Renew The Church! – website and Blog

The mass killings in Tucson, Arizona were another sobering reminder of the cheapness of life in the dark minds of some among us.  Surely we will hear more calls for gun control or banning, for censorship of “inflammatory” political rhetoric, for government control of talk radio and Fox News and the internet, for a Secret Service protection for every senator and congressman.  What I have not heard yet, however, is what seems to me to be the real foundation of the problem: life is cheap in this very confused modern culture of ours.  Abortion, euthanasia, assisted suicide are real.  In the virtual reality in which many “adolescents” from pre-teens to thirty-somethings live, in the brutal video games where they get to pretend killing others to their heart’s desire, in the horrific movies of inhuman carnage, our culture teaches that life is cheap.

Abortion continues to be a “right” in America.  A mother has the “right” to “terminate her pregnancy.”  “Her pregnancy” is the substitute phrase for “the child now growing in her womb.”  The child is not a human person – the chid is merely “her pregnancy”, and she has the “right” over her own body.  The body of the child, the human person innocently growing inside of her, has no rights.  And this insanity makes sense to many here today.

Mother Teresa asked, “if we can accept that a mother can kill even her own child, how can we tell other people not to kill one another?”  America cannot answer her, because the only rightful answer is profound repentance.  We have created a monster culture, and we are choking on the bitter fruit of its savage jungle.

Man was made for life, and for truth, and for real love.  We need to realize that “virtual reality” is not reality.  Living vicariously through fictions and pretenses is not real, and is not living.  When life is empty, no wonder is it so easily cheapened!  When no light is seen, no wonder darkness begins to seem normal!  When no truth is heard, no wonder fantasy sounds right.   How has it come to this, and so quickly?  But it is still not too late, not yet.  Watchmen can still sound the alarm, leaders can still rally the people, men and women can still turn to God for forgiveness and for life; the door has not yet shut.  When will we learn to read the signs of the times?  Will we learn to read the signs, before that last day?

Thomas

The West in general, and the USA in particular, is in grave danger. The weaknesses are screaming in our ears, certainly in the areas of both economics and morality.

The West has been living on borrowed money for years, and creditors won’t wait forever. The street riots in Europe, protesting government attempts to get people to grow up and live within their means, will come to this country. Some politicians are now “getting religion” economically – how sincere and courageous they are remains to be seen.

The West has been walking away from moral truth for years also. The “pill” has made cheap and easy sex the norm, and has helped degrade the meaning and commitment of marriage and family to become a mere arrangement of convenience. Thus, serial marriage-divorce-remarriage has left children bewildered and insecure, left like the rest of us to chase toys and pleasures instead of real meaningful happiness. After all, who believes in real happiness anymore?

The degraded sense of the once-holy sacrament of marriage with its privileged marital act once appropriate only in marriage, has opened the door for open homosexuality. Why not, if sex for pleasure is perfectly acceptable, why not with whomever one pleases, whenever one pleases, for whatever purpose one chooses?

Paul saw it then; we see it now:

Romans 1:21 … for although they knew God they did not accord him glory as God or give him thanks. Instead, they became vain in their reasoning, and their senseless minds were darkened.

22 While claiming to be wise, they became fools

23 and exchanged the glory of the immortal God for the likeness of an image of mortal man or of birds or of four-legged animals or of snakes.

24 Therefore, God handed them over to impurity through the lusts of their hearts for the mutual degradation of their bodies.

25 They exchanged the truth of God for a lie and revered and worshiped the creature rather than the creator, who is blessed forever. Amen.

26 Therefore, God handed them over to degrading passions. Their females exchanged natural relations for unnatural,

27 and the males likewise gave up natural relations with females and burned with lust for one another. Males did shameful things with males and thus received in their own persons the due penalty for their perversity.

28 And since they did not see fit to acknowledge God, God handed them over to their undiscerning mind to do what is improper.

29 They are filled with every form of wickedness, evil, greed, and malice; full of envy, murder, rivalry, treachery, and spite. They are gossips

30 and scandalmongers and they hate God. They are insolent, haughty, boastful, ingenious in their wickedness, and rebellious toward their parents.

31 They are senseless, faithless, heartless, ruthless.

32 Although they know the just decree of God that all who practice such things deserve death, they not only do them but give approval to those who practice them.

This passage could be in the script for any evening news show on TV, any evening of the week. It could be the foundation for any sermon in any church in the West. And it ought to be!

