So on Christmas Day I thought it would be fun to put up the old text of the Proclamation of the Nativity from the Roman Martyrology on my Patheos blog. Exalted felicitations of the day and all. Festive, you know? It reads like so:
The twenty-fifth day of December.
In the five thousand one hundred and ninety-ninth year of the creation of the world
from the time when God in the beginning created the heavens and the earth;
the two thousand nine hundred and fifty-seventh year after the flood;
the two thousand and fifteenth year from the birth of Abraham;
the one thousand five hundred and tenth year from Moses
and the going forth of the people of Israel from Egypt;
the one thousand and thirty-second year from David’s being anointed king;
in the sixty-fifth week according to the prophecy of Daniel;
in the one hundred and ninety-fourth Olympiad;
the seven hundred and fifty-second year from the foundation of the city of Rome;
the forty second year of the reign of Octavian Augustus;
the whole world being at peace,
in the sixth age of the world,
Jesus Christ the eternal God and Son of the eternal Father,
desiring to sanctify the world by his most merciful coming,
being conceived by the Holy Spirit,
and nine months having passed since his conception,
was born in Bethlehem of Judea of the Virgin Mary,
being made flesh.
There is, in fact, a more updated and recent version which, if memory serves, I have also used on some Christmases:
Today, the twenty-fifth day of December,
unknown ages from the time when God created the heavens and the earth
and then formed man and woman in his own image.Several thousand years after the flood,
when God made the rainbow shine forth as a sign of the covenant.Twenty-one centuries from the time of Abraham and Sarah;
thirteen centuries after Moses led the people of Israel out of Egypt.Eleven hundred years from the time of Ruth and the Judges;
one thousand years from the anointing of David as king;
in the sixty-fifth week according to the prophecy of Daniel.In the one hundred and ninety-fourth Olympiad;
the seven hundred and fifty-second year from the foundation of the city of Rome.The forty-second year of the reign of Octavian Augustus;
the whole world being at peace,
Jesus Christ, eternal God and Son of the eternal Father,
desiring to sanctify the world by his most merciful coming,
being conceived by the Holy Spirit,
and nine months having passed since his conception,
was born in Bethlehem of Judea of the Virgin Mary.Today is the nativity of our Lord Jesus Christ according to the flesh.
I like either one (though I think the latter version more accurate) because both stand as reminders that the Incarnation did not take place in Cloud Cuckoo Land, but at a particular time and a particular address locatable with a fair amount of accuracy on calendars and Google Earth. God fetched water for evening meals here. I enjoy that reminder.
Little did I count on the fundamentalism of my more intense readers, who were unable to distinguish between a good faith effort of an ancient liturgist to work with the best data he had, and modern fundamentalism (both secular and religious) which wants to turn the Proclamation into either a flawless scientific analysis with the weight of infallible dogma, or else proof that the Catholic Faith is an ignorant sham and fraud.
The first reader to respond was an unbeliever, with the normal silliness one expects:
In the five thousand one hundred and ninety-ninth year of the creation of the world
That must have come as something of a shock to the Myans, Aboriginies, Babylonians, Chinese, Africans and Indians!
It was Christmas. I was on vacation. I didn’t feel like arguing with yet another nitpicker about what the Proclamation is trying to do and what it’s not trying to do. So I went on my my merry-making. Then another person showed up like the Magi, from the East:
To an Orthodox like me, this dating is peculiar. It’s good to anchor the incarnation historically, to be sure, but is this “proclamation” appointed for liturgical use in the West?
I was going to answer, but then somebody pointed out the new version of the Proclamation and explained that this is what the Church now uses in the Liturgy, so I got to party some more.
Meanwhile, others wrote in various degrees of high dudgeon and fear:
I hope that is a joke, Mr. Shea! I just added you to my blogger list; I’d hate to have to take you off so soon. Do you think the pope thinks the world is c. 7000 years old? Sorry if I missed the joke, but the problem is too many Catholics think that the Church actually teaches Biblical literalism, so I don’t think educated Catholics should joke about this…
and
I gotta say, Mark, I’m curious if you actually believe this. I’m quite a fan of statements like this but do you literally believe it?
When others wrote in to, in effect, tell these readers to dial back on the caffeine because the Proclamation is not infallible, inspired or inerrant but just an ancient effort to remind us that the Incarnation really happened here on earth, the readers wrote back:
Alright, I’ll eat a bit of crow here, seeing how it’s from the tradition. But if it’s meant to edify, I would certainly be more edified by “in the 13 billion, five thousand, one hundred and ninety-ninth year of the creation of the world…” or whatever. Again, too many Catholics are frightened of science for no reason… In some things we should leave the past in the past.
and
So nobody is concerned that the Church confidently proclaimed this as fact for 2000 years and now we believe it’s patently and absurdly false? Doesn’t this call the Church’s credibility into question just a little bit? FWIW, I don’t know what the answer is here, but I find it troubling. And at least as troubling that other people don’t seem to.
