Renew The Church! – website and Blog

The world is in a deepening crisis.  It grows in depth, gravity and danger daily, it seems.  The real possibility of a new world war is a threat of increasing credibility.  Uncontrollable consequences of current wars and continuing terrorist attacks against any target of opportunity, rob any serious thoughtful observer of confident optimism toward the future, distant or near.  Nation is against nation, culture against culture, ideology against ideology.  Civilization itself is attacked within nations by their own citizens – a kind of cultural suicide that exposes rebellion within human nature itself: no one is safe.  Enemies are neighbors, family, coworkers, one’s own self!  No one can be trusted, because the world is without love.

Solutions are offered.  Some, the secularists, want to restructure the structures of society: we need to reorder the bureaucracy.  Some, the clericalists, see that the church has become dysfunctional: we need to restructure our religion.  The pope restructures his curia; the bishop restructures his diocese; the pastor restructures his parish.  Some, the spiritual, see that love is lost because faith is lost: we need to reform and teach the leaders; we need renewal of the formators of clergy, of catechists, of liturgists, of liturgies – of worship itself.

All will be wastes of time, fruitless, mere delay of inevitable failure until we discover and deal with the real poverty at the foundation of our life.  We busy ourselves with rearranging the furniture while ignoring that the house is on fire; the earth trembles in deep prophetic quakes pronouncing “contradiction!”  We continue to do the impossible.  We insist on a fantasy.  We refuse to awaken from the self-satisfying dream that is in fact a nightmare: living as if God is not here, as if He does not see us and all we do and even think.  We refuse to believe that apart from Him, actually, we can do nothing.  And since that is true, all that we do ought to be in whole-hearted union with Him.

Remembering St. John Vianney’s simple realization, “Prayer is nothing other than union with God,” the one thing needed is immediately seen; the answer to the needs of humanity today is clear:  We need to live in prayer.  We need to live, to do, to work, to rest prayerfully, “in prayer.”  Our consciousness of God, our presence with the ever-present God, must be continuous, habitual, covenantal, substantial, sustained.

And why has it not been, before now?  Why has the obvious not been embraced and lived before now, yet?  Because we do not love Him as we should – as is commanded, in His laws of life.  And we do not love Him because we do not know Him.  We hardly seek to know Him.  In truth we often seek to avoid Him.  But when we do seek to know Him, we approach His Glory.  His Glory would blind us, but then we could see.  His Glory would consume our lives, but then we could live.  We need to trust Him, to believe Him, to believe in Him, to be in Him and He in us: our vocation, our call from the instant when, by His will, we began.

It is all here: the journey to find and be found, to embrace and be embraced, to consummate union:

Our Father, who is in heaven,
Hallowed be your Name!
Your Kingdom come!
Your will be done on earth as it is in Heaven!
Give us this day our Bread for the day,
And forgive us our trespasses as we forgive those who trespass against us.
Lead us not into temptation,
And deliver us from evil,
Amen and Amen.

Yes, I admit it.  The title does drip a bit with sarcasm.  For some time in my not-too-long career in Catholic Faith Formation, I did my best to lead Catholics into the deeper end of the doctrinal pool – with the universal Catechism of the Catholic Church as our textbook.  And some, I’m still happy to remember, were grateful.  One comes to my mind: a retired physician who was delighting to read this doctrinal storehouse in the weeks between our weekly parish meetings. He shared with the class that he as an active medical doctor felt it urgent to keep up with the science and medical practices of his profession, for all those years of his practice, but never had he felt in need of learning and growing in his Catholic Faith.  He was sincerely, innocently, almost child-like joyful to discover in the Catechism a precious, beautiful treasure.  He was growing, deepening, maturing within himself in ways unexpected.

The “unexpected” nature of this not uncommon discovery in this man brings me still, to the day, a deep sorrow also.  So many Catholic adults today still, it seems, are led in what are called “Adult Faith Formation” parish or diocesan offerings, shallow “catechesis in the wading pool” of the near-infinitely deep  wealth of knowledge and wisdom divinely entrusted to this Church of the Lord.  We the Church were sent to “make disciples”!  Learners!  Followers of Jesus Christ!  Yet we are miles away from doing it the way He did.  And our results show it.  We are more like the shameful Church of Laodicea of the Biblical Book of Revelation, than the Church praised by Jesus, that of Philadelphia.  To the Church in Philadelphia:

“And to the angel of the church in Philadelphia write: ‘The words of the holy one, the true one, who has the key of David, who opens and no one shall shut, who shuts and no one opens.
“‘I know your works. Behold, I have set before you an open door, which no one is able to shut; I know that you have but little power, and yet you have kept my word and have not denied my name.
Behold, I will make those of the synagogue of Satan who say that they are Jews and are not, but lie—behold, I will make them come and bow down before your feet, and learn that I have loved you.
Because you have kept my word of patient endurance, I will keep you from the hour of trial which is coming on the whole world, to try those who dwell upon the earth.
I am coming soon; hold fast what you have, so that no one may seize your crown.
He who conquers, I will make him a pillar in the temple of my God; never shall he go out of it, and I will write on him the name of my God, and the name of the city of my God, the new Jerusalem which comes down from my God out of heaven, and my own new name.
He who has an ear, let him hear what the Spirit says to the churches.’
(Rev. 3:7-13, RSVCE)

Notice what is coming upon this faithful Church – does this not sound ominously near, in this unstable and dangerous world now come upon us: an “hour of trial which is coming on the whole world, to try those who dwell upon the earth”?  Wars and possibilities of wars encompass the world, corruption and lies find chairs of power to sit upon, to deceive and divest the innocent, to rape and impoverish the unsuspecting – or are we all just too busy to notice the wolves in sheep’s clothing working for our destruction?

