Evangelization is the desire to share the priceless gift that God wished to give us...

Tuesday, October 12, 2010

HOLY FATHER'S MOTU PROPRIO "UBICUMQUE ET SEMPER"
VATICAN CITY, 12 OCT 2010 (VIS) - Given below are extracts of "Ubicumque et semper", the Apostolic Letter "Motu Proprio data" by which Benedict XVI establishes the Pontifical Council for Promoting New Evangelisation.

"The Church has the duty to announce the Gospel of Jesus Christ always and everywhere. ... Over history this mission has assumed new forms and methods, depending on place, situation and historical moment. In our own time, one of its most singular characteristics has been that of having to measure itself against the phenomenon of abandonment of the faith, which has become progressively more evident in societies and cultures that were, for centuries, impregnated with the Gospel.

"The social transformations we have seen over recent decades have complex causes, the roots of which are distant in time and have profoundly modified our perception of the world. ... If, on the one hand, humanity has seen undeniable benefits from these transformations and the Church received further stimuli to give reasons for the hope she carries, on the other, we have seen a worrying loss of the sense of the sacred, even going so far as to call into discussion apparently unquestionable foundations, such as faith in the God of creation and providence; the revelation of Jesus Christ our only Saviour, the shared understating of man's fundamental experiences like birth, death and family life, and the reference to natural moral law".

"Among the central themes examined by Vatican Council II was the question of relations between the Church and the modern world. In the wake of this conciliar teaching, my predecessors dedicated further reflection to the need to find adequate forms to allow our contemporaries to still hear the Lord's living and eternal Word".

"Venerable Servant of God John Paul II made this demanding undertaking one of the pivotal points of his vast Magisterium, summarising the task awaiting the Church today in the concept of 'new evangelisation' (which he systematically developed in numerous occasions), especially in regions of age-old Christianity".

"Thus, in my turn, sharing the concern of my venerated predecessors, I feel it appropriate to offer an adequate response so that the entire Church, allowing herself to be regenerated by the Holy Spirit, may present herself to the modern world with a missionary vigour capable of promoting a new evangelisation".

"In Churches of ancient foundation, ... although the phenomenon of secularisation continues its course, Christian practice still shows signs of possessing vitality and profound roots among entire peoples. ... We also know, unfortunately, of areas which appear almost completely de-Christianised, areas in which the light of faith is entrusted to the witness of small communities. These lands, which need a renewed first announcement of the Gospel, seem particularly unreceptive to many aspects of the Christian message".

"At the root of all evangelisation there is no human project of expansion, but the desire to share the priceless gift that God wished to give us, sharing His life with us".

Sharing Faith with Family - FIRST: Be Conformed to God

I personally am not a real big fan of these Catholic "Theology on Tap" meetings, but what do I know?  NOT MUCH!  The topic of this article reporting on one such Theology on Tap here in my area struck accord with me PLUS you will see, the Father nailed the big one when he tells of the importance of mimesis:

“The more we are conformed to God, the more attractive we will be” in witnessing to our faith, said Father Henehan.

“Evangelization is not about winning arguments,” Father Henehan told about 50 young adults attending a Theology on Tap evening at The Medici restaurant and bar near Illinois State University. “The goal of evangelization is winning souls.”

The Church 2 step

The Great Evangelization by Fr. Robert Barron
The Church 2-step
Step 1 Hunker down - perservation
Step 2 Let loose the Light - let the light out

Fr Barron - Catholicism Project

Root Cause Fallacy

1986 Time article describing Root Cause Fallacy - term used by Ibn Warraq in THIS previous post.

The Root Cause is always a regurgitation of the violence from our fallen human state that the Middle East mirrors back at us in its ever-so-terrorizing reality. 2 powerful fuels that compound the Root Cause is our adaptation to the very powerful myth that denies our participation in the Root Cause violence breeding "the anti-Western, antimodern, antisecularist movement" and its double, a sentiment that is "anti-Western, but modern and secular, and is thus often at war with Islamic fundamentalism."

René Girard sums up the situation in this quote:

“What is frightening is the conjunction of massive technical power and the spiritual surrender to nihilism. A panic-stricken refusal to glance, even furtively, in the only direction where meaning could still be found dominates our intellectual life.”

I guess I am one who feels that trying to get at this Root Cause without intentional evangelizing and conversion to the Triune God will get deflected by harden hearts and deepen the Root Cause Fallacy. In efforts to shed light by a knowledge not steeped in the Christian Faith, a knowledge that is today our default knowledge due to our culture's embrace of the anti-Christian 'dumbing down' relativism, will inevitably lead one further into the spinning vortex of mass confusion, distraction and violence.

