No, the sky isn’t falling

It seems like every time Pope Francis so much as sneezes, Internet commentators start sounding like Chicken Little: “The Church is falling! The Church is falling!” Now, I haven’t read any of Amoris Laetitia, and I don’t know when I’ll get around to reading it, so I don’t know if it’s good, bad, or just plain ugly.

What I do know, however, comes from the words of Rabbi Gamaliel in yesterday’s Gospel:

For if this endeavor or this activity is of human origin, it will destroy itself. But if it comes from God, you will not be able to destroy them; you may even find yourselves fighting against God.

The fact is, the Church survived Gamaliel and the Sanhedrin, the Roman Empire, Germanic Invasions, and many other empires and rulers that thought they could take Her down. She survived heresy, division, the (sad) schism with the Orthodox, the Protestant Reformation, Secular Humanist movements in Europe, Soviet-style Communism, and many more movements and philosophies. There have been bad popes, worse bishops, terrible priests (some may think I could among this number), and apathetic laity; and the Church still survives today. Some of Her strongholds have gotten weak (Europe, North America), and some of the lands washed by martyrs’ blood have become Her strongest bastions. The Church has survived, and will survive until Christ Himself returns.

To those who fear that Pope Francis will destroy the Church, I say, “Have hope! The Church will survive him.” There may be confusion right now. Certain movements within the Church may be celebrating and promoting their misunderstanding of what Pope Francis has taught and said, but it won’t last. Even during the most corrupt and decedent popes, great saints have arisen to call the Faithful back to Christ’s teaching and to evangelize the world.

The call for us as Catholic Christians is not to seek cover, crying “The Church is falling! The Church is falling!” It’s not for us to criticize every little word and action of Pope Francis. Our call is to be the great saints in our time by first living lives of virtue and hope, then proclaiming the Good News of Christ. Yes, the great saints in the past would occasionally “call out” popes, bishops, priests, and so on, but they recognized that their primary mission was to live according to the teachings of Jesus and proclaim those teachings to the world. That is our mission as well. If we wish to reform the Church, we must reform our lives first of all.

What Does An Evangelizing Parish Look Like?

The title of this post is one I’ve been struggling with for some time: What does an evangelizing parish look like? In my opinion, this is a vital question that every person in the Catholic Church, whether clergy, religious or lay, needs to be asking. This question is not asked over concern for the future of the Catholic Church, but for the future salvation of those in our communities and neighborhoods.

Much has been made over the past 20-30 years about parishes establishing “mission statements”, but very few that I’ve seen explicitly mention evangelization. Yet, that is a primary mission which Our Lord gave to the Apostles: “Go, therefore, and make disciples of all nations, baptizing them in the name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the holy Spirit, teaching them to observe all that I have commanded you.” (Matthew 28:19-20) It’s my contention that we do not evangelize as Catholics because have not made evangelization a primary mission of our parishes.

This post is the first in what should be a lengthy series of intermittent posts discussing various things a “model” evangelizing parish does. My hope is to get a vision that I and other pastors can use to reform our priestly ministry and guide our parishes in becoming evangelizing forces within our communities.

Time For Me To Make A Commitment For The Sake Of The Gospel

I’ve been lazy. There are so many things I’d like to do as part of my online ministry (which includes this website) that I haven’t done. I’ve thought about them, I’ve brainstormed over ideas for them, but haven’t put any of it into practice.

Until today’s daily Mass readings. The Apostles were so zealous to proclaim the Good News of Our Lord’s salvation that they rushed over to the temple to continue their proclamation immediately after they were miraculously busted out of jail. They risked maltreatment for the sake of the Gospel, and I can’t even find time, energy, and desire to do something as simple as a blog post.

I’m taking the first step right now. I’m publicly committing to posting at least 1 thing a day. It might be a discussion about an article online. It might be a quote from spiritual reading, the Liturgy of the Hours, or the Mass. On particularly hectic days, it might be a “Hi, I’m still here!” post.

