W
e have reached the end of the catecheses on the Letter to the Galatians. We could have reflected on so much other content found in this writing of St. Paul! The Word of God is an inexhaustible font. And in this letter, the Apostle spoke to us as an evangelizer, as a theologian and as a pastor. The holy Bishop Ignatius of Antioch used a beautiful expres- sion when he wrote: "There is then one Teacher, who spoke and it was done; while even those things which He did in silence are worthy of the Father. He who pos- sesses the word of Jesus, is truly able to hear even His very silence" (Epistle to the Ephesians, 15, 1-2). We can say that the Apostle Paul was capable of giving voice to this silence of God. His most original intuitions help us discover the astounding newness contained in the revelation of Jesus Christ. He was a true theologian who contemplated the mystery of Christ and transmitted it with his creative intelligence. And he was also capable of exercising his pastoral mission toward a lost and confused community. He did this with different methods: from time to time he used irony, firmness, gentleness- He revealed his own authority as an apostle, but at the same time he did not hide the weaknesses of his character. The strength of the Spirit had truly en- tered his heart: his meeting with the Risen Christ conquered and transformed his whole life, and he spent it entirely at the service of the Gospel. Paul ... was convinced that he had received a call to which he alone could respond; and he wanted to explain to the Gala- tians that they too were called to that freedom which liberated them from every form of slavery because it made them heirs of the ancient promise and, in Christ, children of God. And aware of the risks that this concept of freedom brought, he never minimized the consequences. With parrhesia, that is, courageously, he repeated to the believers that freedom is in no way equal to libertinism, nor does it lead to forms of presump- tuous self-sufficiency. Rather, Paul placed freedom in love's shadow and based its consistent exercise on the service of charity. This en- tire vision was set within the hori- zon of a life according to the Holy Spirit that brings to fulfilment the law given by God to Israel and prevents from falling back into the slavery of sin. The temptation is always to go backward. One definition of Christians found in the Scripture says that we Chris- tians are not the type of people who go backward, who turn back. This is a beautiful definition. And the temptation is to turn back to be more secure; to turn back to the law, disregarding the new life of the Spirit. This is what Paul teaches us: the fulfilment of the true law is found in this life of the Spirit that Jesus gave us. And this life of the Spirit can only be lived in freedom; Christian freedom. And this is one of the most beauti- ful things. At the end of this catechetical journey, it seems to me that a two- fold attitude could arise within us. On the one hand, the Apostle's teaching generates enthusiasm in us; we feel drawn to follow im- mediately the way of freedom, to "walk by the Spirit," to always walk by the Spirit: it makes us free. On the other hand, we are aware of our limitations because we experience first-hand every day how difficult it is to be docile to the Spirit, to facilitate his benefi- cial action. Then the tiredness that dampens enthusiasm, can set it. We feel discouraged, weak, some- times marginalized with respect to a worldly lifestyle. St. Augus- tine, referring to the Gospel epi- sode of the storm on the lake, sug- gests how to react in this situation. This is what he says: "The faith of Christ in your heart is like Christ in the boat. You hear insults, you wear yourself out, you are upset, and Christ sleeps. Wake Christ up, rouse your faith! Even in tribula- tion you can do something. Rouse your faith. Christ awakes and speaks to you - Therefore, wake Christ up - Believe what has been said to you, and there will be tre- mendous calm in your heart" (cf. Sermon 63). In difficult moments, as St. Augustine says here, it is like we are in the boat at the mo- ment of the storm. And what did the apostles do? They woke Christ up who was sleeping during the storm; but he was present. The only thing we can do in terrible moments is to wake up Christ who is within us, but "sleeps" like [he did] in the boat. It is exactly like this. We must wake up Christ in our hearts and only then will we be able to contemplate things with his eyes for he sees beyond the storm. Through that serene gaze, we can see a panorama that we cannot even glimpse on our own. In this challenging but captivat- ing journey, the Apostle reminds us that we cannot allow ourselves any tiredness when it comes to doing good. Do not grow tired of doing good. We have to trust that the Spirit always comes to assist us in our weakness and grants us the support we need. Let us, therefore, learn to invoke the Holy Spirit more often! ... The prayer to the Holy Spirit is spontaneous: it has to come from your heart. In moments of difficulty, you have to say: "Come, Holy Spirit." This is the key word: "Come." ... The core of the prayer is "come," as Our Lady and the Apostles prayed after Jesus had ascended into heaven. They were alone in the Up- per Room and invoked the Spirit. It will be good for us to often pray: Come, Holy Spirit. And with the presence of the Spirit, we will protect our freedom. We will be free, free Christians, not attached to the past in the bad sense of the word, not chained to practices, but free with the Christian freedom, the kind that makes us grow....
