St. Francis de Sales on Fasting

In the Ash Wednesday Mass I attended, the homily came from the pen of St. Francis de Sales, the patron saint of the Diocese of Baker. The source of the following excerpts is Source: The Sermons of St. Francis de Sales for Lent.

Ideally, I would have spread this out over Thursday, Friday, and Saturday after Ash Wednesday; however, constrained by circumstances, I missed the opportunity to post on Thursday. We’ll squeeze the three day plan into two instead.

Here’s Part I of the Saint’s sermon for Ash Wednesday:

FASTING

These first four days of the holy season of Lent serve as a preface to indicate the preparation that we ought to make in order to spend Lent well and to dispose ourselves to fast well. That is why I thought of speaking to you, in this exhortation, of the conditions which render fasting good and meritorious…

To treat of fasting and of what is required to fast well, we must, at the start, understand that of itself fasting is not a virtue. The good and the bad, as well as Christians and pagans, observe it. The ancient philosophers observed it and recommended it. They were not virtuous for that reason, nor did they practice virtue in fasting. Oh, no, fasting is a virtue only when it is accompanied by conditions which render it pleasing to God. Thus it happens that it profits some and not others, because it is not undertaken by all in the same manner.

We find some people who think that to fast well during the holy season of Lent it is enough to abstain from eating some prohibited food. But this thought is too gross to enter into the hearts of religious, for it is to you I speak, as well as persons dedicated to Our Lord. We know very well that it is not enough to fast exteriorly if we do not also fast interiorly and if we do not accompany the fast of the body with that of the spirit.

That is why our Divine Master, who instituted the fast, greatly desired in His Sermon on the Mount to teach His Apostles how it must be practiced [Matt. 6:16-18], which is a matter of great profit and utility (for it would not have been becoming to the greatness and majesty of God to teach a useless doctrine. That could not be.). He knew that to draw strength and efficacy from fasting, something more than abstinence from prohibited food is necessary. Thus He instructed them and, consequently, disposed them to gather the fruits proper to fasting. Among many others are these four: fasting fortifies the spirit, mortifying the flesh and its sensuality; it raises the spirit to God; it fights concupiscence and gives power to conquer and deaden its passions; in short, it disposes the heart to seek to please only God with great purity of heart.

It will be very helpful to state clearly what must be done to fast well these forty days…Now, among all the conditions required for fasting well, I will select three principal ones and speak familiarly about them.

The first condition is that we must fast with our whole heart, that is to say, willingly, whole-heartedly, universally and entirely.

[St. Bernard] says that fasting was instituted by Our Lord as a remedy for our mouth, for our gourmandizing and for our gluttony. Since sin entered the world through the mouth, the mouth must do penance by being deprived of foods prohibited and forbidden by the Church, abstaining from them for the space of forty days. But this glorious saint adds that, as it is not our mouth alone which has sinned, but also all our other senses, our fast must be general and entire, that is, all the members of our body must fast. For if we have offended God through the eyes, through the ears, through the tongue, and through our other senses, why should we not make them fast as well? And not only must we make the bodily senses fast, but also the soul's powers and passions -- yes, even the understanding, the memory, and the will, since we have sinned through both body and spirit.

How many sins have entered into the soul through the eyes, as Holy Scripture indicates? [1 In. 2:16]. That is why they must fast by keeping them lowered and not permitting them to look upon frivolous and unlawful objects; the ears, by depriving them of listening to vain talk which serves only to fill the mind with worldly images; the tongue, in not speaking idle words and those which savor of the world or the things of the world. We ought also to cut off useless thoughts, as well as vain memories and superfluous appetites and desires of our will. In short, we ought to hold in check all those things which keep us from loving or tending to the Sovereign Good. In this way interior fasting accompanies exterior fasting.

