My comments today will be simple. I want to focus on just three points. The first point is where we are as a Church and as individual Catholics, given the current environment of our country. The second point is what we need to do about it. And the third point is who we need to be, or become, to live the kind of witness God wants from us. Before we get to that, though, I want to offer a few preliminary thoughts.
Language matters. It both expresses and shapes our thinking. Vulgar language suggests a vulgar soul. Obviously, lots of exceptions exist. A peasant can have a rough vocabulary and still lead a saintly life. And a political leader can have a golden tongue and still be a complete liar. But, in general, words are revealing. They have power because they have meaning. So we should take care to understand and use them properly.
The words of the Nicene Creed are the defining statement of Christian identity. They’re the glue of the Catholic community. Jews are Jews by virtue of being born of a Jewish mother. But being a Christian has nothing to do with blood or tribe or ethnicity or national origin. Christian identity comes from the sacraments, sacred Scripture and the Creed. What we believe and profess together to be true as Catholics is the foundation and the cement of our unity.
Every word in the Creed was prayed over, argued over and clarified by decades of struggle in the early Church. The words are precious and uncompromising. They direct us toward God and set us apart from the world. When people sometimes claim that Islam and Christianity have so much in common, they need to read, or reread, the Creed. Catholics pray the Creed every Sunday at Mass as the framework and fundamental profession of our faith. Devout Muslims reject nearly every line of it.
Over a lifetime, a Catholic will recite the Nicene Creed or the Apostles’ Creed thousands of times. But if we’re honest, we need to admit that we often mumble the words without even thinking. That has consequences. The less we understand the words of the Creed and revere the meaning behind them, the farther away we drift from our Catholic identity and the more confused we become about who we really are as Christians. We need to give our hearts to what we hear and what we say in our public worship. Otherwise, little by little, we become dishonest.
Here’s my purpose in saying all this. The theme we’re here to talk about today is “Renewing the Church and Her Mission in a Year of Faith.” Four of those words warrant some attention: renewing, Church, mission and faith.
Let’s start with that first word: renewing. Over time even the strongest marriage can wear down with hardship or fatigue. Couples renew their vows to remember and reinforce their love for each other. The story of the Church is much the same. History has shown again and again that, over time, the life of the Church can become routine; then an afterthought; and then stagnant and cynical, or worse. God sends us saints like Bernard of Clairvaux, Francis of Assisi, Teresa of Avila and Catherine of Siena to change that: to scrub the heart of the Church clean; in other words, to make her young again. They rekindle the “fire upon the earth” (Luke 12:49) that Jesus intended all of his disciples to be.
In our own day, we can see the same work of the Holy Spirit in the Neo-Catechumenal Way, the Christian Life Movement, Walking with Purpose, ENDOW, the Fellowship of Catholic University Students, and so many other new apostolic efforts. The new ecclesial movements are a very important moment of grace for the Church, including the Church in Philadelphia. We shouldn’t fear them because this is exactly how the Franciscans and other religious communities once began. We should welcome the zeal behind these new charisms wholeheartedly, even as we test them. The Church is always in need of change and reform, but change and reform that remain faithful to Jesus Christ and the soul of Catholic teaching. Real renewal is organic, not destructive.
Let’s turn to the second word: Church. The Church is not a “what,” but a “who;” not an “it,” but a “she.” Nobody can love the Church as an institution any more than they can love General Motors or the IRS. The Church has institutional forms because she needs to work in the legal and material structures of the world. But the essence of the Church is mother and teacher; guide and comforter; family and community of faith. That’s how we need to think of her. And the Church is “his” Church, the bride of Jesus Christ, not “our” Church in any sense that we own her or have authority to rewrite her teachings.
The great third-century bishop St. Cyprian once said, “You cannot have God for your Father if you do not have the Church for your mother.” We should belong to the Church as her sons and daughters. The Church should live in our hearts like our family does, and we should come together on Sunday to love and reinforce each other as a family, to praise our Father and to share the food he gives us in his Son. Our Sunday worship should be alive and full of faith and celebrated with conviction and joy. Bricks and mortar are a dead shell without a zeal for God and for the salvation of each other burning inside the parish walls.
