First Class Error in Fourth Cup Thesis
Mick Amongst The Hahn-verts
And it came to pass that I was among the adoring crowds anxious
to hear the good news from the fifth evangelist before whom all of Tradition must genuflect.
I was amongst tens of hundreds of adoring acolytes crowded into
Saint Therese de Lisieux Catholic Church in Wellington, Florida on August 31, as the chosen one addressed the multitudes from 9:00 am until 2:12 pm.
I had paid my $26.00 with the solitary goal of publicly challenging the chosen one over his claims about Holy Maundy Thursday, the Last Supper/First Mass, and the putative “Fourth Cup,” which, according to the authoritative CPA (Convert from Protestantism Apologist), is the
key to understanding the Bible and its Eucharist
Institution accounts.
Dr. Hahn is as wrong about that novel claim as he is popular and
deemed authoritative by his uncountable Hahn-Verts – especially those Bishops and Priests who have been converted to his radical exegetical evangelical claims which appear to have some connection to his Presbyterian Seminary (Gordon-Conwell) training in Theonomy (An ideology advocating the application of Mosaic Laws to the society
the Christian finds his own self living in).
Those Bishops and Priests have stood in his presence, apparently in
full agreement, as the great communicator casts his eisegetical spell
over his adoring acolytes and presents a new Gospel based upon,
wait'll until ya get a load of this later on, a first century Seder Meal.
But, I first have to note just how effective a speaker Dr. Hahn is; from
his bearing to his enthusiasm to his materials to his entire presentation which mixes intelligence, learning, humor, and even pathos, he had his acolytes eating out of the palms of his hands and nodding their heads in agreement to all of his statements in such fervent unison that they reminded me of the flocks of pigeons in Piazza San Marco in
Venice racing after popcorn pitched by tourists.
There can be no doubt that had Dr. Hahn proclaimed - Sam the Sham
was the last in a long line of great Egyptian Pharoahs that the painting of The Stations of the Cross would have vibrated due to the force of the sound generated by AMENS !!
However, Dr. Hahn made some excellent points, among them the valuable reminder that the words, “New Testament” are the only such words in the new testament and those are said by Jesus which reminds us all that the New Testamnet is not so much about a book or collection of books but about the action of Christ, the Mass (my paraphrase).
He also made a neat summary of the New Evangelisation by describing it as your story about your Catholic Faith shared with others (paraphrase) after crediting Pope Blessed John Paul II with having had the keen, and right, insight that it was the Baptised who need evangelising – an undeniable truth.
He was also charmingly self-effacive at points - I'm not much but I am
all that I think about - and he told genuinely interesting personal vingnetttes that did not cast him in the best of lights and he was,
frankly, simply brilliant at presenting the scriptural basis for Confession and illustrating the necessity for it by linking New Testament citations
with Genesis and the Creation of Adam and Original Sin and dying the death as referring to the loss of Sanctifying Grace and from his own life he supplied the matter that grounded his theological points in here-and-now reality.
Well done, sir; very well done!!!
But – at this is a but bigger than Oprah's – it was his presentation of
“The Fourth Cup.” (the putative Ritualistic Map discovered by Dr.
Hahn that helped him to escape the querulous quandary in which he then spiritually existed) that constituted both the major part of his anti-Traditional eisegesis and the dangerous error that he has been
successfully spreading with as much success as did Johnny Appleseed accomplish his self-appointed task.
It is worth noting that the presentation I was at contained not a single word of caution from Dr. Hahn that this was merely his own opinion and an opinion not shared my others – you know, such as Doctors of The Catholic Church and The Early Church Fathers and can not be found in any reliable Catholic Commentary (A Lapide, Catena
Aurea, Haydock's Commentary, and even Dom Orchard's 1952 Commentary is in opposition to Hahn) , nor is it even hinted at in such sources as Denzinger, Ott, Premm, Spirago-Clarke, Radio Replies, Catholic Evidence Training Outlines (yes, Dr. Hahn
wrote the Forward to the 1992 reprint) Liturgical Year etc etc etc
Dr. Hahn's Ritualistic Map that is supposed to lead the believer from naïveté and/or theological confusion to the heart of the matter of The Institution of the Holy Eucharist - that it is a First Century Seder that Jesus supposedly faithfully followed.
No, I am not kidding.
This is the very center – the hearth and heart – of his captious claim
(for me, not the Hahn-Verts) that at the Last Supper/First Mass, Jesus and His Apostles celebrated a Seder.
Bullshit.
The Seder (Order) Meal was developed by Rabbinical Judiasm after
Titus had destroyed the City of Deicide as this Jewish author confesses:
Almost everyone doing serious work on the early history of Passover traditions, including Joseph Tabory, Israel Yuval, Lawrence Hoffman, and the father-son team of Shmuel and Ze’ev Safrai, has rejected Finkelstein’s claims for the great antiquity of the bulk of the Passover Haggadah. What is particularly significant about this consensus is that these scholars are not radical skeptics. These scholars believe that,
generally speaking, we can extract historically reliable information from rabbinic sources. But as demonstrated by the late Baruch Bokser in his book The Origins of the Seder, practically everything preserved in the early rabbinic traditions concerning the Passover Seder brings us back to the time immediately following the
Roman destruction of the Temple in 70 C.E. (A.D. 70 for those who accept Jesus as Messias). It’s not that rabbinic literature
cannot be trusted to tell us about history in the first century of the Common Era. It’s that rabbinic literature—in the case of the Seder—does not even claim to be telling us how the Seder was performed before the destruction of the Temple.
