Renew The Church! – website and Blog

I’m active on a non-Catholic (evangelical Protestant) discussion/debate forum, and the issue of contraception vs. NFP has come up again.  I’m posting here what I posted there, since I know that the issue is far from understood or received universally among Catholics.  I sincerely believe that lack of Catholic fidelity to the Church’s teachings against contraception is one of the most serious problems we have today.  Contraception erodes or destroys the very foundation of a Christian marriage, opening the door to every other possible problem and contention between the spouses.  Marriage must be firm in Christ, or it is vulnerable to every assault and attack of the evil one.  And as marriages fall, and fail, so go the children, and the culture, and the world.

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Contraception is a cancer to marriage: it destroys the sacred nature of a sacred union.

There are two prime goods in marriage:

1)      the good of the union of the spouses, characterized by complete fidelity until death.

2)      The good of procreation, specifically of children although sometimes the fruitfulness of the marriage can result only in other ways.

Contraception attacks both of these goods:

1)      Contraception attacks the union of the spouses by admitting a barrier between the two in the moment of the most intimate and personal self-gift of the one to the other.  The self-gift is blocked by the barrier of contraception – whether a physical barrier, or chemical, or surgical, or by withdrawal, or by whatever means.  The self-gift is blocked, the self-giving is denied, and the conjugal union becomes a lie – a charade – a pretense of true union.  The conjugal union becomes the using of one another, rather than the union of one another.  Thus contraceptive love-making is inherently unfaithful love, denying as it does the full gift of self in love.

2)      Contraception attacks the procreative good of marriage by refusing the welcome of children.  Even if contraception is used not in a complete refusal of children, but only to manage or space the birth of children, still contraception attacks the union of the spouses as explained above.  Thus never can contraception be good for a marriage.  It can never be “victimless”, or benign.  At best, it makes of the spouse an object and not a full person as God created him or her.  The fullness of the person has been denied or rejected by the contraceptive act.

Contraception breaks the God-created and necessary link between life and love.  In God, life and love are inseparable, both being of the essence of God as He is in Himself.  God is life necessarily (He is the “I AM” – He must BE – His existence and life is one with His divine essence.).  And, God is love, necessarily.  God is love in Himself, eternally He is the perfection of love in His inner dynamic life in the Holy Trinity.

Thus God is life and love in an eternal union in one.  And man is made in His image.  When man separates what is one in God, man denies his very nature.  Thus in contraceptive love-making, man does not make but rather counterfeits love.  When man excludes or seeks to exclude the possibility of conception in the conjugal union by blocking fertility in the conjugal act, he denies his creation in God.  He denies the meaning of marriage and of love.  He denies his very being, and he becomes a counterfeit of himself.

Fertility Cycles.  Not every conjugal union will result in conception, and God so designed the woman with fertility cycles so that children can be planned in prudence and in love.  To be a true sharing in self-giving, every conjugal union must be the true and full gift of the husband to the wife, in all his masculinity, fully received by her, and also the full and true gift of the wife to her husband, in all her femininity, fully received by him – whether in times of her fertility or not in her times of fertility.  God is the creator of the cycles of fertility, and the wife is fully woman, and fully wife, at all times whether fertile or not.  Each conjugal union must be the full self-gift of each to the other at the time of the union, or the meaning of marriage is being denied and God is being denied in the union.

Abuse of NFP.  Can God be denied in a marriage that applies NFP and never uses contraception?  Sadly, yes.  If NFP is used not to space and plan children, but to avoid them, then the plan of God is being denied and the marriage is being abused.  NFP can be abused by morally wrong intent, and if it is then the abuse is sinful.  But contraception is always sinful.  Every act of contraceptive union is an abuse and morally wrong in itself, regardless of intention although evil intention can make it worse.  As a means to a prudent and loving end, NFP can and ought to be a good, but as a means to any end whether a good one or an evil one, contraception is always gravely wrong.  The end (the intention even if good) can never justify morally wrong means to that end.  The end never justifies the means.

Thomas

Jesus asked that the Feast of the Divine Mercy be preceded by a Novena to the Divine Mercy which would begin on Good Friday.   He gave St. Faustina an intention to pray for on each day of the Novena, saving for the last day the most difficult intention of all, the lukewarm and indifferent….