The third word is mission. Our mission, our purpose and task as Christian disciples, is simple: “Make disciples of all nations” (Matthew 28:19). Jesus meant exactly what he said, and he meant those words of the Gospel for all of us, including you and me. We need to bring Jesus Christ to the whole world and the whole world to Jesus Christ. Our mission flows straight from the inner life of the Trinity. God sent his Son. The Son sends his Church. And the Church sends us.
Obviously, we can’t convert the world on our own. We’re not called to succeed. Success is God’s business. Our business is trying, working together and supporting each other as believers and always asking God’s help. God does listen. He’ll handle the rest. But we do need to try. We need to be more than just maintainers of old structures. We need to be missionaries.
Fourth and finally, there’s that word faith. Faith is not an emotion. It’s not a set of doctrines or ideas, though all these things play an important part in the life of faith. Faith is confidence in things unseen based on the word of someone we know and love, in this case God. Faith is a gift of God. He chooses us. We can certainly ask for the gift of faith, and when it’s offered, we can freely choose to accept it or not. But the initiative is God’s, and only a living encounter and a living relationship with Jesus Christ make faith sustainable.
Faith opens our eyes to God’s real reality. Because we see with new eyes, we have reason to hope. And hope enables charity by allowing us to put aside fear and to look beyond ourselves to the suffering and needs of other people. History is shaped and life is advanced by people who believe in something more important than themselves. So faith is the cornerstone of Christian life because it enlarges us; it animates us; it’s restless. It must be shared or it dies. It takes us outside ourselves and allows us to risk.
Now let’s go back to the three points I mentioned at the start of this talk. The first point I want to talk about is where we are as a Church and as individual Catholics, given the current environment of our country. We need to know the facts of our pastoral terrain before we can renew or achieve anything.
Some of you here today probably saw the movie from a few years ago called Cinderella Man. It’s based on a true story: the story of Jimmy Braddock, the Irish Catholic boxer who came from nowhere to win the 1935 world heavyweight championship. Out of work, injured and poor in the middle of the Great Depression, Braddock never betrays his wife. He never gives up on his duties as a father. He’s honest, humble, grateful, hardworking, faithful to his friends, and he pays back every dime he receives in unemployment assistance from the state. Most of all, Braddock accepts the pounding that life gives him, both in and out of the ring. He endures it without bitterness. He never quits. And, in the end, he does something almost miraculous: He wins the title from the great champion Max Baer.
People who love this film love it for a reason, despite its violence: In many ways, the character of Jimmy Braddock embodies the very best of American virtue. The trouble is: Less and less of that virtue now seems to survive in American life, except as a form of nostalgia. And nostalgia is just another thread in the same cocoon of unreality that surrounds us 24 hours a day on our TVs, in our theaters, in our mass marketing and on the Web.
In a sense, our political and economic power, our addictions to comfort, consumption and entertainment, have made us stupid. David McCullough, the Pulitzer Prize-winning writer, said recently that we’ve become “historically illiterate” as a nation. He told the story of a student at a prestigious university who attended one of his lectures and thanked him afterward. Until she heard him speak, she said, she had not known that all 13 of the original American colonies were located on the East Coast.
The illiteracy goes beyond history and other academic subjects. Notre Dame social researcher Christian Smith and his colleagues have tracked in great detail the spiritual lives of today’s young adults and teenagers. The results are sobering. So are the implications. The real religion of vast numbers of American young people is a kind of fuzzy moral niceness, with a generic, undemanding God on duty to make us happy whenever we need him. It’s what Smith calls “moralistic therapeutic deism.” Or, to put it in the words of a young woman from Maryland, “It’s just whatever makes you feel good about you.” As Smith observes: “It’s not so much that Christianity in the United States is being secularized. Rather more subtly, either Christianity is [degenerating] into a pathetic version of itself or, more significantly, [it’s] actively being colonized and displaced” by a very different religious faith.
