Franciscan at Home

Shortly after the time of Christ, St. Paul reminded the Ephesians that they once were ‘strangers to the covenants of promise, having no hope and without God in the world.’[i] Pope Benedict echoed the same theme in Spe Salvi when he wrote, ‘To come to know God—the true God—means to receive hope.’[ii] Thus, we glean that the theological virtue of hope is a necessary lens through which to study and teach the history of the Church; we understand that hope is foundational to the events and developments, including the lives of the saints, which have unfolded over two millennia. The virtue of hope has two dimensions: eschatological and immanent. Pope John Paul II wrote that hope ‘encourages the Christian not to lose sight of the final goal which gives meaning and value to life,’ and it ‘offers solid and profound reasons for a daily commitment to transform reality in order to make it correspond to God’s plan.’[iii] The essence of hope is that it ‘inspires men’s activities and purifies them so as to order them to the Kingdom of heaven; it keeps man from discouragement; it sustains him during times of abandonment’ and it ‘opens up his heart in expectation of eternal beatitude.’[iv] Quite simply: ‘The one who has hope lives differently.’[v]

A common view is that the acceptance of religious doctrine not only inhibits but even destroys the life of intelligence. The Christian faith involves undoubting belief in certain assertions for which reason cannot provide conclusive proof, but which are nevertheless taken as ruling principles of thought and action. A Catholic educational setting, as one that submits itself in this way to Catholic dogma and the teaching of the Church, is held to have exchanged the freedom of the mind for the security of unquestioned authority. Catholic education is sometimes thought therefore to be less free and the teaching offered of an inferior quality. This pervasive assumption is here challenged by Stratford Caldecot, who shows that it rests upon a faulty understanding of both faith and reason.

The Catholic faith is sometimes regarded by outsiders – and even by insiders! – as a kind of ideology, a system of ideas imposed and controlled by the clerical ‘thought-police’ in Rome. If this were true, if our faith or our Church were opposed to freedom and reason, then our places of Catholic education could be nothing more than indoctrination centres.

Of course, human nature being what it is since the Fall, we all have a tendency to turn faith into ideology. However, faith as understood by St. Augustine, St. Thomas, Blessed John Henry Newman, and the Second Vatican Council is not an ideology. Far from opposing, it actually fosters the development of reason and personal conscience.

What is a ‘young adult?’

This is the question that plagues many people in young adult ministry in the United States. Young adults are often described by their age range: 18 to 30 years old. But Christian Smith, author of Souls in Transition: The Religious and Spiritual Lives of Emerging Adults, suggests the term young adult is a misnomer. He proposes we call this age group emerging adults. ‘Rather than viewing these years as simply the last hurrah of adolescence or an early stage of real adulthood, (this title) recognizes the very unique characteristics of this new and particular phase of life.’[i]

Previously, he and Melissa Lundquist Denton wrote a book called Soul Searching: The Religious and Spiritual Lives of American Teenagers. Published in 2005, Soul Searching became one of the most influential books in American Catholic Youth Ministry since the USCCB published Renewing the Vision in 1997.

Soul Searching studied the religiosity of American teenagers. Souls in Transition continues that study by looking at the lives of 18 to 24 year olds. ‘The features marking this stage are intense identity exploration, instability, a focus on self, feeling in limbo or in transition or in-between, and a sense of possibilities, opportunities, and unparalleled hope. These, of course, are also accompanied… by large doses of transience, confusion, anxiety, self-obsession, melodrama, conflict, disappointment, and sometimes emotional devastation.’

A parish is complicated. If God’s plan is simple, why does my role as a catechetical leader feel so complicated? Perhaps it is because, as catechists, it is part of our mission not only to proclaim the truth, but to link it to everyday life. The GDC (87) states that for the Christian life to mature in a person all of its elements must be cultivated: knowledge of the faith, liturgical life, moral formation, prayer, belonging to community and the missionary Spirit. When catechesis omits one of these elements, the Christian faith does not attain full development. This, my friends, is why catechesis can seem complicated!

The parish is also the place where we can meet the Lord Jesus in the sacraments, where heaven meets earth, and where sins are absolved. The Catechism has a word for this place where the love of the brethren is lived out in the power of the Spirit: communio. In the parish, in this communio, we are no longer strangers and sojourners, but fellow citizens with the saints and members of the household of God (Eph 2:19).

