The Four Signs of a Dynamic Catholic

The following comes from FOCUS:

Book review parts

Back in June, I wrote an article “What Catholic Are Reading: Four Books for Your Summer Reading List” and in this article I said, “If I’m on my game, I’ll follow up this article with some book reviews/cliff notes and allow you all to join into the discussion on these books.” Well, I don’t know if I’m exactly “on my game,” but I am delivering to you the first of my book reviews.

So, here it goes. . .

Book Synopsis
So, what’s this Four Signs of a Dynamic Catholic all about? Well, its author, Matthew Kelly, is taking up quite the task—how do we renew Catholic parishes across the country? Matthew Kelly spent a significant amount of time and money focusing on what makes Catholics highly engaged at their parishes. His logic: if we figure out the difference between highly engaged Catholics and unengaged Catholics, we can figure out not only how to make more engaged Catholics, but we can also track their effectiveness in the parish. The book sold over 100,000 copies in the first month of publication and has started a conversation about how to renew the parish.

Ultimately, Kelly will say that only 7% of all Catholics are engaged Catholics or what he calls Dynamic Catholics. What makes someone a Dynamic Catholic? Here are the four signs:

• Prayer
  Description: Specifically, Kelly notes that this consists of a daily routine of prayer. “Am I saying the other 93 percent of Catholics don’t pray? No. Their prayer tends to be spontaneous but inconsistent. The 7% have a daily commitment to prayer, a routine” (p. 8).
• Study
  Description: “[Dynamic Catholics] see themselves as students of Jesus and his Church, and proactively make an effort to allow his teaching to form them” (p. 14). Kelly also notes that on average they spend 14 minutes each day learning about the faith.
• Generosity
  Description: Generosity covers not only time and money, but also generosity in all things. This generosity is a way of life.
• Evangelization
  Description: While many Dynamic Catholics don’t consider themselves to be evangelists, they “regularly do and say things to share a Catholic perspective with the people who cross their paths.”

Why Matthew Kelly/the book is brilliant?
If you have been around Matthew Kelly for any decent length of time, you quickly realize that he is a very smart man. There is a lot that I have learned from him and continue to learn from him. Here are a few gems he demonstrated from his book that were worth thinking about:

• Motivational Speaker Written
  If you have ever heard Matthew Kelly speak, it is hard to forget how compelling and inspiring one of his talks can be. Like many great motivational speakers, he writes very similarly to how he speaks. In doing so, he keeps the same tone of simplicity, logic, inspiration, fun, and well, dynamic way of speaking.
• Vision
  This is similar to the first point, but needs to be said. Kelly is not afraid of running after a greater reality than we see today. He can paint a picture of the way the future can be and then come back into the present to show you how to make it a reality.
• Practical Steps
  Kelly has a monumental task in front of him – renewing Catholic parishes – but is willing to offer some of the simplest baby steps to help the reader make that next step in their walk with Christ. For example, 10% tithe may be very daunting if you currently give 2%. His challenge: Give 1% more each year until you hit 10%. Another, if you don’t have a prayer life, start by praying one minute each day. As he says, “We need solutions that are accessible to all, that inspire people to say, ‘I can do that’” (p. 17).
• Intentionality
  Matthew Kelly does a great job of adding very intentional goals and objectives for parish renewal. It is easy to be caught up in all of the problems we have or in the culture we face, and often times this can be very distracting for renewal. Kelly’s game plan, whether it is perfect or not, helps us to trek towards specific goals.
• Summaries
  Each chapter has a summary at the end. This makes it easy for someone to make sure they understood all of the key points in the chapter or perhaps more importantly to go back later and review the chapters quickly.

Great Quotes

The 80/20 principle
“There is a concept known as the Pareto Principle. It states, in essence, that roughly 80 percent of effects come from 20 percent of causes. In business this same concept is often referred to as the 80/20 principle. The idea is that 80% percent of your business comes from 20 percent of your customers. . . Did the 80/20 principle hold true in Catholic parishes? No. Not even close. . . Roughly 7 percent of Catholic parishioners are doing almost everything in their faith community and paying almost entirely for the maintenance and mission of the parish” (p. 11)

What is we could double the 7 percent?
“If just 7 percent of Catholics are accomplishing more than 80 percent of what we are doing today, imagine what 14 percent could do. Not to mention what 21 percent or 35 percent could accomplish. Our potential is incredible. The Catholic Church is a sleeping giant. We literally have the power to change the world” (p. 14).

Do people know how to pray?
“We do an awful lot of talking about prayer, but we spend very little time actually teaching people how to pray. We assume that people know how to pray, but the truth is when most people sit down in the classroom of silence to make an earnest attempt at prayer they haven’t got the foggiest idea how to begin” (p. 47-48).

On the culture’s vision for the human person
“Consider this one question: What is the present culture’s vision for the human person? When you ask the question, the silence is deafening. Today’s culture doesn’t have a vision for you. It certainly does not have your best interests at heart. What, then, is the culture driven by? Consumption” (p. 81).

On generosity
“A few days later I discovered this quote from Fulton Sheen: ‘Never measure your generosity by what you give, but rather by what you have left’” (p. 117).

On evangelization
“Astoundingly, when asked if anyone had ever taught them how to evangelize, 99.4 percent of respondents said no” (p. 180-181).

