Sign of contradiction

s. Contradiction comes from the Latin "contra", "against" and "dicere", "to speak."

According to Catholic tradition, a sign of contradiction points to the presence of Christ or the presence of the divine due to the union of that person or reality with God. In his book, "Sign of Contradiction", John Paul II says that "sign of contradiction" might be "a distinctive definition of Christ and of his Church." [John Paul II, "Sign of contradiction", St. Paul Publications 1979, p. 8.]

Jesus Christ as sign of contradiction

to Mary, the mother of Jesus Christ, as a prophecy regarding her child and herself.

"Behold this child is set for the fall and rising of many in Israel, and for a "sign that is spoken against" (and a sword will pierce through your own soul also), that thought of many hearts may be revealed." (Italics added; Douay Rheims Bible translates the phrase as "sign that will be contradicted.")

The interpretation of the Navarre Bible, a Catholic bible commentary, [http://www.ewtn.com/expert/answers/bible_versions.htm] is the following:

"Jesus came to bring salvation to all men, yet he will be sign of contradiction "because some people will obstinately reject him -- for this reason he will be their ruin. But for those who accept him with faith Jesus will be their salvation", freeing them from sin in this life and raising them up to eternal life."

The commentary also says that Mary will be intimately linked with her Son's work of salvation. The sword indicates that Mary will have a share in her son's sufferings. The last words of the prophecy link up with verse 34: uprightness or perversity will be demonstrated by whether one accepts or rejects Christ.

There are "three elements" then involved in a sign of contradiction, according to Catholic theology: (1) An attack on Christ or people who are said to be "united" with Christ. From this attack, ensues a double-movement: (2) the downfall of those who reject Christ, and (3) the rise of those who accept him.

This double-movement is connected with the division Jesus Christ referred to in :

:"I am the vine, you are the branches. "Whoever remains in me and I in him will bear much fruit, because without me you can do nothing. Anyone who does not remain in me will be thrown out like a branch and wither; people will gather them and throw them into a fire and they will be burned." If you remain in me and my words remain in you, ask for whatever you want and it will be done for you. By this is my Father glorified, that you bear much fruit and become my disciples." (italics added)

This passage shows the double-movement depending on the two possible attitudes towards Christ: whoever is united to Christ in holiness will rise and bear fruit, while those who are disunited to Christ will fall down and wither.

The early Church and the Roman Empire

The early Christians, regarded as forming a pernicious sect by several authorities of the Roman Empire, are also seen as a sign of contradiction. Early Christians were called cannibals (for reputedly eating the "body of Christ"), they were called atheists (for not following the established Roman religion), they were also accused of burning Rome during the time of the Emperor Nero, and thus were tortured and burned as torches. Emperors after Nero also saw them as a threat to the unity of the Empire.

Tertullian, an early Christian apologist, said that the persecution of the first Christians helped in propagating Christianity: "The blood of martyrs is the seed of Christians." According to Catholic historians like Philip Hughes and Warren Carrol, when the Empire fell in 476 A.D., Christianity continued to prosper and to spread throughout Europe and beyond. These historians say that it was the Christian monks who eventually tried to keep intact the ancient culture in their monasteries.

Early Church Fathers

Many Catholic Church Fathers are also seen by theologians as signs of contradiction. A specific example is St. Athanasius or Athanasius of Alexandria, who defended the divinity of Christ, the basic reason behind the Christian religion, according to Patrologist Johannes Quasten.

J. Quasten says that Athanasius was the deacon and secretary to bishop Alexander of Alexandria. As such he attended the Council of Nicea in 325 where he fought for the defeat of Arianism and acceptance of the divinity of Jesus. Against Arius who said that Jesus Christ was not eternal and not God but a mere creature, Athanasius formulated the doctrine that Jesus Christ is "consubstantial" with the Father, a doctrine now known as "homoousios."

Athanasius later became the Patriarch of Alexandria, Egypt in 328. When the Arians gained political power, Athanasius was exiled five to seven times, but was restored to authority each time. This gave rise to the expression "Athanasius contra mundum" or "Athanasius against the world."

While Arius, his opponent, died in 336, Athanasius died in 373 surrounded by the affection of his flock, and from then on revered as a great saint in Christendom. (J. Quasten, "Patrology") Athanasius has been recognized by the Catholic Church as a Church Father, a leading testimony of Sacred Tradition. He has also been declared a Confessor of the faith and Doctor of the Church.

Black legends and the Church's contributions to civilization

According to Thomas Woods, author of "The Politically Incorrect Guide to American History" and "How the Catholic Church Built Western Civilization", the Church, attacked as the enemy of progress, freedom, human rights, science, is at the origin of these phenomena.