Even this faithful praiseworthy Church has yet to persevere to the end, to “conquer”, to “hold fast what you have, so that no one may seize your crown.”  They possess, they “have” what they must not lose!  But Laodicea does not “have” yet – even yet – but must acquire while there is still time, while the Lord still holds out time, and grace, and patience.  Church of Laodicea, listen! To the Church in Laodicea:

“And to the angel of the church in Laodicea write: ‘The words of the Amen, the faithful and true witness, the beginning of God’s creation.
“‘I know your works: you are neither cold nor hot. Would that you were cold or hot!
So, because you are lukewarm, and neither cold nor hot, I will spew you out of my mouth.
For you say, I am rich, I have prospered, and I need nothing; not knowing that you are wretched, pitiable, poor, blind, and naked.
Therefore I counsel you to buy from me gold refined by fire, that you may be rich, and white garments to clothe you and to keep the shame of your nakedness from being seen, and salve to anoint your eyes, that you may see.
Those whom I love, I reprove and chasten; so be zealous and repent.
Behold, I stand at the door and knock; if any one hears my voice and opens the door, I will come in to him and eat with him, and he with me.
He who conquers, I will grant him to sit with me on my throne, as I myself conquered and sat down with my Father on his throne.
He who has an ear, let him hear what the Spirit says to the churches.’
(Rev.3:14-22, RSVCE)

Laodicea has become lukewarm and poor in matters that truly count – in spiritual matters of great value and importance.  Perhaps she has the most enviable campus in town!  Perhaps her church building has the highest steeple and the best manicured grounds and the biggest and loudest organ (with real pipes!) and the most expensive vestments and statues and altar furnishings in town – but there is an invisible, yet real, famine weakening the souls gathered to her.  What then?  Then God is calling to her, “Repent.”  He says, “I counsel you to buy from me gold refined by fire, that you may be rich, and white garments to clothe you and to keep the shame of your nakedness from being seen, and salve to anoint your eyes, that you may see.”

God is even now warning us all.  All in the Church, all in the world, God is warning us all.  Time itself is not an absolute; it is created, and transient: it will cease, and timeless eternity will again be the unstained reality for which we were created!  May God have mercy on us.  “He who has an ear, let him hear what the Spirit says to the churches.”

The Catholic Church was formed and built and directed by God to be Holy!  Light for the world!  What a dark mystery has come upon us, at this time in human history.  How can it be, that many in His Holy Church now appear to be directed away from the radiant glory of the divine, and instead be directed and focused on man himself, the concerns of men – an idolatrous obsession with the works of his own hands!  This misdirection in man is ancient.  Man was tempted from the beginning, in the Garden, to turn from God to himself as his own Guide, his own Rule, his own Judge.  Adam and Eve turned from God to themselves, and then they fled from the One who made them. (Gen 3:1-8) 

There began then Two Ways for human persons in their freedom to choose: to seek the Truth, the true God in order to live in Truth; or to deny Truth and fabricate a counterfeit of reality, a preferred fiction, a make-believe of what “ought to be” as I wish.  God will lead rightly those who seek Him!  But those who deny Him, in whatever degree of culpability they may have personally for their sins: they find themselves left to themselves, easy targets of the destroyer of souls, easily seduced by the ambitions and pleasures of the world.  These misguided souls find themselves left (enslaved!) to idols of human or demonic invention.

The nature of man, by divine design, is good.  He was made to lean not toward the merely natural but to be drawn beyond – toward the supernatural, the divine, the eternal.  God made us in His divine image and likeness! (Gen 1:27)  Our hearts are restless until they find their rest in Him.(1)  But because of original sin our nature was wounded, and we can easily fall if we do not resist.  And these are times of powerful temptations.

The Catholic Church – including both hierarchy and laity – is now, amazingly, divided between these Two Ways.  The battle for human souls once understood as engaged “in the world” outside of the boundaries of the Church, is now felt within the Church.  Poorly formed or malformed laity, or consecrated religious, or clerical hierarchy at all “levels” of ecclesial authority – the whole acting Body on earth of our Lord is found here or there to be infected, corrupted, carnal, worldly.  The faithful groan with tears, crying to the Lord, “How can this BE!”  The enemy, clever deceivers, clever sons of their father, laugh with one another in their secret assemblies, boasting with one another of their victories and their power.  They have forgotten the power of the God they have betrayed: “Do not be deceived; God is not mocked, for whatever a man sows, that he will also reap.” (Gal 6:7)

Several faithful and strong bishops have emerged in this time, to the great consolation and joy of the faithful laity!  The Lord has not left us without shepherds.  Bishop Athanasius Schneider has written well in one of his books a section on “the loss of the supernatural” in the Church today, focusing on this as “the deepest root” of it all.  He wrote:

I think that the deepest root of the problems and the crisis in the Church is the weakening of the supernatural, and in some cases a loss of it. One can say that the deepest consequence of Original Sin, of the first sin of man—of Adam and Eve—expresses itself as a flight from God. They fled. When you flee from God’s presence, you abandon the supernatural—the essence of God is supernatural. God is supernatural. The basic distinction between God and creation, or creatures, is supernatural and natural. (2)

When any Catholic is unaware of, or insensitive to the radical, absolute difference between the natural or created world, and the One Creator God the Holy Trinity, he is in ignorance of the most serious kind, and vulnerable to many dangers to his immortal soul.  He may confuse superstition with supernatural and salvific faith, for example.  The Catechism points to this possible confusion here:

III. “YOU SHALL HAVE NO OTHER GODS BEFORE ME”
2110 The first commandment forbids honoring gods other than the one Lord who has revealed himself to his people. It proscribes superstition and irreligion. Superstition in some sense represents a perverse excess of religion; irreligion is the vice contrary by defect to the virtue of religion. 

