The extraordinary power hidden within the Creed we profess each Sunday

 

 

 

Reblog : Jericho Tree

Filed in Catholic  by Fr Martin Boland  November 4, 2013

 

 

 

 

 

 

Millions of Catholics do it every Sunday. In the middle of Mass, we
profess our faith in the Creed. Now, maybe it’s just Brentwood
Cathedral, but when I look out at my congregation reciting the Creed, I
sense it is being done in a spirit of dutiful resignation and without
much thought being given to the remarkable things we are saying. Maybe
the words have not caught fire in the majority of our lives?

 

 

 

Instead, when we say the Creed we need to realise that we are doing
something extraordinary and counter cultural. In a world where so many
people live atomised existences, we are actually doing something as a
community. In an age that shies away from commitment, those people in
front of me are committing themselves to a set of convictions and to
each other. The Creed is our symbol, the way we recognise each other as
brothers and sisters in Christ. It’s a sign of our common membership. It
is our Catholic identity.

 

 

 

Where novelty is the order of the day, we hold fast to words written
by others centuries ago. In a society where social fads and intellectual
fashions shift daily, we claim to have found universal truths that
reveal the meaning and destiny of every man and woman. We stand
together, week after week, and recite them in public. We live together
under these truths, in the hope that our individual “I believe” is taken
up and strengthened by the Church’s “we believe”. In an environment
where so much is disposable, we prefer to live within an ecology of
tradition.

 

 

 

In the third week of Lent, as part of the RCIA, the catechumens are given a copy of the Creed, with the words:

 

 

 

My dear friends, listen carefully to the words of that
faith by which you will be justified. The words are few, but the
mysteries they contain are great. Receive them with a sincere heart and
be faithful to them.

 

Powerful words. Maybe we should start to use a form of them as an
introduction to the recitation of the Creed at Mass? Maybe they would
help wake us from the inertia of familiarity? Maybe they would provide
us with a reminder that the origins of the creed are to be found in the
profound, life-changing experience of baptism?

 

The Holy Spirit depicted as a dove, surrounded by angels, by Giaquinto, 1750s. (Photo credit: Wikipedia)

 

It is this that brings us together on a Sunday, that we have been
baptized into the name of the Father, Son and Holy Spirit. When I look
out at my congregation on a Sunday, the feature that binds us together
is that we – in baptism – have taken on the name of Jesus Christ as our
own, and we are now living in the person of Christ, in persona Christi.
There has been a rupture with one’s old life and our solitariness is
transformed into communion – as we live in genuine relationship with the
community of the faithful. Now, we live by a new name. We call
ourselves Christians and proclaim that fact with pride when we recite
the Creed. The Catechism (Para. 197) puts it like this:

 

 

 

As on the day of our Baptism, when our whole life was
entrusted to the “standard of teaching” (Romans 6:17), let us embrace
the Creed of our life-giving faith. To say the Credo with faith is to
enter into communion with God, Father, Son and Holy Spirit, and also
with the whole Church which transmits the faith to us and in whose midst
we believe:

The Creed is the spiritual seal, our heart’s meditation and an
ever-present guardian; it is, unquestionably, the treasure of our soul. (St Ambrose)

 

Is the creed the treasure of our souls? We may be willing to profess
our faith on a Sunday in a safe environment, surrounded by like-minded
people, but would we stand up in our workplaces, before friends and
colleagues, in the roads we live in, in our conversations with
non-believers, and say with confidence, “I believe in one God…Father,
Son and Holy Spirit”? Or would we be afraid that we might be ridiculed,
shunned or even killed as those many Christians who proclaim the Creed
in Syria and Pakistan are today?

 

 

 

The Creed is the story of our redemption and, unlike any other story,
it has a power that bears constant repetition. It’s a story that we
speak together as a community in the face of a society that is either
indifferent or hostile to Christ.

 

 

 

And the more Christians can truly claim and live by the Creed’s
counter cultural perceptions, the more powerfully can our profession of
faith be prophetic in our world – proclaiming God, the Almighty One’s
presence and power within creation, and thereby calling into question
those cultural and intellectual forces that deny God’s presence and
power.

 

 

 

It’s too early to characterise the pontificate of Pope Francis, but
I’d tentatively suggest that there’s a back to basics feel about many of
this Pope’s statements. Creedal Catholics, Pope Francis seems to be
suggesting, are able to offer – to a world desperate for significance
and direction – a unique vision of the world’s origin, meaning and
destiny. In the Creed, we are not just offering the world an alternative
view. We are offering what we believe to be the truth about the world.