How bad will it get, before we wake up? And grow up? And fall down on our knees in repentance? Alcoholics Anonymous has a proverb that each one has his own “bottom” that he has to hit before he can admit his addiction. How far down is the “bottom” in this fantasy-land of moral corruption and godlessness? How deep is this addiction to self-pleasure, before we see it is destroying us?

So – my question is, what is your parish doing about the growing crisis all around us? Is it enough? Is it anything at all? Is it making a difference?  What ought we be doing?

• Are we working to teach and form our own members in the Catholic Faith?
• Are we growing together in the Truth of God’s Word with Bible Studies?
• Are we intentionally deepening our personal prayer-life, and intimate relationship with God in Christ?
• Are we sharing the Faith with friends – strangers – relatives?
• Are we evangelizing?  Are we knocking on doors to tell people about the more that God has for them, and that Christ died to give them?
• Are we guarding true moral principles on election day?  Are we refusing to elect any who are part of the degrading of Christian morality in our country?
• Are we living a simple life, within our own means, treasuring what is truly of value, and not chasing the glass trinkets of a godless world?

Thomas

Our most defining characteristic as human persons is this: we are made in the divine image.  This explains our origin: God made us.  This explains our vocation on this earth: we are called to conversion and to return – to return to God, to a living and loving relationship with Him.  This explains our destiny: we are ordered toward an eternity in personal and divine communion in God the Holy Trinity and with one another.  God is the rightful and appropriate center in the life of a human person, and without this anchor in reality, man is lost.

Our culture is lost.  If there is a God, to this culture He is irrelevant.  This is, in a practical sense, atheism.  This explains why this culture has been called a “culture of death.”  This explains the profound and essential confusion at the very core of our society.  We are a culture of people who do not know who we are, or where we are going, or why we are going there.

Regularly I “go to Mass” as it is often said.  I participate in the holy celebration, the divine worship of Mass.  Holy Eucharist is always of infinite value, and there we most intimately meet Christ our Lord.  But I want to talk a bit about homilies in our celebration of Mass, because the Liturgy of the Word generally and the homily in particular prepare us for the Liturgy of the Eucharist.  The foundations of our right reception of the Eucharist are laid in our Catholic formation, but for many Catholic adults, formation in the Faith of the Church is mostly that gleaned in Sunday homilies.  Thus homilies are of great importance, are crucial, in the faith formation of adults and in their right reception of Christ in Holy Eucharist.

Too often the homily is a great challenge not to our lack of proper zeal and fidelity to Christ, but to our patient listening!  Not infrequently I struggle to remain in the pew with my mouth shut, because Christ and His people deserve so much more.  Too commonly the homily is merely nice, well-crafted and tranquil: a lullaby of platitudes.  The house is on fire, the family is asleep, and we are sung sweet lullabies!  We need trumpets!  We need a clarion call to (spiritual) arms!  We need watchmen at the gates and on the walls, crying out that the enemy is near, at the doors, and we are in danger.  We need zeal, and fervor – and we too often find impotence and sterility.

To believe in a God who is irrelevant to one’s every day, thought and act is “practical atheism,” no matter how sacramentalized a Catholic he appears to be.  We sin against God by such a lie.  The Catechism lists several ways we can sin against our privilege and our duty to love God with all our heart and soul and mind and strength:

Catechism 2094 One can sin against God’s love in various ways:

• – indifference neglects or refuses to reflect on divine charity; it fails to consider its prevenient goodness and denies its power.
• – ingratitude fails or refuses to acknowledge divine charity and to return him love for love.
• – lukewarmness is hesitation or negligence in responding to divine love; it can imply refusal to give oneself over to the prompting of charity.
• – acedia or spiritual sloth goes so far as to refuse the joy that comes from God and to be repelled by divine goodness.
• – hatred of God comes from pride. It is contrary to love of God, whose goodness it denies, and whom it presumes to curse as the one who forbids sins and inflicts punishments.

If this list can be taken as a progression, which it does seem to be, then we can see the slippery slope sliding down to a most horrible and grave transgression: actual hatred of Almighty God.  And we see how it begins, in an individual or a nation: indifference – the neglect or refusal to even think about God and His love – the reduction of God to irrelevance.  A God of no real import, no relevance or significance in our lives, solicits and deserves no gratitude, but rather at most only a lukewarm response to opportunities  of living true Christian charity and witness to the life of Christ.  Since God is irrelevant, Christ is as well – the whole Gospel story is quaint and traditional, but when Mass is over, so is any living acknowledgment of Christ in us, the hope of glory.

