Cardinal-designate Timothy Dolan of New York gave this speech Feb. 17 before the Pope and the College of Cardinals: “The Announcement of the Gospel Today, Between Missio Ad Gentes and the New Evangelization.”
Holy Father, Cardinal Sodano, my brothers in Christ:
Sia lodato Gesu Cristo!
It is as old as the final mandate of Jesus, “Go, teach all nations!” yet as fresh as God’s holy word proclaimed at our own Mass this morning.
I speak of the sacred duty of evangelization. It is “ever ancient, ever new.” The how of it, the when of it, the where of it, may change, but the charge remains constant, as does the message and inspiration, “Jesus Christ, the same yesterday, today and tomorrow.”
We gather in the caput mundi, evangelized by Peter and Paul themselves, in the city from where the successors of St. Peter “sent out” evangelizers to present the saving Person, message and invitation that is at the heart of evangelization: throughout Europe, to the “new world” in the “era of discovery,” to Africa and Asia in recent centuries.
We gather near the basilica where the evangelical fervor of the Church was expanded during the Second Vatican Council and near the tomb of the Blessed Pontiff who made the New Evangelization a household word.
We gather grateful for the fraternal company of a pastor who has made the challenge of the New Evangelization almost a daily message.
Yes, we gather as missionaries, as evangelizers.
We hail the teaching of the Second Vatican Council, especially found in Lumen Gentium, Gaudium et Spes and Ad Gentes, that refines the Church’s understanding of her evangelical duty, defining the entire Church as missionary, that all Christians, by reason of baptism, confirmation and Eucharist, are evangelizers.
Yes, the Council reaffirmed, especially in Ad Gentes, there are explicit missionaries, sent to lands and peoples who have never heard the very Name by which all are saved, but also that no Christian is exempt from the duty of witnessing to Jesus and offering his invitation to others in his own day-to-day life.
Thus, mission became central to the life of every local Church, to every believer. The context of mission shifted not only in a geographical sense, but in a theological sense, as mission applied not only to unbelievers, but to believers, and some thoughtful people began to wonder if such a providential expansion of the concept of evangelization unintentionally diluted the emphasis of mission ad gentes.
Blessed John Paul II developed this fresh understanding, speaking of evangelizing cultures, since the engagement between faith and culture supplanted the relationship between church and state dominant prior to the Council and included in this task the re-evangelizing of cultures that had once been the very engine of Gospel values.
The New Evangelization became the dare to apply the invitation of Jesus to conversion of heart not only ad extra, but ad intra, to believers and cultures where the salt of the Gospel had lost its tang. Thus, the missio is not only to New Guinea, but to New York.
In Redemptoris Missio, 33, he elaborated upon this, noting primary evangelization — the preaching of Jesus to lands and people unaware of his saving message — the New Evangelization — the rekindling of faith in persons and cultures where it has grown lackluster — and the pastoral care of those daily living as believers.
We, of course, acknowledge that there can be no opposition between the missio ad gentes and the New Evangelization. It is not an “either-or,” but a “both-and” proposition. The New Evangelization generates enthusiastic missionaries; those in the apostolate of the missio ad gentes require themselves to be constantly evangelized anew.
Even in the New Testament, to the very generation who had the missio ad gentes given by the Master at his ascension still ringing in their ears, Paul had to remind them to “stir into flame” the gift of faith given them, certainly an early instance of the New Evangelization.
And, just recently, in the inspirational Synod in Africa, we heard our brothers from the very lands radiant with the fruits of the missio ad gentes report that those now in the second and third generation after the initial missionary zeal already stand in need of the New Evangelization.
The acclaimed American missionary and TV evangelist Archbishop Fulton J. Sheen, commented, “Our Lord’s first word to his disciples was: ‘Come!’ His last word was: ‘Go!’ You can’t ‘go’ unless you’ve first ‘come’ to him.”