 

 

 

So, no more muttering the words of the Creed. No more complacency
when living it. We need to say the words of the Creed with pride and
live it as a public profession of a living community – not for our own
sake, but for our world.

 

Related articles

 

• Historical trajectory of the Apostles’ Creed (deovivendiperchristum.wordpress.com)
• Faith Formation – Remember the Large Catechism (swmnelca.wordpress.com)
• Do we need the Apostles Creed? (thesotblog.wordpress.com)
• Creedally speaking (aspokensilence.com)
• All Souls Day : 2nd November (parchment9.wordpress.com)

 

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Abortion, the Death of the Soul, and Christian Strategy

Reblog : CatholicCulture.org

By Dr. Jeff Mirus  | October 23, 2013 4:00 PM

 

 

In his famous interview with the Jesuit Antonio Spadaro in August, Pope Francis initiated what has become a spirited discussion about the image and the reality of the Catholic Church, and about the relationship between the Church’s mission to evangelize and her necessary opposition to the predominant moral evils of our age. The Pope suggested that the Church is too often viewed almost exclusively negatively, in terms of this moral opposition, and that a renewed emphasis on evangelization will be necessary for substantial progress to be made.

 

This message confused those in the pews who have heard very little about moral evils like abortion and contraception from their pastors. But the Pope was focusing on the image of the Church in the secular world, where her public opposition to abortion, contraception, sterilization, gay marriage, divorce (and so on) is the first thing that comes to mind. It is just here that, in spite of the faint-heartedness of too many Catholics, the Church is rightly seen as an enormous sign of contradiction.

 

The Pope’s concern, clearly, is that there must be another face of the Church—a consistent effort to present the full message of Christ, a message of hope and redemption that is not only preached but lived in daily service to others. It is this face which outsiders will find attractive, and which (if it were omnipresent) would dramatically alter the image most people have of the Church. Only when they are attracted to this face of Christ in the heart of the Church, will people begin to respond to His light and love through moral change. This is Pope Francis’ central message.

 

Still, some pro-life Catholics are extremely leery of any emphasis on living and preaching the Faith which reduces the priority given to pro-life work, and particularly to pro-life political action. In extreme cases, this anxiety has led a few to blame those who advocate a broader and more positive approach for the “death of babies”. I have received more than one email here at CatholicCulture.org sarcastically asserting that it is a shame that so many babies must die because of the Pope’s remarks.

 

There are several ways of responding to this concern. One is to emphasize that the Christian fight against abortion is not primarily an effort to save the individual lives of persons we know, but a strategic struggle against a grave moral evil which, once defeated, will reduce the incidence of murder enormously in the long run. As in any war, one cannot achieve every desirable outcome. One must develop and pursue the strategy which is most likely to bring victory in the end, recognizing that lives are going to be lost along the way, lives that simply cannot be saved. Thus, for example, if we conclude that the chances of restricting abortion significantly through political action are now extraordinarily slim, precisely because our society must first be transformed in more fundamental ways, then even from a pro-life strategic perspective, an emphasis on evangelization is perfectly justified.

 

But there is also another way of addressing this anxiety, and that is to insist that we Catholics recognize not only natural but supernatural evils. It is possible to become so focused on the natural horror of abortion that we lose sight of the even graver spiritual issues which it entails. Our Lord Himself instructed us: “Do not fear those who kill the body but cannot kill the soul; rather fear him who can destroy both soul and body in hell” (Mt 10:28). Even in pro-life work we need to keep this in mind.

 

The Adult is Exposed to the More Serious Danger

 

The Church has been left in considerable ignorance concerning “how salvation works” for those who cannot take advantage of her sacramental system. Nonetheless, she knows that those without personal sin cannot be consigned Hell, and so her theologians have long affirmed that infants who die unbaptized will enjoy happiness eternally to the full measure of their capacity. There is some question whether this capacity can be anything more than natural, that is, whether it entails only the happiness natural to the unregenerate human soul, or whether it entails the vision of God Himself. In any case, the Church’s emphasis is best summarized in this statement of the Catechism of the Catholic Church:

 

