Pope Francis to release apostolic exhortation “Evangelii Gaudium”

(CNA/EWTN News)  The Vatican announced today that Pope Francis will officially deliver his first post-synodal apostolic exhortation to coincide with the end of the Year of Faith.

During a Nov. 18 press conference, the Holy See revealed that the title of the new document is “Evangelii Gaudium,” or “The Joy of the Gospel,” which will be publicly proclaimed by the Pope during the closing Mass for the Year of Faith on Sunday, Nov. 24.

The exhortation is a concluding document of last year’s Synod of Bishops, which centered on the theme of “The New Evangelization for the Transmission of the Christian Faith.”

Although the Pope will make the first announcement on the Nov. 24, the official presentation will take place on Tuesday, Nov. 26 in the John Paul II Hall of the Vatican.

Pope Francis will deliver the exhortation to “a bishop, a priest, a deacon, religious men and women, novices, a family, catechists, artists, journalists, young people, the elderly and the sick” noted Archbishop Rino Fisichella.

Archbishop Fisichella, who will be present at the official presentation on Nov. 26, is the President of the Pontifical Council for the promotion of the New Evangelization.

“Namely,” he continued, “it will be delivered to all those in various stages of life, who as Christians, are called to be evangelizers.”

“The Year of Faith becomes a commitment that the Church assumes her duty once again to bring the Gospel to every creature,” added the archbishop.

Altogether, there will be 36 people present for the event representing 18 different countries and five continents, the Vatican during the press release.

Special note was made that the Bishop, priest and deacon that the Pope will deliver the exhortation to come from Letonia, Tanzania  Australia, and were chosen because of their youth.

It was also made known that the document might not be a “classical ‘post-synodal’” apostolic exhortation, and due to this fact the preparation and structure of the document remain unknown.

Marian Day: Pope Francis and Benedict XVI to welcome statue of Our Lady of Fatima

(Vatican Radio) Pope Francis will consecrate the world to the Immaculate Heart of Mary on October 13^th as part of Marian Day celebrations that will involve the statue of Our Lady of Fatima.
The statue is normally kept in the Shrine of Fatima in Portugal but will be in Rome this weekend for the consecration which is one of the highlights of the ongoing Year of Faith.
Our Lady of Fatima appeared to three shepherd children in the village of Fatima in Portugal in 1917. She warned of violent trials in the twentieth century if the world did not make reparation for sins. She urged prayer and devotion to the Immaculate Heart of Mary. John Preiss is President of the Fatima Family Apostolate in Alabama, U.S. and he spoke to Susy Hodges about the significance of this weekend’s events and the veneration of Our Lady of Fatima.
Listen to the full interview with John Preiss: 
Preiss says Our Lady of Fatima “gives us a message of hope” and notes how at Pope Francis’s specific request, his pontificate was consecrated to Our Lady of Fatima on May 13^th, her feast day. Asked whether this message of Fatima is sufficiently well known and appreciated, Preiss says there is a need for Catholics “to learn the message, to live the message and to spread the message” and agrees that it needs “to be publicized better.” He says the younger generations, in particular, lack the religious formation of the older generation and often have not been taught to pray the rosary at home as Our Lady of Fatima asked us to do.
Preiss also spoke about Blessed Pope John Paul’s known devotion to Our Lady of Fatima and how the bullet that a gunman fired at him during an attempted assassination attempt that occurred on the feast day of Fatima (May 13^th, 1981) was donated to the crown adorning the head of the statue of Our Lady of Fatima.

Archbishop Chaput: Fire Upon the Earth

The following comes from Archbishop Chaput at First Things:

These remarks were delivered the evening of October 1 at Philadelphia’s St. Charles Borromeo Seminary as part of a Year of Faith discussion series.

In the Gospel of Matthew, Jesus speaks the first words of his adult ministry not to his family or to his friends—but to his adversary, Satan, in the desert. He says,“Man shall not live by bread alone, but by every word that proceeds from the mouth of God.” And in the Gospel of Mark, Jesus begins his public ministry with these first words: “The time is fulfilled, and the kingdom of God is at hand; repent, and believe in the gospel.”

My goal tonight is to speak about personal conversion and the new evangelization, through the lens of the Year of Faith. And I’d like to do that in three steps. First, I’ll revisit what a “year of faith” is, and why Pope Benedict felt we needed one. Second,I’ll talk about Pope Francis and the new spirit he brings to witnessing our faith as a Church. And third and most important, I’ll speak about what we need to do, and how we need to live, going forward—in other words, how we might share our faith so fully and joyfully that we truly become God’s lumen gentium, God’s “light to the nations.”

Before we start though, I want to go back to those two verses from Matthew and Mark, because they frame our whole discussion tonight.