The powerful Ninth Day of the Novena, and its prayer for the lukewarm, has this:

Ninth Day

“Today bring to Me the Souls who have become Lukewarm,

and immerse them in the abyss of My mercy. These souls wound My Heart most painfully. My soul suffered the most dreadful loathing in the Garden of Olives because of lukewarm souls. They were the reason I cried out: ‘Father, take this cup away from Me, if it be Your will.’ For them, the last hope of salvation is to run to My mercy.”

Our Prayer:

Most compassionate Jesus, You are Compassion Itself. I bring lukewarm souls into the abode of Your Most Compassionate Heart. In this fire of Your pure love, let these tepid souls who, like corpses, filled You with such deep loathing, be once again set aflame. O Most Compassionate Jesus, exercise the omnipotence of Your mercy and draw them into the very ardor of Your love, and bestow upon them the gift of holy love, for nothing is beyond Your power.

Eternal Father, turn Your merciful gaze upon lukewarm souls who are nonetheless enfolded in the Most Compassionate Heart of Jesus. Father of Mercy, I beg You by the bitter Passion of Your Son and by His three-hour agony on the Cross: Let them, too, glorify the abyss of Your mercy.   Amen.

reference: The Divine Mercy Novena

Fr.  Raniero Cantalamessa, OFM Cap., was appointed by Pope John Paul II “Preacher to the Papal Household.”  He still serves in this office, preaching a weekly sermon in Advent and Lent in the presence of the Pope, the cardinals, bishops and prelates of the Roman Curia and the general superiors of religious orders.

This Lent Fr. Cantalamessa recently preached in the presence of Pope Benedict XVI and the Roman Curia.  He gave a startling and at the same time refreshingly honest appraisal of a crucially grave (my word) problem in the Church today: laxity and lukewarmness among clergy.  The sexual abuse scandal is a horrible crisis for the Church, and it seems to never end!  But Fr. Cantalamessa suggests that we have a problem that is in one sense even worse – the loss by priests of apostolic zeal and passion for the mission.  The entire homily can be read on Zenit.  Here are a few painful “highlights”:

The lukewarmness of a part of the clergy, the lack of zeal and apostolic inertia: I believe it is this that weakens the Church even more than the occasional scandals of some priests that make more noise and against whom it is easier to hasten to take measures.  “The great misfortune for us parish priests” — said the Holy Cure of Ars — “is that the spirit becomes sluggish.”….

We must not generalize (the Church is rich in holy priests who carry out their duty silently), but Heaven help us if we are silent. A committed laymen said to me with sadness: “The population of our country has grown in the last 20 years by over three million inhabitants, but we Catholics have stayed with the same number. Something is not right in our Church.” And knowing that clergy, I knew what was not right: the concern of many of them was not souls, but money and comfort.

There are places where the Church is alive and evangelizes almost solely by the commitment and zeal of some lay faithful and lay groups that moreover at times face obstacles and are regarded with suspicion. ….

Our present Pope certainly knows of the problem, probably better than any of us laity, although it is the laity who experience the spiritual oppression of such lifeless and  deadening clericalism directly and personally.  How has it come to this?  How has the sacred priesthood among the people of God become a sterile profession with staff, salary, fringe benefits and career track?  How has the parish become a business to be managed?

How has Sunday worship – in which we are to present our  bodies a living sacrifice, in which we are to stand with Mary and John at Calvary, in which Christ gives us His very Self to nourish us – become for so many a 55-minute choreographed pageant, with audience of spectators rushing to the doors to beat the parking-lot exodus and get out of there until next week?

Like priest, like people.  How has it come to this?  Where is the apostolic zeal?  Where is the mission of Christ?  Where is the heart in the Church?  Where is the passion for the Gospel?

Thank you, Fr. Cantalamessa!  The painful truth of our shameful condition, permeating so many parishes but not all, characterizing so many priests but not all, thanks be to God – this shameful truth must not be swept under the rug in some false loyalty to the priesthood.  The priesthood is being dishonored by clerical careerism and C.E.O.-style managers.  Such a diminished view among priests only engenders an equally compromised and half-hearted sense of discipleship among the laity.  Those in the laity who do hear the call to “the Gospel without compromise” find not help but resistance and obstruction from such priests who want nothing rocking their very comfortable boats.

