Carl E. Olson's Blog, page 154
May 2, 2013
Building Bridges Between Orthodox and Catholic Christians

Building Bridges Between Orthodox and Catholic Christians | Christopher B. Warner | CWR
An interview with Archimandrite Robert Taft, SJ, prominent Byzantine liturgical theologian and lifelong healer of Christian relations between East and West
The April
22nd kidnapping of Syrian archbishops Mar
Gregorios Ibrahim of the Syriac Orthodox Church and Paul Yazigi of the Greek
Orthodox Church of Antioch, and the killing of their driver, has reminded us
once again of the vulnerability of ancient Christian
peoples living in the Middle East. More than 1,000 Christians have been
killed to date in the Syrian conflict and more than 80 churches have been
destroyed. The majority of Christians in Syria are Greek or Syriac Orthodox or Melkite Greek Catholic. This recent violence in Syria can remind us
to pray for suffering Christians in the Middle East and afford us the
opportunity to practice solidarity with our Greek
Catholic and Orthodox Christian brothers and sisters.
Catholic
World Report had the recent privilege of asking Archimandrite Robert Taft, SJ
for his perspective on current Orthodox-Catholic relations. Father Taft has
been the leading scholar in Byzantine liturgical studies for decades. Taft has
devoted his life to preserving the liturgical treasury of the East and building
bridges between Orthodox and Catholic Christians. As a young Jesuit, Taft first
became interested in the liturgical traditions of the Christian East while
teaching at the Baghdad Jesuit College in Iraq (1956-1959).
In
1963, Taft was ordained a Catholic priest of the Byzantine Slavonic (Russian)
Rite. He is Professor-emeritus of Oriental Liturgy at the Pontifical Oriental
Institute, Rome, where he received his doctorate in 1970 and remained to teach
for 38 years. The Oriental Institute is the most prestigious institute in the
world for Eastern Christian studies.
A
prolific writer, his bibliography comprises more than 800 articles and 26 books,
including A History of the Liturgy of St. John Chrysostom (vols. II-VI),
Orientalia Christiana Analecta, Rome, 1978-2013. Several of his writings have
been translated into other languages.
Taft
is the personal friend of many prominent Orthodox scholars, living and
deceased, like Father Alexander Schmemann and Father John Meyendorff. He has
many friends in and ties to the Russian Orthodox community, where he is admired
and respected. For example, he directed the doctoral studies for both of St.
Vladimir Seminary’s liturgical professors: Paul Meyendorff and Father Alexander
Rentel.
CWR: Father Robert,
thank you very much for your willingness to share with us some of your recent
thoughts on Eastern Christian ecumenism.
Many people who are sensitive to Orthodox-Catholic
dialogue noticed that when Pope Francis appeared on the balcony a month ago, he
was not only very humble, but spoke of the Church of Rome as the Church “which
presides in love” and referred to himself as the bishop of Rome concerned for
the Christians of Rome. These past few weeks he has definitely set the tone for
his pontificate.
This quotation from the second-century letter of St. Ignatius
of Antioch to the Roman Church, “which presides in love,” could not have been
coincidence considering Pope Francis’ noteworthy sensitivities to Eastern
Christian ecclesiology. Plus, the historically unprecedented response to
Francis’ election in the form of Ecumenical Patriarch Bartholomew’s attendance
at the papal installation Mass seems to mark Pope Francis as another welcomed
bridge-builder between East and West. As an
aside, I think it is beautiful that pontifex
means “bridge-builder” in Latin. Perhaps Pope Francis will bring a new
understanding of that title through his ecumenical dialogue and his local focus
on the duties of the bishop of Rome? Could you comment on how you think Pope
Francis’ humble “style” will be viewed by Orthodox Christians?
Taft: Pope Francesco is making a wonderful impression on most of the
world by just being himself, the self of a real Christian in love, not with
himself or his image, but with what real Christians love…God and all His
creatures He died to save, especially the poor and needy and downtrodden. This
has come across clearly to all of us, including Orthodox I know, who as real
Christians can spot a fellow-Christian a mile away.
In addition, even more interesting from the ecumenical
perspective is Francesco’s emphasis on his primary title, “Bishop of Rome.”