René Girard can be instrumental in helping to grasp Root Cause and therefore help one stand firm and not get thrown into the Root Cause Fallacy.

As Athos put it so wisely in a previous post: Girard's mimetic theory is the hermeneutic for understanding human violence par excellence. It is a shame that it is cast into the "blanket of silence" of Western rationalism where men walk on it and do not know what treasure they unwittingly reject.

Life in Christ - what it looks like & what it demands

Archbishop Charles J. Chaput tells about the New Life in Christ - what it looks like and what it demands.

Only the truth can set people free. That truth is Jesus Christ. So if we truly love our neighbors we will want them to know the truth. The whole truth. Not just the parts of it that make them feel good and don’t challenge them to change.

It’s not possible for real Christians to lead a double life; our whole way of thinking and acting needs to be transformed by our faith, or we make ourselves into hypocrites. Like our friend Franz once said, being a halfway Christian is like being a vegetable. It’s not really a life. It’s barely an existence.

Read the rest of the article and Franz's story HERE.

Check out the Archbishop on his Facebook site HERE.

FRANCISCANS: CONTINUE TO BEAUTIFY THE FACE OF THE CHURCH

See entire news release from Vatican Information Sevice HERE.

"Eight centuries have passed and today you wish to renew your Founder's gesture", the Pope told his audience. "You are all children and heirs of those origins. ... Like Francis and Clare of Assisi, ... always begin again from Christ ... in order to see His face in our brothers and sisters who suffer, and to bring everyone His peace. Be witnesses of the beauty of God, whose praises Francis sang while contemplating the wonders of creation".

"Go forth and continue 'to repair the house' of the Lord Jesus Christ: His Church", cried the Holy Father. "Yet there is another ruin, an even more serious ruin: that of people and of communities", he said.

"Like St. Francis, always begin with yourselves", he concluded. "If you prove capable of renewing yourselves in the spirit of the Gospel, you will continue to help the pastors of the Church to make her face, as the bride of Christ, ever more beautiful. Now as at your beginnings, this is what the Pope expects from you".

Check article from American Catholic on Pope Benedict XVI and St. Francis HERE.

Living and Loving in the Old West

In the present barometric atmosphere, displaying oneself to be a Christian in social settings of educated classes - not merely an ethnic Christian or one who cherishes memories of being taken to church long ago, but a practicing Christian - is reaching, if you will pardon the cliché, a tipping point. But, in my opinion, a good tipping point.

Not so long ago, even among the WaPo and NYT crowds, being a practicing Christian and saying so was similar to saying, "Of course NASA staged the moon landings in a hanger." But now, being a Christian - a steady-eyed, Ten Commandment practicing, Magisterium affirming, treat others the way you want to be treated Christian - is becoming something not of social opprobrium, but of curiosity and interest, at least here in the United States.

We have seen that Pope Benedict is correct: from Wall Street to Main Street, from the halls of our schools to the streets and highways, the vacuity of faith and morals has created a society-wide vortex of self-centered, bestial unconcern for the common good. The so-called smartest guys in the room were just the beginning; the bottom of the maelstrom is not yet even visible.

The worship of instincts and desire, too, continues its downward spiral with growing legal clout and arm-twisting enforcement of despising future generations of human life. The Christian faith and moral teachings about lifelong, faithful marriage between husband and wife, family as "domestic church" in which children are born and raised in love to become loving husband and wives and parents themselves seems under siege and under attack from every side.

Just as Christian life and teachings are two or three generations away from supposed viability, with many a sidelong glance, they are becoming something not stupid and outdated, but an alternative at least to be looked at once again.

So, when you go to Mass, follow the Golden Rule, work hard and well for your employer, practice chivalry, know that you are probably going to seem as quaint and old-timey as an Amish family strolling in Times Square. But know too that you are becoming an absolutely necessary witness for hurting and lost souls who are beginning to realize that fact about themselves.

We aren't here to be triumphalist. We're here to live and love in the ruins of the West as members of Christ's Body, the Church. And maybe, just maybe, help a few back to civility, sanity, and, yes, even salvation.

He's Grown to Like the Church

The Devil Made Me Do It (or not)

tip to Anchoress

Joseph of Nazareth Is a Single-Issue Evangelical -- It is Our Call To Be Like Joseph NOW!

tip to Justin Taylor

Russell Moore delivered a most prophetic messages on Joseph, the demon-fighter and patron saint of the Mass'keteers on October 16, 2008 at The Southern Baptist Theological Seminary. You can download it here. The title of the sermon was, "Joseph of Nazareth Is a Single-Issue Evangelical: The Father of Jesus, the Cries of the Helpless, and Change You Can Believe In" (Matt 2:13-23).