Meanwhile, over at the American Catholic blog, which coincidently ran the older version of the Proclamation as well, a Catholic who has mysteriously embraced fundamentalism in the mistaken belief that he is “defending the Faith” was busy declaring that we all have to believe and profess the original text of the Proclamation on pain of declaring the Church to be in error:
Question: If one believes the cosmos to be 13.7 billion years old, and the earth to be at least 4 billion, then how can one *not* “bowdlerize” the proclamation?
Lex orandi, lex credendi.
May I ask if every one of the posters, and the author of this piece, have come to the conclusion that the Church’s apostolic Faith is true, and all of modern science wrong?
What do all these complaints have in common? The conviction that the Proclamation is a) science (the only disagreement being whether it is good or bad science); b) people are morally bound to have some definite view of the age of the universe on pain of such punishments as being declared Out of Step with Science or else on pain of Being a Heretic (note how similar those two punishments are) and c) everybody knows science and the faith “contradict” each other.
Permit me to say that none of these people know what they are talking about.
First things first: The Faith has no problem with the Sciences. God is the author of all truth, so whatever the sciences discover to be true is compatible with the data of revelation, properly understood. The Church reflects exactly this attitude by the fact that the Proclamation has been updated to incorporate the findings of the sciences. Some fundamentalists (such as the last correspondent) will call this “bowdlerization” and complain that it is accomodating “pagan knowledge”. But of course, the whole point of the Proclamation in the first place was that it was an attempt to situate the Incarnation in pagan as well as Hebrew history. Hence all that stuff about the Olympiad and the Founding of Rome. That’s what the Proclamation is: a good faith attempt by an early liturgist to locate the events of the Incarnation in human history using the data available to him at the time. Now that we have somewhat better data, we revise the Proclamation accordingly.
Can the Church do that? Of course she can. There’s nothing infallible about the Proclamation. It’s not a dogmatic decree. What matters is that God created, not when.
What’s ironic about the people who were ready to strike me from their blogroll for the sin of possibly taking seriously the dating of the creation at 7000 years (I don’t, by the way) is that the guy who wrote the ancient version of the Proclamation was doing science as best he could. That is, he was using the best data he had available at the time and trying to synthesize it into a coherent picture of the world. That’s all any science can ever do. The problem is that science, which studies this passing world, is constantly changing because our knowledge of this world is constantly changing. That’s why the Faith, while it respects the sciences, does not treat “the latest scienctific breakthrough” as though it is the final and permanent platform from which to view the Faith. A thousand years ago, the most up-to-date science would have told you that the body had four humors. 150 years ago, all educated people knew that the universe was pervaded with aether. When is the Church going to get with it and acknowledge that “scientific fact”? Answer: never. It’s not the Church’s business to adapt the good news of Jesus Christ to the latest theory. Our history is littered with discarded “scientific facts” that the Church has never made a matter of faith. The (current) age of the universe is 13.7 billion years. Who knows what it will be in ten years, once the physicists are done tinkering with the speed limit of the universe?
Does this mean the Faith should ignore the sciences? Of course not. The revised version of the Proclamation of the Nativity attests to that. But (as the revision attests) it does mean Catholics should be sure to distinguish what matters from what doesn’t in terms of the faith. The fact is, the age of the universe is largely irrelevant to our faith. What matters is not when it was made, but by Whom. Revelation exists to say that the Creator created it, not when or how. When and how a matter for the sciences. Some worshippers of the intellect (who tend not to use the intellect) think that science is somehow going to disprove that God created the universe. Rubbish. That’s a metaphysical question which science is no more capable of addressing than a screwdriver is capable of addressing a nail. Others think that by showing the Bible is not a science book they have shown it false. Again, rubbish. Genesis is not written to address scientific questions. It is written to answer theological and spiritual ones.
The purpose of the Proclamation, both old and new versions, is exactly the same: to use the best data we have to remind us that God entered human history as a baby in Bethlehem during the reign of Caesar Augustus. It was this fact that impressed itself on the Church. Working from that fact, an ancient Church liturgist then attempted to locate that event within the best data given him by the Greek, Roman, and Jewish traditions. Now we have somewhat better data to work with in locating that event in time and space (meaning, we now have a better idea of how big and old the universe is). None of that threatens the central message of the Proclamation: that God became man. It only threatens people who cannot appreciate that long ago, a liturgist made a good faith effort to make use of the best of current knowledge, just as the Church still does today.