A towering challenge to both the missio ad gentes and the New Evangalization today is what we call secularism. Listen to how our Pope describes it:
“Secularization, which presents itself in cultures by imposing a world and humanity without reference to Transcendence, is invading every aspect of daily life and developing a mentality in which God is effectively absent, wholly or partially, from human life and awareness. This secularization is not only an external threat to believers, but has been manifest for some time in the heart of the Church herself. It profoundly distorts the Christian faith from within and, consequently, the lifestyle and daily behavior of believers. They live in the world and are often marked, if not conditioned, by the cultural imagery that impresses contradictory and impelling models regarding the practical denial of God: There is no longer any need for God, to think of him or to return to him. Furthermore, the prevalent hedonistic and consumeristic mindset fosters in the faithful and in pastors a tendency to superficiality and selfishness that is harmful to ecclesial life” (Benedict XVI, “Address to Pontifical Council for Culture,” 8.III.2008).
This secularization calls for a creative strategy of evangelization, and I want to detail seven planks of this strategy:
1. Actually, in graciously inviting me to speak on this topic, “The Announcement of the Gospel Today, Between Missio Ad Gentes and the New Evangelization,” my new brother cardinal, His Eminence, the Secretary of State, asked me to put it into the context of secularism, hinting that my home archdiocese of New York might be the “capital of a secular culture.”
As I trust my friend and new brother cardinal Edwin O’Brien — who grew up in New York — will agree, New York — without denying its dramatic evidence of graphic secularism — is also a very religious city.
There, one finds, even among groups usually identified as materialistic — the media, entertainment, business, politics, artists, writers — an undeniable openness to the divine.
The cardinals who serve Jesus and his Church universal on the Roman Curia may recall the address Pope Benedict gave them at Christmas two years ago, when he celebrated this innate openness to the divine obvious even in those who boast of their secularism:
“We, as believers, must have at heart even those people who consider themselves agnostics or atheists. When we speak of a New Evangelization, these people are perhaps taken aback. They do not want to see themselves as an object of mission or to give up their freedom of thought and will. Yet the question of God remains present even for them. As the first step of evangelization, we must seek to keep this quest alive; we must be concerned that human beings do not set aside the question of God, but, rather, see it as an essential question for their lives. We must make sure that they are open to this question and to the yearning concealed within. I think that today, too, the Church should open a sort of ‘Court of the Gentiles’ in which people might in some way latch on to God, without knowing him and before gaining access to his mystery, at whose service the inner life of the Church stands.”
This is my first point: We believe with the philosophers and poets of old, who never had the benefit of Revelation, that even a person who brags about being secular and is dismissive of religion has within an undeniable spark of interest in the beyond and recognizes that humanity and creation is a dismal riddle without the concept of some kind of Creator.
A movie popular at home now is The Way, starring a popular actor, Martin Sheen. Perhaps you have seen it. He plays a grieving father whose estranged son dies while walking the Camino de Santiago de Campostella in Spain. The father decides, in his grief, to complete the pilgrimage in place of his dead son. He is an icon of a secular man: self-satisfied, dismissive of God and religion, calling himself a “former Catholic,” cynical about faith ... but yet unable to deny within him an irrepressible interest in the transcendent, a thirst for something — no, Someone — more, which grows on the way.
Yes, to borrow the report of the apostles to Jesus from last Sunday’s Gospel, “All the people are looking for you!”
They still are ...
2. ... and, my second point: This fact gives us immense confidence and courage in the sacred task of mission and New Evangelization.
“Be not afraid,” we’re told, is the most repeated exhortation in the Bible.
After the Council, the good news was that triumphalism in the Church was dead.
The bad news was that so was confidence.
We are convinced, confident and courageous in the New Evangelization because of the power of the Person sending us on mission — who happens to be the second Person of the Most Blessed Trinity — because of the truth of the message and the deep-down openness in even the most secularized of people to the divine.
Confident, yes!
Triumphant, never!
What keeps us from the swagger and arrogance of triumphalism is a recognition of what Pope Paul VI taught in Evangelii Nuntiandi: The Church herself needs evangelization.
This gives us humility as we confess that Nemo dat quod not habet, that the Church has a deep need for the interior conversion that is at the marrow of the call to evangelization.
3. A third necessary ingredient in the recipe of effective mission is that God does not satisfy the thirst of the human heart with a proposition, but with a Person, whose name is Jesus.
The invitation implicit in the missio ad gentes and the New Evangelization is not to a doctrine, but to know, love and serve — not a something, but a Someone.
