A You’re darned right I can — people who know me will vouch for it — but here the editor won’t let me, so y’all are safe this time. As for you, you’ve pretty much proven that point, I think. (You can go on and on!)

Anyway, what Jesus is saying there is that He is the way, the truth and the life (John 14:6) and (among other things, in John 6:29) that we must believe in the One whom God sent, that is, Jesus. That is exactly why we believe in only one Church.

Is Christ divided? Is there one Christ who says He truly, really, gives us His flesh to eat and His blood to drink, and another Christ who says, well, no, just kinda symbolically, like? One Christ who says you must cherish every human person and never, ever, sacrifice another person’s fundamental good, such as his life, to your own requirements, however great; and a different Christ that thinks it’s, well, sad, y’know, but sometimes a guy or a girl’s gotta do what a guy or a girl’s gotta do, and make the tough decision to end the life of an unborn child (and it really is tough — for the child, at any rate) because the situation is just too, too difficult?
No, my friend. He said, “Say ‘yes’ if you mean ‘yes,’ or ‘no’ if you mean ‘no’” (see Mt 5:37). He, Christ, is the only way and the “one mediator between God and men” (1Tim 2:5), and He doesn’t contradict Himself. He didn’t say, “You are Peter, and on this rock I will build my churches” (see Mt 16:18). He said, “There will be only one flock, and one shepherd” (see Jn 10:16).

As I said, I’m not allowed go on and on, but one more thing — well, two, actually. First, when we say in the Mass that “we believe in one, holy, catholic and apostolic church,” we’re not actually talking about the Catholic Church (capitalized). Instead, we’re talking about the lower-case ‘catholic’ or ‘universal’ church (many Protestants pray this too) — though I wouldn’t dispute you that the ‘universal’ church in fact it is to be found fully only in the Catholic Church.

Finally, we’re certainly not saying: “We are the only ones good enough for you, God.” That would be rather silly, since Christ came not for those who are virtuous, but for sinners (see Luke 5:32). So we really have to say: “We’re the only ones bad enough for you, God,” if we want to belong to the Church founded by Christ.

Q I teach religion at a local Catholic high school and I am recently married (and soon to be a father). For both these reasons I need to know: What type of sexual behavior is allowed by the Church when a woman is either (a) pregnant or (b) in mid-life? . . . At both times she is not able to conceive, so my question is, Must every act be open to new life? And must all sexual actions in a marriage be intercourse?

A Congratulations on your marriage and impending fatherhood! In either of those two situations, sexual intercourse between a man and his wife is as open to life as it can be. No action is taken against life. So you need have no concern about that.

In the same way, when a couple believe they should not conceive a new life at a particular time, though they must then abstain during the wife’s fertile times, they may — and should, generally — make love during the infertile times in her cycle (which Natural Family Planning methods, properly applied, make quite easy to determine). Again, the act is open to life, though it is highly unlikely they will conceive.

At any time, a husband and wife may certainly express their tenderness and affection in ways that naturally lead to some arousal without being “obliged,” as it were, to continue to the point of reaching sexual intercourse. However, when sexual arousal is brought to its completion, it must culminate in full intercourse to be integrally human, that is, to be morally good. Not to do so would be to distort the natural language of sexual surrender, which is one of total mutual self-giving and openness, so that it becomes an acted lie: “I give myself/I am open to you totally . . . but not really.”

Q What is the position of the Church regarding animals? Do they have souls? Can they go to heaven? I ask this, because I think heaven would not be complete without Lassie and Flipper and animals that I love.

A Without wanting to be flipper, I mean, flippant, I have to say that you think that way only ’cause you ain’t never been to heaven. Because we’re “down here,” we may think we couldn’t get on without these creatures in heaven. But it’s really the other way around: We would have difficulty getting on without them here.

In heaven God will fill our hearts totally. But because we are made for Him and can’t be happy without Him, He gave us some creatures, and notably animals, to reflect just a few tiny sparks of his Being, and to distract us from what in other ways would sometimes be too gray or melancholy an existence. The Catechism of the Catholic Church refers to this when it says that “by their mere existence [animals] bless Him and give Him glory” — that is, they manifest His goodness. (You can find the Church’s basic teaching about animals in paragraphs 2415-18 of the Catechism.)

What we love in animals will be so much more powerfully present to us in God that I’m not sure we would be capable in heaven of even bringing animals to mind. God is not just another creature in the series of creatures, the cutest and fuzziest of all the animals, or even “the most wonderfulest person you could ever meet.” God is personal, certainly, but completely out of our league (see 1Cor 2:9; Catechism 1027); His Person, His Love, His Beauty, His Presence, will overwhelm us.

Animals do not have immortal souls and therefore, barring divine intervention, are incapable of any kind of afterlife. Nevertheless, the Church, reflecting on Romans 8:19-23, does teach that “the visible universe . . . is itself destined to be transformed, ‘so that the world itself, restored to its original state, facing no further obstacles, should be at the service of the just,’ sharing their glorification in the risen Jesus Christ” (Catechism 1047). We do not know “the way in which the universe will be transformed. The form of this world, distorted by sin, is passing away, and we are taught that God is preparing a new dwelling and a new earth in which righteousness dwells, in which happiness will fill and surpass all the desires of peace arising in the hearts of men” (Catechism 1048).

What more can I say?

Q Recently, someone told me that Jesus probably did not know that He was God. That all Scripture was written post-resurrection (that I believe). That He could not have been fully human and fully divine and yet know about His divinity before the resurrection! This makes no sense to me. If I believe He is God, then why not? They keep telling me that I have not taken Christology so there is no way I can understand.