This is the legacy — not the only part of it, but the saddest part of it — that my generation, the boomer generation, has left to the Church in the United States. More than 70 million Americans describe themselves as Catholics. But for all practical purposes, they’re no different from everybody else in their views, their appetites and their behaviors. This isn’t what the Second Vatican Council had in mind when it began its work 50 years ago. It’s not what Vatican II meant by reform. And left to itself, our life as a Church is not going to get better. It’s going to get worse. So if we want a real renewal of the Catholic faith in Philadelphia, in the United States and worldwide, it needs to begin with us, right here and right now.
That leads me to my second point: what we need to do about the pastoral realities we face. In calling for a Year of Faith, Pope Benedict said that “the renewal of the Church is ... achieved through the witness offered by the lives of believers.” That means all of us — clergy, religious and lay. We all need repentance, and we all need conversion.
The clergy abuse crisis of the past decade has been a terrible tragedy. It’s caused great suffering. It’s wounded many innocent victims. It’s turned thousands of good people away from the Church. As a bishop, I regret these things bitterly, and I apologize for them, especially to the victims, but also to our people and priests. God will hold all of us who are bishops to a hard accounting for the pain that has resulted. And I accept that as a right judgment.
But if we’re honest — and there can be no real reform, no real renewal, without honesty — we need to admit that the problems in American Catholic life today are much wider and much deeper than any clergy scandal. And they’ve been growing in our own hearts for decades. If young people are morally and religiously ignorant by the millions, they didn’t get that way on their own. We taught them. They learned from our indifference, our complacency, our moral compromises, our self-absorption, our eagerness to succeed, our vanity, our greed, our lack of Catholic conviction and zeal.
We made this moment together — clergy, religious and lay. And God will only help us unmake the failures of the past and remake them into a moment of renewal, if we choose now to serve God’s purposes together.
If we really want new life in the archdiocese, some of what we need to do is obvious.
We need to protect and educate our young people. We need to impress on their hearts that salvation is not just a pious fiction, but a matter of eternal consequence: a gift that cost God the life of his own Son. Our Catholic schools are vital in this work. St. John Neumann founded our schools 150 years ago to protect the faith of our young people from Protestant pressure in the classroom. But our same Catholic schools are even more important today in a time of aggressive secularism, moral confusion and bitter criticism of the Church.
We need to do much more to support the priests, deacons and religious who minister so generously to our minority communities. Minorities bring a huge transfusion of new life into the Church. We also need to help our minority communities see that they too share God’s call to be missionaries.
We need to use our material resources far more wisely, and then we need to be accountable for them.
We need to be eager again to invite young men to the priesthood, starting with parents who encourage their sons in the home. Nothing is more heroic as a way of life than a priesthood lived with purity and zeal. And we need to form our young priests to be more than just maintainers and managers, but real missionaries: new men for a new kind of mission field, with a hunger to bring the whole world to Jesus Christ.
Finally, we need to build a new spirit of equality, candor and friendship that weaves together every vocation in our Church. Priesthood, the diaconate, religious life and the lay vocation: Each has a distinct and irreplaceable importance. There are no “second class” Catholics and no “second class” vocations. We need each other.
In a way, being together today in mid-November to talk about the future of the Church is exactly the right time for our theme. November is the month of All Saints and All Souls [Days]. It’s a time when the Church invites us to reflect on our own mortality and the universal call to holiness we all share. Life is short. Time is the one resource we can never replenish. Therefore, time matters. So does what we do with it.
In the end, renewal in the Church is the work of God. But he works through us. The privilege and the challenge belong to us, so we need to ask ourselves: What do I want my life to mean? If I claim to be a Catholic, can I prove it with the patterns of my life? When do I pray? How often do I seek out the sacrament of penance? What am I doing for the poor? How am I serving the needy? Do I really know Jesus Christ? Who am I leading to the Church? How many young people have I asked to consider a vocation? How much time do I spend sharing about God with my spouse, my children and my friends? How well and how often do I listen for God’s will in my own life?
The Church has many good reasons why people should believe in God, believe in Jesus Christ and believe in the beauty and urgency of her own mission. But she has only one irrefutable argument for the truth of what she teaches: the personal example of her saints.
And that brings me to my third and final point: who we need to be and who we need to become.
