In 1953, Arthur C. Clarke published what is now a classic science fiction story titled “The Nine Billion Names of God“. The premise of the story is that two western computer programmers are hired by Tibetan monks to program a computer to print out all of the possible names of God. The program will eliminate certain combinations of letters that make no sense in any language. It would’ve taken them thousands of years to write it out by hand but the computer will finish printing it in a matter of days. They estimate that there are 9 billion such combinations. It is their belief that once they have enumerated and printed every possible name of God, it will bring about the end of the world.

You can read the Wikipedia article about the story by clicking on the story name in the previous paragraph. It will tell you all the various awards and accolades the story has earned as well as a spoiler for how the story ends. I read the story in an anthology of Clarke stories sometime in the 1970s and it has been a favorite of mine ever since.

Recently, I began reading the works of Andy Weir most noted for his breakthrough 2011 novel “The Martian” which in 2015 was made into a hit movie “The Martian” starring Matt Damon about an astronaut who is stranded around on Mars for two years.

One of the most popular short stories by Weir is “The Egg” which you can read online here. Massive spoilers here as well. The story is a first-person account of a conversation between the narrator who claims to be God and a recently deceased human being. God informs them that they are going to be reincarnated. In fact, everyone who’s ever lived is reincarnated. Furthermore, the individual being addressed by God has been reincarnated millions of times and will continue to be reincarnated many more times. In fact, everyone who has ever lived is a reincarnation of the same individual. God informs them that once they have experienced being reincarnated as every human being who ever lived (including people like Einstein or Hitler on opposite ends of the spectrum) that then they will become a God as well.

In the story “The Egg”, God tells the human…

Weir’s story is an amazing piece of speculation that has in its roots some Christian theology. In Matthew 25:31-46 Jesus explains that when we treat one another well and meet one another’s needs with compassion and charity that we are doing the same to God. And conversely, when we mistreat one another or ignore one another’s needs, we are neglecting the needs of God.

In Paul’s first letter to the Corinthians chapter 12, he expounds upon the gifts of the Holy Spirit. He’s writing in response to a controversy in the city of Corinth as people are complaining that certain spiritual gifts are more important than others. He’s trying to explain that regardless of what one’s role is in life, they have the capability (and duty) to use their spiritual gifts for the common good. He uses the analogy of the parts of the human body all having to work together to make the body useful and that no one part of the body is insignificant. “If [one] part suffers, all the parts suffer with it; if one part is honored, all the parts share its joy. Now you are Christ’s body, and individually parts of it.” 1 Cor 26-27.

Essentially Paul is saying the same thing as Weir. Combined together, all of human beings are God.

Then an interesting thought occurred to me, the current world population is about 7.9 billion people. According to worldometers.info, the world population will reach 9 billion sometime in 2037.

A “name” is a symbolic representation of an object, person, or concept. If human beings were created in the image and likeness of God then each of us is a symbolic representation of God. In essence, each of us is a way to name God. And if Clarke is right, and Weir is right, and St. Paul is right… Sometime in the year 2037 we will have manifested in the human population 9 billion ways to name God. And maybe, we will then hatch from our Egg of the universe and be united as God.

Today I was watching a podcast on Facebook live from one of my favorite YouTube channels Father Roderick Vonhögen. He is a priest who lives in the Netherlands who not only talks about theology and religion online but is probably more famous for his reviews of sci-fi movies such as Star Wars and Marvel comic movies. He also does live online streaming of him building Lego models. So he’s a real sci-fi nerd who just happens to be an ordained priest.

One of the features of his weekly video podcast is he answers questions about the Catholic faith and one that he addressed in today’s show was why can’t we have online confession via Skype, FaceTime or other methods since we are dealing with the virus by streaming Mass online?

I’ve been a catechist who taught RCIA at St. Gabriel Church for over 30 years so I thought I would write an article addressing the same issues backed up by some of the comments that Father Rodrick made in his video blog.

If you’re going to talk about the Sacrament of Reconciliation a.k.a. Confession we need to talk first about the authority to forgive sins in the first place. Father Rodrick cited one of my favorite passages of Scripture about the paralytic man at Capernaum. The story is told in various versions in all three of the synoptic Gospels. Matthew 9:1-8, Mark 2:1-12, and
Luke 5:17-26.

