Carl E. Olson's Blog, page 143

Women Religious in the U.S.: The Past Fifty Years

Women Religious in the U.S.: The Past Fifty Years
| Catherine Harmon | CWR

Ann Carey, the author of Sisters in Crisis: Revisited discusses the past, present, and future of sisters in the States

Ann Carey has
written extensively about Catholic women religious for many years,
publishing articles on the subject in the National Catholic
Register, Our Sunday Visitor, Crisis, and Catholic World
Report. She has received Catholic Press Association awards for news
and feature writing and for investigative reporting. The second, updated
edition of her book Sisters in Crisis is now available from Ignatius Press, and discusses at
length the on-going controversy surrounding the Leadership Conference of
Women Religious and the group’s clashes with the Vatican. The book
also examines the dramatic changes in the lives of women religious in
the United States in the years since Vatican II, as well as the
increasingly hopeful signs of genuine renewal cropping up in religious
communities across the country.

Carey recently discussed Sisters in Crisis: Revisited—From Unraveling to
Reform and Renewal with CWR managing editor Catherine
Harmon.

CWR: The first edition of this
book was published in 1997. Since then, we’ve seen the launch of
the Vatican’s apostolic visitation of US women religious
communities as well as the Congregation for the Doctrine of the
Faith’s doctrinal assessment of the Leadership Conference of
Women’s Religious. Is the “crisis” faced by
today’s women religious the same one they faced in 1997? Would you
say their overall situation has improved or worsened since that time?

Read the entire interview on the CWR site.

Religion and Worldly Success

Religion, Liberalism, and Worldly Success | James Kalb | Catholic World Report

The irony of modern liberalism is that it is made possible by ties and loyalties that it rejects and destroys.

Why does it seem that orderly, prosperous, and well-run societies are usually less religious, but the less religious a society becomes the more disorderly it gets?

The situation is complex, it’s hard to do comparisons, and polling results are subject to a great deal of interpretation, but general trends seem clear. Northern and Western European countries are irreligious, Northeast Asian countries such as China and Japan are irreligious, and communist and post-communist countries are irreligious, except where religion was part of resistance to foreign ideological domination. In contrast, less developed areas such as Africa, South America, and Asia outside the Russian and Chinese cultural spheres are usually quite religious.

Given all that, it seems clear that religion doesn’t mix with success or modernization, right?

Actually, the picture is more complicated than that. It does appear that more order and prosperity mean less religion. That should be no surprise: people have been saying for some time that there are no atheists in foxholes and the poor are closer to God. It’s also true that the trend throughout the world seems to be away from religion. On the other hand, it’s equally true that less religion means less order and prosperity. Kill a country’s religion, and you kill the country. Throughout the West the post-60s period has been marked not only by a trend toward extreme secularity, but by an end to the postwar boom and by intractable social problems, including radical increases in crime and family instability.

To explain the situation we need to look at the relation between religion and social order.

Continue reading on the CWR site.

New: "The Transforming Power of Faith: Wednesday Audiences" by Benedict XVI

Now available from Ignatius Press:

The Transforming Power of Faith: Wednesday Audiences

by Benedict XVI

"Having faith in the Lord is not something that involves solely our
intelligence, the area of intellectual knowledge; rather, it is a change
that involves our life, our whole self: feelings, heart, intelligence,
will, corporeity, emotions, and human relationships. With faith
everything truly changes."

So Pope Benedict XVI introduced his catecheses for the Year of Faith, a
series of sixteen talks given at his weekly audience from October 2012
to the end of his papacy in February 2013.

These talks explore how and
why faith is relevant in the contemporary world. How can we come to
certainty about things that cannot be calculated or scientifically
confirmed? What does God's revelation mean for our daily lives? How can
the hunger of the human heart be fulfilled?

Offering the guidance of
biblical exegesis, pastoral exhortation, and brotherly encouragement,
Pope Benedict seeks to answer these questions and many others.

"Terrapin" is "a Catholic mystery" that "offers less genre writing than art"

Terrapin: A Mystery (also in electronic book format)
By
T.M. Doran

Ignatius
Press, 2012
392
pp., $19.95
ISBN:
978-1-58617-721-8

Reviewed
by Kenneth Colston

From
the July/August 2013 issue of St. Austin Review. Learn more or
subscribe to StAR at www.staustinreview.com

Is
there such a genre as the Christian mystery? W.H. Auden, who
considered himself a Christian, thought that the “detective story”,
to which he said he was addicted as a man might be addicted to
tobacco or alcohol, was partially isomorphic with the Christian
story: it begins in a closed milieu of innocence, is disturbed by a
crime against god and society, and is restored to a
garden of
innocence by a celibate in a state of grace. This dramatic arc, Auden
maintains, is also that of Aristotelian tragedy, moving from a
peaceful state (false innocence), to murder (revelation of presence
of guilt), false clues (false location of guilt), solution (location
of real guilt), arrest (catharthis), and back to peaceful state (true
innocence). It includes a “double peripeteia”, or two reversals
of fortune, one from apparent guilt to innocence (the suspects), and
one from apparent innocence to guilt (the murderer). auden’s short
but seminal analysis, “The Guilty Vicarage” (Harper’s
Weekly,
May 1948) exposes five elements of the mystery genre as a way of
shedding light on the function of mystery versus the function of art,
which true detective stories, he insists, are not.

