Fr. Robert Barron: It’s Okay to be Against Heresy!

The following comes from Fr. Robert Barron at Strange Notions:

Recently, two prominent Catholic women—Kathleen Sebelius in an address to the graduates of Georgetown University’s public policy school, and Maureen Dowd in a column published in the New York Times—delivered strong statements about the Church’s role in civil society. Dowd’s column was more or less a screed, while Sebelius’s address was relatively measured in tone. Yet both were marked by some pretty fundamental misunderstandings, which have, sadly, become widespread.

Echoing an army of commentators from the last fifty years, Dowd exults in James Joyce’s characterization of the Catholic Church (drawn, it appears, from the pages of Finnegans Wake) as “here comes everybody.” The word “catholic” itself, she explains, means “all-embracing” and “inclusive,” hence it is desperately sad that the Church, which is meant to be broad-minded and welcoming, has become so constricting. Whether it is disciplining liberal nuns or harassing pro-choice Catholic commencement speakers, the Church has abandoned the better angels of its nature and become intolerant. She concludes, “Absolute intolerance is always a sign of uncertainty and panic. Why do you have to hunt down everyone unless you’re weak? But what is the quality of a belief that exists simply because it’s enforced?” Not only is this narrow-minded aggression un-Catholic, it’s downright unpatriotic. “This is America. We don’t hunt heresies here. We welcome them,” she writes.

The problem here is a fundamental confusion between inclusiveness in regard to people and inclusiveness in regard to ideas. The Church is indeed all-embracing in the measure that it wants to gather all people to itself. The Bernini colonnade that reaches out like welcoming arms in front of St. Peter’s Basilica in Rome is meant to carry precisely this symbolic valence. But the Church has never had such an attitude toward all ideologies and points of view. It has recognized, from the beginning, that certain doctrines are repugnant to its own essential nature, or contradictory to the revelation upon which the Church is constructed. This is precisely why, for the past two millennia, theologians, bishops, Popes, and councils have consistently and strenuously battled heresies concerning central Catholic dogmas. They have understood that the adoption of these errors would fatally compromise the integrity of the Church.

Truth be told, any community must, if it is to survive, have a similar “intolerance.” The Abraham Lincoln Society would legitimately oppose the proposal that its members ignore Lincoln and concentrate on the study of Winston Churchill; the USGA would find repugnant the suggestion that Pebble Beach be turned into a collection of baseball diamonds; and the United States of America indeed aggressively excludes those committed to the eradication of fundamental American principles. The Catholic Church is not a Voltairean debating society; it is a community that stands for some very definite things, which implies, necessarily, that it sets its back against very definite things. A Church that simply “welcomed” heresies would, overnight, cease to be itself.

Read the rest here.

Why We Need Monks

The following comes from Fare Forward:

Religious communities serve as icons of the Christian life. Today more than ever, we need their witness of poverty, chastity, and obedience to counteract our contemporary excesses.

“Fathers and teachers, what is a monk?” asks the Elder Zosima in The Brothers Karamazov. “In the enlightened world of today,” he says, referring to Dostoyevsky’s Russia, “this word is uttered in mockery by some, and by others even as a term of abuse. And it gets worse and worse.”

Though monasticism is suffering at our own historical moment as well, Zosima’s grim exposition is dated in a key respect. In contemporary America, “monk” is no longer a term of abuse but of medieval lore. At best, our current cultural imagination allows us to envision hooded old priests and ruler-wielding nuns. Mockery has been replaced by mythology, and the monk has become a thing of the past. Russian peasantry and gentry, though contemptuous of monasticism, could not ignore it. The modern layman, even despite his best efforts, may find it hard to pay attention.

Because consecrated religious stand in opposition to so many of the modern world’s common conceits, their existence is almost utterly inconceivable to us. This unintelligibility is, in part, a tragic effect of the major loss of religious life over the past half-century. And this countercultural witness is precisely why we need a renewed monasticism today.

From 1965 to 2005, even as the United States’ official Catholic population grew from 45.6 to 66.8 million, the nation saw almost a 30 percent decrease in Catholic priests, a 55 percent decrease in religious brothers, and an astonishing 60 percent decrease in nuns. Attributable to many causes—not least of all theological misunderstandings and cultural shifts—, this loss has harmed both the laity and the remaining religious.

However, though the quantity of consecrated faithful has recently diminished, they have never completely disappeared. From the time of Christ onwards, Christians in great numbers have given up real earthly treasures so as to remove possible distractions as they pursue final treasures. Money, sex, choice—these are all goods, but they are the kind of goods that often become gods. And as the number of vowed religious has dropped precipitously over the last several decades, the cities governed by these gods have opened their gates to floods of immigrants.

The religious who stood as practiced foils against the seduction of relativism, hedonism, and moralistic therapeutic Deism have themselves been weakened by the sickness of confusion. Though they still stand, they stand diminished in number, harder to pick out in the heat of the fray. As twentieth-century theologians emphasized a ressourcement to guide and direct aggiornamento, now more than ever we need a return to the sources for models of intentionally organized Christian communities, in order to confront today’s particular challenges. What we have dismissed may save us yet. After all, the stone that the builders rejected became the cornerstone.