When we end our time together today, I have a homework assignment for you. Sometime over the Thanksgiving weekend, I want you to rent or buy or borrow a copy of the 1966 film about Sir Thomas More, A Man for All Seasons. I want you to watch it with your family. Here’s why: More was one of the most distinguished scholars of his time, a brilliant lawyer, a gifted diplomat and a skilled political leader. Jonathan Swift, the great Anglo-Irish writer, once described him as “a person of the greatest virtue this kingdom [of England] ever produced.”
Above all, More was a man of profound Catholic faith and practice. He lived what he claimed to believe. He had his priorities in right order. He was a husband and a father first, a man who — in the words of Robert Bolt, the author of the original play and the 1966 film — “adored and was adored by his own large family.”
A Man for All Seasons won Oscars for both "Best Picture" and "Best Actor," and it’s clearly one of the great stories ever brought to the screen. But it captures only a small fraction of the real man. In his daily life, Thomas More loved to laugh. He enjoyed life and every one of its gifts. Erasmus, the great Dutch humanist scholar and a friend of More and his family, described More as a man of “amiable joyousness [and] simple dress ... born and framed for friendship ... easy of access to all,” uninterested in ceremony and riches, humble, indifferent to food, unimpressed by opinions of the crowd and never departing from common sense.
Despite the integrity of More’s character, and despite his faithful service, Henry VIII martyred him in 1535. More refused to accept the Tudor king’s illicit marriage to Anne Boleyn, and he refused to repudiate his fidelity to the Holy See. In 1935, the Church declared Thomas More a saint. Today — half a millennium after he died and a continent away — this one man’s faith still moves us. That’s the power of sainthood; that’s the power of holiness.
Here’s the lesson I want to leave you with: We’re all called to martyrdom. That’s what the word martyr means: It’s the Greek word for “witness.” We may or may not ever suffer personally for our love of Jesus Christ, but we’re all called to be witnesses. In proclaiming the Year of Faith, Benedict XVI wrote:
“By faith, across the centuries, men and women of all ages, whose names are written in the Book of Life ... have confessed the beauty of following the Lord Jesus wherever they were called to bear witness to the fact that they were Christian: in the family, in the workplace, in public life, in the exercise of the charisms and ministries to which they were called.”
The only thing that matters is to be a saint. That’s what we need to be. That’s what we need to become. And if we can serve God through the witness of our lives by kindling that fire of holiness again in the heart of Philadelphia, then God will make all things new: in our Church, in our families and in our nation.
Archbishop Charles Chaput, OFM Cap., is the archbishop of Philadelphia.
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Father Geno Sylva of the Vatican’s Pontifical Council for promoting the New Evangelization said: “There are two levels to the New Evangelization.
- - - - - First is the FORMATION and EDUCATION of those who practice the faith, so they can be better witnesses and evangelizers in their own lives to those in their family, their neighborhood and their workplace.
- - - - - The other level is to REACH OUT to the secular culture, to people who are away from the Church or who are seeking something better, and to put together arenas where they can feel comfortable coming to find something they are looking for. ”
QUOTE: ” 11. In order to arrive at a systematic knowledge of the content of the faith, all can find in the Catechism of the Catholic Church a precious and indispensable tool.
It is one of the most important fruits of the Second Vatican Council.
In the Apostolic Constitution Fidei Depositum, signed, not by accident, on the thirtieth anniversary of the opening of the Second Vatican Council,
Blessed John Paul II wrote: “this catechism will make a very important contribution to that work of renewing the whole life of the Church … I declare it to be a valid and legitimate instrument for ecclesial communion and a sure norm for teaching the faith.”
It is in this sense that the Year of Faith will have to see a concerted effort to rediscover and study the fundamental content of the faith that receives its systematic and organic synthesis in the Catechism of the Catholic Church. Here, in fact, we see the wealth of teaching that the Church has received, safeguarded and proposed in her two thousand years of history.
From Sacred Scripture to the Fathers of the Church, from theological masters to the saints across the centuries, the Catechism provides a permanent record of the many ways in which the Church has meditated on the faith and made progress in doctrine so as to offer certitude to believers in their lives of faith.” - UNQUOTE - Pope Benedict XVI - Porta Fidei (Year of Faith).
Catholics can not teach their children and others what they do not know.