When you began your ministry as successor of St. Peter, Holy Father, you invited us to friendship with Jesus, which is the way you defined sanctity.
There it is ... love of a Person, a relationship at the root of our faith.
As St. Augustine writes, “Ex una sane doctrina impressam fidem credentium cordibus singulorum qui hoc idem credunt verissime dicimus, sed aliud sunt ea quae creduntur, aliud fides qua creduntur” (De Trinitate, XIII, 2.5).
4. Yes, and here’s my fourth point: But this Person, Jesus, tells us he is the truth.
So, our mission has a substance, a content, and this 20th anniversary of the Catechism, the approaching 50th anniversary of the Council, and the upcoming Year of Faith charge us to combat catechetical illiteracy.
True enough, the New Evangalization is urgent because secularism has often choked the seed of faith; but that choking was sadly made easy because so many believers really had no adequate knowledge or grasp of the wisdom, beauty and coherence of the Truth.
Cardinal George Pell has observed that “it’s not so much that our people have lost their faith, but that they barely had it to begin with; and, if they did, it was so vapid that it was easily taken away.”
So did Cardinal Avery Dulles call for neo-apologetics, rooted not in dull polemics, but in the Truth that has a name, Jesus.
So did Blessed John Newman, upon reception of his own biglietto nominating him a cardinal, warn again of what he constantly called a dangerous liberalism in religion: “ ... the belief that there is no objective truth in religion, that one creed is as good as another. ... Revealed religion is not a truth, but a sentiment, a taste ... ”
And, just as Jesus tells us, “I am the Truth,” he also describes himself as “the Way and the Life.”
The Way of Jesus is in and through his Church, a holy mother who imparts to us his life.
“For what would I ever know of him without her?” asks De Lubac, referring to the intimate identification of Jesus and his Church.
Thus, our mission, the New Evangelization, has essential catechetical and ecclesial dimensions.
This impels us to think about Church in a fresh way: to think of the Church as a mission. As John Paul II taught in Redemptoris Missio, the Church does not “have a mission,” as if “mission” were one of many things the Church does. No, the Church is a mission, and each of us who names Jesus as Lord and Savior should measure ourselves by our mission effectiveness.
Over the 50 years since the convocation of the Council, we have seen the Church pass through the last stages of the Counter-Reformation and rediscover itself as a missionary enterprise. In some venues, this has meant a new discovery of the Gospel. In once-catechized lands, it has meant a re-evangelization that sets out from the shallow waters of institutional maintenance, and, as John Paul II instructed us in Novo Millennio Ineunte, puts out “into the deep” for a catch.
In many of the countries represented in this college, the ambient public culture once transmitted the Gospel, but does so no more. In those circumstances, the proclamation of the Gospel — the deliberate invitation to enter into friendship with the Lord Jesus — must be at the very center of the Catholic life of all of our people. But in all circumstances, the Second Vatican Council and the two great Popes who have given it an authoritative interpretation are urging us to call our people to think of themselves as missionaries and evangelists.
5. When I was a new seminarian at the North American College here in Rome, all the first-year men from all the Roman theological universities were invited to a Mass at St. Peter’s with the prefect of the Congregation for the Clergy, Cardinal John Wright, as celebrant and homilist.
We thought he would give us a cerebral homily. But he began by asking, “Seminarians: Do me and the Church a big favor. When you walk the streets of Rome, smile!”
So, point five: The missionary, the evangelist, must be a person of joy.
“Joy is the infallible sign of God’s presence,” claims Leon Bloy.
When I became archbishop of New York, an old priest told me, “You better stop smiling when you walk the streets of Manhattan, or you’ll be arrested!”
A man dying of AIDS at the Gift of Peace Hospice, administered by the Missionaries of Charity in Cardinal Donald Wuerl’s Archdiocese of Washington, asked for baptism. When the priest asked for an expression of faith, the dying man whispered, “All I know is that I’m unhappy, and these sisters are very happy, even when I curse them and spit on them. Yesterday I finally asked them why they were so happy. They replied, ‘Jesus.’ I want this Jesus so I can finally be happy.”
A genuine act of faith, right?
