Franciscan at Home

The purpose of this article is to answer the title-question as succinctly as possible from within the framework of the Second Vatican Council and subsequent papal interpretation by Pope St. John Paul II in Veritatis Splendor (VS). First we must understand two terms in order to more fully grasp the meaning of conscience and how it operates in life, namely, the terms “freedom” and “truth.”

Truth That Sets Us Free

Freedom and truth are uniquely tethered to one another in the Gospel of John where Jesus says, “If you remain in my word, you will truly be my disciples, and you will know the truth, and the truth will set you free” (8:31-32). The first thing to note is that truth here is not a mere concept, but a person: the second Person of the Blessed Trinity Incarnate. Truth here is not an ideology; it is neither propaganda, nor can it be reduced to a set of theological propositions. The fullness of truth is a Person, Jesus Christ, the Word Incarnate, who died and rose again. The fathers of the Second Vatican Council proclaimed as much in Dei Verbum (no. 4) in their treatment of Revelation, taking their cue from the First Letter of John who spoke of “the Word of life – for the life was made visible; we have seen it and testify to it and proclaim to you the eternal life that was with the Father and was made visible to us” (1:1-2).

The Council fathers did not intend to divorce Catholic doctrine (truth) from the Person of Christ (the fullness of truth) in their account of Revelation. Rather, they intended to teach something more profound about truth, namely, its power to summon, call, beckon, entreat, instruct, and even lay claims to our freedom. Truth shines like light in the darkness (Jn 1:5), similar to what St. Paul taught when he wrote: “For God who said, ‘Let light shine out of darkness,’ has shone in our hearts to bring to light the knowledge of the glory of God on the face of Christ” (2 Cor 4:6). There is splendor in truth whereby we can legitimately speak of being addressed by veritatis splendor. Jesus made this clear before Pilate when he said: “For this I was born and for this I came into the world, to testify to the truth. Everyone who belongs to the truth listens to my voice” (Jn 18:37).[i]

In coming to know this truth, which is to say, by remaining in Christ, the Light of the World (Jn 8:12), we are set free. We are freed primarily for love, since there can be no love without freedom; and freedom for the purposes of this article is defined as: self-possession through realization of the good. If love is a ready self-donation or laying down one’s life for one’s friends (Jn 15:13), then one obstacle to love surely includes being insufficiently self-possessed as to render an authentic gift of oneself more difficult; there’s “no one” to give. Being set free in further “finding oneself” through realization of the good, however, means that the abuse of freedom is possible as well, such that evil follows. In the experience of evil, we do not so much give ourselves as throw ourselves away, thereby becoming “lost” (Lk 15). Such evil actions steadily lead to lesser degrees of freedom as we throw ourselves away instead of preparing the gift in and through greater self-possession. Greater self-possession is another way of conceiving the truth that in giving ourselves, we find ourselves (Gaudium et Spes [GS] no. 24). This was why Jesus counseled us: “Do not give what is holy to dogs, or throw your pearls before swine, lest they trample them underfoot, and turn and tear you to pieces” (Mt 7:6). Evil is what evil does, ending by “tearing you to pieces,” stealing “you” away along with your self-possession and freedom by trampling them underfoot. This is a distinctive way of “losing oneself” that is pleasing neither to God nor to Jesus Christ whom he sent.

Last year, on the eve of All Saints Day, a teenager showed up at my door searching for candy and donned a self-made t-shirt for his costume that can only be described as “genius.” The shirt simply said, “Terrifying,” and had two images emblazoned upon it: the icon of a dead phone battery and the icon representing “no wi-fi available.”

I laughed out loud. It was the perfect indictment of modern culture through a teen’s eyes. It also illuminated a severe problem that parents and catechists currently face when trying to introduce this next generation to the timeless and eternal Father. How do we guide a young soul with little or no prayer life into an intimate relationship with God, especially in the midst of this over-stimulated and screen-based culture?

Earlier this year, Pope Francis promulgated The Joy of Love as a major part of the Church’s commitment to proclaim the Gospel of the Family in response to “the many signs of crisis in the institution of marriage” (no. 1). The rather lengthy document reiterates and consolidates much of the work of the recent synod on marriage and family, while also offering the Pope’s own profound reflections concerning the nature of marital love, the dynamics of family life, the education of children, and family spirituality.

By virtue of its sheer length and breadth of content, the document requires considerable time and effort to work through, and reaping the full fruits of Pope Francis’ teachings will certainly be a long term and multi-faceted process. Nonetheless, for those of us working in educational and pastoral situations there are key parts of the text that immediately stand out for the fundamental shape that they give to all our attempts to help others understand and more fully embrace God’s plan for sex, love, and marriage.