Jesus was teaching in a house in Capernaum and it was so crowded that no one could get in. But there was a paralyzed man and his friends wanted to bring him to Jesus to be healed. They opened a hole in the roof and lowered him down on a mat through the roof so that he could get to Jesus. Jesus says to the man “Your sins are forgiven”.

I can only imagine the reaction of his friends. “We went to all this trouble so that you could cure him of his paralysis and all you will do is forgive his sins?” But the bigger issue was the scandal of that statement itself. For the Jewish people, only God could forgive sins.

We can understand the confusion of the people there. If you or I do something to offend one another we can offer each other forgiveness but a sin is an offense against God so in their mind only God could forgive a sin. Of course we understand that Jesus is God and was revealing himself to be so by claiming the power to forgive sin.

So why do priests have the authority to forgive sin? Are they equating themselves with God as Jesus did at Capernaum? Of course not. The authority of the Church for forgiveness comes from the words of Jesus himself. In the Gospel of John when Jesus is speaking to the Apostles after he has risen he says to them.

The authority of the church also comes from the statements of Jesus “I will give you the keys to the kingdom of heaven. Whatever you bind on earth shall be bound in heaven; and whatever you loose on earth shall be loosed in heaven.” Matthew 16:19. Also see Matthew 18:18 which similarly gives authority to the Apostles.

Technically the bishops, as the modern day successors of the Apostles, have this authority to forgive sins on behalf of God through the power of the Holy Spirit. For practical reasons long ago this authority was also handed on to the priests because it’s impractical for bishops to hear everyone’s confessions.

All of the Sacraments are outward signs of God’s grace and are created as a kind of reenactment of things that Jesus actually did. He personally forgave peoples sins. He didn’t just send a messenger and say “Tell that guy I forgave him.” The power of God to impact our lives is so substantial that we cannot experience it fully through words alone.

The Traditions of the Church as expressed in the Mass and Sacraments are designed to be sensual experiences. We feel the waters of Baptism cleansing us. We taste and see the goodness of the Lord when we receive him through the Eucharist. In Confirmation and Anointing of the Sick we feel the anointing of Holy Oil. Ideally in a face-to-face celebration of the Sacrament of Reconciliation the priest actually lays his hands upon you in a gesture of forgiveness while he prays the Words of Absolution. The reforms of Vatican II promoted face-to-face confession so that this could be a more sensual experience but even in the privacy of an old-fashioned confessional behind a screen, you still feel the presence of another human being reaching out to do an offering you God’s forgiveness.

For the proper celebration of this Sacrament we need the closeness of one human being to another to experience God’s love and forgiveness in a very special way. Using online methods, phone calls, emails or whatever just does not give the full experience of the loving forgiveness that is capable to experience in a more personal setting.

Someone asked Father Rodrick what if a person is in isolation for medical reasons. He said that the Church allows for the Sacrament of Reconciliation to be celebrated through a glass door or other medical partition even with the use of an intercom as long as the two can see one another and absolute privacy can be maintained. Father Rodrick said that the use of an intercom in such circumstances was no different than a priest wearing a hearing aid. It’s just a method to allow communication more clearly and accurately.

This leads us to probably the biggest reason why online celebration of the Sacrament of Reconciliation is not permitted. The Seal of Confession is absolutely essential. What is said to the priest during confession cannot ever be revealed under any circumstances. Priests have gone to jail to protect the privacy of what was told to them in confession. Violation of the Seal of Confession is so serious that a priest would be automatically excommunicated from the church. It doesn’t even take a trial involving the Pope. It’s just automatic.

Not only can a priest not reveal anything that was said during confession but they cannot act upon it in any way. A priest friend once told me that in the seminary when discussing the privacy of confession one of the seminarians asked their teachers “What if someone confesses to me that they put a bomb under my bed? Do I have to sleep in that bed?” The teacher answered “Tell the person that their penance was to remove the bomb and then pray like you never prayed before that they actually do it.”

While this is somewhat of a contrived scenario, Father Rodrick mentions in his podcast that if someone confesses for example that they have murdered and may murder again, the priest can withhold absolution and instruct the penitent to turn themselves in. That’s the most that the priest can do.