The New Evangelization is accomplished with a smile, not a frown.
The missio ad gentes is all about a ‘Yes’ to everything decent, good, true, beautiful and noble in the human person.
The Church is about a Yes! Not a No!
6. And, next-to-last point: The New Evangelization is about love.
Recently, our brother John Thomas Kattrukudiyil, the bishop of Itanagar, in the northeast corner of India, was asked to explain the tremendous growth of the Church in his diocese, registering over 10,000 adult converts a year.
“Because we present God as a loving father, and because people see the Church loving them,” he replied.
Not a nebulous love, he went on, but a love incarnate in wonderful schools for all children, clinics for the sick, homes for the elderly, centers for orphans, food for the hungry.
In New York, the heart of the most hardened secularist softens when visiting one of our inner-city Catholic schools. When one of our benefactors, who described himself as an agnostic, asked Sister Michelle why, at her age, with painful arthritic knees, she continued to serve at one of these struggling but excellent poor schools, she answered, “Because God loves me, and I love him, and I want these children to discover this love.”
7. Joy, love ... and, last point ...
Sorry to bring it up ... but blood.
Tomorrow, 22 of us will hear what most of you have heard before:
“To the praise of God, and the honor of the Apostolic See, receive the red biretta, the sign of the cardinal’s dignity; and know that you must be willing to conduct yourselves with fortitude even to the shedding of your blood: for the growth of the Christian faith, the peace and tranquility of the people of God, and the freedom and spread of the Holy Roman Church.”
Holy Father, can you omit “to the shedding of your blood” when you present me with the biretta?
Of course not! We are but “scarlet audio-visual aids” for all of our brothers and sisters also called to be ready to suffer and die for Jesus.
It was Pope Paul VI who noted wisely that people today learn more from “witness than from words,” and the supreme witness is martyrdom.
Sadly, today we have martyrs in abundance.
Thank you, Holy Father, for so often reminding us of those today suffering persecution for their faith throughout the world.
Thank you, Cardinal Koch, for calling the Church to an annual “day of solidarity” with those persecuted for the sake of the Gospel and for inviting our ecumenical and interreligious partners to an “ecumenism of martyrdom.”
While we cry for today’s martyrs, while we love them, pray with and for them; while we vigorously advocate on their behalf, we are also very proud of them, brag about them, and trumpet their supreme witness to the world.
They spark the missio ad gentes and New Evangelization.
A young man in New York tells me he returned to the Catholic faith of his childhood, which he had jettisoned as a teenager, because he read The Monks of Tibhirine, about Trappists martyred in Algeria 15 years ago, and after viewing the drama about them, the French film, Of Gods and Men.
Tertullian would not be surprised.
Thank you, Holy Father and brethren, for your patience with my primitive Italian.
When Cardinal Bertone asked me to give this address in Italian, I worried, because I speak Italian like a child.
But, then I recalled that, as a newly ordained parish priest, my first pastor said to me as I went over to school to teach the 6-year-old children their catechism, “Now we’ll see if all your theology sunk in and if you can speak of the faith like a child.”
And maybe that’s a fitting place to conclude: We need to speak again as a child the eternal truth, beauty and simplicity of Jesus and his Church.
Sia lodato Gesu Cristo!
Jimmy Akin: When to Watch for the White Smoke
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I like Card.delegate Dolan but my concern is that he is kind of a ‘showman’...good at times, not so good at others. I heard him being interviewed the other day after his meeting with Obama and, although he was frustrated, he said that he admires Obama and was honored to have been with him…how can you ‘honor and admire’ a man who is responsible for pushing the slaughter of human babies in the womb, and who would have babies who survive abortion lie alone and helpless, uncared for, uncomforted because, Obama said, if he would admit that the baby in the womb was ‘human’ 5 minutes after birth then he would have to admit it’s human 5 minutes before, in the womb…what does he think ‘it’ is…? an animal? theDNA is human after all…Card. designate Dolan also said he will not refuse the Eucharist to public figures such as Pelosi and Biden despite the fact that they stand arrogantly against the Church, against her teachings and against the bishops and urge others to do so…this concerns me, saddens me…
Among all the other heralded names from recent church history whom he called out by name, I’m very sorry he did not see fit to include just one more article of shining Catholic wisdom, from one of the giants of the 20th Century:
“I as a Catholic have absolutely no right in my thinking to foist through legislation or through other means, my doctrine of my church upon others. It is important to note that Catholics do not need the support of the civil law to be faithful to their religious convictions,” - Boston’s late Richard Cardinal Cushing, 1965, the man who married John F Kennedy.