Superstition 
2111 Superstition is the deviation of religious feeling and of the practices this feeling imposes. It can even affect the worship we offer the true God, e.g., when one attributes an importance in some way magical to certain practices otherwise lawful or necessary. To attribute the efficacy of prayers or of sacramental signs to their mere external performance, apart from the interior dispositions that they demand, is to fall into superstition. [Cf. Mt 23:16-22] 

The sons of Adam and Eve named in Scripture, Cain and Abel, illustrate this difference.  The two offered worship to God, but only the worship of one, Abel, was accepted:

In the course of time Cain brought to the LORD an offering of the fruit of the ground, and Abel brought of the firstlings of his flock and of their fat portions. And the LORD had regard for Abel and his offering, but for Cain and his offering he had no regard. So Cain was very angry, and his countenance fell.
The LORD said to Cain, “Why are you angry, and why has your countenance fallen? If you do well, will you not be accepted? And if you do not do well, sin is couching at the door; its desire is for you, but you must master it.”
Cain said to Abel his brother, “Let us go out to the field.” And when they were in the field, Cain rose up against his brother Abel, and killed him. (Gen 4:3-8) 

Why was Cain’s offering not accepted by God?  What had he done wrong?  The Lord told him afterward that he needed to “do well” to be accepted.  What had he not “done well”?  The Letter to the Hebrews explains:

 By faith Abel offered to God a more acceptable sacrifice than Cain, through which he received approval as righteous, God bearing witness by accepting his gifts; he died, but through his faith he is still speaking. (Heb 11:4)

Cain thought that he had done well – that he did what his brother Abel had done – and he had, outwardly. Perhaps he did not realize that within him, in his heart, he had not done well.  The Catechism number 2111 above explained the problem: Superstition “can even affect the worship we offer the true God, e.g., when one attributes an importance in some way magical to certain practices otherwise lawful or necessary. To attribute the efficacy of prayers or of sacramental signs to their mere external performance, apart from the interior dispositions that they demand, is to fall into superstition.” 

Cain was lacking the necessary “interior disposition.”  He lacked faith – a supernatural gift from God.  “By faith” Abel had offered his sacrifice.  We cannot please God by the externals of our works; necessary is the gift within, by the interior grace of God, enabling us to act in faith.  We need grace – a participation in the life of God – within us to please God with our outward expressions of love and adoration of Him our Creator. “And without faith it is impossible to please him. For whoever would draw near to God must believe that he exists and that he rewards those who seek him.” (Heb. 11:6)

The efforts of the evil one to purge humanity of God and all that is supernatural and divine has accelerated, in our time.  Even in the Church, satan works to blind us to the supernatural hunger for the holy and the divine, distracting us with busyness, with outwardness, with human concerns and problems and attractions.  How we need to grow and deepen in prayer, in an interior life and communion with God!  Apart from Him we can do nothing!  Bishop Schneider offers razor-sharp insight into our problem, our Church threatened from within, by the loss of the supernatural:

The Modernist movement, which has been present in the Church since the nineteenth century, used the Second Vatican Council as a catalyst for expansion. Thus, after the Council, the Church became immersed in a deep crisis marked by naturalism. It seems that, to a certain degree, there has been a victory of the natural over the supernatural in so many aspects of the life of the Church. However, it is only an apparent victory, since the Church cannot be overcome by the powers of Hell. 

But temporarily, we are witnessing an eclipse, an obfuscation of the supernatural, of the primacy of God, of eternity, of the primacy of grace, of prayer, of sacredness, and of adoration. All these signs of the supernatural have been extremely diminished in the pastoral life and liturgy of the Church in our days. On a global scale, the deepest crisis in the Church is the weakening of the supernatural. This is manifested in an inversion of order, so that nature, temporal affairs, and man gain supremacy over Christ, over the supernatural, over prayer, over grace, and so on. This is our problem. As Jesus Christ said, “Without Me, you can do nothing” (Jn 15:5). The whole crisis in the Church, as seen after the Council, was manifest in an incredible inflation of frenetic human activity to fill the void or the vacuum of prayer and adoration, to fill the void created through the abandonment of the supernatural.(3)

The solution is self-evident, is it not?  Is the Spirit not clearly speaking to us what we are to do: turn from the world and the lusts of the world!   Church, return to your God!  Be the Body of your Lord on earth; show His Holy Face to mankind by your holiness! (4)

Do not love the world or the things in the world. If any one loves the world, love for the Father is not in him. For all that is in the world, the lust of the flesh and the lust of the eyes and the pride of life, is not of the Father but is of the world. And the world passes away, and the lust of it; but he who does the will of God abides for ever. (1Jn 2:15-17)

End Notes:
(1) Augustine, Confessions, 1.1.1.
(2) Schneider, Bishop Athanasius; Montagna, Diane. Christus Vincit: Christ’s Triumph Over the Darkness of the Age (p. 107). Angelico Press. Kindle Edition.
(3) ibid p. 112
(4) I recommend this video on the Church today, a conversation between Robert Moynihan and Fr. Murr:   October 11: From 1962 to Today

Most of the links below are to share Bishop Strickland’s counsel to his own in the Diocese of Tyler, Texas, concerning the Synod.  I wish that all Bishops, in every Diocese, would have done what Bp. Strickland has done for his “sheep,” to help them understand the threat that he sees – may God intervene, and safeguard the Church and Her Faith!