As regards children who have died without Baptism, the Church can only entrust them to the mercy of God, as she does in her funeral rites for them. Indeed, the great mercy of God who desires that all men should be saved, and Jesus’ tenderness toward children which caused him to say: “Let the children come to me, do not hinder them,” allow us to hope that there is a way of salvation for children who have died without Baptism. [#1261]

 

Note that the word “hope” here is intended theologically, not as a sort of worldly wish, but as a supernatural confidence in the love of Christ. But the case of the women who abort their children (and those who pressure them or collaborate with them) is very different. What of them? In addition to opening themselves to a life of deep psychological regret, they also open themselves to grave sin, a critical step in a life lived apart from God. Odd as it may sound to some of us, committing this sin and falling into a life of estrangement from God are both graver by far than suffering bodily death. It is, after all, the death of the soul that is paramount, as Our Lord says.

 

From this reality, the most important question arises: What approach is calculated to minimize the incidence of spiritual death? Or to put the matter positively, what must we do to help people to inherit eternal life (Mt 19:16; Mk 10:17; Lk 10:25;Lk 18:18)? In the temporal arena, I think it is hard to argue that an unrelenting emphasis on political action ought to be the preferred strategy. In the spiritual arena, it is equally hard to argue that a dominant emphasis on the evils to be avoided ought to be the preferred strategy. There is little reason to avoid evil without a vision of the Good, and especially without a relationship with the One who alone is Good (Mt 19:17; Mk 10:18; Lk 18:19).

Pope Francis, it seems, is calling us to recollect ourselves precisely as Catholics. Sometimes, just when we are convinced we have made the deepest and most vigorous of Catholic commitments, we find that we have not. Life does not end with the death of the body. Insofar as we act as if it does, none of our strategies can possibly work. Everything that matters most comes through a relationship—by which I mean an eternal union—with Jesus Christ.

 

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The real test of Francis’ reform: touching the spiritually poor

 

Reblogged : The National Catholic Reporter.

 

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  Pope Francis embraces a young woman during an encounter with youth in Cagliari, Sardinia, Sept. 22. (CNS/Paul Haring)

 

Hans Kung

 | 
Sep. 23, 2013

 

 

 

This is the first of a series of articles examining Pope Francis’ recent interviews. A new article will be published each day this week on NCRonline.org.

Pope Francis shows courage: not only in his brave appearance in the favelas of Rio de Janeiro, but also by entering into an open dialogue with critical nonbelievers. He has written an open letter to leading Italian intellectual Eugenio Scalfari, founder and longtime editor in chief of the major liberal Roman daily newspaper La Repubblica. These are not papal instructions, but a friendly exchange of arguments on equal levels.

Among the 12 questions from Scalfari printed in La Repubblica Sept. 11, the fourth seems to me of particular importance for a church leadership ready for reforms: Jesus perceived his kingdom not to be of this world — “Render to Caesar the things that are Caesar’s, and to God the things that are God’s” — but the Catholic church especially, writes Scalfari, all too often submits to the temptations of worldly power and represses the spiritual dimension of the church in favor of worldliness. Scalfari’s question: “Does Pope Francis represent after all the priority of a poor and pastoral church over an institutional and worldly church?”

Let’s focus on the facts:

• From the beginning, Francis has dispensed with papal pomp and glory and engaged in direct contact with people.
• In his words and gestures, he has not presented himself as the spiritual lord of lords, but rather as the “servant of the servants of God” (Gregory the Great).
• Facing numerous financial scandals and the avarice of church leaders, he has initiated decisive reforms of the Vatican bank and the papal state and called for transparent financial politics.
• By establishing a commission of eight cardinals from the different continents, he has underlined the need for curial reforms and collegiality with the bishops.

But he has not yet passed the decisive test of his will to reform. It is understandable and pleasing that a Latin American bishop puts the poor in the favelas of the great metropolises first. But the pope of the Catholic church cannot lose sight the fact that other groups of people in other countries suffer from other kinds of “poverty,” and also yearn for the improvement of their situation. And these are people whom the pope can support even more directly than he can those in the favelas, for whom state organizations and society in general are primarily responsible.

Explore our print edition, featuring our annual Health & Well Being special section.

