R. Thomas Richard's Blog, page 21

A secular issue worth thinking about: Reform of Congress

Alright – this is not a Church issue, but a secular governmental one. I received this in an email, and I thought it deserved an audience. Think about it:

Congressional Reform Act of 2011

1. Term Limits

12 years max, some possible options are below.

A. Two Six-year Senate terms

B. Six Two-year House terms

C. One Six-year Senate term and three Two-Year House terms

2. No Tenure / No Pension

Members of Congress receive a salary while in office,

that salary ends when they leave office.

3. Congress members (past, present & future) are to participate in Social Security.

All funds in the Congressional retirement fund move to the Social Security system

immediately.

All future funds flow into the Social Security system,

and Congress participates with all Americans.

4. Congress can purchase their own retirement plan,

just as all Americans do.

5. Congress will no longer vote themselves a pay raise.

Congressional pay will rise by the lower of CPI or 3%.

6. Congress loses their current health care system

and participates in the same health care system as the American people.

7. Members of Congress must equally abide by all laws

they impose on the American people.

8. All contracts with past and present members of Congress are void effective 1/1/12.

The American people did not make the contract members of Congress enjoy,

Congress made all these contracts for themselves.

Serving in Congress is an honor, not a career.

The Founding Fathers envisioned citizen legislators,

so ours should serve their term(s), then go home and back to work.

+++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++

Do you think this might work? Congress needs a reformation! Could this be part of a solution? If you think so, suggest it to your congresspersons.

Boredom at Mass

I'm going to post here a slight re-write of a post I wrote for a Catholic on-line forum, on boredom at Mass.

There are many ways today that people (priests and laity) are trying to generate a genuine personal participation (or "interest" or "excitement" or something) in the celebration of the Mass. Some attempts are embarrassingly superficial (popular music and musicians, liturgical dance, extended "kiss of peace" hugs and chats, "creative" and made-up comments, commentaries and sometimes even jokes by the celebrant during the rite, ….); some try appeals to the solemnity, reverence and unction still remembered from pre-Vatican II days – and so on. But when men try to "create" or "generate" a reaction to Mass that is not authentic and from within, they are defeated before they begin. Worship is not created or generated outside of man by other men. Worship emerges from the interior of a worshipful heart, the rightful response to the work of the Spirit within.

Defeat is seen, in spite of the persistent attempts of some, in the dreaded judgment after all that "Mass is boring." We can hear it often from the kids; we can see it often in the faces of many adults. "Mass is boring." Why? Given the actual meaning and significance of every Mass, how can this be?

I came across this passage quoted below in then-Card. Ratzinger's book, The Spirit of the Liturgy, that for me sheds light on the real issue. The problem is certainly not an "external" or superficial one, but an interior one, a problem in the heart.

In the Old Testament there is a series of very impressive testimonies to the truth that the liturgy is not a matter of "what you please". Nowhere is this more dramatically evident than in the narrative of the golden calf (strictly speaking, "bull calf"). The cult conducted by the high priest Aaron is not meant to serve any of the false gods of the heathen. The apostasy is more subtle. There is no obvious turning away from God to the false gods. Outwardly, the people remain completely attached to the same God. They want to glorify the God who led Israel out of Egypt and believe that they may very properly represent his mysterious power in the image of a bull calf. Everything seems to be in order. Presumably even the ritual is in complete conformity to the rubrics. And yet it is a falling away from the worship of God to idolatry.

This apostasy, which outwardly is scarcely perceptible, has two causes. First, there is a violation of the prohibition of images. The people cannot cope with the invisible, remote, and mysterious God. They want to bring him down into their own world, into what they can see and understand. Worship is no longer going up to God, but drawing God down into one's own world.

He must be there when he is needed, and he must be the kind of God that is needed. Man is using God, and in reality, even if it is not outwardly discernible, he is placing himself above God. This gives us a clue to the second point. The worship of the golden calf is a self-generated cult. When Moses stays away for too long, and God himself becomes inaccessible, the people just fetch him back. Worship becomes a feast that the community gives itself, a festival of self-affirmation. Instead of being worship of God, it becomes a circle closed in on itself – eating, drinking, and making merry. The dance around the golden calf is an image of this self-seeking worship. It is a kind of banal self-gratification.

The narrative of the golden calf is a warning about any kind of self-initiated and self-seeking worship. Ultimately, it is no longer concerned with God but with giving oneself a nice little alternative world, manufactured from one's own resources. Then liturgy really does become pointless, just fooling around. Or still worse it becomes an apostasy from the living God, an apostasy in sacral disguise. All that is left in the end is frustration, a feeling of emptiness. There is no experience of that liberation which always takes place when man encounters the living God.

from Spirit of the Liturgy, Card. Ratzinger, p.22-23.

