TRUTH FOR ITS OWN SAKE

TRUTH FOR ITS OWN SAKE

As an old man who has been a lifelong Catholic, I am (I think understandably) depressed at the moment about the condition of the Catholic Church, especially in America.  The factors that most of all make me unhappy are these two:  (a) our many remarkably incompetent bishops, and (b) our many homosexual priests and their “lavender mafia.”  Based on my study of the history of the Catholic Church, however, I am relatively confident that the Church will eventually bounce back from this awful slump.  But the bounce-back probably won’t come for a long time, and, given my age, it almost certainly won’t happen while I’m on earth to see it.  I will die an unhappy man.

I look for consolations.  One of them is that the Notre Dame Football team – which is Catholicism’s official college football team (at least my father, a devoted Catholic who never himself went to college, so considered it when I was a boy) – is having a strong winning season.  This, I take it, is a sign that God has not abandoned his Church.  I don’t go so far as to think this means that God will allow Notre Dame to beat Alabama for the national championship, for to do so he would have to disappoint many good Evangelical Protestants in the state of Alabama; and as far as I can see the Evangelicals of Alabama, despite their doctrinal deficiencies, have been in recent times more faithful Christians than the Catholics of northern and western states.

I also console myself with the thought that the official teachings of the Church, despite the apparent wishes of some German bishops, remain true to the teachings of the Apostles, the Fathers of the Church, and the Doctors of the Church.  The Nicene Creed has not been openly repudiated.

And I especially console myself with the thought that the theology of the Church has for many centuries borne a strongly Aristotelian flavour.  This is of course particularly true of the theology of Thomas Aquinas (1225-74).

One of the great shortcomings of the modern era is that we (and by “we” I mean the modern world in general) have repudiated Aristotelianism, above all Aristotle’s concept of mind (or intellect or reason – whatever you want to call it).  We have replaced it with what I suppose may be called the utilitarian concept of intellect.

According to Aristotle (384–322 BC), the highest purpose or function of intellect is to know truth.  “All men by nature want to know,” he said in the opening sentence of his Metaphysics.  According to the modern or utilitarian concept, the intellect is a tool for doing or making.  Aristotle held that knowledge is an end-in-itself.  We moderns hold that knowledge is a means to a further end, an end that is more valuable than knowledge itself.

The modern view was perhaps best summed up by Karl Marx (1818-83) when he said in his eleventh thesis on Feuerbach: “The philosophers have only interpreted the world, in various ways; the point, however, is to change it.”  In the United States, the thinker who did the most to explain and defend this modern view of intellect was John Dewey (1859-1952) in his philosophy of Instrumentalism.

For Aristotle, the mind and the universe were made for one another.  Mind is a faculty that has the potential for understanding the universe, and the universe is an entity (or a system of entities) that has the potential for being understood by mind. Mind reaches its fulfilment in understanding extra-mental reality, and the universe reaches its fulfilment in being understood by mind. The wedding of the two is the ultimate point of reality.

Not so for us moderns.  For us, the intellect is a useful tool.  And a marvellous tool it has been.  Not only did it enable us to survive as a species, as Charles Darwin (1809-82) pointed out; but in the last few centuries it has, in its function as tool, done amazing things, godlike things.  Our science-based technology has transformed the world in a million ways, most of them (but not all) genuinely beneficial.  These transformations have taken place not just directly in the obvious spheres (medicine, transportation, communications) but indirectly in social spheres (economics, politics, psychology, social equality, sexual relations).

This modern idea that knowledge should be pursued, not for its own sake but for the sake of good things beyond knowledge, has even benefited the pursuit of knowledge.  In the old pre-modern days, science was a plaything for super-smart people who didn’t have to work for a living, people like Aristotle, Aquinas, Galileo, and Newton.  Ordinary people didn’t mind if super-smart people liked having fun that way.  We were tolerant of harmless scientists. But once we figured out that scientists were making discoveries that allowed engineers to create useful and pleasant things, we decided to devote lots of money to science, private philanthropic money and public taxpayer money – so as to multiply the number of scientists and the number of useful discoveries.

But if I’m somebody who believes that truth is not a thing of value for its own sake, then it will be quite logical for me to conclude that lies are allowable provided these lies seem likely to produce beneficial results.  Soviet Russia and Nazi Germany have been the most striking examples of that kind of “utilitarian” lying.

We Americans have not been immune to this kind of thing.  Politics, of course, has always been replete with lies, but I have the impression that it’s getting worse.  Maybe I’m wrong; I hope so.  But wherever I turn to national politics, no matter which party I look at, I seem to see falsehood running wild.

That’s one of the reasons I hope Catholicism soon recovers from its present corruption – so that the world will once again be safe for at least a few Aristotelians, people who believe in truth for its own sake.

DIAMETRICALLY OPPOSED VISIONS

Two Diametrically Opposed Visions

In a lyrical essay originally published in Crisis Magazine, Catholic philosopher and Senior Fellow of Human Life International, Donald DeMarco, Ph.D., poignantly paints the stark division between the pro-life worldview, and the worldview espoused by the Culture of Death. Invoking T.S. Eliot’s seminal poem The Waste Land, Dr. DeMarco suggests that Eliot captured the essential characteristics of the Culture of Death.

