Faithful not Flawless

Appreciating St. Jerome, doctor of the Church

09/30/2020

Luke 9:57-62 As Jesus and his disciples were proceeding on their journey, someone said to him, “I will follow you wherever you go.” Jesus answered him, “Foxes have dens and birds of the sky have nests, but the Son of Man has nowhere to rest his head.” And to another he said, “Follow me.” But he replied, “Lord, let me go first and bury my father.” But he answered him, “Let the dead bury their dead. But you, go and proclaim the Kingdom of God.” And another said, “I will follow you, Lord, but first let me say farewell to my family at home.” Jesus answered him, “No one who sets a hand to the plow and looks to what was left behind is fit for the Kingdom of God.”

Today we celebrate the feast of St. Jerome, a great doctor of the Church. Of course, the term “doctor of the Church” does not carry the meaning we usually use for it of someone who has earned a “Ph.D.” like Dr. Karen Hollenbeck, or is a medical doctor, like Dr. Bill Curry. Rather, a “doctor of the Church” is someone whose teaching and writing have been revered over the centuries of Christianity and extremely helpful in understanding and living the faith. Think about it like this: a Ph.D. doctor helps our minds to be sharper; an M.D. doctor helps our bodies to feel better, so a “doctor of the Church” helps our souls to draw closer to Christ.

One of the main reasons the Church dubbed St. Jerome a “doctor of the Church” is because he translated the Bible, the Old Testament in particular, from Hebrew and Greek into Latin. That translation into Latin was completed around 405 A.D. when virtually everyone in the Roman Empire spoke Latin. Hence, it was called the “Vulgate” because Latin was the “vulgar” language of the common people, not vulgar as in “street slang” or “curse words” but vulgar as in common language that everyone spoke. In fact, the Vulgate was held in such high esteem that in 1563 the Council of Trent declared the Vulgate was the “authoritative” version of the Bible for the Catholic Church. That declaration did not mean Jerome’s translation was flawless but it did mean that it was faithful.

Someone who was not a fan of St. Jerome’s Vulgate translation of the Bible was none other than the mighty St. Augustine, Jerome’s contemporary. St. Augustine is also declared a “doctor of the Church,” and these two doctors disagreed and disputed a lot. Some day in your spare time you should read the heated correspondence between Jerome and Augustine; it is more entertaining than a presidential debate.

Basically, Augustine argued that Jerome should stick to the Greek version of the Old Testament called the “Septuagint,” instead of wandering off into the Hebrew version of the Old Testament. But Jerome held his ground and 1,100 years later, the Council of Trent vindicated his Vulgate. I do not know about you, but it sort of shakes my faith a little to see these spiritual giants of the Church dueling and debating each other, like two great gladiators in the Colosseum exchanging blows. I am left wondering who is right and who is wrong. It is very unnerving, to me at least.

But these saintly gladiator games also have a beneficial effect. It helps me remember that no one person has a corner on the truth, no matter how holy or how wise they might be. Rather, the whole Church – including the popes, bishops, doctors, saints and lay persons – all together constitute the Body of Christ and enjoy infallibility. Of course, the pope has the charism of infallibility in a singular way which he exercises in rare and extraordinary circumstances.

So, I don’t worry too much if St. Jerome did not get everything right in his Vulgate translation. Indeed, later in life, he agreed with Augustine on using the Greek Septuagint. And St. Augustine, at the end of his life, went back and reread all his writings and made corrections of his own errors, which he published in a book called “The Retractions.” Augustine did not get everything exactly right either. The great doctors of the Church were faithful not flawless.

Do you know any Ph.D. doctors who make mistakes and don’t know everything, even in their field of expertise? Have you ever encountered a M.D. doctor who got a diagnosis wrong? Well, the same is true for the great “doctors of the Church,” St. Jerome and St. Augustine. Their wisdom and their folly remind us to put our faith in Jesus alone, and in his Scriptures, and in his Church. We can learn as much from what the saints got right, as what they get wrong.

Praised be Jesus Christ!