This is the verse from Matthew: Man shall not live by bread alone, but by every word that proceeds from the mouth of God. In the Gospel, when Jesus says these words, he’s ravenous from forty days in the desert. But he’s speaking with the devil here about a great deal more than bread. Men and women need food and shelter to survive. These things are basic to their dignity. But they need God to be fully alive. Human beings are more than a bundle of appetites. Our longings go beyond what we can see and touch and taste. We were made for God. And material answers to questions of the soul can never be more than a narcotic. The proof is all around us. So much of the suffering in modern American life—we see it every day—can be traced to our misdirected desires, and the distractions we use to feed them. We look for joy and purpose in things that can never give us either.

Here’s the verse from Mark: The time is fulfilled, and the kingdom of God is at hand; repent and believe in the gospel. This is one of the key moments in all of Scripture. Jesus comes out of the desert on fire with the presence of his Father. He calls on us to wake up from the darkness in our lives. He speaks with passion and urgency. And that’s how we need to hear his words, because time matters. Time is the only thing in life we truly own, and none of us has more than a little of it. God is near. The kingdom is coming. What we do right now to prepare for it—tonight, tomorrow, and for however long God gives us in the world—has consequences not only for ourselves, but for the people we touch with our lives.

The kingdom of God is at hand. God’s kingdom builds on two foundation stones in the human heart: repentance and belief. Repentance makes us new, and it makes us sane. It makes us new because it gives us a chance to begin again by healing the evil we’ve done. It makes us sane because it’s an act of humility and truth telling. It forces us to look honestly at who we are, how we’ve failed, and the people we’ve wounded. And belief—specifically belief in the gospel, belief in the “good news,” because that’s what the Old English word “god-spell” means—gives us the ability to hope that despite all our failures, despite our insignificance and sins, the greatness of God’s love can reach down and redeem even us. We have a future, we have meaning, we have hope for something more than this life, because we belong to a people that God calls his own and loves without limits. And he proves his love with the sacrifice of his own son.

That brings us to the first step in our talk tonight:

What a “year of faith” is, and why Pope Benedict felt we needed one.

Benedict announced the current Year of Faith in his apostolic letter Porta Fidei, or “Door of Faith.” The Year began on October 11, 2012, the fiftieth anniversary of the opening of Vatican II and the twentieth anniversary of the publication of theCatechism of the Catholic Church. It ends next month on the Solemnity of Christ the King.

A Year of Faith is a time set aside by the Church to focus on the meaning of our baptism—in other words, who we are, what we believe, and how we’re called to act as a Christian community. Pope Paul VI announced the last Year of Faith in 1967, hoping to heal the ambiguity and turmoil in the Church that followed Vatican II. That was a turbulent time. And yet, despite the confusion of the ’60s, Paul led a Church that still had a strong memory of her own unity and purpose. The Church pursued her mission in a developed world that was still broadly influenced by a Christian moral vision and vocabulary.

Times have changed over the past five decades. In many ways, the challenges facing the Church in the world, and the fractures even within her own house, have grown more difficult. In Pope Benedict’s words, we now live in a world marked by “a profound crisis of faith.” And this fact shaped the course of his entire pontificate.

In Porta Fidei, Benedict listed three reasons for calling a Year of Faith. He hoped Christians would be led to profess the faith more fully and with conviction; to deepen their encounter with Jesus Christ in the Liturgy, especially in the Eucharist, and towitness the faith more credibly by the example of their lives. He stressed that “A Christian may never think of belief as a private act. Faith [involves] choosing to stand with the Lord so as to live with him.” Therefore faith, “precisely because it is a free act, also demands social responsibility for what one believes.”

Above all, in living the Year of Faith, Benedict wanted the Church and her pastors to recover the courage and zeal “to lead people out of the desert toward the place of life,” toward the God who gives us life in abundance.

Now those are beautiful words. We need to take them to heart. The image of man’s “crisis of faith” as a desert is a powerful one, and true. But if surgeons have just saved your child from cancer, it can be very hard to see the modern world as wounded or empty of meaning. Vatican II understood this clearly in describing the modern age as a patchwork of light and shadow. There’s enormous beauty and good in the world. Humanity has achieved great things. We have a right to take joy and pride in them. But just as we can often learn the right lessons from a failure, we can also learn the wrong lessons from success. Rich or poor, mighty or weak, every one of us is mortal. Every one of us will die. And so will every one of the people we love. It’s profoundlyrational to ask what our lives mean; to acknowledge the limits of our reasoning and senses; and to hope for and seek something more than this life. But these questions—so urgent, so fundamental—are exactly the ones modern life buries under a mudflow of distractions and narcotics.