To attempt to apply Card. Ratzinger's words on "the golden calf" episode to our Holy Mass, can Holy Mass actually be, for some, "a feast that the community gives itself, a festival of self-affirmation"? Instead of authentic worship of God, can it become "a circle closed in on itself – eating, drinking, and making merry"? Can Mass be for some after all a mere "dance around the golden calf" – mere "self-seeking worship" – mere "banal self-gratification"?

What a truly horrific thought!

Can Mass be, for some, another "narrative of the golden calf" – a "self-initiated and self-seeking worship"? Can it be that Mass is boring for many precisely because Mass is not sufficiently "all about me"? For those "no longer concerned with God but with giving oneself a nice little alternative world, manufactured from one's own resources," yes Holy Mass would be boring!

For such disconnected persons, "liturgy really does become pointless, just fooling around. Or still worse it becomes an apostasy from the living God, an apostasy in sacral disguise. All that is left in the end is frustration, a feeling of emptiness. There is no experience of that liberation which always takes place when man encounters the living God." How can there be liberation if the only encounter experienced or sought is encounter with oneself!

True liturgical renewal and reform must always have the end of ever more authentic encounter with and worship of the one true God. Such reform, I suggest, has then one essential prerequisite, imperative above all: prior and continuing catechesis – teaching, instruction, formation in the truth of the God who deserves authentic worship! What is the goal of catechesis? To place persons in communion with Christ! We must be in a vital encounter with the living God in Christ, to worship Him!

"The definitive aim of catechesis is to put people not only in touch but in communion, in intimacy, with Jesus Christ: only He can lead us to the love of the Father in the Spirit and make us share in the life of the Trinity." (John Paul II, On Catechesis in Our Time #5)

Considering the state of our present efforts at adult faith formation, it is no wonder so many are bored at Mass. They do not know the One being offered worship, and so they do not know what worship of Him truly is. They cannot enter communion with true worshippers; they cannot enter true worship. The Church needs catechesis – especially adult catechesis: the faith formation of adults! The Church needs to enable that life-changing, personal encounter with the living God. Why is this not obvious? Why is this not the number one action item in every parish, in our "new evangelization"? We need to meet Christ, and the Church needs to enable that life-changing meeting.

Jn 4:23 But the hour is coming, and now is, when the true worshipers will worship the Father in spirit and truth; for the Father is seeking such to worship Him.

Jn 4:24 God is Spirit, and those who worship Him must worship in spirit and truth.

The Church and the Economic Train-Wreck

As America begins to get serious about the national debt crisis, we have an opportunity to look at and reconsider our shameful moral crisis: these two crises are inseparable, like two edges of a single sword. Our economic crisis is clear: we perpetually overspend using borrowed money, producing an ever-deepening chasm of debt. Our moral crisis seems to have been "tabled" for now, so that we can deal with the "important" problem of the economy. Any separation of the two, however, is superficial and artificial.

The analogy that comes to mind is the common caricature of the drunken sailor. (My apologies to every real sailor: I was a sailor myself, once!) Every weekend ashore he went out on a drinking binge, and spent every dime he had earned and could borrow on loose living. His problem had an obvious economic side, and an obvious moral side, but the two problems had a single root: no recognition of, no faith in God. He lived only for himself, even though in the most nearsighted, immature, carnal and immediately gratifying ways he could find. He pictures for us, I suggest, America.

American government has continued to believe in and hold to an economic model of constant borrowing that requires constant economic growth to eventually repay. Thus we need ever more businesses, more business activity, more jobs, more tax revenues to enable more benefits (more tax expenditures per person) – a system constantly requiring more people to financially support. All the while, however, the American people have been embracing an immoral (and becoming amoral) life-style that requires and that results in fewer people: fewer children means less responsibility for ME, more stuff for ME, more time for ME. America for decades now has been clinging to moral adolescence, to a refusal to grow up, to a denial of personal responsibility, to an obsession with self – and thus to the abandonment of true love, of authentic marriage, and of generous responsible parenthood. We see the progressing triumph of this Peter Pan refusal to mature in the culture: within decades, contraception was made "Christian", abortion was made "legal", homosexuality was made "moral" – and thus children were made "optional".

Washington, however, has continued legislating and spending under a model of growing population, while America has continued producing an ever shrinking and ever more-self-obsessed one. That's the prescription for a national train-wreck; one that could and should have been foreseen if we had enough adults around who could do the math. Immoral or amoral living has economic consequences.

"It's the economy stupid" is far too nearsighted a proverb. The human soul is more valuable than mere money, and is made for far grander and more noble things, but God will get our attention one way or the other. Unbridled hedonism has two downsides, economic and spiritual. The sins of man have one solution! And thus the Church has one overriding responsibility – and it is not to meet its annual budget, or to provide more meeting spaces or reorganize or have an annual "mission" with an even more "inspirational" preacher than last year. We don't need guest motivational speakers who come and go; we need the abiding and life-changing presence of God here among us. We need to meet Christ; we need to become alive in the Holy Spirit; we need renewal.

