Magisterium

I want to draw attention, especially those of you currently in RCIA at The Cathedral of the Madeleine, to a post on our RCIA blog entitled You, Me, the Pope, and our Bishop. This post is in response to some questions and queries on a recent class. There is also another post on our Blessed Mother.

Writing about the Church's magisterium, Bishop Wester, the bishop of my diocese, Salt Lake City, on The Intermountain Catholic website, has two new podcasts up. This is a great service as it allows our bishop to speak directly to us in His Own Words.

"Blessed are they who . . ." (Matt. 5,6)

This is a great reflection for a Monday morning, from the Ironic Catholic, Theological Rant 1.0: Will You Just Let Me Be Religious Already?. To whet your appetite, it begins: "Excuse me, I know you're just trying to live your life and be sensitive and thoughtful and all, but will you just let me be religious already?"

Indeed, as the Ironic Catholic insists, "heroic virtue is worth striving for." To that end I turn to a person who also thought a life of holiness was the only life worth living, Blessed Teresa of Calcutta. Mother Teresa's motto, the cornerstone of her order, are Jesus' words from the Cross "I thirst" (Jn. 19,28). What Jesus thirsts for, according to this holy woman, is us, for you and me, for all humanity. So, it must be our task "to quench the infinite thirst of a God made man." Mother Teresa also manages to encapsulate something that has been pointed out in these pages many times before, it is drawn from the wisdom of others and my own, admittedly limited, experience: "Until you know deep inside that Jesus thirsts for you - you can't begin to know who He wants to be for you. Or who He wants you to be for Him" (Mother Teresa: Come Be My Light pgs. 41-42). In the end the ones who will be filled are those "who hunger and thirst for righteousness" (Matt. 5,6). To that end, in a turn of phrase worthy of Jude Simpson, with the I.C. "I want beatitudes, not platitudes."

Rendering service "to the Christian community and also to the whole of humanity"

All things Latin American seem to coalescing since my Ché post. I know that post was probably too long and tortured for anyone to read, judging from the total lack of interest the post generated. Long-time readers know, however, that I have a peculiar fondness for my misbegotten children. So, it remains of interest to me for several reasons. In addition to our dear Cathedral being visited by Guatemalan First Lady Wendy Widmann de Berger yesterday, John Allen wrote once again about the region for his All Things Catholic weekly Friday article: Signs of Life in Latin America.

This article highlights well the current situation in Latin America today vis-à-vis Church and State. Of course the large, looming figure of Hugo Chávez is noted, along with Brazilian President Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva in Brazil, but there are other significant voices that Allen strives to hear, such as Ecuadorian President Rafael Correa, Bolivian President Evo Morales, who, like Chávez, Correa, Lula da Silva, and Fernando Lugo, a bishop who vacated his See to run for the presidency of Paraguay, is Catholic and who said back in July that "the Catholic bishops had 'historically damaged the country' by functioning as 'an instrument of the oligarchs'".

Towards the end of his article Allen summarizes a book written by Fr. Edward Cleary, OP entitled Conversion of a Continent. According to Allen, "Cleary argues, recent Latin American experience confirms what believers in the United States have long understood -- an open religious marketplace, unfettered by an established church, is healthy for churches all the way around". While I am inclined to agree with this statement (i.e., that the increasing religious diversity in the region is actually good for the Catholic Church, which has often been moribund), I really loathe talking about faith and religion using marketplace terms. The reason I dislike it is that it reduces people to religious consumers. The problem with this, at least from a Christian standpoint, is nothing less than a complete evisceration of the Gospel. If we are nothing more than religious consumers, then our basic approach to joining a community is rooted in what we personally get out of it. Nothing could be more unChristian or anti-Christian. Now, that is not to say that most of us are looking for something. This something often remains quite nebulous, even unidentifiable until we encounter it. In the encounter we discover that this something is a someOne. Facilitating such an encounter is what evangelism is all about, which is why I will plug, yet again, Papa Montini's Apostolic Exhortation Evangelii Nuntiandi, in which we read, quoting from a speech given to the Sacred College that "it is only in the Christian message that modern man can find the answer to his questions and the energy for his commitment of human solidarity" (par. 3). It follows that "it is absolutely necessary for us to take into account a heritage of faith that the Church has the duty of preserving in its untouchable purity, and of presenting it to the people of our time, in a way that is as understandable and persuasive as possible" (par. 3).

