CHRISTIAN MARRIAGE VALIDITY

WHAT MAKES A CHRISTIAN MARRIAGE VALID?

A layman asked about the “crisis of marriage” and how Catholics can help educate youth in love, help them learn about sacramental marriage, and help them overcome “their resistance, delusions and fears.”

The questioner and the Holy Father shared three specific concerns, none of which is in itself controversial: first, that there is a "crisis of marriage" in the Catholic world today; second, that the Church must increase its efforts to educate those who are entering into marriage so that they are properly prepared for the Sacrament of Marriage; and third, that the Church must help those who are resistant to marriage for various reasons to overcome that resistance and embrace the Christian vision of marriage.

What Did Pope Francis Actually Say?

In the context of the question that the Holy Father was asked, we can better understand his answer. As the Catholic News Agency reports, "The Pope answered from his own experience":

“I heard a bishop say some months ago that he met a boy that had finished his university studies, and said ‘I want to become a priest, but only for 10 years.’ It’s the culture of the provisional. And this happens everywhere, also in priestly life, in religious life,” he said.

“It’s provisional, and because of this the great majority of our sacramental marriages are null. Because they say ‘yes, for the rest of my life!’ but they don’t know what they are saying. Because they have a different culture. They say it, they have good will, but they don’t know.”

He later noted that many Catholics "don't know what the sacrament [of marriage] is," nor do they understand "the beauty of the sacrament." Catholic marriage-preparation courses have to overcome cultural and social issues, as well as the "culture of the provisional," and they must do so in a very short time. The Holy Father mentioned a woman in Buenos Aires who "reproached" him for the lack of marriage preparation in the Church, saying, “we have to do the sacrament for our entire lives, and indissolubly, to us laity they give four (marriage preparation) conferences, and this is for our entire life.”

For most priests and those engaged in Catholic marriage preparation, Pope Francis's remarks were not very surprising—with the exception, perhaps, of the initial claim (modified the next day) that "the great majority of our sacramental marriages are null." The very fact that Catholics in most countries divorce at a rate comparable to non-Catholics suggests that the questioner's concerns, and the Holy Father's answer, are addressing a very real problem.

Objective Impediments to a Valid Marriage

But is it really that hard for Catholics today to contract a valid sacramental marriage? What kinds of things can render a marriage invalid?

The Code of Canon Law addresses these questions by discussing "specific diriment impediments"—what we might call objective impediments—to marriage, and those problems that may affect the ability of one or both parties to consent to marriage. (An impediment is something that stands in the way of what you're trying to do. ) The Holy Father, we should note, was not talking about objective impediments, which include (among other things)

·         not being of the proper age (16 for men, 14 for women)

·         "Antecedent and perpetual impotence to have intercourse"

·         being "bound by the bond of a prior marriage"

·         a union between a baptized Catholic and a unbaptized person

·         having received the Sacrament of Holy Orders or being "bound by a public perpetual vow of chastity in a religious institute"

·         being too closely related, whether by blood or by adoption

Indeed, perhaps the only one of these objective impediments that is more common today than in the past would be unions between baptized Catholics and unbaptized spouses.

Impediments to Matrimonial Consent That May Affect a Marriage's Validity

What both Pope Francis and the questioner had in mind were, instead, those things that affect the ability of one or both of those entering a marriage from fully consenting to the marriage contract. This is important because, as Canon 1057 of the Code of Canon Law notes, "The consent of the parties, legitimately manifested between persons qualified by law, makes marriage; no human power is able to supply this consent." In sacramental terms, the man and the woman are the ministers of the Sacrament of Marriage, not the priest or deacon who performs the ceremony; therefore, in entering into the sacrament, they need to intend by an act of the will to do what the Church intends in the sacrament: "Matrimonial consent is an act of the will by which a man and a woman mutually give and accept each other through an irrevocable covenant in order to establish marriage."