The
first element is the milieu, the closed society in a state of grace:
the groves of academe, the country village, the bourgeois train car
or drawing room—not, however, a monastery, because the requirement
of confession threatens exposure and undermines innocence, which may
be why, Auden speculates, detective stories flourish more in
predominantly Protestant countries. the second element, the victim,
must be someone who is bad enough to involve everyone in suspicion
but good enough to make everyone feel guilty: “the best victim is
the negative Father or Mother Image”. The third element is the
murderer, “the rebel who claims the right to be omnipotent”,
through concealed “demonic pride”, and whose execution, in a
satisfying mystery, is “an act of atonement”. The fourth element,
the suspects, are guilty not of the murder but of something real that
they wish to hide: crimes against God and neighbor or against God
alone, a “hybris of intellect or innocence”, a lack of faith in
another suspect. The fifth element is the detective, and Auden says
that there have only been three completely satisfactory ones, each of
which embodies a perennial type: Sherlock Holmes, the scientific
seeker of neutral truth; Inspector French, the Scotland Yard yeoman
whose dutiful sacrifice on behalf of society is total; and Father
Brown, whose compassionate care of souls is paramount. These five
elements appeal to a class of readers immune to most escape
literature, doctors, lawyers, artists, scientists, or other
professionals who “suffer from a sense of sin”, which “means to
feel guilty at there being an ethical choice to make, a guilt which,
however ‘good’ I may become, remains unchanged. As St. Paul says,
‘except I had known the law, I had not known sin.’ ... The
phantasy, then, which the detective story addict indulges is the
phantasy of being restored to the Garden of Eden, to a state of
innocence, where he may know love as love and not as the law.”

I
draw upon Auden because I found it curious that Ignatius Press, known
mainly for its service to orthodox Roman Catholic readers of
theology, would be publishing a whodunit, and that StAR,
whose
mission is to reclaim the culture for the church, would wish the book
reviewed. Is there an inherent relationship between Christianity and
mystery writing? Both obviously search for justice and truth, but is
there a deeper relationship?

Terrapin
conforms
to some of Auden’s strict categories, but also, as Auden says of
Raymond Chandler, offers less genre writing than art. The setup is
simple but arresting. Four men who have been best buddies since
childhood reunite for a weekend and a Detroit Tigers baseball game.
They drink a little too much after the game; the next morning, three
of them wake up in their hotel room to find the fourth dead. Rather
than report it immediately to the police, they discuss what to do
over breakfast, and when they return to the room the body is gone.
Was their friend Greg Pace really dead, or was he playing a trick?
The central consciousness is not a detective but a mystery writer,
Dennis Cole, one of the four, and through his point of view the
entire novel moves back and forth between the hours and days
following the possible crime and vivid flashbacks to the friends’
1960s and 1970s not-so-innocent childhood spent in Terrapin Township,
a crabgrass suburb of Detroit.

The
portrait of this closed milieu of only apparent innocence, the
working-class neighborhood, is the strongest embodiment of Auden’s
theory and the greatest achievement of Doran’s creation. Auden
writes that the natural milieu should be “the Great Good place; for
the more Eden-like it is, the greater the contradiction of murder.
The country is preferable to the town, a well-to-do neighborhood (but
not too well-to-do or there will be a suspicion of illgotten gains)
than the slum.” Terrapin is peopled with memorable, good but flawed
or problem-plagued characters who are known to the neighborhood:
Dennis’ father T. A., a Korean War veteran, a widower, a machinist
by day and a reader of philosophy, theology, and (of course)
mysteries by night, a wise moral tolerant Atticus Finch figure; Jenny
Holm, a beautiful but disturbed and sexually frustrated unmarried
woman whose children have been taken away from her; Alvin, a black
man who marries a white woman and becomes the stepfather to a
rebellious teenager; and Greg’s and Dennis’s other companions,
Ben, Tony, and Lori, who accompany them on their increasingly
dangerous boyish adventures. These generously offered flashbacks,
which constitute the bulk of the book and slowly provide not only the
background but also the solution to the crime, have the ring of
observed artistic truth and are much richer than the present-time
mystery. The closely knit American neighborhood, when boys and girls
played kick-the-can freely in alleys and backyards and side streets,
their heads not glued to screens nor their ears plugged to speakers,
looking to the skies and observing their neighbors and creating
adventure and learning from adults and scrapes to become moral beings
through games that become less and less innocent, from digging frogs
out of muddy ponds to voyeurism and breaking and entering—this
former communio
personarum of
parenting adults and observant children, neither innocent nor
perverse, has probably become a thing of the past. With
air-conditioning and year-round storm windows and huge yards, who
overhears the secrets next door, let alone peeks in when the owners
are out or sits up with them until two in the morning when cancer
strikes? Doran depicts a lost world of communal friendship. How can
one learn to love one’s neighbor when the neighborhood has been
replaced by video games and hand-held devices and other instruments
of electronic isolation?

