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Opinion
Church Seen to Be Enjoying an Uptick
Author Stands By His Earlier Assessment
By Carrie Gress
COLUMBUS, Ohio, DEC. 6, 2007 - Instead of turning away from the faith and embracing the relativism of society, more and more youths are actually embracing the teachings of the Church, says Catholic author David Hartline.
Speaking with ZENIT, Hartline, author of "The Tide Is Turning Toward Catholicism," said: "Many have asked me since the release of my book earlier this year if this tide of good news will continue or if it just a temporary cause for joy.
"The answer is that this tide continues to gather strength. Good news is abounding in the Church."
Hartline's book chronicles trends within the Church, showing that the negative slide in numbers and interest in it and its teachings is swinging in the other direction.
Rejecting relativism
"When the young gravitated toward Pope John Paul II," said Hartline, "many skeptics said this was only temporary. When Cardinal Ratzinger was elected Pontiff, many said the young would leave.
"However, just the opposite happened, the young remained and could easily relate to Benedict XVI's comments on the 'dictatorship of relativism.'"
"Many young people saw what the relativistic culture was doing to their friends and family," he continued. "It was tearing them apart.
"One only need look at various youth conferences around the world where there are long lines for the confessional and Eucharistic adoration and where the recitation of the rosary is greeted by large crowds."
"Recently in the
Embracing truth
"More young people are embracing the core of our 2,000-year-old faith and rejecting the latest whims and trends that society is throwing at them," Hartline emphasized.
He added: "The number of seminarians and postulants to women's religious orders continued to increase, most notably in African and Asia but also Europe and
"The young," Hartline explained, "continue to use their talents for the Church in various entertainment forms. Many younger Catholic athletes regularly speak out about their faith to various Catholic media," while "Catholic-oriented films like 'Bella' showcase rising stars like Leo Severino, Eduardo Verástegui and Alejandro Monteverde."
The author said that in an interview he did with Verástegui, "the young actor explained why he walked away from being exalted as the next Latin lover of the silver screen. Turning down millions, he decided that he wanted to star in and produce movies that not only his own mother would enjoy, but also the Blessed Mother."
"While some Christian churches are in a free fall," said Hartline, "the Catholic Church is one of the only organized churches growing. Many people attribute this to Benedict XVI's strong leadership, but it is also because of the gift of the teaching authority of the Church, which frees us from our beliefs being molded by those who dissect opinion polls.
"As you can see, there is much to be thankful for this Christmas. Indeed the tide is turning."
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The Archbishop of Canterbury, Dr Rowan Williams has given a wide-ranging lecture yesterday in
The Archbishop acknowledges that violence has been part of the history of all religions: "Despite Jesus' words in John's gospel (Jn 19.36), Christianity has been promoted and defended at the point of the sword and legally supported by extreme sanctions; despite the Quranic axiom, Islam has been supported in the same way, with extreme penalties for abandoning it and civil disabilities for those outside the faith. There is no religious tradition whose history is exempt from such temptation and such failure".
Dr Williams argues strongly against the idea that religious diversity is at odds with social cohesion, but conversely, that it can help strengthen social harmony - if governments are willing to listen to the views of the faith communities:
"The notion that social unity can be secured by a policy of marginalising or ignoring communities of faith because of their irreducible diversity rests on several errors and fallacies, and its most serious and damaging effect is to give credibility to the idea of a neutral and/or self-evident set of secular principles which have authority to override the particular convictions of religious groups... this amounts to the requirement that religious believers leave their most strongly held and distinctive principles at the door when they engage in public argument: this is not a good recipe for lasting social unity".
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Archbishop Forte Says There Is Bond Among Believers
Archbishop Bruno Forte of Chieti-Vasto said this in his pastoral letter for the year 2007-2008, titled "The Water of Life: Baptism and the Beauty of God."
The Italian prelate said that the Church has from the beginning "followed in the footsteps of the Master, proposing to whoever wished to encounter Jesus an itinerary similar to that which he showed to the disciples of John the Baptist."
"For an adult who seeks baptism," he continued, "it is a true itinerary of Christian initiation that unites catechesis and a progressive experience of God's gift. For one who was baptized as a child, the path coincides with the education in the faith."
Archbishop Forte, a member of the International Theological Commission, suggests two fundamental meanings of baptism: liberation from evil and the "decisive encounter with Christ, who will permit us to live all our existence as a story of friendship with him in the communion of the Church."
The proclamation of the Gospel, he said, is a necessary requisite for baptism, even though in past years this duty of the baptized "was almost discounted and the importance of preparation for baptism was rather neglected."
"In the complex society in which we live, multireligious and multicultural, the urgency of proclaiming the faith and of Christ's call to conversion shows itself in all its necessity," observed the 58-year-old prelate.
In the baptism of a child, continued the archbishop, this urgency looks above all to the parents, whose catechesis in preparation for the baptism of their child is "indispensable."
Eternal life
Commenting on the baptismal rite, Archbishop Forte said it begins with a dialogue: "The parents are asked if they want their child to be baptized, and what they hope for from baptism. The response is the echo of the deepest expectation of the human heart: eternal life.
"He who receives baptism is not alone: God who is love will guard you always."
He continued: "In the celebration of baptism we are called to say 'no' to sin and to the seductions of Satan, meaning a life based on appearances, on egoism and lies, which will separate us from God and others so as to affirm ourselves, living the illusion of being able to be happy without loving.
"At the same time, we are called to say 'yes' to God who is love, the Father, Son and Holy Spirit. It is a 'yes' expressed by the word 'I believe,' with which we surrender ourselves totally to God."
"To this profession of faith, the living God responds making us enter a covenant of love with him: a covenant so faithful, that our belonging to him and the Church can never be lost, whatever our infidelities and rejections may be."
Ecumenical
"Thanks to the gift of baptism," said Archbishop Forte, "we have the certainty of belonging always to God, and we can experience the sweetness of being in the hands of one who will never betray us."
He continued: "This definitive relationship with God consists fittingly of the 'character' imprinted by baptism, the bond with him, which thanks to his fidelity cannot be canceled, will unite us always to his family, the Church."
For this reason, the archbishop wrote, "there exists among all the baptized [...] a communion stronger than their differences, which -- although it exists in different degrees -- is the basis of the ecumenical commitment, conducive to overcome the historical divisions among them."
The "passion for the unity that Christ wants," confirmed Archbishop Forte, is therefore "inscribed in the same baptismal grace."
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"We're Better Americans by Being More Truly Catholic"
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I always enjoy being with friends like tonight because I can leave my Kevlar vest in
In fact, one of the distinguishing marks of debate both outside and within the Church over the last 40 years is how uncivil the disagreements have become. Being a faithful Catholic leader today -- whether you're a layperson or clergy -- isn't easy. It requires real skill, and in that regard, I've admired the great ability and good will of Bishop Murphy for many years. So it's a special pleasure to be with him tonight.
I'm not really surprised by the environment in our country or in our Church because Msgr. George Kelly saw it coming 30 years ago. I read his great book, "The Battle for the
I also remember George's sense of humor, which was vivid and healthy, and which probably kept him so generous and sane. He was a man's man and a priest's priest -- and his commitment to Catholic family life, Catholic education and Catholic scholarship has remained with me as an example throughout my priesthood. George and I became friends through our mutual friend Father Ronald Lawler, O.F.M. Cap., and after I became a bishop in
We have a full evening, so I'll be very brief. I want to quickly sketch for you the picture of an anonymous culture. But everything I'm about to tell you comes from the factual record.
This society is advanced in the sciences and the arts. It has a complex economy and a strong military. It includes many different religions, although religion tends to be a private affair or a matter of civic ceremony.
This particular society also has big problems. Among them is that fertility rates remain below replacement levels. There aren't enough children being born to replenish the current adult population and to do the work needed to keep society going. The government offers incentives to encourage people to have more babies. But nothing seems to work.
Promiscuity is common and accepted. So are bisexuality and homosexuality. So is prostitution. Birth control and abortion are legal, widely practiced, and justified by society's leading intellectuals.
Every now and then, a lawmaker introduces a measure to promote marriage, arguing that the health and future of society depend on stable families. These measures typically go nowhere.
Ok. What society am I talking about? Our own country, of course, would broadly fit this description. But I'm not talking about us.
I've just outlined the conditions of the Mediterranean world at the time of Christ. We tend to idealize the ancients, to look back at
We don't usually think of Plato and Aristotle endorsing abortion or infanticide as state policy. But they did. Hippocrates, the great medical pioneer, also famously created an abortion kit that included sharp blades for cutting up the fetus and a hook for ripping it from the womb. We rarely connect that with his Hippocratic Oath. But some years ago, archeologists discovered the remains of what appeared to be a Roman-era abortion or infanticide "clinic." It was a sewer filled with the bones of more than 100 infants.