Because a prelate’s title to his primacy comes from his local primatial see,
not from some personal or super-imposed ecclesiological distinction. I can’t
imagine that any of our attentive Orthodox observers have missed that!
Impregnable America is just a memory now
by Russell Shaw | Catholic World Report
On the evening of the Boston Marathon bombing I was doing a
radio interview about a book I'd written. Before getting to me, the host asked
listeners to pray for victims of the atrocity in Boston and for the nation.
When my turn came, I said, "My prayer is 'deliver us from evil.'" The
host agreed that was the right prayer.
Remember
America the Impregnable? It's just a memory now. The United States used to be
literally beyond the reach of foes, protected by two mighty oceans and peaceful
neighbors. But the cold war, with its ever-present nuclear threat, put an end
to that. And with 9/11, impregnability was a vanished dream.
Now,
of course, Americans find themselves menaced not just by foreign
threats--al-Qaeda, North Korea, whatever--but also by a seemingly bottomless
reservoir of home-grown monsters acting out fantasies of homicidal violence in
settings like schools and movie theaters. "Terrorism is a fact of modern
life," an Op Ed commentator pronounces. So, deliver us from facts of modern
life!
The
nation is responding to the reality of pervasive, universal vulnerability in a
variety of ways. Abroad, President Obama sharply escalates drone attacks on
terrorists--a controversial policy whose strongest talking point may be that it
helps keep us from blundering into another Iraq. Back in the U.S. a homeland
security regime is taking shape, with a burgeoning network of intrusive new
procedures to match. More subtly, pit-of-the-stomach anxiety is likely swelling
the market for escapist entertainment while encouraging some Americans to seek
distraction in outlets like alcohol, drugs, and pornography.
May 1, 2013
The Ignatius Press St. Paul's Pilgrimage Cruise


Year of Faith Mediterranean Pilgrimage Cruise
Follow
St. Paul's missionary path through Greece and Turkey. Join Ignatius
Press president Mark Brumley and EWTN's Father Mark Mary on a pilgrimage
of sea and land, led by outstanding Pilgrimage Guide Steve Ray, host of
The Footprints of God film series. Visit the sites where St. Paul
preached, suffered, was imprisoned, and eventually martyred (precruise
Rome extension only). Plus, see the island of St. John's exile, where he
received the vision of the book of Revelation. And visit Athens, where
Paul presented Christianity to the pagan world; and ancient Greek
philosophers such as Socrates, Plato, and Aristotle lived and taught.
Listen to inspiring teaching and faith-building presentations in the
lands of the first Christian missions.



Be transported back to the days of the early Church as you visit:
Athens
Thessalonika (Veria)
Phillipi (Kavala)
Constantinople (Istanbul)
Pergamon (Dikili)
Ephesus/Miletus (Kusadasi)
Patmos
Corinth
And visit Imperial Rome, the place of the martyrdom of Ss. Peter and Paul, on the optional precruise leg of the pilgrimage.
This is a spiritual journey of a lifetime.
learn more about the Pilgrimage »

Follow on Twitter | Friend on Facebook | Forward to Friend
Copyright © 2013 Ignatius Press, All rights reserved.
April 30, 2013
The Death of China’s Most Famous & Powerful Bishop

The Death of China’s Most Famous & Powerful Bishop | Anthony E. Clark, Ph.D. | Catholic World Report
The enigmatic Bishop Aloysius Jin Luxian, SJ of Shanghai described himself as “both a serpent and a dove.”
China’s most famous—and most
powerful—Catholic bishop has died. When I last saw him in 2011, I knew then
that age was finally catching up with Shanghai’s remarkable and indefatigable
prelate. As we sat together, I handed him a pile of rare photographs of him and
his fellow Jesuits, images that dated before his arrest in 1955. Pausing for
some time as he looked over the first photograph, he said in a low voice, “Old beloved
friends.” He had not seen those faces in more than six long and eventful
decades. He asked me to bring more photographs of “Catholic Shanghai before the
Communists”; I do have more images to give him, but now he is perhaps seeing
the real faces of his “beloved friends,” and I will file them away for
posterity. Bishop Aloysius Jin Luxian, SJ (1916-2013), was one of the most
gentle and charming people I have met, and he was also among the most enigmatic,
and as I thumb through his dossier I vacillate between admiration,
disagreement, speculation, and sometimes disappointment. As I said in my
2010 interview with Bishop Jin for Ignatius Insight, with Jin there are “no
easy answers.” I would like to offer a few remarks here about why Bishop Jin’s
recent death, at the age of 97, is probably one of the most noteworthy events
in the history of Catholicism in China.