THIS IS A MUST HEAR SERMON - SORRY IT IS NOT IN HOMILY LENGTH, BUT IT IS AN AWESOME MESSAGE ON SAINT JOSEPH AND ALL FATHERS.

One of the most poignant sections of the sermon comes when Moore makes a comparison between “Christians” of a former generation who tolerated the lynching of African-Americans and “Christians” of this generation who tolerate the atrocity of abortion:

And many of them believe that it is missional to speak to people while blunting or silencing a witness about the life of children so that you can reach them with the gospel. . . Some will tell us there are many other issues: economics, global warming—issues I’m very concerned about too. Previous generations have said that as well. Previous generations of preachers have stood in the pulpit and preached until they were red in the face about card-playing and movie-going and tax-policy and personal morality and tobacco-smoking and a thousand other issues, but would not speak to the fact that there were African-American brothers and sisters of the Lord Jesus swinging in the trees! And there is judgment of God upon that. And there is here too.

Read more on the fruits of the Democratic candidate to understand what we are voting for in this upcoming election.

Remember it is all about LIFE! Don't get caught thinking overwise.

Converting England and Us

Check out Athos' post and this article he links.

from the article:

“…if Catholic Christianity conveys in human form the divine revelation which is the greatest truth, goodness, and beauty man can know, then all the elements of truth, goodness, and beauty in the theory and practice of other forms of Christianity and indeed in other faith traditions would attain their crown in this [Catholic] context, would come to their intended fulfillment.”

Father Nichols’ description of the cultural challenges of the New Evangelization after Vatican II rings true far beyond Land’s End: our problem today is less the new atheism than the new apathy, an apathy that has grown exponentially amidst uninteresting and soggy Christianity, material wealth, and the decline of any public consensus that some things are, simply, true. Like those who will read him with appreciation here in the former colonies, Father Nichols also recognizes that the challenge of spiritual boredom in post-Christian culture cannot be met by Catholic Lite. It can only be met, and the 21st century world converted, by Catholicism in full.

Franciscan Meets Skateboard

This one's for you, Aramis: Fra Gabriel Skateboarding Down Under.

There is HOPE - Pope Benedict XVI & St Francis take on the Muslims

h/t from Real Clear Religion

Excerpts from Asia Times: "What seems to the West a low-key appeal to reason and Western norms of religious freedom...looks like a Trojan Horse to Muslims. Islamic leaders already have noted that months before [Magdi] Allam's baptism, the Vatican published a "doctrinal note" on evangelization that specifically repudiates the notion that Catholics should refrain from attempting to convert people of other faiths."

"As [Jesuit] Father Dall'Oglio warns darkly, Muslims are in dialogue with a pope who evidently does not merely want to exchange pleasantries about coexistence, but to convert them. This no doubt will offend Muslim sensibilities, but Muslim leaders are well-advised to remain on good terms with Benedict XVI. Worse things await them."

The post concludes with: "The European Church may be weak, but no weaker, perhaps, than in the 8th century after the depopulation of Europe and the fall of Rome. An evangelizing European Church might yet repopulate Europe with new Christians as it did more than a millennium ago. "

More reading: Wouldn't it be obvious that true Christians would want all people to know the truth?

* * *

From an interview with Frank Rega: LifeSiteNews: What can St. Francis teach Christians of today about relating to Muslims?

Frank Rega: First, I think it is important to realize that St. Francis did not openly attack the Muslim religion or Mohammed. He was not armed with a copy of the Koran in one hand and the Catholic Catechism in the other. In fact there is no indication that he ever instructed his friars who undertook such a mission to study the Koran or the tenets of Islam. His goal was to carry to the unbelievers the very presence of Christ, and the essence of God's love, mercy, forgiveness and salvation.

This brings up a second point, the necessity to be strong in the basics of our Faith. One cannot relate as a Catholic to another religion while being hesitant, for example, about the truth of Christ's Resurrection from the dead on Easter.

Finally, Francis shows us that we must keep it simple. Simplicity was one of the hallmarks of his personality and of his approach to Christianity. Spiritual strength flows from the simple understanding and belief that Jesus is God, that he founded a Church to transmit the grace of salvation in His Name, and that Church is the Roman Catholic Church.

I conclude with this post from Real Clear Religion, although Francis was not on a formal mission of peace, converting the muslims was his attempt to bring about peace. According to one scholar, Christopher Maier, "Francis like the crusaders wanted to liberate the holy places of Palestine from Muslim rule. What was different was his strategy...He wanted their total submission to the Christian faith."