In such a culture, death is presumed to have the final say, and as such is the measure of all things: life leads to death, and then no more. Given this, life is suffused with a sense of bleak hopelessness, a “tale told by an idiot…etc.” Children – the most tangible sign of a society’s hope for and investment in the future – are a thing to be prevented through contraception, sexuality is reduced to the tawdry and transactional, suicide ever lurks on the peripheries, and beauty and fertility appear as things painful and threatening (“April is the cruellest month.”).

Against this bleak pessimism, Dr. DeMarco sets up the testimony of an array of poets who saw beneath even the worst of life’s struggles and sorrows a rich ore of beauty and meaning, and who celebrated life. Often inspired by the Christian gospel, they presumed that resurrection, and not death, is reality’s final word, and that the apparent tragedy of death is but a preparation for resurrection. Death’s finality is only an apparent finality. “Life is real! Life is earnest! And the grave is not the goal,” exclaimed Longfellow.

“The label ‘pro-life’ hardly begins to do justice to the rich poetic expressions of life,” concluded Dr. DeMarco. “Yet ‘the fine art of Life,’ as the contemporary poet, Edwin Leibreed has said, ‘is to make another Soul vibrate with a song of joy.’ God is the author and paragon of life, which, in its pilgrim form, becomes a challenge, an adventure, a sublime and luminous possession, a great gift, an inexhaustible treasure, and the way to heaven. We should live out our lives with the full understanding of how infinitely valuable life is.”

The Richness of the Term “Pro-Life”

I admit that such speculations can seem somewhat far removed from the pragmatic political purpose that the label “pro-life” was designed to serve. I am sympathetic to the argument that we ought not excessively to broaden the meaning of the term “pro-life,” so that it no longer immediately testifies to our opposition to the deliberate slaughter of unborn children. There is a risk that by meaning everything, the term “pro-life” will come to mean nothing. And indeed, we have seen some in the “liberal” wing of the Church attempt to co-opt the term to serve their own questionable political purposes.

On the other hand, the pro-life movement and its founders and shapers selected the term “pro-life” in part precisely because they recognized that the battle against baby-killing is not just a battle against this one particular form of evil, but against a whole worldview – a worldview that, in some real way, favours and celebrates death. I am not one of those who necessarily gets offended if someone refers to me as an “anti-abortion activist.” I most certainly am someone who is against abortion, and there is nothing shameful about that. Indeed, it is a badge of honour. On the other hand, I do lay claim to the admittedly more imprecise “pro-life” label, precisely because my opposition to abortion is an expression of a more comprehensive worldview that not only precludes the killing of innocent unborn babies, but also rejects the spiritual and psychological root causes that would lead anyone to desire to kill innocent unborn babies in the first place!

More than anyone else, St. Pope John Paul II pointed towards the common thread uniting the abortion holocaust to other forms of evil in our modern world, including not just the direct attacks on life itself, but attacks against the moral truths and societal structures designed to protect life: above all the moral truths pertaining to sexuality, and the structure of the family. The abortion holocaust is only one manifestation of this Culture of Death. The Culture of Life, on the other hand, is one in which the absence of abortion is merely the natural outflowing of a radically life-affirming worldview.

If Dr. DeMarco’s description of the pro-life worldview seemed excessively poetic, consider this alternately gorgeous and chilling passage from St. Pope John Paul II’s homily on the Solemnity of the Assumption of the Blessed Virgin Mary in 1993:

This marvellous world – so loved by the Father that he sent his only Son for its salvation (Cfr. Io 3,17) – is the theatre of a never-ending battle being waged for our dignity and identity as free, spiritual beings. This struggle parallels the apocalyptic combat described in the First Reading of this Mass. Death battles against Life: a “culture of death” seeks to impose itself on our desire to live, and live to the full. There are those who reject the light of life, preferring “the fruitless works of darkness” (Eph 5,11). Their harvest is injustice, discrimination, exploitation, deceit, violence. In every age, a measure of their apparent success is the death of the Innocents. In our own century, as at no other time in history, the “culture of death” has assumed a social and institutional form of legality to justify the most horrible crimes against humanity: genocide, “final solutions”, “ethnic cleansings”, and the massive “taking of lives of human beings even before they are born, or before they reach the natural point of death.”

The sainted pope took the same approach in his deservedly famous pro-life encyclical Evangelium Vitae. That incisive exploration of the cultures of life and death is framed within an initial discussion of the profound value and dignity and destiny of human life. Compared with the subsequent ethical analyses of specific moral acts such as abortion, euthanasia, artificial reproductive techniques, etc., this discussion may seem excessively abstract. But St. Pope John Paul II knew that just as laws are downstream from culture, so is culture downstream from theology. A Culture of Life cannot and will not begin merely with the correct laws, as important as they are. It can only flow out from the correct theological and metaphysical principles: our concepts of God and man.