If you haven't done so already, I'd encourage you to pick up a little book written about 10 years ago, "The Rise of Christianity" by the
But what does ancient
Let me explain it this way: People often say we're living at a "post-Christian" moment. That's supposed to describe the fact that Western nations have abandoned or greatly downplayed their Christian heritage in recent decades. But our "post-Christian" moment actually looks a lot like the pre-Christian moment. The signs of our times in the developed nations -- morally, intellectually, spiritually and even demographically -- are uncomfortably similar to the signs in the world at the time of the Incarnation.
Drawing lessons from history is a subjective business. There's always the risk of oversimplifying.
But I do believe that the challenges we face as American Catholics today are very much like those faced by the first Christians. And it might help to have a little perspective on how they went about evangelizing their culture. They did such a good job that within 400 years Christianity was the world's dominant religion and the foundation of Western civilization. If we can learn from that history, the more easily God will work through us to spark a new evangelization.
I'm not a historian or a sociologist, so I'll leave it to others to fully evaluate Rodney Stark's work. But Stark does address a couple of key questions: How did Christianity succeed? How was it able to accomplish so much so fast? Stark is not only a social scientist, but also a self-described agnostic. So he has no interest in talking about God's will or the workings of the Holy Spirit. He focuses only on facts he can verify.
Stark concludes that Christian success flowed from two things: first, Christian doctrine, and second, people being faithful to that doctrine. Stark writes: "An essential factor in the [Christian] religion's success was what Christians believed. ... And it was the way those doctrines took on actual flesh, the way they directed organizational actions and individual behavior, that led to the rise of Christianity."
Let's put it in less academic terms: The Church, through the Apostles and their successors, preached the Gospel of Jesus Christ. People believed in the Gospel. But they weren't just agreeing to a set of ideas. Believing in the Gospel meant changing their whole way of thinking and living. It was a radical transformation. So radical they couldn't go on living like the people around them anymore.
Stark shows that one of the key areas in which Christians rejected the culture around them was marriage and the family. From the start, to be a Christian meant believing that sex and marriage were sacred. From the start, to be a Christian meant rejecting abortion, infanticide, birth control, divorce, homosexual activity and marital infidelity -- all those things widely practiced by their Roman neighbors.
Athenagoras, a Christian layman, told the Emperor Marcus Aurelius in the year A.D. 176 that abortion was "murder" and that those involved would have to "give an account to God." And he told the emperor the reason why: "For we regard the very fetus in the womb as a created being, and therefore an object of God's care."
As this audience already knows, Christian reverence for the unborn child is no medieval development. It comes from the very beginnings of our faith. The early Church had no debates over politicians and communion. There wasn't any need. No persons who tolerated or promoted abortion would have dared to approach the Eucharistic table, let alone dared to call themselves true Christians.
And here's why: The early Christians understood that they were the offspring of a new worldwide family of God. They saw the culture around them as a culture of death, a society that was slowly extinguishing itself. In fact, when you read early Christian literature, practices like adultery and abortion are often described as part of "the way of death" or the "way of the [devil]."
There's an interesting line in a Second Century apologetic work written by Minucius Felix. He was a Roman lawyer and a convert. He's talking about a birth-control drug that works as an abortifacient. He describes its effects this way: "There are women who swallow drugs to stifle in their own womb the beginnings" of a person to be.
That's what the first Christians saw around them in their world. They believed the world was snuffing out its own future. It was stifling future generations before they could come to be. It was slowly killing itself.
Since we see similar signs in our own day, we need to find the courage those first Christians had in challenging their culture. We need to believe not only what they believed. We need to believe those things with the same deep fervor.
The early Christians staked their lives on the belief that God is our Father. They respected Caesar, but they didn't confuse him with God, and they put God first. They believed the Church is our mother. They believed their bishops and priests were spiritual fathers and that through the sacraments they were made children of God, or "partakers of the divine nature," as Peter said.
It's time for all of us who claim to be "Catholic" to recover our Catholic identity as disciples of Jesus Christ and missionaries of his Church. In the long run, we serve our country best by remembering that we're citizens of heaven first. We're better Americans by being more truly Catholic -- and the reason why, is that unless we live our Catholic faith authentically, with our whole heart and our whole strength, we have nothing worthwhile to bring to the public debates that will determine the course of our nation.
Pluralism in a democracy doesn't mean shutting up about inconvenient issues. It means speaking up -- respectfully, in a spirit of justice and charity, but also vigorously and without apologies. Jesus said that we will know the truth, and the truth will make us free. He didn't say anything about our being popular with worldly authority once we have that freedom. In the end, if we want our lives to be fruitful, we need to know ourselves as God intends us to be known -- as his witnesses on earth, not just in our private behavior, but in our public actions, including our social, economic and political choices.
If pagan
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A Failed Attempt at Defending Women’s Dignity
By Father John Flynn, L.C.
“We should be very definite in saying that selling flesh is a crime,” Rumen Petkov, the interior minister, said during a recent forum on human trafficking, the article reported. The New York Times also commented that last year, Finland made it illegal to buy sex from women brought in by traffickers, while Norway is reportedly planning on imposing a complete ban on purchasing sex.
Prostitution is also under debate in
“Of the estimated 80,000 women who are sex workers in the
Moreover, she argued that two-thirds of sex workers have experienced violence, including rape. Government data also reveal that at least 60 sex workers have been murdered in the past 10 years.
Guardian commentator Madelaine Bunting returned to the debate with an article published Oct. 8. Around 90% of prostitutes want to leave their activity, she said. At a time when sex trafficking is booming as one of the most lucrative forms of organized crime, we don’t need a fairytale story about prostitution, argued Bunting.
Victorian failure
Countries debating whether or not to legalize prostitution could learn from what occurred in the Australian state of
A detailed examination of the situation in
“
Normalizing prostitution, as if it were merely some kind of employment, has also undermined women’s workplace equality and contradicts other government policies aimed at protecting women’s rights, accused Sullivan.
Too often, she added, the pressures today to treat prostitution as just another job stem from a neo-liberal vision of the free market, which sees women and girls as a commodity. Some feminists who supported the legalization of prostitution, Sullivan continues, were also influenced by a libertarian outlook and a misplaced desire to establish the “rights” of prostitutes. For its part, the state saw economic advantages in legalization, since it could tax a heretofore underground and illegal activity.
Legalization in
Intrinsic violence
This has not occurred, she affirmed, because attempting to portray prostitution as an occupation to be put under the control of health and safety norms ignores the intrinsic violence of prostitution and the fact that sexual harassment and rape are indistinguishable from the product clients buy.
Moreover, legalization itself has introduced a new series of damaging consequences for women, Sullivan argues. Among these is, ironically, a further expansion of the illegal side of prostitution. In fact, the phenomenon of curbside prostitution, far from disappearing with legalization, has continued to grow in
Likewise, legalization, far from removing the influence of organized crime, has instead fueled the role of illegality by introducing greater economic incentives for trafficking in women and girls for both legal and illegal brothels. Sullivan also quoted experts in organized crime who allege that the legalized prostitution industry in
With regard to this human trafficking, Sullivan draws attention to international studies that put at billions the profits made from this modern form slavery. Estimates of the numbers of women and girls who are trafficked range from 700,000 to 2 million each year.
The legalization of prostitution in
Billion-dollar industry
We are now in a situation, Sullivan pointed out, where the media, airlines, hotels, the tourist industry and banks all seek to promote and expand the industry of prostitution. In addition, legalization has brought an encroachment of prostitution in public life.
According to data cited in the book, by 1999, annual turnover in
Instead of legalization, Sullivan recommended following the example of
Legalization of prostitution, Sullivian concluded, makes a fundamental mistake as it enshrines as a man’s “right” the ability to buy women and girls for sexual gratification. Once this is done, it becomes much more difficult to control the industry or prevent the exploitation of women.
Slavery
“Prostitution is a form of modern slavery,” commented a recent document of the Pontifical Council for the Pastoral Care of Migrants, issued June 16. The publication, “Guidelines for the Pastoral Care of the Road,” attracted media attention due to its ten commandments for drivers, but its content also includes a section on street prostitution. (Nos. 85-115)
“The sexual exploitation of women is clearly a consequence of various unjust systems,” commented the Pontifical Council. Causes such as a need for money, the use of violence, and human trafficking contribute to trap women into prostitution.
“The victims of prostitution are human beings, who in many cases cry out for help, to be freed from slavery, because selling one’s own body on the street is usually not what they would voluntarily choose to do,” the document added.
The council called for greater efforts to help free women from the abuses against human dignity that result from prostitution. Catholic institutions, the declaration added, have often helped women to escape from this situation. Women need to be aided so that they can regain their esteem and self-respect, and to be reintegrated into family and community life.