Back to the topic at hand… No matter how secure our Internet connection might be, we cannot completely guarantee 100% privacy that is a fundamental requirement for the Sacrament.

I recently saw an interview on YouTube with a speech therapist who practices over the Internet giving lessons to children and adults using WebCams. She is under strict requirements to use the highest levels of encryption in order not to violate HIPPA privacy requirements. But even the triple encryption offered by Zoom Pro software that she uses would not be safe enough for this most serious privacy needs.

The Church keeps this level of privacy because they want people to be completely free and unafraid to seek the forgiveness of God through this Sacrament. If you thought for a moment that something you might confess could ever be revealed, you would be reluctant to confess it. Your soul would be endangered because the Church didn’t take your privacy seriously enough. The Church won’t let that happen.

People often ask “Why do I need to go to church when I can pray just as well at home by myself in private?” Our late former pastor Father Larry Crawford always had a great response to that question. He would say “You are probably right however believe it or not we don’t go to church to pray.” After a typical look of shock would go across the persons face he would then continue. “We go to church to worship”.

He would go on to explain that prayer and worship were two different things. Prayer is a conversation with God and we do indeed pray throughout the celebration of the Mass. However the celebration of Mass is a communal expression of worship. We come together as a community to encounter God.

Trick question for you… When does Mass begin?

Some would say during the opening hymn. Others would say that because we were taught in the old days that you had not fully attended Mass unless you experienced the three central parts of the Mass the offertory, the consecration, and the Eucharist that it didn’t count so they would say at the offertory. My late mother who was liturgy chairman at St. Gabriel for over a decade said otherwise. She said “Mass begins in the parking lot”. and many theologians would agree with her. We encounter God three ways at Mass. God is present in the Eucharist. God is present in his Word during the Scripture readings. But God is also present in the community. Jesus told us that whenever two or three gather in His name He is there in our midst. Matthew 18:20

It is this coming together as a community where we feel God’s presence through the love of our fellow members of the Catholic Family of St. Gabriel Church. St. Paul tells us that we all have God-given gifts and talents to contribute to the world and together. “Now you are Christ’s body, and individually parts of it.” 1 Corinthians 12:27. There is a hymn titled “You are the only Jesus some will ever see”. As members of the Body of Christ we make Jesus present to one another and the world.

By utilizing Facebook to live stream our worship, we still hear the Word of God in Scripture and to a limited extent we feel the presence of our community coming together. While we are not able to receive the Eucharist, given the situation two out of three isn’t bad.

During this crisis we have to maintain social distancing for our own health as well as the health of our loved ones. We are not able to fully experience the joy of coming together as a community. We don’t get to see the faces of our fellow parishioners or greet them with a hug or a handshake. However I am greatly inspired by the number of people who have recently joined our Facebook group. The comments during the live stream of our Mass and other prayer services shows that our connection as a community is stronger than any virus or other force that tries to keep us apart. The Apostle St. Paul wrote the letters that are an important part of our New Testament so that he could stay in touch with the communities that he could not visit frequently. Some of these letters had actually been written while he was imprisoned. He used what he could to keep the communities he founded together in Christ and we use technology today to maintain our connection to one another.

We have had our Facebook group for many years but it has been greatly underutilized. However in the past few days hundreds of new members have signed up. It is so heartwarming to see us reach out to one another in this way. Let us all let this crisis give as a longing for community and for the loving presence of our fellow parishioners. Let us all continue to make use of every means of communication to stay in touch with one other even after the crisis passes.

Let us pray for all of those affected directly by this terrible illness, for those who are out of work and struggling because of it, and those who are even more isolated than ever. May we seek every opportunity to spread the Gospel message and God’s love in whatever ways we can.

From time to time friends or family post items on Facebook or other social media advocating the return of prayer to public schools. While well-intentioned, this is a serious mistake. Rather than write a lengthy reply each time this happens, I decided it’s time to create a blog post that lays out my position on the topic.