Evangelize by first allowing the Lord to open the eyes of my heart

Coffey Anderson singing "Open the Eyes of My Heart" . Let it be a blessing to you today.

Gutsy Evangelist

National Review Online gives us a portrait of a gutsy evangelist from Egypt: Zakaria Botros:

Though he is little known in the West, Coptic priest Zakaria Botros — named Islam’s “Public Enemy #1” by the Arabic newspaper, al-Insan al-Jadid — has been making waves in the Islamic world. Along with fellow missionaries — mostly Muslim converts — he appears frequently on the Arabic channel al-Hayat (i.e., “Life TV”). There, he addresses controversial topics of theological significance — free from the censorship imposed by Islamic authorities or self-imposed through fear of the zealous mobs who fulminated against the infamous cartoons of Mohammed. Botros’s excurses on little-known but embarrassing aspects of Islamic law and tradition have become a thorn in the side of Islamic leaders throughout the Middle East.

Botros is an unusual figure onscreen: robed, with a huge cross around his neck, he sits with both the Koran and the Bible in easy reach. Egypt’s Copts — members of one of the oldest Christian communities in the Middle East — have in many respects come to personify the demeaning Islamic institution of “dhimmitude” (which demands submissiveness from non-Muslims, in accordance with Koran 9:29). But the fiery Botros does not submit, and minces no words. He has famously made of Islam “ten demands,” whose radical nature he uses to highlight Islam’s own radical demands on non-Muslims.

The result? Mass conversions to Christianity — if clandestine ones. View article …

The Invitation to THIS DANCE is the Meaning & Goal We All Seek

Image:La Trinité et tous les saints

From Deacon Keith A Fournier, Editor in Chief for Catholic Online, THE TRINITY: LIVING IN THE FAMILY OF GOD.

...It is a "eucharistic" view of the role of humanity in the wonder of creation.

In the actual text of the oldest Liturgy of Christianity, at the Eucharistic offering, the priest proclaims that the offering of Jesus is "for the life of the world" (liturgy of John Chrysostom; cf. John 6:51). That sense of offering oneself for the life of the world, in Jesus, lies at the heart of understanding the Christian mission and the meaning of life itself.

We are all invited into that communion through baptism into Jesus Christ! The “dance” of our relationship with Him and in Him and for Him continues through our participation in life in the Church, which is His Body. The Church now extends its circle of invitation through our participation in the world which will one day become His “kingdom”. (See, Revelations 11:15).

We are invited into the complete union of love with God and in Him, with one another! This experience begins now in our daily ‘ordinary” lives and will only reach its consummation in the life to come where we will be fully given over to God in this “dance”, this dynamic life of love.

The invitation to this dance is the meaning and goal of the spiritual life. Our response to God’s invitation to the dance opens us up to the very core of the meaning of our human existence!

(This is a reference from notes taken from Gil Bailie's ERI talk #1 in Wheaton, IL)

Prove It: You -- Looks Like a Great Book from Amy Welborn

Link to Amy Welborn's post on her new book

Then I move on to honesty, not only because this is a fundamental component to the life of a Christian, but because my experience with teens tells me casual, pragmatic dishonesty without a shred of guilt is a huge problem.

Is this, "pragmatic dishonesty without a shred of guilt" not also a huge problem with us adults as well? Where do the youth pick up this dishonesty without guilt but from their models?

More Than Mere Decoration - The Hard Command

To followup Athos' post The Hard Command and my post My Initial Take I add this from our friend over at Real Clear Religion, where Genevieve first quotes Ali Larijani and then comments:

'The US cannot by force impose the American way of life on Islamic societies, as democracy on the basis of secularism would not work (in the Islamic world)...Islam is not just a decoration in our lives, contrary to the West where the Vatican is decoration,'

Ali Larijani, Iran's chief nuclear negotiator, said in a meeting with religious scholars in Tehran.

Unfortunately, Larijani's criticism is not entirely without merit. Due to the mass apostasy from the Christian Faith in the West, the Vatican and more importantly the Church, has become no more than an old discarded decoration and a vestige of the past. Only when our faith becomes more than mere decoration, will our eyes be opened to the devastation that Islam poses to our civilization.

Aramis wonders, how many, oh how many of us, simply wear our Christian faith as decorations keeping it on our shirt sleeves, not ever risking a chance that it would seep into our hardened hearts, turning them into soft and pliable instruments of Christ?