Beyond an expected, minimal and socially acceptable lukewarmness comes acedia – spiritual sloth.  An actual disgust toward God and the things of God.  He is, after all, so “twentieth century”, so politically incorrect, so not modern and progressive.  Only one step remains for satan’s complete victory: hatred of God, the supplanting of Him by pride, the complete rejection of the command that defines us as human persons: to love God with one’s whole heart and mind and soul and strength, and neighbor as self.

The culture of death, growing in its cold grasp around our throats, is moving closer day by day toward this satanic communion with hatred.  Religious indifference in daily life permeates the nation; even in our worship we hardly acknowledge the fire of His authentic Presence.  The enemy is, truly, at the very door, and our watchmen sing us lullabies and preach to us platitudes.

Catholics, and all Christians, take the responsibility for your own awakening into your own hands!  Yes, the Church owes you more, but you owe God nonetheless.  Take up your Catechism!  Take up your Bible!  Take up serious and earnest and heart-felt prayer, and like the poor widow let your pleas not stop until we gain justice.  Weakened and hungry adults – having at best an eighth grade formation in the Faith – cannot stand against the sly and devious enemy.  You must seek, and find, a vibrant and growing adult Faith – strong against the deceptions and pressures now taking aim against us all.

Thomas

Advent begins this Sunday, Nov. 28, 2010.  Advent deserves our prayerful attention – our prayerful preparation, and expectation, and our embrace.

Let us worship our Lord.

Thomas

It is painful in this country, especially every election cycle, to bear the timidity of so many bishops and priests who do not confront the horrific culture of death that grows among us.  Catholics elect pro-abortion, pro-euthanasia, anti-family politicians and then habitually re-elect them.  Even worse, some “Catholics” are these very politicians, working so effectively at destroying the very humanity of our country.  And what are so many of our bishops and priests doing, meanwhile?  So many are preserving and protecting the status quo at the parish and diocesan levels, giving nice homilies, dispensing sacraments, enjoying a religious career, and failing to do what the Church is sent to do: make disciples of Jesus Christ.  The Church was sent to continue the work of Christ: the work of conversion, sanctification and renewal in this broken world.  Instead, we are mostly a church in maintenance mode, hardly conscious of the command to mission that should define us.

Pope Benedict XVI recently spoke to the bishops of Brazil – and his words ring very true for our bishops here in America, especially in this time of national elections.   Speaking to the bishops of the different roles of the laity and the clergy, the pope said (and this is quoted from an article from Catholic Online)

“First, the duty of direct action to ensure a just ordering of society falls to the lay faithful who, as free and responsible citizens, strive to contribute to the just configuration of social life, while respecting legitimate autonomy and natural moral law…. Your duty as bishops, together with your clergy, is indirect because you must contribute to the purification of reason, and to the moral awakening of the forces necessary to build a just and fraternal society. Nonetheless, when required by the fundamental rights of the person or the salvation of souls, pastors have the binding duty to emit moral judgments, even on political themes.

“When forming these judgments, pastors must bear in mind the absolute value of those … precepts which make it morally unacceptable to choose a particular action which is intrinsically evil and incompatible with human dignity. This decision cannot be justified by the merit of some specific goal, intention, consequence or circumstance.  Thus it would be completely false and illusory to defend, political, economic or social rights which do not comprehend a vigorous defense of the right to life from conception to natural end. When it comes to defending the weakest, who is more defenseless than an unborn child or a patient in a vegetative or comatose state?

“When political projects openly or covertly contemplate the decriminalizing of abortion or euthanasia, the democratic ideal (which is truly democratic when it recognizes and protects the dignity of all human beings) is betrayed at its very foundations. For this reason, dear brothers in the episcopate, when defending life we must not fear hostility or unpopularity, rejecting all compromise and ambiguity which would conform us to the mentality of this world”.

Do bishops and priests and deacons read what the Pope is teaching?  I know some of them do, because I know some holy priests and deacons, praise God!  I do not know any bishops personally – not one – but what I don’t hear from them or about them is deeply troubling.  How can they be so quiet about issues that matter so much!  Can’t they see the wolves at the door?  Don’t they know of the countless babies killed, the patients in their own dioceses being denied human care – even food and water – so they can be “allowed” to “die with dignity”?  Don’t they see the culture in which they are immersed,  being dehumanized and de-christianized methodically all around them?  Don’t they see the growing brutality, insensitivity and amorality that accompanies this increasingly decadent society, so driven by lust of every sort?  Don’t they know that there is an answer: Christ?

