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Featured Article
Nov
3
Source: http://www.archden.org/dcr/news.php?e=454&s=2&a=9553
by Most Rev. Charles J. Chaput, Archbischop of Denver
Personal witness is always the best proof of what we claim to believe. And this year, like every other year, with or without an election, we need to apply the idea of Catholic witness in a special way to our public life as citizens. We might find it useful to remember 10 simple points as we move toward November.
1. George Orwell said that one of the biggest dangers for modern democratic life is dishonest political language. Dishonest language leads to dishonest politics — which then leads to bad public policy and bad law. So we need to speak and act in a spirit of truth.
2. “Catholic” is a word that has real meaning. We don’t control or invent that meaning as individuals. We inherit it from the Gospel and the experience of the Church over the centuries. We can choose to be something else, but if we choose to call ourselves Catholic, than that word has consequences for what we believe and how we act. We can’t truthfully claim to be Catholic and then act like we’re not.
3. Being a Catholic is a bit like being married. We have a relationship with the Church and with Jesus Christ that’s very similar to being a spouse. And that has consequences. If a man says he loves his wife, his wife will want to see the evidence in his love and fidelity. The same applies to our relationship with God. If we say we’re Catholic, we need to show that by our love for the Church and our fidelity to what she teaches and believes. Otherwise we’re just fooling ourselves, because God certainly won’t be fooled.
4. The Church is not a political organism. She has no interest in partisanship because getting power or running governments is not what she’s about, and the more closely she identifies herself with any single party, the fewer people she can effectively reach.
5. However, Scripture and Catholic teaching do have public consequences because they guide us in how we should act in relation to one another. Loving God requires that we also love the people He created, which means we need to treat them with justice, charity and mercy. Being a Catholic involves solidarity with other people. The Catholic faith has social justice implications — and that means it also has cultural, economic and political implications. The Catholic faith is never primarily about politics; but Catholic social action — including political action — is a natural byproduct of the Church’s moral message. We can’t call ourselves Catholic, and then simply stand by while immigrants get mistreated, or the poor get robbed, or unborn children get killed. The Catholic faith is always personal, but never private. If our faith is real, then it will bear fruit in our public decisions and behaviors, including our political choices.
6. Each of us needs to follow his or her own properly formed conscience. But conscience doesn’t emerge from a vacuum. It’s not a matter of personal opinion or preference. If our conscience has the habit of telling us what we want to hear on difficult issues, then it’s probably badly formed. A healthy conscience is the voice of God’s truth in our hearts, and it should usually make us uncomfortable, because none of us is yet a saint. The way we get a healthy conscience is by submitting it and shaping it to the will of God; and the way we find God’s will is by opening our hearts to the counsel and guidance of the Church that Jesus left us. If we find ourselves disagreeing as Catholics with the Catholic teaching of our Church on a serious matter, it’s probably not the Church that’s wrong. The problem is much more likely with us.
7. But how do we make good political choices when so many different issues are so important and complex? The first principle of Christian social thought is: Don’t deliberately kill the innocent, and don’t collude in allowing somebody else to do it. The right to life is the foundation of every other human right. The reason the abortion issue is so foundational is not because Catholics love little babies — although we certainly do — but because revoking the personhood of unborn children makes every other definition of personhood and human rights politically contingent.
8. So can a Catholic in good conscience support a “pro-choice” candidate? The answer is: I can’t and I won’t. But I do know some serious Catholics — people whom I admire — who will. I think their reasoning is mistaken. But at the very least they do sincerely struggle with the abortion issue, and it causes them real pain. And even more importantly: They don’t keep quiet about it; they don’t give up their efforts to end permissive abortion; they keep lobbying their party and their elected representatives to change their pro-abortion views and protect the unborn. Catholics can support “pro-choice” candidates if they support them despite — not because of — their “pro-choice” views. But they also need a compelling proportionate reason to justify it.
9. What is a “proportionate” reason when it comes to the abortion issue? It’s the kind of reason we will be able to explain, with a clean heart, to the victims of abortion when we meet them face to face in the next life — which we most certainly will. If we’re confident that these victims will accept our motives as something more than an alibi, then we can proceed.
10. Lastly, the heart of truly “faithful” citizenship is this: We’re better citizens when we’re more faithful Catholics. The more authentically Catholic we are in our lives, choices, actions and convictions, the more truly we will contribute to the moral and political life of our nation.
Archbishop Chaput’s forthcoming book on American Catholics and public life, “Render Unto Caesar,” will be published by Doubleday later this year.
Nov
3
St. Elizabeth Ann Seton
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The love of talk distracts all the powers of our soul from God, and fills them with earthly objects and impressions, like a vessel of water that cannot be settled while you are continualy stirring the earthly particles from the bottom.