Various things can stand in the way of one or both of those entering a marriage giving their full consent, including (according to Canons 1095-1098 of the Code of Canon Law)

·         lacking "the sufficient use of reason"

·         suffering from "a grave defect of discretion of judgment concerning the essential matrimonial rights and duties mutually to be handed over and accepted" (e.g., not understanding that marriage entails sexual activity)

·         not being "able to assume the essential obligations of marriage for causes of a psychic nature"

·         being "ignorant that marriage is a permanent partnership between a man and a woman ordered to the procreation of offspring by means of some sexual cooperation"

·         thinking you are marrying one person when you are really marrying another ("Error concerning the person")

·         having been "deceived by malice, perpetrated to obtain consent, concerning some quality of the other partner which by its very nature can gravely disturb the partnership of conjugal life"

Of these, the chief one that Pope Francis clearly had in mind was ignorance concerning the permanence of marriage, as his remarks about the "culture of the provisional" make clear.

"The Culture of the Provisional"

So what does the Holy Father mean by the "culture of the provisional"? In a nutshell, it's the idea that something is important only so long as we think it's important. Once we decide that something no longer fits with our plans, we can set it aside and move on. To this mindset, the idea that some actions we take have permanent, binding consequences that cannot be undone simply does not make sense.

While he hasn't always used the phrase "culture of the provisional," Pope Francis has spoken about this in many different contexts in the past, including in discussions of abortion, euthanasia, the economy, and environmental degradation. To many people in the modern world, including Catholics, no decision seems irrevocable. And that obviously has serious consequences when it comes to the question of consenting to marriage, since such consent requires us to recognize that "marriage is a permanent partnership between a man and a woman ordered to the procreation of offspring."

In a world in which divorce is common, and married couples choose to delay childbirth or even avoid it altogether, the intuitive grasp of the permanence of marriage that previous generations had can no longer be taken for granted. And that presents serious problems for the Church, because priests can no longer assume that those who come to them wishing to get married intend what the Church herself intends in the sacrament.

Does that mean that "the great majority" of Catholics who contract marriages today do not understand that marriage is a "permanent partnership"? Not necessarily, and for that reason, the revision of the Holy Father's comment to read (in the official transcript) "a portion of our sacramental marriages are null" seems to have been prudent.

A Deeper Examination of the Validity of Marriage

Pope Francis's off-the-cuff comment in June 2016 was hardly the first time that he has considered the topic. In fact, other than the "great majority" part, everything he said (and much more) was expressed in a speech that he delivered to the Roman Rota, the Catholic Church's "Supreme Court," 15 months earlier, on January 23, 2015:

Indeed, the lack of knowledge of the contents of the faith might lead to what the Code calls determinant error of the will (cf. can. 1099). This circumstance can no longer be considered exceptional as in the past, given the frequent prevalence of worldly thinking imposed on the magisterium of the Church. Such error threatens not only the stability of marriage, its exclusivity and fruitfulness, but also the ordering of marriage to the good of the other. It threatens the conjugal love that is the “vital principle” of consent, the mutual giving in order to build a lifetime of consortium. “Marriage now tends to be viewed as a form of mere emotional satisfaction that can be constructed in any way or modified at will” (Ap. Ex. Evangelii gaudium, n. 66). This pushes married persons into a kind of mental reservation regarding the very permanence of their union, its exclusivity, which is undermined whenever the loved one no longer sees his or her own expectations of emotional well-being fulfilled.

The language is much more formal in this scripted speech, but the idea is the same as the one Pope Francis expressed in his unscripted comments: The validity of marriage is threatened today by "worldly thinking" that denies the "permanence" of marriage and its "exclusivity."

Pope Benedict Made the Same Argument

And in fact, Pope Francis was not the first pope to address this very issue. Indeed, Pope Benedict had made essentially the same argument about "culture of the provisional" in the same setting—a speech to the Roman Rota on January 26, 2013:

Contemporary culture, marked by accentuated subjectivism and ethical and religious relativism, places the person and the family before pressing challenges. Firstly, it is faced with the question about the capacity of the human being to bind him or herself, and about whether a bond that lasts a lifetime really is possible and corresponds with human nature or whether, rather, it contradicts man’s freedom and self-fulfillment. In fact, the very idea that a person fulfills him or herself living an “autonomous” existence and only entering into a relationship with the other when it can be broken off at any time forms part of a widespread mindset.