Some days news from the Vatican is so troubling and sad that I can hardly believe what I am reading or hearing.  Recently, it has been on the matter of the World Youth Day, which is but one example among many radical departures from “the Church” I used to know, love, believe, and follow in Christ.

World Youth Day was established by Pope (now Saint) John Paul II in 1985, to be celebrated every three years or so with the pope in office at the time. The intention and purpose of the Day, as described on the official website for World Youth Day, WYD, is this:

WYD is open to all young people who want to take part in a festive encounter centered on Jesus Christ together with their peers. This event is an opportunity to personally experience the universality of the Catholic Church, and to share with the whole world the hope of many young people who are committing their lives to Christ and His Church. World Youth Day is a unique way to deepen your faith and grow closer to Christ, through prayer and the sacraments, together with hundreds of thousands of other young people who share your interests and ambitions.

If we hear the new head of the WYD rightly, anyone going to the event this year, expecting to find it as described in its website, will be as stunned and troubled as I was to read there is a new WYD, re-defined by our current pope.  It is very near. The next WYD will be held in Lisbon, Portugal, August 1-6, 2023 – a mere 2 weeks and 4 days from now, as I write this, and as I write this, I am still stunned from reading the radical and disconcerting news of the new intention and purpose of WYD as envisioned by Pope Francis.  And his intention is to be implemented by his newly named Cardinal of the Church – just announced – upon the hundreds of thousands of youth anticipated to be present.

This new purpose of WYD is definitely no longer to introduce youth of the world to Christ and His saving Gospel, and to His Church sent to the world – not at all.  The Cardinal-designate Bishop Américo Aguiar, auxiliary bishop of Lisbon and new president of the WYD Lisbon 2023 Foundation – described in the Catholic News Agency this redefinition and intention of the event this way:

In the interview [by Walter Sanchez Silva, and Natalia Zimbrão] the bishop said that in his opinion the intention of World Youth Day is to have young people journey together, respecting their diversity.

For the cardinal-designate, the goal is to enable each young person to say: “‘I think differently, I feel differently, I organize my life in a different way, but we are brothers and we go together to build the future.’ This is the main message of this encounter with the living Christ that the pope wants to provide to young people.”

“We don’t want to convert the young people to Christ or to the Catholic Church or anything like that at all,” Aguiar continued. “We want it to be normal for a young Catholic Christian to say and bear witness to who he is or for a young Muslim, Jew, or of another religion to also have no problem saying who he is and bearing witness to it, and for a young person who has no religion to feel welcome and to perhaps not feel strange for thinking in a different way.”

The prelate stressed that it’s important “that we all understand that differences are a richness and the world will be objectively better if we are capable of placing in the hearts of all young people this certainty of Fratelli Tutti (Brothers All), that the pope has made an enormous effort so that this enters the hearts of all.” (Pope Francis’ encyclical Fratelli Tutti is dedicated to “fraternity and social friendship.”)

World Youth Day had always been – as described above from the website – an opportunity for young people from all over the world to personally encounter Christ through the witness and example of committed young Catholics, and thus to be encouraged to also choose to give themselves completely to His service, perhaps even in the priesthood or in consecrated life.  These days things are changing.

Pope Francis’s “gospel” of “fraternity and social friendship” for the youth of the world and for the Church, is laid out in his encyclical, Fratelli Tutti.  It preaches a very different vision, and his to-be-Cardinal and new Head of the WYD Foundation has echoed the same, if I may say so.  Please read it yourselves!  Here is a passage in the encyclical that illustrates the often confusing if not problematic writings of this pope, here in lifting up his chosen model, St Francis of Assisi:

4. Francis did not wage a war of words aimed at imposing doctrines; he simply spread the love of God. He understood that “God is love and those who abide in love abide in God” (1 Jn 4:16). In this way, he became a father to all and inspired the vision of a fraternal society. Indeed, “only the man who approaches others, not to draw them into his own life, but to help them become ever more fully themselves, can truly be called a father”

There are some important problems with two imprecise statements in the quote above, in Fratelli Tutti, which prove to be central to the pope’s whole thesis:

1.) “Love” has widely divergent interpretations, especially in these days!  By “the love of God”, a saint and the Gospel would mean here divine love, godly love, the love with which God loves.  The Greek word “agape” in Scripture is well-described in its perfection as self-emptying love of Jesus in His Incarnation (Phil 2:7) as well as the “kenosis” of His Passion, not the self-seeking, self-fulfilling “love” of this world.
Even true “friendship”, a recurrent theme of this papal encyclical, has its new meaning in the Gospel:

Greater love has no man than this, that a man lay down his life for his friends. You are my friends if you do what I command you. No longer do I call you servants, for the servant does not know what his master is doing; but I have called you friends, for all that I have heard from my Father I have made known to you. (John 15:13-15)