First of all there is nothing that prohibits an individual from silent prayer or other non-disruptive religious activities by individuals in public school. So the whole idea that you cannot pray in school is fallacious to begin with. What is prohibited is organized religious activity in schools such as joint public prayer. Public school is funded by the government and up until a certain age attendance is mandatory. This forces children to participate in government-sponsored religious activities which is a clear violation of the constitutional separation of church and state. Check out this article from Wikipedia explaining the history of the ban on organized school prayer in public schools. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/School_prayer Even after the ban on public prayer in schools I continued to silently pray a Catholic prayer before meals at lunch. I made the sign of the cross as is our tradition and received no ill will towards me for doing so.

While I appreciate that many people think school prayer is a good thing, my personal experience is that it tends to ostracize certain children. Back in the early 60s when the ban on public prayer in public schools came out when I was young, some well-intentioned people developed something called “Weekday Religious Education” in which public schoolchildren were given time off for an hour or so once a week to go attend some sort of religious education program mostly Bible study. It was usually held in a trailer or bus parked off the property of the public school.

Although it was cited as “nondenominational” it was by its very nature decidedly Christian and mostly Protestant. I was raised Roman Catholic. In those days the Catholic Church was not as ecumenical or tolerant of interfaith activities as it is today. In those days it was strictly forbidden for Catholics to participate in any religious activity that wasn’t 100% Catholic. In those days it was frowned upon by the church when Catholic parents sent their kids to public school at all. Unfortunately Catholic schools could not handle the special education needs of a kid in a wheelchair so I had no choice but to attend public school. As someone who has taught the Catholic faith to adults for over 30 years I can tell you that even though there is much agreement between Catholic and Protestant traditions on most of Christian teachings, their approach to understanding and interpreting Scripture is one area where there are noticeable differences. So a Bible study taught from a Protestant perspective can often be contrary to Catholic tradition.

Even something as simple as a children’s hymn can have theological implications. Consider the lyric “Jesus loves me this I know. For the Bible tells me so.” While Catholicism believes that the Bible is the inerrant Word of God, it does not follow the Protestant doctrine of sola scriptura (by scripture alone) meaning that the Bible is the sole authority for understanding God’s revelation. On the other hand Catholicism teaches that both Sacred Scripture and Sacred Tradition (the traditions of the Catholic church) are the sources from which we draw our certainty about what has been revealed. A Catholic version of the classic children’s hymn would awkwardly declare “Jesus loves me this I know. For the teaching of the holy Roman Catholic Church as expressed in the Baltimore catechism tells me so”. Hard to turn into a catchy song isn’t it?

So while most of my classmates went to this class, I and a couple of other Catholic students opted out at the insistence of our parents as guided by our church. That immediately cast us as outsiders, different, weird, a variety of other adjectives because we refused to go to Bible study. I’ve always opposed public prayer in schools for that very reason. I was on the receiving end of much prejudice because my beliefs were different than the majority. In the early 60s keep in mind there were still many fears that JFK as our first Roman Catholic president would somehow make the United States a puppet of the Vatican. That was the atmosphere at the time. There were no Jewish kids in my class but they would have even more reason not to attend. Furthermore what about Islamic children, Buddhist or Sikh students? Yet today they would be especially ostracized. For much of my young adult life I considered myself agnostic and out of respect for like-minded people would not have want to been singled out by my peers as some sort of heathen nonbeliever. Although I returned to the Catholic Church in my late 20s, I still maintain the deepest respect for the rights of agnostic and atheist people. Any form of organized religious activity in a public school serves to create division, prejudice, and even hatred.

Think about this… The First Commandment of the Judeo-Christian Ten Commandments prohibits having false gods. It is the most fundamental of the commandments. The First Amendment to the US Constitution prohibits a government endorsed religion. In effect the First Amendment protects me from violating The First Commandment.. I think there is beauty and symmetry in that situation. It speaks to the ingenuity and genius of our founding fathers. Forcing children to pray in ways that are contrary to their traditions or contrary to their atheist beliefs is decidedly un-American according to the Constitution of the United States. Even if you allow people to opt out of such situations, you expose a captive audience to a contrary religious teaching and risk alienation and ostracize those who choose not to participate.