“Customers,” on the other hand, “need enlightenment regarding the respect and dignity of women, interpersonal values and the whole sphere of relationships and sexuality,” the document said. The exploiters also need to be enlightened regarding the hierarchy of the values of life and human rights, it recommended.
“Committing oneself at various levels -- local, national and international -- for the liberation of prostitutes is therefore a true act of a disciple of Jesus Christ, an expression of authentic Christian love,” the council concluded. Surely a far better answer than legalizing what is nothing more than sexual slavery.
Church of England says: 'organ donation is a Christian duty'
Giving oneself and one's possessions voluntarily for the well being of others and without compulsion, is a Christian duty of which organ donation is a striking example, the Church of England has told the House of Lords. The Church's Mission and Public Affairs Division was responding to the Lords' EU Social Policy and Consumer Affairs sub-committee's inquiry into the EU Commission's Communication on organ donation and transplantation: policy actions at EU level.
"Christians have a mandate to heal, motivated by compassion, mercy, knowledge and ability," the response says. "The Christian tradition both affirms the God-given value of human bodily life, and the principle of putting the needs of others before one's own needs."
The response repeats the Church's opposition to selling organs for commercial gain, while accepting organs being freely given by living donors, with no commercial gain. It argues that, if the present opt-in system of organ donation is to continue, it will need to be backed by a properly resourced programme of public awareness-building and education.
Whether organ donation should be arranged through an "opt-in" or an "opt out" system is not a question on which Christians hold a single set of views, the response explains. The opt-in system, where people sign up to be donors if they die, reflects Christian concern to celebrate and support gracious gifts, freely given'. An opt-out approach, where people state that they do not wish to donate organs, could stress the Christian concern for human solidarity and living sacrificially for others ' .
The response goes on to say: "The undoubted need for more organs to be donated for the healing of others has to be weighed against the changed relationship between persons and the State which moving to an opt-out system could entail." Either way, all EU member states would need to adopt the same opt out or opt in approach to consent for organ donation, it argues.
Source: CofE Comms
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Turning the Tide Against Euthanasia
Interview With Father Thomas Rosica
TORONTO, MAY 6, 2007 One can know if a society is still Christian by the way it treats its most vulnerable citizens, according to the director of Salt and Light Catholic television network.
In this interview Father Thomas Rosica commented on the Toronto-based network's newest documentary: "Turning the Tide: Dignity, Compassion and Euthanasia."
The documentary was released April 2, the second anniversary of the death of Pope John Paul II.
Basilian Father Rosica was the national director of World Youth Day 2002 prior to founding
Q: The name of your documentary is "Turning the Tide." How can we as a culture turn the tide away from the universal acceptance of euthanasia?
Father Rosica: We took the title of our documentary from the words of the great 19th-century American writer Harriet Beecher Stowe: "When ... everything goes against you … never give up … for that is just the place and time … that the tide will turn."
"Turning the Tide" looks at all aspects of the euthanasia and the assisted-suicide issue, from the point of view of those people who see themselves as most threatened if a law is passed allowing euthanasia.
When people today speak about a "good death," they usually refer to an attempt to control the end of one's life, even through physician-assisted suicide or euthanasia.
We have a responsibility to confront these actions -- especially if we are to understand our moral obligation as caregivers for incapacitated persons, and our civic obligation to protect those who lack the capacity to express their will but are still human, still living, and still deserving of equal protection under the law.
There can be no true peace unless life is defended and promoted.
The best way to know if we are still in any way a Christian society is to see how we treat our most vulnerable people, the ones with little or no claim on public attention, the ones without beauty or strength or intelligence.
Q: What has been the role of the mainstream media in promoting euthanasia and assisted suicide?
Father Rosica: The mainstream media has caused great confusion about the topic of euthanasia and has been extremely deceptive in its portrayal of human suffering and compassion.
Most people who think that euthanasia and assisted suicide should be legal are not thinking the whole issue through. They are thinking about personal autonomy and choice.
They think about what it would be like to suddenly become incapacitated, and consider such a life as undignified or worthless. Perhaps they consider severely disabled people as having no quality of life.
Our dignity and quality of life don't come from what we can or cannot do. Dignity and quality of life are not matters of efficiency, proficiency and productivity. They come from a deeper place -- from who we are and how we relate to each other.
Q: Many view euthanasia as compassionate, as death with dignity. What does the Church say with regard to compassion, dignity and death?
Father Rosica: This issue strikes to the very core of who we are and what we believe.
Even when not motivated by the refusal to be burdened with the life of someone who is suffering, euthanasia must be called false and misguided mercy. True compassion leads to sharing another's pain, not killing the person whose suffering we cannot bear.
What is wrong with abortion, euthanasia, embryo selection and embryonic research are not the motives of those who carry them out. So often, those motives are, on the surface, compassionate: to protect a child from being unwanted, to end pain and suffering, to help a child with a life-threatening disease.
But in all these cases, the terrible truth is that it is the strong who decide the fate of the weak; human beings therefore become instruments in the hands of other human beings.
Our society today has lost sight of the sacred nature of human life. As Catholic Christians we are deeply committed to the protection of life in its earliest moments to its final moments.
The Christian notion of a good death is not as a good end, but a good transition, that requires faith, proper acceptance and readiness.
"Turning the Tide" proposes that true compassion is the best way to handle human suffering.
Q: Do laws prohibiting euthanasia have a place in a free society? Is the right to die a human right?
Father Rosica: Currently in
In June 2005, Francine Lalonde, a Bloc Québecois member of the Canadian House of Commons, introduced Bill C-407 that would change the Canadian criminal code and legalize euthanasia and assisted suicide in
The bill had some initial problems and was not passed, but Lalonde, re-elected in 2006, has promised to reintroduce her bill.
The notion that euthanasia and assisted suicide could be a reality for us in Canada should come as a wake-up call to all Canadians, not just because of the notion that all life is sacred from conception to natural death, but simply because of whom such a law would affect most, the most vulnerable.
This includes the chronically ill, who are a strain on the health care system; the elderly who have been abandoned and who have no one to speak on their behalf and who feel they may be a burden to others; and the disabled who have to fight every day to maintain their own integrity and dignity.
If we look at how the system has gone in the
Consider the following statistics:
In 1984, in the
Even though about 2,400 cases of euthanasia and assisted suicide are reported each year, the Dutch government conducted a study in 1991 that found that there were up to 12,000 cases that year.
Of these, about half the patients did not request or consent to being killed. One of the doctors explained that it would have been "rude" to discuss the matter with the patients, as they all "knew that their conditions were incurable."
In
In view of what has happened in other countries, it is time to turn the tide before all Canadians have to start fighting for our lives.
Q: What can the world learn from the way Pope John Paul II lived his death?
Father Rosica: John Paul II showed us true dignity in the face of death.
Rather than hide his infirmities, as most public figures do, he let the whole world see what he went through in the final phase of his life.
Before the cameras, John Paul II taught that although science can ease discomfort, palliative care should not be used as a cloak to hide the fact of dying.
As the curtain was about to fall, nothing made him waver, even the debilitating sickness hidden under the glazed Parkinsonian mask, and ultimately his inability to speak and move.
Pope John Paul has become a living "argument" for the appeal to respect the most frail and vulnerable, who he upheld during his pontificate.
Who can say his life was not fruitful, when his body was able to climb snow-capped summits or vacation on
Who didn't feel the paradoxical influence of his presence, when his voice was muted?
In our youth-obsessed culture, Pope John Paul II reminded us that aging and suffering are a natural part of being human.
Where the old and infirm are so easily put in homes and forgotten, the Pope was a powerful reminder that the sick, the handicapped and the dying have great value.
John Paul II taught us how to live, to suffer and to die. May he watch over us now and strengthen us as we turn the tide in our time.
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A View on What "Tolerance" Can't Tolerate
It's Conscientious Objection, Says Academy Official
Today's society might consider itself ideologically tolerant, but it does not accept conscientious objection, says the vice president of the
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Archbishop Bruno Forte on Scripture
"Listen to His Words, Let His Heart Speak to Yours"
CHIETI , Italy
Here is a translation of the pastoral letter written in Italian by Archbishop Bruno Forte of Chieti-Vasto, member of the International Theological Commission, on the theme
"The Word for Living: Sacred Scripture and the Beauty of God."
Let us try together to understand what the Word of God is: If you truly understand it, with the mind and with the heart, you will feel the need to bring yourself to listen to the Words in which it is God himself who speaks to you, giving you the light to know yourself in truth, wisdom to discern the signs of his presence, strength to make you able to speak to him Words of love, which are the voice of your prayer, confession of your humble faith, song in the song of the whole Church, which is born from the Word and is called by the Word to be a witness unto the ends of the earth.