Jin Luxian lived through China’s
most dramatic changes and growing pains as it transitioned from empire to the
largest and most paradoxical Communist country in the history of our world. He
witnessed China’s war with Japan (1930s); the fierce and tragic war between his
own countrymen, the Nationalists and Communists (1920s-1949); the rise of Mao
Zedong and Maoism in 1949; the turbulent 100 Flowers Movement (1956) and the
following Anti-Rightist Campaign (1957-1958); the Great Leap Forward and the
millions of deaths it caused (1958-1961); the cruel violence of the Cultural
Revolution (1966-1976); the post-Mao economic boom inaugurated by Deng Xiaoping
(1989-present). This long list of China’s landmark events does not include
equally dramatic events in Catholic history, such as the Second Vatican Council
(1962-1965). Because he was a Jesuit priest who had earned his doctorate in
theology from the Pontifical Gregorian University in Rome, Jin was labeled a
“dangerous counterrevolutionary” in alliance with an “imperialist power,” the
Vatican. Jin Luxian’s life provides historians extraordinary access to some of
the world’s most exceptional moments of transformation, and if you ask China’s
Catholics who has been the most influential figure in their Church’s remarkable
survival and seemingly-impossible growth through their country’s painful birth
as a Communist superpower, they will, to the person, reply, “Bishop Jin.”
Numbers aren’t Everything but They are Something

by Mark Brumley, President and CEO of Ignatius Press | CWR blog
Recently I saw an interview with
the controversial educator Michelle Rhee. She is the former chancellor of
public schools for Washington, DC. She put in place a rigorous program of
educational accountability, including serious testing. There were
accusations--not against her but against some teachers--of manipulating test
results to meet the higher expectations of the chancellor. And even apart from
such cheating, standardized tests are limited in the extent to which they can
measure all the pertinent dimensions of learning.
Limited, yes, but numbers do tell
us some important things, even if numbers aren't everything. Two cheers for
statistics.
The same idea applies to
quantitative assessments of church membership. They don't tell us everything
but they can tell us something. Which brings me to my point.
First Things recently ran a piece about relative Catholic decline in solidly committed
Catholics compared to committed Protestants. The Catholic decline can be read
in different ways. However it is read, it isn't good news.
To be sure, if the issue were simply about numbers, we could give away big-screen
TVs and various bits of SWAG to drive up the church rolls, at least
temporarily. Every Sunday a bingo night and every parishioner a winner. But it
isn't just about the numbers.
Of Bishops and Bombers
Of Bishops and Bombers | William Kilpatrick | Catholic World Report
It is time for Catholic leaders to update their thinking on Islam.
In his Sunday homily the week after the Boston Marathon bombing, Cardinal Sean O’Malley said that the action of the bombers was a “perversion of their religion.” We have grown accustomed to hearing such statements from prelates, as well as from presidents and prime ministers. Terrorist have “perverted” their religion or “distorted” it or “misinterpreted” it. But how accurate are such assessments?
On one occasion, Muhammad ordered the beheading of more than 700 Jews who had surrendered to him. On another occasion, when a severed head was tossed at his feet by one of his men, he exclaimed that it was “more acceptable to me than the choicest camel in Arabia.” On still another occasion he exulted, “I have been made victorious through terror.” Indeed, the Qur’an is full of admonitions to terrorize. Was Muhammad perverting the religion he founded? Was he a “misunderstander” of Islam?
Tamerlan and Dzhokhar Tsarnaev felt obliged by their religion to wage jihad. A song on their YouTube playlist is titled “I will dedicate my life to jihad.” Had they misunderstood or perverted the meaning of jihad? Many of Islam’s official representatives in America would like us to think so. They tell us that jihad is simply an interior spiritual struggle or a quest for self-betterment. For example, the Council on American Islamic Relations in Chicago sponsors a bus ad campaign that presents a benign interpretation of jihad. Sample: a picture of a young Muslim woman wearing a gym outfit and a hijab accompanied by the caption, “My jihad is to keep fit despite my busy schedule. What’s yours?”