[My note: On this point, FOCUS has a website called FOCUSEquip.org that trains people how to evangelize! Check out the Leader Resources.]

The future of Catholicism
“It is essential to the future of Catholicism that we come to the realization that the thinking that got us here will probably not transform the Church in our time into a dynamic and relevant institution. If the Church is to become vibrant again it is of vital importance that we begin thinking on a whole new level” (p. 197).

Last thoughts
Full disclosure: Matthew Kelly is a hero of mine. I love this book. Our Church needs a direction for renewal and Kelly gives us one. Is it perfect? Probably not. Could four other signs be used? Sure. (By the way this would most likely apply to any book, not just Matthew’s). General Patton once said, “A good plan violently executed today is far and away better than a perfect plan tomorrow.” As faithful Catholics, we often settle for dreaming of a more perfect plan and spend too much time tearing one another down rather than jumping on board together and trying to make a difference.  I highly recommend that you buy this book, read this book, and then try to put it in action. I’ll be trying to do so in my parish this year, which brings me to the next point.

Why I am Catholic: Former Atheist Jennifer Fulwiler

Jennifer Fulwiler is a Catholic Convert from atheism and writer at ConversionDiary.com.  She is the author of the book Something Other Than God.  The following comes from Why I am Catholic:

One thing I could never get on the same page with my fellow atheists about was the idea of meaning. The other atheists I knew seemed to feel like life was full of purpose despite the fact that we're all nothing more than chemical reactions. I could never get there. In fact, I thought that whole line of thinking was unscientific, and more than a little intellectually dishonest. If everything that we call heroism and glory, and all the significance of all great human achievements, can be reduced to some neurons firing in the human brain, then it's all destined to be extinguished at death. And considering that the entire span of homo sapiens' existence on earth wouldn't even amount to a blip on the radar screen of a 5-billion-year-old universe, it seemed silly to pretend like the 60-odd-year life of some random organism on one of trillions of planets was something special. (I was a blast at parties.)

By simply living my life, I felt like I was living a lie. I acknowledged the truth that life was meaningless, and yet I kept acting as if my own life had meaning, as if all the hope and love and joy I'd experienced was something real, something more than a mirage produced by the chemicals in my brain. Suicide had crossed my mind -- not because I was depressed in the common sense of the word, simply because it seemed like it was nothing more than speeding up the inevitable. A life multiplied by zero yields the same result, no matter when you do it.

Not knowing what else to do, I followed the well-worn path of people who are trying to run from something that haunts them: I worked too much. I drank too much. I was emotionally fragile. Many of my relationships with other people were toxic. I wrapped myself in a cocoon of distractions, trying to pretend like I didn't know what I knew.

###

A year after I graduated from college, I met a guy at work named Joe. I was so impressed with him, I didn't think I had much of a chance. He'd grown up poor, raised by a single mother, and had gone on to get degrees from Yale, Columbia and Stanford. People who knew him said he was one of the smartest people they'd ever met. So when we began dating, I was thrilled. Our life together turned out to be even better than I could have imagined: We traveled the world on whims, ate at the finest restaurants, flew first class, and threw epic parties on the roof of his loft downtown. On top of that, both of our careers were taking off, so our future held only more money and more success.

We were a perfect couple. The only thing we didn't see the same way was the issue of religion. A few months after we started dating, it came out that Joe not only believed in God, but considered himself a Christian. I did not understand how someone who was perfectly capable of rational thought could believe in fairy tale stories like those of Christianity. Did he believe in Santa Claus too?

It didn't cause any problems between us, though, since we had the same basic moral code, he didn't practice this bizarre faith of his in any noticeable way, and, mainly, I did not want to think about it. At all. Whenever the subject of God came up, something deep within me recoiled. Not that I had any problem demolishing silly theist ideas -- it had been something of a hobby back in college -- but the subject took me too close to that thing I was trying to forget. I had constructed my entire life around not thinking about it, so I never articulated what it was. It had been so buried by the parties and the socializing and the breathless running from place to place that it was no longer a specific concept, just some dark, cold amorphous knowledge I needed to avoid.

Joe and I married in a theater in 2003, reciting vows we wrote ourselves, with me wearing a dark purple dress. The plan was that marriage would be just a stepping stone along the path we were already on. But then I discovered I was pregnant, and everything changed.

###

Motherhood caught me completely off guard. I'd grown up as an only child in a culture where nobody I knew had more than two kids living at home. I never had a friend whose mom had a baby during the time of our friendship. And considering that I'd never wanted kids and had some minor medical issues that made me think I probably couldn't have them anyway, I was utterly unprepared for motherhood. The physical, mental and emotional changes I went through after the birth of my son were a hard blow, like a punch to the head that comes out of the blue, and it left me reeling.

This cataclysmic event unearthed all those old thoughts about meaninglessness, and this time there was no re-burying them. Now that I had a child, it felt like my life had more meaning than ever. The dark-haired, blue-eyed baby felt so valuable; my own life was flooded with hope and joy at his presence. But with none of the usual distractions in place, the facts of the matter now descended upon me: There was nothing transcendent about my son's life, my life, or any of the love I felt for him. He was destined for the same fate as the rest of us, to have his entire existence erased upon his inevitable death.