Most inspiring words from this wise shepherd! The Church is blessed to have his leadership.
The best way to evangelize is to live as if your beliefs matter. I was speaking to a lapsed Catholic the other day, and he indicated that one of the reasons he dropped is because no one was living the “rules” of the faith. If the rules aren’t there to be followed, why bother following getting up on Sunday, going to Mass and dropping $50 in the collection plate? That Dolan would not refuse the Eucharist to those decidedly anti-Catholic Catholic politicians is every bit the scandal that those same politicians supporting abortion and now the “contraception mandate.”
I attened church—and kind—very little before I converted to the faith and was quite excited when I joined. Increasingly, there are days I think “Why did I bother, and why do I bother now? Would I have joined those many years ago knowing what I do now?” Frankly, I am not sure.
Cardinal Dolan, like Pope John Paul II, Pope Benedict XVI, and the previous Holy Fathers, and other Cardinals such as Donald Cardinal Wuerl and Francis Cardinal Arinze, have been chosen by God and Our Lady for these extreme times when the world is in such danger. Unless we understand what it means, what they are seeking to tell us, in following the Lord Jesus Christ in simplicity, love and joy, we are not going to “get” them. Reason will lead the way, but Faith must triumph. We simply have to believe that God is working powerfully through the Church to save us, and to keep this world from provoking a terrible chastisement. Timothy Cardinal Dolan has already been persecuted by the leader of his country like no other Cardinal before him. Obama called him as soon as the mandate was voted in, just to rub his nose in it, to let him know that he is more powerful than the Church. Well, that ain’t (yes, I wrote “ain’t”) so, and someday he will know it. But this modern day Nero is out to destroy the Church, just as Hitler and Stalin were out to destroy the Church, because evil leaders know that the Church is in the way of their lust for more and more power. I am writing in simple words. I am a simple homemaker. But I KNOW what I am writing. We need simplicity, we need joy, we need FAITH, we need to grow in love, and we need to follow Jesus, and that means trusting that He is working through our Holy Father, our good Cardinals and Bishops, our faithful priests, and faithful lay men and women, in fact, everyone who has good will, but we need to be mindful of respect for the hierarchy He has set in place through His Church on earth. We must BELIEVE. We must learn what FAITH really is. FAITH is a supernatural soul connection with the Heavenly Court; FAITH is BELIEVING in the POWER of the Holy Sacraments of the Church. FAITH is risking all in following Jesus by performing our daily duties for love for Him; FAITH is receiving His own supernatural peace, joy, love, goodness, reason, hope, and simplicity in the midst of all of our trials. That is what FAITH is and that is what our Holy Father knows we need. Let’s listen without trying to analyze or second-guess the leaders that God has given to us in His Holy Church on earth. A little humility is needed here.
Jesus said we must become as little children to enter the kingdom of heaven.
We live now in a society where we voice our concerns, but are unable to come together to do anything about it. In essence we ourselves, with our passivity, have become part of this totalitarian world. We live in a secular society that is hell bent in destroying the innocence of children as young as five.
People have become enslaved by by substance abuse because of the coldness and indifference of this world, their own personalities never maturing to their potential.
I am coming to believe that those who are living in the kingdom need to reach out to the child that still exists in the human being, to restore the child in the person no matter the age.
As John Paul II said, the soul was made from God, the soul is compromised of truth and love and when we witness…there may not be an immediate response, but the seed of truth works its way down to the soul to bring liberation and new life.
Now is the time for the desert to bloom!
If these seven planks of strategy run true for me, I am sure that they run true for many, many others. I look forward to this thinking and rejoice in the hope of being in relationship with Jesus in a deeper, more joyful way as I come to learn more and more about Him as our leaders lead the way. It is so refreshing to see his happiness, exuberance and love for Mother Church. This is the Christ I want to know, love, and serve! Let’s be on our way!!