Autism has captured the attention of many people through the media, and yet there remains a great deal of ignorance about it. The organization, Autism Speaks, states: Autism spectrum disorder (ASD) and autism are both general terms for a group of complex disorders of brain development. These disorders are characterized, in varying degrees, by difficulties in social interaction, verbal and nonverbal communication and repetitive behaviors. For some, their knowledge of autism comes from movies and television. In 1988, Dustin Hoffman and Tom Cruise starred in Rain Man, about the relationship between two brothers. The Hoffman character, Raymond Babbit, is an autistic savant, a term which “refers to individuals with autism who have extraordinary skills not exhibited by most persons.” He has the ability to remember everything he sees and hears, although he isn't able to hold a meaningful conversation. In the mind of many people, this is the face of autism, when in fact it is a rare occurrence.

John Paul II was convinced that the wellbeing of both society and the Church depends on the health and strength of the family. Anticipating the coming crisis, he wrote, “The future of humanity passes by way of the family.” By 1981, John Paul II could see that “the family is the object of numerous forces that seek to destroy it or in some way to deform it.” Thirty-five years later, the attacks on the family have dramatically intensified to the point where its nature (the complimentary unity of man and woman) and its purpose (indissoluble union and procreativity) have been fundamentally rejected in the West and a false vision of reality substituted for God’s created order. We are slowly awakening to the truth that, as a society, we have truly lost the Judeo-Christian vision of what a family is. This rejection of God’s truth about the family has been costly: familial life is deeply fractured and people are profoundly wounded. The good news is that God desires to heal us. For this to take place, it is critical that we address five key needs.

Contemporary culture is undeniably profoundly confused about the nature of the human person and what constitutes right relationships between men and women. This is due in no small part to the introduction of the birth control pill in 1965, which held out the promise of sex without consequences; we all know only too well that its advent created a fissure between the unitive and procreative dimensions of the sexual act that led to decades of misunderstanding concerning the nature of love and the authentic meaning of human sexuality. Instead of regarding one another as persons, deserving of love and ordered toward the total gift of self, it is now an acceptable social norm for men and women to view each other merely as objects, to be used as instruments of pleasure and discarded when “used up.” The muddle created by the fight for women’s reproductive “rights,” the on-going horror of abortion, the ubiquitous “hook-up” culture, the spread of sexually transmitted diseases, and the onslaught of the gay agenda—all can be said to be the legacy of the so-called sexual revolution.

Si entrabas a la tiendita de la esquina y preguntabas al ciudadano estadounidense promedio, "Qué es lo que representa la Iglesia Católica?", ¿cuál sería su respuesta?

Muchos enfocarían los asuntos morales: "La Iglesia Católica está en contra del aborto, en contra de la contracepción, y en contra del 'matrimonio' gay'". Casi nadie diría: "La Iglesia Católica representa a Dios quien es amor y quien nos creó por amor; quien nos invita a compartir su amor; quien envió a su Hijo para morir por nosotros por amor; y quien quiere perdonarnos sin importar lo que hemos hecho y nos sana para que estemos felices en esta vida y con Él por siempre en el cielo."

El amor y la misericordia de Dios están en el mero corazón del Evangelio; sin embargo, la mayoría de la gente, incluyendo muchos católicos, desconocen este punto central de nuestra fe. Esta es una razón por la que el Papa Francisco he hecho una llamada para este Jubileo extraordinario llamado "El Año de la Misericordia".

The Car, the Barn, and the Woods

The goal of the catechist is to lead others to an encounter with the living God, leading them to conversion.

My father, Pat Brueggen, was my CCD instructor, youth minister, sports coach, but most importantly my role model for the faith. The man I got to see after the cleanup from our lock-ins and football games was a person whose faith was intertwined in the way he lived his life. Catholicism was not merely an 8-5 job, but it was what drove every facet of his life. The barn, the woods, and the car may not seem like primary places of catechesis, but this is where I learned my faith and grew closer to Jesus. My dad would listen to Scott Hahn cassette tapes while milking the cows and would always take time to pass that knowledge on to us. I would watch my father in the tree stand dressed in his blaze orange, shivering with a rosary in his hand because of the freezing temperatures. In the car, every time we would pass a Church, he would reverently make a sign of the cross to remind himself and those in the car that Jesus was present there. God was continually working through my father in a way that prompted me to want to have a relationship with God myself.