We Catholics love the priesthood – the great gift of the priesthood given by Jesus and served by countless saints and holy servants for centuries.  But our love for the priesthood demands holy priests!  Christ calls for holy priests!  The Church needs not more priests; we need holy priests committed to living the Gospel and making disciples of Christ!  Better to have few holy priests, than many basking in privilege who confuse the innocent and the young with a confused and compromised Gospel.

May the Lord bring renewal to our Church!  Lord, raise up holy priests, holy religious, holy bishops – and a holy laity – that the world might see your Bride in the splendor of holiness that you deserve.

Thomas

The Cathedral...

Many former Catholics did not leave the Church because of cool and reasoned conclusions about authentic doctrine or belief.  Many left hungry and angry, after heart-sickening confrontations with hypocrisy, carnality and/or heresy in the Church.  There is passion in the rejection of the Church in many former Catholics!  This anti-Catholic passion in new “born-again” evangelicals comes more often because of wounds to the heart – wounds and hurts within them due to the sins of the world in the Church.  The failures of men in the Church have overwhelmed them, and thus they have failed ever to see or know the holy Presence of Christ that indeed makes the Church what it is in truth.

These former Catholics are angry with the Church, in their experience, for not being the Church.  Their emotional rejection of the Church is not unlike the experience of those atheists who, as C.S. Lewis described his early atheism, “did not believe God existed. I was also very angry with him for not existing.”  There is in the heart of man a need for the true God!  But when man meets the tragedies and sufferings of this real world, he can fall into an angry rejection of any God that could allow such contradiction in the world.  Like Lewis, he can reject the very existence of God – and remain very angry with God for not existing.

So also many former Catholics had and have, in their Christian souls, a sure realization of the holiness and truth that ought to mark the true Church of Jesus Christ.  But when such a Christian meets the carnal world in the Church, the contradiction demands resolution.  The emotional resolution is nearer and easier than the one Jesus would call us to.  The emotional resolution is to reject the Church: “This cannot be the true Church of Christ!”  The response that Jesus calls us to is harder: “You are to be faithful.  Take up your Cross, and be faithful.  You must suffer for the sake of the Bride, and you are not free to cast her out of your heart.  Divorce is not an option.  As I have wept for her, you must weep for her.  As I have suffered, you must suffer.  As I am making all things new, you must work with Me looking not for ease in this world, but only for the glory in the Cross.”

And she will be renewed.

Thomas

The years of inadequate catechesis given to our children, in the decades following the post-Vatican II upheaval, have yielded their troubling harvest: adults in the Church today do not know their Faith.  This clear fact is (or ought to be) very troubling.  But there is another even more troubling consequence: young men and older men who sense a call to the priesthood have also come out of that same doctrinally shallow pool.

Men seeking to serve the Church as priests have presented themselves to seminaries, with very poor foundations in the Faith.  They have had superficial if not also erroneous formations as Catholic boys and young men.  The first thing they need in seminary is remediation – taking basic courses in the Catechism – which of course takes precious time out of their academic curriculum.  These men, after a compressed priestly formation in seminary, soon find themselves not only ordained priests but quickly, because of the priest shortage, they become pastors.  As young and premature pastors,  they find themselves overseeing the formation and pastoral care of hundreds if not thousands of Catholic families.  And again, because of the priest shortage, the demands on their time and energies as pastor leave very little time or energy to try to “fill in” the gaps left in their formation and spiritual development.  We have not yet seen the full consequences of this on the Church, but it does not look good.

The situation in the Church reminds me of the parallel situation in the secular world in families: children having children; parents who still need to be parented – parents lacking the maturity or wisdom that their children deserve and need.  Thus the whole culture regresses.  Even in politics: we look at irrationalities in our government’s policies and plans and we wonder, where are the adults?  Can we not get some adult supervision here?  Are the inmates taking over the asylum completely?  How has it come to this?

The Church was sent to be light in this dark world, but the Church has problems of her own.  Where are the pastors?  Where are the Bishops?  Where is the spiritual maturity to guide us toward the treasure entrusted to our Church?  Where is the catechesis for our lay adults to help them form solid and faithful Catholic families?  The house is in need of repair, and when will the work begin?  We don’t merely need fresh paint – the foundations are solid, but there are major structural defects and weaknesses.  What will happen when the winds pick up?  What will happen when the storms hit?  When torrents come upon us, and the whole house is pressed hard upon, what will happen when so many hardly know their right hand from their left?  Indeed, “When the Son of Man comes, will He find faith upon the earth?”