This is what the Church wishes to signify during this holy time of Lent, teaching us to make our eyes, our ears and our tongue fast. For this reason she omits all harmonious chants in order to mortify the hearing; she no longer says Alleluia, and clothes herself completely in somber and dark colors. And on this first day she addresses us in these words: Remember, man, that you are dust, and to dust you shall return [Gen. 3:19], as if she meant to say: "Oh man, quit at this moment all joys and merrymaking, all joyful and pleasant reflections, and fill your memory with bitter, hard and sorrowful thoughts. In this way you will make your mind fast together with your body."

This is also what the Christians of the primitive Church taught us when, in order to spend Lent in a better way, they deprived themselves at this time of ordinary conversations with their friends, and withdrew into great solitude and places removed from communication with people. For the same reason, the ancient Fathers and the Christians of the year 400 or so were so careful to spend these forty days well that they were not satisfied with abstaining from prohibited meats, but even abstained from eggs, fish, milk and butter, and lived on herbs and roots alone. And not content with making their bodies fast in this manner, they made their minds and all the powers of the soul fast also. They placed sackcloth on their heads in order to learn to keep their eyes lowered. They sprinkled ashes on their heads as a sign of penitence. They withdrew into solitude to mortify the tongue and hearing, neither speaking nor hearing anything vain and useless. At that time they practiced great and austere penances by which they subjected their body and made all its members fast. They did all this with full liberty, neither forced nor constrained. Note how their fast was accomplished whole-heartedly and universally; for they understood very well that since not only the mouth has sinned, but also all the other senses of our bodies and powers of our soul, the passions and appetites are full of iniquities. It is thus reasonable that, in order to make our fast complete and meritorious, it should be universal, which is to say, practiced in both body and spirit. This is the first condition to be observed in order to fast well.

[The second and third conditions will be addressed tomorrow.]

A Real Catholic Church

Looking at the photos below, I think that if I could go inside this incredible church, I'd feel like Dorothy in the Wizard of Oz: 

"Toto, we're not in Kansas anymore!"

But...this is Holy Cross Shrine in Pfeifer, Kansas. 

This beautiful church once served Holy Cross Parish, but the parish was dissolved in 1993. Still, a few parishioners maintain the church and it is open to the public from 8am to 8pm daily. 

More information and a couple more photos here.

A Sacrifice to God is a Contrite Spirit

A few words from St. Augustine – a good meditation as we enter the season of Lent.

Do you want God to be appeased? Learn what you are to do that God may be pleased with you. Consider the psalm again: If you wanted sacrifice, I would indeed have given it; in burnt offerings you will take no delight. Are you then to be without sacrifice? Are you to offer nothing? Will you please God without an offering? Consider what you read in the same psalm: If you wanted sacrifice, I would indeed have given it; in burnt offerings you will take no delight. But continue to listen, and say with David:  A sacrifice to God is a contrite spirit; God does not despise a contrite and humble heart. Cast aside your former offerings, for now you have found out what you are to offer. In the days of your fathers you would have made offerings of cattle – these were the sacrifices. If you wanted sacrifice, I would indeed have given it. These then, Lord, you do not want, and yet you do want sacrifice.

You will take no delight in burnt offerings, David says. If you will not take delight in burnt offerings, will you remain without sacrifice? Not at all. A sacrifice to God is a contrite spirit; God does not despise a contrite and humble heart.

You now have the offering you are to make. No need to examine the herd, no need to outfit ships and travel to the most remote provinces in search of incense. Search within your heart for what is pleasing to God. Your heart must be crushed. Are you afraid that it might perish so? You have the reply: Create a clean heart in me, O God. For a clean heart to be created, the unclean one must be crushed.

We should be displeased with ourselves when we commit sin, for sin is displeasing to God. Sinful though we are, let us at least be like God in this, that we are displeased at what displeases him. In some measure then you will be in harmony with God’s will, because you find displeasing in yourself what is abhorrent to your Creator.

This is an excerpt from Sermon 19, 2-3: CCL 41, 252-254, which you can view here.

