Brutally Honest

"If you feel no danger, you very likely see no need for rescue"

There are many I know who've regularly decided to miss out on weekly Church attendance.  I find it heartbreaking for numerous reasons but perhaps the largest being the preparation for life's hardships that I firmly believe weekly, regular, attendance brings.  

I suspect that some are put off my insistence that Church beckons though I've yet to experience any real persecution or hatred over it, something likely to mean that I'm not trying hard enough to get them to come.

In this homily by Fr. Phillip Powell, he touches on the notion of Church as lifeboat and the refusal by too many to recognize their need for rescue:

If you feel no danger, you very likely see no need for rescue. Sitting comfy and cozy on your couch, reading a good book, you would probably dismiss a neighbor who barges in yelling, “I'm here to rescue you from your comfy, cozy couch!” If you were kneeling in prayer in church, confident that all was right with your spiritual life, the rantings of a crazy friar from the pulpit about sin and God's love would be distracting but hardly alarming. However, if your world were collapsing, if your family, your nation, your civilization, all that you have come to rely on were spinning out of control, and someone offered you a way to leave that world behind, the first thing you would need to do is admit that your world was coming apart. You would need to see the destruction, hear the system tearing at its seams, feel the angst and anger rising. In other words, you would have to confess that the world you helped to build and operate was losing its soul, spiraling into a dysfunctional waste. If you make this confession, then rescue is possible. If you refuse, if you deny the truth, rescue is impossible, and you will grow to hate those who offer you a way out. 

Christ's offer to rescue the world is an accusation. To say, “You need rescuing” is to say “You are in danger,” and I am in a position to help. The hardest part of being rescued is admitting that help is required. Why does the world hate Christ and his disciples? Because the Church sees the world in danger and knows that the only way to be rescued is to embrace Christ and leave that dangerous world behind. Leave behind contesting for social standing; compromising the truth to gain political influence; rutting with violence for the applause of mob; to leave behind self-righteous do-gooding, the easy hatred of imaginary enemies, and the lust for things and people. Christ's offer of rescue is an accusation, but it is also—if accepted—a vindication, a victory over the world, a win for those who would confess that they can only lose without God. No slave is greater than his master. If we are slaves of Christ, then we can expect nothing more from the world than he himself received. The rulers of this world fear another King, and they fear his followers. When the world stops hating the Church, we know that we have stopped preaching his Good News. Therefore, go out and frighten the world!

Lord, give us the courage to boldly step into the world's hatred and, with your help, rescue those willing to be rescued.

And give us the passionate persistence needed to love those who aren't quite ready yet.

Amen.

Love, respect AND... clear expectations

Cardinal Dolan is talking about what we get in The Church:

It was a lesson I began to learn when I was seven or eight . . .

My buddy Freddie from across the street and I were playing outside.  Mom called me for supper.

“Can Freddie stay and eat supper with us?”  I asked.

“He’d sure be welcome, if it’s okay with his mom and dad,” she replied.

“Thanks, Mrs. Dolan,” Freddie replied.  “I’m sure it’s okay, because mom and dad are out, and the babysitter was just going to make me a sandwich whenever I came in.”

I was so proud and happy.  Freddie was welcome in our house, at our table.  We both rushed in and sat down.

“Freddie, glad you’re here,” dad remarked, “but . . . looks like you and Tim better go wash your hands before you eat.”

Simple enough . . . common sense . . . you are a most welcome and respected member now of our table, our household, dad was saying, but, there are a few very natural expectations this family has.  Like, wash your hands!…

So it is with the supernatural family we call the Church:  all are welcome!

But, welcome to what?  To a community that will love and respect you, but which has rather clear expectations defining it, revealed by God in the Bible, through His Son, Jesus, instilled in the human heart, and taught by His Church.

The Church is Catholic . . . that means all are welcome;

The Church is one . . . that means we have a Person — Jesus — and His moral teaching that unite us;

The Church is apostolic . . . that means that His teaching was entrusted to His apostles, and carefully handed-on by His Church.  The sacred duty of the Church is to invite people, challenge people, to live the message and teachings of Jesus.

This balance can cause some tensions.  Freddie and I were loved and welcomed at our family table, but the clear expectation was, no dirty hands!

Blessed John Paul II used to say that the best way to love someone was to tell them the truth:  To teach the truth with love.  Jesus did that — He was love and truth in His very person — and so does His Church.

We love and respect everyone . . . but that doesn’t necessarily mean we love and respect their actions.

Who  a person is?  We love and respect him or her . . .

What a person does?  Truth may require that we tell the person we love that such actions are not consonant with what God has revealed.

We can never judge a person . . . but, we can judge a person’s actions.

Jesus did it best.  Remember the woman caught in adultery?  The elders were going to stone her.  At the words of Jesus, they walked away.