1. Why a letter on the Word of God?
I thought I should write you a letter on the Word of God because I am convinced that in our complex society something is happening that is similar to what is described in the book of Amos: "The days are coming, says the Lord, when I will send a hunger into the country, not hunger for bread nor thirst for water, but of hearing the Word of God" (Amos 8:10). I recognise this hunger in the need for love that is in each of us, men and women of this "post-modern" time. We are becoming more and more prisoners of our solitude. Only an infinite love can satisfy the expectation that burns inside us: Only the God who is love can say to us that we are not alone in this world and that our house is in the heavenly city, where there will no longer be neither sorrow nor death. "From that city," writes Augustine, "our Father has sent us letters, he has sent us the Scripture, and from this awakens our desire to return home." [1]
If you understand that the Bible is this "letter of God," which speaks to your heart, then you will approach it with the trepidation and the desire with which one who is in love reads the Words of the beloved. Thus God, who is Father and Mother in love, will speak just to you, and the faithful, intelligent, humble, and prayerful listening to what he says to you will slowly begin to satiate your need for light, your thirst for love. Learning to listen to the voice that speaks to you in sacred Scripture is to learn to love: The Word of God is the good news against solitude! For this reason listening to the Scriptures is a listening that liberates and saves.
2. God speaks!
Only God could break the silence of the heavens and irrupt into the silence of the heart: Only he could speak to us -- as no other -- Words of love. This is what happened in his revelation, first to the chosen people,
The Word of God is God himself in the sign of his Word! It shares in his power: "For just as from the heavens the rain and snow come down and do not return there till they have watered the earth, making it fertile and fruitful, giving seed to him who sows and bread to him who eats, so shall my Word be that goes forth from my mouth; It shall not return to me void, but shall do my will, achieving the end for which I sent it" (Isaiah 55:10ff). The Hebrew Word "dabar," usually translated as "Word," means Word just as much as action: Thus, the Ten Commandments are called "the ten Words" in Hebrew, to indicate that they express both the demands of God's love and the help that he gives for following them. The Lord says what he does and does what he says. In the Old Testament he announces to the children of
3. The Word becomes flesh
"And the Word became flesh and came to dwell among us" (John 1:14). The fulfillment of revelation, supreme gift of divine love, is Jesus Christ, the Son of God made man for us, the unique Word, perfect and definitive of the Father, who in him says everything to us and gives everything to us. In times past, God spoke in partial and various ways to our ancestors through the prophets; in these last days, he spoke to us through a son, whom he made heir of all things and through whom he created the universe" (Hebrews 1:1ff). In Jesus the texts of the New Testament acquire and manifest there full meaning: "All Scripture is a single book and this book is Christ."[2] To nourish oneself with Scripture is the nourish oneself with Christ: "Ignorance of the Scriptures," affirms
4. The Spirit interprets the Word
How can we meet the Living One in the garden of the Scriptures, as in the garden of the sepulchre? If we wish to happen to us what happened to the woman whose eyes were opened to recognise the risen Lord after first taking him to be the gardener (cf. John 20:15ff), it is necessary to be called by the beloved, touched by the fire of his Holy Spirit: "The comforter, the Holy Spirit who the Father will send in my name, he will teach you all things and remind you of all I have said" (John 14:26). The Holy Spirit who guided the chosen people, inspiring the authors of the sacred Scriptures, opens the heart of the believer to the understanding of what is contained in the Scriptures. Thus, the Scriptures "grow with the one who reads them."[5]
No encounter with the Word of God will be experienced, then, without an invocation of the Spirit who opens the sealed book, moving the heart and turning it to God, opening the eyes of the mind and giving sweetness in consenting to and believing the truth.[6] It is the Spirit who will lead us into the whole truth through the door of the Word of God, making us workers and witnesses of the liberating power that it contains and which is so necessary in a Word that often seems to have lost its taste and passion for truth. Before reading the Scriptures, you must always invoke the giver of gifts, the light of hearts: the Holy Spirit!
5. The Church: creature and house of the Word
To make us capable of faithfully receiving the Word of God, the Lord Jesus wanted to leave us -- together with the Spirit -- also the gift of the Church, founded on the Apostles. They were the ones who received the Word of salvation and handed it down to their successors as a precious jewel, kept in the secure custody of the people of God on pilgrimage through time. The Church is the house of the Word, the community of interpretation, guaranteed by the guidance of the shepherds to whom God wished to entrust his flock. The faithful reading of Scripture is not the work of solitary navigators, but is done in the barque of Peter: proclamation, catechesis, liturgical celebration, the study of theology, personal or group meditation, also in the family and spiritual understanding that has matured along the path of faith are all channels that allow us to come to know the Bible in the life of the Church. It is particularly beautiful and fruitful to meditate on the Word according to the distribution of readings proposed by the daily liturgy, letting take us by the hand through the luxuriant forest of biblical texts.
Accompanied by mother Church, no baptised person should feel indifferent to the Word of God: listening to it, proclaiming it, allowing it to enlighten us so that we may enlighten others -- these are tasks that touch all of us, each one according to the gift he has received and the responsibility entrusted to him, with the missionary passion that Christ asks of his disciples, no one excluded (cf. Mark 16:15). This is why I wanted in the diocese a school of the Word open to all! From priests to deacons, from parents to catechists, from consecrated men to consecrated women, from theologians to teachers, from members of associations and movements to each baptized individual, whether young or old, we are all called to be the Church generated by the Word that proclaims the Word: even you!
6. The obedience of faith to the Word
You will truly correspond to the Word of the Lord if you bear along it in that welcoming listening that is the obedience of the faith, "by which man commits his whole self freely to God, offering the full submission of intellect and will to the God who reveals and freely assenting to the truth revealed by him."[7] The God who presents himself to your heart calls you to offer to him not just a part of you but your entire self. This receptive listening makes you free: "If you remain faithful to my Word, you will truly be my disciples and you will know the truth and the truth will set you free" (John 8:31-32). In the Word it is God himself who comes to you and transforms you: "The Word of God is living, efficacious and sharper than any two-edged sword; it penetrates to the very division of the soul and spirit, the joints and marrow, and able to discern reflections and thoughts of the heart (Hebrews 4:12). Give yourself, then, to the Word. Trust in it. It is eternally faithful, like the God who speaks it and inhabits it. That is why if you welcome the Word in faith, you will never be alone: In life, as in death, you will enter through it into the heart of God: "Learn to know the heart of God by the Words of God."[8] Listen, read, meditate on the Word; taste it, love it, celebrate it; live it and proclaim it in Words and deeds: this is the way that is opening to you if you understand that in the Word of God is the fountain of life. In it God visits you in person: for this reason the Word implicates you, catches up your heart, and offers itself to your faith as a help and a defence in your spiritual growth.
7. A way of welcoming the Word: "lectio divina"
How should we read the Word of God? A tried and true way of delving into it and tasting it is "lectio divina," which constitutes an authentic spiritual journey in various stages. The first stage is the "lectio," reading. Read a passage of Scripture attentively and more than once and ask yourself: "What is the text itself about?" Move on then to the "meditatio," meditation, which is like an interior resting. Recollect yourself and ask God: "What are you saying to me with these Words of yours?" Adopt the attitude of the young Samuel: "Speak, Lord. Your servant is listening!" (1 Samuel 3:10). Then answer with prayer, "oratio," turning to the God who has spoken to you: "What will I say to you, my Lord?" Ask the Lord to live in the house of your heart so that he transforms your thoughts and your steps. You now arrive at the "contemplatio," that active contemplation in which your heart, touched by the presence of Christ, will ask: "What must I do now to realise this Word?" and will try to live it.
Through these four ways -- attention, understanding, judgment, decision -- experienced in the encounter with the Word, it will be for you as a "lamp that shines in a dark place until the dawn comes and the morning star rises in your hearts" (2 Peter 1:19). Precisely in this way Scripture can guide and accompany you on the paths of life: "Your Word is a lamp for my steps, a light on my way" (Psalm 118 [119]:105). Sometimes it can seem that the Word you have read says nothing to you. Do not be discouraged! Return to it and ask: "Lord give me life according to your Word" (Psalm 118 [119]:107). The problem you are having has been experienced by many before you, Abraham, Sara, Moses, Jeremiah, Esther, John the Baptist, Peter, Paul: These and other men and women of the Bible can tell you about the struggle and the joy of believing. Try to meet them by meditating on the texts that narrate their story, using the steps of the "lectio divina": You will discover how near they are to your questions and how their experience speaks to you -- this is the way that I am trying to follow in the meetings of the "laboratory of faith" which have been directed above all to young people.