Nothing
in the novel is overtly or boisterously Catholic, not even the
protagonist’s religious Augustine-reading father, but it is, in a
sense, a Catholic mystery, with a twinge of Jansenism in the
understanding of the sinful soul that lies habitually, holds grudges
indefinitely, envies goodness constantly, retains guilt endlessly,
and plots revenge methodically. But just a twinge, for grace can be
brought out even of murder.

Kenneth
Colston is a retired teacher of languages who resides in St. Louis.
His articles have appeared in New
Oxford Review, LOGOS: a Journal of Catholic Thought and Culture,
Commonweal, Catholic Digest, Homiletic and Pastoral Review,
and many secular newspapers and journals.

From
the July/August 2013 issue of St. Austin Review. Learn more or
subscribe to StAR at www.staustinreview.com

Throwing Down the Gauntlet of Faith

Throwing
Down the Gauntlet of Faith | Carl E. Olson | Editorial for Catholic World Report 

The uniquely penned encyclical "Lumen fidei" is about the light of faith, as well as divine life, true love, and absolute truth

“The
future is made wherever people find their way to one another in
life-shaping convictions. And a good future grows wherever these
convictions come from the truth and lead to it.” — Joseph
Cardinal Ratzinger,
Preface
to the Second Edition (2004) of Introduction
To Christianity

“Faith
by its specific nature is an encounter with the living God—an
encounter opening up new horizons extending beyond the sphere of
reason. But it is also a purifying force for reason itself. From
God's standpoint, faith liberates reason from its blind spots and
therefore helps it to be ever more fully itself. Faith enables reason
to do its work more effectively and to see its proper object more
clearly.” — Benedict XVI,
Deus Caritas Est

There
have already been some
fine overviews written about Lumen
fidei (“The Light of Faith”),
the co-authored and unique encyclical released by Pope Francis on
July 5th,
but written largely in the months prior by his predecessor, Benedict
XVI. Rather than trying to summarize a document that deserves to be
read in its entirety, or to provide a “greatest hits” list, I
will content myself in making a few loosely related points about the
text that might be of interest to readers, especially those (again,
hint!) who have or will read it in full.

Pope
Francis notes that Benedict XVI “had almost completed a first draft
of an encyclical on faith. For this I am deeply grateful to him, and
as his brother in Christ I have taken up his fine work and added a
few contributions of my own” (7). My impression is that the vast
majority of the encyclical came from Benedict's pen. That said, the
passages by Francis are fairly obvious, but rarely in a disconcerting
or jarring fashion; quite the contrary. There are moments of
repetition, which are likely meant to be points of reiteration but
sometimes are simply repetitive. That is a minor quibble, for Lumen
fidei is a strong and challenging
document that has some exceptional and even surprising passages. This
text is like a gauntlet of faith that has been thrown down in the
midst of a confused and deeply wounded world with a combination of
humility, love, and exhortatory firmness.

Granted,
those of us who love reading theological texts can sometimes get
carried away in reacting to them. I understand that many Catholics
won't bother to read the encyclical, and I know the larger world, if
it pays attention at all, will simply try to find the “controversial
passages.” That's sad, but predictable, and that's all I'll say
about that at the moment.

As
I read Lumen fidei,
I was struck by the many passages that drew upon themes and insights
found in several of Ratzinger's book, going back to his Introduction
to Christianity, but also including
Spirit of the Liturgy
and Daughter Zion,
as well as his first encyclical, Deus
Caritas Est. Although it has the
name of Francis on it, the text bears the theological and stylistic
imprint of Ratzinger, and it to Francis' everlasting credit that he
so humbly and warmly presented it as he did.

In
addition to the specific, previous works, there is a heavily
Johannine, Augustinian quality to the encyclical.

Continue reading on the CWR site.

The Encyclical on Faith

The Encyclical on Faith | Fr. James V. Schall, S.J. | CWR

"Lumen Fidei" is a quiet new force in the world for those who seek God, truth, goodness, and salvation

“There
is no human experience, no journey of man to God, which cannot be
taken up, illuminated and purified by this light. The more Christians
immerse themselves in the circle of Christ’s light, the more
capable they become of understanding and accompanying the path of
every man and woman toward God.” — Pope
Francis, Lumen Fidei, 35.

