nearly limitless long-term memories. With so much to retain, we must again recall that repetitio est mater memoriae—“repetition is the mother of memory.”

If you master this material and weeks or months go by without rehearsing it, much of the detail will likely be lost, but you will also find that when you return to this book again, look at the images, study the illustrations and tables, repeat the tours, it will all come back to you in a jiff! The more you return to it, the more you practice, the more you will retain, and the quicker it will all come back.

If you plan to use the information in this book to share the reasons with someone about a particular subject, perhaps with a friend who objects to the papacy or who just doesn’t understand why Catholics make such a fuss about Mary, be certain, if the situation permits, to rehearse and refresh those specific parts of the relevant memory cathedrals beforehand. They are so rich in material it will take some time to completely master them. Feel free to embellish them with additional images for new reasons you may know or come to find in your studies.

The images here are but a start as you embark on this unique, apologetic art. So memorize the reasons for the hope that is in you, and develop in your mind great mnemonic sinew.

But be careful, too, not to win an argument at the expense of losing a soul. We must not forget that St. Peter ends his stirring call to apologetics with the words “yet do it with gentleness and reverence” (1 Pet. 3:15). And we must also continually keep ourselves open to God’s graces and do our own parts to live the moral lessons Christ has passed on through his Church. We must never forget the first pope’s next verse either: “[A]nd keep your conscience clear, so that, when you are abused, those who revile your good behavior in Christ may be put to shame” (1 Pet. 3:16).

If we’re going to talk the talk of God and his Church to others, then we must walk the walk of God and his Church before them. St. James exhorts us to “be doers of the word, and not hearers only, deceiving yourselves” (1:22). The Beloved Disciple sums it all up for us like this: “Little children, let us not love in word or speech but in deed and in truth” (1 John 3:18). So indeed, I pray that we will steep ourselves in the truths of the Church, memorize the reasons for the hope that is in us, and lovingly share those truths with our brothers and sisters in Christ, in our words and in our deeds.

108 CCC 1324.

109 In St. Thomas Aquinas’s words: “Truth is found in the intellect according as it apprehends a thing as it is; and in things according as they have being conformable to an intellect. This is to the greatest degree found in God. For His being is not only conformed to His intellect, but it is the very act of His intellect; and His act of understanding is the measure and cause of every other being and of every other intellect, and He Himself is His own existence and act of understanding. Whence it follows not only that truth is in Him, but that He is truth itself, and the sovereign and first truth,” Summa Theologica, I-I, q. 16, a. 5.

110 See St.Thomas, Commentary on the Divine Names.

111 Pope Pius XII’s Allocution to Sporting Associations, delivered in Rome on May 20, 1945, as cited in Robert Feeney’s A Catholic Perspective: Physical Exercise and Sports (U.S.: Aquinas Press, 1995), p. 28.

112 Cited in Saint Albertus Magnus (Racine, WI: St. Catherine’s Press, 1938).

113 Albert the Great, De Naturi Boni.

114 Rossi, Paolo, Logic and the Art of Memory: The Quest for a Universal Language (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2000), 22.

Appendix A

Glossary of Mnemonic Source Images

Likenesses of things [rerum] are formed when we enlist images that present a general view or summation of the matter with which we are dealing; likenesses of words are established when the record of each single name or word is kept by an image.

St. Albert the Great, De Bono (On the Good)115

SOURCE

IMAGE

Matthew

Winged man

Mark

Winged lion

Luke

Winged ox

John

Eagle

Acts

Ax

Romans

Roman

1 Corinthians

1 column

2 Corinthians

2 columns

Galatians

Galoshes

Ephesians

Beret (Parisians)

Philippians

Person flipping

Colossians

Colossus of Rhodes

1 Thessalonians

The “Salonian”

2 Thessalonians

2 “Salonians”

1 Timothy

Timmy & Lassie

2 Timothy

2 Timmies & Lassie

Titus

Titan

Philemon

“Philly man”

Hebrews

He brews (coffee)