“Is there no one left to condemn you?”  the Lord tenderly asked the accused woman.

“No one, Sir,” she whispered.

“Neither do I condemn you,” Jesus concluded.  “Now go, but sin no more.”

Hate the sin; love the sinner . . .

In my senior year of college, I led a delegation to the rector arguing that it was time to drop the “outmoded” expectation that we seminarians be required to major in philosophy.  Those “revolutionary” days — this was 1971 — required, we insisted, that we future priests be specialists in more “relevant” areas such as psychology or sociology.

The rector, a wise man, listened carefully and patiently.  He thanked us and asked for some time to think and consult about our demand.

A week later he called us back and told us that the philosophy requirement would remain.  (I’m now sure glad he did, by the way!)  One of the more fiery students piped-up, “See, you never listen to us!  You do not respect us.”

The rector calmly explained “Just because I do not agree with you, or do not accept your proposal, does not mean that I did not listen, nor that I do not love and respect you.”

Not a bad philosophy lesson, by the way!

So, for example, the Church loves, welcomes, and respects the alcoholic . . . but would not condone his binge;

The Church loves, welcomes, and respects a prominent business leader…but would not condone his or her failure to pay a just wage to a migrant worker;

The Church loves, welcomes, and respects a young couple in love . . . but would challenge their decision to “live together” before marriage;

The Church loves, welcomes, and respects a woman who has had an abortion, and the man who fathered the child and encouraged the abortion . . . but would be united with them in mourning and regretting that deadly choice;

The Church loves, welcomes, and respects a woman or man with a same-sex attraction . . .  while reminding him or her of our clear teaching that, while the condition of homosexuality is no sin at all, still, God’s teaching is clear that sexual acts are reserved for a man and woman united in the lifelong, life-giving, faithful, loving bond of marriage.

The Church loves, welcomes, and respects wealthy people, while prophetically teaching the at-times-uncomfortable virtue of justice and charity towards the poor.

We are part of a Church where, yes, all are welcome, but, no, not a Church of anything goes.

The Church of anything goes is the Church outside The Church established by God.

Which Church are you a member of?

"You do not have to be mad in a maddening world"

In what I believe to be one of the best pieces I've read in a very long time, Erick Erickson of RedState speaks, at a time when we all need to hear it, to hope in the darkness:

My life is not all peaches and roses. But I write this whole story and highlight the ups, not the downs, because I do not believe in coincidences. I do not believe in luck. I believe in an active Creator. I have experienced too much in my life to lead me to think this is all atoms and physics and chemistry and coincidence. I have experienced pain and misfortune and sadness, but as much as those things too define me it is the joys of life I dwell on.

There is a man upstairs. He has a plan. And while I do not know the mind of the Creator, I know this all works for the good of those who are called according to His purpose. I do not know His plan, but I have experienced enough in my life to know I should trust Him and that His plan, however confounding it may seem, is a good plan that will work out in the end for the best.

So I raise my head these last few days and see liberals salivating at the idea that it might be a right wing tea partier who blew up Boston while conservatives are convinced it is a Middle Eastern terrorist. I see the wailing and gnashing of teeth over gun control, the evil of Kermit Gosnell, and the politicization of everything. Then there is the destruction in Waco, the dead and injured — it is enough to make you want to sit in the mud while holding your child close and cry.

It should be hard to be optimistic, but I, a natural pessimist, I am optimistic. I have hope. I know that there is a higher purpose to it all. I know that there is not just the rudimentary day to day existence in which we live, but there is a master plan to it all. I know some of you do not believe that and you are entitled to reject that. But I have experienced too much in my life and see clearly in hindsight an active presence who leads me somewhere down a path I did not choose, but on which I walk.

Choosing to let your heart not be troubled is not easy. It is often hard. We see bombings in Boston, planes flying into tall buildings, random explosions killing many at one time in Texas, politicians and citizens at each others throats and it seems the whole world has gone mad. But the world has always been mad. We are just more aware of it these days with bold events that shock the conscience.

We are on a blue marble circling a giant ball of plasma that if we draw too close to we burn up as we and it hurtle around a black hole at the center of a galaxy scientists believe will one day collide with another galaxy. The world is a crappy, hostile place in a colder than ice dangerous expanse of vacuum, radiation, and sweet meteors of death. The thought that we exist as we do at all borders on absurdity.

And yet there is a one year old who, though she knows not why her father cries in the rain and mud, pats his face to tell him it is okay. There are strangers who, instead of running from the blast, turn to it to help those who have fallen. There is a President some of us care little for who chooses his words carefully to bind the wounds of dark days for all of us regardless of our votes.

The world is not meant to be fair. It is a maddening place filled with bad and evil. But the good shines through. The right overwhelms the wrong. The very real good slays the very real evil. The smiles break through the tears.

