Franciscan at Home

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.