POPE FRANCIS I 4 OPINION
THE CATHOLIC FREE PRESS NOVEMBER 19, 2021
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Catholic progressives and the culture war
A
mong those in the ultramundane pantheon of communist mega-monsters, Lev Davidovich Bronstein (better known by his Bolshevik nom de guerre, Leon Trotsky) is a more interesting human personality than Ioseb Besarionis dze Jughashvili (Joseph Stalin or, in the Roosevelt-Churchill correspondence, "Uncle Joe"). Trotsky actually had ideas, however mis- shapen, and something vaguely resembling a conscience. Stalin was pathologically power-mad and had no discern- ible conscience whatsoever. Trotsky was also clever with words, as in the quote about the class struggle often at- tributed to him: "You may not be interested in war, but war is interested in you." Whether or not Trotsky put it that pithily - opinions dif- fer - there is an analogous truth that many self-identified progressive Catholics miss. So to my progressive Catholic friends I say: You may not be interested in the culture war, but the culture war is interested in you - and every- one else. The culture war defining much of contemporary public life throughout the western world comes in two forms. One group of cultural aggressors, well-entrenched in the Biden Administration, insists that human beings are in- finitely plastic and malleable, that there are no "givens" in the human condition (including the givens inscribed in our chromosomes), and that acts of will, aided by tech- nology, can, for example, correct "gender assignments" misapplied at birth. Another group of cultural aggressors takes a sharply different tack, insisting that our race, sex, ethnicity or some combination thereof indelibly marks us as either victims or oppressors. The LGBTQ+ move- ment is one expression of the former. Critical race theory and such exercises in historical fantasy as the New York Times "1619 Project" (through which school children are now taught that the real American founding happened when the first slavers brought their human cargo to Virginia) is a good example of the latter. I won't play Trotsky and en- gage in a dialectical argument to resolve the obvious question: How can we be both utterly undefined and forever defined at the same time? I'll simply note that both these aggressors are at war with the biblical and Catholic view of the human person. That is the culture war and you can't escape it, except by willful acts of denial, culpable ignorance, or sheer mendacity. The development of a re- fined Catholic theological anthropology - a distinctive and ennobling Catholic view of the human person - has been one of the Church's signal ac- complishments over the past century. That development made possible two striking affirmations in Vatican II's Pastoral Constitution on the Church in the Modern World . First, the Council fathers taught that Jesus Christ reveals both the face of the merciful Father and the truth about us, such that we learn the full glory of human nature by contemplating the person of Christ. Then they taught that the fulfillment of human desire and human destiny comes through self-giving, not willful self-assertion. These teachings have profound implications for cultural renewal today. According to the authoritative teaching of the Second Vatican Council, Catholics must not pigeon-hole human beings by race, ethnicity, chromosomal identity, or ob- ject of sexual attraction. Catholics who take the texts of Vatican II seriously refuse to truckle to, and in fact resist, those cultural aggressors who think of human beings as mere twitching bundles of morally-equal desires, the fulfillment of which exhausts the meaning of "human rights." Catholics who take the Council seriously work to give legal effect to Vatican II's teaching that "abor- tion, euthanasia- [and] mutilation" (think of 13-year-old girls getting double mastectomies in the name of "trans" rights) "poison civilization," "debase the perpetrators" as well as the victims, and "militate against the honor of the Creator." In a recent video address to a Spanish conference on Catholics in public life, the president of the United States Conference of Catholic Bishops, Archbishop Jos Gomez of Los Angeles, courageously challenged self-styled "so- cial justice" movements based on thoroughly un-Catholic concepts of the human person. He was instantly attacked by the usual progressive trolls of the Catholic Twitter- verse and blogosphere, who found the archbishop's truth- telling to be insensitive culture-warring. That indictment, like so much other progressive Catho- lic hysteria in recent months, was risible. It also smacked of the kind of bullying that failed to make Archbishop Gomez cower when he released a thoughtful public letter to President Biden this past January. The archbishop is a quiet man, not especially fond of controversy. But he is also a pastor who believes that there is no escaping the culture war when the aggressors deny essential truths of Catholic faith about our humanity. More power to him.