8. The Word: fount of love
The Words of the God who is love make us capable of loving. Love is the fruit that is born from the true hearing of the Word: "Be doers of the Word," says St. James, "and not hearers only, deceiving yourselves" (1:22). He who allows himself to be enlightened by the Word knows that the meaning of life does not consist in being focused on himself, but in that exodus from self without return, which is love. Listening to sacred Scripture makes you feel loved and renders you capable of loving: If you hand yourself over without reserve to the God who loves you he will be the one who gives you to others, enriching you with all the necessary power to put yourself at their service. This is why Benedict XVI especially invites young people, who stand before life, "to acquire a familiarity with the Bible, to have it at their fingertips, so that it be as a compass indicating which road to take."[9] The Word is a certain guide because -- among the many distractions of the world -- it leads us to commit ourselves to others in the footsteps of Jesus, to recognize in them his voice that calls us. The works are our signs of caritas in our Church: counseling centres, homeless shelters, soup kitchens, etc., the different volunteer activities, the challenges of justice, of peace, and of care for creation, the people that knock at your heart each day, await you to see whether the Word you listen to has truly changed your heart. If you do these things, then you can feel that the following Words of the Lord are directed to you: "Each time you did these things for the least of my brethren, you did them to me" (Matthew 25:40).
9. The Word: fount of joy and hope
If you listen to the Word and carry it with you, you will sense that your life is in the heart itself of God, whence is born confidence for the present and hope for tomorrow: "Whoever hears my Words and puts them into practice," says Jesus, "is like a wise man who built his house on rock" (Matthew 7:24). This confidence is nourished by the joy of feeling loved: "When your Words found me I devoured them; they became my joy and the happiness of my heart because I bore your name, O Lord, God of hosts" (Jeremiah 15:16). This is why the two disciples on the road from
Scripture, which is the account of the history of the covenant between God and his people, is a living memory of this great love, which awakens confidence in him who will bring his promises to fulfillment. Giving you reasons for life and hope, the Word opens you to God's tomorrow and helps you bring it into the present by the power of humble acts of faith and simple gestures of charity. It is because of its power that the Word is also the reason for the great hope that animates ecumenical dialogue: If we make the effort to be disciples of the one Word, how can we consider our divisions more important than the unity to which the Word calls us?
10. From the Word to silence
From obedient listening to the Word flows, therefore, the eloquent silence of life: "We give thanks to God always because, having received from us the divine Word we preached, you accepted it not as the Word of men but, as it truly is, the Word of God who is at work in you who believe" (1 Thessalonians 2:13). This existence which is inhabited by the Eternal is constantly nourished by listening to his silence, which comes to us through the Word and opens us up to the silence of desire and expectation. Those who love the Word, know how necessary silence is -- both interior and exterior -- to truly hear it, and to allow that its light transform us through prayer, reflection, and discernment: In an environment of silence, in the light of the Scriptures, we learn to recognize the signs of God and to bring our problems to the plan of salvation to which the Scripture bears witness. Listening is the fruitful silence inhabited by the Word: "The Father pronounced one Word, which was his Son and he repeats it in an eternal silence; thus it must be listened to in silence by the soul."[10] Never pronounce, then, the Word of life, without having travelled long in the paths of silence, in the meditative and profound silence of the Word that comes from the Eternal!
11. The icon of Mary: the Virgin of listening
Mary is an icon of fruitful listening to the Word: She teaches us to welcome it, to care for it, and to meditate on it without ceasing: "Mary, for her part, treasured all these things, meditating on them in her heart" (Luke 2:19). Perfect image of the Church, Mary allows herself to be formed by the Word of God: "Let it be done to me according to your Word" (Luke 1:38). And listening she makes a gift of love: The Virgin of the annunciation goes to
12. The Word for living
The prayer of a monk, expert in the assiduous meditation on the Scriptures, can help us to listen to the Word of God according to Mary's example: "We beseech you, Lord, to make us know what we love, so that we seek nothing outside of you. You are everything for us: our life, our light, our salvation, our food, our drink, our God. We pray to you, our Jesus, to inspire our hearts with the breath of your Spirit and to transfix our souls with your love so that each one of us can say in all truth: Make me know him whom my heart loves; I am indeed wounded by your love. I desire that those wounds be made in me, O Lord. Blessed is the soul transfixed by charity! It will seek the fountain and drink. Drinking from it, it will always thirst. Quenching its thirst it will desire with ardour him for whom it always thirsts, though drinking from this fountain continually. In this way, love is thirst for the soul that seeks with desire; it is the wound that heals."[11] Only love opens one up to knowledge of the beloved: "Only he who rested on Jesus' breast can understand the meaning of Jesus' Words."[12] Rest your head on the Lord's breast too, like the beloved disciple at the Last Supper (cf. John 13:25), and listen to his Words, let his heart speak to yours! This is what I ask of God for you as I "commend you to God and to the Word of his grace, which is able to build you up and give you the inheritance among all the saints" (cf. Acts 20:32). Amen!
[1] "Commentary on the Psalms," 64, 2-3.
[2] Hugh of St. Victor, "Noah's
[3] "Commentary on the Prophet Isaiah," PL 24, 17.
[4] Benedict XVI, Discourse of Sept. 1, 2006, at the Sanctuary of the Holy Face of Manoppello.
[5] St. Gregory the Great, "Homilies on Ezekiel," I, 7, 8.
[6] Cf. Second
[7] Second
[8] St. Gregory the Great, "Letters," 5, 46.
[9] Message for World Youth Day 2006.
[10]
[11] St. Columba, "Instruction 13 on Christ Fountain of Life," 2-3, "Opera",
[12] Origen, "In Joannem," 1, 6, PG 14, 31.
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Martyrdom and Muslim Fundamentalism
Interview With Robert Royal
The main culprits behind the martyrdom of Christians appears to be shifting from the ideologies of yesteryear to the Muslim fundamentalism of today. So says Robert Royal, author of the 2002 book "The Catholic Martyrs of the Twentieth Century."
The most recent, high-profile example of the tendency was the case of the teen-ager in
For more perspective on the problem, the Catholic newspaper Avvenire interviewed Royal, the president of the Washington, D.C.-based Faith and Reason Institute.
Q: What reactions do you elicit when you speak of "martyrs" to a contemporary public?
Royal: It is a difficult concept to understand, even for Catholics. It is thought that it is something that could only happen in the times of the first Christians, in the Colosseum, and that no longer happens. But in numbers, martyrdom has never been more prevalent.
Q: What makes it possible today?
Royal: In my book I pointed out the ideological nature of the century that just ended. But lately I have noticed a worrying tendency which perhaps within a year will be clear in all its seriousness.
It is the resentment of many Muslim fundamentalists toward Westerners and the ease with which it is manipulated by radical leaders and regimes.
Q: Could you give an example?
Royal: Look at
Therefore, I am not surprised that
It reveals that there are many fanatics, in this case Muslims, ready to take recourse to violence at the least provocation.
Q: How far back does this tension go? Does it precede September 11 and the invasion of
Royal: In my opinion, yes. A clear example is the murder of John Joseph, bishop of Faisalabad, in Pakistan, who died in mysterious circumstances in May [1998], which reflects an ever more frequent Muslim fundamentalist view of the West that makes it almost impossible for Muslims to find work or take part in public life and, therefore, creates a climate in which their persecution is legitimate.
It is a form of forced Islamisation, of a campaign for "religious purity" now common in many Muslim countries.
Not all scholars of the Koran or Muslim religious justify it, but the pressure of the fundamentalists is ever stronger.
Suffice it to think that some Muslim countries have formally requested the United Nations to prohibit the very use of the word "Islamisation" by groups for the defence of human rights.
Q: Which are the countries where Christians are most at risk?
Royal: One, certainly, is
When the Americans were in
But the rights of Christians are regularly violated, and by law, in
Q: Do you think, then, that in the coming years the martyrdom of Christians will occur more frequently in the Arab Muslim world?
Royal: There is also
And it must not be forgotten that in the Muslim world opportunities for dialogue also arise continually. But it is a very difficult dialogue, which clashes constantly with the determination of regimes to exploit any occasion to drive the masses to anti-Western violence.
Q: Do you think that hatred in these countries is directed at Christians as such or at Westerners?
Royal: In many countries of the Muslim world this distinction does not exist. Anti-Western feeling extends to Americans and Europeans, Jews and Christians.
Religious such as Father Santoro are seen as representatives of Western governments, in the same way that in the Muslim world religion and politics are the same thing.
It is a hatred born from a feeling of profound humiliation that has its roots in the history of the past century, beginning with World War I.
But now the resentment is sharp. Of course there are many reasons to reflect on the conduct of the West vis-à-vis the
Suffice it to say that, although it is true that the cartoons on Mohammed are blasphemies for a Muslim, the anti-Christian and anti-Jewish caricatures and articles are the order of the day in Arab newspapers. But very few are willing to acknowledge it.