“These
considerations on faith—in continuity with all that the Church’s
magisterium has propounded on this theological virtue—are meant to
supplement what Benedict XVI had written in his first encyclical
letters on charity and hope. He himself had almost completed a first
draft of an encyclical on faith. For this I am deeply grateful to
him, and as his brother in Christ I have taken up his fine work and
added a few contributions of my own. The Successor of Peter,
yesterday, today, and tomorrow, is always called to strengthen his
brothers and sisters in the priceless treasure of that faith which
God had given as a light for humanity’s path.” — Pope
Francis, Lumen Fidei, 7. 

I.

It has
long been known that Benedict XVI was working on a third encyclical,
one on faith, in the years after completing Spe Salvi, his
great encyclical on hope (still the JVS favorite!). Benedict had
designated this year as that of faith. He had given several general
audiences on the topic before he resigned. So it is both a gracious
and profound thing for his successor, Pope Francis, to take up what
Benedict had mostly completed to add his own touches to it. Nothing
makes the point of the unity of faith over time and background as
resident in the Chair of Peter more clearly than this collaboration
of two popes. Though Pope Francis has shown himself quite capable of
citing learned authors with the best of them, we know that when
something begins with Nietzsche, then cites Dostoyevsky, Martin
Buber, Dante, Romano Guardini, Ludwig Wittgenstein, T. S. Eliot, and
Newman along the way, not to mention numerous fathers of the Church,
especially Augustine, and heavy German footnotes, that we see the
hand of Benedict. The only thing missing was a quotation from Plato. 

What
struck me about this latest encyclical was how little it addressed
itself to current events. It does say that marriage is between one
man and one woman for their good and that of the child, but that is
nothing new. One would think that a Church that wanted to be
“relevant,” with a new Pope, some greater effort would be made to
speak of economics and foreign affairs. I can imagine the editorial
writers in the world press and media scratching their collective
heads trying to figure out how to deal with this obviously important
document. They are not used to being told that they cannot explain
the condition of their own souls without the faith that addresses
itself to the whole of human existence.

I suggest
that the encyclical’s purposeful indifference to such things is
precisely its point. In the long run, these worldly things are not
particularly important if they are not also taken up with the great
drama of faith that constitutes salvation history. We cannot explain
ourselves by ourselves to ourselves. “Idols exist, we begin to see,
as a pretext for setting ourselves at the center of reality and
worshiping the work of our own hands. Once man has lost the
fundamental orientation that unifies his existence, he breaks down
into the multiplicity of his desires…” (13). This encyclical
spells out the alternative to the self-centered man. We are not the
center of our own reality; yet, we really exist and there is a
center.

The faith
informs us about the communion within the Godhead, the Father, the
Son, and the Spirit. The one God is Triune.

Continue reading on the CWR site.

Proclaiming the Kingdom in the splendor of the Son

A Scriptural Reflection on the Readings for Sunday, July 7, 2013, the Fourteenth Sunday in
Ordinary Time | Carl E. Olson

Readings:
• Is 66:10-14c
• Ps 66:1-3, 4-5, 6-7, 16, 20
• Gal 6:14-18
• Lk 10:1-12, 17-20

Anyone who has seen a sunrise from a
viewpoint overlooking a grand vista knows the wonder of seeing the
contours of the earth revealed as the light washes over the landscape
and chases away the shadows. A world once dark and confining becomes
bright and expansive, and a sense of direction and place is
enlivened.

In an analogous, but much more profound
way, the Transfiguration of the Lord (Lk. 9:28-36) was the light that
revealed to the disciples a world bright and expansive. It gave them
a brief but life-changing glimpse into the splendor of the kingdom of
God. “At His Transfiguration,” wrote St. Thomas Aquinas, “Christ
showed his disciples the splendor of His beauty, to which He will
shape and color those who are His…”

What does this have to do with today’s
Gospel? A great deal, for everything that happened after the
Transfiguration and led up to Christ’s Passion was illuminated and
touched by the glory seen by Peter, James, and John. And while those
three apostles kept silent about what they saw (Lk. 9:36), the
Evangelist Luke wanted his readers to understand the landscape of
Jesus’ journey to Jerusalem in the light of that glorious event.

When Jesus appointed seventy-two men
(or seventy, depending on the translation), he deliberately patterned
his action after the selection of seventy elders by Moses. Those men
were meant to share in the spirit given to Moses so that, as God told
Moses, “they may share the burden of the people with you” (Num.
11:16-17). Earlier, Jesus had given the Twelve “power and
authority” over demons and illness, then sent them to proclaim the
kingdom of God and to heal the sick (Lk. 9:1-6). Some of the Church
fathers understood this as an establishment of apostolic authority,
whereas the selection of the seventy pointed toward the establishment
of the priesthood, for priests are co-workers who assist the bishops
in their duties (Catechism of the Catholic Church, 886, 939).