And from that reflection, Pope Benedict drew a conclusion that, if anything, is even more disturbing than the one Pope Francis came to, because he sees such "subjectivism and ethical and religious relativism" calling into question the very faith of "those engaged to be married," with the possible consequence that their future marriage may not be valid:

The indissoluble pact between a man and a woman does not, for the purposes of the sacrament, require of those engaged to be married, their personal faith; what it does require, as a necessary minimal condition, is the intention to do what the Church does. However, if it is important not to confuse the problem of the intention with that of the personal faith of those contracting marriage, it is nonetheless impossible to separate them completely. As the International Theological Commission observed in a Document of 1977: “Where there is no trace of faith (in the sense of the term ‘belief’ — being disposed to believe), and no desire for grace or salvation is found, then a real doubt arises as to whether there is the above-mentioned and truly sacramental intention and whether in fact the contracted marriage is validly contracted or not.”

The Heart of the Matter—and an Important Consideration

In the end, then, it appears that we can separate the possible hyperbole—"the great majority"—of Pope Francis's unscripted remarks from the underlying issue that he discussed in his response of June 2016 and in his speech of January 2015, and that Pope Benedict discussed in January 2013. That underlying issue—the "culture of the provisional," and how it affects the ability of Catholic men and women truly to consent to marriage, and thus to contract a marriage validly—is a serious problem that the Catholic Church must face.

Yet even if Pope Francis's initial off-the-cuff remark is correct, it's important to remember this: The Church as always presumed that any particular marriage that meets the external criteria for validity is actually valid, until shown otherwise. In other words, the concerns raised by both Pope Benedict and Pope Francis are not the same as, say, a question about the validity of a particular baptism. In the latter case, if there is any doubt about the validity of a baptism, the Church requires that a provisional baptism be performed to ensure the validity of the sacrament, since the Sacrament of Baptism is necessary for salvation.

In the case of marriage, the question of validity only becomes a concern should one or both spouses request an annulment. In that case, Church marriage tribunals, from the diocesan level all the way up to the Roman Rota, may in fact consider evidence that one or both partners did not enter into the marriage with a proper understanding of its permanent nature, and thus did not offer the full consent that is necessary for a marriage to be valid.

CHRISTIANITY IN INDIA TODAY

Christians and Muslims have been persecuted at the hands of Hindu nationalists associated with the ruling BJP party. But, according to one recent visitor, the tide could be turning

The small wooden figure of St George looks like an Asian warrior, with a lotus flower on his head instead of a helmet. His saddle is clearly made for an elephant, not a horse. The statue of the saint slaying the dragon and rescuing the princess is displayed in a glass case at the Syro-Malabar Church museum in Kochi, or Cochin, the great trading city on the coast of the southern Indian state of Kerala. 

This statue demonstrates that it would be wrong to describe Christianity in India as simply the result of Portuguese, French or British colonialism. The museum’s curator, Fr Ignatius Payyappilly, points out that the princess is recognisably local, saying: “She sits on her haunches, Indian fashion, her hands in the traditional ‘namaste’ position. And both she and St George have the long ears typical of Buddha images.”

Indian politics today is partly a battle about history. The silent message of the saint is important, given the growing concern among the country’s minorities about Hindutva, the ethno-religious political ideology that claims India as a “motherland” for Hindus and regards Islam and Christianity as alien elements in Indian society (Buddhism, born in Bodh Gaya in the Indian state of Bihar, is accepted, but it is regarded as a Hindu sect).

The Syro-Malabar Church, with 4 million members, is the largest of south-west India’s Churches, claiming descent from the mission efforts of the Apostle Thomas. It is one of the 23 Eastern Catholic Churches in communion with Rome. Whether Thomas actually arrived in India in AD 52 is disputable, but it is clear that Christianity was established on the Malabar coast at least as early as the sixth century. Then, it lived in cultural symbiosis with both Hinduism and Buddhism.