“Man is called to a fullness of life which far exceeds the dimensions of his earthly existence,” he writes at the beginning of Evangelium Vitae, “because it consists in sharing the very life of God.”

The loftiness of this supernatural vocation reveals the greatness and the inestimable value of human life even in its temporal phase. Life in time, in fact, is the fundamental condition, the initial stage and an integral part of the entire unified process of human existence. It is a process which, unexpectedly and undeservedly, is enlightened by the promise and renewed by the gift of divine life, which will reach its full realization in eternity (cf. 1 Jn 3:1-2). At the same time, it is precisely this supernatural calling which highlights the relative character of each individual’s earthly life. After all, life on earth is not an “ultimate” but a “penultimate” reality; even so, it remains a sacred reality entrusted to us, to be preserved with a sense of responsibility and brought to perfection in love and in the gift of ourselves to God and to our brothers and sisters.

The Bleak Culture of Death

How vastly different is this transcendent optimism from the bleak pessimism of various popular philosophies that have so enamoured and ensnared so many minds in the past century: the nihilism that proclaimed that God is dead and that life holds no meaning; the existentialism that proclaimed that meaning is something that humans futilely wrest from a fundamentally “absurd” universe; the communism that eschewed hope in a transcendental paradise and that murdered over a hundred million people in the name of creating an earthly one; the fascism that proclaimed the value of the master race and the worthlessness of all others; the eugenics that proclaimed the dominance of the “fit” and the worthlessness of the “unfit.” And on and on.

Our own age is still haunted by the spectres of each of these hopeless ideologies, and many others created since. Indeed, one is astonished, at times, at the extent to which simple, wholesome, fruitful, productive, happy normalcy is looked down upon and scorned as “old-fashioned” and unsophisticated, while all manner of hopelessness, sterility, deviancy, and bleakness are openly celebrated as the only “sophisticated” and praise-worthy things.

I think it safe to say that we saw this dynamic played out in the recent election. There are, no doubt, many things that one could criticize about the Republican Party as it exists today. And yet, it is difficult to wrap one’s head around the furious apostolic zeal with which the Democratic Party systematically advocates things destructive, evil, and hopeless. Whatever one thinks of the national spectacle that was the nomination hearings of Supreme Court Justice Brett Kavanaugh, for instance, there is no doubt in my mind that a great deal of the irrational hysteria manifested in much of the media coverage and in public protests was directly traceable to one issue: abortion. The Democratic Party has openly and explicitly committed itself to defending the right to kill – murder – unborn babies in just about any imaginable circumstance and for just about any reason. With the nomination of Kavanaugh, Democrats were petrified that their fabricated Constitutional “right” to abortion would be taken from them, and no measures were too extreme to prevent that from happening.

Recently the Trump administration reported its intent to return to the scientific, text-book definition of “sex” – contrary to the Obama administration’s novel use of an entirely subjective definition – was greeted with outrageous claims that Trump was “erasing” the existence of transgender people. This was only the most recent indicating that the Democratic party has wholly allied itself with an extremist, tyrannical and tawdry conception of LGBT ideology and sexual ethics, in which objective scientific truth is subordinated to subjective feelings; in which no age is too young to introduce children to gross sexual immorality (i.e. drag queens reading to children at public libraries); in which the nuclear family is perceived as an oppressive and outmoded institution to be replaced with fluid “open” and “polyamorous” unions; in which vast public spectacles are devoted to celebrating anonymous, unnatural, sterile, promiscuous sex; in which the quiet pleasures of true romance and life-long commitment are subordinated to the unmitigated, hedonic search for pleasure; and in which even gentle expressions of conscientious opposition are to be subject to crushing retribution.

We are told that all these things are to be accepted in the name of “tolerance” and “love” and “freedom.” But in truth, one finds little of any of these among their advocates. On the other hand, when I attend pro-life events such as the “March for Life” in Washington, D.C., I always find a super-abundance of all three. Rather than the vulgar outrage that characterizes so many pro-abortion events, at the March for Life one finds a hopeful, joyful optimism. There are families. There are children. There is an abundance of common decency. And this is because most pro-life activists are not merely against abortion, but because their opposition to abortion is the natural outflowing of a wholly different worldview. Even if they do not realize it, they are giving voice to a fundamental metaphysical conviction that life is stronger than death, and not the other way around. Death is not the bleak conclusion of all things, but rather the prelude to resurrection.

To be pro-life then, most certainly involves conscientious, explicit activism targeted at ending abortion, and all other systematic attacks on human life in our society. However, it also involves witnessing to what St. Pope John Paul II called the Gospel of Life, without which our pro-life efforts are doomed to long-term failure. In addition to pro-life activism, the lay faithful are called to deeply culturally transformative activities such as building a community of loving families, providing an authentic Christian presence in the world rooted in prayer and contemplation, charitable service and evangelization, artistic and liturgical renewal, etc.

The laity’s life is called to integrate all activities into one meaningful whole – to give witness in the ordinary of one’s day in an extraordinary manner. The Culture of Death feeds off an anti-Gospel. The only truly long-lasting antidote to this anti-Gospel is the true Gospel, and the instantiation of that Gospel as a lived reality in our daily lives, by which the culture is transformed from a Culture of Death to a Culture of Life from the very roots up.