The synoptic Gospels have developed a broader notion of poverty. In the Gospel of Luke, the beatitude of the poor refers without a doubt to the really poor, poor in a material sense. But in Matthew’s Gospel, this beatitude refers to the “poor in spirit,” the spiritually poor, who, as beggars before God, are aware of their spiritual poverty. Thus, in line with the other beatitudes, it includes not just the poor and hungry, but also those who cry, who are left out, marginalized, neglected, excluded, exploited, desperate. Jesus calls both the miserable and lost ones in a situation of extreme affliction (Luke) and those in a situation of inner distress (Matthew), all those who are weary and burdened, including those burdened by guilt.

Thus the number of poor who need support multiplies many times over. Support in particular from the pope, who can help more than others, due to his office. Support from him as the representative of the ecclesiastical institution and tradition means more than just comforting and encouraging words; it means deeds of mercy and charity. Offhand, three large groups of people come to mind who are “poor” in the Catholic church.

First, the divorced. From many countries and counted in the millions, many are excluded from the sacraments of the church for their whole life because they have remarried. Today’s greater social mobility, flexibility and liberality as well as a noticeably longer life expectancy make greater demands on partners in a lifelong relationship. Certainly, the pope will emphatically uphold the necessary indissolubility of marriage even under these aggravating conditions. But this commandment will not be understood as an apodictic condemnation of those who fail and cannot expect forgiveness.

Rather, this commandment expresses a goal that demands lifelong faithfulness, as it is lived by innumerous couples already, but cannot be guaranteed. The mercy that Francis calls for would allow the church to admit divorced and remarried persons to the sacraments if they seriously wish it.

Second, women who are ostracized in the church because of the ecclesiastical position regarding contraception, artificial insemination and also abortion, and often find themselves in a situation of spiritual distress. There are millions of them in the whole world. Only a tiny minority of Catholic women obey the papal prohibition to practice “artificial” contraception, and many with a good conscience use artificial insemination. Abortion should not be banalized or even be used as a means of birth control. But women who for serious reasons decided to have an abortion, often experiencing great moral conflict, deserve understanding and mercy.

Third, priests who had to leave the priesthood because they married. Across the continents, they number in the tens of thousands. Many suitable young men do not even become priests in the first place because of the commandment of celibacy. Without doubt, voluntary celibacy of priests will continue to have its place in the Catholic church. But the legal commandment that church officials remain unmarried contradicts the freedom guaranteed in the New Testament, the ecumenic tradition of the first millennium and modern human rights. The abolition of mandatory celibacy would represent the most effective means against the catastrophic shortage of priests noticeable everywhere and the related collapse of pastoral care. Should the church maintain mandatory celibacy, there is no thinking of the desirable ordination of women into the priesthood.

All these reforms are urgent and should first be discussed in the summit of eight cardinals, which is to meet Oct. 1-2. Francis faces important decisions here. He has already shown great sensitivity and empathy with the hardships of people, and proved considerable courage in various situations. These qualities enable him to make the necessary and forward-looking decisions regarding these issues, some of which have been a problem for centuries.

English: Christ Handing the Keys to St. Peter by Pietro Perugino (1481-82) Cappella Sistina, Vatican. (Photo credit: Wikipedia)

In his interview, published Sept. 20 in Jesuit journals worldwide, including La Civiltà Cattolica and America, Francis recognizes the importance of questions such as contraception, homosexuality and abortion. But he refuses to put these questions too much at the center of the church’s mission. He rightly calls for a “new balance” between these moral issues and the essential impulses of the Gospel itself. But this balance can only be reached when reforms that were postponed again and again are realized, so that these fundamentally secondary moral issues will not rob the proclamation of the Gospel of its “freshness and attractiveness.” This will be the great challenge for Francis.

[Fr. Hans Küng, Swiss citizen, is professor emeritus of ecumenical theology at Tübingen University in Germany. He is the honorary president of the Global Ethic Foundation (www.weltethos.org). His book Can the Catholic Church Be Saved? will be available in English in February 2014.]

Tomorrow: Franciscan Fr. Richard Rohr writes, “The top person can never be wrong.”

 

Related articles

 

• The Four Reform Themes of Pope Francis in New Interview (world.time.com)
• Pope Says Church Should Stop Obsessing Over Gays, Abortion (bloomberg.com)
• Pope seeks historic easing of rigid Catholic doctrine (Or is he seeking “humble” popularity) (myshieldmyrefuge.wordpress.com)
• Pope Chamberlain The First: A “Judgemental” Blog Post. (mundabor.wordpress.com)

 

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