Franciscan at Home

J.R.R. Tolkien’s monumental fantasy novels, The Hobbit (1937) and The Lord of the Rings (1954-55), have a great deal to teach about friendship. Many readers first encounter these works in adolescence, when our first encounters with friendship are forged—and, unfortunately, tested and maybe broken—by fallen humanity.

But even if we first came to Tolkien in adulthood, we can recognize the appeal of his stories to the notion of fellowship. The appeal lasts not only because the book presents shining images of stalwart friendships among its characters, but also because the book itself can be a friend in moments of friendlessness.

I’m not suggesting that the solace of a great book like The Lord of the Rings can ever replace the incarnate personhood of human beings that true friendship requires. But I think that the reason it seems like it can is that Tolkien gives us literary friendships that can seem more real than our “merely human” ones because of Tolkien’s Catholic conviction that there is a transcendent grace that lifts the “merely Hobbit” or “merely Elvish” friendships out of their mundane limitations.

Many Tolkien scholars have argued that Tolkien’s fantasy is successful because he can convince the reader that elves and rings of power and seeing-stones and wizards are real. But I think that the greatest literary magic of Tolkien is his ability—founded on his fervent belief—to convince the reader that friendships that cannot be broken by the fires of hell really exist.

Never has friendship been so needed, and yet perhaps never has it been so neglected. Long before Jesus Christ came into the world as the love of God made visible (cf. 1 Jn 4:9), the ancients were already convinced that friendship held a unique and irreplaceable position among the four loves. Aristotle, in fact, claimed that without friendship no one would even desire to live. In the wisdom writings of the Old Testament, the author of Sirach reflected on how rich a gift friendship is, asserting that “Faithful friends are a sturdy shelter; whoever finds one finds a treasure” (Sir 6:14). By the time of the coming of Christ, the human community, torn by the divisions from Adam and Eve’s first “no” to God and every subsequent turn from the Father, doubted the universality of human friendship and denied even the possibility of divine friendship. When Jesus assured his apostles that they were no longer servants but friends, hPicture of smiling women linking arms in friendshipe introduced a radical newness of possibility in love that needs to be re-proclaimed to and experienced by every generation with all its transformative power for human and divine friendship.

As a Clinical Child and Family Psychologist who works primarily in the field of catechesis, one particular interest of mine is the integration of what both faith and science tell us about the human person. In secular society, and even among some individuals in the Church, there is the misconception that science and faith are somehow incompatible. However, some of the greatest minds both in science and religion have disputed this assumption. For example, Albert Einstein famously said, “A legitimate conflict between science and religion cannot exist. Science without religion is lame, religion without science is blind.”1 Similarly, in a letter to Director of the Vatican Observatory Reverend George V. Coyne, S.J., St. John Paul II wrote, “Science can purify religion from error and superstition; religion can purify science from idolatry and false absolutes. Each can draw the other into a wider world, a world in which both can flourish… We need each other to be what we must be, what we are called to be.”2

Christians have viewed the field of psychology with skepticism from its very beginning. After all, Sigmund Freud, considered by many to be the founder of psychology, called religion “an illusion.”3 But as the field of psychology has grown and its methods have improved, many have found it to be more and more compatible with Christian thinking. In fact, what we find by science to be true about the human mind and human emotion would necessarily have to be compatible with our faith, since God himself created us to think and to feel.

Using what we know about how people think, feel, and behave can make us more effective in faith formation. The following is a discussion of five pressing questions in the field of catechesis that may be answered, at least in part, by research in the social sciences.

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While camping at the World Youth Day vigil in Kraków this summer, I spoke with a young woman who was preparing to enter her first year of college at a prestigious university in California. She pulled her iPhone out of her backpack and showed me where her online college application required her to check the appropriate box to indicate her gender. There were 18 boxes to choose from. I read through the litany of genders, and noticed that two were missing: male and female. (Facebook—which invites its users to identify as one of 58 genders—at least offers them the possibility of choosing to be male or female.) The university application, however, did allow the incoming students to choose “cis-male” or “cis-female,” which means that the biological sex one was assigned at birth aligns with the gender one chooses as their identity. What’s going on? Where is this coming from? In a sense, it could be said that Gaudium et Spes prophesied our culture’s sexual identity crisis by stating, “when God is forgotten the creature itself grows unintelligible.” In order to offer pastoral care for individuals who struggle with gender dysphoria, it is useful to reflect upon the roots and ultimate goal of gender theory. Throughout its history, the Church has defended the truth of the human person from ideologies that aimed to separate the body and soul, including Gnosticism, Manichaeism, and Cartesian Dualism. In varying ways, each of these schools of thought pitted the physical against the spiritual, considering what is material to be inferior to what is immaterial. Similarly, gender theory promotes the notion that one’s gender is a reality that exists independently of one’s body, and it defines one’s true identity. In other words, one’s body is not a reliable guide to discovering one’s identity. Rather, the body is a collection of parts that may be augmented or even surgically removed if they conflict with one’s internal feelings.

