VINCENT Hodge (CL 18/8/02) has got it wrong when he uses Scripture as if it were the only source of moral authority.
The Church’s moral authority is based on Sacred Scripture and the living apostolic tradition. They build on one another in their understanding of the nature of sin and the need and means to overcome it by faith and repentance.
Jesus declares and St Paul teaches that ‘the immoral, the idolaters, adulterers, sexual perverts … are excluded from the Kingdom of God (Matt 19:17-19; 1 Cor 6:9). The laws of morality are inseparable from faith. It is this dual ‘obedience of faith’, that Paul starts and finishes with in Romans 1:5, 16, 26. This reciprocity commits conscience to consider its relationship to both faith and morals, ‘lest the cross of Christ be emptied of its power’ (1 Cor 1:17; 2 Cor 6:1-2).
Vincent’s use of Roman chapter 3 (as sin binds us all, faith is the door to God’s righteousness) in the context of his argument, intimates not a real but purely a formal freedom from sin and the notion that faith alone justifies our membership to the Church and her internal unity.
Vincent Hodge incorrectly applies 1 Cor 11:17, 20-21, 34 as relating the symbolism of the Eucharist, as being of the modern vulgarism ‘inclusiveness and sharing’ rather than the biblical expression ‘charity and unity’. This inclusive sharing is given as the pretext for opening up reception of the Eucharist to those outside the faith. Without a proper catechesis and commitment to the Church’s beliefs, morals and sacraments, this would be an empty ecumenical gesture, with the sublime sacrament becoming a gnostic symbol.
Paul’s address was to the Corinthian Christian community alone, not to those outside of it. The ‘Real Presence’ and the sacrificial nature of the ‘sacred meal’ they held in common belief.
Paul goes on to connect the immorality of their behaviour as it might affect their faith. He chides their dissent and factionalism and those who might be unworthily receiving the ‘body and blood’ of Christ as to ‘ … eats and drinks judgment upon themselves’ (1 Cor 1:11-34).
DOUG McCLARTY
Holland Park West, Qld