But this action not only foreshadowed
the priesthood, it revealed even further the prophetic, missionary
character of Jesus’ work. Sent to proclaim the presence of the
kingdom of the God, the disciples were given strict, even ascetic,
directives: carry no money, carry no sandals, greet no one along the
way. They were exhorted to elicit a response, a decision for or
against Jesus and his message. “Jesus’ own understanding of his
and his followers’ identity,” explains N.T. Wright in Jesus
and the Victory of God (Fortress Press, 1996), “went far beyond
the picture of a teacher of miscellaneous truths or maxims. The
corporate identity of the new movement belonged firmly within the
world of Jewish eschatological expectations.”

The kingdom of God is the fulfillment
of those expectations about the meaning of history and God’s plan
for mankind—and the Church is “the seed and beginning of this
kingdom” (CCC, 567, 669). Christ established the kingdom by his
preaching and his Passion, and he entrusted the message of the
kingdom to the Twelve and to the Church so it would grow and so it
could be seen for those with eyes to see. “In the word, in the
works, and in the presence of Christ, this kingdom was clearly open
to the view of men” (Lumen Gentium, 5).

But men will only see it if they turn
toward the light of the Lord, humbling gazing, if you will, upon the
Transfiguration so they might be transformed. This transformation,
St. Paul told the Galatians, comes by the way of “the cross of our
Lord Jesus Christ,” which brings about a new creation. Paul’s
blessing—“Peace and mercy to all who follow this rule”—was a
direct continuation of the peace granted to those who accepted the
disciples sent forth by Jesus: “Peace to this household.”

And every household that accepts Jesus
is taken into the household of God, the Church, which Paul called
“the Israel of God.” Within it, a world once dark and confining
becomes bright and expansive.

(This "Opening the Word" column originally appeared in the July 4, 2010, edition of Our Sunday Visitor newspaper.)

New from Ignatius Press: "Sisters in Crisis: Revisited"

Now available:

Sisters in Crisis: Revisited | From Unraveling to Reform and Renewal



by Ann Carey


Fifty years ago, nearly 200,000 religious sisters worked in Catholic
schools, hospitals and other institutions throughout the United States.
American Catholics honored these women of faith who founded and built
these flourishing works of mercy.



Then came the ideological shifts and moral upheavals of the 1960s, and
ever since, most women's orders in the United States have been in a
state of crisis. Now the sisters are aging, with fewer and fewer younger
women to take their place. Perhaps related to this demographic shift is
the continuing doctrinal confusion that has come under the scrutiny of
the Vatican.



Using the archival records of the Leadership Conference of Women
Religious and other prominent groups of sisters, journalist and author
Ann Carey shows how feminist activists unraveled American women's
religious communities from their leadership positions in national
organizations and large congregations. She also explains the recent and
necessary interventions by the Vatican.



After examining the many forces that have contributed to the crisis,
Carey reports on a promising sign of renewal in American religious life:
the growing number of young women attracted to older communities that
have retained their identity and newly formed, yet traditional,
congregations.

Ann Carey is a veteran journalist who specializes in
bioethics and Catholic women religious. Her work has been published
widely in periodicals such as Our Sunday Visitor, National Catholic Register, Crisis, and Catholic World Report.
She has received Catholic Press Association awards in news and feature
writing as well as investigative reporting, and has taught writing and
journalism at the college level. Ann and her husband live in South Bend,
Indiana, where they enjoy the company of their children and
grandchildren.

"Ann Carey has documented in detail the almost unbelievable
deconstruction of communities of women religious in the United States -
the sudden transformation of so many sisters from exemplary piety and
strict observance of rules to ideologically driven political activists
determined to "restructure" the Church. Can recent efforts at the
highest levels of the Church restore what was lost? Can the "still small
voice" of revitalized and vigorous faith in the newer, growing (and
younger) religious communities replace what has been systematically
destroyed? We earnestly hope that Carey's careful account of what
happened and how will aid in finding the profoundly needed cure for this
devastating disease."

-Helen Hull Hitchcock, Women for Faith & Family

"Carey shows how the LCWR's reconfiguring of its governance structures
along with its changing theological agenda has consistently brought it
into conflict with church officials. Thus, this book becomes a must-read
for anyone seeking to understand the implications of its redirection
and the impact this has had on vowed religious life in the United
States."

-Dolores Liptak, RSM, PhD, Sisters of Mercy of the Americas, West Hartford, CT

Summary of the Encyclical, "Lumen Fidei"

From Vatican Information Service:

Vatican City, 5 July 2013 (VIS) – Published below is a broad summary of Pope Francis' first encyclical, “Lumen Fidei”, published today, 5 July 2013 and signed on 29 June of the same year.