Confessions of a Lousy Evangelist

Since I’m thinking about evangelization (within and without the Church) and catechesis of the faithful quite a bit these days, I thought I’d write about my efforts in that regard[i].


This is the account of the email evangelization of my friend, Doc. Now, I am probably the world’s worst evangelist, so don’t expect a huge success story. Nevertheless, I think there are some good lessons here.

Doc and me

I met Doc a few years ago at a meeting of our local Right to Life group. (He had earned this nickname as a combat medic in Vietnam.) I heard him mention that he’d been attending Mass at the Catholic church in town; later, I emailed him and asked if he was a Catholic or if he just happened to like going to Mass.

Doc told me he wasn’t Catholic, but he liked going to “the big church”. He sat up in the choir loft, which was (sadly) no longer used for a choir, and he was often alone. A couple of other people would occasionally show up and sit there with him, he said, and he considered them his “church friends”. He liked to say, “We’re the balcony sitters.”

That started what was primarily an email catechesis. He was willing to learn, and I regularly emailed him links on the web, or answered questions he asked. The RCIA classes at the parish had commenced, but he was reluctant to attend. He said he would rather learn from me.

Although I wondered if I should consider that a warning sign, I decided to continue with his catechesis. Here’s why: Doc is a Vietnam vet who’s had a rough life. I observed that people – even one of the very nice people in our Right to Life group – treated him as a second-class citizen, largely because he looked and dressed like a “down-and-outer”.  The people who treated him rudely didn’t know that he owned a house in town, as well as a pick-up truck, and that he paid his bills…and was a pretty nice guy besides. They judged him, pure and simple, and found him wanting. And I was pretty sure that, for a variety of reasons, Doc would not be all that welcome at RCIA classes – though he would certainly not have been turned away.

And Doc liked the internet. He liked researching different topics, and he liked email. It was a way to reach him that was at times more effective than face-to-face interaction. I think he learned more about Catholicism by email and internet than he ever would have learned in an RCIA class.

Occasionally, I also met with Doc at the local library in order to give him other materials and answer some of his questions in person. Doc proved himself to be intelligent as well as interested in “Catholic stuff” as he called it, and he even took to defending the faith (some aspects of it, anyway!) with his friends and acquaintances around town. 

We also went to a few different Masses together (I was attending another parish at the time), and I occasionally met him at the church to teach him to pray some standard Catholic devotions, such as the Rosary, the Divine Mercy Chaplet, and the Stations of the Cross. It’s more effective to teach those prayers in person and in a church than via email!

Doc attended that year’s Easter vigil with me, and he was seriously considering coming into the Church the next year. We continued our “classes” with only the slightest slow-down through the summer months. In the fall, he decided that he would join the RCIA class at the parish. He didn’t like the classes too much, finding them a little light-weight and trivial compared to what I’d been doling out. He told me that the pastor gave a couple of “quizzes”, and he aced them. I was proud of my student!

Things were moving along nicely, it seemed. But then in our conversations, it became clear that Doc had a couple of real stumbling blocks: he did not – would not­ – accept the perpetual virginity of Mary. “It says, ‘James, the brother of Jesus’,” he said, and he would not accept any of the explanations I gave him. He was equally unwilling to accept papal infallibility on any terms, because, after all, there were a lot of “bad” popes in the history of the Church! He also seemed to have doubts about the Real Presence of Jesus in the Eucharist.

Finally, in one of our face-to-face meetings at the library, I told him that he absolutely should not come into the Church at Easter.

No wonder I have so little success at “bringing people into the Church”!

Pray for me!

Doc was surprised. I explained that since he didn’t believe some of the core teachings of the Church, he would not be able to truthfully say that “I believe and profess all that the holy Catholic Church teaches, believes and proclaims to be revealed by God” when it came time to make that statement at the Easter Vigil. He finally agreed, and he withdrew from RCIA. That was prior to Easter 2011; he still goes to Mass, but he still is not Catholic. The evangelization continues, though – we are still friends, and I still send him links to Catholic “stuff”.