2.) Such godly love and friendship does not seek to help others “become ever more fully themselves” until they have received the new self in Christ given in Christian Baptism!  Thus we are sent to evangelize!  To make disciples, not “diversity.” Then with disciples begins the life-long journey of sanctification in Him, the journey of dying to the old self and growing in the new.  Then, one can truly be “friend” and even “father” to the other, as Paul wrote:

I do not write this to make you ashamed, but to admonish you as my beloved children.  For though you have countless guides in Christ, you do not have many fathers.   For I became your father in Christ Jesus through the gospel.  I urge you, then, be imitators of me. (1 Cor 4:14-16)

By such imprecise uses of very significant and important words, the encyclical is confusing. It carries a very soft and “spongy” gospel,  and its “rubber” is really hitting the road in a matter of a few weeks.  What has happened to the command “Go and make disciples [of Jesus Christ!] in all the nations of the world (Cf Mt 28:20), because Jesus is the Way, and the Truth, and the Life, and no one comes to the Father, but by Him! (Cf Jn 14:6)?  Is this traditional and historic basis of the Catholic Faith now become… what? “Divisive”? Not “inclusive” enough? Not respecting the “richness” of “diversity” of the non-Christian religions of the world?  

Lord God help us.  These days foreshadow a deep darkness, and troubles ahead.  Holy Church – how long can you sit silently, while sterile progressivism – present from antiquity in the world, and growing even in the Church – is being proclaimed among the hearts and souls of the faithful?  Your saints of these days are being cancelled, while contradictions of Truth are being preached instead of Truth as “gospel” to the innocent and vulnerable.   Lord, send grace, and raise up saints among Your people!   Let us pray.

Cardinal Robert Sarah has my vote!  Of course, I have no status to vote for our next pope, but if I did….  What I can do, however, is pray.  And I can strive to grow in prayer, and in the Interior Life of Grace, and in enduring faithfulness to Holy Truth.

And also I can proclaim in the tiny voice of this Blog to the People of God, that we all need to pray fully, not merely with words or wishes or shallow wants, but in holy faith emptying ourselves of all loves of this passing world!  We must “make space” for Him.  We must “have a room” in our hearts for Him alone in His fullness, in the center of our hearts, in the center of our lives, with lives lived in complete devotion to Him!  In the sacrifice of deepest prayer, let us offer ourselves heart and mind and soul and strength to God Who Is Truth: “Let it be to me,” now and forevermore, “according to Your Word.”

“She has chosen the better part….”

Cardinal Sarah, in a recent address (note 1), offers 5 key points of focus for the Catholic faithful, proper intentions of our hearts worthy of and fruitful in the troubling days that we face.  These five areas of concern reveal debts, actually:  We owe our Creator.  We owe Him lives of worship in spirit and truth. (note 2)   The five he listed are these; the comments are mine:

• 1. The Word of God.  Yes we today especially must make our home in His saving and holy Word.

• 2. Prayer.  His Word – both His Word Jesus Christ, and His Word Holy Scripture – reveal God in Truth.  St. John Vianney wrote, “Prayer is nothing else than union with God.” (note 3)

• 3. The Interior Life – Within we find who we really are.  There, in the “room of self-knowledge,” in silence and solitude and stillness, the holy moment of Encounter lives.

• 4. Silence – We must find, and recover, and embrace Truth in the purity of quiet.

• 5. Inner Struggle – Day after day, more and more boldly, evil screams at us in murderous rage.  They hated Him; they will and do hate us.  But the evil must not find place in us!  Greater is He who lives within, than those who hate, who lie, who kill, consume and destroy.

Now I rejoice in my sufferings for your sake, and in my flesh I complete what is lacking in Christ’s afflictions for the sake of His body, that is, the Church…. (Col 1:24)

Our proper response to the darkness and evil of these days, I believe, is a life of holiness. (note 4)  Every faithful soul on earth, I believe, in union with the multitude of souls in holiness both living on earth and in heaven, is important and significant, participating in the Life and Passion of Christ our Lord.  Every holy person is an unquenchable light in the darkness – every one a bright star, in the blackness of night, each one a testimony and a promise of the immense glory of the sun – the Son – coming in the dawn!  Each spark of God’s life in the body of humanity is standing against death, the progeny of satan – it is a witness of immortal love, and glory, and joy.  Each faithful soul, each child of the Blessed Mother, testifies to the hope placed within each of us in Baptism, of the Triune God’s plan from the beginning: a humanity imaging the Creator before the whole universe of His creation, striking speechless every evil spirit in rebellion. God’s Holy Truth stands victorious.

Notes:

1. “Cardinal Sarah Offers Ways to Deal With ‘Crisis of Faith’ in the World”, National Catholic Register
2. John 4:23-24 –  But the hour is coming, and now is, when the true worshipers will worship the Father in spirit and truth, for such the Father seeks to worship him.  God is spirit, and those who worship him must worship in spirit and truth
3. St. John Vianney,  Little Catechism, Ch. 8 On Prayer.
4. The Ordinary Path to Holiness, R. Thomas Richard.  I wrote this book to try to present, to contemporary Catholics, the profound and beautiful spirituality taught to His Church by the Holy Spirit, guiding so many holy saints into communion with our Lord in love, in His eternal truth. There is a path – a process – of growing in and into holiness.  The saints and the Spirit confirm: it is of God.  And we can follow it: it is a path left for us to follow, if we will.