A First of all, congratulations. If it makes no sense to you, you must be intelligent and not afraid to exercise your mind in the face of theological fascism.

Secondly, people who have taken a course or two of theology (or for that matter, even a degree in theology) and proceed to behave as if they belong to a class of superior beings who “understand” what the rest of the poor benighted Christian people don’t, would make you angry if they weren’t so sad. They are invariably the same people who look down their noses at the teaching of a John Paul II and sneer at a Cardinal Joseph Ratzinger, two intellectual giants beside whom they are quite pathetically dwarfed. The presumption that the study of Christology is a source of knowledge that can airily contradict the authentic teaching of the Church is a token in itself of either the shortness of their intellect or the weakness of their theology, or both. You weren’t making a theological argument, but a statement of the faith as articulated by the authentic teaching authority of the Church. No theology can contradict that.

Anyway, to your question. This person apparently thinks Jesus could not have been fully human and have known about His divinity before His resurrection. But by the same token, how could He have been fully divine and not known about His divinity before His resurrection?
We have no experience of the hypostatic union, and some of the impositions of “mere human” experience on Jesus are embarrassing, to say the least. Moreover, let’s suppose your friend is actually both fully human and fully from another planet. Then let’s suppose he became somehow aware of it (through his own awareness or because someone revealed it to him). Would that stop him being fully human? It would stop him being merely human, all right, but “fully human”?

The Church teaches — most recently in Novo Millennio Ineunte (Pope John Paul II, 6 January 2001) — that “there is no doubt that already in His historical existence Jesus was aware of His identity as the Son of God.” He explains it. Here’s the text:

[Jesus’] divine-human identity emerges forcefully from the Gospels, which offer us a range of elements that make it possible for us to enter that “frontier zone” of the mystery, represented by Christ’s self-awareness. The Church has no doubt that the Evangelists in their accounts, and inspired from on high, have correctly understood in the words which Jesus spoke the truth about His person and His awareness of it. Is this not what Luke wishes to tell us when he recounts Jesus’ first recorded words, spoken in the Temple in Jerusalem when he was barely twelve years old? Already at that time He shows that He is aware of a unique relationship with God, a relationship which properly belongs to a “son.” When His mother tells him how anxiously she and Joseph had been searching for Him, Jesus replies without hesitation: “How is it that you sought me? Did you not know that I must be about my Father’s affairs?” (Lk 2:49). It is no wonder therefore that later as a grown man His language authoritatively expresses the depth of His own mystery, as is abundantly clear both in the Synoptic Gospels (see Mt 11:27; Lk 10:22) and above all in the Gospel of John. In His self-awareness, Jesus has no doubts: “The Father is in me and I am in the Father” (Jn 10:38).

However valid it may be to maintain that, because of the human condition which made Him grow “in wisdom and in stature, and in favor with God and man” (Luke 2:52), His human awareness of his own mystery would also have progressed to its fullest expression in his glorified humanity, there is no doubt that already in his historical existence Jesus was aware of his identity as the Son of God. John emphasizes this to the point of affirming that it was ultimately because of this awareness that Jesus was rejected and condemned: They sought to kill him “because He not only broke the sabbath but also called God His Father, making Himself equal with God” (Jn 5:18). In Gethsemane and on Golgotha Jesus’ human awareness will be put to the supreme test. But not even the drama of His Passion and Death will be able to shake His serene certainty of being the Son of the heavenly Father.

Q Can you explain the reason why women are not priests?

A There are two ways of looking at this, and both of them begin from Christ. On a more “technical” theological level, we could put it like this:

1. Jesus is the only priest.
2. We have evidence that He decided to extend his priesthood to others.
3. No one — male or female — has any “right” to be one of these “others.”
4. The evidence we have is that He “extended” it to a few men, no women. This evidence comes from the New Testa-ment (principally the Last Supper narratives) and from the understanding of the early Church, which is crucial.
5. Before trying to understand “why,” we have to accept the fact that Jesus designated a few men — and no women — to be priests.

The second way of looking at it is an effort to answer the “why.” I think it can be expressed like this:
When Jesus looks at a woman, what He first sees is His Spouse — His Church — for whom He gave His life. And He wants to continue giving His life for her. He came to serve; He still wants to serve.

So He will always say to her, “Sit down at the table, and I will serve you.” In the Church, therefore, everything happens in a way contrary to what has been the norm in human society, where typically the men sit down and the women serve. Here the women sit down, and a Man — the Man, Christ — serves.

Now, it is true that He also sees His Spouse in every man, but not in so “blatant” a way. A woman is a more perfect “icon” of the Church, that is, a kind of typical image that refers us (and Him, Christ) to the Church. A man is a better “icon,” in this same sense, of Christ, the Priest; and maybe — more importantly — doesn’t create such a “problem” for Christ’s heart, which will not allow Him to ignore or pass over a woman’s iconic representation of His Spouse, the Church/humankind, as easily. But He can do so more readily with a man.

The implications for the man who is called to be a priest, by the way, are quite severe. The priesthood is essentially service, and it requires constantly, every day, laying down his life for the one who is loved, the Church. This also helps explain why the Catholic Church everywhere sees the priesthood intimately intertwined with the charism of celibacy, to the point that the Latin Church currently discerns that where you do not have the latter, the call to the former is not there either.

Some of the clamor for women priests from certain quarters in the Church is due unfortunately to the fact that often we priests have not made sufficiently clear that the essence of the priesthood is serving and giving up your life every day. And nothing else. It is not “power.” In fact, it is to be, as far as possible, power-less.

Have a question you’d like answered? Send it to Fr. Brian Wilson, L.C., “I Have a Question,” P.O. Box 640, Granville, OH 43952; or bwilson@familink.com.