Over the course of my life, I have seen the Holy Spirit working in my dad, which drew me to want the same Spirit to live and be seen in me.

Andrew Brueggen
Holmen, Wisconsin

For Persons with Physical Disablilities

Catechesis for persons who have physical disabilities is not that difficult. Only in rare cases will catechists need to make small adaptations in lesson content, unlike when preparing lessons for those with some cognitive difficulty. The greatest challenge that catechists face in preparing lessons for persons with physical disabilities has to do with making sure that the catechetical materials and the facilities are as accessible as possible.

The United States Conference of Catholic Bishops writes, concerning the need to welcome persons with disabilities:

Since the parish is the door to participation in the Christian experience, it is the responsibility of both pastors and laity to assure that those doors are always open. Costs must never be the controlling consideration limiting the welcome offered to those among us with disabilities, since provision of access to religious functions is a pastoral duty.[i]

While we agree that our parish offerings should be accessible, every catechetical facility, school, or parish may have its own difficulties in becoming more accessible. The National Directory for Catechesis states, “As much as possible, persons with disabilities themselves should guide catechetical personnel in adapting curricula to their particular needs.”[ii] For catechesis with children, parents will be our best resource. In order to be truly welcoming, though, we need to find and meet with the disabled persons in our community. Many times we might believe there are no persons with disabilities in our parishes, simply because we don’t see them. This is highly unlikely. It is quite possible that if we investigate, we may discover that the parish is in fact physically inaccessible.

Soon after promulgating Humanae Vitae in 1968, Blessed Pope Paul VI stated that what was needed for a fuller understanding of the encyclical was a fuller, more adequate anthropology. His successor, Pope Saint John Paul II, would later supply this fuller, more adequate anthropology when he expounded and developed his philosophical and theological anthropology of the human person. One needs only recall the series of Wednesday audiences wherein he developed what we now call the “theology of the body.” [i] Pope Benedict XVI later picked up a similar theme when he expounded a profound theological anthropology in Caritas in Veritate (June 9, 2009), while situating the human person in proper relation to the Trinity and to one’s neighbor in Deus Caritas Est (December 25, 2005). Pope Francis was indebted to these doctrinal developments of his predecessors when he came to write his most recent encyclical, Laudato Si (LS), a debt he acknowledges in the encyclical’s opening paragraphs (3-6). However, Laudato Si has a different emphasis, expressed in the opening words, which come from a canticle written in Old Italian and composed by St. Francis of Assisi in 1225: “Canticle of the Creatures.” By opening with this canticle, Pope Francis introduces the rich philosophical and theological anthropology of his predecessors into the relational context of the earth’s environment, which is contiguous with human life in the body. A Fundamental Human Ecology For example, Pope Francis writes in Laudato Si, “Learning to accept our body, to care for it and to respect its fullest meaning, is an essential element of any genuine ecology” (155). Far from being a form of somatolatry, or worship of the human body, Pope Francis here affirms the share we have as embodied persons in the surrounding physical environment. He gleans this insight from the account of creation in the Book of Genesis (chapters 1-3) where “in the beginning” human life was “grounded in three fundamental and closely intertwined relationships: with God, with our neighbor and with the earth itself” (66). Then the Holy Father continues: “According to the Bible, these three vital relationships have been broken, both outwardly and within us. This rupture is sin” (ibid.). This division—within ourselves, with God, with one another, and with the earth[ii]—accounts for Pope Francis’ rather sobering judgment that the earth, “our home, is beginning to look more and more like an immense pile of filth” (21). This is significant because it helps us to understand how the “human environment and the natural environment deteriorate together; we cannot adequately combat environmental degradation unless we attend to causes related to human and social degradation” (48). As it goes with ourselves, so it goes with the environment; if we neglect ourselves and our relationships to one another and God, then predictably neglect of the physical environment follows. A wholesome human ecology, which acknowledges and accepts the profound “relationship between human life and the moral law” (155), is a prerequisite for a wholesome environment. Neglect and abuse of the earth, therefore, are best explained by the deterioration in human ecology, as when the poorest and weakest among us are neglected and forgotten. Supplying in justice the proper care due to the human body would include a whole host of corporal works of mercy wherein we clothe the naked, feed the hungering, dress wounds, and supply adequate housing to the homeless. How we understand ourselves is reflected in how we treat one another and the environment. Consequently, the “acceptance of our bodies as God’s gift is vital for welcoming and accepting the entire world as a gift from the Father… whereas thinking that we enjoy absolute power over our own bodies turns, often subtly, into thinking that we enjoy absolute power over creation” (155).