Seems to me that a priority among Christians should be the deepening of our faith and a prime source for this journey would be to become a student of Pope Benedict XVI. Another way is to become involved in the Emmaus Road Initiative with Gil Bailie. Gil so aptly wrote about the project:

Pope Benedict XVI has written of the need "to reinvest with some concrete and particular meaning theological statements about the uniqueness and the absolute value of Christianity." Pope Benedict has also pointed the way to accomplishing this by suggesting that a collaboration between theology and anthropology can lead to "the truly most exciting part of Christian faith." The Emmaus Road Initiative is an effort to rediscover this excitement by drawing on René Girard's extraordinary anthropological insight into Christian uniqueness and on the rich theological tradition to which Girard's work makes an invaluable contribution.

Today we honor St. Bartholomew and in the words of Pope Benedict XVI, "we can say that despite the scarcity of information about him, St Bartholomew stands before us to tell us that attachment to Jesus can also be lived and witnessed to without performing sensational deeds. Jesus himself, to whom each one of us is called to dedicate his or her own life and death, is and remains extraordinary."

Don't so much worry about the splinter in the other's eye, but get to the removal of the log from our own eye - the log which weakens our attachment to Christ - so that like Bartholomew we may forever be decreasing so that Christ might increase, in our lives as well as in the lives of others.

The Hard Command

In an article from the Washington Post, "Albania Takes Aim at a Deadly Tradition," an amazing truth about human nature itself is touched upon and passed over without realization.

In the realm of the Bible, the Sacred Scripture of the Catholic Church, a "given" is that vengeance is a major source of social catastrophe. As Gil Bailie says, "The first homicide, which is really a fratricide occurs [in my Bible] on page 4, and thereafter the thing is awash in blood. And it reaches its denouement by Christian standards at a ghastly public execution; then it finally culminates in scenes of apocalyptic violence ... What’s strange is that it just now dawned on us that this book is about violence. About violence, religion, and truth."

This story from Albania is about revenge and the thirst for blood too, and that Albania is somehow trying to address this "problem" shows how poorly modern (how Belloc hated that adjective; it only means current, but carries the airs of pomposity and strutting) social science understands the depth of the Christian message. For that, we must turn to a retired philsopher from the University of Chicago, Leszek Kolakowski. In his Modernity on Endless Trial [Univ. of Chicago, 1990], this hardened old humanist and no Christian himself wrote the following about the benefits of this biblical faith for the world:

Our natural forces can find no safe shelter against evil; all we can do is practice the art of balancing opposing dangers. And this is precisely what the Christian tradition affirms in its statement that certain results of original sin are inescapable, and that if salvation is possible, it can only be through grace.

There are reasons why we need Christianity, but not just any kind of Christianity. We do not need a Christianity that makes political revolution, that rushes to cooperate with so-called sexual liberation, that approves our concupiscence or praises our violence. There are enough forces in the world to do all these things without the aid of Christianity. We need a Christianity that will help us to move beyond the immediate pressures of life, that gives us insight into the basic limits of the human condition and the capacity to accept them, a Christianity that teaches the simple truth that there is not only a tomorrow but a day after tomorrow as well … the strength of Christianity does not reveal itself in a theocracy or in a monopoly on the creation of rules for all areas of civilization. Its strength in this interpretation is manifested in its ability to build a barrier against hatred in the consciousness of individuals …

The requirement of the renunciation of hatred was a challenge thrown down by Christianity to human nature, and it has remained so. If Christians are to be found only among those who know how to meet this challenge, who are disciples of Jesus in the sense that they do not escape from the struggle, but are free from hatred – how many have there been, and how many are there now in the world? I do not know. I do not know whether there were more in the middle ages than there are now. However many there are, they are the salt of the earth, and European civilization would be a desert without them. [84-85, 92 - My emphases]

What Kolakowski discerns as "renunciation of hatred" is the injunction of Our Lord to forgive and even pray for our enemies. It is a short circuit not only in the escalation of violence written of between two Albanian families, but that of all human beings who fall for the satanic injunction of vengeance as their "sacred duty."

Christianity has only recently begun the hard work of not scapegoating as Jesus taught us. Some have fallen into a kind of nihilistic paralysis in the wake of not scapegoating as the principle of culture-creating and culture-sustaining, but this is simply the failure of accepting the grace necessary to live the ethics of the Sermon on the Mount.

Other religions are just that -- religions -- that, by anthropological definition are built on sacred violence and hatred. Christians have the hard job ahead of living up to Our Lord's command: "Love your enemies and pray for those who persecute you, that you may be children of your heavenly Father..." [Matt 5,44-45a]

And, echoing Kolakowski in a paraphrase, How many Christians are there who do not escape the struggle and are free from hatred in the world? I do not know. I do not know whether there were more in the middle ages than there are now. However many there are, they are the salt of the earth, and civilization would be a desert without them.