Such an endeavor, Pope Paul continues, requires a two-fold fidelity "to a message whose servants we are and to the people to whom we must transmit it living and intact". In order to be faithful we must answer "three burning questions":

- In our day, what has happened to that hidden energy of the Good News, which is able to have a powerful effect on man's conscience?

- To what extent and in what way is that evangelical force capable of really transforming the people of this century?

- What methods should be followed in order that the power of the Gospel may have its effect?" (par. 4)

"After my picture fades . . ."

Cyndi is still just amazing! This song, because it is unapologetically sentimental, creates a memorial flood for me, which is appropriate for a day of remembrance. I hope you, too, dear reader (all 15 of you) find it equally reminiscent.

All Souls Day

All Souls Day, by William Bouguereau (1859)
Following immediately on the heels of All Hallows Eve and All Hallows Day (i.e., All Saints Day) is All Souls Day. On this day we commemorate all our dead, especially our departed family members, friends, and members of our parishes. It is yet another way of acknowledging, of living, of calling to mind and making present this great communion of saints to which we belong. Hence, it is a way understanding that, because of the life, death, and resurrection of Jesus Christ, life does not end at death, but continues forever and that eternal life begins at Baptism, or that life, at least for those who die in the friendship of Christ, is not the last breath, merely the last smile on this side of the door to our Father's house where we hope to dwell and be happy forever.

To make a secular comparison, All Souls is something like a religious memorial day. It is very appropriate to visit the graves of loved ones, to visit the graves of those who do not have anybody to remember them, most especially priests and religious. If unable to visit graves, pray for our beloved departed, ask them to pray for you, for us. Above all, attend Mass. While All Souls is not, like All Saints, a holy day of obligation, it is an important feast. Besides, this year, it falls on a First Friday. This gives us that much more impetus to go to Mass, to gather as God's People, to make present in the world, in our various communities, this great communion, to show we are Christian by our love for God and one another.

I will post our weekly traditio later this afternoon or this evening. It never hurts to build in some anticipation. One last note, in my litany for yesterday I failed to invoke the intercession of Sts. Perpetua and Felicity and St. Thérèse of Lisieux. So,

Sts. Perpetua and Felicity - pray for us
St. Thérèse of Lisieux- Little Flower- pray for us

All Saints

St. Stephen, deacon, my patron

Over on our parish blog, The People of St. Mary Magdalene, starting last week and continuing through the early part of this week, in anticipation of All Saints, I posted a series on holy people:

The Divine Witness of a Humble Woman

The Divine Witness of a Humble Pope

The Divine Witness of a Humble Bishop

The Divine Witness of a Humble Man

A litany:

Holy Mary, Mother of God- pray for us
St. Joseph- pray for us
St. Mary Magdalene- pray for us
St. Stephen- pray for us
St. Philip- pray for us
St. Lawrence- pray for us
St. Martin of Tours- pray for us
Sts. Francis and Clare- pray for us
St. Teresa Benedicta of the Cross- pray for us
St. Gianna Molla- pray for us
Bl. Pope John XXIII- pray for us
Bl. Teresa of Calcutta- pray for us
Bl.Franz Jägerstätter- pray for us
All holy men and women- pray for us

In order that we, too, might attain beatitude "we must above all seek the prayers of the saints. Thus, what is beyond our own powers to obtain will be granted through their intercession" (From a sermon by St. Bernard of Clarvaux, abbot, taken from the Office of Readings for the Solemnity of All Saints [a.k.a. All Hallows]).