The Church exists to evangelize! We have spent decades now in our parishes and dioceses with mostly "in-house" concerns: in shallow attempts at spiritual and moral introspection, in canned programs of formation, in paper-thin episcopal pronouncements, plans and policies. In spite of all this apparent activity, we have failed seriously to commit to what is essential, what Christ formed and sent us to do. Granted there are exceptions by the grace of God, though relatively few. What has become "normal", however, is not good: the Church has failed to throw her heart and soul and being into the mission He gave us, to make disciples.

America is in her shiny brand-new bought-on-credit-with-no-down-payment car, cruising at 80, on a paved road to a radical humiliation. Maybe such a humiliation can usher in an authentic humility before God. And maybe the Church will begin to see her failure to be Church and to be His Light for this dark culture. May He have mercy on us, and give us His grace still. Maybe yet we will turn to Him.

Why Do Catholics Like Celebrity-Saints?

No, I don't mean people who were secular celebrities for whatever gift or notoriety, and who then became devoted Catholic Christians. I mean people, typically converts to the Faith with especially dramatic or radical conversion stories, who then became celebrated authors, speakers, and teachers. They became celebrities after conversion because of their speaking and writing abilities.

This is not unique to the Catholic Faith, of course. The Protestant world as well has their share of "successful" TV evangelists, who accumulate many followers, fans, supporters and donations. There is a lot of money to be collected from the faithful – and modernity makes it easier. I remember hearing one TV evangelist exhort the audience, "Plant a seed on your plastic today!" No, not in contradiction to biology 101 – but in convenience 101: "Use credit cards, it's easy!"

There is an unnecessary tragedy when they fall. Yes it is a personal tragedy for them, but it is unnecessarily tragic for their followers, because these "stars" became something beyond God's provision for His people. Such quasi-idolatrous "celebrity" is no gift of the Holy Spirit. Stars, heroes, celebrities – the whole concept seems radically non-Christian to me. Christians in general and Catholics included, unfortunately for us all, can succumb to a kind of idolatry of heroes. Catholics, unfortunately for us all, can seek inspiration of the "inexpensive" kind – the kind that passes as quickly as it came, the kind that does not threaten one's life or life-style, the kind of inspiration that someone else has. The "celebrity saint" is booked many months in advance, in very large halls, with guaranteed funding, and all to the delight of his ardent fan base. They, filling the halls, sit in the audience. He, on tour, on stage, delivers his performance and everyone is happy.

Is Christ happy? Are disciples being made? Are persons being transformed into Christ? Are they growing mature in the Faith? Are they themselves becoming evangelizers as they support the professional evangelists? Or is all this theater a too-convenient way of avoiding the personal responsibility that comes with the grace of the Cross of Christ?

Mother Teresa knew sanctity in her profound humility. She did not seek the spotlight; she endured it for the sake of Christ and His mission. Attributed to her are these two comments on the matter:

Humility is the mother of all virtues; purity, charity and obedience. It is in being humble that our love becomes real, devoted and ardent. If you are humble nothing will touch you, neither praise nor disgrace, because you know what you are. If you are blamed you will not be discouraged. If they call you a saint you will not put yourself on a pedestal.

We must have a real living determination to reach holiness. 'I will be a saint' means I will despoil myself of all that is not God; I will strip my heart of all created things; I will live in poverty and detachment; I will renounce my will, my inclinations, my whims and fancies, and make myself a willing slave to the will of God.

Jesus came to give us something more than a crafted "inspirational" talk. He came to "in-spirate" us – that is, to pour forth the Spirit into our hearts and lives. He came to call us out of the audience, out of the safety of being a mere spectator, out of avoiding living by instead vicariously substituting the stage-lives of the stars, the heroes, the celebrities.

We are to be inspired by the Holy Spirit. We are to live lives of heroic virtue and faith. We are called to be perfect – that is, mature in the life to which God has called us, and for which He has enabled us. If the celebrity teachers are really doing what they are supposed to be doing, then they are working themselves out of a job – they are to point us to Jesus, they are to enable us to encounter Him personally, and to strengthen us to remain in Him.

And in Him, we will not long remain in the audience. The Church is sent to evangelize. How long will it take us to "learn" enough actually to do it?

The Christian Family Today: Trinity Sunday

Blessings on this Holy Day!  May we all be open to receive the Love of Father, Son and Holy Spirit.  Rejoicing in our blessings, may we remember also our call to "be a blessing" to others.  Our family is our first experience of love, but the older we become in nature and grace, the more our choices determine the depth and direction of our love.  Even those little loved by human parents, can by God's Grace yet experience and grow in His Love, and can help others to become perfect as our Heavenly Father is perfect. (cf Mt. 5:48).  In the Trinity is Love for all, and we as Christian families are called to reflect this Love in the world.