What do the clergy do with their time?  Are they so overwhelmed with “important” worldly matters that the essentials of their vocation in Christ are set aside?  Are they so bogged down in the externals and the formalities that the interior life and light are lost?  Clergy are obligated to recite the Divine Office daily (Canon 1174) – is there time to truly rest in the Lord, and pray?  They read the lectionary and prepare homilies – is there time to listen to the word of God speaking within, in their own personal heart of hearts, listening not as a teacher of others but as disciple of Christ themselves?  Do they have time to listen to the Pope?

God help us!  Lord, give us your grace!  Awaken this sleepy and self-obsessed church, that we might be worthy to be called your Church!  This nation, this world needs the witness of Truth – now more than ever, as the tides of godlessness rise.  The world needs the Church; the Church needs Christ.  The Pope is faithfully proclaiming His Truth – is anyone listening?

Thomas

This post comes with a request for comments and thoughts.  I’m envisioning a fellowship of artists – both the outwardly artistic and  the inwardly inclined – artists who are conscious of the religious and spiritual dimensions of true art.  I find such art in very scattered places, and in surprising expressions!  This is an “in-process” concern of mine, and what I am posting below is a first draft.  If you have any sympathy with what you read, please comment and give me your thoughts.

Mission Statement of Fellowship of Consecrated Artists

God gives to everyone a hunger for the good, the true and the beautiful.  God gives to artists a particular sensitivity to the good, the true and the beautiful – and to some among artists, He gives the ability to express these things in surprising and penetrating ways.  The artist, then, receives with his gift a responsibility: “to whom much is given, of him much will be required.” (Lk 12:48)

The artist, like all men, must choose – what to say, what to express, what to write or paint or compose, and for whom, and to what end? The consecrated artist returns his art first and foremost and above all to God: the unique Creator and Artist above all.  First art is done for God, then in His name, for others.  The consecrated artist consecrates his art to the purposes of God, echoing His eternal creativity.  To God the artist is responsible.

For what is the artist responsible?  The artist can, by personal expressions of his gift, illuminate the darkness that oppresses so many in the world, with a luminance that in fact is of God: the light of the good, the true and the beautiful.  In this way, the artist is an evangelist of Good News, wakening men and women to a perhaps forgotten or lost nobility, dignity and value.

What are the proper subjects for true art?  All in creation is created good, and the good is beautiful, and truth is found in every moment sustained by God.  Man, broken in sin, can distort this creation in both his actions and his perceptions.  Yet such darkness is not our vocation, nor our rightful destination.  True art is a sign-post pointing home, whether plainly or hidden as in a parable, whether whisper-gentle or prophet-strong.

I envision a studio/gallery here or somewhere where such intentional art can be displayed, where people can see or hear the works, and talk and share and grow together on our common journey.

What do you think?

Thomas

He is.  He made Himself one of us.  He came among us, He suffered with us and for us, and He showed us the way home.

On this anniversary of the 9/11 Terrorist attack on America, I struggle for words worthy of the day.  So many died that day, so many relationships suddenly ripped apart, so many families abruptly fractured by the violent hatred of complete strangers.  And in the years since, so many brave men and women have stepped up to defend us, to defend those they love, to try to somehow bring justice to the horror.  I do not have the words worthy of any of them, yet they deserve so much more than my silence, and the silence of others, and the growing complacency of so many in this country.

Please know that nothing is hidden that will not come to the light.  Please know that justice will come, and it will be perfect, and all will be made right.  Please know that God is still in control, and He who created every one of us in love will love us to the end.  And all will be well, in His hands.

Thomas

Some Republican leaders are counseling the party to keep quiet the “cultural agenda”: protection of marriage, right to life, and moral issues.  They counsel, money trumps morality: the economy is the issue to win with.

This shallow analysis got us into this dangerous mess!  A strong, vital culture is not one based merely on immediate self-gratification, self-preservation and self-indulgence.  There’s not enough money in the world to borrow, to fill the true need in the human heart with “things”.  We are bigger, made for greater purposes, requiring of us deeper lives than that.

Human nature requires a magnanimity – a great-soulness – of us.  Without the freedom and call to find true greatness, we will die as persons and as a culture.  Confined in a box of escapist entertainment, mind-numbing drugs and adolescent toys we will suffocate.  An economy of shallow consumerism and a government of paternalism betrays the human soul!   We can borrow and spend, spend and borrow until the Chinese own us: we will remain empty, hungry, unhappy and unfulfilled until we solve the real issues that human nature demands of us.