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Oh for heaven’s sake. There truly are folks who argue for the sake of argument! What sad people…..
Thank you for this post Senor Shea!
Excellent post, Mark. I am a scientist who has recently been reviewing the currently accepted “scientific” version of our origin as human beings. Scientific stories change all the time—all it takes is a new analysis or discovery. And the Church pays attention, but she rightly does not follow every fad.
I heard the proclamation of the Nativity chanted at midnight Christmas Mass last week, and as always, it moved me. The whole point of that proclamation is that God first created us in his image, and that He then entered into history at specific time and place. The Incarnation is not myth. It’s fact, the most important fact in history.
In the Physics, Aristotle writes that the motions of the heavens are circular, and as a result have been potentially in motion perpetually. Regardless, we don’t know exactly when the motion started, nor can we know, on account of the circular motion thing (where does the circle start? [Sts. Albert and Aquinas use this in defense of the argument that we cannot know the end of days either—let alone the beginning, but dont tell Bonaventure]). Furthermore, Aristotle writes, in the Topics, that there are simply some things that the human intellect cannot grasp (Moneta of Cremona OP writes that the date of creation is one of those things in his Summa Adversus Cathares, Aquinas later adopts the same argument from his Dominican Inquisitor brother).
All of this being said, I don’t think the proclamation’s author was too concerned with pagan philosophy, nor do I think he had to have been. As you state, the goal was to appeal to persons of faith and to situate a proclamation that would hark back to scripture, celebration, and God’s saving action in Israel. It was never an attempt to disprove the “natural” sciences.
Thanks for the post! And thank you for posting the proclamation a couple of weeks ago.
You know, I read the whole argument, thought about it a bit, saw how it made sense and addressed the common issues people would have with it and how it made use of common sense, but then I read where some guy on the internet thinks it’s “hilarious nonsense,” and so now I know Mr. Shea was wrong.
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Thanks for setting me straight, Mr. Smith.
Sigh… sometimes I think people in general might have something reasonable to say, and I read about how everyone gets their knickers in a knot over poetry like the Proclamation. Which is how I always understood it: poetically pointing up the concreteness of the Incarnation. Do people whine over Dylan Thomas’ “A Child’s Christmas in Wales” description of snow “shawling out of the arms and hands and bodies of the trees” because this isn’t a scientific description of either snow or trees? Or, conversely, yap about “dumb science-y” explanations of snow because Thomas’ description is so poetically exquisite?
\\To an Orthodox like me, this dating is peculiar. It’s good to anchor the incarnation historically, to be sure, but is this “proclamation” appointed for liturgical use in the West?//
Something similar to the Roman Martyrology for Christmas in many Orthodox editions of the Horologion (Book of Hours) for this feast, though it is not read aloud.
Martyrologies, Synaxaria, Prologues, and such are not necessarily supposed to be historically accurate but edifying and inspiring.
God created it all, whether in a short time or a long time. He created time for heaven’s sake.
Mark has it exactly right when he says, “Some worshippers of the intellect (who tend not to use the intellect) think that science is somehow going to disprove that God created the universe.” All science can say with honesty is “Either God exists, or He does not - a 50/50 proposition.” End of discussion for science. Anything further that is said on the subject in the name of science is merely an opinion.
For crying out loud! What is wrong with people? The first proclamation is given, in a darkened church, where I attend midnight Mass, at its conclusion the lights come on and the entrance hymn begins. I think it’s great. We’re there to worship God, not define the date of creation.
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First things first: The Faith has no problem with the Sciences.
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Finally!!! theology and sanity. I dont know how many times I have come into contact with Catholics who are infected with this fundmentalist evangelical myth that evolution and other science is counter to the gospel. As B16 points out, it is complementary, not exclusionary. As St. Thomas rightly notes and is reiterated here… all Truth has its source in God, no matter the disciplines involved. Science, philosophy and theology, etc. The three pagan wise men used science and they came to a cursory understanding of Jesus. So too, can we when we keep within our respective disciplines and know their boundaries.
Bill Jones said-
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Even Dawkins says “there is probably no god”.
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Yeah, why use your own brain when you can let others do the thinking for you.
Bill Jones said-
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Faith is belief without evidence. You have no evidence.
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No evidence? There called miracles. And they happen every day.
It is intereting that you want evidence for faith. Do you have convincing evidence that you love your mom?
Whoever said it was poetry was absolutely correct…and I love to hear it sung at Midnight Mass (accompanied by handbells).