Good for Cardinal Dolan! Being from St. Louis and the home of Cardinal Dolan, it is great to root for my two favorite cardinal’s. Hall of famer Stan"the man’Musial’, and now Cardinal Dolan.
There is much he said,about the state of secularism,which has gained so much strenth here at home and throughout the world.
Year’s ago when I was working part-time at the U.S Post office as a letter carrier, I was instructed,‘never allow yourself to have the mail follow you,rather alway’s follow the mail when you deliver it, and you will never get lost.’
Unfortunatly, over the past few year’s, too many bishops and clergy have allowed the faith to follow them, rather than having them follow the faith. And we as Catholic’s, did the same thing! The result? Too many faithful got lost and so much confusion, about who we are as catholics.
Years ago, when we walked into a church, we left the outside influence of secularism, where it belonged,‘outside. And when we left church we were encouraged to bring what we learned,back out into the world.
I only hope that Cardinal Dolan and the other leaders of our church have the courage to do what is correct,in the eye’s of Jesus.
Well said, Your Eminence; well said!
Cdl Dolan’s comments about POTUS were not flattery. We respect the office, and the person, and can never dismiss her/him out of hand regardless of the views expressed. Civil discourse is so rare today. Cdl Dolan went on to say that POTUS broke a promise he made when he called hin to the WH after being named to NY. He reminded POTUS of that promise when Mr O called him on 21 January to tell him he made a decision which broke that promise not just to +Dolan but to every US citizen and trashed consciences and is ramming a very questionable national health care plan that may do more harm than good, financially to the Treasury and to people’s Natural Law rights IF the Social Engineers get their way. AS to Cdl Dolan’s personality, he is a bif fat jovial Irishman. But listen to his homilies, the March for Life one, and his serious talks on EWTN with Fr. Groschel. Sharp mind, quite wit and down to earth.
A bishop or priest does not know if a person who comes up to the altar to receive Holy Communion, has gone to Confession and been absolved of their sins. They can only assume that the person knows if they receive the Eucharist while in a state of mortal sin, they have committed yet another mortal sin, condemning them to damnation.
Joanie, thank you for your simple, humble yet eloquent words. You have very clearly described the Body of Christ. We need to keep our Faith strong, be obedient to what the Lord is asking of us as individuals—-and ALWAYS trust that HE is in control. Thanks again for that reminder!
If these seven planks of strategy run true for me, where I can identify with them, I am sure they run true for many, many others. I look forward to this thinking and rejoice in the hope of being in relationship with Jesus in a deeper, more joyful way as I come to learn more about Him and be His witness as our leaders lead the way. It is so refreshing to see his happiness, exuberance and love for Mother Church. This is the Christ I want to know, love, and serve! Let’s be on our way!!
I want to support Cardinal Dolan, and all the cardinals and bishops. I really do. But I would find an explanation to be helpful as to why, with very, very, few exceptions, they do nothing publicly to address the public scandal of prominent “Catholic” persons who promote evil. Certainly the souls of these powerful people are in danger. Certainly their anti-witness to Truth causes others to be more vulnerable to that same evil. An explanation please. Anyone?
“Joy is the infallible sign of God’s presence,” claims Leon Bloy.
Let us be JOYFUL and bring JESUS to the world…....Lent is upon us…..pray, fast, almsgiving…..all with JOY in our hearts!!
DJ - I agree with all of your comments. Please allow me to share a suggestion with you. Whenever, you question your conversion to Catholicism never ever forget the Power and Consolation of the Eucharist. DJ, I am a lapsed Catholic (unfortunately, I believe I was the recipient & product of Catholicism Ultra Lite) who returned to the Church after approximately 30 years. What brought me back? THE EUCHARIST - DJ may you live your faith everyday and be the example of faith which you seek. You are the Light & the Salt of which Christ spoke of in the Gospel. Now, I wonder how I made it through my former life without The Sacraments especially The Eucharist and The Sacrament of Reconciliation. Well, it was through the Grace & Mercy of Our Lord Jesus. DJ, I, can say without hesitation, LOVE being a Catholic and I am so thankful to God for my participation in the Sacramental life! HTH :-)
“Who is going to save our Church? Not our bishops, not our priests
and religious. It is up to you, the people. You have the minds, the eyes, the ears to save the Church. Your mission is to see that your priests act like priests, your bishops like bishops and your religious act like religious.” —Archbishop Fulton J. Sheen
Help and support your priests and Bishops each and every time that they speak truth to power ... pray for them and nudge them when they are timid or worse yet silent. Please Mary pray for all of us in the Church militant.