For weeks, I hardly got out of bed. Some combination of severe sleep deprivation and more severe depression left me almost catatonic. But then one morning, as I looked at the baby in the pre-dawn light that filtered in through the window, I felt something new within me. It was something that was not despair, some unfamiliar yet welcome feeling. I peeled back the layers to find that it was doubt: Doubt of my purely materialist worldview, doubt of the truth I had believed since childhood that there is nothing transcendent about the human life.

I considered that in almost every single time and place throughout human history, people have believed in some kind of spiritual realm. Almost every human society we know of has shared the belief that there is more to life than meets the eye, that what transpires here in the material world somehow reverberates into the eternal. Previously I had assumed that the vast majority of the billions of people who had ever lived were all simply ignorant; now I wondered if maybe I was the one who was missing something.

###

A few months later, I stumbled across a Christian book. I'd never been in the Religion section of a bookstore, let alone read anything about Christianity. I'd only picked up this book because the author claimed to be a former atheist, and I was curious to see what level of fraud he was. After flipping through the first few pages, I was surprised to find that I believed that he had been an atheist. I read a few more pages, and found his writing to be clear and basically reasonable. Obviously he'd come to the wrong conclusions, but I could respect the fact that he at least attempted to reason his way into his current belief system, rather than basing it on some emotional experience. I found that I couldn't put the book down, and ended up buying it (loudly noting to the cashier that it was a gift for a friend).

A quick internet search showed that the book was widely scorned by atheists, and some of their counter-points to the author's arguments were good. But it was simply not true to say that there was nothing compelling about it. For example, the book pointed out that thousands of Jewish people abandoned the sacred practices that had sustained them through centuries, through all types of persecution, in the years after the death of Jesus of Nazareth. Almost all of Jesus' original followers went to their death rather than recant their statements that they'd seen him rise from the dead. Christianity spread like wildfire in the early centuries, despite the fact that becoming a Christian often meant persecution or even death.

I had never seen Jesus as anything other than a silly fairy tale figure whom people called upon to give a divine thumbs-up to self-serving beliefs; but now I was intrigued by the man as a historical figure. Something happened in first-century Palestine, something so big that it still sends shockwaves down to the present day. And it all centered around the figure of Jesus Christ. As Joe once pointed out when I asked him why he considered himself a Christian, Christianity is the only one of all the major world religions to be founded by a guy who claimed to be God. That's an easy claim to disprove if it's not true.

One afternoon, shortly after I finished the book, I was caught off guard by a thought:

What if it's true?

Read the rest here.

The One Thing is Three by Fr. Michael Gaitley

Jesus the Bridegroom: Brandon Vogt interviews Dr. Brant Pitre

The following comes from Brandon Vogt:

Whenever I recommend Dr. Brant Pitre to friends, I describe him as the Indiana Jones of Catholic theology. His books are like treasure hunts. Dr. Pitre guides you through familiar passages, which are often darkened by confusing twists and turns, but like the adventurous Jones he shines light in just the right places to uncover new treasure, riches that leave you surprised and entranced. The most common reaction friends have after reading his work is, "Wow! Why didn't I see that before?"

Dr. Pitre's first book, Jesus and the Jewish Roots of the Eucharist (Image, 2011), illuminated the Last Supper and Crucifixion with the light of first-century Jewish tradition. Widely lauded as fresh and fascinating, the book examined the powerful symbolism behind Jesus' key actions during Holy Week.

His newest book, Jesus and the Bridegroom: The Greatest Love Story Ever Told (Image, 2013), uses Dr. Pitre's same intellectual gifts—his command of the Old Testament, his grasp of first-century Judaism, and his invigorating writing style—to unveil the central key to salvation history: God's marriage to his people. From beginning to end, from Adam and Eve to Revelation, the Bible depicts the story of a wedding, a marriage between the Creator and his creation. And the central figure is the Bridegroom God made flesh, Jesus Christ. When read through this lens, with special attention to Jewish nuptial language, the life and mission of Jesus shines brilliantly in new ways.

I recently sat down with Dr. Pitre to discuss his new book. We chatted about the importance of first-century Jewish tradition to the New Testament, we examined a few key episodes in the life of Christ that highlight his Bridegroom identity, and we explored the implications of this connection for Christians today.

Romance of Religion: "Faith is an adventure, a journey, a quest... It's a great story"

An excerpt from chapter five of The Romance of Religion. 

In one of his science fiction books, C.S.Lewis portrays an angelic being who moves through a solid brick wall, and when the hero asks if this ethereal being is real he is challenged about the nature of reality. The angel passed through the brick wall, but what if it was the brick wall that passed through the angel? Lewis points out that this is all a matter of one’s perspective and perception. If you saw a man step through an opaque bank of fog, and you did not know that the fog was actually a wall of mist you might think that the man was a ghost or a spirit. He had, after all, according to your perception, stepped through what seemed to be a solid wall. Of course you would have it the wrong way around. The man stepped through the wall of fog not because he was insubstantial, but because the fog was.

It has become clear that when I have been talking about fairyland and going to other worlds that I have been referring to our intercourse with the spiritual realm. To use the word ‘spiritual realm’ is in itself misleading because by ‘spiritual’ most people mean ‘ethereal’, and by ethereal they mean made up of ‘ether’ and ether is a gas, so what people usually mean is that when you speak of the ‘ethereal’ you are simply gassing. In other words, you are full of hot air.