One of the conceits of our age is the idea that reason and science have banished superstition and brought a new era of light to human affairs. Faith, sin, heaven, hell, God and grace—these are throwback ideas to a dark age of supernatural mumbo jumbo and witch burnings, doomed to the dustbin of history. In effect, this is the atheist version of a creation myth. It’s a sunny theory. And for people who imagine themselves as materialists, it can be very comforting.

But it’s false. As scholars like Christian Smith and many others have shown, there’s really no such thing as an “unbeliever.” We all put our faith in something. In fact, we all believe in things we can’t see or prove every day, including the premises we use to organize our understanding of reality. Science operates off first principles—in other words, assumptions about the nature of reality—that can never be proven by science itself.

The cultural power of science comes from its ability to explain many of the observable workings of reality, and also from the technology it creates, which can be very useful in humanity’s service. The trouble is that scientists are also directly or indirectly responsible for Sarin gas, Hiroshima and Nagasaki, the technology that murdered six million Jews and the “morning after” abortion pill. Both of the great murder ideologies of the last century—Marxism-Leninism and National Socialism—based their claims to legitimacy on science. More human beings were gassed, starved, aborted, burned, or shot in the name of genetic and racial hygiene, or the laws of history, or scientific materialism in the twentieth century than died in all the previous nineteen centuries of religious conflict and persecution combined.

Some years ago Alasdair MacIntyre wrote that the “new dark ages [are] already upon us”—a darkness brought on not by religion, but by the vanity, moral confusion and failure of the Enlightenment. The key difference between the sixth century and our own, said McIntyre, is that this time “[the] barbarians are not waiting beyond the frontiers; they have already been governing us for quite some time. And it is our lack of consciousness of this [fact] that constitutes part of our predicament.”

MacIntyre’s words may explain a lot about the framework of Catholic thought over the past two hundred years. The Church is a global community. But her heartland for centuries has been Europe. Issues in Europe and the developed world have tended to mold her agenda. Quite apart from the mistakes and sins of her own leaders, the Church in Europe in the years since the Enlightenment has faced constant pressure from revolutionary violence, intellectual contempt, ideological atheism, idolatry of the nation state, two disastrous world wars, and mass genocides. And Catholic attempts to hold on to the Church’s privileges have often made conflicts worse.

Today a new and even more effective atheism—the practical atheism of an advanced but morally empty liberal consumer culture—is pushing the Church to society’s margins. This, on a European continent that owes much of its identity and history to the Christian faith. And we can see some of the same trends now in Canada and the United States.

Obviously I’m using a very broad brush here. There’s no way to squeeze a couple of centuries of Church life into a few sentences. But thinking like this has helped me imagine what God may hope for us in the leadership of our new universal pastor and bishop of Rome. And that brings us to the second step in my talk tonight:

Pope Francis and the new spirit he brings to witnessing our faith as a Church.

Pope Francis issued his first encyclical, Lumen Fidei or “Light of Faith,” in June—just three months after his installation. Benedict clearly helped shape the text. But Popes don’t put their names on major teaching documents unless they believe in the content. So in seeking to understand Francis, it’s worth hearing some of his words from Lumen Fidei.

Here’s a passage. “Faith consists in the willingness to let ourselves be constantly transformed and renewed by God’s call . . . The beginning of salvation is openness to something prior to ourselves, to a primordial gift that affirms life and sustain it in being.”

Here’s another. “Faith is necessarily ecclesial; it is professed from within the body of Christ as a concrete communion of believers . . . Faith is not a private matter, a completely individualistic notion or a personal opinion: It comes from hearing, and it is meant to find expression in words and to be proclaimed.”

Here’s a third. “In the Bible, the heart is the core of the human person, where all his or her different dimensions intersect: body and spirit, interiority and openness to the world and to others, intellect, will and affectivity . . . Faith transforms the whole person precisely to the extent that he or she becomes open to love.”

And here’s a fourth and final passage. “[Love] requires truth. Only to the extent that love is grounded in truth can it endure over time . . . [And if] love needs truth, truth also needs love. Love and truth are inseparable.”

My point is this: Anyone hoping for—or worried about—a break by Pope Francis from Catholic teaching on matters of substance is going to be mistaken. At the same time, the tone of this pontificate will certainly be distinct from anything in the past century. Pope Francis has been formed by experiences very unlike the factors that shaped John XXIII, Paul VI, John Paul II, and Benedict XVI.

Francis said shortly after his election that the cardinals had chosen a bishop of Rome from the “[far] end of the world.” Argentina may be the most European of Latin American countries, but Pope Francis’ world as a priest and bishop has been the global South, the problems that wound it and the poor who inhabit it.

Last Sunday’s reading from the Book of Amos (6:1, 4-7)—“Woe to the complacent in Zion, lying on beds of ivory”—would resonate with this Pope in a uniquely vivid way. So would the Gospel reading from Luke (16:19-31) about the Rich Man and Lazarus. In other words, Pope Francis comes to the moral and cultural struggles of the Church in the North from a different perspective.