Catholics who think they know everything - don’t.
“This isn’t what the Second Vatican Council had in mind when it began its work 50 years ago. It’s not what Vatican II meant by reform. “
I recently read through some of the Second Vatican documents and the call for us, the laity, is loud and clear: bring unbelievers to know Jesus…to know God.
“we need to admit that the problems in American Catholic life today are much wider and much deeper than any clergy scandal. And they’ve been growing in our own hearts for decades”
Amen. Our materialism and consumerism have distorted our relationships with each other and with God. Over the past 40 years, our nation (families, municipalities, states…) has become deeply ensconced in debt, disparities between rich and poor have widen, and obesity has negatively impacted individual health and our economic well-being. We are searching for something, but it seems to be away from God and away from hope.
Dear Archbishop Charles Chaput, Thank You!!!
Your Grace
Thank you so much for this beautiful article - it is a great boost.
But thank you most of all for your ongoing faithfulness to Christ and our Mother - the Church, as you so beautifully put it. I am often encouraged by your continual witnessing as a Bishop, as an apostle of the Lord, in and out of season! Regardless of what ‘the media’ prints/distorts/.
We need many more Bishops like you - who will stand up and speak the Truth, as St. Thomas More did. Keep leading dear Bishop - so many are listening and following you and in you - The Lord.
We miss Chaput in Denver, but so happy his zeal and faithful witness is spreading to my hometown of Philly! Praise God for faithful bishops like him!
I was happy to see the Archbishop take a ‘shot’ at Islamic teachings via the Creed;it appears that the Muslim concept of God is not the same as the God of the Bible. Let the riots begin?
Thanks…
Very well said Archbishop Chaput. May you receive the red hat at the earliest opportunity and God Bless!
St.Sir Thomas More last words “I die the kings Good Servant,but,God’s First “
Thank you ArchBishop Chaput,something we as faithful Catholics should pray about everyday in our ever increasing secularised and relativism based society !’
God Bless America andd may the lord grant us the grace to love and serve our brothers and sisters in need.
This ought to be required reading in every parish in the U.S.
Archbishop Chaput, thank you for this article. Now can you make it required reading for the priests in the diocese?
Many thought provoking ideas. Thank you. Hopefully, this address will be read and studied by many clerics.
Wow! I’m sharing this on facebook and tagging my 22, 20 and 16 year-olds. Thank you Archbishop!
All the way from Perth in Western Australia, thank you for your strong leadership, Your Grace. After all, in our universal Church, we may look to you too, as our leader too!
Archbishop Chaput,
This thought provoking essay is filled with wisdom and candor. It should be read repeatedly as it addresses so many gaping problems in our church and in our world. Your honest assessment of where we are and where we need to go provides an excellent roadmap to individuals, and parishes. I will pray that this is read by millions that take it’s messages to heart. May God Bless You for your work on behalf of our Church. Thank you.
What can I say? You have blown me away again with your courage, truth, boldness and loyalty to our Church. May God bless you and continue to guide you in these tough issues that will face us in the years to come. Surely, the spirit of St. Thomas More lives in you.
Your Grace,I love the passion and zeal in all your words. Again, I
would’nt expect anything else from a Capuchin Priest!!great followers of
Francis of Assisi. I pray for your continuing inspiration and example
In the following of Christ Jesus. God bless you always.
The clergy abuse crisis of the past decade has been a terrible tragedy. It’s caused great suffering. It’s wounded many innocent victims. It’s turned thousands of good people away from the Church. As a bishop, I regret these things bitterly, and I apologize for them, especially to the victims, but also to our people and priests. God will hold all of us who are bishops to a hard accounting for the pain that has resulted. And I accept that as a right judgment.
“....Using a description by St. Augustine, Archbishop Chaput spoke about the true meaning of freedom….” Archbishop Chaput
As a life-long Philadelphia Catholic, I am just as concerned with the “freedom” of our children, all children throughout Pennsylvania, from childhood sexual abuse. The latest investigations and reports from various organizations throughout the Commonwealth as well as the pending criminal and civil trials against the Archdiocese of Philadelphia clearly indicate that much more needs to be done to provide protection for our children from the destruction, humiliation and life-long tragedy of sexual predation.