I think this story  can be used to make a few good points:

1.       It’s beneficial to have personalized instruction, along with the RCIA class setting. Doc was much more amenable to the internet style than the classroom style. Catering to his needs made the instruction he received much more effective, I think. This duty probably falls to the person’s sponsor, but in my experience, sometimes sponsors don’t know much more than the candidate.

2.      Just because a person has been through RCIA classes for 6 months, does not necessarily mean he should automatically be received into the Church. As a former RCIA instructor, I can attest to the fact that not everyone who completes the classes actually believes what they’ve been taught! If Doc had simply been attending the classes, he’d have been received into the Church, because, at least in the parish in question, no one would have explained to him the gravity of the promise he was making, nor taken the time to find out if he believed.

3.      Bringing someone into the Church who does not believe and profess all that the Holy Catholic Church teaches is a big mistake. I’ve seen it happen with a couple of previous catechumens. Now they’ve been baptized, confirmed, and received First Holy Communion, but have fallen away. Their condition is worse than it was at the first!

But there is no salvation outside the Church. If we believe that – which we must if we are Catholics – then there is much work to be done.

---

[i] This story appeared last November on a blog called Anytime Evangelize, which has since gone dormant (but hopefully will be resurrected someday – the blogger, Matt, had a good thing going, but ran out of time).

On Purposeful Misinterpretation of Vatican II

Sometimes I just plain get angry about the state of the Holy Sacrifice of the Mass as it is celebrated in the parishes to which I have easy access. And then I start to get angry at the people responsible for it…past and present.

Those people responsible for it right now, in the month of February, 2012, are perhaps less culpable than some of the Council Fathers at Vatican II, but they are still culpable.

I’m talking about priests and bishops, of course, because they are the ones responsible for the liturgy at the parish and diocesan level. They are the ones who are supposed to know what the rubrics say, and what the Church teaches. The General Instruction of the Roman Missal states that:

…the Priest will remember that he is the servant of the Sacred Liturgy and that he himself is not permitted, on his own initiative, to add, to remove, or to change anything in the celebration of Mass. (paragraph 24; emphasis added)

That’s servant, not master.

I often hear that we should excuse our current crop of priests and bishops to some extent because they were trained wrongly in the seminary.

Well, why were they trained wrongly? Because priests and bishops who went before them did one of two things: either they failed to stand up against the uncalled-for and illicit liturgical changes that were widespread in the wake of Vatican II, or they knowingly encouraged these changes. Ignorance bred ignorance, and arrogance bred arrogance following the Council, especially with regard to liturgical matters. And we are now reaping the fruits of both.

The ones who knew, back in the days immediately following the Council, that the changes were/are wrong have that on their heads. May God have mercy on their souls.

The ones who were ignorant…well…are they to be pardoned because they were told “this is how it is now”? Maybe, to some extent. It was a lot more difficult to get a copy of the documents back then, I suppose; nowadays, the internet makes it easy.

And what of those who currently believe they are doing what the Council mandated? Are they to be excused because they just don’t know, weren’t trained, didn’t “get it”?  Perhaps. But I question their ignorance. I question their failure to recognize the truth and to fight for it, for the sake of Our Lord Jesus Christ. Here’s why:

Just a year into my life as a Catholic (which began 10 years ago this Easter), I became the secretary of the Cathedral parish (no one else would take the job, and believe me, they were eventually sorry that I did!). I was suddenly exposed to a multitude of derogatory comments about our bishop, the Most Reverend Robert F. Vasa. The most scathing criticism, of course, was that he was “pre-Vatican II”.