Lumen fidei – The light of faith (LF) is the first Encyclical signed by Pope Francis. Divided into four chapters, plus an introduction and a conclusion, the Pontiff explains that the Letter supplements Benedict XVI’s Encyclicals on charity and hope, and takes up the “fine work” carried out by the Pope Emeritus, who had already “almost completed” the Encyclical on faith. The Holy Father has now added “further contributions” to this existing “first draft”.

The introduction (nos. 1-7) of LF illustrates the motivations at the basis of the document: firstly, it reiterates the characteristics of light typical of faith, able to illuminate all man’s existence, to assist him in distinguishing good from evil, especially in this modern age in which belief is opposed to searching and faith is regarded as an illusion, a leap into the void that impedes man’s freedom. Secondly, LF – precisely in this Year of Faith, 50 years following the Second Vatican Council, a “Council on faith” – seeks to reinvigorate the perception of the breadth of the horizons faith opens so that it might be confessed in unity and integrity. Indeed, faith is not a condition to be taken for granted, but rather a gift from God, to be nurtured and reinforced. “Who believes, sees”, the Pope writes, since the light of faith comes from God and is able to illuminate all aspects of man’s existence: it proceeds from the past, from the memory of Jesus’ life, but also comes from the future as it opens up vast horizons.

Chapter One (nos. 8-22): We have believed in love (1 John 4: 16). Referring to the biblical figure of Abraham, in this chapter faith is explained as “listening” to the word of God, the “call” to come out from the isolated self in order to open oneself to a new life and the “promise” of the future, which makes possible the continuity of our path through time, linked so closely to hope. Faith also has a connotation of “paternity”, because the God who calls us is not a stranger, but is God the Father, the wellspring of the goodness that is at the origin of and sustains everything. In the history of Israel, faith is opposed to idolatry, which man is broken down in the multiplicity of his desires and “his life story disintegrates into a myriad of unconnected instants”, denying him the time to await the fulfilment of the promise. On the contrary, faith is trust in God’s merciful love, which always welcomes and forgives, and which straightens “the crooked lines of our history”; it is the willingness to allow oneself to be transformed anew by “God’s free gift, which calls for humility and the courage to trust and to entrust; it enables us to see the luminous path leading to the encounter of God and humanity, the history of salvation” (no. 14). And herein lies the “paradox” of faith: constantly turning to the Lord gives humanity stability, liberating us from idols.


LF then turns to the figure of Jesus, the mediator who opens to us to a truth greater than ourselves, the manifestation of God’s love that is the foundation of faith: “in contemplating Jesus’ death … faith grows stronger”, as in this He reveals His unshakeable love for mankind. His resurrection renders Christ a “trustworthy witness”, “deserving of faith”, through Whom God works truly throughout history, determining its final destiny. But there is a “decisive aspect” of faith in Jesus: “participation in His way of seeing”. Faith, indeed, looks not only to Jesus but also from Jesus’ point of view, with His eyes. The Pope uses an analogy to explain that, just as how in our daily lives we place our trust in “others who know better than we do” – the architect, the pharmacist, the lawyer – also for faith we need someone who is reliable and expert “where God is concerned” and Jesus is “the one who makes God known to us”. Therefore, we believe Jesus when we accept his Word, and we believe in Jesus when we welcome Him in our life and entrust ourselves to Him. Indeed, his incarnation ensures that faith does not separate us from reality, but rather helps us to grasp its deepest meaning. Thanks to faith, man saves himself, as he opens himself to a Love that precedes and transforms him from within. And this is the true action of the Holy Spirit: “The Christian can see with the eyes of Jesus and share in His mind, His filial disposition, because he or she shares in his love, which is the Spirit” (no.21). Without the presence of the Spirit it is impossible to confess the Lord. Therefore “the life of the believer becomes an ecclesial existence”, since faith is confessed within the body of the Church, as the “concrete communion of believers”. Christians are “one” without losing their individuality and in the service of others they come into their own. Thus, “faith is not a private matter, a completely individualistic notion or a personal opinion”, but rather “it comes from hearing, and is meant to find expression in words and to be proclaimed”.