A society that denies life to the preborn child denies its own right to survive; a society that redefines man, woman and marriage discards the foundation of society for a fabrication, a fiction.  A society that rewrites the Ten Commandments destroys its own moral compass, and is guided by fools.  The “cultural agenda” is no “extra” – it is essential, discarded at our peril.

Thomas

Dark Clouds A’Coming (photo  – R. Thomas Richard © 2010)

Card. Ratzinger expresses beautifully a quiet necessity for all who would find Christ in Holy Scripture.  Needed is not a hasty grasping at the surfaces, but a patient waiting upon God’s unfolding meaning.  Writing of Mary and Joseph as they finally found the missing boy Jesus in the Temple, they heard from Him an explanation they did not understand.  They heard His words –  “Why were you looking for me? Did you not know that I must be in my Father’s house?” (Lk 2:49)  They did not understand at first, but because of this, Mary and Joseph can help us learn to listen to Him.

Card. Ratzinger, reflecting on this scene in Luke’s Gospel, expresses the challenge to us all to rightly listen to Holy Scripture:

“They did not understand the sayings that he spoke to them” (Lk 2:50). Even for the believing man who is entirely open to God, the words of God are not comprehensible and evident right away. Those who demand that the Christian message be as immediately understandable as any banal statement hinder God. Where there is no humility to accept the mystery, no patience to receive interiorly what one has not yet understood, to carry it to term, and to let it open at its own pace, the seed of the word has fallen on rocky ground; it has found no soil. Even the Mother does not understand the Son at this moment, but once again she “kept all these things in her heart” (Lk 2:51).

Mary – The Church at the Source Joseph Cardinal Ratzinger (San Francisco, Ignatius Press 2005) p. 71

There is a way of reading appropriate to Holy Scripture as divine revelation.  One ought not read Scripture as one would read a cookbook, for example, as though salvation is gained the way a cake is mixed and made!  Nor should one read Scripture as a text book of mathematics, as if life in Christ is a problem to be solved, or as if theology is a theorem to be proved.   Scripture is not a “map” to heaven or to Truth; it is more than a “love letter” merely to be swooned over; it is not a playbook in the strategies for victory in apologetics.  It certainly is not a weapon in the war of denominations, or a tool in the battle of egos masking as evangelization.

Scripture is first of all the supernatural, the holy, the divine expressed in the natural and among the fallen; it is eternal Wisdom broken into transient time and human culture.  It is the seed sown in several types of soil, some unfruitfully.  God has condescended to speak with us, in words and in events, and we are invited to be attentive, to hold all that we can of the Mystery, and to patiently and humbly give Him time in our hearts and minds: to let Him “come to term” in us, as Mary did.

Scripture demands of us meditation – the active engagement of the mind with sacred revealed Truth as we seek understanding.   Truth obliges us to obedience, yes, but even more is required.  To give His saving Truth room in us, to hold Him close and remain in Him, praying that He remain in us – to offer Him “good soil” for fruitfulness – this is a step further.  This is the work of a contemplative, peaceful and able to rest with sacred mystery.  To bring forth Christ in us, that He might again be among us, we must let His seed open in us at its own pace; we must let the Gift come to term in us, that He can come forth among us in His time.

In the contemplative union of Faith, Mary does not grasp at a false and shallow certitude, a certitude of the surfaces of things, hasty conclusions that cannot penetrate to the depths of living Truth.  Such is the  idolatry of pharisaism, blind to the very God it claims to defend.  To the contemplative, the idolatry of superficial certitude offers no depth, no life – it is sterile, it is barren.  In Scripture, rather one can meet the living God and embrace Him in Truth, as Mary did.  Again (same reference) Ratzinger writes of Mary’s prayerful and fruitful listening, that she

… translates the events into words and penetrates them, bringing them into her “heart” – into that interior dimension of understanding where sense and spirit, reason and feeling, interior and exterior perception interpenetrate circumincessively. She is thus able to see the totality without getting lost in individual details and to understand the points of the whole. Mary “puts together”, “holds together” – she fits the single details into the whole picture, compares and considers them, and then preserves them. The word becomes seed in good soil. She does not snatch at it, hold it locked in an immediate, superficial grasp, and then forget it. Rather, the outward event finds in her heart a space to abide and, in this way, gradually to unveil its depth, without any blurring of its once-only contours.

Father, make us humble contemplatives, listeners and learners, good soil, peaceful to find rest in your Son, strong that His life find faithful expression in us.

Thomas Richard