Being a student at heart, I became curious about what that phrase really meant. And I did the unthinkable: I actually read some of the Vatican II documents – and in the process deduced that the people making the criticisms had not. I discovered that Bishop Vasa wasn’t doing anything that was “pre-Vatican II”.  I even wrote a paper about it, because that’s what a student does. I didn’t have a blog, I didn’t submit the paper for publication in any well-known journal; I just wrote a paper to consolidate my thoughts and to share with anyone who expressed concerns about the bishop being “pre-Vatican II”.

Of course, I still have the paper. Looking back at it, I find it a little amusing; I was so sure that people were just a little misled and could be convinced of the truth by simply reading the documents! I said things like this (emphases not in original):

Bishop Vasa’s recent attempts to educate us regarding minor changes in the Liturgy, in compliance with the new GIRM, seem to have caused a great deal of consternation among parishioners.  I am confused by the negative attitude of many.  First of all, it seems to me that the “changes” are minor, and are in most cases an attempt to bring the Church back to already-established norms that have not been followed.  Second, it appears to me that in most cases, when people say “The Bishop wants it his way,” they are in error.  The Bishop is clearly following norms that were established for the whole Church by whatever body wrote the GIRM, and which he, by virtue of his office, is required to uphold.  He is not making up new rules for us to follow! …

I researched the role of the laity in the liturgy, too, because that was another “pre-Vatican II” complaint against Bishop Vasa: he didn’t like women, they said, and always wanted male readers and servers. He was taking away the laity’s right to their various liturgical ministries! But here is what I found:

It is important to note that there is not a single chapter or subsection in this document devoted to lay people’s right or privilege to have a role in the liturgy.  In the Third Instruction on the Correct Implementation of the Constitution on the Sacred Liturgy, one section delineates the Bishop’s right to appoint lay people to help distribute communion.  However, it is also stated that, “The office of administering communion belongs first to priests, then to deacons, and in some cases, to acolytes.”  Interestingly, this particular post-conciliar document of Vatican II also states that “the traditional norms of the Church prohibit women (young girls, married women, religious) from serving the priest at the altar…”  So, while having female altar servers may be an outgrowth of Vatican II, it is quite clearly not something that was mandated by that council.

I wrote lots more – about 3500 words altogether. I addressed the role of the laity in the liturgy, the authority of bishops, and the laity’s place in the hierarchy of the Church (because people – a priest, even! – told me that Vatican II had “turned the hierarchy upside down”). In that first, early paper, I didn’t address things like ad orientem worship, the posture for receiving Holy Communion, or sacred music. But I did read about them, and found the current state of the liturgy in my parish sadly wanting.

Now, if I, as a new convert to Catholicism, with absolutely no knowledge of Vatican II, could read a few hundred pages and discover that turning the altar around was not mandated, dismantling altar rails was not mandated, and folk music with guitars was not mandated, then why couldn’t a priest, with all his education and training, come to the same conclusion?

As for the use of Latin, sometimes I would like to wring a few necks with their own priestly collars. You don’t have to read too many pages to find that Latin was not “abolished” by Vatican II. You don’t have to read very far to find that the laity is supposed to know the Latin ordinary of the Mass! These things are no-brainers. And yet they continue to be ignored – no, wait – not just ignored, but denigrated, down-played, and denied!

On the other hand, Anne Muggeridge, in The Desolate City, says things about the machinations of “progressives” and “radicals” during the Council that are sickening in their deceitfulness and heretical nature. For instance, she notes that ambiguous language was purposefully used in some of the documents, and at least one of the many periti at the Council said, “We are stating this in a diplomatic manner, but after the Council we shall draw the conclusions implicit in it” (p. 63). And even though Pope Paul VI took some steps to insert more authoritative and compelling language into the documents (particularly regarding the issue of “collegiality”), after the Council “it was the minority, radical and officially rejected view that became the doctrinal norm” (p. 63).

Perhaps in the end, then, it really isn’t the fault of today’s priests that they have been wrongly inculcated as to the content of the documents of Vatican II. There were apparently some very powerful forces at work. Unfortunately, they seem to be continuing their devious work today.