A lot of commentators have already analyzed the recent La Civilta Cattolicainterview with Pope Francis. I wrote about it myself last week. I won’t revisit what I said here. But I do want to highlight some words in the interview that struck me as a clue to the way his Pope thinks about the future. The interviewer asked Pope Francis about the relationship between the “ancient” Churches of the developed world, the global North, and the “young” Churches of the developing world, including the global South. The Holy Father answered this way:

The young Catholic Churches, as they grow, develop a synthesis of faith, culture and life, and so it is a synthesis different from the one developed by the ancient Churches. For me, the relationship between the ancient Catholic Churches and the young ones is similar to the relationship between young and elderly people in a society. They build the future, the young ones with their strength and the others with their wisdom. You always run some risks, of course. The younger Churches are likely to feel self-sufficient; the ancient ones are likely to want to impose on the younger Churches their cultural models. But we build the future together.

How that future will play out is unclear. It holds opportunity and risk; ambiguity and hope. But God is in charge. God will guide his Church. And God will fill this holy man who is our Pope with the wisdom to lead us well.

That brings us to the third and last step in these thoughts tonight:

What we as Catholics need to do, and how we need to live, in the years ahead.

I think we make a mistake when we identify the “new evangelization” too closely with techniques or technologies or programs. It’s true that using the new means of communication to advance the Gospel is important. We just founded the Cardinal John Foley Chair in social communications here at the seminary. And I’m glad we did. Today’s mass media are reshaping society. They influence how we think, what we buy and how we live. We need to understand the language and master the tools of the modern world. Through them, with God’s help, we can do a better job of bringing Jesus Christ to our people, and our people to Jesus Christ.

But the main instrument of the new evangelization is the same as the old evangelization. It’s you and me. There’s no way around those words: Repent and believe in the gospel. The world will change only when you change, when we change, because hearts are won by personal witness. And we can’t share what we don’t have.

The words and habits of religion are easy. We can sometimes use them to fool ourselves. We need to drill down below the counterfeit Christianity so many of us prefer into the substance of who we are and what we really treasure. We need to let God transform us from the inside out, and conversion requires humility, patience and love. It requires letting go of the desire to vindicate ourselves at the expense of others. So much of modern life, even in the Church, is laced with a spirit of anger. And anger is an addiction as intense and as toxic as crack.

Pharisees come in all shapes and sizes, left and right. We need to be different. As Pope Francis said in his La Civilta Cattolica interview, the Church needs to be more than “a nest protecting our mediocrity.” We prove or disprove what we claim to believe by the zeal and joy of our lives. What we need to do in the years ahead is what God has always asked us to do: forgive each other; encourage each other; protect the weak; serve the needy; raise the young in virtue; speak with courage; and work for the truth without ceasing—always in a spirit of love.

There’s a passage in The Confessions where St. Augustine writes “My weight is my love.” For Augustine, the more our hearts burn with the love of God, the more the heat of that love carries us upward into his presence. And I think this is exactly what Jesus means in the Gospel of Luke, when he says “I came to cast fire upon the earth, and would that it were already kindled.” A world on fire with the love of God is a world redeemed; a world lifted up on the heat of that love into the arms of God.

The reason the world has paused for Pope Francis—if only for a little while—is that so many people sense in him something more than himself; not just God’s truth and God’s justice, but God’s tenderness. It’s the tenderness Charles Peguy captured in his poem “God’s Dream,” where God says:

[From] those who share my dreams
I ask a little patience,
a little humor,
some small courage,
and a listening heart—
I will do the rest.

Then they will risk,
and wonder at their daring;
run—and marvel at their speed;
build—and stand in awe of the beauty of their building . . .

So come now—
Be content.
It is my dream you dream,
my house you build,
my caring you witness,
my love you share.

And this is the heart of the matter.

The heart of the matter is God’s love. It always has been. It always will be. So as we draw to the close of this Year of Faith, may God turn our hearts to him, and make us a “fire upon the earth”—a fire that lifts up his creation in love.

Charles J. Chaput, O.F.M. Cap., is the Archbishop of Philadelphia.

Pope Francis to consecrate the world to Immaculate Heart of Mary

The following comes from the Catholic Herald:

Pope Francis will consecrate the world to the Immaculate Heart of Mary on October 13. The consecration will take place as part of a pilgrimage that will bring thousands of members of groups promoting Marian piety to the Vatican.

The Shrine of Our Lady of Fatima in Portugal announced in early August that Pope Francis requested that the original statue of Our Lady of Fatima be brought to the Vatican for the celebration.