Further background
So why does Dr. Hahn insist that Jesus and His Apostles celebrated a Seder and why is he so fixiated on “The Fourth Cup” when those matters have never been a concern for Catholics?
Who knows ? It is prolly just the flowering of some malign theonomic seed planted in him during his seminary days.
What we do know from Catholic Tradition is that Jesus did not just
lead His Apostles in the celebration of just a Jewish Meal – Seder or regular meal – but a passover meal FOLLOWED by the Insititution of the Eucharistic Sacrificial Meal (to stay with the meal analogy for the moment).
He did both even though Dr. Hahn is ignorant of this (I don't know how he could be if he read Trent; He does have a personal library of 20,000 or more books) or if that is the case, then he simply prefers his own theological ideology which in the matter of his "Fourth Cup" presentations (delivered 100s of times) is not Traditional
Catholic exegesis but Protestant eisegesis.
It is simply preposterous to insist that Jesus faithfully followed a seder that was not even developed until long after His Passion, Death, and Resurrection.
Here is the gteat commentary of Cornelius a Lapide that explains and settles the matter:
Council of Trent (Sess. 22, c. 1): “After Christ had celebrated the ancient Passover, which the multitude of the sons of Israel sacrificed in memory of their going out of Egypt, He instituted a new Passover, that He Himself should be immolated by the Church (ab ecclesia), by means of (per) the priests, under (sub) visible signs, in memory of His passage from this world to the Father, when He redeemed us by the shedding of His Blood, and delivered us from the power of darkness, and translated
us to His Kingdom.”
In the ever new light of Catholic Tradition I began to understand why
the scripture expert continually used his own words rather than the words of Jesus when it came to the putative Fourth Cup for Dr. Hahn does not quote Jesus accurately but rather, repeatedly, claims that in Matt 26:29, Jesus says “He will not drink...until His kingdom is revealed” rather than
And I say to you, I will not drink from henceforth of this fruit of the vine, until that day when I shall drink it with you new in the kingdom of my Father
and for Dr. Hahn that kingdom is revealed when Jesus drinks the wine/vinegar on the Cross which is supposed to be The Fourth Cup of the Seder.
Dr. Hahn's presumptively christian exegesis is rather a Judaised
eisegesis based upon a Seder Meal developed by Rabbis long after Jesus instituted the Eucharist in the Upper Room and he has spread these Judaised seeds all over America in presumptively
Catholic Churches and I am unaware of any Bishop or Priest who has called him on this and corrected him.
I never did get to ask his question because there was no Q & A session but during one break I got Dr. Hahn alone for a quick eye-balling
during which time I noted I had a question about the presentation and Dr. Hahn walked off saying “I'll be right back.”
He did not return. C'est la vie. Maybe he was alerted to potential problems because I had a Bible and a zippered notecase that might have contained some contrary information or maybe it was simply the case (more likely) that he was just too busy and forgot to return.
What is undeniable is that Saint Therese de Lesieux may as well be renamed Saint Scott for it has been completely Hahn-verted which is another way of saying its Catholic Tradition has been subverted and inverted and it has been Baptised into the Presbyterian Theonomic Ideology personified by Dr. Hahn.
I inquired about signing-up for two Bible Study Courses but both courses required that I buy his textbooks and Dr. Hahn's text on Exodus alone cost $50.00.
He was also selling his books on Sacramentals, his Catholic Dictionary, his Biblical Exegetical Series, and he was giving away copies of his weekly reflections of the weekly scriptural readings of the Lil' Licit Liturgy.
It is quite clear that today's Catholic need never again consult
The Early Church Fathers (Hahn has his own book of specially-culled excerpts from them) and because he made it clear that anybody who
tells you that Vatican Two was a rupture ought not be listened to
(that did make me smile) and that Vatican Two was a great blessing
and it came at just the right time, I came to understand that I
was witnessing an astonishing Ecumenical Conciliar disaster
being recast as an Ob-La-Di, Ob-La-Da Dadaism Song and Dance of Denial.
When I told the Bible Study sign-up clerk that I had my own Bibles
and Catholic Commentaries she said that made no difference for Saint Therese de Lesieux would exclusively be using Dr. Hahn's material
from now on and that I could not take the courses unless I purchased
Dr. Hahn's material.
Seems reasonable given that he has supplanted Catholic Tradition.
I have to give credit where it is due and Dr. Hahn has to be credited
with being a marketing genius if nothing else but I also wonder just when some Priest will publicly stand-up to some of his captious claims and refute them with Tradition.
Prolly never as AmChurch Clergy are far more like to have been in a Seminary where they have engaged in trust exercises (falling backwards into each others arms) rather than being exposed to and taught Catholic Tradition.
C'est la vie.
In hs fascinating and revealing, Nikitaroncalli, Franco Bellgrandi,
Court Chamberlaim of the Sword and Cape of His Holiness in the Papal Court , described the devolution of Catholicism and its rejection of Tradition as the process of The Body of Christ phagocytizing protestantism – and I saw it in action.
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