My goals for this website are: to proclaim the Good News of Christ to those who have need of evangelization, and to help those who already follow Christ on their path to living as His disciple. Oh, and hopefully have a bit of fun in my geekiness.

Are we being good stewards with the Catholic Faith?

The word “stewardship” seems to have become the new buzzword in the Catholic Church. You almost can’t do anything in the Church without hearing about the need to be good stewards, and what Catholic hasn’t had the “Three T’s” drilled into their head (in case you’ve never heard of the Three T’s, they’re Time, Talent, and Treasure).
I don’t want to denigrate the stewardship work being done in the Church. it is necessary for us to be good stewards of he Church, to use our time and talent to build up the Church physically and spiritually, and to use our treasure to fund the temporal needs of the Church. In the discussion of stewardship, I think one aspect is missing: being stewards of the Catholic Faith that has been passed on to us.
Today’s Gospel reading is from the Gospel of Matthew, chapter 21, the parable of the wicked tenants. Focusing on the Gospel, the reflection in the Magnificat Lenten Companion says that “we must be the kind of disciples who are careful stewards of creation and careful stewards of our lives.” As part of being stewards of our lives, are we doing everything we can to be careful stewards of the Catholic Faith? The chief priests and elders were not good stewards of the Jewish Faith, and thus were being criticized by Our Lord.
As Christians, we can fall into the same trap, and I would argue that we have over the past 50 years or so. I’m not going to point fingers and put blame on this person or that idea, but I will say that we haven’t been good stewards of the Catholic Faith. Look at the state of the Church today: a great many Catholics don’t know the basic elements of the Faith, and many don’t even bother to go to Church once a week. At least two generations of Catholics have basically no understanding of what it means to be Catholic. A large number of priests, religious, and laity have erroneous and contrary beliefs to the Truths revealed by Christ, and a number of prominent Catholic laity and religious cause public scandal by repeatedly opposing the bishops and the teachings of the Church. We must seek to do better.
If we wish to be good stewards of the Catholic Faith, we must not focus on how things went wrong and start assigning blame. Understanding what happened in the past is good for the purposes of avoiding the same errors in the future, but it’s all too easy to fall into the “blame game” while trying to justify our actions (or lack thereof). Instead, we need to dedicate ourselves to the task of stewardship. We need to make every effort to learn the Catholic Faith, and to allow the teachings of Christ to influence all areas of our lives. We also need to make every effort to spread the teachings to the next generations of Catholics who don’t know the Faith, to those who are weak in their practice of the Faith, and to those who have not heard the Gospel.
Being a good steward of the Catholic Faith is not an easy task. There will be pushback and arguments. Friendships may be broken, and families divided. We live in a culture that has all but abandoned its Christian roots. If we’re to recover our Faith and bring the world to Christ, we have to be willing to go through that suffering, offering it up in union with the suffering of Our Lord on the Cross. After all, Our Lord didn’t say being a steward would be easy, just that those who are faithful would be rewarded.

“They were loved out of the Church”

Strange quote for a title, no? It was said by a parishioner here during a phone conversation regarding people who have fallen away from the practice of the Catholic Faith. At first glance, it might seem strange, but makes logical sense once you think about it.

Following the Second Vatican Council, there was a renewed emphasis on the love of God for humanity and His desire that all be saved. This, of course, is true and should be a focus by the Church at all times. The problem arises when any truth is taken to an extreme that reduces or denies another truth. It became popular to preach universal salvation, a heresy that denies the existence of Hell and states that all humanity will be saved. Universal salvation states that regardless of how we’ve lived our lives and how well we followed (or how strongly we’ve avoided) the teachings of Christ, we’ll be saved.