Archbishop Rino Fisichella, president of the Pontifical Council for the Promotion of the New Evangelisation, wrote in a letter to Bishop Antonio Marto of Leiria-Fatima: “The Holy Father strongly desires that the Marian day may have present, as a special sign, one of the most significant Marian icons for Christians throughout the world and, for that reason, we thought of the beloved original Statue of Our Lady of Fatima.”

The statue of Our Lady of Fatima is scheduled to travel to Rome on October 12. It will be only the 11th time since the statue was made in 1920 that it has been removed from the Portuguese Marian shrine.

Pope Francis and the pilgrims will welcome the statue to St Peter’s Square during an evening prayer service on October 12. The statue will then be taken to the Rome Shrine of Divine Love, where the Diocese of Rome plans an all-night vigil.

The statue and the pilgrims will return to St Peter’s Square on October 13 for the recitation of the rosary and Mass with Pope Francis. In a press statement, the directors of the Fatima shrine said Pope Francis will consecrate the world to Mary during the event.

The Marian pilgrimage is part of the Year of Faith celebrations that will resume in late September with an international meeting of catechists.

The International Conference on Catechesis will run from September 26-28 and will bring together leaders of national and diocesan offices for religious education. After the conference they will begin a two-day Year of Faith pilgrimage to the tomb of St Peter and they will also celebrate Mass with Pope Francis.

In another Year of Faith event, Catholic families from around the world will gather in Rome’s Piazza del Popolo and walk to St Peter’s Square for a celebration of family life with Pope Francis on October 26. The Pope will celebrate Mass with the families in St. Peter’s Square on the following day.

The Year of Faith, convoked by Benedict XVI to mark the 50th anniversary of the beginning of the Second Vatican Council, will conclude on November 24.

Ralph Martin: The Strait and Narrow Path of the New Evangelization

Our Father in Faith

Fr. Robert Barron: A Commentary on Lumen Fidei

Lumen Fidei: A Summary on Pope Francis' First Encyclical

The following comes from Kevin Cotter at Focus:

Pope Francis has released his first encyclical along with some help from Pope Benedict XVI who completed most of the draft before he resigned from the Papacy.

[For more basic facts on the release of this encyclical, see 7 Things You Need to Know about Pope Francis’ First Encyclical]

First, this encyclical is fantastic. I think the Church will be thinking, praying, and quoting this one for a very long time. The Church, especially in the West, is hungry for a renewal of the faith. During this Year of Faith, this encyclical on faith is a tremendous addition to the conversation that is going on throughout the world.

Second, the purpose of this blog post is to give a summary of the encyclical. After its release, there will be plenty of news articles about the encyclical that will report a few of the major themes or quotes of the document.

[Follow Pope Alarm on Twitter or Like us on Facebook to receive to get these quotes and share them with others].

Others will want to read the entire document, but might not have the time to do so right away. My goal is to provide an outline and a summary of the document to help increase the interest in this great work and to provide motivation for people to read through and learn more about our faith and how they can apply it to their lives.

[To read the entire encyclical -- PDF version: http://ow.ly/mGnAd; Online version at vatican.vahttp://ow.ly/mGnCt]

Outline of the document

Chapter 1 – We Have Believed in Love (cf. 1 John 4:16)

Chapter 2 – Unless You Believe, You Will Not Understand (cf. Isaiah 7:9)

Chapter 3 – I Delivered to You What I Also Received (cf. 1 Corinthians 15:3)

Chapter 4 – God Prepares a City for Them (cf. Hebrews 11:16)

Two options

1. You can read the summary of each chapter of the encyclical. This part appears first.

2. You can read the summary of each chapter with quotes. This part appears second.

Summary of the introduction:

The encyclical starts with what the ancients put their faith in and proceeds to move directly to what our culture believes about faith – that it is something for the blind, those driven by emotion. But, at the same time, our culture is discovering that reason is not enough. Confusion has set in on what is good and evil, right and wrong. Faith in Jesus and love in Him gives us a new vision to see the world.

Summary of Chapter 1:

Chapter 1 reviews Salvation History—the story of God’s people—to see faith throughout history. It begins with Abraham who St. Paul often quotes and uses as an example in the New Testament. It is noted that God speaks and acts towards Abraham as one in a relationship, not as a god who is far away. Our faith in Him calls us to make a step forward—to go on a journey with Him, just like Abraham. In this journey, our relationships with God are not just about our faith in Him, but in His faith in us! We can jeopardize this relationship with idolatry. The story of Israel points to the temptation of idolatry—to worship that which we make with our own hands. Finally, the story of faith finds its summation in Jesus. He is the fulfillment of all of God’s promises and at the same time shows us why we can trust Him—He died for us! Because He came into our reality, we can now truly see reality. God is not something beyond us; He is someone who acts in the here and now.