“This is what a Christian church looked like before the arrival of the Portuguese,” says Fr Ignatius, pointing to a model of a lovely red and white building that faintly resembles a Chinese pagoda. “The Portuguese thought they were Hindu temples and destroyed them.”
Over tea and apricots in his gleaming white Kochi residence, I discuss with Cardinal George Alencherry, the Syro-Malabar Archbishop, the situation of Christians in Kerala. They make up about 20 per cent of the population and both the Catholic and Protestant Churches are well established. The educational attainment of both men and women in Kerala is high, with literacy almost 100 per cent, but unemployment rates too are high. Many Keralans leave for other parts of India, while manual jobs in the state are increasingly filled with immigrants from poor north-eastern states such as Odisha and Bihar.

So far, the level of interreligious violence has been low in Kerala compared with other states, but, warns the cardinal, “there is an undercurrent of communal tension here too”. This is confirmed by a Lutheran pastor in Kerala’s capital city of Thiruvananthapuram (formerly Trivandrum), who told me of an incident a year ago when a pastor was beaten up by activists of the Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh (RSS), the main Hindutva movement.

There has been no major outbreak of communal violence in India since 2008 but there is a steady trickle of reports of local incidents. Many Christians feel that the general climate is one of watchfulness and insecurity, though many also speak of good local inter-communal relations. Much of the concern focuses on the RSS, estimated to have a couple of million members, and its affiliated organisations – trade unions, a student union, a women’s association – that make up the Sangh Parivar, the “Hindu family”, a grassroots network promoting a politicised version of Hindu identity. One aim is to dominate the public space. 

A trigger of the pogroms against Christians in Odisha that began in December 2007 and continued for most of 2008 seems to have been the raising (with police permission) of a temporary Christmas arch across a village road. “Part of the background was the increased local presence of the Vishwa Hindu Parishad (VHP), the RSS’ paramilitary wing,” says Professor Sebastian M. Michael SVD, sociologist, consultor to the Pontifical Council for Culture and ex-director of the Pune-based Institute of Indian Culture. “Many inhabitants of Odisha are tribals, who lost their lands to big mining companies in the nineteenth century. A Belgian missionary stood up for them and many converted to Christianity. Today, the aim of the RSS is to ‘sanscritise’ the tribals.”

In Bihar, India’s most populous state and one of its poorest, most people I speak to seem optimistic about containing Hindu extremism. “By the standards of India, the RSS is a small organisation. The majority of Hindus do not respond to the Hindutva rhetoric,” says Fr José Kalapura SJ, head of a social science institute in Bihar, who sees the mutual fear of different religious dominations as part of the Indian political scene. “Hindus feel that their religion and culture were despised during the colonial period,” he says. “And there is, despite an 80 per cent Hindu majority, a demographic fear that Muslims with their higher birth rates will eventually re-establish domination. On the other hand, Christians and Muslims fear persecution and absorption by the Hindu majority.”

The ideology of the ruling Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) and its leader, Prime Minister Narendra Modi, is inspired by Hindutva. The links between the BJP and the RSS are well known. Modi himself has an RSS background. Last November the BJP lost heavily in the parliamentary assembly elections in Bihar and some have seen the vote as a sign that Indian voters may be tiring of a communalist message. The outcome of elections in three further states – Kerala, Tamil Nadu and West Bengal, which took place this week – will show whether this mood endures. 

So far, the BJP, whose base is in the prosperous north-west, particularly in Modi’s home state of Gujarat, has had difficulties establishing itself in the south and in the poor north-east. But the party clearly aims to succeed Congress as the dominating presence throughout India. Lately, the BJP has toned down the Hindutva cultural message in favour of an emphasis on market liberalism, economic growth and opportunities for India’s expanding middle class. Few would dispute the need to liberalise the bureaucracy-ridden economy, a process begun by Congress in the 1990s under Rajiv Gandhi. But poverty remains a significant factor in Indian politics. The BJP is seen by many as a party of rich industrialists and business people, without a social redistribution policy. 