Maybe the “Year of Faith” will help to reverse the trend. If the Vatican II documents are actually re-read and studied by laity and clergy alike – as has been advertised – perhaps some light will be shed on the deviations we currently experience but which were not at all intended by the Council Fathers. And perhaps corrections will be made.

One can…must…always hope.

Feast of St. Philothea

February 19 is the feast day of St. Philothea of Athens!

She’s an Orthodox saint, so you won’t find her listed on any Latin rite calendars.  I discovered her several years ago; I was so enamored of St. Francis de Sales’ Philothea that I decided to look for a saint by that name. I found St. Philothea of Athens, and later discovered St. Philothea of Argesh, patron saint of Romania.

Here is the story of St. Philothea of Athens, gleaned from several websites (noted below):

The monastic martyr Philothea was born in Athens, Greece, and was given the name Revoula Benizelos; some sources say she was born in 1522, some in 1528. Whatever the date, she came into the world during the Turkish occupation. Her parents, Syriga and Angelos, possessed both material and spiritual wealth, and were recognized as deeply devout. Syriga prayed for many years that God would grant her a child, and her prayer was answered.

Though she was a prayerful child given to ascetic practices, she was also a wealthy heiress, and was sought after by noblemen. At the age of twelve, little Revoula was betrothed to a nobleman against her will, but she consented to marry him to please her parents. Her husband was brutally abusive toward her, but he died after three years of marriage. After her husband's death, Revoula returned to her parents' home for ten years, until they both died. During this ten-year period, she lived as a hermitess in her parents' home, leading a life of prayer and fasting.

After her parents’death, Revoula built a convent for women, and dedicated it to St. Andrew, who had given her the design for the monastery in a vision. She took monastic vows under the name Philothea, which means, friend of God; and she, her own maidservants, and many young women of the city, became the first nuns there.

Among other things, Philothea founded schools in Athens, protected women from Turkish abductions and conversion to Islam, and cared for the poor and the sick. She was so free in her almsgiving that more than once the monastery was left without food or other necessities of life, and the sisters began to complain about her. But each time, large donations appeared unexpectedly and saved the community from starvation.

Due to the Turkish occupation, many Athenians had been made slaves of their conquerors. Philothea did all she could to free her fellow countrywomen, ransoming many from servitude. Once, four women ran away from their Turkish masters, who had demanded that they renounce their Christianity, and took refuge in the monastery established by Philothea. The angry Turks surrounded the monastery, seized Philothea, and brought her before the judge. She refused to deny Christ as they demanded, and was sentenced to death; but some influential Athenian Greeks intervened on her behalf and obtained her release.

Philothea, after this experience, redoubled her prayers, her apostolic labors, and her works of mercy, and was soon granted the gift of working miracles and healings. She founded a new monastery in Patesia, a suburb of Athens; here, she struggled in asceticism with the sisters.

Relics of St. Philothea
 in Athens cathedral

During the Vigil for St. Dionysius the Areopagite, the Turks, angered by her increasing influence, again seized St. Philothea and tortured her. Finally, they threw her down on the ground half-dead. The sisters tearfully brought the holy martyr, flowing with blood, to Kalogreza, where she died on February 19, 1589. Shortly thereafter, the relics of the holy Monastic Martyr Philothea were brought to the Athens cathedral church.

Twenty years after her repose, a beautiful scent began to issue from her tomb. Her precious relics, venerated at the Cathedral in Athens, remain incorrupt to this day.

It seems to me that St. Philothea’s story should inspire us as we consider what we are up against in our society today. We may not have Turks occupying our country, but the godless government that is trampling on our rights and trashing our Constitution is not much better. And persecution is coming, we’ve been told, by cardinals and bishops. In fact, persecution is here, but has not yet become bloody.

At any rate, let us hope that all of us – laity and clergy alike – may be as persistent in our service to the poor, as strong in our defense of the defenseless, and as steadfast in our faith as was this martyr saint.