"The Christian family is a communion of persons, a sign and image of the communion of the Father and the Son in the Holy Spirit.  In the procreation and education of children it reflects the Father's work of Creation.  It is called to partake of the prayer and sacrifice of Christ.  Daily prayer and the reading of the Word of God strengthen it in charity.  The Christian family has an evangelizing and missionary task." – The Catechism of the Catholic Church paragraph 2205.

How many families today are a "communion of persons" or believe they are created to be a sign and an image of the Holy Trinity's Communion of Three Divine Persons?   Some may remember this truth from the Catechism or from a class or homily they heard, but many other families are broken, hurting, and aching for communion.  Sin has destroyed and will continue to destroy familial love, but God so loved the world He sent His Only Begotten Son (Jn 3:16). In Christ, true communion of persons reflecting the Trinity is given, but will we receive Him and help others receive Him?

If by God's Grace we are determined to know and follow Christ as disciples, daily we can learn from Him how to love truly. We can repent and believe; we can experience the communion we need.  We also hear Him tell us to go and make disciples teaching them all that we have heard from Him.  But how "determined" are we?  How many families take time to know Christ and to follow Him?  How many are truly open to life while others defend contraception, abortion, same sex-marriages, and are educating others to do the same?  Some fervently partake of prayer and the sacrifice of the Mass, but others find excuses not to come if it's inconvenient.  Fewer still may pray daily and daily read the Word of God and grow strong in charity.   God has loved us so much, but how determined are we to love Him in return?  How much grace do we squander?  What do we value most?

How can the Christian family take up the evangelizing and missionary task it has been given in Baptism and Confirmation when so may of our families are in need of evangelization?  The king going to battle against impossible odds in the movie, Lord of the Rings, asked: "How did it come to this?"  I believe it has come one venial sin at a time.   We have become more and more careless, irreverent, and more and more forgetful of the Lord's warning: "Watch and pray that you may not enter into temptation; the spirit indeed is willing but the flesh is weak." (Mat 26:41).

Many families do not watch and do not pray, thus  they enter  temptation and fall.  The more we fall, the less our conscience may bother us.  The flesh is weak and the spirit becomes weak as well.  But if we cooperate with God's Grace, we will watch and discern the signs of these times.   We will pray and we will help our families to pray.  Thus helped by word and example, we will not enter into temptation and fall – or if we do fall, we will sincerely repent and begin again.     By God's Grace, our families can become stronger in the Love of God and find true communion of persons.  We cannot ever give up in the struggle.  We must pray with perseverance, take up our cross daily and follow Him Who has loved us first.  Together we need to overcome the culture of death around us by doing the truth lovingly in our families first, and with our families to reach out to others.

Our battle to overcome evil seems impossible to us often, and without God's Grace it is.  But with Him, all things are possible.  Let us rejoice that God in His Mercy has given us life this day and His Grace to enter union with Him, growing each day in faith hope and above all charity.  The decisive battle of our time is in the family.  It is in the home, where the evil one knows it begins for each of us.  Let us strive to love one another with His Love.  Let us approach each person as one created in His Image and Likeness, no matter how disfigured he/she may appear to us.  Jesus excludes no one from His invitation to "ask, seek, knock."  Can we?  The Good Shepherd leaves the 99 in search of the one lost.  Will we?

What a glorious future awaits the sons and daughters of God who have fought the good fight and finished the race!   We see only a reflection of the Trinity here and now, but the Beatific Vision awaits those willing to receive Love and give Love in return.

Encountering Christ in Holy Scripture with Lectio Divina

I've just put another e-book title into Amazon for the Kindle, and into Barns and Noble for the Nook. It is a small book, entitled Encountering Christ in Holy Scripture with Lectio Divina. I've thought for some time about doing something like this, because I believe there is a great need among Catholics for some better guidelines to help us all to learn to listen to Scripture, personally, in such a way as to hear that life-transforming word of Jesus. We Catholics need to better "become at home" in the saving word of God, so that He can better find a home within us. I finally sat down to write something in anticipation of a workshop I'm invited to give on the subject of Lectio Divina, at a diocesan conference on Hilton Head Island called, "Fire at the Beach" coming in September.

Lectio Divina, as you may know, is a method – a discipline – of listening to Scripture in such a way as to hear Christ, and hearing Him, to become transformed in Him. It is ancient, simple, powerful and effective in a heart that is open to Him. There are four traditional steps to the method, with a fifth step now often added as well. The four steps are these:

• Lectio – prayerful listening to some passage of Scripture,

• Meditatio – meditating upon the passage,

• Oratio – praying in response to the passage, and

• Contemplatio – a quiet resting in contemplation with Him.

• The fifth step – Actio – is enacting the truth of the passage in one's own life.