Critics point to the 0.5 per cent of the central government budget devoted to health and education, and to the poor social performance of the Gujarat state government during Modi’s premiership. Disappointment with broken promises to the poor may well have contributed to the BJP’s loss in Bihar. As one of the Catholic bishops has said: “Thirty-five per cent of India’s population lives below the poverty line. What is Modi’s message to them?”

The Hindutva movement stresses the unity of Hinduism across caste and sect boundaries. If India’s 80 per cent Hindus can be made to vote consistently en bloc for one party, this party could rule indefinitely. After all, Congress managed to hold power for several decades. But the landscape has changed dramatically in the past 25 years. Many smaller parties, including a Dalit party, now compete for power. Though they, too, are for the most part based on communal identities, either of caste or religion, they are seen by some as a counterforce to BJP hegemony. Compromises and alliances are needed and these smaller parties tend to dilute ideology.

Michael sees this as the way to counter Hindutva: “Hindutva is a strategy for the upper castes to continue their economic and political domination. But they are only 20 per cent of the population. The lower castes, the Shudras, are 52 per cent, the Dalits 15 per cent and the tribals 7 per cent. With broad alliances of all people of goodwill, based on the values of social justice and solidarity enshrined in the constitution, we can build democratic majorities. There is a strong anti-caste tradition in India we should build on.”

Ulla Gudmundson is a former Swedish ambassador to the Holy See (2008-13).

CATHERINE OF SIENA

LOVE AND LAUGHTER

28 April 2016 | by Thomas McDermott | Comments: 0

An uneducated, almost certainly illiterate mystic played an important role in Dominican spirituality and was one of the first women made a Doctor of the Church

We sometimes think of saints as frozen, passionless, anaemic.  This is far from an apt description of Catherine of Siena, perhaps the most remarkable woman of the fourteenth century. When Fra Bartolomeo Dominici, one of her earliest disciples, met her as a young woman, he was struck by her joy. Raymond of Capua, her confessor and friend, was drawn to her “affectionate nature” and “outgoing affability … and a charming graciousness in her dealings with others”. 

She easily laughed and cried. Once, she was thrown from her donkey and landed painfully on the ground. Her companions found her laughing at herself. When the animal fell on top of her, she smiled wryly and said: “This little donkey is keeping me warm.” 

Caterina Benincasa was born in a Siena still ravaged by the Black Death in 1347, and died in Rome in 1380, aged 33. She was one of several children of a local dyer and his wife. It seems that people were always attracted to her. She was not formally educated, but the young men and women of Siena’s sophisticated set simply enjoyed being with her and would accompany her on extensive travels through Italy and the south of France. One admirer tells us she would squeal with joy whenever she caught sight of Catherine, and would then be overcome with the desire to pray. All told, her loose community of followers consisted of as many as 60 people – a mix of women and men, lay people and Religious, Franciscans and Augustinians, as well as Dominicans. They called her “Mama” and chroniclers tell us they “delighted to live in her company”.

Sometimes a thousand people or more would gather around her, just to see her or kiss her hand. She had her detractors of course, who derisively called her group the “Caterinati” or the “Catherinised ones”. But the atmosphere seems to have been playful and relaxed. After transcribing one of her vibrant letters, which she would always dictate, her disciples would sometimes sign off with nicknames such as “Crazy Giovanna” or “Foolish Cecca”.

Among her friends, Catherine had a “special love” for Raymond of Capua, a man old enough to be her father. They were both involved in caring for victims of the plague; when Raymond contracted the disease himself, Catherine sat at his bedside until he recovered. He would later write her biography and become Master of the Dominican Order – he is sometimes known as its “second founder”. 

Catherine was a spiritually precocious child, and had early mystical experiences. At about 16, she joined a group of older lay penitent women associated with the Dominican Order who met at the friars’ church in Siena. They were called the “Mantellate” because of the black mantles, or capes, they wore over their white Dominican habits. Unlike nuns, they lived in their own homes. 