St. Philothea, pray for us!

The websites from which I took this information are located here, here, and here.

"The Church Needs Evangelization!" - Dolan

Here’s an excerpt from a meditation I read recently (from the writings of Cardinal Jean Danielou); it struck me that this is an apt characterization of our society today (my emphases):

…Being entirely engrossed in their effort to control the universe by technical science, modern men and women have lost the other half of themselves which expresses itself as sacrifice. For them the world has lost its sacred character; they see it only as the field for their experiments. They no longer grasp its symbolic aspect, its mystic side. They no longer see anything in it but the reflection of themselves which it offers them; they fail to see the imprints of God whose likeness they mirror.

How could a more lofty revelation take hold of a person or a world of this sort, so wholly unspiritual, when the very sense of the mystical, the very sense of the sacred is dead in them? How can one talk about a new creation to people who no longer 

recognize that they are creatures, or of the incarnation to those who no longer see the action of God in the world, or of contemplation to those whose knowledge of things is limited to their practical utility? What has to be restored to the world is the primary, original, universal basis of religion in the soul…[1]

Indeed! And it just so happens that from October 11, 2012 to November 24, 2013, the Church will observe the “Year of Faith”. According to this article, one “major movement” at the level of the Universal Church will be the Synod in October 2012 on “the new evangelization for the transmission of the Christian faith”.  Given a society that fits the above description, this couldn’t come at a better time! The article notes that (emphases in original):

The Pontifical Council for Promoting Christian Unity, for its part, will be in charge of promoting ecumenical initiatives on behalf of the restoration of unity among all Christians, which is “one of the principal concerns” of the Second Vatican Council.  A solemn ecumenical celebration “in which all of the baptized will reaffirm their faith in Christ” is thus planned as part of the program…

Okay, I admit, the word “ecumenical” is usually a red flag for me, but let’s let hope spring eternal. Ecumenism is a means to an end, not an end in itself, with that end being full incorporation into the Mystical Body of Christ, the Catholic Church. You can’t effectively preach the truth of the Catholic faith to one of our separated brethren until you know, understand, and appreciate where he is coming from, what are his objections to the Catholic faith, and where he is in error. Then you can focus your message of conversion.

On the other hand, you can’t preach the truth of the Catholic faith if you don’t know it yourself. And so we need to focus first on making sure Catholics know why they are Catholic.

The article about the Year of Faith goes on to say (emphasis in original; my comment):

The Year of Faith should be the occasion to rediscover the teachings of Vatican II [that’s a start; and maybe we can get them RIGHT this time!] and of the CCC.  Several international conferences will be organized, and seminarians will be invited to study these documents carefully.  Similarly, the CDF encourages a rereading of the homilies, catecheses, addresses and other texts by Benedict XVI.

I have been thinking about this need for Catholics to better understand their faith and to…well…believe it…for a couple of weeks; I wrote about it on February 9 in a post entitled “Yes, We ARE Out to Convert People”, saying:

If, as Catholics, we’re “not out to make converts”, it means we’re not convinced of the Truth of our faith…

If more of us really believed our salvation depended on our belief in “all the truths which the Holy Catholic Church teaches”, we would first of all practice our faith with greater fidelity; and second, we would want to help others come to an understanding of why it is a very good thing to be Catholic.

And less than a week later, Michael Voris addressed the same issue in the February 15 Vortex (watch the video below). He said, in part:

The Catholic Mass occurs within the context of the Catholic Faith...and since the sacrifice of God to Himself is the most superior form of worship there is, then it follows that the Faith which believes this is the TRUE faith – meaning by extension and quite logically – that the other faiths... all of them... are false.

It’s just that simple…

..There is only one true religion. Period. And it’s not just a matter of faith or belief: it’s a fact. Undeniably. And please don’t start going on about silly notions of being “unconscious” Catholics and “anonymous” Catholics.