Archbishop Vincent Nichols:
'The experiment of secular society has failed'
"Many recognise that the experiment of modern secular society has failed," Archbishop Vincent Nichols, Archbishop of Birmingham, said in his homily at the annual Civic Mass, on the Feast of Christ The King, in St Chad's Cathedral, Birmingham.
The full homily text follows:
For many hundreds of years in most of the churches in this country there was, on the central arch, a painting of today's Gospel: the Last Judgement, or Doom. On its right hand side were the virtuous, being escorted to heaven; on the left, the wicked being thrust into hell; at the centre, Christ the King and Judge.
This was, as it were, the backdrop to all life, the overall context in which daily living was experienced. It was the narrative that gave meaning to everyday actions and relationships. And it was shared by all. It spoke clearly about good and evil, about who to esteem and respect; about who to fear; about what to seek. And I can assure you that most often there was a figure of a bishop on the left, among the deceitful and untrustworthy, although often another one could also be seen on the right!
In the sixteenth century these paintings were covered in whitewash and removed from sight. Much more seriously, in the last decades they have been removed from our common consciousness by the march of secularism and the removal of religious belief from our shared public life.
There are many signs of its absence. Instead of receiving a shared story, a meaning, for our lives, today we go to great trouble to construct one, individually, and at some cost. Advertisers understand this, and constantly sell clothes as 'personal statements'. A walk through Birmingham city centre taught me, just a few days ago, about the 'Goth' fashion, currently popular among youngsters.
And just as fashions change, so too the interpretations and meanings given to life vary more and more. And with this comes the uneasy sense that our shared values are no longer stable. The patterns and priorities by which we order our daily living are now quite diverse and our society, we fear, may be fragmenting.
When we look more closely at the patterns by which we now live, we can see that some key values shape our thought and action. They are the lynch-pins of secularism: knowledge and reason, scientific progress and technology, and personal autonomy. Practically, they have built up into an assumption we all share: that of affluence, at least in our part of the world. This becomes our actual over-riding preoccupation.
Our time is spent securing, by one means or another, the material comfort and choice to which we are accustomed and to which we assume we have a right. But it means that, as a society, we live life on its surface, always seeking the next event, the next fashion, the next spectacle to restore enthusiasm and meaning to our efforts. We have come a long way from the Gospel of the Last Judgement!
Yet, as you will know, these paintings are emerging again. There is a remarkable example, just restored, in Holy Trinity Church in Coventry. So, too, I believe, there is the beginnings of a growing realisation that religious belief has a continuing and important part to play in our society.
Today many recognise that the experiment of modern secular society has failed. Rationality and technology are not enough, either to hold us together or to inspire us. There is something more for which the human spirit reaches out and indeed wants to give.
Could I put it very simply. If everyone in an organisation, be it a hospital, or a bank, or an industry, simply worked precisely and solely to their job description, the enterprise would grind to a halt within days. Indeed, what makes for a successful enterprise is precisely a shared vision, an underlying sense of purpose, a 'team' effort in which personal whims and autonomy are put to one side for the greater, common good.
And the same is true for our civic and public life. We need a shared vision, a common aim, a shaping of personal autonomy for the sake of something more important. Yet we seem to be losing the knack of engendering and sustaining that sense of civic ownership, responsibility and pride.
For me, and for many, a key element in that loss is a gross misrepresentation of the value and contribution of religious belief. Hard line secularists, and there are plenty, will insist that religious belief is irrational and therefore inadmissible. They are wrong. Faith and reason, certainly in the enduring Catholic tradition, go hand in hand. They will say that technology is our salvation.
Yet increasingly we see that because something can be done, it is not therefore good that it is done. They will say that religious belief is, of its nature, opposed to personal autonomy and that the only true authority is that of the individual. But down that road lies the disintegration of shared values and the dissipation of common identity upon which our stability depends.
In contrast, it is a consistent experience of centuries that, properly understood, the Christian faith is a high road to profound personal fulfilment, especially once we understand that our fulfilment is never achieved as individuals but only in the context of a wider community.
Religious belief has a crucial contribution to make in our world today. That is not to say that many of the features of modern society are unacceptable or corrosive. Far from it. Indeed knowledge and reason are fundamental, as is science and personal responsibility. But so too are the religious aspirations of our human spirit and the Christian heritage of our land.
It is time we resisted that secularising mythology which distorts and rejects our past. Her Majesty the Queen spoke eloquently of this last week, at the opening of the new General Synod of the Church of England, when she stated that this time of great change represents an opportunity for Christian Churches.
She said: "When so much is in flux, when limitless amounts of information, much of it ephemeral, are instantly accessible on demand, there is a renewed hunger for that which endures and gives meaning. The Christian Church can speak uniquely to that need, for at the heart of our faith stands the conviction that all people, irrespective of race, background or circumstance, can find lasting significance and purpose in the Gospel of Jesus Christ."
Today, in the Civic Mass, we celebrate Christ as King. In doing so we hold him to be the key to our fulfilment. He is no despot, no arrogant ruler seeking to impose his will on our reluctant souls. Rather he is, in the language of faith, 'the first fruits', the very best of our humanity, above all in his victory of death. In sharing in that victory through grace, as our ultimate promise, we find our feet again in this life, knowing how to judge things aright and esteem lasting aims and ambitions rather than fleeting fame and power.
Of course in our complex and varied world, the Church will always live in an uneasy relationship with society. The spheres in which state and church act are different yet overlapping. But a relationship there must be, and one to which the Churches and religions can bring their 'awkward peculiarity' to debate, decision and action. It is precisely in the particularities of faith that its strength often lies.
Generic chaplaincies in prisons and hospitals, ill-defined 'spirituality' with 'spiritual guides or counsellors', are not enough, not if we are to bring to the service of our society all the depth of commitment and self-sacrifice that religious faith engenders and then supports. And that is what we need to do if e are to find a new stability, a renewed sense of common purpose and a reinvigorated commitment to those who a needy and impoverished either here or in the wider world.
The Gospel image of the Last Judgement is not simply a story about our endings. Rather it is an invitation to each one of us to live today as one who awaits that immense gathering of all mankind into the presence of God. At that moment the truth of our shared humanity will be made plain.
For now we struggle to glimpse it, beyond our divisions and self-interests. But it is this vision, made complete in Christ the King that must guide our way each day. Indeed, this celebration of the Mass of Christ the King invites us to refresh that intention in our hearts and to be encouraged, by our faith and in our personal relationship with Christ our Lord, in putting it into action even in the smallest detail of our present lives.
Source: Archdiocese of Birmingham
Here are further thoughts from Archbishop Nichols concerning our current society:
Archbishop Nichols - 'Proclaiming the faith in a pluralistic society'
The Rt Rev Vincent Nichols, Archbishop of Birmingham, gave the following public lecture last night at Swansea University.
I would like to start by thanking all who have been responsible for the invitation extended to me to give this lecture here in
One face lingers in my mind from the news last week. It is the face of Mrs Walker, wrapped in such a profound grief yet, at the same time, calm. "Someone has taken a piece of my heart" she said. "How do you mend a broken heart?" She was speaking, of course, of the callous murder of her eighteen-year-old son, Anthony, in a park in Huyton, in my hometown of
She spoke with such love of her talented, vivacious son who, like her, was a dedicated disciple of Christ. She spoke with such clarity of her sense of purpose as a mother: "He was in training" she said. "He was in training to be a good man." She described him as kind, 'the joker in the family pack' with a strong moral code. She said that, as part of his training "when it came to making decisions we made them together." She was startlingly clear about what being 'a good man' would mean. And she illustrated that goodness in the most testing of all circumstances.
In court she sat, face to face, with the two men who murdered her son. She heard every detail of the horrific story. Outside the court she was asked the crucial question: Do you forgive them? Her answer is truly remarkable. "As Jesus was dying on the Cross he forgave those who were killing him because they did not know what they were doing. I must do the same. Yes I do forgive them. There is no other way." Then, speaking of the two young men, she added "I cannot hate. I just hope these lads find it in their hearts to forgive themselves. Their hearts must be very tortured. I don't know if they can cope with it. I brought my children up in this church to love. I taught them to love, to respect themselves and to respect others. We don't just preach forgiveness, we practice it. What does bitterness do? It eats you up inside, it's like a cancer."
The title of this lecture is, 'Proclaiming the Faith in a Pluralist Society'.
I think I could stop here, with this one example, illustrating precisely this theme. She is a remarkable woman, a woman of faith and compassion. In the midst of her pain she proclaims the Gospel. Thank God for her, and for all like her.
But is her witness heard? Yes, I believe so. But not without difficulty. And it's that I'd like to reflect on.