SAINTS AND PURGATORY

The Saints tell us what Purgatory is actually like

 

More painful than anything on earth, and yet more peaceful than anywhere but Heaven.

In her official teaching, the Church doesn’t say much about what Purgatory is actually like, but from the writings of saints and theologians, there’s much we can learn.

1- It’s a place of intense suffering and joy. St. Catherine of Genoa, who is said to have suffered the pain of purgatory on earth, claimed “there is in purgatory as much pain as in hell” (Treatise on Purgatory). Like the damned, souls there suffer hunger for the God they don’t yet see—like a man who could live without eating, hungering more and more for the bread he doesn’t have (to use St. Catherine’s image). And they suffer from fire that “will be more painful than anything man can suffer in the present life” (St. Augustine, On Psalm 37:3).

Once St. Catherine of Ricci is said to have suffered 40 days for a soul in Purgatory—when a novice touched her hand, she remarked, “Mother, you are burning!”

At the same time, St. Catherine of Genoa also taught, “Souls in purgatory unite great joy with great suffering … No peace is comparable to that of the souls in purgatory, except that of the saints in heaven.”

There’s a mysterious ebb and flow of pain and joy in Purgatory, says the Dominican Fr. Reginald Garrigou-Lagrange, because the suffering is temporary and leads to heaven: The more the soul loves God, the more it suffers not seeing Him; the more if suffers, the more joy and love it has in drawing closer to God.

2- It’s a place of cleansing and mercy. Remember the parable about the man who came to the king’s marriage feast without a wedding garment? (Matthew 22:1-14) The wedding garment is the life of grace we need to enter the feast of heaven. Now imagine a twist: The man comes wearing his garment, but it’s all soiled. What would the king say? Maybe something like: “Nothing unclean shall enter” (Revelation 21:27).

In the Old Testament, Judas Maccabeus had his men pray for the deceased and requested that a sin offering be made for them: “Therefore he made atonement for the dead, that they might be delivered from their sin.” (2 Maccabees 12:43) This presupposes a place of purification after death—Purgatory.

Many Church Fathers think St. Paul alluded to Purgatory when he wrote about building on the foundation of Jesus with gold or silver, wood or straw:  “The fire will test what sort of work each one has done … If any man’s work is burned up, he will suffer loss, though he himself will be saved, but only as through fire” (1 Corinthians 3:13, 15). Wood and straw didn’t fare well for the three pigs—but God, in His mercy, doesn’t demand gold!  

That’s a good thing, because Fr. Garrigou-Lagrange says, “Souls that completely escape all purgatory are probably rather rare. Among the good religious whom St. Teresa knew, only three had completed their purgatory on earth” (Life Everlasting., p. 194).  

3- It’s a place to avoid. Nevertheless, it can be avoided, and the saints have repeatedly encouraged us to make our Purgatory on earth.

Fr. Paul O’Sullivan gives the following advice for avoiding Purgatory (How to Avoid Purgatory):

• avoid sin
• do penance
• accept suffering
• frequent confession and Communion
• pray with faith and perseverance
• prepare for death: “Eternal Father, from this day forward, I accept with a joyful and resigned heart the death it will please You to send me, with all its pains and sufferings.”
• gain indulgences

It’s advice that makes saints … even in this life. As Fr. Garrigou-Lagrange reminds us: Attaining sanctity on earth is possible—and normal—for everyone.

5 WAYS THE CHURCH HAS CHANGED THE WORLD

5 Ways the Catholic Church has changed the world

   

Word on Fire's recent man-on-the-street interviews demonstrate that young adults need to study Church history.

Recently, Bishop Robert Barron had his Word on Fire team scour the streets of Rome, asking young people what they thought were the best and worst things the Catholic Church has ever done. Answers to the first question ranged from personal guidance and building churches, to the advancement of art and their work with the poor.

It was in the second question that the video began to turn bleak, if not chilling. Without fail, every person interviewed named the sexual abuse cases of the last decades as worst thing the Catholic Church has ever done, with the Crusades as a close second. One woman pondered, “I don’t know if its killing people or raping children … How do you choose?”

In just four minutes, this video –- which was produced during the recent bishop’s synod on Catholic youth — reveals the biggest evangelical hurdle the Church must face moving forward. The recent exposure of cover-ups and abuse is the topic most present in the minds of Catholic youth and will most likely influence their views of the Church for many years to come.

Only slightly less troubling is how most of the people interviewed had to strain themselves to come up with something great the Church has ever done or how its spiritual works have influenced the secular world. This demonstrates that young Catholics have no understanding of their Catholic history. Without knowing where we have come from, how can we help steer where the Church must go? How do we develop a cultural and spiritual identity?

Our 2,000 years of greatness may feel easy to overlook because we feel far-removed from the Church’s most influential periods in the West. The more one studies history, however, the more it becomes clear that the world would be far less advanced today in the fields of science, art, global society, communication, travel, and education if not for the work of the Catholic Church.