James

Games

1 Peter

1 rock

2 Peter

2 rocks

1 John

A John you know

2 John

John and twin

3 John

John triplets

Jude

Jeweled

Apocalypse

Apollo rocket

Clement of Rome

Clementine orange

Ignatius of Antioch

Igniting flame

Irenaeus of Lyon

Iron

Shepherd of Hermas

Shepherd

Polycarp

Many carp

Cyprian of Smyrna

Sipping from cup

Tertullian

Turtle

St. Augustine

Augustus Caesar

St. Jerome

Jerry (the mouse)

Clement of Alexandria

Orange + Alexander the Great

C. of Constantinople

Constantine statue

Council of Lyon

Lions

St. Thomas Aquinas

Huge Dominican

Council of Florence

Florists

Calvin

Calvin (& Hobbes)

Luther

Martin Luther King, Jr.

Council of Hippo

Hippo

Council of Carthage

Cart/hedge

Pope St. Damasus

Dam/asses

Tobit

Your toe gets bit

Judith

Jew with dish

Wisdom

Wisdom tooth

Sirach

“Zee rack”

Baruch

Bear rug

1 Maccabees

Smacking bees

2 Maccabees

Smacking two swarms of bees

115 Carruthers, The Book of Memory, p. 272.

Appendix B

A Method for Nailing the Numbers

I believe that they who wish to do easy things without trouble and toil must previously have been trained in more difficult things.

Marcus Tullius Cicero, Ad Herennium (For Herennius)116

And now we stand ready (or sit as the case may be) to apply the tasty icing to our apologetic cake (for those who can tolerate the calories and the effort.) This is a method for those who would like to know the sources for the scriptural reasons literally “chapter and verse.” Below is a centuries-old method for transforming numbers into consonant sounds, which in turn can be transformed into words, which in turn can be transformed into images, which in turn can be translated back into numbers, in their exact order! Sound a bit complicated? Well, not necessarily. Please look at this chart, then I’ll provide explanation.

NUMBER-LETTER CONVERSION CHART

DIGIT

CONSONANT SOUND(S)

BEGINNER’S REMINDER

1

t or d

A t or d has one straight downstroke.

2

n

We write an n in two motions.

3

m

We write an m with three motions.

4

r

R is the last letter in four.

5

l

The Roman numeral for 50 is L.

6

j, ch, sh, or soft g

J looks a bit like a 6 flipped around. Ch, sh and soft g are similar sounds.

7

k, hard c, or hard g

Flip 7 around, add a diagonal, and you’ve almost got a k. Hard c sounds the same and hard g is similar.

8

f or v

Imagine a figure skater doing a figure 8. V is a similar sound.

9

p or b

Flip the 9 around and there’s your P. B has a similar hard sound.

0

z or s of soft c

Z as in, well, zero. S is a similar (and very useful) sound. So is soft c.

Now let me show you how this is done. (I am literally going ask my wife to start calling out random digits and she doesn’t even know this yet!) Here we go:

“5 2 1 9 8 6 4 8 2 5 1 7 6 9 7 8 2 2 4 3 9 6 1 4 3”

Okay, those are the first twenty-five digits she called out. Now, when I taught psychology at the University of Illinois in Springfield, on the nights I taught about memory I would instruct our class to take turns calling out digits to construct a random fifty-digit number—a string twice as long as this one. We would write them down, and then I would say, “Okay, let’s take a few minutes to memorize this number string.” Yes, I’d get a few wide eyes and groans, but in three or four minutes, I’d tell them “All right, let’s see how we did. Please turn your papers over.” Then I’d walk up to the blackboard.117

Now, we’ll recall that a typical adult’s “short-term memory” capacity for a digit string like this is about seven digits (plus or minus two). With a group of thirty or forty students, we’d typically get up to about a dozen digits up on the blackboard before the room fell silent. At that point I would face away from the class and complete the digit string without my paper. Then I’d face away from the board toward the students and start calling them out from memory, “3 4 1 6 9, etc.” “No!” they’d exclaim, “Dr. Vost, you are getting them all wrong!” Then I would excuse myself for forgetting to tell them that I was reading the string to them backward! That was the icing on the little demonstration, but I proceeded to add one last sprinkle. I would finally ask someone to call out a number between one and fifty. “Thirty-two!” one might say, whereupon I might say, “eight!” Then I would go to the board and reveal that the thirty-second digit of that string was indeed an eight (or whatever number it actually was that day).