The Church needs to awaken.  Bishops and priests have a great responsibility, because their spiritual children are in great and serious need – and many do not know it, not the fathers, not the children!  May God stir and arouse us, and soon.

Thomas

If a majority of Americans does not very soon wake up, or sober up, or grow up, this country is soon to fall.  Our foundations are crumbling, and no matter how many large-screen TVs we can cram into our up-side-down mortgaged homes, the country will fall.  No matter how high-tech is our entertainment, it remains fantasy.  Life is not a beach!  Retirement is not the purpose of work, and golf is not the reason for life!  Virtual reality is not real, no matter how clever or exciting.

No matter how many pools, computers and media-savvy classes we indulge our kids with, in our education-palaces called “schools,” we are abusing them: we are robbing our children of their future by our debts, we are starving them of real education and wisdom, we are abandoning them to fad “edu-experts.”  We are failing to love them enough to be parents to them, and we are afraid to even be adults for them.  What chance do they stand?

Christ sent a church into this darkness to be light!  Is there enough light even now, even in our tepid sleepy churches, to see the fall in front of us?  Can we not see the chasm there, getting closer?  The greatness of America hinges on the goodness of Americans.  We have lost the way, but still it is very close.  It is late, but not too late, not yet.  We still are close enough to remember a better way.

Thomas

Both Charles Peguy and Leon Bloy are cited as saying, in one form or another, that the one tragedy of life is not to have been a saint.  Listening to the teaching of the Lord in “the parable of the sower” (Mt 13:3-23), we can hear options and possibilities both for the tragedy of failure and the joy of success in finding and living our true vocation to holiness.

The Gospel has power!  His word has potency!  Yet the effect of the Word depends on the reception in the heart.  A human heart can be a busily trodden path, hard as cement.  A human heart can be a plot of rocky soil, having ready and quick receptivity, yet shallowness – no “depth of soil” because of the rocks.  When the Gospel begins to cost something, the Word within withers and fails.  The heart can be entangled with fruitless “thorns,” love of the world and delight in so-called riches, that choke the true and eternal treasure of the holy Word.  But finally, the heart can be open, pliant, receptive, obedient, persevering.  Such a heart is “good soil” to the saving Word, and is fruitful.  His word is sent out not to return void, but to return in beautiful fruitfulness a hundredfold, or sixtyfold, or thirty.

The Word is preached, and celebrated, and received in Holy Mass: in the Liturgy.  The Latin phrase that entitles this post is literally translated, “Law of prayer, law of belief.”  The USCCB website has a paper that discusses the phrase:

Lex orandi, lex credendi has become something of a tenet of liturgical theology, especially in the years since the reforms of the Second Vatican Council. Literally translated, it means “the law of prayer [is] the law of belief.” This axiom is an adaptation of words of Prosper of Aquitaine, a fifth-century Christian writer and a contemporary of St. Augustine. The original version of the phrase, ut legem credendi lex statuat supplicandi (“that the law of praying establishes the law of believing”), highlighted the understanding that the Church’s teaching (lex credendi) is articulated and made manifest in the celebration of the liturgy and prayer (lex orandi). We understand this to mean that prayer and worship is the first articulation of the faith. The liturgy engages belief in a way that simply thinking about God or studying the faith does not naturally do.

In other words, in an act of worship, the faithful are in dialogue with God and are engaged in an active and personal relationship with Jesus Christ, and every individual member of the liturgical assem- bly is connected to one another as members of the mystical Body of Christ in the Holy Spirit, as they look together with hope for the salvation promised in the Kingdom of Heaven. Theology, christology, ecclesiology, pneumatology, and eschatology are all expressed in word and deed, in sign and symbol, in liturgical acts.

I was very struck with the presumption of this paper.  Does the writer know this for a fact?  That

• in an act of worship, the faithful are in dialogue with God and
• are engaged in an active and personal relationship with Jesus Christ, and
• every individual member of the liturgical assembly is connected to one another as members of the mystical Body of Christ in the Holy Spirit, as
• they look together with hope for the salvation promised in the Kingdom of Heaven.