Archbishop Chaput, support the legislative proposals now languishing in Harrisburg, which measures would eliminate the statute of limitations for such crimes, both civilly and criminally, as well as provide an opportunity for prior victims to seek legal redress through the courts (so that other as-yet unknown perpetrators may be identified.)
“....God will hold all of us who are bishops to a hard accounting for the pain that has resulted….”
Archbishop Chaput, what specifically is a “hard accounting”?
We belong to the oldest religion in the world and yet many of us who belong to it do not really understand it. We say we are Catholics and yet many of us do not practice our faith on a daily basis. Archbishop Chaput is one the great Catholic Scholars f our time and his no nonsense approach to Catholic Doctrine and practice is example of what and how we should be as Cathilics. This last last election showed just who little many of us are practcing our faith or have nay faith at all. When your ride around your city and see the young men in white shirts and ties you may laugh at them nut one thing is for sure you know what faith they are practicing. This is also the same for Muslims. What about us who call themselves Catholic. We have become so luke warm that I think God is beginning to spew us out of his mouth. We are not only better than this it must be demonstrated to the point that theres is not question about who we are.
One of the things that would help us to understand the faith would be for the liturgy, especially the Creed, to be put into plain English. Transliteration is not translation. Too many people use the word profound to describe the liturgy when they really mean unintelligible. True linguistic depth happens when the concept stated is obvious to all, because then the speaker can look into the depths of the concept instead of wondering what the writer was trying to say. True profundity seeks the depths of the concept, not so much difficulty in expressing the concept that the words are just gobbledygook.
Wallace, you are so right- on regarding the last 2 elections - as a convert I was so disappointed that the “Catholic vote” was largely responsible for getting a pro abortion (and now anti religious liberty) president elected. I am always amazed when talking to people who think they are “good” Catholics and don’t think twice about going against what the Church teaches. Archbishop Chaput needs to publish his remarks and talks and send them to all the Bishops. I keep praying for bold Bishops and Priests to lead and educate the laity. My whole life as a Catholic has been one of trying to educate the Catholic in the pew. I find now that the more I love and support the Church and her teachings, the more resistance I get from ” good” Catholics who have been influenced by professors and teachers who are dissenters of Church teachings. Very sad indeed. I have a hard time blaming them because this is what they are learning. May God grant us boldness and courage in our Priest and Bishops as they proclaim the truth of what the Church teaches. The Truth is the only way to win this war.
So sorry Grandma Sheila that so many who call themselves Catholic are not. However these people are what we call ‘cradle Catholics’. They were baptized at birth and perhaps had some of the Sacraments, because their mother/father /teacher brought them to that ...and then that was it.
Most Catholics I know need to be ‘educated in the tenets of our Faith; read the Catechism preferably with a pastor; ask questions - the answers are in our Church.
The parishes in many parts are being revitalized - and we are all part of that. So our job is to evangelize out there in the Year of Faith and bring our lukewarm fellow Catholics back! The lukewarm are ‘easy prey’ for any professor, teacher who dissent - these wolves in sheep’s clothing are cunning and they go after the prey. We can all see the results. But I believe there is a whole Catholic generation coming up which standa apart and they are committed catholics who obey the Magisterium, are faithful to our Holy Father. This part of the Tree of Christ/the Church - will bloom and grow, the other part will wither and die. Christ Himself said it - it is so.. Thank you for your wonderful testimony..—- ‘Fear Not’ ..He said..
Thank you Mary for your encouragement. I do have hope in our younger (JohnPaul II) generation of Catholics. It just makes me a little sad that so many who consider themselves “good” Catholics are not living within or embracing her teachings. I think the Catholic Church could be such a leader in the world if we were one strong voice and living witness. God is good and I trust in Him.