Her association with the Dominicans was critical as it allowed her to carry on her work under the auspices of one of the most important orders of the time. If you visit her family home, as thousands of pilgrims do every year, you will see how close it is to San Dominico, the great Dominican church and priory in Siena. But there was more than convenience in her attraction to the Dominicans. The purpose of the Order – “preaching and the salvation of souls” – precisely encompasses her own vocation. 

In 1970, Pope Paul VI proclaimed Catherine, along with St Teresa of Avila, a Doctor [teacher] of the Church – the first women to achieve this recognition. Catherine’s teaching is found principally in The Dialogue, in 381 extant letters and in 26 prayers. Her thought was borne not from reading books – she was illiterate for most, if not all, of her life – but from her relationship with divine Love. Pope St John Paul II referred to it as a “lived theology”. 

Her life and work illustrate the richness and variety of the Dominican spiritual tradition, which embraces what you might call the “positive way” of Thomas Aquinas, the “negative way” of Meister Eckhart – as well as the mystical and prophetic way of Catherine of Siena. 

As a faithful daughter of Dominic, she had tremendous regard for study and for the contemplation of Truth. The more we grow towards a true knowledge of God, the more we will grow in love of God, of ourselves and of others. Growing in holiness is not so much a struggle of the will but a constant return to an ever-deeper knowledge of God in the inner “cell of self-knowledge”. Holiness also entails growing in virtues such as justice and courage, as well as faith, hope and charity. Like Dominic, Catherine was enflamed with zeal for preaching and the salvation of souls.  

Catherine’s spirituality is Christ-centred. Although she had great regard for Mary and the saints, particularly St Paul, her gaze is always on Christ. Her teaching stays closer to the Gospel than the works of some of the later mystics. Knowingly or unknowingly, she embraces many of the themes of Aquinas: the fundamental goodness of creation, an emphasis on the human person made in  imago Dei, the superiority of the intellect over the will, knowledge of the truth as the beginning of beatitude, grace as a participation in divine life, emphasis on the humanity of Christ who shows us how to be fully human, and emphasis on the virtues and the gifts of the Holy Spirit.

Although Catherine was a mystic, there was nothing aloof or detached about her. Throughout her writings there is an appreciation that the quality of our love of God is mirrored in the quality of our love of neighbour. If you want to know how much you really love God, then look at how much you really love those most in need: the most vulnerable, the outcast, the stranger. In one of the most remarkable letters of medieval Christian literature, Catherine describes to Raymond of Capua how she accompanied a condemned man to the scaffold and moments later received his severed head in her hands.  

Although she had many mystical experiences, each of them represented a broadening and deepening of her outreach to others rather than being private or individualistic moments. As she comes to love Jesus more, her love expands and is transformed into love of his Body, the Church. She firmly believed that the good of the Church is the good of humanity and that anyone who rebelled against the Church was his or her own enemy. 
Catherine was bold and fearless. She became preoccupied with church reform, by which she meant its spiritual and moral reform, beginning with the pope, cardinals and bishops, then the priests and Religious. Always a direct hitter, her criticism of homosexual activity among the clergy (The Dialogue, Ch. 124) was seen as so indelicate that it was often excised from earlier editions of the work. 

Another concern was the return of the papacy to Rome from Avignon, where popes had resided for almost 70 years. She was utterly devoted to the Pope, no matter who he was, often calling him the “sweet Christ on earth”. She travelled all the way from Siena to Avignon to urge Gregory XI to return to Rome, which he did (and later regretted). In her letters to various popes, she speaks very directly, telling one that if he isn’t “man enough” to do the job it would be better if he resigned. 

Catherine promoted the santo passaggio, or crusade, to reclaim the Holy Sepulchre and the Holy Land from Muslim control. However uncomfortable some of us might feel today about calls for a crusade, she was convinced that good would come from it; it would bring the warring Christian nations in Europe together for a purpose. And she had another, more intriguing, reason. She longed for the conversion of Muslims because she admired their prayerfulness and zeal, and thought they would be vital allies in the reform of the Church that she worked and prayed for. 