One would hope that these are the realities present in worship!  And if lex orandi, lex credendi, then our worship reveals our faith.  Distracted, preoccupied and clock-watching worship reveals unstable and shallow faith.  If worship is vibrant – if “full, conscious and active participation” among the members is the rule – then the faith is dynamic and vital and growing.  As we pray, so we believe.  But how do we pray, and what do we in truth believe?

If interest in growing in understanding the faith is any indication, the Church is in big trouble.  The vast majority in every parish I have been associated with, has had relatively little interest in growing in understanding the faith.  With very few exceptions among the pastors of those parishes, they do not personally and consistently encourage adult faith formation, and the people mostly do not participate in it.  What is the Latin for, “as the priests, so also the people”?

Lex orandi, lex credendi, and lex credendi, lex orandi.  The two are not separable.  His grace in human lives manifests itself and flows from faith to worship to human lives of fruitfulness – thirtyfold, or sixty or a hundred.

A dear and holy priest once told me, “It a mess – but we have the Holy Spirit.  It’s going to be alright.”  Let us pray that we are open to His Spirit, and responsive to His urgings and direction!  He can use the little that we offer to bring forth great things.  Let us be sure that we do offer Him our all.

Thomas

Pope Benedict XVI has strongly encouraged the use of Lectio Divina. He wrote, “I would like in particular to recall and recommend the ancient tradition of Lectio divina: the diligent reading of Sacred Scripture accompanied by prayer brings about that intimate dialogue in which the person reading hears God who is speaking, and in praying, responds to him with trusting openness of heart (cf. Dei Verbum, n. 25). If it is effectively promoted, this practice will bring to the Church — I am convinced of it — a new spiritual springtime.”

Yesterday I wrote a post describing Lectio Divina, a traditional method of listening to, meditating upon, Holy Scripture. Why did I do this? Because we in the Church need that “intimate dialogue” with God. The Church and the world need a “new spiritual springtime.” We need to awaken, and learn to listen to God. We need to treasure and hold His revealed light in the midst of this dark and darkening culture.

We need to hear God because He has given us a job to do, and many of us are sleeping. The world needs living witnesses of the saving truth of God in Jesus Christ – and if we are to be His witnesses (and we have been sent for that very purpose), then we need to take hold of that mission with a fervor, a sincerity, an urgency and an authenticity that have so far escaped us. If “mission” is our work, our vocation as Church, then many of us are asleep on the job.

So many, so many in the Church are asleep. The ruler of this world is not asleep! The kingdom of this world is advancing, becoming more organized, spreading its network by all the modern means available. This “post-Christian” culture paused for a moment in recent history to welcome a sort of inter-religious unity and equivalence, giving lip service to all the faiths and belief systems around the whole world – but not for long. Belief in anything greater than man must give way, because man will exalt himself above God, above anyone’s God, to fully reveal the man of sin. The world that hated and crucified Jesus will hate and persecute His followers also.

Who is safe from the hatred of the world, in a world that rejects God? Only those whose god is content with mere ritual and ceremony, with mere pretty but sterile words, with believers who are drunk with the pleasures and powers and toys of this world, with believers who are asleep.

Struggling within Himself, within His humanity, in the Garden of Gethsemane Jesus Christ prepared His soul for the martyrdom that was to come. He prayed to His Father, in what we have called “the agony in the Garden.” Seeing His disciples sleeping, He said, “Are you still sleeping and taking your rest? Behold, the hour is at hand, and the Son of man is betrayed into the hands of sinners.” (Mt 26:45)

The Church needs to awaken because we have a mission to the world. This confused and drunken world is peopled by God, who created each person in His own image, and for eternal life. The Church needs to awaken to get to work, to do what God has sent us to do, while it is still light. As Jesus said, “We must work the works of him who sent me, while it is day; night comes, when no one can work.” (Jn 9:4)

Christ is light. The light of the Son is brighter than the light of the sun, on this poor and decaying world. The interior dawn of Christ in the soul is a greater awakening than any sunrise can bring. When a person begins to hear – to really hear – His Word that “pierces to the Heart,” then persons change – and a new springtime can come upon the world.