In preparing for the workshop, I am discovering already several themes that seem to be crucially important for us in this time in our present cultural state and condition. These themes are crucially important, but scarce indeed in this culture of ours.

• (To practice Lectio) – the themes of proper reverence in the presence of The Holy in Scripture, and the stark beauty of solitude and of silence with His word. This in a culture that glorifies irreverence, group-think and noise.

• (To practice Meditatio) – the challenge of believing in objective and absolute revealed Truth, in the midst of this obsessively relativistic and skeptical age. And the challenge as well to submit to such Truth sincerely, personally, authentically.

• (To practice Oratio) – the theme of consecration – the radically faithful self-offering of personal consecration in one's prayer to God. Even the reality, the existence of such a thing as consecration to God seems starkly out of place in this culture of independence, autonomy, emptiness and loneliness.

• (To practice Contemplatio) – the theme of communion in love with God in His word – a theme crucial to Christian life and indeed to our very humanity! – yet one that finds no place in the secular world so spiritually bankrupt in pragmatism and utilitarianism.

These themes – reverence, solitude, silence, Truth, consecration, communion, love – these are essentials! Human persons were made for these precious realities, yet look how impoverished our world has become: these realities are so rare. They are denied, discarded, suppressed, rarely even acknowledged as existing! They have become as meaningless dreams or ideals, so poor is our world today. Thus the crying need for discovery – or rediscovery – of them, to rightly judge this culture so empty of them.

Catholics have been given so much, and the world is in need of so much! If Catholics discover or rediscover, and embrace, what God has entrusted to us – then, perhaps, we can be the light that this darkening world needs. The darkness is growing, and so then is the need. May the Lord help us to become the help so needed, for to whom much is given, much will be required. There is much given, in the holy word of Scripture. Lectio Divina can help us find it.

Truth, Goodness, Beauty

I've been talking with atheists and agnostics recently. It is so clear that faith is a gift! Unbelievers challenge me with the demand, "Prove that there is a God!" – Or that there is an afterlife, or absolute moral right and wrong, or that truth itself exists. They cannot even see, since they believe we accidentally evolved slithering out of slime and chaos, that "the beautiful" could be anything more than that which is pleasing for them to look at. Perhaps we can help them to look again, and more closely.

There is beauty, and goodness, and truth. And love exists. And when a person is able to see that there is more than futility, accident and death, he can begin to see past his own eyes to things that exist apart from him, that existed before him and that will endure beyond him. These transcendental realities invite us all to transcend ourselves. And if a person can hear the invitation of truth, and of beauty, and of goodness, perhaps he will pause for a moment and to catch a glimpse of what lies beyond the surfaces of things to things interior, at the foundations, within and under the dimensions of the material and the temporal. Perhaps first he looks toward God, and later to Him.

Some, even among atheists and agnostics, if they do possess a love for truth, will never stop looking until they see. We might be more helpful to atheists and agnostics if we stop pointing them to things that they cannot see, but instead to things that they can see. Maybe we should stop quoting Scripture to them that they are deaf to, and stop urging them to try to see what only eyes of faith can see, and instead point them to values God set into place for all men: transcendent values of truth, goodness, beauty, love – signs that point to Him. Then maybe later, they will see the more beyond the signs.

Beauty is a common word, but it has suffered shrinkage in our aesthetically challenged world. Some who live on the surfaces of life (even while feeling imprisoned in doing so) lead us to wonder to ourselves, "Do you not see the beauty there?" We wonder further, "How can you see the beauty there and just keep walking!" Some do see such beauty "there" (somewhere – anywhere) that it affects them, moves them, changes them irreversibly. Others, deadened within, say "Sure, oh yeah, of course. Very nice." And they keep walking. But the man who does see – he stops walking for a bit because something is owed in return, when such a gift of seeing the beautiful is received.

There is something holy about the good, and the beautiful, and the true. Its holiness demands something of us. We owe something in return, not merely because the gift is pleasing to us and gives some passing momentary pleasure. No, the good and the beautiful and the true have a transparency to something greater than themselves, and they thereby invite us to something greater than ourselves.

Humanity is, today, in a place of deep confusion. Before his elevation to pope, Card. Ratzinger (homily in Mass before the Conclave, 2005) preached about the errors and dangers of relativism:

To have a clear faith, according to the creed of the Church, is often labeled as fundamentalism. While relativism, that is, allowing oneself to be carried about with every wind of "doctrine," seems to be the only attitude that is fashionable. A dictatorship of relativism is being constituted that recognizes nothing as absolute and which only leaves the "I" and its whims as the ultimate measure.

Consider the distortion to these transcendental values of truth, goodness and beauty, in a culture under the sway of relativism:

Truth is not recognized as an attribute of God in Jesus Christ ("I am the way and the truth and the life"), nor even as an eternally existing and absolute reality independent of any human perception of it. Rather, "truth" is what "I" agree with and define to be true. What is true for me can be different from what is true for you, because there is no absolute truth.