Astronomy and scientific theory. It is a popular misconception that the worlds of science and religion are mutually exclusive, and that “Christians hate science” but the Catholic Church was instrumental in many scientific advancements. At the request of Pope Clement IV, The Opus Maius (1267) by the Franciscan Roger Bacon instituted the tradition of optics.

The first vision-enhancing spectacles were an Italian invention, the lenses of which were later developed into telescopes and microscopes. Through diligent study of the stars and constellations, the Catholic Church developed the Gregorian Calendar, which is used worldwide today.

Catholics played a big part in scientific theory as well. It is recognized that the theory of the Big Bang was the proposition of a Catholic priest, Fr Georges Lemaître, in the 20th century. The Catholic Herald points out that while the theory of evolution is attributed to Darwin, Jean-Baptiste Lamarck (d. 1829), a French Catholic, developed the theory first.

Music

Modern Western music is a direct result of 1,200 years of Catholic development. In order to better glorify God, many genres of music were created: Gregorian chant, sacred choirs, hymns, oratorios. As these styles grew in popularity, the church developed a means of writing music so that her liturgical and devotional musical literature could travel and be performed throughout Christendom. This musical language is still used today in ways, admittedly, the Church might never have imagined.

It may seem like a stretch to consider that distortion-based progressive rock would find its roots in sacred music, but had musical writing and orchestration never been developed, we might never have seen the invention of modern instrumentation. From the development of bowed string instruments came those that were plucked and eventually came the lute and from there the guitar.

The Catholic Church may not have inspired modern musical styles, but they created the system of music that evolved to become the vast variety of genres we know today.

Education and the written word

For over a thousand years of Western society, Catholics were the primary educators and bookmakers. Before the printing press of the Renaissance, books were a time consuming to write and bind and were primarily the works of monastic scribes. Once the printing press was invented, the first book to be mass-produced was the Bible.

In the same timeframe, the Church began opening up universities, which spread knowledge and helped usher in the Renaissance and eventually the Age of Enlightenment. Today it is estimated that Catholic schools educate more than 50 million students worldwide. Catholic educators, from Don Bosco to Elizabeth Ann Seton and many others brought an egalitarian view of education to the fore, opening up elementary opportunities for the children of the poor and the marginalized, and encouraging educational advancement through the establishment of Catholic schools of higher learning.

Philosophy and the maintenance of society

Jesus himself told us to love our neighbors as we do ourselves. The last two thousand years have seen numerous Catholic scholars write on philosophical principles, including St. Augustine, St. Thomas Aquinas, St. Anselm, Blessed Duns Scotus, Suárez, and Blaise Pascal.

These writings explore and defend the dignity of all men and women, free will, the role of virtues in happiness, the nature of good and evil, natural laws, and the principals of non-contradiction. As with science, there is no separation of thought between faith and reason; well-reasoned laws (and well argued legislation) are essential to the creation of a just society.

The empowerment of women

The modern feminist movement would be loath to admit it, but the Catholic Church has honored and encouraged powerful women of faith since its earliest days. The Virgin Mary is revered with the utmost respect, as are Mary Magdalen and the early Mothers of the Church.

St. Hildegard of Bingen, a Doctor of the Church, was a polymath and autodidact whose brilliance was arguably as broad as Da Vinci’s. Another Doctor, Saint Catherine of Siena, was a lay woman who managed to not only serve her local community but who also had the ear of European royalty and the pope himself. The examples of Catholic women who imagined great things, and then did them – schools, social services, hospitals and even military strategies – could fill volumes.

These five examples merely scratch the surface of the influence of the Catholic Church, both in sacred and secular terms. There are many other ways in which the Church has had great influence on Western civilization.

SYNOD 2018: TESTIMONY OF PERCIVAL HOLT, INDIA

Synod 2018: Testimony of Percival Holt, Indian Catholic Youth Movement

‘Youth are like fire. We flame, we bring light, give warmth but are also under the threat of getting extinguished.’

Here is the testimony that Percival Holt, National Youth President, of the Indian Catholic Youth Movement [ICYM] – Conference of Catholic Bishops of India [CCBI] (India), present at the Synod as Auditor, presented on October 16, 2018, during the 12th General Congregation of the Synod:

Dear Holy Father Pope Francis, Synodal Fathers and my fellow ministers in the mission of Christ.

I lead the Catholic Youth of India as the National President of Indian Catholic Youth Movement under the Bishops Conference of India.

“Youth are like fire. We flame, we bring light, give warmth but are also under the threat of getting extinguished. Today we are flickering, we may either blow off into the darkness or blow up into wildfire to burn down everything. The church needs to kindle these sparks into the right flames”.

In my life, at a point when I was discerning my vocation to the priesthood, I had the wise guidance of a Bishop and a few priests. In understanding faith beyond being a ritualistic Christian, I had my youth director and some sisters who enabled me to fall in love with Christ & his church and become a leader and inspiration to many. But I also saw many young people who yearned for such consecrated persons in their lives but could not find one. Many of them struggled in life, while others have given up and some lost.