So how did I pull off this egregious display of such strange memory mastery? I used two memory methods that are both now at your disposal. First, I used this digit/number conversion code, breaking the digits into pairs of two. Let me demonstrate this with the actual random string that Kathy just called out to me. Here it is again:

“5 2 1 9 8 6 4 8 2 5 1 7 6 9 7 8 2 2 4 3 9 6 1 4 3.”

1. 52 = l and n. I make these then into the word and the image of a lion. (I could have used a loon, I suppose.)

2. 19 = t or d & p or b. I form an image of a child’s top. (I could have used a tab or Tabbie, or tub, or tube, or tip, or teepee, or other such words as well.)

3. 86 = f & j, ch, or sh. Now I think of a fish.

4. 48 = r & f or v. I make an image of a roof.

5. 25 = n & l. I imagine the Nile.

6. 17 = t or d & k or g. I picture my dog.

7. 69 = j, ch, sh, or soft g & p or b. I choose the word cheap and picture my friend Bob. (Well, that’s not very nice. I’ll use a jeep instead.)

8. 78 = k, hard c, or hard g & f or v. I think I’ll have some coffee.

9. 22 = n & n. That’s too easy. I’ll picture my favorite nun.

10. 43 = r & m. How about a ram?

11. 96 = p or b & j, sh, ch, or soft g. Anyone for a peach?

12. 14 = t & r. One of dad’s old lawn mowers was a Toro. Let’s use that.

13. 3 = m. Way too easy. I’ll just end with an image of me.

Are you still with me? Do you see how we have converted twenty-five random digits into thirteen simple, easily pictured words? We have cut the amount of information in half and we have given random, abstract information meaning. When I did this for my class with fifty-digit strings, I simply formed twenty-five simple words and images from whatever digits they tossed my way. And how did I know them in their exact order? Well, that’s where our primary memory methods come into play.

As I formed and memorized these words, I simply placed them in a system of memory locations (just like one of our mnemonic cathedrals) that I already knew better than the back of my hand. If someone called out maybe “Twenty-two!” to ask for the twenty-second digit for our shorter example above, I would just think of the last consonant sound in word I placed on the eleventh location (since I find it easiest to group the digits into pairs of two). In this case I’d call out “six,” as I thought back to the peach. If I had used one of our mnemonic cathedrals, that peach would have stood at the door to the left nave (location 11), of course!

So, there is a bit of work involved in this process when you learn it for the first time. I recall one day, though, when a friend of mine mastered the numbering system during a three-mile jog. (One thing we did to practice was to convert our friends’ phone numbers into silly phrases and images.) But, perhaps, you protest, you have better things to do with your time than memorize random numbers. Well, I certainly hope that you do, and now we can cut to the chase.

Thanks to the thirteenth-century Archbishop of Canterbury, Stephen Langston, our modern Bibles are structured in chapters. When the printing press was developed 300 years later, our Bibles came to include numbered verses as well. Now, chapters and verses happen to be numbers, so these numbers, of course, are amenable to our new memory methods. Using the digit/consonant conversion chart, any chapters and verses can be converted into simple words and visual images, which may then be inserted into the proper places of our mnemonic cathedrals. You have the tools now to do this yourself, but since you or someone else has purchased this book you’re reading, I’ll consider myself to have been duly hired on, and I’ll do this for you as well for all of the Bible verses we used in this book.