How do you get lukewarm water?  Easy – mix some hot and some cold, roughly in equal amounts.  How do you get a lukewarm Catholic?  Easy – mix into the baptized human soul, both spiritual heat (supernatural divine truth, love and light) and spiritual cold (natural love of the world, the praise of men, carnal pleasures, self-love) – in roughly equal proportions.  Simply disregard the warnings in Scripture and try anyway to live a contradiction: an impossible “compromise,” a combination of love for God and love for Mammon.

See – Lk 16:13, 1Jn 2:15-17.

Here are some observations of a Jesuit priest of the 1600’s, Fr. Louis Lallemant, SJ (d. 1635).  In a book of his teachings, “The Spiritual Doctrine”, are notes from his lectures as teacher and spiritual director to seminarians, in the year 1630.  He observed in his time, among religious congregations and orders,  that the effect of lukewarm men or women in a religious congregation can be disastrous.  He wrote of “the religious” – meaning, men or women in a religious congregation – monks, brothers, sisters, nuns, etc., in a religious order:

ADDITIONS:  CERTAIN THOUGHTS OF FATHER LALLEMANT;  COLLECTED BY  FATHER JOHN JOSEPH SEURIN, OF THE COMPANY OF JESUS, DURING HIS SECOND NOVITIATE IN THE YEAR 1630.

 VIII. – OF DIFFERENT KINDS OF RELIGIOUS, AND OF THE THINGS THAT ARE MOST PREJUDICIAL TO CERTAIN HOLY COMMUNITIES.

THERE may be said to be four kinds of religious: 1) some perfect; 2) others bad, proud, full of vanity, sensual, opposed to all regularity; 3) others, again, tepid, slothful, careless; and lastly, 4) such as are virtuous and on the way to perfection, although they may perhaps never attain to it.

The holiest orders in religion may contain these four kinds of members, as well as those orders that have fallen into laxity, with this difference, however, that in an order that has fallen from its first fervor, the majority are tepid persons, and the remainder consists of some that are positively bad, a few who are laboring after perfection, and a very few who are perfect. But in an order in which discipline is still strictly observed, the bulk of the community is composed of those who are tending to perfection, and the remainder comprises some who are perfect, a few who are tepid, and a very few who are bad.

One very important remark may here be made: it is, that a religious order inclines to degeneracy when the number of the tepid begins to equal that of the fervent, I mean those who labor from day to day to make fresh progress in prayer, recollection, mortification, purity of conscience, humility. For those who do not use this diligence, even though they keep themselves from mortal sin, must pass for tepid persons; they corrupt many others, inflict extreme injury on the whole body, and are themselves in danger, either of not persevering in their vocation, or of falling into interior pride or great disorders.

The duty of superiors in religious houses is to labor, as well by their own good example, as by exhortation, private conversation, and prayer, that their subjects may persevere in the ranks of the fervent who are aiming at perfection; otherwise they will themselves bear the penalty of it, and that a terrible penalty.

Can these observations and conclusions be applied to a Catholic parish today, as it was to a religious order several centuries ago?  It seems they can.  How then can spiritual lukewarmness, or tepidity, take root and spread in a parish?  What is needed to rightly “shepherd the sheep” and enable them to grow, rather than stagnate or sicken and die, spiritually?

Question: What happens to the Christian supernatural virtues of Faith, and Hope, when the most important virtue, Holy Charity – Divine Love – diminishes or is lost?  God is Love!  When Holy Love is neglected or rejected, Faith in God diminishes or can be lost.  If Faith in God and Holy Love are lost, what in the supernatural realm can be hoped for?

When a poor soul loses or rejects supernatural and spiritual Faith and Hope and Charity – that is, the whole supernatural Christian Life! – then all that is left of God Himself are natural human ideas – that is, shallow, superficial idols. “Religion” is left tepid, barren, empty, mere idolatries.   Case in point: Laodicea, Rev. 3:14-22.

Many suggestions are coming forth from pulpits this week as Lent begins – suggestions on “Lenten sacrifices.”

My comment (question, really) concerning the many many short-cut suggestions:  What does God want from us?

Psalm 51, from USCCB website:

Ps 51:3
Have mercy on me, God, in accord with your merciful love;
in your abundant compassion blot out my transgressions.
4
Thoroughly wash away my guilt;
and from my sin cleanse me.
5
For I know my transgressions;
my sin is always before me.
6
Against you, you alone have I sinned;
I have done what is evil in your eyes
So that you are just in your word,
and without reproach in your judgment.
7
Behold, I was born in guilt,
in sin my mother conceived me.
8
Behold, you desire true sincerity;
and secretly you teach me wisdom.
9
Cleanse me with hyssop, that I may be pure;
wash me, and I will be whiter than snow.
10
You will let me hear gladness and joy;
the bones you have crushed will rejoice.
11
Turn away your face from my sins;
blot out all my iniquities.
12
A clean heart create for me, God;
renew within me a steadfast spirit.
13
Do not drive me from before your face,
nor take from me your holy spirit.
14
Restore to me the gladness of your salvation;
uphold me with a willing spirit.
15
I will teach the wicked your ways,
that sinners may return to you.
16
Rescue me from violent bloodshed, God, my saving God,
and my tongue will sing joyfully of your justice.
17
Lord, you will open my lips;
and my mouth will proclaim your praise.
18
For you do not desire sacrifice or I would give it;
a burnt offering you would not accept.
19
My sacrifice, O God, is a contrite spirit;
a contrite, humbled heart, O God, you will not scorn.
20
Treat Zion kindly according to your good will;
build up the walls of Jerusalem.
21
Then you will desire the sacrifices of the just,
burnt offering and whole offerings;
then they will offer up young bulls on your altar.