That’s one possible way to interpret jihad, but it’s not the main way that jihad has been understood in Islamic tradition throughout the centuries.
April 28, 2013
Sigrid Undset on St. Catherine of Siena

The opening pages of Catherine of Siena | by Sigrid Undset, the Nobel Prize winning author of Kristin Lavransdatter | Ignatius Insight
In the city-states of Tuscany the citizens—Popolani—businessmen, master craftsmen and the professional class had already in the Middle Ages demanded and won the right to take part in the government of the republic side by side with the nobles—the Gentiluomini. In Siena they had obtained a third of the seats in the High Council as early as the twelfth century. In spite of the fact that the different

The family of Jacopo Benincasa was one of these. By trade he was a wool-dyer, and he worked with his elder sons and apprentices while his wife, Lapa di Puccio di Piagente, firmly and surely ruled the large household, although her life was an almost unbroken cycle of pregnancy and childbirth—and almost half her children died while they were still quite small. It is uncertain how many of them grew up, but the names of thirteen children who lived are to be found on an old family tree of the Benincasas. Considering how terribly high the rate of infant mortality was at that time, Jacopo and Lapa were lucky in being able to bring up more than half the children they had brought into the world.
Jacopo Benincasa was a man of solid means when in 1346 he was able to rent a house in the Via dei Tintori, close to the Fonte Branda, one of the beautiful covered fountains which assured the town of a plentiful supply of fresh water. The old home of the Benincasas, which is still much as it was at that time, is, according to our ideas, a small house for such a big family. But in the Middle Ages people were not fussy about the question of housing, least of all the citizens of the fortified towns where people huddled together as best they could within the protection of the walls. Building space was expensive, and the city must have its open markets, churches and public buildings, which at any rate theoretically belonged to the entire population. The houses were crowded together in narrow, crooked streets. According to the ideas of that time the new home of the Benincasas was large and impressive.
Lapa had already had twenty-two children when she gave birth to twins, two little girls, on Annunciation Day, March 25, 1347. They were christened Catherine and Giovanna. Madonna Lapa could only nurse one of the twins herself, so little Giovanna was handed over to a nurse, while Catherine fed at her mother's breast. Never before had Monna Lapa been able to experience the joy of nursing her own children—a new pregnancy had always forced her to give her child over to another woman. But Catherine lived on her mother's milk until she was old enough to be weaned. It was all too natural that Lapa, who was already advanced in years, came to love this child with a demanding and well-meaning mother-love which later, when the child grew up, made the relationship between the good-hearted, simple Lapa and her young eagle of a daughter one long series of heart-rending misunderstandings. Lapa loved her immeasurably and understood her not at all.
Catherine remained the youngest and the darling of the whole family, for little Giovanna died in infancy, and a new Giovanna, born a few years later, soon followed her sister and namesake into the grave. Her parents consoled themselves with the firm belief that these small, innocent children had flown from their cradles straight into Paradise—while Catherine, as Raimondo of Capua writes, using a slightly far-fetched pun on her name and the Latin word "catena" (a chain), had to work hard on earth before she could take a whole chain of saved souls with her to heaven.










When the Blessed Raimondo of Capua collected material for his biography of St. Catherine he got Madonna Lapa to tell him about the saint's childhood—long, long ago, for Lapa was by that time a widow of eighty. From Raimondo's description one gets the impression that Lapa enjoyed telling everything that came into her head to such an understanding and responsive listener. She told of the old days when she was the active, busy mother in the middle of a flock of her own children, her nieces and nephews, grandchildren, friends and neighbours, and Catherine was the adored baby of a couple who were already elderly. Lapa described het husband Jacopo as a man of unparalleled goodness, piety and uprightness. Raimondo writes that Lapa herself "had not a sign of the vices which one finds among people of our time"; she was an innocent and simple soul, and completely without the ability to invent stories which were not true. But because she had the well-being of so many people on her shoulders, she could not be so unworldly and patient as her husband; or perhaps Jacopo was really almost too good for this world, so that his wife had to be even more practical than she already was, and on occasion she thought it her duty to utter a word or two of common sense to protect the interests of the family.