In an interview granted to Zenit News Agency, Woods says it is much easier to propagate historical myth than most people realize. For example, the idea that in the Middle Ages everyone thought the world was flat. This, as Jeffrey Burton Russell has shown, is a 19th-century myth that was deliberately concocted to cast the Church in a bad light. Woods states that modern scholarship over the past 50 to 100 years or so has gone a long way toward refuting these myths and setting the record straight.

The Church, he says, has been attacked as an organization which is against science. However, Woods states that the first person to measure the rate of acceleration of a freely falling body was Father Giambattista Riccioli. Father Nicholas Steno is considered the father of geology. [Father Nicholas Steno http://www.ucmp.berkeley.edu/history/steno.html] The father of Egyptology was Father Athanasius Kircher, and the man often cited as the father of atomic theory was Father Roger Boscovich. Gregor Mendel, an Augustinian abbot, is known as the father of modern genetics. And Msgr. Georges LeMaitre, S.J. (1894-1966) set forth the "Big Bang" theory in 1927. The Society of Jesus brought Western science all over the world through their missions, and in the 20th century they so dominated the study of earthquakes that seismology became known as "the Jesuit science."

Some Catholic cathedrals were built to function as the world's most precise solar observatories, and the Basilica of San Petronio in Bologna was used to verify Johannes Kepler's theory of elliptical planetary orbits. The Catholic Church's contributions to astronomy exceed that of any other institution from the recovery of ancient learning during the late Middle Ages into the Enlightenment. In general, he states that Catholic teaching -- including the idea of God as orderly and even mathematical, thus making possible the idea of autonomous natural laws -- lent themselves to the development of modern science.

During the Dark Ages of Europe, the university system was developed by the Catholic Church under the patronage of the papacy. The early universities' commitment to rigorous and rational debate provided the framework for the Scientific Revolution, which was unique to Western civilization.

The other black legends he discusses are the opposition of the Church to the free-market economy and to the development of a modern legal system. He says that the contrary is true: it is the Church which helped develop these. Spanish theologians like Francisco de Vitoria, based on Thomist theology and philosophy argued for the inherent rights of South American natives against the abuses of some Spanish colonials. This has been acknowledged by the United Nations as a major basis for international law, setting up a statue of Vittoria in the UN headquarters. Modern economists like Schumpeter acknowledge the big contribution of Medieval scholars in bringing about the free-market economy. [http://www.zenit.org/english/visualizza.phtml?sid=77158]

Joseph Ratzinger, now Pope Benedict XVI, has said that Catholicism is the religion of the Logos, the Word, meaning and reason.

:"From the beginning, Christianity has understood itself as the religion of the "Logos", as the religion according to reason...It has always defined men, all men without distinction, as creatures and images of God, proclaiming for them...the same dignity. In this connection, the Enlightenment is of Christian origin and it is no accident that it was born precisely and exclusively in the realm of the Christian faith....It was and is the merit of the Enlightenment to have again proposed these original values of Christianity and of having given back to reason its own voice... Today, this should be precisely [Christianity's] philosophical strength, in so far as the problem is whether the world comes from the irrational, and reason is not other than a 'sub-product,' on occasion even harmful of its development -- or whether the world comes from reason, and is, as a consequence, its criterion and goal...In the so necessary dialogue between secularists and Catholics, we Christians must be very careful to remain faithful to this fundamental line: to live a faith that comes from the "Logos", from creative reason, and that, because of this, is also open to all that is truly rational." " [http://www.zenit.org/english/visualizza.phtml?sid=74864]

Pius VII and Napoleon

Another example of a sign of contradiction is the life of Pius VII. His was a difficult pontificate filled with moral and physical problems inflicted by Napoleon I whom the pope himself consecrated Emperor of the French in Notre Dame in Paris. As his armies were conquering many countries of Europe, Napoleon, who was a proponent of liberalism, is reported to have said to Church officials, "Je détruirai votre église" ("I will destroy your Church") [http://www.catholic.com/library/A_Crisis_of_Saints.asp] Later Napoleon took Pope Pius VII prisoner and sent him to Fontainebleau.

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Pius VII later offered asylum to Napoleon's elderly mother and gave both moral and material assistance to his family. Napoleon died in exile 1821 at the age of 52; Pope Pius VII died in 1823 in Rome at the age of 81.

The Society of Jesus and the Suppression

After Ignatius of Loyola's death and through the 16th, 17th and 18th centuries, the Jesuits became widely known as the schoolmasters of Europe, in part for their reputation as scholars and their demonstrated intellectual excellence as shown through the thousands of textbooks they authored. They were also known for their unity with Pope. They have a fourth vow: obedience to the Pope.