Amen.

[To the one praying: Repeat, slowly, carefully, prayerfully – until you hear and understand this prayer, and are on your knees sobbing for your sins and all the sins of Zion, His Holy Church, in Jerusalem and in the Vatican and in Catholic and Christian churches throughout the world.]

Important Background:

For a quick background: two radically different forms of the Liturgy of the Mass exist in the Roman Catholic Church today, around the world.  The predominant one, the “ordinary form,” developed from initial efforts of renewal which surfaced in the Vatican II Council.  This new, “ordinary” form replaced the centuries-old, now “extraordinary form,” the Traditional Latin Mass – the “TLM”.

The Vatican II Council was intended to be a non-radical renewal of the Church – a renewal of her approach to the world in such a way as to speak to the world in words and ways understandable to the men and women of today.   It was to seek and find ways to help the world see, listen to, hear and thus come to believe and live the radically different ways of Christ the Lord.  He sent us with this mission: to “make disciples of all the nations, … teaching them to observe all that I have commanded you” (Mt 28:19-29).

Pope Paul VI, who closed the Council, soon learned of unintended effects of the Council that shook him to the core.  On the Solemnity of Saints Peter and Paul, June 29, 1972, in the Basilica of Saint Peter, His Holiness, Pope Paul VI delivered a sermon that immediately captured the attention of millions throughout the world, Catholic and non-Catholic alike. Lamenting the chaotic state of the post-Vatican II Church, the pontiff declared: “Through some fissure, the smoke of Satan has entered the Temple of God.” 

A recently published book, by a priest having personal connections and sources on this shocking realization by Pope Paul, also gives much light and depth of perspective to us concerning our Church today:  

A couple of years later, two highly-respected Cardinals of the Roman Catholic Church —Cardinal Dino Staffa, Prefect of the Apostolic Signatura [the Supreme Court of the Catholic Church] and Cardinal Silvio Oddi— met privately with Pope Paul [VI] and placed before him documentation of a very damning nature —documentation indicating exactly where in the temple wall His Holiness might find that fissure. 

The damning documents concerned two high-ranking members of the Roman Curia: Cardinal Sebastiano Baggio, Prefect of the Sacred Congregation for Bishops, and Bishop Annibale Bugnini, Deputy-Secretary of the Sacred Congregation for Divine Worship. With proof in hand, Staffa and Oddi formally accused Baggio and Bugnini of being active Freemasons and, as such, traitorous infiltrators of the central government of the Roman Catholic Church. The seriousness of the matter could not be greater, given the positions these men held. 

Cardinal Sebastiano Baggio, Prefect of the Sacred Congregation for Bishops since 1973, decided who would and who would not become a bishop of the Roman Catholic Church. He chose these episcopal candidates from a pool of half a million priests throughout the world. As the successors of the Apostles, bishops are absolutely essential to the existence of the Church. If, as Staffa and Oddi alleged, Sebastiano Baggio was the “Freemason Ambassador to the Holy See,” the havoc he was in a position to wreak upon the universal Church could cause irreparable damage. The bishops who had been nominated on his watch reflected Baggio’s own liberal ideological views. In the view of Staffa and Oddi, and some others in the Roman Curia, the “Baggio Boys” were self-styled “progressives” who were opposed to the central authority of Rome, all too ready to jettison theological orthodoxy in the name of “aggiornamento” and “dialogue” with the world. They argued that this trend was supported by the values of the creed of Freemasonry that Cardinal Baggio covertly espoused. 

As for Bishop Annibale Bugnini, Secretary of the Congregation for Divine Worship and undersecretary in the Congregation for Rites, his Freemason attachment, if true, could explain the radical liturgical revolution taking place in the Catholic Church. The implementation of the directives of the Second Vatican Council had patently gone far beyond the stated intentions of the Council Fathers, and indeed at times actually contradicted them. Venerable rites, customs, and devotional practices that had been safeguarded and passed on for centuries were simply swept aside. (1)

And The Effects?

These unintended effects following the Council continued to unfold, shocking and troubling many of the faithful including (then) Pope Benedict XVI. In an address to the Roman Curia, with what appears to be a profound interior grieving in his heart, he addressed the horrific eruption within the Church – within the clergy of the Church touching all levels of her bureaucracy.  Addressing specifically the unthinkable but continuing cases of priest and bishop sexual abuse of children, the pope said to the Curia:

In this context, a vision of Saint Hildegard of Bingen came to my mind, a vision which describes in a shocking way what we have lived through this past year. 

“In the year of our Lord’s incarnation 1170, I had been lying on my sick-bed for a long time when, fully conscious in body and in mind, I had a vision of a woman of such beauty that the human mind is unable to comprehend. She stretched in height from earth to heaven. Her face shone with exceeding brightness and her gaze was fixed on heaven. She was dressed in a dazzling robe of white silk and draped in a cloak, adorned with stones of great price. On her feet she wore shoes of onyx. But her face was stained with dust, her robe was ripped down the right side, her cloak had lost its sheen of beauty and her shoes had been blackened. And she herself, in a voice loud with sorrow, was calling to the heights of heaven, saying, ‘Hear, heaven, how my face is sullied; mourn, earth, that my robe is torn; tremble, abyss, because my shoes are blackened!’