Goodness is not recognized as grounded in the goodness of God ("No one is good, but God alone."), nor even merely as a good common to all men for all times. There is no absolute good. Rather, goodness is what is good for me, what pleases me, what satisfies me. What is good for me might be very different from what is good for you, since we all have different tastes.

Beauty is not recognized as the eternal radiance of the eternally true and good ("I am the good Shepherd" is literally, "I am the Shepherd the beautiful."). Rather, in the world of relativism, there is no beauty beyond what is aesthetically pleasing in some way to me. As for truth and goodness, for beauty it is the individual and his subjective preference that defines beauty and what is beautiful.

Thus in today's world, the center of gravity of reality has shifted from the world in which I have been created and placed, to a world inside of me, to my perceptions and preferences and pleasures. To say that something is good, or true, or beautiful is to say something about me and what I think and judge, not about the thing outside of and independent of me. To see something beautiful is "really" to say, "When I look at that, I feel beauty in myself." (See, for example, C.S. Lewis and The Abolition of Man.) Thus, the man of relativism is actually saying, "When I look at that thing I am beautiful." It is all about me.

Of course, for all its self-centeredness and egoism, such relativism is not a bold assertion of actual self-importance and strength, but an admission of extreme poverty and loneliness. Such an aesthetic is bankrupt, and reveals even while being denied, an empty bravado and the terror of ultimate unimportance. The loudest ones among us have so little to say. The ones all self-centered are standing on nothing more substantial than their own poor and weak and transient thoughts – ideas – that can vanish in a moment. They possess nothing beyond the phantoms and fleeting phantasms of their minds, and are thus the most needy of all.

What are we to do? We need to become more prayerful, if we would be credible witnesses of an interior life more solid than the empty counterfeit that modernity offers. We need to walk and live ever aware of the eternal realities, and we need to stand on them, reverence them, indeed we need to return to them – to Him – their due. That is, truth and beauty and goodness deserve something of all of us because they point us by design to God. In Him we are to remain, and all that we are therefore ought to reflect His truth, beauty and goodness. All that we do ought to repay Him with human acts that are also good, true and beautiful. And if we, being then credible witnesses, point others to goodness and truth and beauty beyond what the unbeliever has thought and known under relativism, perhaps something will resonate in him. Perhaps he will stop walking and look again, listen again, and see anew. Perhaps he will be touched by and risk the invitation to transcendence, even by way of you or me. Faith is a gift – often received through the hands and loving patience of another.

Auschwitz – a School of Holiness?

First, some examples easier to understand….

I know a couple who endured a really hard time with their son, who began his high-school years manifesting a serious problem with drugs. Their first reaction was understandable: in love, they reasoned and pleaded with him. They arranged counseling. They set curfews for him. They tried to monitor his activity. The problem grew worse. At great expense they sent him to residential rehab programs, which were effective as long as he was in residence. Their last resort was a program that included a requirement for them that was heart-wrenching: "tough love." For their part they, his parents, had to agree to stop any form of cooperation with or enabling of this problem that was going to kill him if he did not stop it. They had to allow him to experience the real consequences of his self-destructive choices and behaviors. They had to let him experience the harm he was doing to himself. I'll leave this story at this point – but it has had a good result and so far, the story, still continuing, is a happy one.

Alcoholics Anonymous found this same truth, years ago: very often the alcoholic (or drug abuser) must "hit bottom" before he can admit Step 1 of the AA Program:

1. We admitted we were powerless over alcohol—that our lives had become unmanageable.

This is a simple step, but one that is extremely difficult until that "rock bottom" has been hit. Mankind is stubborn and clever, and we can avoid for many years this basic, fundamental confrontation with a flaw in the core of our being.

There is a flaw at the very core of our being. We call it "Original Sin," although the flaw actually is not "a sin" but rather the result of the original sin, the first sin of our first parents, Adam and Eve. From that sin, and that consequent flaw, follows every kind and sort of contradiction and sin that has infected and polluted and wounded every child of Adam and Eve since. There is a deep brokenness, a flaw in the human DNA, indeed now in all creation, that can be repaired only by the One who created us in the first place. To continue my reference to AA a step or two more, we see how beautifully they acknowledge this simple truth of the human situation. Steps 2 and 3 of the AA Program continue:

2. Came to believe that a Power greater than ourselves could restore us to sanity.

3. Made a decision to turn our will and our lives over to the care of God as we understood Him.

Yes, as AA says, "It works when you work it!" It "works" because it is the simple truth. The deep problems of man will not be fixed by mere education, or counseling, or talks or human concern. Deeper power and deeper healing is needed.