You do not have to be mad in a maddening world. You can choose to be happy. You can choose to be optimistic. You can choose to let not your heart be troubled.

You need to read the whole thing to understand the context, the back story.

You just do.

Then pass it on.

And carry on.

"You are more beautiful than you think"

I needed a break from the drama, the mayhem, the fear-mongering, et cetera ad nausem.

And I think what follows does the trick.

Dove has put together the following video that I think has some theological grounding... maybe...

If women were to think through the notion of being creations of God, then it does seem to me to follow that they are indeed more beautiful than they think.

Nicely done Dove... nicely done.

"The risk of allowing love is that we can use free will to hate"

Kathryn Jean Lopez is taking on the question many of us are asking, if only to ourselves - Why Does God Allow an Eight-Year-Old Boy to be Killed Waiting for His Dad at the Finish Line?

From a summary of a conversation on The Good Catholic Life, a Boston-area radio program yesterday:

God never wants evil to happen in the world. When a modern Cain kills his brother, God grieves. We can’t imagine what it’s like to lose one child like three families did yesterday. God lost three children. The only way to stop what happened yesterday was for God to eliminate human freedom. The risk of allowing love is that we can use free will to hate. Jesus changed even our suffering into opportunities for goodness.
He noted that God’s direct will is that every single one of us become a saint in heaven, but he permits things as a result of our freedom in order to prevent a greater evil. This is God’s permissive will. God will bring good out of this evil.

And how about this in response to evil? Work as hard or harder that those who work in law enforcement, medicine, and Homeland Security in the wake of the Boston marathon attack, taking up prayer as our weapons and armor. 

She's not quite done... finish with her.

The line that sticks out for me is the line I used in the title.  

We each have choices to make... do we love... or do we hate.

Of course, that choice requires an understanding of what love and hate are, and what they are not.

The world is quick to confuse the two.  

We are not, however, of this world.

We are called to do something that matters and it is my strong belief and opinion that Christ, through His body The Church, gives us the best guidance as to what that something is.

Carry on.

"Whom shall I fear"

Because I think we need the reminder.

Carry on.

"Christianity, then, to the Catholic is not merely an individual matter..."

All credit to Frank Weathers for this jewel-ous find, where the intent over there is to substantiate the doctrine of infallibility but where the intent over here is to validate my personal embrace of the Catholic faith.

Monsignor Robert Benson was the son of the Archbishop of Canterbury who was ordained as an Anglican priest more than 100 years ago and to the certain chagrin of his father and his family, converted to Catholicism just 8 years after that ordination.

From Frank's piece, we get this excerpt from Benson's book Christ in the Church:

For the Catholic, Jesus Christ still lives upon earth as surely, though in another and what must be called a ” mystical” sense, as He lived two thousand years ago. For He has a Body in which He lives, a Voice with which He speaks. As two thousand years ago He assumed one kind of Body by which to accomplish His purposes, so He has assumed now another kind of Body in which to continue them; and that Body consists of an unity of myriad cells — each cell a living soul complete in itself — transcending the sum of the cells and yet expressing itself through them. Christianity, then, to the Catholic is not merely an individual matter — though it is that also, as surely as the cell has individual relations with the main life of the body. But it is far more: it is corporate and transcendent.

The Catholic does not merely as a self-contained unit suck out grace through this or that sacramental channel; the priest to him is not just a vicegerent who represents or may misrepresent his Master; a spiritual life is not merely an individual existence on a spiritual plane. But to the Catholic all things are expanded, enlarged, and supernaturalized by an amazing fact: He is not merely an imitator of Christ, or a disciple of Christ, not merely even a lover of Christ; but he is actually a cell of that very Body which is Christ’s, and his life in Christ is, as a matter of fact, so far more real and significant than his individual existence, that he is able to take upon his lips without exaggeration or metaphor the words of St. Paul —” I live — yet it is no longer I that live; it is Christ that liveth in me “; he is able to appreciate as no separatist in religion can appreciate that saying of Christ Himself, that unless a man lose his life, he cannot save it.

How may times have we heard that as Christians, we are the body of Christ, we are His hands and feet.

Benson takes it to a micro level.  We're actually a cell of that very Body, which is Christ's.

Fascinating.

From there, you can, I'd think see where the infallibility of the Church is inevitable but from here, it simply puts meat on this notion, this need, this necessity, to be seen as Christ and to see Christ in others.

Excellent stuff.

Carry on.

"Why is the whole world so moved by images of this embrace?"