Joanie, you may be a simple homemaker but the words you wrote are wonderful. All God asks is that we believe in Him and trust in Him
and be willing to sacrifice for Him.
AWILAWAY; Their own pastor/bishops handle that some publicly after they have privately tried. It is really none of our business except to pray for the bishops and the local pastors of these people and the dissidents themselves. The quote from Abp. Sheen I am sure was pulled out of its full context. The HOLY SPIRIT is in charge of HIS Church so we simply do our part, proclaim the Gospel with the witness of our lives and lay off telling the bishops or pastors how to do their role and what to preach about. They bave their own spiritual and theological advisers, cpolumns in their weekly newspapers, and they pray over their ministries also.
Enough words. It is time for action. Until the Bishops do what they are supposed to do, according to their own colleague Cardinal Burke, and enforce Canon 915, I wish to hear no more words.
It is precisely the correct use of Canon 915 which will bring about plank 7. I love the Bishops, I admire the many good ones, and wish to applaud all of their good works, but with the issue of Canon 915 they are Cafeteria Bishops who pick and choose what they wish to enforce and what they do not, despite the very clear instructions before them. In this matter they are calculating and cautious when they must be (should have been 40 years ago) bold and daring. It is only bold and daring actions from our Shepherds that will bring about Plank 7.
I await the days of action.
Dear HermitTalker, where is the line as to what is our business? If a priest counsels a young couple to go on “the pill”, or a single woman to have an abortion, (yes, it has happened) is that no one else’s business? If a bishop covers up sex abuse, do we fast and pray only? The quote from Sheen was taken out of context? Did you verify?
I would like to see the full context of Abp Sheen’s quote because I have met and heard and discussed with enough people ove the years to know that many are trouble, have no idea how the church works, think a letter from the pulpit from the bishop will be like a magic wand to clear
away all eviland bad liturgy. We all have a biblical obligation to do fraternal correction but there is a scalpel way of doing that and a nuclear weapon way. Unfortunately the nuke is the weapon of choice for too many and it does more harm that good.
I guess I do have a bit of a nuke ‘em attitude: Speak the truth and let God sort it (the sheep and goats) out. I am just not smart enough to execute the “surgical” approach of carefully parsing my words so each listener hears what they want to hear. Sort of like, oh for example, B H Obama.
St Francis de Sales was bishop of Geneva at the Reformation was quite successful in discussions with the protestahts. Ooe famous line of his has stuck nwith me, and I practice it- one catches more flies with a spoonful of honey than a gannon of vinegar. There are times when I do give people on here on different sites, and others a spoongul of good old Irish sacrastic humour when they insist on being mulish. Jesus had a few of those “stingers” for some of His critics. Not for repentant sinners and sincere seekers. Delicate discernment needed, but I reach for the honey first, but am never too far from a blast of my Irish tougue. You know the definition of Irish diplomacy, we tell someone to go to hell in such a charming way, they look forward to the trip!
I am all for using the kindest approach possible. But never at the expense of Truth. God Bless and Be Well.
You want to evangelize? Cure hunger.
Catholics could cure hunger for 50 cents per Catholic per day. That would stop 15,000 people from dying of hunger every day.
The math is easy - 50 cents per Catholic per day is $180 per year times 1.2 billion Catholics is $216 billion which is more than it would cost to cure hunger.
If Jesus were here, do you think he would be talking about anything else? Any other agenda is foolish, and is an insult to God.
Well Patrick, one way to cure hunger would be to contracept and abort (including, of course, post-birth abortions) all those “undesirable” hungry people and then, pretty soon, no more hunger! Because, of course, if you’re not breathing, you’re not hungry, are you? Gee, maybe “hunger” isn’t the only issue after all.
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