Summary of Chapter 2:

Chapter 2 seeks to understand the relationship between faith and several other aspects—reason, love, truth, and theology. Lumen Fidei shows that truth is necessary for faith so that it can remain grounded. Faith is rooted in reality when it is rooted in truth. Similarly, our love for God has to have this truth as well or it be fleeting like emotions. Love is needed with faith so that truth does not become cold and impersonal.

Our culture often believes that truth that is meant for everyone is by its very nature like a dictator. But, truth for everyone can reveal a common good for everyone and when it is done in love it can be personalized to each individual.

In the end, truth in the Catholic faith possesses us; we do not possess truth. As we become more possessed by truth, we grow in humility and in the knowledge of the faith. By taking on knowledge and humility, we are more capable of sharing this truth with others who are seeking it. A truth that will truly fulfill what they are ultimately searching for.

Summary of Chapter 3:

Ultimately, faith and truth are received in community. The nature of our lives forces us to have faith in the truth others are giving us—from our names to our language. The same is for our Christian faith which is passed on from one generation to the next. We accept this faith in a community and in the communion of the Church.

Specially, the sacraments allow us to experience this faith. We are received into the community of the Church through Baptism and encounter the love and gift of Jesus in the Eucharist. In the Eucharist, we experience the past gift that God has given us while seeing the future of our eternal home. In addition to the sacraments, the Our Father and the Decalogue gives us a new vision and a new path to live while united to our community. This community stays unified through the apostolic tradition and apostolic succession which safeguards truth and allows our faith to be handed on. Believers must believe in all of what the Church teaches or they endanger unity.

Summary of Chapter 4

In this final chapter, Lumen Fidei shows how faith should be the foundation of our society. Faith is needed for the foundation of our society, marriage and family. In marriage, men and women have faith in a common good and a hope beyond themselves. In this faith and in this love, they provide a model of faith and a place with faith grows as children place their trust in their parents.

This foundation of family helps form our other relationships as well. Men and women cannot have true brotherhood without a common father. Faith in God provides this common faith so that our societies can endure. It also provides the dignity of the human person which is needed in our societies as well.

Faith also provides strength in suffering. Faith does not answer every question, but provides a lamp to help us navigate through the darkness and the presence of God who is with us personally in our suffering.

In the end, faith should provide us with joy. Just as Mary accepted Jesus with joy, we too should follow her example. The sign of our faith lives should be a joy in Jesus.

Introduction

Summary of this introduction:

The encyclical starts with what the ancients put their faith in and proceeds to move directly to what our culture believes about faith – that it is something for the blind, those driven by emotion. But, at the same time, our culture is discovering that reason is not enough. Confusion has set in on what is good and evil, right and wrong. Faith in Jesus and love in Him gives us a new vision to see the world.

Some notable quotes from the introduction:

What our culture often believes about faith:

“Faith thus appeared to some as an illusory light, preventing mankind from boldly setting out in quest of knowledge.” (No. 2)

“Faith would thus be the illusion of light, an illusion which blocks the path of a liberated humanity to its future.” (No. 2)

“Faith was thus understood either as a leap in the dark, to be taken in the absence of light, driven by blind emotions” (No. 2)

The truth about faith and reason:

“Slowly but surely, however, it would become evident that the light of autonomous reason is not enough to illumine the future.” (No. 3)

“Yet, in the absence of light everything becomes confused; it is impossible to tell good from evil, or the goad to our destination from other roads which take us in endless circles, going nowhere.” (No. 3)

“The light of faith is unique, since it is capable of illuminating every aspect of human existence.” (No. 4)

“Transformed by this love, we gain fresh vision, new eyes to see” (No. 4)

The Creed

The Faith of Christians

Scott Hahn: Catechism and the Year of Faith

Read the Catechism for the Year of Faith

For this Year of Faith, Pope Benedict has encouraged you to study and reflect on the Catechism of the Catholic Church. Well, here's an easy way to do it. Simply click here and go to the flocknote site and enter your email address and - starting October 11, 2012 - you'll start getting a little bit of the Catechism emailed to you every morning. Read that little bit every day and you'll read the whole catechism in a year.

Catholicism: Faith Formation

Focus on Christ!

More on the Year of Faith from the Vatican

The following comes from the CNA:

The Vatican issued guidelines Jan. 5 for how the Church at all levels should celebrate the Year of Faith, which starts in October 2012.

A summary of the guideline document, which was produced by the Congregation for the Doctrine, was released on Jan. 5, but the full text will be published Saturday, Jan. 7.

The introduction to the guidelines explains that the Year of Faith is “intended to contribute to a renewed conversion to the Lord Jesus and to the rediscovery of faith, so that the members of the Church will be credible and joy-filled witnesses to the Risen Lord, capable of leading those many people who are seeking it to the door of faith.”