By ‘spiritual’ they also think of angels, who they conceive either as a kind of fairy godmother or as plump, pink bottomed cherubs or effeminate handsome youths with wings. Or when they think of spiritual beings they think of ghosts–wispy illusions of smoke and shadows that disappear as soon as you say, “Boo!” When all is said and done, ‘spiritual’ for most people means gaseous, ephemeral, non physical and therefore unreal, or at least less real than all that which is substantial and physical.

However, this is exactly the opposite of what I think of when I hear the word ‘spiritual’. I think the spiritual beings,  like the man stepping through the fog, are more real than what we consider substantial and physical–not less real, and that the things we consider solid and physical and ‘real’ are actually rather slippery and ephemeral, impermanent and insubstantial. Happily, modern physics seems to be coming around to the conclusions that ancient religion arrived at thousands of years ago.

In all sorts of ways we are learning that what we thought was solid and real is insubstantial, and what we thought was ‘spiritual’, ethereal and unreal is  actually the most reliable form of reality.  Modern physics is now more like metaphysics because the modern physicist has shown us that what we thought was solid matter is not so solid after all. It is a tissue of energy and invisible particles bound together no one knows how. Furthermore, our perception of this tissue of the so-called “physical realm” has been shown to be no more than a series of chemical and electrical reactions in our brain. Nevertheless, our perception of reality is very convincing, and it is easy to believe that it is the only form of reality. It is not hard to imagine how one might believe a convincing illusion to be the only reality there is.

If you go to the movie theater you see something which seems very real. You hear the hero laugh and you see the villain sneer. The illusion is so powerful that it can make you gasp with fear, howl with laughter and weep with poignant grief. For a few hours you are transported to a world of adventure, and the darkness of the theater allows the illusion to seem totally and utterly real. But then the credits roll, the lights come up and you remember that it was all a temporary world created with the amazing  alchemy of modern technology. In fact the whole wonderful world was nothing but a magical mixture of music and machinery, lenses and light, and when it is reduced further you realize that it was all a concoction of digital images and digital sound and even these things were no more than electronic impulses chugging through a very smart machine. The illusion of the cinema is therefore one complex illusion piled on top of many others.

Now imagine for a moment, that a person was born in the movie theater and never went outside the movie theater. Ever. He would, of course, perceive the cinematic illusion as the real world. If you went into that cinema and turned on the lights and said, “You know, all that you have seen here is merely a picture of the real world.” He would not believe you, indeed, the more you insisted and the more you cajoled and the more you tried to explain the ‘real’ world outside, the more he would find your fairy tale a ridiculous fabrication. Indeed he would find it not only ridiculous but dangerous.

Let us imagine that you said to the movie man, “The real world is like that world, but the people are not big flat images up on a screen, they are smaller, but although they are smaller they are not less important. In fact they are three dimensional. They are real, and because they are real, the images you have been looking at are only worth something in their relationship to the real people outside.”

He would say, “What is ‘three dimensional?” You would reply. “You can walk around them. You can touch them. They are not flat. They are round.” He would say, “What is ‘round?” And if you said, “You can eat the food. Some of it tastes good. The  root beer and the roast beef  are delicious. Some of it tastes bad. The red beets are bitter and the broccoli tastes bad. ” He would say, “What is taste?” And when you stopped frowning in frustration and said, “But you can smell things there. The roses you see smell beautifully sweet and the wet dogs smell like sweaty socks.” He would reply, “What is smell?”

Because he had spent all his life looking at movies he would not have the  mental equipment to even begin to conceive of taste and touch and smell and what ‘three dimensional’ means.  Locked in the cinema his whole life, he would laugh at such things. He would scorn you if you tried to convince him that another world existed, which was like the world you saw, but was not less real, but more real. He would consider you to be a dreamer, a fool and a dangerous lunatic. Furthermore, if he lived in the cinema with a whole little tribe of like minded cinema people, he would feel secure that he and his fellow movie people were right and you were wrong.

So it is with the materialist. He is trapped in his little one dimensional movie house with his materialist friends and cannot see any further.

Go here to learn more about The Romance of Religion.

Forgive Everyone

I came across this at New Advent:

In Dostoevsky’s great last work, The Brothers Karamazov, the story is told of Markel, brother of the Elder Zossima. Diagnosed with tuberculosis, he is dying. In those last days he came to a renewed faith in God and a truly profound understanding of forgiveness. In a conversation with his mother she wonders how he can possibly be so joyful in so serious a stage of his illness. His response is illustrative of the heart of the Orthodox Christian life.

 ’Mama,’ he replied to her, ‘do not weep, life is paradise, and we are all in paradise, but we don’t want to realize it, and if we did care to realize it, paradise would be established in all the world tomorrow.’ And we all wondered at his words, so strangely and so resolutely did he say this; we felt tender emotion and we wept….’Dear mother, droplet of my blood,’ he said (at that time he had begun to use endearments of this kind, unexpected ones), ‘beloved droplet of my blood, joyful one, you must learn that of a truth each of us is guilty before all for everyone and everything. I do not know how to explain this to you, but I feel that it is so, to the point of torment. And how could we have lived all this time being angry with one another and knowing nothing of this?’ [He spoke even of being guilty before the birds and all creation] …’Yes, he said, ‘all around me there has been such divine glory: birds, trees, meadows, sky, and I alone have lived in disgrace, I alone have dishonored it all, completely ignoring its beauty and glory.’ ‘You take too many sins upon yourself,’ dear mother would say, weeping. ‘But dear mother, joy of my life. I am crying from joy, and not from grief; why, I myself want to be guilty before them, only I cannot explain it to you, for I do not know how to love them. Let me be culpable before all, and then all will forgive me, and that will be paradise. Am I not in paradise now?’