In our first article on the Feasts of Israel, we saw how the four spring festivals of Passover, Unleavened Bread, Firstfruits, and Weeks (Shavuot) foreshadow the mysteries of Christ’s First Coming, namely, his redemptive death, his sinlessness, his resurrection, and the outpouring of the Holy Spirit at Pentecost. In this second article, we will see how the fall feasts anticipate the events surrounding Christ’s Second Coming at the end of human history.[i] The Feasts of the Seventh Month Just as the Passover season in the first month (March-April) includes three distinct feasts, so the festive season of the seventh month (late September-October) includes three festivals: The Feast of Trumpets, the Day of Atonement, and the Feast of Tabernacles. These fall feasts differ from the spring festivals, however, in their messianic fulfillment. Whereas Passover, Unleavened Bread, and Firstfruits are fulfilled in Christ’s Paschal Mystery, and the Feast of Weeks in the outpouring of the Holy Spirit at Pentecost, it would appear that the fall feasts have yet to be fulfilled. The Jewish calendar hints at this; while the spring feasts are only seven weeks apart, the fall feasts come much later in the year, after the dry summer months. This long, barren period between the spring and fall festivals foreshadows the history of the Church, whereby the spring feasts mark the initial stages of Christ’s work of redemption and the fall feasts its consummation. In other words, the fall feasts have an eschatological significance.

Although the word "evangelization" has gained greater notoriety among Catholics in recent years, it still gets confused pejoratively with its ugly step-cousin “proselytization.” To proselytize is to apply undue pressure on someone to convert, using unethical means like bribery, threats, or deception. The Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith offered this comment: “More recently, however, the term has taken on a negative connotation, to mean the promotion of a religion by using means, and for motives, contrary to the spirit of the Gospel; that is, which do not safeguard the freedom and dignity of the human person.”[1]

A good example of this happened during the Irish famine, when Catholics were starving. English landlords would prepare a huge stewpot for all the poor of the estate or village. There was only one catch: in order to get the stew, the person had to renounce the Catholic faith. You can imagine how great a temptation that was, especially during those years of famine and starvation. Pope Benedict XVI said, “The Church does not engage in proselytism. Instead, she grows by ‘attraction.’”[2]

There are a number of legitimate means of evangelization that are sometimes confused with proselytism: going door-to-door, standing atop the proverbial "soap box," or handing out tracts. Not everyone is comfortable with this kind of evangelization because it involves initiating spiritual conversations with strangers, something most of us don’t excel at. However, some people are really good at it!

But the Catholic vision of evangelization involves much more.

Los católicos en los Estados Unidos hemos comenzado un proceso de cuatro años de reflexión, evangelización y consulta llamado el Quinto Encuentro Nacional de Pastoral Hispana/Latina (desde el 2017 hasta el 2020). Al centro de este proceso se halla un modelo catequético que parte de la convicción de que la evangelización y la catequesis son dinámicas íntimamente relacionadas.

El proceso del V Encuentro involucrará, directa e indirectamente, a varios millones de católicos en cerca de 5.000 parroquias en la mayoría de las diócesis católicas de los Estados Unidos. El proceso es una oportunidad perfecta para evaluar de qué manera el marco conceptual de la Nueva Evangelización, aplicado a la catequesis, puede conducir a una apreciación renovada de esta importante actividad eclesial en comunidades de fe católicas. Al mismo tiempo, el proceso es una ocasión para sacar a la catequesis de la “esquina programática” en donde parece residir en muchas comunidades de fe (ej. programas pre-sacramentales, “escuela dominical”) y reposicionarla para que tenga un papel más integrado en los esfuerzos evangelizadores de la Iglesia, una meta que muchos de los documentos eclesiales sobre la catequesis han formulado pero que no siempre logra.

En este ensayo parto de siguiente premisa: la manera como una comunidad entiende la evangelización influencia de manera significativa el cómo se concibe la catequesis al igual que los compromisos pedagógicos y curriculares asociados con ella.

Catholics in the United States are currently engaged in a four-year process of reflection, evangelization, and consultation called the Fifth National Encuentro of Hispanic/Latino Ministry (from 2017 to 2020). At the core of this process is a catechetical model that builds upon the conviction that evangelization and catechesis must explicitly go hand in hand. The V Encuentro process will engage several million Catholics, directly and indirectly, in about 5,000 thousand parishes in most Catholic dioceses throughout the United States. The process is a perfect opportunity to assess to what extent the conceptual framework of the New Evangelization applied to catechesis can lead to a renewed appreciation of this important ecclesial activity in Catholic faith communities. At the same time, the process provides an occasion to take catechesis out of the “programmatic corner” where it dwells in many faith communities (e.g., pre-sacramental programs, “Sunday school”) and reposition it into a more integrated role in the Church’s wider evangelization efforts—a goal envisioned by most contemporary Church documents on catechesis but not always accomplished. In this essay, I propose that a community’s understanding of evangelization significantly influences how catechesis is conceived as well as the pedagogical and curricular commitments associated with it.