Wednesday, August 24, 2016

Reception

Today is the feast day of Saint Bartholomew. To which the vast majority of Catholics are going to answer, "Who is Saint Bartholomew?" In one sense, the answer to that is easy. He was an apostle. In another sense, it is very difficult for no one has the slightest clue as to who he was or what he did. We know only two things about him for certain: his name and his status as apostle.

And yet, of the four tiers of feasts in the Catholic Church—Optional Memorial, Memorial, Feast and Solemnity—Bartholomew rates the second highest. The obvious question is, "Why?" I'm going to ignore that question and wonder more about the issue of reception because it's one that intrigues me lately.

Bartholomew is remembered because he was received by the early church. The only thing that was received for certain is his name which appears in all three Synoptic gospels. That's nothing to sneer at. The gospels are grimly economical texts. Not a word is wasted. Anything that gets mentioned there does so because it was important. We can reasonably question what the role of the apostles was and we can reasonably question whether there really were exactly twelve of them. Questioning that Bartholomew was one of them in the memory of the early church is far tougher.

And, whatever the apostles were, they were very important.

Beyond that, however, the question of reception gets tricky. Further stories and traditions about Bartholomew are very thin on the ground. He may have done heroic things or he may not. Either way, not enough people were interested in passing them along. And not many people came along after the fact to make things up about him either. In any era, the willingness of other people to preserve, polish, embellish and create stories to tell about you is the key to your being received into the culture and that is just as true of the culture of the Church as any other. And Bartholomew has, for the most part, not been received.

Two groups of people have bucked this trend and they have done so largely on the basis of Bartholomew's credentials. If you have an image at all that goes with Saint Bartholomew, it is most likely an image of an Anglican Church or a hospital in England. And the reason for this is that he is in the Bible. The strong Calvinist streak in the Church of England discouraged naming of institutions after saints unless those saints had impeccable scriptural credentials. And poor Bartholomew doesn't have much but he does have that. The second group to preserve his memory have been members of the Catholic hierarchy. They have not done so with any great enthusiasm but they have done it. For Bartholomew has hierarchical credentials in that the Bible doesn't just mention him but also says that he was an apostle.

Beyond that, however, not much reception has taken place. He isn't part of Christian lore. Lore was passed on, and, in some cases, created, but it didn't take root.  That may be a good thing. It could also be a bad thing. It may be that very important truths were lost along with Bartholomew. One of the unquestioned responsibilities of the Church hierarchy is to counter reception. On the other hand, one of the important roles of the laity is to counter potential abuse of power by the hierarchy by being selective about what we choose to receive. Both side are capable of corruption. If the Holy Spirit is not influencing the process, then everything we do as Catholics is in vain.

Finally, spare a thought for Saint Bartholomew today. He was a real man who believed and acted on his beliefs, whatever he did and he was there at the beginning.

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