Chapter Two (nos. 23-36): Unless you believe, you will not understand (Is 7:9). The Pope shows the close link between faith and truth, the reliable truth of God, His faithful presence throughout history. “Faith without truth does not save”, writes the Pope; “It remains a beautiful story, the projection of our deep yearning for happiness”. And nowadays, given “the crisis of truth in our age”, it is more necessary than ever before to recall this link, as contemporary culture tends to accept only the truth of technology, what man manages to build and measure through science, truth that “works”, or rather the single truths valid only for the individual and not in the service of the common good. Today we regard with suspicion the “Truth itself, the truth which would comprehensively explain our life as individuals and in society”, as it is erroneously associated with the truths claimed by twentieth-century forms of totalitarianism. However, this leads to a “massive amnesia in our contemporary world” which – to the advantage of relativism and in fear of fanaticism – forgets this question of truth, of the origin of all – the question of God. LF then underlines the link between faith and love, understood not as “an ephemeral emotion”, but as God’s great love which transforms us within and grants us new eyes with which we may see reality. If, therefore, faith is linked to truth and love, then “love and truth are inseparable”, because only true love withstands the test of time and becomes the source of knowledge. And since the knowledge of faith is born of God’s faithful love, “truth and fidelity go together”. The truth that discloses faith is a truth centred on the encounter with Christ incarnate, Who, coming among us, has touched us and granted us His grace, transforming our hearts.

At this point, the Pope begins a broad reflection on the “dialogue between faith and reason”, on the truth in today’s world, in which it is often reduced to a “subjective authenticity”, as common truth inspires fear, and is often identified with the intransigent demands of totalitarianism. Instead, if the truth is that of God’s love, then it is not imposed violently and does not crush the individual. Therefore, faith is not intransigent, and the believer is not arrogant. On the contrary, faith renders the believer humble and leads to co-existence with and respect for others. From this, it follows that faith lead to dialogue in all fields: in that of science, as it reawakens the critical sense and broadens the horizons of reason, inviting us to behold Creation with wonder; in the interreligious context, in which Christianity offers its own contribution; in dialogue with non-believers who ceaselessly search, who “strive to act as if God existed”, because “God is light and can be find also by those who seek him with a sincere heart”. “Anyone who sets off on the path of doing good to others is already drawing near to God”, the Pope emphasizes. Finally, LF speaks about theology and confirms that it is impossible without faith, since God is not a simple “object” but rather the Subject who makes Himself known. Theology is participation in the knowledge that God has of Himself; as a consequence theology must be placed at the service of Christian faith and the ecclesial Magisterium is not a limit to theological freedom, but rather one of its constitutive elements as it ensures contact with its original source, the Word of Christ.

Chapter Three (nos. 37- 49): I delivered to you what I also received (1 Cor 15:3). This chapter focuses entirely on the importance of evangelization: he who has opened himself to God’s love cannot keep this gift for himself, writes the Pope. The light of Jesus shines on the face of Christians and spreads in this way, is transmitted by contact like a flame that ignites from another, and passes from generation to generation, through the uninterrupted chain of witnesses to the faith. This leads to a link between faith and memory as God’s love keeps all times united, making us Christ’s contemporaries. Furthermore, it is “impossible to believe on our own”, because faith is not “an individual decision”, but rather opens “I” to “we” and always occurs “within the community of the Church”. Therefore, “those who believe are never alone”, as he discovers that the spaces of the self enlarge and generate new relations that enrich life.

There is, however, “a special means” by which faith may be transmitted: the Sacraments, in which an “incarnate memory” is communicated. The Pope first mentions Baptism – both of children and adults, in the form of the catechumenate – which reminds us that faith is not the work of an isolated individual, an act that may be carried out alone, but instead must be received, in ecclesial communion. “No-one baptizes himself”, explains LF. Furthermore, since the baptized child cannot confess the faith himself but must instead be supported by parents and godparents, the “cooperation between Church and family” is important. Secondly, the Encyclical refers to the Eucharist, “precious nourishment for faith”, an “act of remembrance, a making present of the mystery”, which “leads from the visible world to the invisible”, teaching us to experience the depth of reality. The Pope then considers the confession of the faith, the Creed, in which the believer not only confesses faith but is involved in the truth that he confesses; prayer, Our Father, by which the Christian learns to see through Christ’s eyes; the Decalogue, understood not as “a set of negative commands” but rather as “concrete directions” to enter into dialogue with God, “to be embraced by His mercy”, the “path of gratitude” towards the fullness of communion with God. Finally, the Pope underlines the there is one faith because of the “oneness of the God who is known and confessed”, because it is directed towards the one Lord, who grants us “a common gaze” and “is shared by the whole Church, which is one body and one Spirit”. Therefore, given that there is one faith alone, it follows that is must be confessed in all its purity and integrity: “the unity of faith is the unity of the Church”; to subtract something from faith is to subtract something from the veracity of communion. Furthermore, since the unity of faith is that of a living organism, it is able to assimilate all it encounters, demonstrating itself to be universal, catholic, illuminating and able to lead all the cosmos and all history to its finest expression. This unity is guaranteed by the apostolic succession.