Even something as fundamental as the Ten Commandments is taught differently between Protestant and Catholic traditions. Catholic tradition is that The First Commandment prohibits the worship of false gods and idolatry. However Protestant tradition splits those into one prohibiting worship of false gods and one prohibiting idolatry (graven images). At the other end, Catholics separate the commandments on coveting your neighbor’s wife and coveting your neighbor’s goods into Commandments 9 and 10 while Protestant tradition combines these two into a single 10th commandment. The content is all they are in both traditions but the arrangement and numbering are different. That’s one of the reasons I oppose the display of the Ten Commandments on public property such as courthouses etc. The first question I ask is “Which Ten Commandments?” If you use a Protestant numbering you have endorsed a religion which is prohibited by the Constitution. You’ve alienated Catholics who number them differently. And vice versa should use the Catholic numbering system.

Those who advocate for school prayer believe that somehow it will cause us to raise children who are more moral and ethical. They look at the decline of respect for elders and general disciplinary problems within schools as well as school violence including gun violence. Their hope is that prayer is the solution to these issues. I believe in the power of prayer and encourage people to pray that we raise our children with a sense of tolerance, ethics, respect for life, and empathy towards everyone despite our differences. But keep in mind we can and must teach basic morality, ethics, tolerance, empathy, and respect for life without bringing religion and constitutional freedoms into the equation. The imposition of organized prayer in public schools has the potential to work contrary to those goals and can serve to divide rather than unite us around common moral principles.

So the bottom line is there still is prayer in public schools. The only thing that is prohibiting is organized public prayer in schools is a very very good thing.

When I teach RCIA classes at St. Gabriel Church, there are two lessons which I call my “guaranteed failure” lessons. In the first, my task is to teach the entire Old Testament in one 90 minute class. I guarantee that I will fail to do so. The following week I’m supposed to teach the entire New Testament in a single class and I similarly fail. But I tried to hit the high points of each.

One of my favorite parts of my New Testament lesson is a section where I’m describing John’s approach to Jesus. One of the terms he uses is “Lamb of God”. A lamb is an animal used in the Passover sacrifice and by describing Jesus as God’s Lamb he is saying that Jesus is God’s sacrifice that saves us. In John’s vision of what it’s like in heaven as laid out in the Book of Revelation he refers to the Lamb.

The Book of Revelation is sometimes called the book of the apocalypse. In Revelation 7:1-17 John is literally describing the apocalypse as seen from heaven. The Angels are commanded not to destroy the world until the believers have been saved and accounted for. The angel marks the seal of God 144,000 people. That is 12,000 from each of the 12 tribes of Israel. There are some denominations which take this passage so literally they believe that only exactly 144,000 people will make it to heaven out of all of the billions who currently live or who have ever lived. I think I’m a pretty good person and assuming I don’t screw up my life any worse than it already is my really plan on making it to heaven. But to be one of only 144,000 out of everyone who ever lived… I’m not too fond of those odds 🙂

Most Scripture scholars will tell you that numbers in Scripture almost always symbolic and not to be taken literally. In particular the number 12 is used to describe “the people of God” because in the Old Testament you were among the 12 tribes of Israel, you were one of God’s people. So the number 12 means “everybody”. Given that interpretation the number 144,000 might best be described as “everybody times everybody times 1000”. It’s John’s way of saying everybody. Yes I mean really everybody. I really really really mean everybody. Get it?

I generally buy into the “numbers are symbolic not literal” school of thought but there is an alternative explanation for that number. If we had 12,000 from each of the 12 tribes as the passage says, you could literally think that of the original 12 tribes of Israel in Old Testament days there might only be 144,000 of that population in heaven. I might be able to buy that argument of literalism were it not for the next passage says “After this I had a vision of a great multitude, which no one could count, from every nation, race, people, and tongue. They stood before the throne and before the Lamb, wearing white robes…”

This so-called uncountable multitude also is worthy to enter heaven. If the 144,000 was literally the chosen people of the Old Testament then the uncountable multitude is everyone else beyond the Jewish people including as it says people of every race and nation. Being part of an uncountable multitude I like my odds a lot better.

One of the elders in heaven then asked John who are these people in the white robes. John’s attitude is “You are asking me? I’m just a visitor here. You should know.” The elder says in verse 14 “These are the ones who have survived the time of great distress; they have washed their robes and made them white in the blood of the Lamb.”