For Jacopo never said a hard or untimely word however upset or badly treated he might be, and if others in the house gave way to their bad temper or used bitter or unkind words he always tried to talk them round: "Now listen, for your own sake you must keep calm and not use such unseemly words." Once one of his townsmen tried to force him into paying a large sum of money which Jacopo did not owe him, and the honest dyer was hounded and persecuted till he was almost ruined by the slanderous talk of this man and his powerful friends. But in spite of everything Jacopo would not allow anyone to say a word against the man; Lapa did so, but her husband replied: "Leave him in peace, you will see that God will show him his fault and protect us." And a short while afrer that it really happened, said Lapa.
Coarse words and dirty talk were unknown in the dyer's home. His daughter Bonaventura, who was married to a young Sienese, Niccalo, was so much grieved when her husband and his friends engaged in loose talk and told doubtful jokes that she became physically ill and began to waste away. Her husband, who must really have been a well-meaning young man, was worried when he saw how thin and pale his bride was, and wanted to know what was wrong with her. Bonaventura replied seriously, "In my father's house I was not used to listening to such words as I must hear here every day. You can be sure that if such indecent talk continues in our house you will live to see me waste to death." Niccolo at once saw to it that all such bad habits which wounded his wife's feelings were stopped, and openly expressed his admiration for her chaste and modest ways, and the piety of his parents-in-law.
Such was the home of little Catherine. Everyone petted and loved her, and when she was still quite tiny her family admired her "wisdom" when they listened to her innocent prattle. And as she was also very pretty Lapa could scarcely ever have her to herself; all the neighbours wanted to borrow her! Medieval writers seldom trouble to describe children or try to understand them. But Lapa manages in a few pages of Raimondo's book to give us a picture of a little Italian girl, serious and yet happy, attractive and charming—and already beginning to show that overwhelming vitality and spiritual energy which many years later made Raimondo and her other "children" surrender to her influence, with the feeling that her words and her presence banished despondency and faint-heartedness, and filled their souls with the peace and love of God. As soon as she left the circle of her own family, little Catherine became the leader of all the other small children in the street. She taught them games which she had herself invented—that is to say innumerable small acts of devotion. When she was five years old she taught herself the Angelus, and she loved tepeating it incessantly. As she went up or down the stairs at home she used to kneel on each step and say an Ave Maria. For the pious little daughter of a pious family, where everyone talked kindly and politely to everyone else, it must have been quite natural for her as soon as she had heard of God to talk in the same way to Him and His following of saints. It was then still a kind of game for Catherine. But small children put their whole souls and all their imagination into their games.
The neighbours called her Euphrosyne. This is the name of one of the Graces, and it seemed that Raimondo had his doubts about it; could the good people in the Fontebranda quarter have such knowledge of classical mythology that they knew what the name meant? He thought that perhaps, before she could talk properly, Catherine called her something which the neighbors took to be Euphrosyne, for there is also a saint of that name. The Sienese were however used to seeing processions and listening to songs and verse, so they could easily have picked up more of the poets' property than Raimondo imagined. Thus for example, Lapa's father, Pucio de Piagnete, wrote verse in his free time; he was by trade a craftsman—a mattress maker. He was moreover a very pious man, generous towards the monasteries and to monks and nuns. He might easily have known both the heathen and the Christian Euphrosyne. Catherine was for a time very much interested in the legend of St. Euphrosyne, who is supposed to have dressed as a boy and run away from home to enter a monastery. She toyed with the idea of doing the same herself. . . .
Related IgnatiusInsight.com Book Excerpts:
• Chapter One of The Living Wood: Saint Helena and the Emperor Constantine (A Novel) | Louis de Wohl
• Chapter One of Citadel of God: A Novel About Saint Benedict | Louis de Wohl
Sigrid Undset (1882-1949), a renowned literary author and one of the most acclaimed novelists of the twentieth century, won the Nobel Prize for literaturein 1928 for her epic work Kristin Lavransdatter.
Relationship or “Rule-lationship”? Or Both?