Young people today prefer seeking assistance from others rather than consecrated people. I must not say, but this needs to be addressed – many of our priests today are a poorer inspiration than lay people. Understanding what is going wrong is crucial before priests are reduced to meagre ritual-performers. Seminarians need to be groomed to nurture and handle the challenges & psychology of young people and extract the best out of them just as Jesus did with his disciples.

I belong to a country where, in cities, young people are drawn towards fast money, growing corporate culture and imitation of the western lifestyle, leading to increased addictions and getting into quick relationships both physically and emotionally.

Whereas, in rural areas, still lack of education, poverty, narrow-mindedness, oppression, anti-social practices are quite prevalent.

We are growing in an environment where high population dictates the norms of life and success, consequently, extreme competition in education and career is making many disappointed, depressed, mentally disturbed and also migrate in huge numbers. Political chaos, corruption & communal disharmony is on the rise.

Young people are stretched between design and desire, i.e. between what has been passed on and what we believe in. The church has been shying away from giving us authentic expressions and clarifications. Today, there is a plethora of information and awareness to dilute traditional teachings and lifestyle. We need to have more open spaces for community building and missionary experiences.

Young people have creative ideas and are innovative. Giving them the opportunities to contribute, explore and gain expertise is important, just as Jesus sent out his disciples to perform their apostolic ministry, who returned overwhelmed with what they had achieved. And I saw this true when 2 parish priests in my diocese entrusted the full responsibility of the church construction to the youth group, who not only supervised the work day & night but also creatively helped raise huge funds and in cost-cutting.

I have 2 concrete proposals:

1. The Holy See should ask every country to hold a similar synod of all Bishops at the local level, in order to discuss and pass on the deliberations & outcome of this synod to every Bishop and draw a National pastoral plan for “youth ministry” in every country.

2. We need to create more organized forums for young people in parishes & institutions, catering to holistic formation, providing opportunities for spiritual, social, educational, skills & professional growth, under the leadership of young people itself & mentorship of a Chaplin, in every diocese, under the aegis of the bishops’ conference, that will create a network of young disciples and leaders in the country.

I conclude by saying “we young people are like Matthew and Paul, shrewd and frustrated but hollow within, we seek a true shepherd who won’t distance us. We are like Mary Magdalene & the Samaritan woman and like them, we too are physically, sexually & emotionally disturbed and have broken relationships. We are seeking living water from you. We are like Peter – timid, coward and selfish, but have the potential to be foundation stones.

We are like Zacchaeus, waiting to see the Messiah. Like him, we are corrupt in our day to day dealings and live dubious lives. We cheat, hurt & hide from everyone and many times we cheat our own self. We are hiding behind tattoos, piercings, fake smiles and beautiful pictures over social media but we are lonely, lost and sad within. We search Christ in the church”.

Thank You!

Reforming the Church

We are witnessing something quite remarkable in the modern history of the papacy. Consider what has transpired in the five-and-a-half years since Jorge Mario Bergoglio was elected pope, taking the name Francis.

Four cardinals (two now deceased) submitted a dubia (a quest for clarification on a matter of doctrine), implicitly challenging the Pope’s orthodoxy; the Prefect of the Congregation for Divine Worship and the Discipline of the Sacraments, Cardinal Robert Sarah, openly contravened the stated wishes of the Pope regarding liturgical reform, and was chastised for it by Francis in public; a retired senior papal diplomat, Archbishop Carlo Maria Viganò, publicly accused the Pope of complicity in the cover-up of (now) Archbishop Theodore McCarrick’s harassment of seminarians and priests, and called for his resignation; and several bishops spoke of the “integrity” of Viganò – without any endorsement of the Pope’s probity – and called for an investigation of the role of the Vatican – including the Pope – in the covering-up of clerical sexual abuse.

While many bishops have raised their voices in support for the Pope, many others have been content to simply wait out this papacy in silence.

The challenges to Pope Francis by several among those closest to him represent a thinly-veiled attempt at something close to a palace coup. They are encouraged by a small but well-organised and vocal minority of Catholic individuals and organisations who have grasped the real meaning of this papacy: Francis is the Pope who might finally achieve the vision of the Second Vatican Council.

Many Catholics, including many of his supporters, have failed to appreciate the depth and significance of Francis’ reforms. They love Francis – they love his simplicity, his smile, his gentle spirit, his “revolution of tenderness” – but they miss the more substantive transformation of the Church that he is pursuing. His enemies don’t. And they are determined to stop him.

Pope Saint John Paul II and Pope Benedict both attended Vatican II, one as bishop and the other as theologian; its teachings, Pope John Paul once insisted, are to be “a sure compass” for the Church. Both furthered elements of the Council’s teaching; John Paul II, in particular, developed the Council’s theology of the laity – although, with the encouragement of his chief lieutenant, the then-Cardinal Joseph Ratzinger, he also promoted a pronounced re-sacralisation of the ministerial priesthood and hardened the distinction between the laity and the clergy.