The father of Dominic Gondreau writes of his son's encounter with Pope Francis:

“Small acts with great love,” Mother Teresa was fond of saying. Yesterday, Pope Francis bestowed an extraordinary Easter blessing upon my family when he performed such an act in embracing my son, Dominic, who has cerebral palsy. The embrace occurred when the Pope spied my son while touring the Square, packed with a quarter million pilgrims, in the “pope mobile” after Mass. This tender moment, an encounter of a modern Francis with a modern Dominic (as most know, tradition holds that St. Francis and St. Dominic enjoyed an historic encounter), moved not only my family (we were all moved to tears), not only those in the immediate vicinity (many of whom were also brought to tears by it), not only by thousands who were watching on the big screens in the Square, but by the entire world. Images of this embrace quickly went viral, and by Easter Sunday afternoon it was the lead picture on the Drudge Report, with the caption, “Change Hatred into Love” (a paraphrase of Pope Francis’ Urbi et Orbi message that followed shortly thereafter),

where it remains even as I write this. Fox News, NBC Nightly News, ABC Nightly News, and CNN all showed clips of it. Lead pictures of it were found in Le Figaro, the New York Post, The Wall Street Journal, the Philadelphia Inquirer, inter alia.

It is often difficult to try to express to people who do not have special needs children what kind of untold sacrifices are demanded of us each and every day. And as for Dominic, he has already shared in Christ’s Cross more than I have throughout my entire life multiplied a thousand times over. What is the purpose in all this, I ask? Furthermore, I often tend to see my relationship with Dominic in a one-sided manner. Yes, he suffers more than me, but it’s constantly ME who must help HIM. Which is how our culture often looks upon the disabled: as weak, needy individuals who depend so much upon others, and who contribute little, if anything, to those around them.

Pope Francis’ embrace of my son yesterday turns this logic completely on its head and, in its own small yet powerful way, shows once again how the wisdom of the Cross confounds human wisdom. 

Beautiful piece... and he's not quite done yet.

Finish with him.

Be changed.

"To be burdened by so many rules and rituals, it's bondage"

A mother's reaction to her's son conversion. 

But wait there's more, much more... here's an excerpt but trust me when I tell you you're going to want to read the entire thing:

Stan and Crystal Galloway, both teachers in Sioux City, wondered if Ryan was going through a phase. He had been obstinate before. Crystal wondered if it was the varied religions her son had been exposed to while studying overseas in college.

But Catholic? They were deeply disappointed. "He had chosen to go against something we raised him for," Stan Galloway said.

Crystal Galloway said she raised her children to know that heaven is for believers and it was important for her to see them there one day. Catholics, she said, believe you have to work your way there, performing certain rituals and good works to earn a grace they believe is freely given to all.

"To be burdened by so many rules and rituals," she said. "It's bondage."

Ryan responded with a deep history of the Reformation, the ways of Catholicism and the Bible. While his mother took notes to make her points, she recognized Ryan was quick on his theological feet.

"It's pointless to say works are not relevant," he would say later. "But they don't want to research this."

He would quote the Bible. From James 2:24, 26: "You see then that a man is justified by works, and not by faith only ..." He would tell them Protestants and Catholics have actually come to an agreement on justification in a joint declaration in the 1990s.

But it grew icy between them, even as Ryan and Anu settled into a life together and took jobs working for Des Moines developer and Iowa state legislator Jack Hatch. Even as they studied in Rite of Christian Initiation of Adults classes that would lead to joining the Catholic Church and to partaking in its sacraments of confession, communion and confirmation. Even as they became pregnant and took a 10-week class called Before and After the Birth to make sure they were as prepared as possible for parenthood.

Even as they filled the baby's room with a crib, rocking chair, two dressers, a floor carpet, lamp, Pack 'n Play, changing pillow, 40 washable diapers, clothes, bottles, bibs, baby monitor, stroller, baby books, toys and a bag full of all the items they needed to bring to the hospital when labor struck.

Even as Ryan made her breakfast in bed, their love for each other growing.

Anu loved Ryan for the way he was interested in life and could talk about not only the Reformation but diets or their standard pillow talk — urban revitalization. Ryan loved that she came from a family with high social standing in India yet befriended the poor of Des Moines.

They loved each other for what was growing inside, their son Ezra, "the product of our love," Ryan said.

Yet the anti-Catholic literature continued to arrive in the mail from Ryan's parents.

Stop what you're doing, read it all... there's much more about Ezra, more that will grab your heart, twist it until it hurts,  only to heal it in the end.

Read it.

Pass it on.

It's worthy.

Christ is risen, Chavez... not so much

Despite Google's in your face attempt to make this day about something else, the fact remains that this is the day commemorating the bodily resurrection of our Lord Jesus Christ, the Son of God and the promise of life that resurrection brings to those who believe.

It's not about Chavez, despite the best efforts of the idiots at Google.  It's not about coloring eggs and certainly not about the bunny.  It's about, as today's Collect relays, Him who conquers death and Who unlocks for us the path to eternity.

Alleluia!  He is risen, He is risen indeed.