As difficult as it may sound, the reality described by Dostoevsky can be summed up very simply: forgive everyone for everything. Stated in such a blunt fashion, such a goal is overwhelming. How can I forgive everyone for everything? This life of forgiveness, which is nothing other than the life of Christ within us, is our inheritance in the faith. The life of blame, recrimination, bitterness, anger, revenge and the like are not the life of Christ, but simply the ragings of our own egos, the false self which we exalt over our true life which is
“hid with Christ in God.”

The rightness of a cause, or the correctness of our judgment do not justify nor change the nature of our ragings. For none of us can stand before God and be justified – except as we give ourselves to the life of Christ, who is our only righteousness.

The question of forgiveness is not a moral issue. We do not forgive because it is the “correct” thing to do. We forgive because it is the true nature of the life in Christ. As Dostoevsky describes it: it is Paradise. In the same manner, the refusal to forgive, the continuation of blame, recrimination, bitterness, etc., are not moral failings. They areexistential crises – drawing us away from the life of Christ and Paradise, and ever deeper into an abyss of non-being.

You can read more on this here.

A Rose Among Thorns

The following comes from Christianity Today:

Beginning in 1996 with Father Elijah, Michael O'Brien—a devout Roman Catholic; a Canadian; a painter and writer—has been publishing a series of novels with the collective title, Children of the Last Days. Father Elijah is the story of Elijah Schafer, a Roman Catholic priest, a convert from secular Judaism, chosen by the power of the Holy Spirit to bring one last witness of God's mercy to the Antichrist himself. Set in the end of days, it finished with Elijah heading towards his prophesied martyrdom.

Due not only to the gravity of its themes but to its spirited writing, it was a tough book to follow with not just one but five others (O'Brien had projected both the number and subject of each of the novels from the beginning). O'Brien has been, in many ways, learning on the job. From the beginning he has been superb at forming full and powerful characters, with rich interior lives. And he has been simply unexcelled at writing about the importance of everyday life, unveiling for his readers the spiritual power of our simplest decisions and our casual commitments. O'Brien's focus on the spirituality of the everyday, not to mention his far superior writing, is what sets these books apart from dispensational novels like the Left Behind series—not to mention his very strongly held conservative Roman Catholicism, which is all-pervasive in his novels.

In A Cry of Stone, the fifth novel in the series, O'Brien has done his best work yet. This is a remarkable book, if for no other reason than for the wonderful and compelling character of its protagonist, Rose Wabos, an Ojibwa girl who grows into a solemn, winsome young woman in the course of the novel.

Born with a curved spine, abandoned by a mother she never knows, Rose is raised by her grandmother, Mary. Their love for each other is achingly described, and in a book filled with loves, theirs is perhaps most beautiful of all. They live in what can only be described as grinding poverty, but here O'Brien does one of the most wonderful things of the novel. While not pretending that their conditions are not miserable, he shows nonetheless their happiness without ever slipping into condescension.

O'Brien's great theme is the power of God seen in the weak. "Bent is the shape of love," Rose thinks once of her aging grandmother. The people around her who seem most straight turn out to be deeply twisted; and her bent spine holds together a vessel that brings grace and peace to those in need. But the actual pain that her deformed back gives her represses any pride that she might have in her brokenness. Her twistedness is not an accessory of virtue; it actually hurts, and makes her life one lived against a continual backdrop of ache, with spasms of agony.

Rose is an artist, and O'Brien has put a great deal of his artistic life in this book. It is not so much that he writes about pastels, oils, and the nature of tempera, though he does do that. The most important things he shares of his knowledge of art in A Cry of Stone are not techniques, but ways of seeing things. Rose from her childhood is blessed with a spiritual gift that she calls "falling into seeing," a prophetic knowledge of another person's heart. Her "falling into seeing" also enables her to see all the world around her as it actually is. In a wonderful scene when her painting class is studying the French artist Gericault's The Raft of Medusa, the following interchange occurs:

"It is as if the whole world is the sea," she said, "and the raft is the wreckage of a great ship that went down at the beginning of the world."

The professor's eyebrows raised.

"Continue."

"We are the survivors."

Her ability to see is related to her striving for. She knows more of pain and of the bitter things of life than most do or would want to do. Nor are these things accepted as if they caused no hurt. Like her bent spine, the events of her life cause her pain and suffering. Throughout the novel O'Brien follows moments of sweetness in Rose's life with moments of hurt, pain, and despair. It sounds a bit like a soap opera, when put like that. But Rose is meant to be a servant of the King of Kings, and O'Brien does not spare his creation from the same way of pain that the king himself took when he came into his own creation, and it knew him not.

The Raft of the Medusa summarizes the difference between sacrificial suffering and the suffering that leads only to despair. Rose is delighted to learn that Gericault painted his powerful work to show the moment when the survivors of the Medusa saw the rescue ship approaching after they had endured weeks of unimaginable suffering. In like manner, she is able to endure her suffering because she trusts that the rescue attempt on Earth has already begun.