Like his predecessors, Pope Francis has also drawn on the teaching of the Council, but in a much more consistent and comprehensive manner. He has understood that Vatican II’s rejuvenated theology of the laity can only be grasped within the Council’s more profound baptismal ecclesiology. That ecclesiology did not begin with a consideration of the distinct spheres of the laity and clergy but with the priority of one’s baptismal identity as Christifidelis, the Christian faithful.

Francis has time and again emphasised the Council’s teaching that all the baptised possess a spiritual instinct for the faith, a sensus fidei (Lumen gentium, 12), which can contribute much to the life of the Church. This retrieval of the Council’s teaching is central to his call for a synodal, listening Church.

This Pope has taken to heart the statement of the late Belgian Cardinal Leo Suenens, an influential prelate at the Council: “Every pope should remember that the most important day of his life was not his papal election but his baptism.” His focus is not on the secular vocation of the laity but on the call by baptism for all to become “missionary disciples”. And this leads to another feature of his reformist vision.

The Council taught that the Church was missionary by its very nature (Ad Gentes, 2). A Church constituted by mission is a Church that lives as a sacrament of God’s saving love before the world. Francis understands that such a Church cannot live from a position of security, power and control, but only in vulnerable accompaniment with the broken and wounded of this world.

Such a Church will be “bruised, hurting and dirty because it has been out on the streets, rather than a Church which is unhealthy from being confined and from clinging to its own security” (Evangelii Gaudium, 49). This remarkable commitment to ecclesial vulnerability is further illuminated in Francis’ startling image of the Church as a “field hospital”. Such a Church does not carefully assess its resources or calculate the probability for the success of its pastoral initiatives; it simply responds to those in need with whatever resources it has at its disposal.

To appreciate the full implications of a “field hospital” Church, vulnerably serving the broken of this world, one simply has to ask one question: what is the real scandal underlying the sexual abuse crisis? Is it not the actions of Church leaders more concerned with securing the Church’s reputation than with vulnerable solidarity with survivors of abuse?

The Second Vatican Council’s baptismal ecclesiology included a recovery of a much-neglected biblical theme, the priesthood of all believers. It consistently oriented its theology of the ministerial priesthood toward authentic pastoral care and service of the baptised. The priest is not to extinguish the Spirit but rather should identify, test and empower the gifts of all the baptised (Apostolicam actuositatem 3, Presbyterorum ordinis, 9).

In contrast to the re-sacralisation of the priesthood of his two immediate predecessors, Francis has once again taken a neglected conciliar theme and made it central to his reformist vision. He has condemned arrogant priests who act like “little monsters”, insisting that they humbly serve God’s people.

In one of the most important speeches of his pontificate, in October 2015 Francis spoke of the Church as being like “an inverted pyramid” in which the “top is located beneath the base”. The ministers, who are situated at the conventional “top” of the pyramid, are in fact “the least”, who must serve the base, all God’s people, by imitating Jesus’ washing the feet of his disciples.

Francis’ response to the scourge of clerical sexual abuse crisis has been tardy and sometimes flatfooted. He has been slow to grasp what is at stake. His initial accusation of calumny levelled against the Chilean abuse survivors risked undermining his entire pontificate. Nevertheless, he had the courage and humility to apologise. He flew the Chilean survivors to Rome to hear their story. He called the entire Chilean bishops’ conference to Rome and, having received letters of resignation from 28 of them, eventually accepted five, with perhaps more to come.

Once he was informed of the credible accusation of abuse of a minor made against Cardinal McCarrick, he asked for his resignation as a member of the college of cardinals and ordered him to live the rest of his days in a life of prayer and seclusion. He met with abuse victims during his recent visit to Ireland and, in a moving act of penitence, implored forgiveness for “the abuse of power, the abuse of conscience and sexual abuse on the part of representatives of the Church”. He has also written a pastoral letter to “the people of God” that calls for both personal and ecclesial conversion and for “solidarity” with the victims of abuse “in the deepest and most challenging sense, to become our way of forging present and future history”.

In that letter, Pope Francis identifies as a key factor in the abuse scandal the disease of clericalism, which is “an excision in the ecclesial body that supports and helps to perpetuate many of the evils that we are condemning today”. The condemnation of clericalism lies at the heart of his call for ministers who “have the smell of their sheep on them”. It also stands in stark contrast to those Catholics, including prelates such as Viganò and the Bishop of Madison, Wisconsin, Robert Morlino, who blame clerical sexual abuse on a “gay culture” in the priesthood.

Another theme in Francis’ reformist vision is subsidiarity, a principle drawn in substance from the Council. The ecclesial application of that principle might be put as follows: pastoral decisions should be made at the local level unless the issue cannot be effectively addressed at that level or it pertains to matters of great import for the universal Church. The Council had something like this principle in mind in its recognition of the considerable authority of local bishops who were not “vicars of the pope” but rather the ordinary pastors of their churches Lumen Gentium, 27). It was also reflected in the Council’s decision to grant episcopal conferences considerable authority in liturgical matters (Sacrosanctum Concilium, 22, 36). This commitment would be substantially reversed during Pope John Paul II’s long pontificate.