Scriptural sources themselves declare the great good of the religious state of life—the life dedicated to the evangelical counsels of poverty, chastity, and obedience. (Here and throughout, ‘chastity’ refers to the religious vow of chastity, which entails celibacy). In Acts 4, St. Luke gives a paradigmatic example of poverty and obedience and communal life:

Now the company of those who believed were of one heart and soul, and no one said that any of the things which he possessed was his own, but they had everything in common. … There was not a needy person among them, for as many as were possessors of lands or houses sold them, and brought the proceeds of what was sold and laid it at the apostles’ feet; and distribution was made to each as any had need.

This early Christian community obeyed Peter and the apostles, shared wealth, prayed often, and worked for the common good. Obedience and poverty went hand in hand.

For the third evangelical counsel, we can look to what St. Paul says in 1 Corinthians 7: “It is well for a man not to touch a woman. … I wish that all were as I myself am [, namely celibate]. … To the unmarried and the widows I say that it is well for them to remain single as I do. But if they cannot exercise self-control, they should marry.” How to read Paul’s encouragement here is controversial. Marriage is a good and is sometimes prudently undertaken—that is clear. But it is also clear that the celibate life is a great good, and this is a lesson we Christians have almost universally distorted these days. Many strands of Protestantism have risked forgetting St. Paul’s endorsement of celibacy altogether, but plenty of Catholics have confused things lately as well, misrepresenting discerning a religious vocation as listening for an extraordinary mystical voice resounding in our heart of hearts, or some such nebulous thing.

St. Thomas Aquinas knew better. The Angelic Doctor observed that the call to celibacy, like the call to poverty and obedience, was offered universally and promised what was, in itself, a better state of life. Abstracted from the individual and applied to the brokenness of our disorderly passions, the three evangelical counsels provide the most direct path towards sanctity. They take as their aim an absolute dedication to a supernatural reality by removing created distractions. Marriage is a great natural good, inscribed in Creation, elevated to the status of a Sacrament by Christ, and a beautiful facet of the life of the Church on earth; nevertheless, marriage cannot be said to be as perfect in itself as are the evangelical counsels.

Read the rest here.

Get on the road: The case for taking a pilgrimage

The following comes from US Catholic:

Pilgrimages prove that in order to move your soul, you usually need to move your feet as well.

A few years ago, on an incongruously cushy tour bus with plentiful opportunities for shopping, I made a pilgrimage to Assisi. We had Mass every day and visited the sites where St. Francis lived. I chose to enter into the experience, however, on what I hoped would be a deeper level.

I made the lonely climb up Mount Subasio outside Assisi and crawled into a cave, just as Francis and his brothers would have done. I ran through the woods at La Verna, where Francis received the wounds of Christ, finding crevasses in the mountain where I imagined the saint took refuge from the cold. I ate very little and spent no money, accepting only what was pro-vided as part of the trip. I prayed constantly. I felt that I connected with the life of St. Francis—and therefore with Christ, whom he sought to imitate. The trip changed my life.

For thousands of years, pilgrims have traveled to places brimming with spiritual value—for Christians, often places connected to the lives of Christ, Mary, or the saints. In the centuries before the airplane, the locomotive, and the automobile, traveling to these destinations usually meant a prolonged journey of anywhere from several weeks to a year. Travelers made the trips for many reasons: to ask for divine aid, to fulfill a religious obligation, or to venerate an important place or object.

Historically, the journey has been as important as the destination. Pilgrims took a lengthy break from their daily routines. They left their families and work environments, entering into a new community of people. In this new group, everyone was equal, no matter how much money or status they possessed.

Along the way, pilgrims had time to reflect on their lives back home. They were free to let go of their current situations and seek interior conversion. The destination became the center of their world, where they hoped to directly encounter God.

Pilgrims, by embarking on an exterior, physical journey, take an interior journey as well. Pilgrimages work because they address a fundamental human principle: We use our experiences of the perceivable created world to connect with the creator, whom we cannot see. This is the sacramental principle, and the foundation of our faith.

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St. John XXIII's secretary tells tales of his famous boss

(CNS)  When the freshly named patriarch of Venice, Cardinal Angelo G. Roncalli, chose 37-year old Father Loris F. Capovilla as his personal secretary in 1953, a skeptical adviser told the cardinal that the priest looked too sickly to bear the strain of his new job.

"Then he'll die as my secretary," replied the future pope, now known as Blessed John XXIII.

Today, at age 96, now-Archbishop Capovilla has outlived his employer by nearly half a century, but remains an indefatigable custodian of his legacy. Here in Blessed John's birthplace, about 25 miles northeast of Milan, the archbishop pursues a highly active retirement that includes running a museum dedicated to the small town's most famous native son.