In this season of Epiphany, here is a book alive with wonder at the Incarnation of God and its powerful work in the life of believers. Here is a beautiful depiction of another rose growing up amidst the world's thorns.

Two Popes and the End Times

The following comes from Fr. Dwight Longenecker:

In a recent homily, Pope Francis warned the faithful against what he described as a “globalized uniformity,” which is the result of secular worldliness. The website Rome Reports quotes him: “[T]he people of God prefer to distance themselves from the Lord in favour of worldly proposals. ... Worldliness is the root of evil, and it can lead us to abandon our traditions and negotiate our loyalty to God, who is always faithful. This is called apostasy, which he said is a form of ‘adultery’ that takes place when we negotiate the essence of our being: loyalty to the Lord.”

Later in the homily, he referred to a modern English novel, The Lord of the World. Written by Robert Hugh Benson in 1907, The Lord of the World is considered the first novel in a genre known as dystopia, in which a disastrous and demonic future of the world is envisioned. It was followed by the classics 1984 andBrave New World. C. S. Lewis’s That Hideous Strength echoes the dystopic vision, as have the books of novelist Michael O’Brien and numerous films and televisions shows.

Some commentators believe this is one of Pope Francis’s favorite books. If so, it is worth a closer look. The author Robert Hugh Benson was a remarkable figure from an illustrious family. His father was the Archbishop of Canterbury, and his brother the well-known writer, E. F. Benson. Another brother wrote the words to the patriotic English anthem, Land of Hope and Glory. Benson was ordained as an Anglican priest, but converted to the Catholic Church and was ordained as a Catholic priest in 1904. His novel, Lord of the World, fell out of fashion for a time, but is increasingly popular because of its uncanny predictions of the future and the direction of the world in our own times.

The novel is set in an imaginary future where the world is governed by a global socialist, secular state. The one world state has introduced Esperanto as the global language. Religion has been ignored and repressed as outdated and irrelevant. The population exists in a grey, monotonous world with no hope. Euthanasia is legal and practiced widely. The Catholic Church has been repressed, and the whole world has swallowed the religion of humanism. Churches are requisitioned and turned into Masonic temples, and the Catholics are few and far between.

In this setting, a Catholic priest named Percy Franklin is elected Pope Sylvester III. Meanwhile, a mysterious man named Julian Felsenburgh – who resembles Percy Franklin – becomes an anti-Christ figure, and thus “Lord of the World.”

That Pope Francis not only has read Benson’s The Lord of the World, but refers to the book in homilies indicates an awareness on his part of the cosmic struggle that exists between the powers of darkness and light. It is interesting how often this Pope refers to the devil, and in the homily in question he said the seduction of Christians to the way of the world rather than the way of the Lord was the work of the devil. 

A book like The Lord of the World reminds one of the words of Bl. Pope John Paul II. In a speech to American bishops in 1976 he said, “We are now standing in the face of the greatest historical confrontation humanity has ever experienced. I do not think the wide circle of the American Society, or the wide circle of the Christian community realizes this fully. We are now facing the final confrontation between the Church and the anti-church, between the Gospel and the anti-gospel, between Christ and the antichrist. This confrontation lies within the plans of Divine Providence. It is therefore, in God’s plan, and it must be a trial which the Church must take up and face courageously.”

Then in 1980, he commented, “We must prepare ourselves to suffer great trials before long, such as will demand of us a disposition to give up even life, and a total dedication to Christ and for Christ. … With your and my prayer it is possible to mitigate this tribulation, but it is no longer possible to avert it, because only thus can the Church be effectively renewed. How many times has the renewal of the Church sprung from blood! This time, too, it will not be otherwise. We must be strong and prepared, and trust in Christ and his Mother, and be very, very assiduous in praying the Rosary.”

In continuity with his saintly predecessor, Pope Francis sees the storm clouds on the horizon and calls the faithful to stand firm. As Advent approaches, we should be reminded once more, as the first Pope preached, to “be alert for our adversary, the devil, who like a roaring lion prowls about, seeking whom he may devour” (I Peter 5:8).

The Future of Catholicism by Michael Coren

The following comes from Michael Coren at The Catholic Thing:

Epiphanies aren’t supposed to occur in Chicago hotel rooms. Desert roads, foxholes, emergency wards, yes, but not Chicago hotel rooms. But it was in the Windy City that a different wind blew three years ago, in the form of a telephone call from a senior editor at Random House. I was on a publicity tour for my book Why Catholics Are Right. “Some news about your book,” explained the vehemently non-Catholic publisher, “We’ve had to reprint immediately, it’s on the best-seller list, and could you write another book on the same subject?”

Of course I agreed, but the epiphany was the realization that if a book about the Church is approachable and not too pompous, legions of people will be eager to read it. 50,000 so far with the last book, and I can only hope and pray – I’ve four hungry kids! – that the new one does as well.

The Future of Catholicism was commissioned specifically to respond to the hysteria that greeted the election of Pope Francis. The moment the conclave ended, numerous journalists approached me for interviews – desperately so, since there are so few Catholics in media in Canada. The questions repeated themselves with a dulling predictability: will the new pope change Church teaching on same-sex marriage; will he ordain women; will he allow abortion and birth control? After the fourth or fifth such interview I responded with, “Yes, and he’s going to become a Muslim too!”

A bit of advice: Don’t use satire or sarcasm on a journalist.