Readings:
• Acts 14:21-27
• Ps 145:8-9, 10-11, 12-13
• Rev 21:1-5a
• Jn 13:31-33a, 34-35
Among the criticisms I once had, as an Evangelical, was that
Catholics were too concerned with “The Church.” They were so focused on the
Church, I thought, that they had little time or energy for Jesus. Besides, I knew that having a saving, personal relationship with
Jesus had little to do with the Church. The love of God, I believed, would only
be hampered by the sort of laws and structures found within the impressive but
worldly Catholic Church. Put simply, I thought that on one side was love and
relationship, and on the other was law and, well, “rule-lationship.”
I eventually changed my mind for two basic reasons: my
understanding of the Catholic Church was faulty, and my interpretation of what
Scripture says about these issues was equally faulty. Instead of recoiling in
horror, I can now appreciate the Catechism’s statement: “The Church is the goal of all things” (CCC 760). I now see
that the Church is very much about love and law, relationship and structure.
This is apparent throughout the Acts of the Apostles,
including today’s reading, which describes some of the work of Paul and
Barnabas in Asia Minor. Luke takes pains to point out how the early Church grew
and was governed. The gospel was proclaimed, disciples were made and then
exhorted to persevere. Elders were appointed and ordained in each church. And,
having returned to Antioch, the base for his missionary journeys, the Apostle
to the Gentiles called together the local church to tell the Christians the
news about their brothers and sisters in Christ. In this way Paul carried out,
in basic ways, the three-fold duty of bishops, the successors of the apostles,
who are to teach, govern and sanctify.
Paul spoke of the suffering that Christians will face in
entering the kingdom of God. The rule of God requires the followers of Jesus to
endure the trials and difficulties, even death, just as He willingly endured
shame, torture, and death on a Cross before He would be glorified by the
Father. Today’s Gospel places together two words that many people think (or
assume) are in direct opposition to one another: commandment and love.
We live in a culture that is enamored with the notion that love is about
feeling and passion—after all, you have to follow your heart!—while
commandments (or laws) are considered stifling and limiting, and certainly
loveless.
Jesus says otherwise: “I give you a new commandment: love
one another.” This is not, of course, the type of love found in many popular
songs and television programs, but a commitment to putting others first, even
to the point of physical death; it is a gift from the King and it is integral
for the life of the Kingdom. Thus, the greatest commandment, Jesus said
elsewhere, is to love the Lord God with our entire heart, soul, and mind, and
the second commandment is to love our neighbor as ourselves (Matt 22:37-40; CCC
2054-55). This love declares, “We belong to Christ, who died for the world.”
And it is this love that holds together and animates the Church, the Mystical
Body of Christ, which is the household of God.
In this way we can begin to appreciate the important
relationship between the Church and the Kingdom. The Church is “ultimately one,
holy, catholic, and apostolic in her deepest and ultimate identity,” the Catechism teaches, “because it is in her that ‘the Kingdom of
heaven,’ the ‘Reign of God,’ already exists and will be fulfilled at the end of
time” (CCC 865). The Kingdom was established in the person and work of Jesus
and grows throughout time.
In the end, as the Book of Revelation describes
today, the Kingdom is not an earthly reign, but the final triumph of Christ
over the power of sin and Satan, culminating in an eternity spent in communion
with the Triune God (cf., CCC 865), free of death, sorrow, and pain. In Christ,
through the Church, all things are being made new.
(This "Opening the Word" column originally appeared in the May 6, 2007, issue of Our Sunday Visitor newspaper.)
April 26, 2013
Abp. Chaput: "America is mission territory—whether we recognize it yet or not..."
Here is an excerpt from the Foreword to Russell Shaw's book, American Church: The Remarkable Rise, Meteoric Fall, and Uncertain Future of Catholicism in America, written by Archbishop Charles J. Chaput, O.F.M.Cap., of Philadelphia:
What people really believe,
they act on. And when they don’t act, they don’t really believe. For all of us
as American Catholics, this issue of faith is the heart of the matter. Real
faith changes us. It hammers us into a new and different shape. We too often
confuse faith with theology or ethics or pious practice or compassionate
feelings, all of which are important—vitally important. But real faith forces
us to face the deeply unsettling command given to each of us in the First
Letter of Peter: “As he who called you is holy, be holy yourselves in all your
conduct” (1:15).