Second, the horror of the final end of man's brokenness…

If a loving parent or friend can finally stop being an enabler of the self-destruction of a beloved other, by letting him see and experience and know that a fundamental and total change is needed, can we not understand something similar of our loving God? We are made for God, and only God can fill the void in our hearts and lives. Man cannot live in truth, in justice, in love apart from God. No matter how sophisticated the culture, or old the nation, or rich with human potential and accomplishment the civilization, any country is one generation away from a Nazi Germany, with its Auschwitz.

We must see through the veneers of human culture, the clean costumes and the pretty masks, and suffer to look into the pit of the darkness of sin with all its horror. God wants us to see, and to know clearly and completely and without doubt that we might turn – once and for all – to God who alone can restore us to sanity and wholeness. Jesus preached, "Repent, and believe the Good News!" First comes repentance, deep and true, then comes life-receiving faith in the innocent One who suffered for us on that Cross.

Years after the horrific evil of the Holocaust, in 1963 Karol Józef Wojtyła was made Bishop of Krakow, which made him also bishop of Auschwitz. What a cross this must have been, to add to the weight of his vocation to the Lord and His Church! Fr. Desolaters, the program director of the Centre for Dialogue and Prayer in Oswiecim, located near the concentration camp, said recently of this man who became pope, "Auschwitz was the school of holiness of John Paul II, which was immediately perceived by the people, because here Wojtyła understood totally what 'faith' means for the man of today."

Auschwitz – a school of holiness. Can we put these words together, words that clash against and seem to contradict each other? If we can look at the Cross of Christ and see His love, then yes painfully we can. Where was God when the Nazis were exterminating His chosen people? God was there on the Cross, suffering with them and with us all in silence and with love, that we all might finally become heart-broken by the rock-bottom pits of sin. Look into the pit and repent, finally and forever, and believe the Good News. To all men suffering in the strife and agonies of sin, hear this: God is love. God loves you, God loves us all, and in Him there is life for you! Repent and believe the Good News. Yes there is the Cross, but yes there is the Resurrection.

"But it shall not be so among you." (Mt 20:26)

Archbishop Charles J. Chaput of the Archdiocese of Denver recently spoke with refreshing candor concerning the US Bishops as a whole, and their lack of simple candor on a matter of great moral importance: Catholic politicians who refuse to support Catholic moral teachings. The Church is shamed by so many Catholic Senators, Representatives, and now a Vice President – not exclusively but notably in the Democratic Party – whose public stances and voting records contradict clear Catholic teachings on many current moral issues. I've re-presented here parts of an article in the St. Louis Review (publication of the Archdiocese of St. Louis):

Archbishop Charles J. Chaput gave a frank response when asked why there is so much disunity among Catholics on the question of Catholics in political life standing clearly with the Church on major moral issues such as abortion.

"The reason … is that there is no unity among the bishops about it," said the Denver archbishop, who was asked the question after his April 8 keynote address for the University of Notre Dame Right to Life Club's spring lecture series.

"There is unity among the bishops about abortion always being wrong, and that you can't be a Catholic and be in favor of abortion — the bishops all agree to that — but there's just an inability among the bishops together to speak clearly on this matter and even to say that if you're Catholic and you're pro-choice, you can't receive holy Communion," Archbishop Chaput said.

The Archbishop said he and others have been trying to move the U.S. bishops' conference to speak clearly on this issue for a number of years. However, there is a fear, he said, that if they do so, the bishops might somehow disenfranchise the Catholic community from political life, making it difficult to get elected if a Catholic politician has to hold the Church's position on issues such as abortion and same-sex marriage.

The strategy clearly has failed, he continued, "So let's try something different and see if it works. Let's be very, very clear on these matters," and he asked the audience to "help me to convince the bishops on that subject."

"We act on what we really believe," Archbishop Chaput said. "If we don't act on our beliefs, then we don't really believe them."

The idea that the separation of church and state should force us to exclude our religious beliefs from guiding our political behavior makes no sense at all, he continued:

"If we don't remain true in our public actions to what we claim to believe in our personal lives, then we only deceive ourselves, because God certainly isn't fooled: He sees who and what we are. God sees that our duplicity is really a kind of cowardice, and our lack of courage does a lot more damage than simply wounding our own integrity; it also saps the courage of other good people who really do try to publicly witness what they believe. And that compounds the sin of dishonesty and the sin of injustice."

I am left nearly speechless by this revealing of episcopal priorities. According to the Archbishop who certainly would know, many bishops believe it is better to keep quiet than to risk being truthful. Their moral mathematics concludes it's better to look the other way than to risk "disenfranchising" our prominent "Catholic" politicians. Better to keep them in office, than to risk anything to keep them faithful.

Have these bishops forgotten that they are successors of the Apostles of the Lord? He sent them to "make disciples" – not to enable successful politicians. He sent them to preach and to teach the holy truth – not to pander and to help manipulate for votes. Please tell me that I've misunderstood! Please tell me I'm leaving something out!