Bill: Actually I do have evidence. No, it isn’t particularly scientific. It doesn’t matter—you’ll write it off one way or another.
Oh my! This reminds me of this Latin phrase; “Pluralitas non est ponenda sine neccesitate.”
Bill Jones said
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If they happened every day, you wouldn’t call them miracles.
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A miracle is an event that violates the laws of nature. Even if there were 1 million such miracles every day, it would still be rare compared to the universal set of natural events that take place in my backyard.
Bill Jones said
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If there actually was any evidence, it wouldn’t be called faith, it would be called science.
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Seeing as you can’t empirically verify anything, let alone a scientific law… science also has a dependence on faith. It is merely reduced to a probability that a positive outcome will occur. I can say with high probability that this apple will drop when I let go. But I cant empirically verify such a conclusion.
Mark—Thanks for the explanation of your view on this, though I could have done without the “none of these people know what they’re talking about” bit, especially since in my comments you quoted I explicitly said I didn’t know what I was talking about.
I was asking questions about a subject I didn’t understand and where there was apparent contradiction between your stance on evolution and your joyous posting of a piece of writing which, taken at face value, contradicts evolution. Not sure it deserved the snark, but no hard feelings.
I’m a convert to Catholicism from an upbringing in two very different protestant backgrounds (fundamentalist non-denom, later high-church Presbyterian) both of which prized literal 6-day, young earth creationism as an absolute dogma.
As you can imagine, that’s a lot of baggage to get over given the Church’s open stance on evolution that was mocked and ridiculed in my upbringing. Things like the proclamation put this tension in sharp relief.
I don’t like evolution. I find the story distasteful and the evidence not nearly as strong as it would need to be for the sort of iron-clad, dogmatic faith people seem to have in it. That said, I’m no scientist of any stripe, so I’m willing to allow for the possibility since the Church tells me I should and most scientists look at you like you’re batty if you disagree with them on it.
But enough about me, on your thoughts on what all the comments you quoted have in common:
“The conviction that the Proclamation is a) science (the only disagreement being whether it is good or bad science); b) people are morally bound to have some definite view of the age of the universe on pain of such punishments as being declared Out of Step with Science or else on pain of Being a Heretic (note how similar those two punishments are) and c) everybody knows science and the faith “contradict” each other.”
Well, no, I don’t believe any of those things. I believe evolution may be wrong and the poetry of Genesis may be closer to the truth than most people are willing to give it credit for these days, but I don’t think heresy is at issue here.
I believe science and faith fit together beautifully, God made an orderly world that we can know and I’m the world’s biggest fan of stuff like the Hubble telescope pics and a regular listener to Radiolab, but that doesn’t mean I believe everything science tells me.
For instance, most of the people who would tell me the proclamation’s date for creation can’t possibly be right would tell me that everything else in the proclamation couldn’t possibly be right and, in many cases, couldn’t possibly have happened at all.
I don’t think the old proclamation is science, but I do think it reads an awful lot like history, which is kind of the point as far as I can tell.
One last question that, if you’re game to answer, might bring us closer to understanding each other: Did the author of the proclamation and the bishops who approved it think they were writing historical facts? Does that matter?
Irenaeus of New York wrote: “Seeing as you can’t empirically verify anything, let alone a scientific law… science also has a dependence on faith.”
Faith which is treasured by so many is defined as a belief that does NOT rest on logical proof or material evidence, this however does not substantiate your claims about a scientific law.
Dear Mr. Shea,
I should have known better (I am one of the commentators who had too much caffeine - how did you know! - the one who threatened to strike you off his blog roll), that you do not espouse the classic fundamentalism, since I have a copy of your ‘Making Senses of Scripture’ on my shelf (though I confess not to have read it all the way through yet, tee hee).
Sorry for being so irate but I teach theology to undergrads and am so worried about the stain of fundamentalism in our Church. I am a convert - the proud son of a research scientist - and was bowled-over by how many ‘fundamentalists’ I have met in this here Catholic Church over the years. I am definitely not a scientific positivist either, though (that would make conversion to Catholicism rather silly, wouldn’t it?). I think that Catholics generally don’t know their Faith and tend to think Christian = anti-science for some reason. I run into fundamentalist Catholics on a daily basis, and I guess teaching the Church’s position on faith and reason has become my apostolate; I am a little too zealous in this sometimes it seems.
Keep up the good work, Mr. Shea. BTW, you are still on my blog roll ;)
I should also have mentioned that I am discussing the bad consequences of this kind of fundamentalism on my blog today: thetheologyofdad.blogspot.com
Bill Jones,
I correctly say that you cant empirically verify a scientific law because evidentiary claims are independent of future outcomes. They only allow us to make predictions of future outcomes.