We are each made to receive the Holy Spirit and to find our joy in welcoming his life into ours. God gives his Spirit as a gift to transform human hearts and minds from within. By this transformation the Lord wants each of us to grow and flourish; the only thing we lose is our sin; everything else is good. So we need never be afraid to watch for the Holy Spirit around us nor allow him to work. As we let Him we will be discovering ourselves, our real beauty and dignity and the real dignity and beauty in others. This is our hope, so, how do we hold it, grow in it and live by it? We live it simply by treating the Holy Spirit as the real person that he is. Since he is real and at work in the world we can look out for him as a presence around us.

If the first millennium of Christianity was marked by the substantial unity of the Church, and the second millennium was the era of Christian division, what does the third millennium hold? Will it be the time of the restoration of the unity of the Church of Jesus Christ? Is this an unrealistic expectation? No, Christians hope for unity because at the Last Supper Jesus Himself prayed for all who would believe in Him: ‘that they may all be one [‘utunumsint’]; even as you Father are in me, and I in you…’ (Jn. 17:21).

Before undertaking our review of Pope John Paul II’s twelfth encyclical letter Ut Unum Sint issued on May 25, 1995, it would be helpful to establish the context for this encyclical by discussing the emergence of the ecumenical movement and the teaching on ecumenism of the Second Vatican Council. One evident fruit of Jesus’ prayer for unity in our time is the emergence of the ecumenical movement at the beginning of the 20th century. The Second Vatican Council’s ‘Decree on Ecumenism’ (Unitatis Redintegratio, 1964, henceforth UR) defines ecumenism as ‘…a movement, fostered by the grace of the Holy Spirit, for the restoration of unity among all Christians’ (UR 1). This movement gathered support when Protestant missionaries met and discussed the scandal of Christians contending for converts in mission lands, all claiming to be the ‘true church’ or to preach the full gospel of Jesus Christ. The Catholic Church did not become involved in the Protestant and Orthodox ecumenical efforts based on the same claim that the Catholic Church was the one, true Church. In this view the only legitimate ecumenism was for the Christians who had broken from the Catholic Church to return to her. This was the position of Pope Pius XI in his 1928 encyclical letter, Mortalium Animos.

In an age where equality and non-discrimination are taken by many as the highest and even as the sole principles of morality, among the most difficult truths for many present day Catholics (or would be Catholics) to understand, accept or justify, is the reservation of the priesthood to men alone. The objective here is to give a clear presentation of what the Church herself says about this issue in the hope that this will be useful to those handing on the Catholic faith, especially those engaged in RCIA programs, and the like, who are dealing with people more than likely influenced precisely by these two modern ‘dogmas’ of equality and non-discrimination.

One of the subtlest of snares for a catechist is that of hypocrisy. A serious Christian, one full of zeal to follow Christ and to teach others about him, may easily get so caught up in his mission that the inner spring or spirit of his life no longer connects with what he is doing outwardly. Because the handing on of a living faith is as much about the catechist’s conversion as it is that of the student, we really cannot afford the luxury of hypocrisy—of looking good at the expense of being good.

This brief paper is entitled, ‘The Dramatic Nature of the Christian Life.’ For devotees of the eminent theologian, Hans Urs Von Balthasar, this topic calls to mind his multi-volume volume work, Theo-drama[i], in which he engages the world of theatre as a way of understanding the truly original drama. By that I mean the drama of the inner life and love of the Trinity, the hidden counsels wherein the Triune God freely elected to create and redeem – thus setting the stage for the drama we call ‘salvation history’.

In the last issue we looked at the use of St. Augustine’s story of salvation as a unifying context for catechesis. Here we take a look at another of his catechetical contributions: the role of the theological virtues in teaching for conversion.

Ten years ago, I attended a debate between a Lutheran minister and an atheistic philosophy professor. The venue was a small theatre that seated about 300 people, but by the time it began, it was certainly pressing the limits of the fire code. People were seated in the aisles, behind the stage, and even out in the foyer.

The gentlemen took their places at their respective podiums and the Lutheran minister spoke first, saying ‘Those of you who believe in God, please pray that we do not have a fire!’ This drew much applause from half of the audience. He continued, ‘And for those of you who do not believe in God, well, you better just hope like hell.’

And thus, within his first two sentences, he had set forth the key theme of his presentation, not to mention the distinguishing feature of Christianity itself: namely, we are a people who believe, hope and love. Without Christ, we have no life.