I sincerely thank the Archbishop for his simple honesty, and admission of his own very difficult mission field among his fellow bishops. I sympathize with him, as he reaches out for support and help from us, the laity. It all does begin with us, the laity. Priests come out of the laity, in most instances from Catholic families, and bishops come from priests. It is possible for a man to truly have a vocation to serve, but to forfeit or lose that calling in his own preference of worldly things: worldly praise, pomp and circumstance – worldly ambition, worldly enjoyments. It is possible for a man to be called to the Cross – to the Gospel at any cost – but to turn from it for the love of power and self-glory.

St. Augustine saw it, many years ago, and he described very well the two cities, the two kingdoms, the two generations of men that have inhabited the earth since Cain and Abel. In his book The City of God, Augustine saw these two cities: the city of man, and the city of God. In the city of man, rulers rule for the love of ruling. In the city of God, rulers rule for the love of serving. The difference is radical and stark.

Pope John Paul II saw it much more recently, and he described very well the two cultures now at battle among us: the culture of life, and the culture of death. There are citizens of the city of God in the world, living a culture of life, working and bearing witness among men who dwell in the city of man. And this is as it should be: this is our vocation, to be Christ's light in this dark world! But there are also citizens of the city of man, perpetuating a culture of death, working in the Church – working in the city of God among those of the city of God!

Sometimes the lines are blurred. Sometimes we cannot tell, on a given issue, what is the true good that must be defended, and what is the evil that is embedded and hidden within by the enemy, the father of lies and deception. Thus we need our bishops to be trustworthy teachers of the one Truth we must live by! Thus Jesus sent them, to be trustworthy witnesses of His Gospel and His life.

On the other hand, on some issues there is no ambiguity and no room for doubt. There are truths that ought to be embedded in the bones and clear in the consciences of every Catholic Christian, including our bishops. Life begins at conception, and life is sacred: You shall not take the life of an innocent person, not ever. Human sexuality is sacred, a holy human participation in the life of God, both signifying and enabling union in love, and the procreation of the human race. The truth of God is not negotiable, or expendable, or political currency to be exchanged in the marketplaces or voting booths of the city of man. The truth of God is worth living for, and even dying for.

Catholics, we need to support our faithful bishops, and we ought to encourage our wavering and uncertain bishops. Perhaps there are some bishops we cannot speak to, because they will not listen. But for all our bishops we must pray, because God is still in control of this Church – His Church, His holy Church. And we, as opportunity allows, must speak the truth because the truth must be spoken. May the Lord give us the graces and light and courage we need, in these troubling times, to remain faithful.

Thomas

Art as Parable

Maybe art is always parable. All that has being was made by the only, the one, God: His truth is at the foundation of all things. Certainly all great art – whether music, writings, paintings, photography, dance – all great art, I would say, somehow in one way or another expresses some fragment of the one Truth that God expresses in His creation. For this reason, I would say, men turn to art as they seek truth because men seek God.

Well this is all to introduce this blog post: the parables found in creation and photographed, and used as cover art for my books. I want to try to express in words what may be obvious in the photography – but maybe it isn't. Both books are now out and available in digital form for the Kindle and the Nook e-readers with these new "covers".

The Ordinary Path to Holiness



(The photograph is of the old Broad River Bridge, now only partially standing, and used as a fishing pier.)

The way is straight – if we will only keep to the way! There are resting places along the journey, because God is patient and merciful. There are lights along the way, because God is patient and merciful. But we must keep our eyes – the eyes of faith, in this case – we must keep our eyes fixed on the end, the final purpose and intent of it all: The Light, the Glory, the Alpha and the Omega, God.

Pope Benedict recently reminded us that we are all called to become "fishers of men." For fish, to remain in the waters is life, and to be caught by the fishermen is death. But for us, the opposite is true. For us, to remain in the waters is death, but to be caught by the fishermen and pulled up into the air is life. Now we have been called as fishers of men, and our task is one of life and death.

The Interior Liturgy of the Our Father



(The photograph is of the inside spiral staircase of the old Hunting Island Lighthouse.)

Our journey is one of ascent, and the climb is not an easy one (especially as we get older!) The Lord cautions us, "How narrow the gate and constricted the road that leads to life. And those who find it are few." (Mt 7:14) Yet He also encourages us, saying, "Take my yoke upon you and learn from me, for I am meek and humble of heart; and you will find rest for your selves. For my yoke is easy, and my burden light." (Mt 11:29-30)

Is the way difficult, or is it easy? Yes. Yes. And His way is the only way for us, lest we fall into chaos, insanity and despair. God made us for Himself – for holy communion in Him – and all else contradicts our very being. So let us climb! Let us pursue the one goal worthy of a human person: true fellowship, blessed and holy communion in God.

Blessings and peace.

Thomas