Please note these are optional additions to the images you have already learned. You may certainly try this at home, but I recommend that you do not do so until you have mastered the images for key ideas behind the reasons and their sources, and the number/consonant conversion chart. If you find yourself ready to do this, then add these additional images to the images you’ve already mastered, always bearing in mind that this last set of images carries the key to the chapters and verses when translated back into numbers. Further, you will likely find that memorizing the chapter numbers alone is quite sufficient to aid you in your apologetic efforts. You might pick just one or two verses at first to totally master with this new system, and then add others later, if you think if might be worth your while.

To give an example, at the end of the piazza of St. Peter’s Cathedral we saw that the church stood upon a massive rock (Peter). Joining us there was that winged man (St. Matthew the evangelist.) Now add one more image. For some strange reason the winged man has decided to wash a dish right there on the sidewalk, using not Joy, but Dove. Once you have mastered the number/consonant conversion system you will know in an instant that “dish: dove” can meaning nothing else than 16:18. The foundational verse for Christ’s establishment of the Catholic Church then is Matthew 16:18. Got it? Good!

If you don’t care for my images, please note the flexible nature of these images. You can feel free to substitute your own words and images, just so they follow the rules of the conversion chart.

A MASTER KEY TO KEY SCRIPTURAL CHAPTERS AND VERSES

LOCATION

ST. PETER’S SCRIPTURE VERSE IMAGES

NOTRE DAME SCRIPTURE VERSE IMAGES

FIRST CATHOLIC BIBLE CHURCH SCRIPTURE VERSE IMAGES

1.

End of sidewalk

Matthew 16:18

dish: dove

Jeremiah 31:22 (KJV)

mat: nun

2.

Top of steps

Matthew 16:19

dish: top

Matthew 1:23

tea: Nemo

1 Tim. 3:15

ma: tail

3.

Front central door

Luke 5:3–4 &10

eel: ham-oar & dice

Luke 1:35

tea: mail

2 Tim. 3:16

ma: dash

4.

Stained glass window

Luke 22:32

nun: moon

Luke 1:43

tea: rum

James 1:4

toe: ear

5.

St. Albert statue

John 21:17

gnat: dog

Galatians 4:4

oar: row

Acts 20:35

niece: mule

6.

Rose window

Acts 8:30–31

oaf: moose-meat

7.

St. Thomas Aquinas statue

Acts 15:7

dial: oak

2 Peter 1:20–21

oat: nose-newt

8.

Left bell tower

Acts 2:14

knee: tire

2 Peter 3:15–16

ma: towel-ditch

9.

Right bell tower

10.

Central spire

11.

Left door to nave

Matt.18:17–18

taffy: dog-dove

Matt. 13:55–56

tomb: lily-lash

Matt. 15:3

tool: Moe

12.

Left rear holy water font

Luke 10:16

toes: ditch

Matt. 27:55–56 (cf. Mark 15:40)

Nike: lily-lash; (tool: rose)

Romans 10:17

toes: tack

13.

Left rear pew section

Acts 13:3

dome: Amy

John 19:25

dip: kneel

Colossians 2:8

Anne: Effie

14.

Arch with St. Matthew symbol (man)

Acts 20:28

nose: nova

Acts 21:17

knot: tug

1 Cor. 11:2

Tut: inn

15.

Left rear confessional booth

2 Cor. 10:8

dice: oaf

Matt. 1:25

tee: kneel

2 Thess. 2:15

Anne: towel

16.

Left rear stained glass window

1 Timothy 3:15

ma: tail

1 Cor. 15:25

dowel: kneel

2 Thess. 3:6

Amy: itch

17.

Left front pew

Titus 1:5

tea: ale

Col. 1:15

oat: tail

2 Timothy 1:13

tea: time

18.

Arch with St. Mark symbol (lion)

Luke 1:34

toy: mare

2 Timothy 2:2

Anne: Annie

19.

Left front station of the cross

Matthew 23:2–3

Gnome: knee-ammo

20.

Left front stained glass window

Mark 16:15

Dutch: duel

21.

Altar rail on left

Matt. 28:20

Knife: noose

Romans 3:23

ammo: gnome

22.