Say what?

“… made them white in the blood of the Lamb”

Okay wait a minute… The first time I heard this passage I had a flashback to when I was five years old. For Christmas I received a book titled “Bennett Cerf’s Book of Riddles”. It was a children’s book full of riddles designed to make five-year-olds giggle with glee and I did many times (and still do when I think about it). Among the gems were…

Next riddle was…

They never did tell you what was big and blue and ate rocks but it didn’t matter because you were giggling at that point. Anyway on with our story… One of the riddles was “If you put a white hat into the Red Sea, what will it become?” Of course every five-year-olds says “Red” but the answer is “Wet”. And you’ve just taught geography to a five-year-old by explaining that the Red Sea isn’t really red. Later in life I learned that Indiana geography is just as messed up. White River isn’t white. South Bend isn’t south. North Vernon isn’t north. And French Lick is not all as wonderful as its name implies either.

So when the Book of Revelation says that white robes were washed in Lamb’s blood and made allegedly whiter… I said “wait a minute… This is another one of those Red Sea jokes is its?”

This riddle remained unanswered to me for many, many years until one day I was sitting at my kitchen bar eating lunch with my mom and watching TV. We were flipping around the dial looking for something to watch (pre-cable only four choices) and ended up landing on a cooking show on PBS. The show was called “The Frugal Gourmet” and featured a gourmet chef named Jeff Smith. Not only is he a chef, is also an ordained minister. He starts telling the story about lambs and adoption and sacrifice etc. and I said to my mom “Oh my God that explains it! I now understand how being washed in the blood of the lamb makes you cleaner!” And I told her the whole story about how I never knew how to explain that an RCIA and the story about the Bennett Cerf riddle book to which she of course said something like “How the hell do you remember a joke out of a book when you were five years old?” I just never forget a joke I guess.

The problem was… I didn’t think I could remember his explanation. It must not have included a joke. As I said this was in the pre-cable area of television and thus very much pre-DVR. I might’ve had a VHS VCR in the living room but the odds that I would’ve been recording that show would be zero. So there was no way to back it up and hear the explanation again or take notes.

At the end of the show they promoted his book “The Frugal Gourmet Cooks with Wine” which you could get from PBS or your local bookstore. The next time I was in a bookstore and looks for it and found a paperback. Much to my joy it contains the story he had told on the air. Now every year when I teach the RCIA lesson on the New Testament I tell the entire above story and then read the following passage from “The Frugal Gourmet Cooks with Wine”. Hopefully it’s brief enough to qualify as fair use.

Quote from “The Frugal Gourmet Cooks with Wine” — “The image of adoption was connected with the image of blood… But see this! In the old shepherding communities, all would have understood this image because all knew the problem of the shepherd. He would check his flock in the morning and find a new lamb. . . but the mother had died during the night In another portion of his flock he would find a mother, sitting silently beside her child stillborn during the night. The mother would die of a broken heart and the orphan would die from lack of sustenance. All logic would tell you to put the orphan under the care of the childless mother. . . but the two would know they were foreign, and they would not accept each other. The moment of wisdom came when the old shepherd, this old Jewish philosopher and theologian, would see in this event the nature of our relationship to the God We are so separated from God, he said, that God is dying of a broken heart and we are dying from lack of sustenance. And it seems that nothing can be done. We are foreigners to one another. But one thing can be done. It is still being done by shepherds. If you slit the throat and drain the blood of the dead baby and wash the orphan in the blood of the lamb, the living mama smells her own and moves around so that the orphan can suckle, can come home to the table. This image of the blood of the lamb being the symbol of adoption was common in the early traditions, and it remains common in the Church.”

So now it all makes sense. Because we are washed in the blood of the Lamb of God we are made worthy to be in his presence in heaven with John and the elders and the Angels were going around stamping people on the head and doing robe laundry.

Whenever someone is baptized as an infant we always dress them in white garments. As adults when we baptize we give them a white garment. In the baptismal rite there is a line that says something about “Receive this white government and bring it unstained to the judgment seat”. This is the Scripture passage to behind that prayer.

I still don’t know what’s big and blue and eats rocks.