The premise of the new book is simple: to explain to Catholics and non-Catholics alike where the Church may and perhaps should change, and where it cannot and will not do so. After an introductory essay outlining absolute truth, permanent things, the deposit of faith, and fundamental beliefs and teachings, I devote the first full chapter to same-sex marriage. The reason, of course, is that this is so frequently the subject that is used to attack the Church.

Frankly, we’ve done an awful job explaining why we hold traditional marriage so dear, but then we’re seldom given a chance beyond a hurried sound bite. Marriage is a child-centered institution, the procreative norm is at the core of marriage, natural law informs all of Catholic moral thought, and sexuality has to be linked to creation for it to be Godly.

In many ways the issue is actually not about homosexuality at all, but about the defense of marriage. The majority community opened the door to decay when it cheapened marriage via easy divorce and casual sex. And it’s hardly surprising that gay activists took advantage of the situation. The Church may change its outreach to the gay community, may refresh the communication of the truth, but the truth itself is rock.

The book continues with chapters concerning abortion, contraception, female ordination, papal authority and other crucial aspects of belief where the tradition, from ancient Scripture to contemporary belief, is uninterrupted and uninterruptible.

Which brings us to where the future of Catholicism may be different. We have to develop a new form of evangelization. The term “New Evangelization” is partly misleading. There is good and bad evangelization, but not really new evangelization. Nothing exemplifies this better than when Rome invited a collection of safe, mainstream Catholic bloggers with small on-line audiences to a media conference, deliberately ignoring the more robustly conservative – and potentially challenging – bloggers with massive followings.

            The future may well be more ecumenical, but let’s qualify that. It’s easy to play nice with Jewish leaders, Orthodox patriarchs, and even some liberal Protestants with moribund churches. Much more challenging, however, is to hold out the hand to Islam, knowing that it might be cut off rather than grasped in friendship. Islam is becoming less and not more tolerant and pluralistic. And it’s imperative that we insist the persecution and slaughter of Christians stop before we can build genuine relationships.

There is also a chapter on Pope Francis himself. This was a difficult one, because the Holy Father makes a fascinating statement every second week. If I have a criticism it is that he says too much, enabling those who wish to exploit his statements. This has been especially unfortunate when it has been used to cause acute pain to courageous (especially pro-life) Catholics who have sacrificed and suffered ignominy – often at the hands of liberal coreligionists.

True, Francis has spoken of evil, Satan, and sin more than any Catholic leader I can recall; he has fiercely criticized ostensibly Catholic politicians who promote abortion; and he stood firmly and bravely against same-sex marriage and abortion in Argentina. Yet he has also made statements that seem to lack subtlety and sensitivity, and have confused rather than provoked.

He is a lion in his defense of the poor, the abused, the marginalized, and the Church. There is no contradiction in that list, but if the truly faithful feel ostracized (and some certainly do), their angst must not be ignored. I also predict, by the way, that his honeymoon with the media will not last.

     

We are Catholics not to be loved but to love. That love is not always one that the world understands, and is certainly not a spasm-like approval of everything and anything that the culture demands. As any parent will tell you, love sometimes means saying no. The Future of Catholicism says yes, but it also says no. As such, I doubt it will ever get me an invitation to appear on the Stephen Colbert Show.

Eucharist by Fr. Robert Barron

'The Brothers Karamazov' Quotes

"Very different is the monastic way. Obedience, fasting, and prayer are laughed at, yet they alone constitute the way to real and true freedom: I cut away my superfluous and unnecessary needs, through obedience I humble and chasten my vain and proud will, and thereby, with God’s help, attain freedom of spirit, and with that, spiritual rejoicing!" Fyodor Dostoevsky, The Brothers Karamazov

A Heart for ‘Evangelizing Through the Media’

The following comes from the NCR:

Colleen Carroll Campbell, an award-winning journalist, host of EWTN’s Faith & Culture show and author of the 2013 Christopher Award-winning memoir My Sisters the Saints, is taking on a new role: anchor of EWTN News Nightly With Colleen Carroll Campbell, which will debut Sept. 3.

She spoke recently with the Register’s associate editor, Amy Smith, about evangelizing through the media, her love of the saints, discernment and balancing motherhood and journalism.

What is the setup of the news program, and who would you like to see as guests?

It is an international nightly newscast — to be broadcast to the entire English-speaking world.

We hope it will have an international focus, as well as focus on national events. Our studio is on Capitol Hill — at the center of the action — so it will have a global and Catholic perspective on the top stories, with commentary and analysis from a Catholic perspective.

We hope it will be a show that encourages an understanding of the day’s events and the big questions of the day.

There is a wide, rich pool of guests in Washington and New York, which is not far, to draw on nightly, so I think we will have a broad roster. I have done 80 shows for Faith & Culture since it started in 2006. A lot of those folks are excellent … I’d like to bring them back. I hope to shine a spotlight on Catholics who are already in the trenches, even in situations where it is difficult to live the truth, experts who can help our viewers make sense of the day’s news.

How should Catholics approach the news?

Catholics should be careful about where they get their information. There are positives and negatives to the changes in today’s media landscape.

The idea of one media establishment — that’s fading way, which is positive. The downside: Sometimes what is called news is not news or no fact-checking or context is given. We’re all drowning in information, but it often lacks context and understanding — and understanding from a Catholic perspective.