THE CATHOLIC DIFFERENCE George Weigel
BY RAYMOND L. DELISLE
CHANCELLOR, DIOCESE OF WORCESTER
B
y our baptism and confirmation, we have been com- missioned to share the Good News of Salvation with others, but what does that really mean? In a very general way, of course, it means that we live a life that demon- strates that we value the gift of faith which has been entrusted to us and, like a rainy-day fund or a retirement plan, we also invest wisely in that gift to make it grow, rather than let it dwin- dle to nothing. That sounds like we have to walk around and act like St. Stephen, the first apostle to be martyred, or St. Te- resa of Kolkata whose total dedication to selfless giving captured the world's attention. No. It starts with caring about others, be it fam- ily or friends, and knowing that we find the strength to do that by being nourished sacramentally, especially at Mass. The two go hand in hand. So often I have heard from grandparents who, often in tears, share how their children and grandchildren do not go to Mass. Sadly, when asked if they talk to their families about it, their answer is often "no, because I'm afraid they will shut me out if I bring it up." I hope our response is, "I understand, but -" It is important to acknowledge that our families, the do- mestic church, are critically important to us. We all know that when one member of the family invites someone to dinner to visit at home, it is the entire family they are inviting them to see, eat with, and somehow experience. If your guest had a conflict, I would expect that your re- sponse would not be judgmental, or critical, but simply understanding and encouraging them to join you and your family on another occasion. You value the relationship and you value what you have to share with them. What about your par- ish family, the people you are with at the ban- quet of the Lamb each week? Do you value it enough in your life that you want to invite others to join them, be it family, friends or neighbors? They might come because, first of all, it is important to you. You must feel like you are sharing a treasure. But you cannot be judgmental or critical if they cannot come on the first invi- tation, or the second, or even the third. Sometimes we either expect too much of people we in- vite to Mass, or they are afraid that too much is expected of them. Although a friend coming to dinner at my house may become a lifelong friend of the family, I'm just asking them to dinner to start. Think that way with asking some- one to Mass. Join me this weekend - maybe for a special event Mass, or a Mass with a meal that follows, or simply because it's your birthday and you want to celebrate it that way. Don't make them feel the pressure of having to regis- ter at the end of Mass or sign up for offertory envelopes! An invitation is not just from you, but also from the en- tire parish community. Just as your family has to be open to visitors at the dinner table, so does the parish com- munity. Put yourself in a visitor's shoes and consider the questions they may be asking. Will I feel like an outsider in the parking lot or when I enter the church? Will I be glared at for sitting in someone's regular pew? If I don't want to shake hands during this pandemic, will people think less of me? One final thought. Be honest. Share what you love about your faith and why it is important to you but let the person you are inviting develop their own reasons. Hopefully, the one thing we all share is this: God loves me no matter who I am and wants me to join others at his dinner table. Blessed are those who are fed at the banquet of the Lamb. For the complete, five-part series on Mass and the Eucha- rist visit: https://catholicfreepress.org/the-eucharist
The invitation
Let us not grow weary
Pope Francis greets a child during his general audience in the Paul VI hall at the Vatican Nov. 10.
CNS PHOTO PAUL HARING
You must feel like you are sharing a treasure .
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