Their status in Europe greatly changed in 1773 when Pope Clement XIV gave in to pressure from groups across the continent. Pope Clement feared that many would follow the example of Henry VIII of England who abandoned the Catholic Church. On the heels of the pope's suppression of the Jesuits, many of the Jesuit's educational institutions fell under state government control, and much of the Jesuit's books and teaching materials were subsequently destroyed. Over 200 members of the order fled to Russia while over 20,000 others scattered throughout the world. Pope Pius VII lifted this suspension in 1814 and the Jesuits re-emerged as they were asked by many governments to return to the colleges they once gave up. The absolutist monarchs who had demanded the suppression had fallen by then, swept by the forces unleashed by the French Revolution of 1789.

The period following the Restoration of the Jesuits in 1814 was marked by tremendous growth, as evidenced by the large number of Jesuit colleges and universities established in the 19th century. In the United States, 22 of the Society's 28 universities were founded or taken over by the Jesuits during this time. Some claim that the experience of suppression served to heighten orthodoxy among the Jesuits upon restoration.

John Paul II

A contemporary example seem by many as of a sign of contradiction is Pope John Paul II. [http://clarionherald.org/19991028/maestri.htm]

While Pope, he was called a reactionary and an ultraconservative, and was often criticized, stridently at times, by the media, non-Catholic and Catholics alike. He was criticized for his views on sex, homosexuality, birth control, and the role of women in the church. He was criticized for some of his canonizations, including the canonization of Opus Dei's founder, St. Josemaria Escriva.

According to George Weigel, in "Witness to Hope", even many Catholic theologians, especially those who had relativist and secularist tendencies, rebelled against his teaching magisterium, criticizing his views about morality, ecumenicism, the sacraments, and the ordination of women. Weigel also says that there were many attempts to assassinate him. He mentions some historians and investigators who made very plausible connections with communist leaders who feared his influence in Eastern Europe. When he died, the communist governments in the Eastern Europe had already fallen.

Traditionalists criticized him for being too open to other religions.

On the other hand, on his death, he was highly praised by many, both Catholics and non-Catholics.

According to Weigel and other Catholic commentators like John Allen, John Paul II has been praised for and will be much remembered for the following things: (1) his revolutionary Theology of the Body which gives profound insights on human sexuality, his clear moral teachings in "Veritatis Splendor", (2) his fight for human rights and dignity which led to the fall of dictatorships and of communism, (3) his defense of life and the human embryo through unprecedented "infallible" teachings on abortion, euthanasia, and murder as grave sins in the Encyclical "Evangelium Vitae", [http://www.washingtondispatch.com/article_10731.shtml] (4) his push for the universal call to holiness through his many canonizations and his "program for all times," "At the Beginning of the New Millennium" ("Novo Millennio Ineunte") which place sanctity as the number one priority of all pastoral activities in the Catholic Church, (5) his teaching on reason as being congruent with the Catholic faith ("Fides et Ratio"), (6) the strides in the work of ecumenism and (7) the work on the "Catechism of the Catholic Church", which, claim Weigel and some historians of theology, has cleared much of the doctrinal confusion which disturbed the Church and society in the 60s, 70s and 80s.

Prelature of Opus Dei and the Holy Cross

, described as one of the most controversial forces in the Roman Catholic Church, is another contemporary sign of contradiction according to some Catholic theologians.

Opus Dei was denounced as a heresy by churchmen in the 1940s but is now considered one of the contributors to a central doctrine of the Second Vatican Council, the universal call to holiness and is supported by various Catholic leaders. Catholic historians say that it was attacked as pro-Franco (because of 8 members who were among the 116 ministers of the dictator) but some of its members driven into exile by Franco's political arm later became the Senate President of the new democracy. It has been criticized as a cult for various reasons. However, the late John Paul II said that its teachings on the radical demands of sanctity belongs to all Christians.
John Carmel Heenan, Cardinal Archbishop of Westminster, commented in 1975: "One of the proofs of God's favour is to be a sign of contradiction. Almost all founders of societies in the Church have suffered. Monsignor Escrivá de Balaguer is no exception. Opus Dei has been attacked and its motives misunderstood. In this country and elsewhere an inquiry has always vindicated Opus Dei." [Others who say Opus Dei is a sign of contradiction are: [http://www.telegraph.co.uk/arts/main.jhtml?xml=/arts/2005/10/23/boall23.xml Piers Paul Read] , [http://www.todosloslibros.info/texto_articulo.php?capitulo=322&libro=108&tipo_libro=9 Vittorio Messori] , [http://www.theuniversityconcourse.com/I,1,2-13-1996/Gordon.htm Richard Gordon] , [http://www.archimadrid.es/princi/menu/hilo/textos/2002/agosto/18082002.htm Manuel María Bru Alonso] , [http://www.conoze.com/doc.php?doc=933 Eulogio Lopez] .] John Paul II, in his decree on Escrivá's heroic virtues, stated: "God allowed him to suffer public attacks. He responded invariably with pardon, to the point of considering his detractors as benefactors. But this Cross was such a source of blessings from heaven that the Servant of God's apostolate spread with astonishing speed."