The problem with universal salvation is that it denies our free will to accept or reject Our Lord’s invitation to follow Him. It has always been held by the Church, based off Our Lord’s own words, that He died that we all might be saved but we have to accept that salvation by receiving the sacraments and following Our Lord’s commands. If we disobey those commands – in other words, fall into sin – we put that salvation at risk. The existence of Hell and the very real danger of ending up there by rejecting God and embracing sin is a dogma of Church. All dogmas are revealed divine Truth that must be held by all the faithful. Universal salvation denies this dogma, and thus meets St. Thomas Aquinas’ definition of heresy: “a species of infidelity in men who, having professed the faith of Christ, corrupt its dogmas”.

As part of the preaching on universal salvation, there was a denial of the need for the Sacraments. Confession was discouraged or flat out refused. General absolution for those things in our lives that “bother us” became the rule instead of the rare exception. People were told not to worry about missing Mass, as it was considered to no longer be a necessity. Baptism became hyper-focused on bringing the child into the Christian community instead of having any salvific role in the child’s life. And so on through all the Sacraments.

On top of the popularity of universal salvation, there was a renewed overemphasis on the meal aspect of the Mass. To be clear the Mass has always been held as a meal: the sacrificial meal through which we participate in both the Sacrifice of Calvary and the Heavenly Banquet. The focus became more on making the Mass into an earthly meal, with symbolism more common to a picnic or potluck. This led to innovations like gathering around the altar, using a coffee table for the altar and having everyone sit on the floor (including the priest!), and an overemphasis on socialization and community involvement. The focus of the Mass was no longer the Sacrifice of Christ, but rather the community that gathers to break the bread and share the cup.

This strong focus on the community led to such ideas as having the cantor begin Mass by inviting everyone to stand and “greet their neighbor”, allowing 5 minutes of socialization before the opening hymn; the priest having those visiting introduce themselves and say where they’re visiting from (which I always found embarrassing as a visitor, by the way); and the Sign of Peace going from a ritual in which ” the faithful express to each other their ecclesial communion and mutual charity before communicating in the Sacrament” with “those who are nearest and in a sober manner” (GIRM 82) to a 15 minute (yes, I’ve seen that) time of visiting and gladhanding throughout the Church.

As people heard the preaching of universal salvation and the overemphasis on community, people started to make a logical conclusion: “I don’t need to have anything to do with the Church and will still get to Heaven. At best, I just need to be a “good person”, and I’ll be fine. Doesn’t matter what I do otherwise.” Don’t have to go to Mass every Sunday? Great! I can sleep in on Sunday or go golfing when every one else is at Mass. Don’t have to go to Confession? Great! I hate having to confront the fact that I’ve done things wrong. Because they got the impression that Jesus loves us so much at we don’t have to worry about Hell, they decided they had better things to do than worry about this Church “thing”.

The overemphasis on community didn’t help matters much. Sorry to those who like the “stand and greet your neighbor”, but there are many people who would much rather socialize during late Saturday night at the local bar or pub than Sunday morning at the Church. In fact, there are many who don’t like these “forced socialization” practices (myself included – if I’m in a group and want to be quiet, don’t force me to do otherwise!) and want to avoid them whenever and however possible. If it’s the choice of spending my Sunday morning how I want or being forced into greeting my neighbor, I’ll take the selfish route, thanks.

Many Catholics have taken the selfish route, and this is what the parishioner meant by someone being “loved out of the Church”. If Jesus loves us so much that there’s no consequences to missing Mass, and it’s uncomfortable to go to Mass, then why go? The problem, of course, that this all based on misunderstanding of the Truth revealed by Christ. Yes, Jesus loves us unconditionally, but that doesn’t mean we can’t reject that love. Yes, community involvement within the parish is important, but the focus of the Mass is in worship of God and sharing in the Body and Blood of Christ, not in our communal gathering and sharing.

People were “loved out of the Church”. Now, the question is, do we love them enough to love them back in to the Truth?

Homily for the Thirtieth Sunday in Ordinary Time

Homily for the Thirtieth Sunday in Ordinary Time

From Patrick Madrid: Fellowship of the Unashamed Mission Statement