The Year of Faith was announced by Pope Benedict XVI last year in his apostolic letter “Porta Fidei.” It will begin on October 11, 2012, the 50th anniversary of the opening of the Second Vatican Council. It also coincides with the 20th anniversary of the publication of the Catechism of the Catholic Church. The year will end on November 24, 2013, the Solemnity of Our Lord Jesus Christ Universal King.

The document from the Vatican’s doctrinal congregation offers a sketch of what should take place at every level of the Church during the Year of Faith.

At the universal level, the Pope will engage in various events, including the solemn opening of the Year of Faith, the Assembly of the Synod of Bishops in Rome, and World Youth Day 2013 in Brazil. There will also be “various ecumenical initiatives” aimed at “the restoration of unity among all Christians,” including “a solemn ecumenical celebration in which all of the baptized will reaffirm their faith in Christ.”

Bishops’ conferences will focus on increasing the “quality of catechesis.” Some of the efforts in this area will involve examining “local catechisms and various catechetical supplements in use in the particular Churches,” in order “to ensure their complete conformity with the Catechism of the Catholic Church.”

The Vatican body also hopes that the bishops’ conferences will use the media to evangelize, such as “television and radio transmissions, films and publications focusing on the faith, its principles and content.”

At the level of dioceses, the Year of Faith is expected to provide an occasion for “renewed creative dialogue between faith and reason,” among both the academic and artistic communities. It should also be a year for “penitential celebrations” in which Catholics can “ask for God's forgiveness, especially for sins against faith.”

In local parishes, the Vatican would like to see a focus on the liturgy, especially the Eucharist, since in it the “mystery of faith and source of the new evangelization, the faith of the Church is proclaimed, celebrated and strengthened.”

Religious institutes, new communities and ecclesial movements are also expected to take their lead in celebrating the Year from the pastoral guidelines.

The Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith hopes that the Year of Faith will make the Second Vatican Council and the Catechism “more widely and deeply known” throughout the Church.

“From the beginning of his pontificate, Pope Benedict XVI has worked decisively for a correct understanding of the Council,” says the document, “rejecting as erroneous the so-called ‘hermeneutic of discontinuity and rupture’ and promoting what he himself has termed ‘the ‘hermeneutic of reform,’ of renewal in continuity.’”

The Vatican’s doctrinal congregation says that their pastoral recommendations are aimed at helping people encounter Christ and grow in their understanding of the Catholic faith. At the same time, it adds, the guidelines are not meant to rule out “other initiatives which the Holy Spirit will inspire among Pastors and faithful in various parts of the world.”

The document concludes by announcing the creation of a secretariat to help coordinate the Year of Faith. It will be established within the Pontifical Council for the Promotion of the New Evangelization.

Pope Benedict's letter explains urgent need for 'Year of Faith'

The following comes from the CNA:

Pope XVI Benedict says the Church's “Year of Faith,” starting October 2012, comes in response to a “profound crisis of faith that has affected many people” and left them searching for answers.

“Ever since the start of my ministry as Successor of Peter, I have spoken of the need to rediscover the journey of faith so as to shed ever clearer light on the joy and renewed enthusiasm of the encounter with Christ,” the Pope wrote in his letter, "Porta Fidei" (Door of Faith), announcing the yearlong initiative.

“The 'door of faith' is always open for us, ushering us into the life of communion with God and offering entry into His Church,” he reflected. “It is possible to cross that threshold when the word of God is proclaimed and the heart allows itself to be shaped by transforming grace.”

The Year of Faith will begin Oct. 11, 2012, the 50th anniversary of the opening of the Second Vatican Council. That same date is the 20th anniversary of Blessed John Paul II's publication of the Catechism of the Catholic Church, a text Pope Benedict said was meant to show “the power and beauty of the faith.”

It will conclude on Nov. 24, 2013, the Solemnity of Christ the King.

October 2012 will also be the occasion of the Church's next General Assembly of the Synod of Bishops, on the theme of “The New Evangelization for the Transmission of the Christian Faith.” This event, the Pope noted, “will be a good opportunity to usher the whole Church into a time of particular reflection and rediscovery of the faith.”

Next year's celebration is not the Church's first “Year of Faith.” In 1967, Pope Paul VI presided over an observance on the same theme, which that Pope described as a response to the “disturbance” and “perplexity” surrounding the faith after the Second Vatican Council.

Pope Benedict explained that the new Year of Faith gives an opportunity to show how that council's documents support the historic traditions of the Church, when properly understood. He encouraged believers to study the Catechism of the Catholic Church during the upcoming year, saying the text was “one of the most important fruits of the Second Vatican Council.”