Escrivá said that Opus Dei in order to be effective has to live like Jesus Christ and that "its greatest glory is to live without human glory."

Catholic Martyrs of the 20th Century

Writing for Catholic Herald, Robert Royal, president of the "Faith and Reason Institute", Washington, D.C. reported about the results of his research which appeared in his book "The Catholic Martyrs of the Twentieth Century: A Comprehensive Global History". [http://www.catholicherald.com/royal/royal1.htm] Royal states that in some countries, such as Spain, the Church has documented almost 8,000 people killed for the Catholic faith during the Spanish Civil War (1936-1939). Royal says, from the former Soviet Union and Eastern Europe, where communism collapsed in 1989, to Africa, Asia, and Latin America, thousands of Catholics have disappeared into gulags, been gunned down by dictators, had their heads cut off by anti-Catholic fanatics, and, in some cases, been crucified.

In Sudan, which Royal says is engaged in the most insidious anti-Catholic campaign in the world, there have been reports not only of martyrdoms and crucifixions, but of Christians in the Nuba mountains in southern Sudan being sold into slavery. It is estimated that over 1.5 million Christians have been killed by the Sudanese army, the Janjaweed, and even suspected Islamists in northern Sudan since 1984. Royal states that China, for example, has produced large numbers of martyrs. In the 1900 Boxer Rebellion alone, 30,000 Catholics died, including several dozen bishops, priests, and religious. Since the Communist takeover in the late 1940s, thousands more have died in brainwashing camps and under laojiao, virtual slave labor.

Human beings as signs of contradiction

The human embryo, according to Catholic doctrine, is also a sign of contradiction. According to Catholic belief the human embryo is already a human being, as much as the human fetus and the new born child. And for Christians, a human being is made in the image and likeness of God. The fact that this belief and notion are highly contested by many quarters makes the human embryo, in the Catholic view, a sign of contradiction.

Most Rev. Elio Sgreccia, Vice President of the Pontifical Council for Life, said in an article entitled "The Embryo: A Sign of Contradiction":

:We need only look at the data bank of bioethical and medical writing on the subject to see how this is so. In the years 1970-1974 more than five hundred works dealing with the biomedical aspect of the question existed, and there were 27 works of a philosophical-theological character. In the years 1990-1994 there were nearly 4,200 works on the biomedical dimension of the subject and 242 on the philosophical-theological aspect of the debate. A quotation from one of the Fathers of the Church, Tertullian: "homo est qui venturus est." [trans: he who will become man is man] From the moment of fertilization we are in the presence of a new, independent, individualized being which develops in continuous fashion. [http://www.vatican.va/roman_curia/pontifical_councils/hlthwork/documents/rc_pc_hlthwork_doc_05101997_sgreccia_en.html]

acred things as signs of contradiction

The Shroud of Turin, an image viewed by some Christians as a miraculous imprinting of the image of Jesus on the cloth, together with the image of Our Lady of Guadalupe, are disputed as authentic supernatural depictions. For this reason, Catholics consider them to be signs of contradictions.

"Sign of Contradiction" by John Paul II

"Sign of contradiction" is also the title of Lenten meditations he preached and wrote upon the request of Paul VI. The theme of the book, according to one review, is "the human encounter with God in a world that seems to contradict the reality of divine power and love." John Paul II says in his conclusion that "It is becoming more and more evident that those words (Luke 2:34) sum up most felicitously the whole truth about Jesus Christ, his mission and his Church."

ee also

*Foolishness for Christ
*Hermit and Stylite: Vocations to solitude for the life of the world.

Endnotes

References

*Wojtyla, Karol. "Sign of Contradiction".
*Woods, Thomas. "How the Catholic Church Built Western Civilization."
*Quasten, James. "Patrology."
*Carrol, Warren. "History of Christendom."
*Journet, Charles. "The Church."
*Allen, John. "Opus Dei: An Objective Look at the Most Controversial Force in the Catholic Church."
*Casciaro, Josemaria, et.al. "Navarre Bible".