Was covering the papal transition and election of Pope Francis in Rome for EWTN this spring good preparation for your news show?

It was a great couple of weeks. No one expected Pope Benedict XVI to resign. Most of us didn’t expect the conclave to progress so quickly or that we would have the first Jesuit, first Latin-American and first Francis as pope — or see someone elected who was counted out by conventional wisdom due to his older age.

It was an exhilarating surprise. It was an honor for me to be able to announce it to EWTN viewers. It was a wonderful way to prepare for the news show.

Has your past work as a speech writer for President George W. Bush and news writing prepared you for broadcast news? Did you think you would end up in broadcast journalism, or did God surprise you?

God is full of surprises. That truth has been a staple of my life and career. I am a print journalist by training, with a liberal arts background at Marquette University, where I focused more on humanities and liberal arts in my education.

I had on-the-ground training in journalism. My first job was at the Memphis Commercial Appeal. Then I worked at the St. Louis Post-Dispatch, reporting and then opinion writing. Then I wrote the books and was a White House speech writer.

I see myself primarily as a writer. My TV work grew out of that. It’s Providence at work in my life.

It’s a delight to be able to present the news and the day’s most pressing issues and to help viewers understand the news. In some ways, this newscast is an extension of my work on Faith & Culture. It will be newsy, topical, fast-moving — all in one show.

I do think it’s part of the larger pattern that God has woven into my career and the mission he has called me to: evangelizing through the media — not necessarily always Catholic media, as I have worked in secular media.

It’s the fundamental idea of proclaiming the Good News and Catholic teaching that is close to my heart.

Do you think your book’s appeal is due to the timeless message of the saints?

The feedback I get the most is that readers connect with the stories — my personal story as an entry point into the stories of the saints.

I wrote the book the way that I did to have an entry point to deliver the message of the saints. They are very real: our friends in heaven and models for us in living on earth.

My Sisters the Saints is about how I experienced these wise and holy women and what they taught me about being truly liberated as a woman. My story is, in a sense, an introduction to the wisdom of the saints — their message for our own lives.

The riches of faith and experience of the saints are urgently relevant to our struggles, even if their lives seem worlds away from ours. They remind us to tap into the riches of the faith, and they help us answer timeless questions. I like to say that we stand on the shoulders of the saints, especially in our struggles to see the relevance of the faith to our lives. They can help us when we find ourselves asking a question such as, "How can a mom find a way to be active in public life while not neglecting motherhood and home life?" They remind us that we need to be in the world and not of it. We need to focus on work that uses our gifts while not neglecting our vocation. The saints can teach us a lot.

How did you discern your new work in daily TV news in relationship to your role as a wife and mother to three little ones, a boy and two girls?

It was a discernment process. My top concern was how it would fit into my family’s life. I made that clear from the start. It’s a good schedule; it’s not 9-5. The job has flexibility, since it’s an evening show. I will have the daytime with my children. We have lots of time together, since they’re not in school yet. In so many ways, it has worked out. But it was not an automatic Yes.

In My Sisters the Saints, I share how becoming a mother was a long struggle, so I really appreciate the gift of motherhood and do not take it for granted.

Nothing is more important than following Jesus and raising little souls to heaven and living marriage with love and fidelity. I consider this newscast part of my efforts to build a better world for my children.

The call of God is surprising, in many ways. He likes to upend my plans, but following his plan leads to more freedom and joy. There can be a sense sometimes that "I can’t be called to x, y or z" because of whatever responsibility I may already have, but God has a different, unique call for each of us. I’ve learned not to create rigid rules on what is or isn’t work-life balance. Follow the call of Christ. Have openness to the Holy Spirit, and let God do the leading. Blessings will follow, even when you’re being led to unexpected places, even to a different state.

When it came to discerning this decision to accept the position as anchor of this new newscast, as with all of my major decisions in life, the support and encouragement of my husband, Dr. John Campbell, were crucial. John is my partner in everything, and I’m blessed to have a spouse who is so open to following God’s call, wherever it leads — and so intent on encouraging me to do the same.

I’d be remiss if I didn’t mention that the discernment process for this job was very much a team effort between John and me, not something I did alone. And the move entailed a significant sacrifice for John, a physician, who is leaving his position as chief of geriatrics at a hospital here in St. Louis so we can move to D.C. He recently accepted a new geriatrics position at a hospital in D.C.

We both believed that this was God’s will for our family, and we’re excited about this new chapter in our lives.

But it’s not without its sacrifices, and it is, in some ways, a surprising development. God is full of surprises!

Any final thoughts on discernment or your book on the saints?

That book, in many ways, is relevant to discernment decisions. It takes readers through my 15-year journey and decision points, which were not at all clear at the time. I discerned step by step, speaking with the saints through prayer and seeking God’s will. It was not all black and white. I found that trust in him and attentiveness to God’s will are what bring joy.

From working at the White House while engaged to a medical student 800 miles away to dealing with my father in his struggle with Alzheimer’s disease to dealing with the moral and emotional questions of infertility, I came — with the help of the saints — to decisions that brought peace.

God is faithful if we are truly attentive and yearn to know his will. He eventually makes it clear, but sometimes he asks us to walk in trust. It’s a hard lesson. Learning that has helped me, and I hope my story helps readers.

My Sisters the Saints offers readers a glimpse of how one modern, believing woman struggles to do God’s will in the company of the saints.