Of course the newspaper photograph of Mrs Taylor was soon replaced. Other news items abound. But if her witness is to have a lasting effect what are the aspects of our modern way life, our culture, it will have to overcome? Why is it that such an outstanding testimony fades so quickly? How well do we understand the circumstances in which we attempt to proclaim the Gospel.
These are the themes of an ongoing study initiated by the Bishops' Conference of England and
So what happens to Mrs Walker's words?
As we all know, the first response is to say: "Well, that's her opinion", and in that one phrase religious belief is privatised and relativised. It is no longer a public or a shared truth, but a personal opinion which may indeed produce heroic virtue but which has no direct relevance to anyone else. Many may prefer the view of the Sun newspaper: 'Forgiveness is too good for them. Let them rot.'
Behind this reaction, of course, lies the dynamic of secularism with its three key tenets. For a secular mind what gives value to human endeavour is, in the first place, reason, or rationality. That is the only source of authenticity: that which can be provided by reason or, as the second criteria, by technology. Religion is seen to fail on both counts for it is portrayed as neither rational nor materially productive. So out it goes from the secular scheme and with it much of the habits of mind, those shared images and events, stories and ceremonies (our shared symbolic capital), which gave meaning to life.
But religion faces a deeper accusation. It is seen to be oppressive, authoritarian, and therefore offensive to the third tenet of secularism: that the individual is the key figure, the individual with his or her autonomy, freedom of choice, self-directing destiny.
There are indeed some very public protagonists of what has been called a 'hard' secularisation: the complete separation of religion from public life and its exiling as a strictly private matter. This voice is often to be found in opinion columns and, sometimes, in Parliament. It relies heavily on the secularising myth, which reinterprets our history, casting all oppression, violence and tyranny at the doors of religious faith. It conveniently forgets that the great perpetrators of violence, in the last century for example, were the secular ideologies of Lenin, Hitler and Pol Pot, to say nothing of the effects of abortion with its six million victims in this country alone. As Pope Benedict often says, without God human society quickly victimises those it is meant to serve; without God human rights are fragile and soon distorted.
But many people listening to Mrs Walker will recognise the value and the source of what she has said. Many do not live entirely without God. Rather we live in a culture of 'soft' secularisation in which affluence is our major concern. We take for granted our right to consumer choice, to constant entertainment, and we marginalise those things that demand more of us. We fit religion into that category, and become consumers of religion rather than genuine disciples. We tend in this way to live life on the surface. Keeping clear of its deeper challenges and dimensions.
Yet there is a deeper issue at work here. The truth is that the experiment of a purely secular state has failed. What we recognise around us is that there are seemingly no longer values and principles which hold us together as a society. In the language of today our society has gone from its secular modernity to a post-modernity in which even the 'rational-technological-personally autonomous' account has fallen down. After all, the departure of a culturally supported faith in God has not left a society 'free from belief' but a society characterised by all sorts of transient and ephemeral beliefs. As was famously stated by GK Chesterton: "When we stop believing in God, we don't believe in nothing. We believe in anything." So too, technology brings its own dilemmas. Just because it can be done, doesn't mean it should be done. Our society struggles to come to ethic decisions and, quite rightly, there are growing calls for a wider discussion of ethical standards and one that includes the contribution of the major religions rather than deliberately excluding them, as has been the case in recent decades. Meanwhile we sense a slow disintegration, a dissolving of the bonds that hold us together.
But for the individual this presents particular dilemmas. The absence of over-arching systems of meaning, stories by which I understand my self, my sorrow, my hopes, fears, losses and joys means that I am constantly having to create my own meaning. The advertisers understand this so well. They seek to convince us, for example, that our choice of clothes is a crucial personal statement, a personal signature, and an important piece of the jigsaw by which I create a life-story for myself. Life-style gurus are another pointer to the degree to which we will go to respond to this fundamental need to find for ourselves a system of personal belief to fill the void at the heart of our post-modern culture.
My choice of clothes, of course, are a bit of a giveaway! And so they are meant to be, even if, in the eyes of some, they are an over-statement. But it is the role of faith, of course, to offer us our account of our lives, a rationale of meaning, a pathway for judgements and actions, which make up our identity. And our faith offers us an identity, which is to be received. In this identity, in our faith, we know who we are, where we are from, what our destiny is and the pathway by which to travel. This gift 'of Sonship' in the Trinitarian language of the faith, frees us from all lesser identities, of being English (or Welsh!), white, or black, middle-class, educated, affluent or of good family stock. It frees us from the fatigue of having to start from scratch each day and enables us to give our energy into appropriating, making our own, the freedom of the children of God - a lifelong task in itself.
But our culture is shy of such commitment. So the shelves of bookshops are full of volumes on undifferentiated spirituality, rather than the testimony of the great faiths. This vague 'spiritual quest' is, of course, a way in which we seek relief from the more negative aspects of our culture, which, in so many ways, pulls us up from our roots and makes us strangers to ourselves, as well as to each other. We live increasingly in the realm of virtual reality - the soaps, the Matrix syndrome, the culture of technology rather than in a world of primary interpersonal contact.
This, then, is something of the context in which we seek to proclaim the Gospel, and if you recognise in yourselves anything of what I have said, even if briefly, then please do pursue it more thoroughly. I ask this for two reasons.
The first is this. As people of faith, as Christians, as Catholics, we have a task of leadership to fulfil. One aspect of this task is to interpret the times. Through the gift of faith we are given the confidence, the trust, to step back a little from our own experience, our culture, and look at it with an honest and critical eye. In the light of faith we should be able to see more clearly than others some of these currents of influence. Our task is to name them, describe them and so win a little freedom from them. This is not an exercise in condemning our world, our culture, but of knowing its trends and assessing their ebb and flow, and recognising, in particular, the undercurrents that pull us, unaware, this way and that. To do so can help us to appreciate positive features of our culture, for indeed rationality, technology and autonomy are positive values, but also its tendencies to demean or capture us. Leadership interpretation of our culture is crucial today, and something we can all do, a contribution we can make, at home, in conversation and in more serious dialogue.
The second reason for studying our culture more closely is nearer to home. We need to see how our culture has moulded our own grasp of the faith. We are very much part of our culture, it is the air we breathe, and it shapes the way we understand our faith. At some points it corrupts us, too.
For example, we need to look again at how our culture has bred in us a 'pick and choose' approach to faith. Of course, we must make faith our own. Of course, we struggle to do so. But sometimes we seem to think that, individually, we can construct our own version of the faith. In losing its integrity, or wholeness, we run the risk of portraying our faith as no more than an exercise in personal choice rather than presenting it as a coherent whole, a revealed truth not only fully consistent with reason but also capable of elevating reason to new heights.
So too we may tend to make technological demands on our faith, especially for example on our liturgy. At the end of Mass should we really be asking if it was a good experience? If it 'worked' ? The working, the 'technology' of the Mass is always the work of grace and this, thank God, is not open to our measures. The 'interiority' of the Mass is its crucial dimension, even more than its ability to give a 'shared experience'. True community centres on and flows from the person of Christ and the hidden contact of each person with him is the greatest of all the building blocks of community.
A study of the context of evangelisation today, then, has some consequences for us. It asks us to refresh our own grasp of faith, to look again at our Catholic culture with its distinctive sources and strengths and to be sure that we are open to them, nurtured by them as well as by the other positive influences around us.
What I am saying, not surprisingly, is that there are real tensions between our life of faith in the Church, our Catholic culture, and our contemporary society, with its preoccupations, some of its espoused virtues and its institutions. In fact it is true to say that we live in an uneasy relationship with the world around us, at times seemingly more or less in step and at others being seriously out of step.
Leadership today, in the realm of faith, means being aware of this uneasy relationship and not being too uncomfortable with it. A good example, again from last week, is the recent Instruction from the Holy See on the question of homosexuality and the priesthood. Here we are simply out of step with some aspects of our society: not with the fight against unjust discrimination, but with the equivalence between same-sex relationships and marriage, and the unequivocal public celebration of same-sex sexual relationships now bestowed by our society. Proclaiming a truth here is to be out of step. But so too was Mrs Walker with the Sun newspaper and many of its 4.5 million readers.
The aim of catechesis in the Church today is comparatively simple: it is to equip us as Catholics to live in this uneasy relationship, this dynamic tension, with our contemporary world. This, of course, is what we must do for we are called, as Catholics, not to an isolation, not to a separate world, but to be in and for our world, just as Jesus himself lived and died. Nor can we merge into our culture and surroundings seeking to be simply a hidden influence. It is our calling, for as long as possible, to proclaim our faith in a public manner, though always with the due sensitivity and deference that Christ himself displayed. In other words, our proclamation of the Gospel is often best carried out as a dialogue of faith, a genuine conversation and shared seeking.
