Renew The Church! – website and Blog

This is from the Catholic Code of Canon Law, concerning us – “the faithful” – the lay members of the Church:

Can. 212 §1 Christ’s faithful, conscious of their own responsibility, are bound to show christian obedience to what the sacred Pastors, who represent Christ, declare as teachers of the faith and prescribe as rulers of the Church.

§2 Christ’s faithful are at liberty to make known their needs, especially their spiritual needs, and their wishes to the Pastors of the Church.

§3 They have the right, indeed at times the duty, in keeping with their knowledge, competence and position, to manifest to the sacred Pastors their views on matters which concern the good of the Church. They have the right also to make their views known to others of Christ’s faithful, but in doing so they must always respect the integrity of faith and morals, show due reverence to the Pastors and take into account both the common good and the dignity of individuals.

I am especially glad to read paragraphs 2 and 3, of our rights and duties. We have the right to make known our spiritual needs! We have the right and even the duty to make known our views concerning the good of the Church – to make these views known to the pastors, and to others of the laity. The true duty and responsibility that we carry before Christ is more than the “pay, pray and obey” that some might still think!

No, we Catholic laity have a rightful share in the life of Christ as priest, prophet and King. Part of the sacred duty of our pastors is for them to help enable us to discover and to truly live that life. True Christian love for our pastors, on our part, must include our efforts to help them to fulfill their role as shepherd after the Shepherd – efforts that call forth from us prayer, the personal example of humility and a teachable spirit, works of charity, and straightforward adult-to-adult communication of truth.

Thomas

In a recent Zenit article, about the Pope’s Homily at Launch of Year for Priests, 6/25/09, he speaks pointedly of the crucial importance of priests in the life of the Church, for good or for ill. The Pope taught,

Indeed, if it is true that sinners, in contemplating him, must learn from him the necessary “sorrow for sins” that leads them back to the Father, it is even more so for holy ministers. How can we forget, in this regard, that nothing makes the Church, the Body of Christ, suffer more than the sins of her pastors, especially the sins of those who are transformed into “a thief and a robber” of the sheep (Jn 10: 1 ff.), or who deviates from the Church through their own private doctrines, or who ensnare the Church in sin and death?

Yes, the sins of every person in the Body of Christ makes the whole Body suffer! Yes, “If one member suffers, all suffer together; if one member is honored, all rejoice together.” (1Cor 12:26) But the priests and bishops, standing as they do “in persona Christi capitas” – in the person of Christ the head, for our sakes – when they fall, the whole Body is deeply wounded. When our priests and bishops fall into compromise with the world, into the three-fold lust of this world, then the Kingdom is betrayed, the Gospel is confused and the People of God are led astray to a land of barrenness and hunger. St. John exhorts us all (1 Jn 2:15-16)

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.

The Church needs holiness; we all are called to holiness! How deeply afflicted we become, when we are led by men whose true vocation has been compromised and obscured by the desires of this world.

The Pope continued,

How is it possible not to remember with emotion that the gift of our priestly ministry flowed directly from this Heart? How can we forget that we priests were consecrated to serve humbly and authoritatively the common priesthood of the faithful?

Yes, our priests “were consecrated to serve humbly and authoritatively the common priesthood of the faithful”! It is a profound joy when such servant-hearts are found, and witnessed! How beautiful, when those who stand in the place of Christ do so bringing rightful honor to His Name and to His Church. How tragic it is, however, when those set over us, to shepherd and to guide us, do so as “hired men”, lording it over us, abusing their authority and despoiling the riches and gifts of the people. How our priests need the Heart of Christ! How we need holy priests and bishops!

What then are we to do?

What are we to do, when shepherded by men who have not the heart of the Shepherd? This is a huge topic, and a huge question – and a crucially important one. First, we must never succumb to the temptations in this situation that would only delight the evil one, and would lead to only more woundedness and ineffectiveness in the Church: we must hold tight to the true charity of Christ in His Sacred Heart. He loves all men, and we must love. We owe love to one another, in Him.

But secondly, we must find for ourselves the spiritual sustenance we need, if the clergy will not lead us to it. If they fail to teach the full treasure of the Faith of the Church, we must seek out trustworthy teachers for ourselves. We must seek, exactly, how to come into the “full, conscious and active participation in the Sacred Liturgy” that will open our hearts to the full measure of grace that Christ has for us in the sacraments. We must come to understand the deep beauty, the glory, of the truth of the Christian life: how to live the morality of the Gospel. And we must learn how to pray, to enter an authentic interior life of communion with God who is our Life. If they will not teach, we must nevertheless learn. We must become disciples. We must become disciples, and perhaps our example will help awaken and bring to sobriety others – even including those priests and bishops under whom many now languish and suffer.

Thomas

Today is the feast of John the Baptist  – a fitting day to begin a Blog dedicated to renewal in the Church.  The reading in today’s Morning Prayer, in the Divine Office, includes this:

23 Lo, I will send you Elijah, the prophet, Before the day of the LORD comes, the great and terrible day,

24 To turn the hearts of the fathers to their children, and the hearts of the children to their fathers, Lest I come and strike the land with doom. (Mal 3)

How is this reading and prophecy so appropriate to the call for Church renewal?  Listen to it, in the light of our Church led by our fathers in Christ!  We call our priests “Father”, for they are ordained to be fathers to us and for us in Jesus Christ.  In this year especially dedicated to the priesthood, begun June 19, on the Feast of the Sacred Heart of Jesus, the Church is calling us, priests and laity, to be especially attentive to the holy priesthood.  That is, we “children” are to turn our hearts to our spiritual fathers.  Our spiritual fathers, our priests and bishops, are to turn their hearts to their spiritual children – lest God come to strike this spiritual land, this Promised Land His Church, with doom.

Listening to the reading in this way, I can see how relevant and piercing it becomes.  How we need holy, sacrificial priests and bishops!  How we need a laity submitted and obedient to such fathers in Christ – because we need a people, a Church,  submitted to Christ.  We need this, and the world needs this, because the world awaits true, authentic living witnesses to the radical truth of God and His Gospel.

The world does not need one more lukewarm, distracted and bored assembly.  The People of God does not need more “company men” in the place of her priests and bishops, who say what is popular and what sells, who trouble no one, who reveal Christ to no one, who call no one to Life.  The Church needs holy priests and bishops.  The Church needs fathers whose hearts are turned to their children in truth, in authentic sacrificial love.

We as laity have expected too little of our fathers, our priests and bishops.  Instead, we have accepted the compromise.  As long as they refrain from the hard parts of the Gospel and of following Christ, we are free to chase after the pleasures and comforts of this world.  As long as the Liturgy is quick, our Sunday drive-through, we too can keep merely on the surface of it all, blind to the holy, the eternal, the transforming.  We remain untouched by the Cross, what light there is remains under a basket and the world remains in the dead idolatries of darkness.

Fathers, turn your hearts to your children!  Children, turn your hearts – your hearts – to your fathers!  We do not love our priests and bishops enough, even though, granted, many of them make it difficult for us to love them in truth.  Many priests and bishops keep themselves isolated and fortified against the fullness of love that would call them deeper into the depths and heights of their exalted vocation in Christ.

How we need truth among us!  We need the truth of love, as well as the love of truth.  May the Lord give us His grace, the grace of love, the grace to love.  The Church will remain as she is – largely weak, divided, confused, shallow and ineffective – until the transforming power of Christ is welcomed and is received within us all.  Business as usual is unacceptable in the light of the Cross of Christ.  He did not die to enable mediocrity, but rather sanctity.

Thomas Richard