Lectern

John 14:26, 15:26, 16:13

Tire: nacho; tile: nacho; Dutch: team

Romans 3:9–10

ammo: bee-toes

23.

Liturgical book on lectern

Luke 1:47

tea: rake

24.

Angel on left

Luke 1:28

tea: nova

25.

Tabernacle

Luke 1:35

tea: mule

26.

Crucifix

Luke 1:43

tea: ram

27.

Angel on right

Luke 1:44

tea: roar

28.

Front of low altar on right

Luke 1:56

tea: mush

29.

Paten on altar

30.

Chalice

31.

Right door to nave

John 17:11, 21–23

dove: dad, nut-gnome

1 Cor. 15: 51–52

towel: loot-lion

32.

Right rear holy water font

Cor. 1:10

tee: dice

Genesis 5:24

owl: Nero

33.

Right rear pew section

Ephesians 4:4–6

oar: row-itch

Hebrews 11:5

Tut: owl

34.

Arch with St. Luke symbol (ox)

Romans 16:15

touch: towel

2 Kings 2:12

Anne: Tina

Tobit 4:15 (cf. Matt. 7:12)

oar: towel; oak: tin

35.

Right rear confessional booth

1 Cor. 1:2

doe: inn

Matthew

27:52–53

nuke: loon-lamb

Judith 11:10

(cf. Matt. 9:36)

tut: ties; ape: match

36.

Right rear stained glass window

Mark 16:15

touch: towel

1 Thess. 4:17

oar: duck

Baruch 4:7 (cf. 1 Cor. 10:20)

Oar: cay; toes: nose

37.

Right front pew section

Ephesians 2:20

knee: nose

Revelation 12:1

tin: tee

Wisdom 2:18 (cf. Matt. 27:43)

Anne: taffy; nag: ram

38.

Arch with St. John symbol (eagle)

Acts 1:20

Oat: nose

Sirach 29:11 (cf. Matt. 6:19–20)

nape: dot; itch: tip-nose

39.

Right front station of the cross

1 Maccabees 2:52 (cf. James 2:23)

Anne: lion; Anne: gnome

40.

Right front stained glass window

2 Maccabees 12:45 (cf. Rev. 21:27)

tan: roll; net: nuke

Whew! Please let me emphasize again the completely optional nature of this technique. (That’s why it’s in the appendix, after all.) Admittedly, it comes close to the memory-for-words versus memory-for-things distinction. We do not want to overload our memories, yet there are large individual differences in people’s memory capacities. If you find you can handle this additional task, well then, be my guest! You may find though, that simply by rehearsing the material in the first twelve chapters and diligently reading your Bible, through the courtesy of the concentration and repetition inherent in natural memory, you may not need these advanced mnemonics.

In any event, I trust you’ve been given plenty of reasons and sources to chew on. I pray that you will digest them well, and that sometime in your future apologetic adventures you will find “I should have said” becomes “I did say!”

116 Cicero, Ad Herennium, p. 223.

117 Yes, when I taught from 1994 to 2004 we had those educational dinosaurs, not PowerPoint displays or “smart boards.” But technology is not everything. I enjoy those new tools and employed them when I taught again in 2012 but remain a blackboard fan as well. Come to think of it, old Aristotle, St. Albert, and St. Thomas all did a fair job as teachers long before computers—or blackboards. It seems they appealed to their students’ intellects—and memories!

Table of Contents

Foreword

Introduction

St. Peter’s Cathedral The Papacy and the Church

Rocky I: The Primacy of Peter

The Establishment and Authority of the Church

Rocky CCLXVI: Infallible, Not Impeccable

The Church Remarkable

Notre Dame: On the Blessed Virgin Mary

Full of Grace, Mother of God

Ever-Virgin

Conceived Without Sin

Assumed into Heaven

The First Catholic Bible Church

Ubi Est Sola Scriptura?

Traditions of Men and of God

Who Loaded the Canon?

Apocrypha Now

Conclusion

Appendix A

Appendix B