Good Pope, bad assessment

No sooner do I post an article praising the wonderful legacy left by Bl. Pope John XXIII, especially his calling of the Second Vatican Ecumenical Council, than does he come in for criticism from no less than Giacomo Cardinal Biffi, archbishop emeritus of Bologna, Italy. Cardinal Biffi has long been known for his feistiness, his keen intellect, good humor, as well as for clearly speaking his mind in public and private. As he approaches his eightieth birthday, he has published a memoir entitled Memorie e digressioni di un italiano cardinale (Memories and Digressions of an Italian Cardinal). In his book, as one might well imagine, published as it is just prior to his superannuation as member of the Sacred College and a few years after his retirement as Bologna’s shepherd, Cardinal Biffi pulls few punches. Among the punches he does not throw, according to Sandro Magister, on whose peerless webpage Chiesa, excerpts of His Eminence’s book appears, Biffi, adhering to the axiom we all learned from our mothers, says almost nothing rather write anything terribly critical about his former archbishop, whom he served as an auxiliary in Milan, the great biblical scholar, Carlo Maria Cardinal Martini, SJ, a man with whom Biffi has little in common, personally, theologically, or pastorally. It is interesting to note that Cardinal Martini was the only challenger to then-Cardinal Ratzinger in the conclave of 2005.

It may surprise some to learn (not those who know me personally) that I am in agreement with many conservative critiques of the post Vatican II Church. The two reforms of the Council I am least open to criticisms of are the definition of the Church as the People of God and the reform of the liturgy, which gives concrete form to this crucial definition of the Church. I am also pretty committed to the Church’s engagement with the world, which Cardinal Biffi often sees, sometimes accurately, as Church capitulating to the world. Engagement with the world is tricky and does mean often challenging the world, especially on ethical and moral issues. In the not too distant past I posted a critique, taken from Romano Amerio’s book Iota Unum on the anthropology of Gaudium et Spes, particularly the new man. So, it was with a small sense of irony (i.e., using it in both positive and negative ways) that I used the first line of this one and only Pastoral Constitution, which makes it a strange and unique canonical document, the status of which remains a matter of debate, for my post on Ché, who was himself committed to the creation of the new socialist man.


Good Pope, good teacher, bad interpreter
When it comes to John XXIII Biffi seems to be content to set up and kick over straw men, assuming the excerpts web-published by Magister are accurate. In the first instance Cardinal Biffi, in a section entitled John XXIII: a good pope, a bad teacher equates the prophets of doom referred to by Il Papa Buono in his great address called Gaudet Mater Ecclesia, given to open the first session of Vatican II, with the prophets of the Bible, including Jesus himself, who gave warning first to Israel and then to the Church about the consequences of deviating from the Truth revealed by God. But, it is most helpful to point out that the Pope is not speaking to or about those who we might revere as prophets in our day. Rather, he tells his audience that he is referring to those who see in our day "nothing but prevarication and ruin. They say that our era, in comparison with past eras, is getting worse, and they behave as though they had learned nothing from history, which is, none the less, the teacher of life. They behave as though at the time of former Councils everything was a full triumph for the Christian idea and life and for proper religious liberty". It helps to point out that Pope John XXIII, as an academic historian and professor of Church history prior to entering the Holy See’s diplomatic service, knew whereof he spoke. His special area of expertise was the Council of Trent, focusing on the greatest figure of that great Council, St. Charles Borromeo, who Biffi, as a native of Milan, the diocese for which he was ordained first a priest and then a bishop, prior his becoming the ordinary of Bologna, greatly reveres.

In a further section Cardinal Biffi first praises and then criticizes Pope John's maxim "Distinction must be made between error and the person in error". This is to say that a distinction must be made between sin and the sinner, between heresy and the heretic, etc. His criticism takes the form of saying that when condemning error, which the Church has continued to do even after Vatican II, the Church does not condemn an abstraction, but also the person who teaches error. What is puzzling is that Biffi himself ends this correction with these words: "The Christian people must be put on guard and defended against those who actually sow error, without ceasing to seek out his true well-being, and without judging anyone's subjective responsibility, which is known to God alone". This is puzzling because it merely re-states what Pope John XXIII said and meant in the first place. So, it seems to me, based on reading these excerpts, that perhaps Cardinal Biffi could have been a bit more generous in reading and interpreting the words and pontificate of Pope John XXIII. Another odd thing about all this is that Biffi seems to be playing to his public persona, something Cardinal Martini, who is in many ways his nemesis, also gets accused of doing.