I agree Grandma Sheila and the truth is that what is not united to Christ and His Church will die, in fact it is already dying. But there are so many thousands of JPII youth—I know so many and this generation will not tolerate what the baby boomers did to the Church and the ex-priests, ex-nuns - many of whom hurt the Church. Not all and that is why I say ‘many’. Some left in good standing and continued to love and support our Church but unfortunately many of the ‘swing door ones in the earl 70s’ caused much destruction and planted the wrong seeds in the then-youth. Today we see the results - just what you said. But there is a whole new movement of new priets, new sisters- all truly united to the Holy Father and the Magisterium—- and there are Bishops like Archbishop Chaput—truly faithful as good shepherds, to the mandate Christ himself gave them. The Church will never die—and the ones who are faithful will rise again in the New Jerusalem… we shouldnt worry about them - pray for them yes— but now is the time for The New Evangelization .. to go out to those who are open to the Truth - to work with true Catholics.. in this way we build the Church right at the level of our parish.
AMEN! And Mea Culpa from a converted baby boomer
If we have learned anything from this past Presidential election is the dire need to evangelize not just to the fallen-away Catholics but especially to those practicing Catholics whose faith should have informed their vote. The choice was clear-cut as the platforms were dramatically opposite to each other especially on fundamental life issues.
The voting results state that 39% of practicing Catholics voted for a president and party that supports abortion, same-sex ‘marriage’ and legislation that attacks our religious freedom and conscience rights. The numbers bear the sad and discouraging facts that not only are Catholics divided; they either do not have properly formed consciences formed by the truths of our faith or they obstinately refuse to go against their long-held party loyalties and ideologies. They choose Caesar over God and this choice has eternal consequences.
We cannot lay the blame on the bishops, as many were very vocal of the threat to our religious freedom especially Archbishop Chaput. They warned us that to vote for the incumbent party was to participation in intrinsic evil. I think the blame lies both with the pulpit and with the laity. Some pastors and priests spoke up but I fear a majority did not. They neglected to speak up about the moral issues that are quickly eroding our society. They did not defend our First Amendment Rights.
As for the laity, many of the Church-going Catholics are elderly and still clung to old party loyalties having never seen how their party has abandoned its founding principles and moved radically to the left. I also believe that there are quite a few contracepting, practicing Catholics who cannot part with their pills nor want to admit or accept the Church’s teachings regarding birth regulation. It is likely that they have never read Humane Vitae or heard of the Church’s wisdom and prophetic warnings on contraception. That is the real ‘war on woman’.
We as the faithful, informed laity who support the USCCB and the teachings of the Magisterium need to approach the tabooed subject matter of politics and religion with our family, friends and coworkers. It is clear that the government is imposing its strong arm into the practices and teachings of our Church. It is the government who is imposing and enforcing coercive measures upon our Church that are contrary to our teachings. There are four levels of persecution: marginalizing, vilifying, criminalizing and outright persecution. We are clearly in the third stage and God forbid, approaching step four.
The Year of Faith is a little late in coming but nevertheless; we have a lot of evangelizing to do. It is all in God’s Providence and as baptized, confirmed Soldiers of Christ, we must instruct, defend and be a witness to truths of our Faith. “Preach the word; be ready in season and out of season; reprove, rebuke, and exhort, with complete patience and teaching.” (2 Timothy 4:2)
As St. Paul tells us in Ephesians, “Finally, be strong in the Lord and in the strength of his power. Put on the whole armor of God, so that you may be able to stand against the wiles of the devil. For our struggle is not against enemies of blood and flesh, but against the rulers, against the authorities, against the cosmic powers of this present darkness, against the spiritual forces of evil in the heavenly places. Therefore take up the whole armor of God, so that you may be able to withstand on that evil day, and having done everything, to stand firm. Stand therefore, and fasten the belt of truth around your waist, and put on the breastplate of righteousness.” (Ephesians 6:10-14)
The stake and need for evangelization have never been greater. Take your pick: sinner or a saint. It’s your choice.
Talk, talk, talk. Just start with giving a communion-rail in the church, for us to kneel on to receive H.Host. using51
Joe, communion on the tongue was and still is unsanitary. Passing saliva from person to person on the priest’s fingers, ugh!
If language matters, when will the church put effort into gender-inclusive language in our liturgies?