Speaking in
Today, many people are searching. We must support them in their search as fellow-seekers. We must respect each one's own search. We must sustain it and make them feel that faith is not merely a dogmatism complete in itself that puts an end to seeking, that extinguishes man's great thirst. Rather faith directs the great pilgrimage towards the infinite. We, as believers, are always simultaneously seekers and finders.
It is worth remembering that, as believers, we bring to this common search, to this dialogue of faith, all our 'awkward peculiarity'. That's a lovely phrase. It gives us permission to be ourselves, not aggressively nor obstinately, but just steadfastly. There are key peculiarities to the Christian faith which are not reduceable to 'faith' in general, as is sometimes suggested in the phrase 'faith schools'. And there are key peculiarities to our Catholic faith which we should sustain and which are not reduceable to a generic Christianity, as is often suggested, or even required, in chaplaincies in hospital, prisons and the Forces. The strength of every faith lies in its peculiarities, in it traditions, observances and disciplines. And these should not be reduced to some common ground, not if each faith, and each Christian body, is to make its distinctive contribution.
In this light, leadership in faith requires another dimension: leadership in helping a community to cherish its particular identity, to nurture its practices and to make sure that a diversity of initiatives are given space to flourish.
The report 'On the Way to Life' which I have already mentioned is clear on this point. The life of Christian faith is a life of discipleship. At its centre is a relationship with Christ. Such a relationship draws in both our hearts and our heads, our devotion and our understanding. So must our catechesis. Growth in faith is of the whole person. Programmes of catechesis really should foster prayer as well as understanding. They should be contemplative as well as instructive, for the revealed truth given to us is a person Jesus, the Lord. On Him, we set our hearts; our minds filled with His light. Catechesis, then, should always include time of our knees.
I stress the 'awkward peculiarity' of our Catholic faith, with its traditions and devotions, for a very particular reason. And this is the last point I would like to make.
There is, I believe, a particular opportunity before the Church at this moment, regarding our task of proclaiming the Gospel. It consists not only of the particular need of our society, but also of strength of the Catholic tradition.
Sociologists use a phrase, which I have borrowed already, the phrase 'symbolic capital'. By it they mean all that reservoir of shared understanding, often expressed in ritual or ceremony, from which we draw meaning. In our culture much of that 'symbolic capital' is, in fact, Christian. We see it in the coronation of kings and queens, in the Courts, in Parliament and in Remembrance Day Services and Parades. Of course other streams which are not so explicitly religious have added to that capital. Shakespeare and many poets; Shackleton, Livingstone and other adventurers; Admiral Lord Nelson and many others. But our symbolic capital is essentially Christian. The funeral rites for Princess Diana showed that. Every flower thrown towards her passing hearse was an attempt at prayer.
In recent decades, as a society, we have simply raided that capital, at such key moments, without ever investing again in it. But I suspect there is a growing momentum of recognition that we must again be investing in this capital, building it up for the future. The popularity of Church schools is one such indication.
So an opportunity is there to help our society to re-invest in its symbolic capital. And I think, as the Catholic Church, we have the means.
At the heart of our Catholic tradition lies the notion of sacrament: that the life and grace of God is mediated to us through created things: through this water, this oil, this bread and wine, in this community and, ultimately, in this man, our flesh and blood, Jesus the Christ. We have, in our faith, a sacramental imagination, an ability to see beyond the surface of our created world and to recognise within it the hallmark of the Creator's presence. This is part of the coherence of Catholic faith: nature is not rejected, neither my human nature with all its flaws, nor the entire created universe. All is marked not only with the 'stain of sin' but also with the glory and splendour of God. In Catholic eyes, nature and grace meet within the drama of salvation, a meeting which becomes definitive in the seen sacraments of the Church. But that meeting of grace and nature is also to be found, by the power of the Holy Spirit, throughout the texture of our lives, even if not always recognised nor received.
The stance towards the word engendered by this 'sacramental imagination' is precisely that which society needs in order to replenish is symbol capital. This is not, fundamentally, an ethical stance, not one whose first concern is with what is the right or wrong thing to do. It is, first of all, a stance, which highlights the worth, the Godliness, of all that is before us, and its potential, under the inspiration of grace, for true greatness. Of course right action follows, but the first work of the sacramental imagination is to see beyond a surface, often deformed by pain, injustice, greed or excess, to the inner heart of the created reality, to its inner, unmistakable beauty.
It is, indeed, beauty that opens up for us the true, God-given worth of our world. Beauty, I suggest, is the key to our sacramental imagination.
There is no doubt that this is so within the celebration of the sacraments of the Church. When I enter a beautiful, carefully maintained church, then my feet are already standing on fruitful ground and my heart is raised to the cause, the author, the focus of such beauty. When the celebration of Mass is 'beautifully done' then its inner mystery shines out. Word, ritual, music, movement all come together to enrich all who take part, often in ways they cannot explain. But what is clear in moments like that is that we are investing in our 'symbolic capital', enriching that treasure house so as to be sustained from it in times of trial and bewilderment.
So the beauty of a church, the beauty of a Liturgy and the beauty of good lives are vital ways in which we proclaim our Gospel today.
But let me return to Mrs Walker. In those photographs hers was a beautiful face. Yet it was so burdened with sadness and grief. Can that truly be appealing, truly beautiful? Or the crucifix, which is the central image of every church: is that really an object of beauty? How can such suffering be beautiful, for it would appear to be its very antithesis?
Indeed if we are to speak of the crucified Christ as 'beautiful', then this beauty has to compete with all the alternative versions of beauty with which we are constantly presented by our culture.
The classic test of true beauty is whether it evokes in the beholder a response of generosity, of deeper belief in the goodness of self and others, a readiness for sacrifice. A lesser, or false beauty will stir up the desire, the will, for possession, ownership and pleasure. We live in a 'must have' culture. This is one of our greatest challenges. Our faith has to help us distinguish, discern, the truth of that is presented to us as beautiful. Faith, and catechesis, can help us to recognise true beauty and our response to it, to reflect on its nature, its appeal, its origin, its purpose. In this catechesis will always be centred on the mystery of Christ and on the mystery of sacrificial love. This is a daunting task, yet even here we can find powerful allies in the 'inner sense' for the truth that permeates all true human loving and in the readiness for self-sacrifice, which is still to be found in so much of our experience.
Then there is a second question posed by the claim of the beauty of the crucifix. It is not simply 'Is this true beauty?' but 'Is this beauty true?' Is it true that, in the end, the love of God, which evokes such a response as that seen in the crucifix, is really the truth about life, about my life? Is there in life a dependable sense of purpose that supersedes this and every horror. Or is the true narrative of life the one of nihilism, or the one that says that reality is, in fact, basically evil?
In a very telling article, the then Cardinal Ratzinger wrote:
Here the appearance of beauty has received new depth and new realism. The One who is the Beauty itself, let himself be slapped in the face, spat upon, crowned with thorns. The Shroud of Turin can help us to imagine this in a realistic way. However, in his Face, that is so disfigured, there appears the genuine, extreme beauty: the beauty of love that goes 'to the very end'. For this reason it is revealed as greater than falsehood and violence. Whoever has perceived this beauty knows that truth, and not falsehood, is the real aspiration of the world. It is not the false that is 'true' but indeed the Truth.' (The Feeling of Things, the Contemplation of Beauty. 2002)
There is no doubt that the faces of falsehood and evil are well known in our world. Our familiarity with them, whether in the form of personal deceit, political corruption, self-promotion and greed, drunken obscenity or angry terrorism, is an everyday reality. So, too, we must recognise such falsehoods corrosive influence on the project of Christian faith. But this reflection suggests that evil and falsehood can be countered only by the means given to us by the Father himself: by the person of Christ in whom it is make clear that truth and beauty are to be found beyond celebrity, beyond ugliness, beyond decay, beyond horror, indeed beyond death itself, hinted at in the beautiful words of Mrs Walker.
This means that the full truth of the crucified saviour needs to be recognised again as central to our faith, central to our symbolic capital and, therefore, to our catechesis. It is, indeed, an image, a truth, that goes beyond our experience. But it must never be set aside for that reason. It is a truth that goes beyond our comfort or our reassurance, yet salvation never comes from within our familiar ambit and cannot be built with the bricks of our own achievement.
Perhaps in much of our catechesis we have shielded our eyes from Him who, in his death, alone offers us life, preferring easier vistas and more superficial beauty. But the gift of salvation is clearly given here, from his wounded side. And it is this we must explore in our sacramental imagination and in all the rigour of its terrible beauty. This, I'm sure, is the deepest challenge of the proclamation of the faith today, for here, and only here, is the face of God revealed. This face demonstrates the true nature of God, the God without whom we will never build a civilisation of love in our world today.
Thank you for your attention.