And she continued: ‘I lay hidden in the heart of the Father until the Son of Man, who was conceived and born in virginity, poured out his blood. With that same blood as his dowry, he made me his betrothed.

For my Bridegroom’s wounds remain fresh and open as long as the wounds of men’s sins continue to gape. And Christ’s wounds remain open because of the sins of priests. They tear my robe, since they are violators of the Law, the Gospel and their own priesthood; they darken my cloak by neglecting, in every way, the precepts which they are meant to uphold; my shoes too are blackened, since priests do not keep to the straight paths of justice, which are hard and rugged, or set good examples to those beneath them. Nevertheless, in some of them I find the splendour of truth.’

And I heard a voice from heaven which said: ‘This image represents the Church. For this reason, O you who see all this and who listen to the word of lament, proclaim it to the priests who are destined to offer guidance and instruction to God’s people and to whom, as to the apostles, it was said: go into all the world and preach the Gospel to the whole creation’ (Mk 16:15)” (Letter to Werner von Kirchheim and his Priestly Community: PL 197, 269ff.).

In the vision of Saint Hildegard, the face of the Church is stained with dust, and this is how we have seen it. Her garment is torn – by the sins of priests. The way she saw and expressed it is the way we have experienced it this year. We must accept this humiliation as an exhortation to truth and a call to renewal. Only the truth saves. We must ask ourselves what we can do to repair as much as possible the injustice that has occurred. We must ask ourselves what was wrong in our proclamation, in our whole way of living the Christian life, to allow such a thing to happen. We must discover a new resoluteness in faith and in doing good. We must be capable of doing penance. We must be determined to make every possible effort in priestly formation to prevent anything of the kind from happening again. This is also the moment to offer heartfelt thanks to all those who work to help victims and to restore their trust in the Church, their capacity to believe her message. In my meetings with victims of this sin, I have also always found people who, with great dedication, stand alongside those who suffer and have been damaged. This is also the occasion to thank the many good priests who act as channels of the Lord’s goodness in humility and fidelity and, amid the devastations, bear witness to the unforfeited beauty of the priesthood. (2)

What Have We Learned?

All of this, so far, is to draw attention and importance to a crucial concern which we all must have, with all due sobriety, for the Church of our time.  The Church of today is sadly shallow in faith, in prayer, in moral obedience and in sacramental observance – this last weakness most importantly manifest in the Holy Mass.  The Church of today in her heart still beautiful beyond measure or compare, unequalled in God’s Creation, yet wounded, abused, her face sullied, her garment torn, her radiance clouded and darkened, her Truth dishonored.  Saint Hildegard’s vision reappears, only more disfigured now than then.

I have devoted years seeking to help in the work of catechesis.  The formation of children focused my attention to the need for catechesis of our adults, our parents.  The focus on adult catechesis in the Faith and in moral obedience to Truth led me to see the needs for holy empowering supernatural grace – and our need to turn to God in prayer and in living in His Presence.  

And now, from all I learned in my past, I understand the rule, “Lex orandi lex credendi.”  The law of prayer is the law of belief.  Our deepest prayer – our holy worship and adoration of God Himself in Himself – there our life in Him must be grounded, anchored; there our renewal as Church must begin.  There our focus and foundation must remain.  To rightful worship and adoration of the All-Holy Triune God we must return, and we as Church must never again forget who we are and Whose we are!  

The shameful absurdities of liturgical innovations and experimentations following the call of Vatican II for renewal in the Church, in the surrounding context of the moral collapse in the West of the 1960’s, still with us today, call the Church today to repentance and return!  The current focus on outreach to the unbelieving world by a Church barely distinguishable from that world, is yielding results that should have been foreseen: we are not evangelizing and converting them; they are evangelizing and converting us.  If it were not for immigration, the Church would be shrinking and not growing at all.(3) Immigrants are coming in, while “born-and-raised” Catholics continue going out. We are “doing Church” very badly.

The Church of today is deeply weakened and wounded by poor if existing adult catechesis in the Faith, poor catechesis in Catholic moral teachings (compounded by shameful examples of immorality tolerated in some of the clergy even “up” to scandalous examples among some bishops and cardinals) and dreadful failures to pass on to Catholic adults at an adult-level, Catholic teaching of the sacramental life and the interior life of prayer.  

But foundational to all this – to all the four pillars of the Faith – is the grace and power and Holy Manna needed and to be found in the Holy Mass.  Even this, we have minimized and weakened in our so-called “renewal” of worship and adoration of God, in leaving and now seeking to restrict if not cancel, the centuries-old “Mass of the Apostles”, the Traditional Latin Mass.  

We must not lose the Traditional Latin Mass!  Catholics need to humbly, in Spirit and Truth, worship and adore our Holy God. What is missing today in our bustling-busy parishes, with ever-expanding budgets and staff positions, with something for everybody, with “friendly” greeters and overflowing chatting and liturgical celebrations free of any awkward silences or encounters with God and His Truth?  What is missing is worship in Spirit and Truth: we have traded it in for something the world can “understand”.  We got a bad deal.  And so did all those seeking a way to find God.

End Notes:

1. Murr, Charles. Murder in the 33rd Degree: The Gagnon Investigation into Vatican Freemasonry (pp. 44-46). Kindle Edition. 
2. Pope Benedict XVI to the Roman Curia, Address and Christmas Greetings Monday, 20 December 2010
3. Richard, R. Thomas. Catholics: Some of our Members are Wandering Away!  Homiletic & Pastoral Review, 02/03/2014