Holiness means being in the world but not of it. It means being different from
and other than the ways of our time and place, and being conformed to the ways
of God, as Isaiah says: “For my thoughts are not your thoughts, neither are your
ways my ways, says the Lord. For as the heavens are higher than the earth, so
are my ways higher than your ways, and my thoughts than your thoughts” (Is 55:8,
9).
To the degree Catholics have longed to join the mainstream of American life, to
become like everyone else, to accommodate and grow comfortable and assimilate,
rather than be “other than” and holy, we’ve abandoned who we really are. Clergy
and religious face this temptation just as vividly as laypersons. Like the Jews
in the days of Jeremiah, too many American Catholics have too often forgotten
the covenant. We’ve “burned incense to other gods, and worshiped the works of
[our] own hands” (Jer 1:16). We’ve ignored the final command Christ gave to all
of us when he said, “Go therefore and make disciples of all nations.” He was
speaking to each of us, right here and right now. Catholics are a missionary
people led and served by a missionary priesthood.
So I think this, then, is the lesson of the last fifty years for all of us. We
need to return to Christ’s call to “repent, and believe in the gospel” (Mk
1:15). We need a Church rooted in holiness. We need parishes on fire with
faith. And we will get them only when we ourselves fundamentally change; when
we center our lives in God; when we seek to become holy ourselves.
Throughout his long ministry, Blessed Pope John Paul II urged Catholics again
and again to take up the task of a “new evangelization” of the world. Seeking
an armistice with the spirit of the world, both outside us and within us, is an
illusion. The Church in the United States faces an absolutely new and
absolutely real kind of mission territory every day now, filled with
intractable pastoral challenges. We’re a nation of wealth, sophisticated media,
and excellent universities. We’re also a nation of aborted children, the
unemployed, migrant workers, undocumented immigrants, the homeless, and the poor.
We live in a nation of great material success and scientific self-assurance but
also a nation where the inner life is withering away, where private
spiritualities replace communities of real faith, and where loneliness is now
the daily routine of millions of people.
America is mission territory—whether we recognize it yet or not; whether we
live in New York or Atlanta or Phoenix—and we need a new Pentecost. We need to
be people who are men and women of prayer, people of courage, people of
service, men and women anchored in the sacramental life of the Church. …
Russell Shaw has lived his own life of Christian witness with uncommon
integrity, humility, and keen intelligence. His skill animates every page of [The American Church]. He has captured the story of the Church in the United
States with honesty and love, and it’s a privilege to call him my friend.
Visit www.ignatius.com to learn more about the book and to order it.
Rethinking Religious Liberty

Rethinking Religious Liberty | Benjamin Wiker | Catholic World Report
Why religious liberty cannot mean the right to believe whatever we want.
In a previous article, “The Puzzle of Religious Liberty,” I brought before
readers a rather vexing quandary. Somehow our hearty affirmation of religious
liberty—which would seem to be a good thing—ends up producing a secular state
that uses its powers to enforce a secular agenda that contradicts our religious
liberty.
How does it happen? In order to limit
governmental interference in our religion, we declare that we each have a right
to define our own particular view about God and how we should—or if we
should—worship Him. Or Her. Or It.
But the practical result of our each individually
exercising this right is, as would be expected, to multiply religious
diversity. Catholics make up about a quarter of the US population, and
Protestants about double that, but Protestantism itself is divided into myriad
significantly distinct denominations. If you doubt that, go to the Pew
Forum on Religion and Public Life, and start clicking through the divisions
and subdivisions of Evangelical Protestant Churches or Mainline Protestant
Churches.
The greater the diversity, the greater the need
for particular religious believers or groups of like-minded believers to be
protected from the imposition of others’ beliefs upon them. Add to the
Christian mix Jews, Orthodox, Muslims, Buddhists, and Hindus, and the
substantial differences in core beliefs become even greater.
In legal terms, the greater the religious
diversity, the greater the desire to keep any one religious view from becoming established, i.e., from using the powers of the state to
impose its particular doctrines. Hence, the greater power given to the
government to ensure that no one’s
religious beliefs are represented by the government. In America, the result has
been the use of government power to subtract
particular religious beliefs from public, political view.
Carl E. Olson's Blog
- Carl E. Olson's profile
- 20 followers