While keeping up with current events, Archbishop Capovilla draws on his remarkable memory to recount vividly detailed and revealing stories of his years with one of the most consequential figures in modern Catholic history.

The archbishop was privy to some of the pope's first remarks, only a few days after his election in 1958, about what would become the Second Vatican Council.

Cardinals and bishops had presented the new pontiff with a litany of challenges before the church -- "not doctrinal but pastoral problems," the archbishop notes -- in areas that included the liturgy, diplomacy, and the education and discipline of priests.

"My desk is piling up with problems, questions, requests, hopes," Blessed John told his secretary. "What's really necessary is a council."

Though the pope mentioned the idea more than once, his secretary refused to comment. Finally the pope gave his interpretation of the priest's silence.

"You think I am old," Blessed John told him. "You think I'll make a mess out of this enormous task, that I don't have time. ... But that's not how you think with faith. ... If one can only begin with the preparatory commission, that will be of great merit. If one dies, another will come. It is a great honor even to begin."

Whatever doubts he may have had at the outset, Archbishop Capovilla came to appreciate the council's historic importance and to play a part in it behind the scenes.

It was the archbishop, in his own telling, who persuaded a reluctant and tired Blessed John to step to a window and bless the crowd in St. Peter's Square on the night of Oct. 11, 1962, following the council's first day. In now-famous remarks, the pope went on to bid the people: "Now go back home and give your little children a kiss -- tell them it is from Pope John."
Blessed John, who had earlier represented the Holy See as a diplomat in both Orthodox and Muslim lands, had a special appreciation of the church's global character and responsibilities, Archbishop Capovilla says.

The pope greatly admired the United States, especially for its racial and cultural diversity, and explicitly looked to the American-sponsored United Nations as a source of inspiration for Vatican II, Archbishop Capovilla says.

The archbishop also recalls that Blessed John received a letter from the Anglo-American poet Thomas Merton, then a Trappist monk in Kentucky, urging the pope to include an ecumenical dimension in the council. In fact, Vatican II would be the first council of the church to include Protestants as guests.

The pope was a master of modern communication in a personal, popular style that broke with papal tradition just in time for the television age.

When a cardinal complained that due to a recent rise in Vatican salaries a mere usher earned as much as he did, Blessed John remarked: "That usher has 10 children; I hope the cardinal doesn't."

The pope's ebullience was evident even in moments ordinarily governed by the strictest protocol. Receiving Queen Elizabeth II of England, with whom he conversed in French, the pope asked her to say her children's names aloud, "because children's names acquire a particular sweetness on a mother's lips."


The pope gave his secretary a lesson in communication when commenting on a speech by then-Cardinal Giovanni Montini of Milan, who would eventually succeed him as Pope Paul VI.

"He's used to speaking to intellectuals, he doesn't look at who's in front of him," the pope said. "Remember when you speak, if there are children present, as soon as you see the children start to swing their legs, it means they're tired. And adults are children, too; they listen for a quarter-hour or 20 minutes, that's it."

For all the changes that Blessed John ushered into the church, and notwithstanding arguments that his reign marked a radical break with the past, Archbishop Capovilla says that the pope saw himself as acting in full continuity with Catholicism's millennial teachings and traditions.

"Precisely because he was a great conservative," the archbishop says, "he was able to bring the world a message of love, of hope and of faith.

St. Ignatius of Antioch on the Eucharist

"I have no taste for corruptible food nor for the pleasures of this life.  I desire the bread of God, which is the flesh of Jesus Christ, who was of the seed of David; and for drink I desire His blood, which is love incorruptible."
  
St. Ignatius of Antioch, "Epistle to the Romans," c. 105 A.D.

Saint of the day: Athanasius

The following comes from Catholic Online:

St. Athanasius, the great champion of the faith was born at Alexandria, about the year 296, of Christian parents. Educated under the eye of Alexander, later  bishop of his native city, he made great progress in learning and virtue. In 313, Alexander succeeded Achillas in the Patriarchal See, and two years later St. Athanasiuswent to the desert to spend some time in retreat with St. Anthony.

In 319, he became a deacon, and even in this capacity he was called upon to take an active part against the rising heresy of Arius, an ambitious priest of the Alexandrian Church who denied the Divinity of Christ. This was to be the life struggle of St. Athanasius.

In 325, he assisted his bishop at the Council of Nicaea, where his influence began to be felt. Five months later Alexander died. On his death bed he recommended St. Athanasius as his successor. In consequence of this, Athanasius was unanimously elected Patriarch in 326.

His refusal to tolerate the Arian heresy was the cause of many trials and persecutions for St. Athanasius. He spent seventeen of the forty-six years of his episcopate in exile. After a life of virtue and suffering, this intrepid champion of the Catholic Faith, the greatest man of his time, died in peace on May 2, 373. St. Athanasius was a Bishop and Doctor of the Church.

Catholics celebrate canonizations of Pope John XXIII and Pope John Paul II