Here, yet again, Pope Francis has taken up the Council’s teaching and given it a new impetus in his call for a programme of “decentralisation” of authority in the Church (Evangelii Gaudium, 16). We see this in the apostolic letter Magnum Principiam, which returns primary authority over liturgical translations to bishops’ conferences. It is also evident in his expressed openness to the possibility of ordaining married men to the presbyterate, a move, he has suggested, that should come in response to calls from the local churches rather than be initiated by the Vatican.

In many ways, Francis’s response to the protracted resistance to curial reform has been to enact the principle of subsidiarity. If he can’t reform it, he can at least redirect decision-making away from it and toward synods, episcopal conferences and the local churches themselves.

Differences and disagreements are not to be feared or artificially smothered; they are a sign of passionate discipleship. And bishops in the Church, including the Bishop of Rome, are not above scrutiny and criticism. In our media-saturated age, no pope can hope to lead effectively without incurring excoriating criticism.

But many of Francis’ critics are resisting his leadership and even calling for his resignation because they discern in his papacy the bold, reforming vision of Vatican II, to which they may pay lip service but would prefer to see emasculated. The success of this pontificate likely represents the last, best chance for decades to come for the decisive realisation of the vision of Vatican II. The stakes could scarcely be higher.

OUR TIME INTO GOD'S: FROM "CHRONOS" to "KAIROS".

Our Time into God’s

Leonardo da Vinci once claimed that “an average human being looks without seeing, listens without hearing, touches without feeling, eats without tasting, moves without physical awareness, inhales without awareness of odour or fragrance, and talks without thinking.”

In other words, instead of truly living life with awareness and intentionality, we let life live us. Day by day passes by, and we are consumed by busyness and routine, sometimes coupled with stress, anxiety, and unrealistic expectations. And, in so doing, life passes us by, without us ever experiencing its fullness.

As Thornton Wilder put it Our Town: “Oh, earth, you’re too wonderful for anybody to realize you. Do any human beings ever realize life while they live it? – every, every minute?”

Stop for a moment, and personalize that question. Do you fully realize life while living it?

Cronos Time vs. Kairos Time

One way we can realize it at least a little more is by understanding the significance of the present moment.

Time is a fascinating reality that can’t be seen or grasped. We can’t make it stop or start, speed up or slow down. We do, however, measure it. We count days, weeks, months, or years, and regulate much of life based on the clock. In many senses, time orients us.

This sort of time is “chromos” time, to borrow from Greek. Chronos is artistically depicted as Father Time, an elderly figure with an hourglass and sickle who keeps track of the passage of time, and reminds us that our days are numbered. Chronos is quantifiable and sequential. It helps us organize our activities effectively but can also be stressful, especially if we measure success by how much we get done in a given duration time.

But time has another dimension to it as well, called “Kairos”.

Kairos is portrayed in classical art as youthful and athletic, full of life and strength. Kairos time is qualitative rather than quantitative. It refers not to duration, but to the quality, the opportunity, the ripeness of a moment. That moment, whenever we speak of it or perceive it, exists in the present. We are free to respond to it, or let it pass us by.

While units of time (chronos) form an ongoing sequential chain, kairotic moments in some way interrupt that chain, and give the present moment new meaning.

Kairos can also be called God’s time. When the Bible speaks of the time of salvation, or the time for restoring the kingdom, or the time for weeping or rejoicing, it speaks of kairos. When we tell each other that it’s “time” for forgiveness, for peace, for family, we speak of kairos.

Kairos is a time of grace, a moment in which the finger of God touches our reality and reveals his presence more fully in a certain moment. While we experience them in a moment of time, these opportunities of grace touch the core of who we are and take on eternal meaning. The Incarnation itself, is perhaps the greatest example of kairos in human history. When the “time” of salvation arrived, the divine completely penetrated our reality. Salvation itself transcends time, but came to the world through a particular Saviour, who became incarnate in a particular place and a particular time and, in so doing, wedded time and eternity.

Discovering the Lord’s Presence

C.S. Lewis explains the intersection of God’s time and our time this way:

“If you picture Time as a straight line along which we have to travel, then you must picture God as the whole page on which the line is drawn. We come to the parts of the line one by one: we have to leave A behind before we get to B, and cannot reach C until we leave B behind. God, from above or outside or all round, contains the whole line, and sees it all” (Mere Christianity, Book 4, Chapter 3).

Discovering the Lord’s presence through moments of grace is an art, not a science. God has endlessly creative ways of breaking into our reality, giving us glimpses of his presence and inviting us to respond. You have probably experienced many of these moments without being aware of it. Perhaps you have received an insight that deeply affected your understanding of something, have felt like a deep friendship took root amazingly quickly, or have finally able to “let go” of something that had been grating on you for years. When a particular experience seems far more meaningful and precious than warranted, it might have been an experience of kairos.

Pay attention to these grace-filled moments. Look for them throughout the day, and when they come, respond intentionally. Specific thoughts, words and actions in these cases don’t take long, but have the potential to be transformative. Peace in the present, sacred memories of the past, and inspiring hopes for the future often come from moments of kairos.

When we recognize and respond to these opportune moments, we integrate kairos and chromos, the temporal and transcendent. And we realize life while living it.