Franciscan at Home

It is a work of God to convert a father to the gift and task of his fatherhood; indeed, we live in a society in which many fathers have abandoned fatherhood. It is even possible that fatherhood is more hidden than motherhood and more susceptible, in a way, to general neglect; nonetheless, like all naturally good gifts, it responds to appreciation, cultivation and instruction. I am sure, however, that fatherhood is from the very root of personhood and needs the grace of God to flourish. Just as God has given me seven children, plus two in heaven and one to be born in the next month, so I need God to help me to adapt to the varieties of personality and the everyday dynamics of family life. The transformation of my-ever shrinking time for ‘me’ into the treasurable time for ‘my family’ is at the heart of God’s action in my life. Sharing, then, what God is doing with me as a father, is a way of fanning into life one of the gifts of God which has been severely frostbitten.

If it is simple to say that I am discovering some of the dimensions of the ‘Father’ as catechist, it is not so simple sustaining the simplicity of this in the reality of daily life. What I want to pass on to my children is a beautiful wonder at the mystery which permeates each person’s life, beginning as it does with Creation and the act of God at the foundation of each person’s life. What I am in danger of doing is passing on a dreadful gloom in front of the practicalities of life: the clearing up, the clearing out of the house in time for school, the rushed return journey and the endless unfinished things that express the impossibility of fulfilling my perfectionist tendencies. Not to mention the dreadful fears that arise in my heart from what I read in the papers.

I was sitting about 20 feet from the steps going up to St. Peter’s Basilica on April 19, 2005, when the smoke went up from the stack of the Sistine Chapel. Joseph Cardinal Ratzinger had been elected as the 264th Successor of St. Peter. My heart raced with anticipation to see my new Holy Father. One could see in his eyes humility, and perhaps a bit of disbelief, that Almighty God had chosen him to lead his family on earth. God called Abraham to do great things when he was 75 years old. Cardinal Ratzinger turned 78 years old three days before he was elected as Pope Benedict XVI.

I eagerly awaited Pope Benedict’s first encyclical, Deus Caritas Est, a quote from 1 John 4:16 which means ‘God is Love.’ This would be the first dogmatic treatise on love in the history of the Church. Since then, the more I have taught from, and reflected upon, this encyclical the more I have realized that it is a model of catechesis. Pope Benedict takes into account all of the important aspects of catechesis.

The initial proclamation of the Gospel message has as its aim to illicit an initial moment of conversion and faith. What about catechesis?

‘The specific character of catechesis, as distinct from the initial conversion-bringing proclamation of the Gospel, has the twofold objective of maturing the initial faith and of educating the true disciple of Christ by means of a deeper and more systematic knowledge of the person and the message of our Lord Jesus Christ.’ (Catechesi Tradendae 19)

In his encyclical, Pope Benedict is giving us a catechesis on love, in both its both human and divine aspects, but he is also aware that, in catechetical practice, one must take account of the fact that ‘the initial evangelization has often not taken place.’ (CT 19) He therefore tells us, ‘I wish to emphasize some basic elements, so as to call forth in the world renewed energy and commitment in the human response to God's love.’ (Deus Caritas Est 1)

Alan Schreck helps us to see the vital importance of Veritatis Splendor, a ground-breaking document of John Paul II.

In this encyclical letter, John Paul II notes that ‘This is the first time, in fact, that the Magisterium of the Church has set forth in detail the fundamental elements of this teaching [regarding morality], and presented the principles for the pastoral discernment…’ (VS 115). Veritatis Splendor is, as we shall see, a ground-breaking document. It requires careful study, and its content is crucial for Catholics today to appropriate—especially the objective truth and unchanging nature of God’s moral law in the face of increasing moral relativism. In order to do justice to this encyclical we are treating it in three parts, over the next three issues.

The title of the encyclical tells us that the subject with which we are dealing is that of truth. Human beings are made for truth. They burn with an innate desire to know the truth. Jesus Christ, of course, is the truth (Jn 14:6), ‘the decisive answer to every one of man’s questions, his religious and moral questions in particular’ (VS 2.2). The role of the Church, particularly her pastors, is therefore to proclaim and teach God’s truth as revealed by Jesus and the Holy Spirit. And what the Church can teach about morality is particularly important because ‘it is precisely on the path of the moral life that the way of salvation is open to all’ (VS 3.2), even to those who through no fault of their own, do not yet know or believe in Jesus Christ as the Lord and the Truth.

The New Testament reports Jesus and the apostles performing many miracles of healing and exercising extraordinary powers over nature. There are similar claims about healing made by Christians today. What can an apologetics regarding miracles look like?
Things in the natural world behave in general in regular and predictable ways. If you throw a book out of a window it will fall to the ground; if you set light to a tree, and it burns away, it will become black and charred; if a man's heart stops beating for a few hours and he is by other normal criteria dead, he will not suddenly come to life again. And so on. For the last five hundred years, scientists have expressed this evident truth by saying that the world is governed by laws of nature which determine how things in it behave.

The Christian believes that the laws of nature operate because God makes them operate. (The reasons for believing this will be discussed later in the series). God has good reasons for making things behave like this, in regular and predictable ways. He is generous and wishes us to have substantial control of our own destiny, and substantial control over the natural world, to make it the way we want. Only if things behave in accord with natural laws can we make a difference to the world at other times and places by moving our bodies at this time and place. And only if laws operate in simple enough ways for us to understand can we utilize their operation.

For example, it is because natural laws make planted seeds grow into vegetables that we can grow vegetables by planting seeds, and so choose whether or not to grow vegetables. If the world was chaotic or operated on principles too difficult for us to understand, we could not control it.

On Feb. 22 2007, the Feast of the Chair of Peter, our Holy Father, Pope Benedict XVI, published his post-synodal apostolic exhortation Sacramentum Caritatis (On the Eucharist as the Source and Summit of the Church’s Life and Mission). In no. 64 of this apostolic exhortation Pope Benedict XVI takes up the topic of the character of ongoing catechesis on the Eucharist to enable the deeply interior dispositions required for a fruitful participation in the Holy Eucharist. It addresses what is required for a personal eucharistic piety which is deep and constant. This is a topic which has suffered from some neglect during the first decades of the liturgical reforms that followed upon the Second Vatican Ecumenical Council.

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.