Fourth chapter (nos. 50-60): God prepares a city for them (Heb 11:16) This chapter explains the link between faith and the common good, which leads to the creation of a place in which men and women may live together with others. Faith, which is born of the love of God, strengthens the bonds of humanity and places itself at the service of justice, rights and peace. This is why it does not distance itself from the world and is not unrelated to the real commitments of contemporary man. On the contrary, without the love of God in which we can place our trust, the bonds between people would be based only on utility, interests and fear. Instead faith grasps the deepest foundation of human relationships, their definitive destiny in God, and places them at the service of the common good. Faith “is for all, it is a common good”; its purpose is not merely to build the hereafter but to help in edifying our societies in order that they may proceed together towards a future of hope.

The Encyclical then considers those areas illuminated by faith: first and foremost, the family based on marriage, understood as a stable union between man and woman. This is born of the recognition and acceptance of the goodness of sexual differentiation and, based on love in Christ, promises “a love for ever” and recognises love as the creator that leads to the begetting of children. Then, youth; here the Pope cites the World Youth Days, in which young people demonstrate “the joy of faith” and their commitment to live faith solidly and generously. “Young people want to live life to the fullest”, writes the Pope. “Encountering Christ … enlarges the horizons of existence, gives it a firm hope which will not disappoint. Faith is no refuge for the fainthearted, but something which enhances our lives”. And again, in all social relations, by making us children of God, indeed, faith gives new meaning to universal brotherhood, which is not merely equality, but rather the common experience of God’s paternity, the comprehension of the unique dignity of each person. A further area is that of nature: faith helps us to respect it, to “find models of development which are based not simply on utility and profit, but consider creation as a gift”. It teaches us to find just forms of government, in which authority comes from God and which serve the common good; it offers us the possibility of forgiveness that leads us to overcome all conflict. “When faith is weakened, the foundations of humanity also risk being weakened”, writes the Pope, and if we remove faith in God from our cities, we will lose our mutual trust and be united only by fear. Therefore we must not be ashamed to publicly confess God, because faith illuminates social life. Another area illuminated by faith is that of suffering and death: Christians are aware that suffering cannot be eliminated, but it may be given meaning; it can be entrusted to the hands of God who never abandons us and therefore become “a moment of growth in faith”. To he who suffers, God does not give reasons to explain everything, but rather offers His presence that accompanies us, that opens up a threshold of light in the shadows. In this sense, faith is linked to hope. And here the Pope makes an appeal: “Let us refuse to be robbed of hope, or to allow our hope to be dimmed by facile answers and solutions which block our progress”.

Conclusion (nos. 58-60): Blessed are you who believed (Luke 1,45) At the end of LF, the Pope invites us to look to Mary, “perfect icon” of faith who, as the Mother of Jesus, conceived “faith and joy”. The Pope elevates his prayer to Maria that she might assist man in his faith, to remind us those who believe are never alone and to teach us to see through Jesus’ eyes.

Ignatius Press to Release Pope Francis' First Encyclical

'The Light of Faith' (Lumen Fidei) available soon in hardcover
 
SAN FRANCISCO, July 5, 2013 | Faith is the source of light, of guidance for the Christian life.
"We walk by faith, not by sight," wrote St Paul. In his highly
anticipated first encyclical, The Light of Faith (Lumen Fidei), Pope
Francis reflects on the meaning of faith, the beginning of God's
gracious salvation and the means by which man encounters the living God
through Jesus Christ in the Holy Spirit.
 
Ignatius Press is slated to release the
encyclical as a high-quality, hardcover, deluxe edition in August, in
time for the fall celebrations of the Year of Faith.
 
"Ignatius Press is honored and
delighted to publish Pope Francis' first encyclical in a special
hardcover edition and to get it before the reading public," said
Ignatius Press President Mark Brumley. "This follows what we did with
Pope Benedict's encyclicals and other works."
 
In The Light of Faith, Francis draws on
key themes of his predecessor, Pope Benedict XVI, who wrote encyclicals
on charity and hope. He intended to complete the set with a reflection
on faith, which would also have underscored the Year of Faith that he
launched. Benedict's history-making retirement meant he was unable to
finish his encyclical. Francis took up the task, adding his own
insights, themes and emphases to the work begun by Benedict XVI.
 
According to Francis, The Light of
Faith is a "four-hand document." Pope Benedict, Francis notes, "handed
it to me, it is a strong document. He did the great amount of work."
Thus, although officially The Light of Faith (Lumen Fidei) is an
encyclical of Francis' and reflects his teaching ministry, it is also
reflects the work of Pope Emeritus Benedict. It's not only Francis'
first encyclical; it is also among the few encyclicals openly
acknowledged to have been written by two successors of St. Peter.
 
For more information, to request review
copies or to schedule an interview with Ignatius Press President Mark
Brumley, please contact Kevin Wandra (404-788-1276 or KWandra@CarmelCommunications.com) of Carmel Communications.