Dear Archbishop Chaput, may God keep your light burning bright! What you say is very true! We Catholics need to give a better witness to the world, a witness that is a flame arising from our answering love to the Love Who created us! Why and what difference does faith make in our lives? For those that need a faith witness to help stir up the ashes of faith I would suggest the spiritual suspense memoir Graffiti On My Soul by Johanna—faith is truly the only answer!
The Bishop speaks of laudable goals but little about implementation.
I think we need a plan for every parish dictated by the Bishops that addresses what is spoken about in homilies - point by point, so that they deal with crises in the Church,, in its relatonship with society and government and in the individuals’ relationship with the relativistic world, and so there is a consistency that everyone is hearing - just like it dows not matter which Catholic Church I attend, I can be sure the real Christ is there, so should I be able to expect that the true teaching of the Catholic Church will be presented there.
This article brought me back to my blog which I posted almost two years ago under the title ‘Separating Chaff from Wheat’ see: http://whenreligionfails.blogspot.ca/2010/03/separating-chaff-from-wheat.html My unbiased views of Archbishop remain unchanged for several reasons.
When the good Archbishop states “The Church is always in need of change and reform” he is telling us that he is not satisfied with its present position - agreed. But when he suggests that the reforms of Vatican II are responsible for the ‘mess’ we are in today he is really telling us that reform means going back to the past. Or what Pope Benedict calls ‘The hermeneutic of reform, of renewal in continuity’ a complicated word meaning taking a backward looking approach to Catholicism. When Chaput says ‘Christianity in the United States is being secularized’ he blames non Catholics for influencing the growing departure of former Catholics. When he points his index finger to the problems in American Catholic life today on matters of indifference, complacency, moral compromises, self-absorption, eagerness to succeed, vanity, greed, and lack of Catholic conviction and zeal he failed to see the remaining four fingers pointing to the endemic and systemic problems of the Catholic institution itself. When Chaput notes that Catholics also need to help our minority communities see that they too share God’s call to be missionaries and that we need to build a new spirit of equality, it almost certainly would not include minorities who have aborted and assisted when the family did not have any other option. At the same time it would not have included committed couples of the same-sex. When he states that renewal in the Church is the work of God it seems appropriate that the laity has an equal and relevant position that must be considered to build a community that puts its faith and trust in an unconditional loving God. Faith is a gift of God and begins and ends in the heart. God accepts us where we are not where others would have us be which is the essence of religious freedom.
When he states that renewal in the Church is the work of God it seems appropriate that the laity has an equal and relevant position that must be considered to build a community that puts its faith and trust in an unconditional loving God. Faith is a gift of God and begins and ends in the heart. God accepts us where we are not where others would have us be which is the essence of religious freedom.
Trebert…...Our US religious leadership is unable and unwilling to understand such a meaningful and accurate assessment of our faith as you have presented here. “.....God accepts us where we are…..” Would that our Church leaders adopt and live such an understanding !
According to Obama the U.S. is NOT a Christian country, and I believe he is CORRECT.
How else in a country where about 90% consider themselves Christian could a person who fights for Abortion at all levels (including infanticide), exports and PAY with our money for abortion plans in other countries INCLUDING CHINA; a person who for political reasons says he is FOR homosexual marriages, a person who against the CONSTITUTION is forcing Catholic (and other denominations) to include in their insurance Contraceptives, Abortion and Sterilization…a person who lied again and again just to get elected…
How could these “Christians” have voted for this man?
Mr. Obama is CORRECT, the U.S. is no longer a Christian country.
But let’s not forget, those who attend weekly services and “praise” the Lord with beautiful songs. the words of our Lord:
“Not every one who says Lord, Lord, will enter the kingdom of heaven but he who DOES THE WILL OF MY FATHER”.
Many will be surprised when the curtain of death is raised and face our Lord, particularly those who are not exercising their “pulpit power”. I’m sorry and pray for them.
May God save America.
“...God will hold all of us who are bishops to a hard accounting for the pain that has resulted. And I accept that as a right judgment…”
Archbishop Chaput (above)
Ed Infante:
I suppose that your statement (below) is similar to Archbishop Chaput’s in his presentation in Philadelphia re clergy sexual abuse:
“...Many will be surprised when the curtain of death is raised and face our Lord, particularly those who are not exercising their “pulpit power”...”
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