By studying their faith, believers can learn to explain it in light of new circumstances driving others to doubt or disbelieve.

“To a greater extent than in the past, faith is now being subjected to a series of questions arising from a changed mentality which, especially today, limits the field of rational certainties to that of scientific and
technological discoveries,” Pope Benedict observed.


“Nevertheless, the Church has never been afraid of demonstrating that there cannot be any conflict between faith and genuine science, because both, albeit via different routes, tend towards the truth.”

The Pope said it would be a matter “of decisive importance” for Catholics to look back on the history of their faith during the 2012-2013 year, to gain an understanding of how the Church continues Christ's mission of redemption.

“In him who died and rose again for our salvation,” he said, “the examples of faith that have marked these two thousand years of our salvation history are brought into the fullness of light.”

Pope Benedict has asked the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith to draw up more specific guidelines on how to “live this Year of Faith in the most effective and appropriate ways, at the service of belief and evangelization.”

He cited the words of the Virgin Mary's cousin Elizabeth, on the occasion of their visitation before Christ's birth, as he asked Catholics to “entrust this time of grace to the Mother of God, proclaimed 'blessed because she believed.'”

Pope Benedict declares the Year of Faith

The following comes from the CNA:

Pope Benedict XVI has declared a “Year of Faith” which will begin in October 2012, the 50th anniversary of the opening of the Second Vatican Council.

“It will be a moment of grace and commitment to a more complete conversion to God, to strengthen our faith in Him and proclaim Him with joy to the people of our time,” said the Pope, making his announcement during Sunday Mass at St. Peter’s Basilica.

The Year of Faith will run from October 11, 2012, until November 24, 2013, which is the Solemnity of Christ the King.

The Pope said in his Oct. 16 remarks that it will give “new impetus to the mission of the whole Church to lead men out of the desert in which they often find themselves, to the place of life, of friendship with Christ.” He also said that “reasons, purposes and guidelines” for the year will be set out in an Apostolic Letter to be published “in the coming days.”

The vast congregation at this morning’s Mass largely consisted of those involved in the “new evangelization,” who were in Rome for a summit organized by the recently formed Pontifical Council for Promotion of the New Evangelization The new evangelization aims to revivify Catholicism in traditionally Christian countries which have been particularly affected by secularization in recent decades.

Unusually, the 84-year-old pontiff was wheeled both in and out of the Mass on a mobile platform. Normally Pope Benedict would walk the approximately 110 yards down the central aisle of St. Peters. “This is just not to tire him,” papal spokesman Fr. Federico Lombardi, S.J., told reporters, adding that “nothing else should be read into the general state of his health, which is good.”

Drawing upon the Scripture readings for today, the Pope outlined a roadmap for the new evangelizers. In the first reading, the Prophet Isaiah recounts how King Cyrus, the Persian Emperor in the 6th century B.C., played his part in fulfilling a divine plan despite that fact that he “did not know” God and was not even Jewish.

“Even the mighty Cyrus, the Persian Emperor, is part of a greater plan, that only God knows and carries forward,” observed the Pope.

This demonstrates, he said, the need for a new “theology of history” as an “essential part” of the new evangelization “because “the men of our time, after the disastrous season of totalitarian empires of the 20th century, need to find a comprehensive vision of the world and time,” more compatible with the vision of the Church.

In the second reading, taken from St. Paul’s First Letter to the Thessalonians, the Pope said new evangelizers are reminded that “it is the Lord who touches hearts by His Word and His Spirit, by calling people to faith and communion in the Church.”

The fact that it is God and not the evangelist who touches hearts, shows the importance of recognizing God as the prime mover in any apostolic activities which “must always be preceded, accompanied and followed by prayer,” he said.

Pope Benedict also highlighted the importance of having collaborators like St. Paul who had Silvanus and Timothy as his companions in his work, and said today’s new evangelizers should also seek coworkers in spreading the Gospel.

He then turned today’s Gospel and said that it provides the key message the new evangelizers must bring to the world. In it, Christ tells the Pharisees to “render therefore to Caesar the things that are Caesar’s, and to God the things that are God’s.” This is a reminder that the Church’s message is not primarily a political one, the Pope said.

“The mission of the Church, like Christ,” he said, “is essentially to speak of God, to commemorate His sovereignty, reminding everyone, especially Christians, who have lost their identity, of God’s right over what belongs to Him, which is our lives.”

Later in the morning, the Pope used his Sunday Angelus address to further explain his plans for a “Year of Faith” to over 40,000 pilgrims gathered in St. Peters Square. He summed up the initiative as “proclaiming Christ to those who do not know him or have, in fact, reduced him to a mere historical character.”

He finished his address by placing all those involved in new evangelization under the protection of the Virgin Mary who “helps every Christian to be a valid witness to the Gospel.”