It is not a rejection of what is rational as you asserted, but it is a reminder that we are creatures that are limited by experience. For instance, our experiential limitations become painfully obvious in quantum mechanics with examples like the double slit experiment, or shrodingers cat.
Bill Jones quotes HuffPo -
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“But when we creatively imagine we are somehow special, standing on the top rung of a ladder of nature or near the heavenly end of a chain, we ignore the complexity of the natural world, and our place in it
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Do you really believe that? That the measure of a man is no more than a wild dog or some other random animal? You dont see how simultaneously repugnant and dangerous that is? Consider this, We can feel emotional pain from something in the present. We can feel emotional pain from recalling a past event. We can feel emotional pain from some future event that has not yet come. We can summon, ponder and combine all of these experiences because we are rational creatures and not primarily instinctual. You dont think that makes us special?
Irenaeus of New York wrote: “We can feel emotional pain from recalling a past event. We can feel emotional pain from some future event that has not yet come. We can summon, ponder and combine all of these experiences because we are rational creatures and not primarily instinctual. You dont think that makes us special?”
How is emotional pain of any kind rational?
Bill Jones said
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Therefore what? Reject physics? Reject chemistry? Reject biology? Reject geology?
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No, that would be rediculous. Nobody is saying that. Anyway, they are not competeing disciplines. It is not an either or question because they compliment each other. Let me give you one example. For instance, it was through the study of philosophy and theology by St. Augustine that he arrived at the conclusion that time was part of creation. Without creation there would be no time. A revolutionary concept that no other philosopher, scholar, theologian ever even postulated. Did he know the details of space-time? No. But his alternate path to the Truth came to a correct conclusion that perfectly agrees with modern science a full 1500 years before Einstien. Science is but one avenue by which man can learn things that are true. Catholicism has contributed more to science than any other institution in history. Period. Instead of cutting and pasting atheistic talking points, you should really do your own research by actually reading some of the material you reject from cover to cover. Atheistic appologetic sites are about as honest as political campaign ads.
The onus was not on emotional but the use of memory and reason.
Irenaeus of New York wrote: “The onus was not on emotional but the use of memory and reason.”
When you are able to explain your comment; “We can feel emotional pain from some future event that has not yet come” as a use of memory or reason, then you might of had a point…
Mr Patton,
I understand why you read it that way. And I should have rephrased it because you are probably not the only one. Thanks. When I said:
“We can summon, ponder and combine all of these experiences because we are rational creatures and not primarily instinctual.”
I was specifically talking about the summoning,pondering,and combining of experiences. Not emotional pain. The summoning of memory, the combining of memory, and the analyzing of memory in a way that the rest of the animal kingdom does not demonstrate. The anticipation of future events was part of the pondering as well.
Bill Jones said
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A mere matter of degree due to 1 million years of evolution.
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Sharks, horseshoe crabs, alligators all have been around an order of magnitude longer. So your argument is baseless.
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is not based on science, so it’s dismissed as a lucky guess.
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Some of the best scientific discoveries through accidents and lucky guesses. Again you resorting to very poor examples found on atheist apologetic websites. I invite you to do satisfy your hunger for the truth by doing your own research.
First things first: The Faith has no problem with the Sciences. God is the author of all truth, so whatever the sciences discover to be true is compatible with the data of revelation, properly understood.
I would say “so whatever the sciences discover to be true (properly understood)is compatible with the data of revelation, properly understood.
It is not just revelation that is often misunderstood. Great article.
I’d never heard the old-style Proclamation at my parish, but then, the first lines aren’t what have emotional punch for me. Tears spring to my eyes every time the cantor proclaims the date of 752 AUC. “Bible times” and ancient history cross paths so rarely that when they do, the effect is a stunning one…
To any atheists who might want to understand this (as I’ve been seeing a lot of deleted comments to this article revealing confusion in this regard):
The principle that “truth cannot contradict truth” comes first; put in plainer English, it means, “if X is true, then not-X is not also true,” and thus serves as both guide and consolation to the one in pursuit of the truth. If you see two things that appear to be true but also appear to contradict each other, then either one or both is false, or they don’t actually contradict.
This is a principle of formal logic; it has no theological content. If the Pope said that it was false, the Pope would be wrong; if God seemed to appear to someone and contradict this principle, the recipient of the vision would know that the vision did not come from God (or at least, that he had ‘misheard’ that part. The possibility of this is why private revelation, in Catholic doctrine, is never allowed to alter “the deposit of the Faith,” that is, Catholic doctrine as understood without reference to the said private revelation).
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