Thomas McDermott OP is the author of Filled with all the Fullness of God: an Introduction to Catholic Spirituality (Bloomsbury, 2013) and editor of drawnbylove.com, a website dedicated to St Catherine of Siena.

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SANCTIFICATION OF PRIESTS

The Sanctification of Priests:  the Hope of Pope Francis

1.       If Jesus had to come amongst us today surely he would ratify the dream, the vision and the enterprise of Pope Francis for the Church.

2.        The longest journey is the journey from the head to the heart

v  Our priestly ministry often suffers from a widespread presumption that exhortation, instruction is the primary strategy to influence people:  to be ministers of the Word.

v  But ideas by themselves do not change or motivate us unless they become “bone of our bone and flesh of our flesh.” How can this become possible in our own priestly life and then in our priestly ministry?

Although we are men we can and must show by our words and actions that the Church is a loving mother

v  This is what Pope Francis told 650 priests chosen to be “missionaries of mercy’ and sent out all over the world on 9 Feb. 2016

v  Evangelii Gaudium, the mission statement of his pontificate, “the Church must be a fertile mother.”

v  Long before Pope Francis declared this Year of Mercy one of the most popular prayers of Christians has been, “Hail, Holy Queen Mother of Mercy…”

And Mary’s Magnificat above all extols how God raises the lowly, fills the hungry with good things.

Our psycho-spirituality is patriarchal, cerebral and masculine, and we need to tap the infinite possibilities of the human heart of The Temple of the Spirit, The Interior Castle within us

In a world where  instant gratification  is possible, where we can achieve anything at a press of a button we become drawn into a culture of speed,  the culture of craving for the latest and the new, of superficiality in our relationships and inputs, conformed to whatever the world finds acceptable,  and no more live lives at a level of depth

v  There is a reluctance to have ourselves evaluated, our works; to identify shortcomings in our ministry.  I may not keep myself up to date in developments in theology or spirituality, my homilies may be forgettable, the pastoral service I do may be minimal but my needs will be met and I can lead a comfortable life.

v  The culture of excellence and accountability is disappearing among us priests.

v  The Journey from Head to Heart    To cultivate an inner life is a challenge to our frenetic culture which eats into our interiority and wearies us.

v  Constantly “surfing” life, living the illusion that we are exercising our autonomy will never lead us to make our home in our heart where He has already first made His home.

It takes time, it takes faithfulness, and it takes a rhythm of life. Pope Francis asks us to discover this interior place, our minds refreshed, where our souls are nourished, our minds refreshed.

v  The core of authentic ministry is our Be-ing rather than our doing or having.

We touch people’s lives more by cultivating an inner life than by our external actions

The more we are united with God the more we become an instrument of His saving grace.

v  St. Catherine of Siena, “The trouble with the world is me.” Others are transformed when we change; not when we exhort.

v  There is a need for us to go back to basics in our spiritual life.

Ø  What is my core sin? Pride, Anger, Covetousness, Envy, Lust, Greed, Sloth.

Ø  What kind of Sadhana, Brahmachari, self-discipline, do I practice?

Ø  What is the door of my heart like? A transparent door? A revolving door? A strong heavy door? A delicate glass door?..

We suffer from spiritual Dementia or Alzheimer’s: there is no more any semblance  of a  faith dimension in our life.

3.       The Priest as Mother

v  Is one to whom people can come fully confident that they will be welcomed, understood, forgiven and supported.

v  Is one who is not aloof, cold, formal, always businesslike, unloving

v  Is one whom people are not afraid to approach.

v  Is never rude, harsh sarcastic

v  Is capable of giving a joyful welcome and experience sadness at someone’s departing

v  The greatest danger in celibacy is to lead an unloving life and take it as normal.

Ø  We become “procedural machines”, our spiritual faculties atrophy/harden and our inner life falls by the wayside.

Ø  The main contribution we bring to the world is not the work we do but the quality of our relationships.

Ø  We should leave “climbing” to mountaineers and focus on the desire to serve.                                                  The days are beginning when people stop coming to us.  We will soon begin to  be forced to go out to them