– St. Elizabeth Ann Seton
Oct
31
What direction does a person choose for his existence if he has decided to tune the instrument of his life to the keynote of “faith”? This question is not an easy one to answer because it obviously reaches down to the deeper levels of human nature, to attributes that are not always visible on the surface but that penetrate and leave their imprint on the whole, yet without being anywhere measureable. All the important fundamental decisions of human existence that go beyond our ordinary concern about the details of everyday living can be understood if we ourselves make some small effort to enter into the movement from which they flow - whether it is a question of a great love, of the passion of the inventor, or of a renunciation required of those who devote their lives to a revolutionary idea; whether it is a question of the attitude expressed in the smile of a Buddha or the faith of a Christian…We can explain what faith really means for an individual only by pointing to the lives of those who have lived it in its fullness: Francis of Assisi, Francis Xavier, IGnatius Loyola, Teresa of Avila, Therese of Lisieux, Vincent de Paul, John XXIII; in such persons, and basically only in them, can we come to know what kind of decision faith is. As we can see in the lives of such individuals, faith is a kind of passion, or, more correctly, a love that seizes an individual and shows him the direction he must go, however fatiguing it may be - the spiritual equivalent, perhaps, of a mountain to climb, which to the ordinary Christian would seem foolish indeed but to one who has committed himself to the venture is clearly the only direction to take - a direction he would not exchange for any conceivably more comfortable one.
From: Glaube und Zukunft, pp.39-40
Oct
31
St. Jerome
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If Hope goes it alone, it ought to be called presumption, which is the highway to ruin.
– St. Jerome
Oct
30
Speaking with God must be a progression in and for ourselves - a progression in the literal sense of the word, that brings us forward, that moves us toward God and away from ourselves. When we neither convert into action nor simply carry around in ourselves all that oppresses us, smothers us in anxiety, deprives us of freedom and happiness, all that we wish for, desire, intend, demand, when we convert them into prayer, express and discuss them in God’s presence, then our prayer enters into a value system, confronts a criterion, by which it can be measured, directed, purified. For petitions to God are challenges to ourselves. The petitions of the Our Father point out the way we must: “Forgive us as we have forgiven” - how often have we fallen silent and blushed at this petition! “Hallowed be thy name” - for which of us is this petition about the defiled and reviled name of God a matter of personal concern? The next to the last petition (”Lead us not into temptation…”) always reminds me of Augustine’s admission in the Confessions that he prayed constantly for chastity even in his Sturm und Drang days, but always with reservation: “But please don’t give it to me yet.” And the last petition: “Deliver us from evil, from malum“. What, exactly, is bad, “evil”, for us? And what is the salutary exigency that must remain? Perhaps the truth of the matter is often the opposite of our wishes. What pleases us can be the product of evil and what hurts us can become our salvation. There are other prayers, too, that can become models for us, can discipline us, can force us to examine our conscience, can purify us. I shall mention here only the simple, yet great, prayer of Nicholas of Flue: “My Lord and my God, take from me all that keeps me from you; give me all that brings me to you.” What a purification of our wishes an honest recitation of this petition presumes!
From:Doma und Verkundigung, pp.125ff
Oct
30
St. Josemaria Escriva
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But now, my poor son, the hurricane has come, and you feel you are being shaken by a force that could uproot century-old trees. But you must remain confident, for your Faith and your love cannot be uprooted, nor can you be blown from your way, if you remain in unity with the “Head”
– St. Josemaria Escriva
Oct
30
CATHOLICS CANNOT SUPPORT THE RH BILL IN GOOD CONSCIENCE
A response to the position paper Catholics Can Support the RH Bill in Good Conscience
To the community of the Ateneo de Manila University:
We, alumni of our alma mater, wish to respond to the position paper authored by 14 members of our faculty. We laud our professors for a wide-ranging presentation on the Philippine social situation, most especially the undesirable effects of an unmanaged population growth to women, the poor and our young people. We commend their dedication to the integral human development of the Filipino people in these troubling times. However, with respect and fraternal charity towards them, we respond that Catholics cannot support the RH Bill in good conscience.
Oct
28
The so-called Didache of the Apostles, a book that dates from about 90 or 100 AD., records a tradition that had long been accepted as a matter of course: “Assemble together on the Lord’s Day, break bread, and give thanks, having first confessed your sins so that your offering will be pure” (Did 14:1). We can be certain of this, then: it is not the role of the Church or of any individual Christian to decide whether or when we should celebrate the divine liturgy or what we should decide to do with our Sunday.
Someone may object: But I dislike the bad air in the church and the worn-out hymns. It bothers me to kneel crowded together with all kinds of people whom I do not know and to hear the priest recite prayers that I cannot understand. I prefer to go up into the mountains, into the woods, or on the water, and I am more pious in God’s free nature than in a congregation that has nothing to offer me.
In reply one might say: “It cannot be that we choose for ourselves whether or how we shall worship God: what is important is that we respond to him in the place where he gives himself to us. We cannot decide on our own terms where God is to meet us, and we should not stive to reach him by our own efforts. He can come to us and let us find him wherever he chooses. What matters is not just some pious feeling of ours that relegates religion to the realm of the nonobligatory and private but the obedience that hears God’s call and accepts it. The Lord does not want our private feelings; he wants to form us into a community and to build the new community of the Church on faith. The body must share in the divine worship as must the community with its hardships and discomforts. That is why it is false to ask: “What do I get out of this?”
From: Zeit fur Gott: Zeit fur den Menschen, 1981
Oct
28
St. Augustine
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I believe, in order to understand; and I understand, the better to believe
– St. Augustine
Oct
27
St. Francis de Sales
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The highest degree of meekness consists in seeing, serving, honoring, and treating amiably, on occasion, those who are not to our taste, and who show themselves unfriendly, ungrateful, and troublesome to us.
– St. Francis de Sales