It is precisely the backing away from this fact that has caused SO much of a problem in the Church these days. Too many leaders in the Church have surrendered this truth so they could be more easily accepted, for whatever reason. Their motives or intentions we leave to God; the results are left for us to judge and the judgment is not favorable. Catholic identity has been lost because the unique claim of Catholicism has been abandoned – privately at least, if not totally publically.

Bottom line: do you believe that Catholicism is the One True Faith , or do you not?

Well, maybe we’re all starting to converge on the same page. Maybe the time is really ripe for a “new evangelization” that will be exactly what it calls itself. Maybe it will be an evangelization within the Church as well as an outreach.

Again, for me, hope springs eternal because Cardinal-designate Timothy Dolan’s address to the Pope and the cardinals today (Feb. 17) seems to indicate that he also sees the need for this two-pronged approach. He stated:

The acclaimed American missionary and TV evangelist, Archbishop Fulton J. Sheen, commented, “Our Lord’s first word to His disciples was ‘come!’ His last word was ‘go!’ You can’t ‘go’ unless you’ve first ‘come’ to Him.”

Exactly! As Catholics, we are not going to be very good missionaries unless we have “come” to Him and know Him and the one, true Church which He established on earth.  But the Church has been under attack from within and without, and secular forces are busily subduing the faithful. Archbishop Dolan continued (my emphases):

A towering challenge to both the missio ad gentes and the New Evangelization today is what we call secularism. Listen to how our Pope describes it:

Secularization, which presents itself in cultures by imposing a world and humanity without reference to Transcendence, is invading every aspect of daily life and developing a mentality in which God is effectively absent, wholly or partially, from human life and awareness. This secularization is not only an external threat to believers, but has been manifest for some time in the heart of the Church herself. It profoundly distorts the Christian faith from within, and consequently, the lifestyle and daily behavior of believers. They live in the world and are often marked, if not conditioned, by the cultural imagery that impresses contradictory and impelling models regarding the practical denial of God: there is no longer any need for God, to think of him or to return to him. Furthermore, the prevalent hedonistic and consumeristic mindset fosters in the faithful and in Pastors a tendency to superficiality and selfishness that is harmful to ecclesial life. (Benedict XVI, Address to Pontifical Council for Culture, 8.III.2008)

… the Church herself needs evangelization!

Archbishop Dolan then addressed the Year of Faith theme in the context of the need for interior conversion of the Church:

So, our mission has a substance, a content, and this twentieth anniversary of the Catechism, the approaching fiftieth anniversary of the Council, and the upcoming Year of Faith charge us to combat catechetical illiteracy.

True enough, the New Evangelization is urgent because secularism has often choked the seed of faith; but that choking was sadly made easy because so many believers really had no adequate knowledge or grasp of the wisdom, beauty, and coherence of the Truth.

Cardinal George Pell has observed that “it’s not so much that our people have lost their faith, but that they barely had it to begin with; and, if they did, it was so vapid that it was easily taken away.”

…

And, just as Jesus tells us “I am the Truth,” He also describes Himself as “the Way, and the Life.”

The Way of Jesus is in and through His Church, a holy mother who imparts to us His Life.

Yes! That sounds like it’s getting back to what we need to know as Catholics – who we are in Jesus, who we are in His Church, our Catholic identity. And when we know who we are and why the Church established by Our Lord is so important, then we can effectively evangelize the world around us.

But if we don’t fully grasp our Catholic identity, we will be as likely to be evangelized by non-Catholic Christians as we are to be evangelized by them. Michael Voris closed his Vortex episode with this quote from Archbishop Fulton Sheen:

“If you do not live what you believe, you will end up believing what you live.”

There’s too much of that going on already. It’s time for a new New Evangelization.

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[1] From the writings of Cardinal Jean Danielou (Holy Pagans of the Old Testament, 130-132) in A Word in Season: Readings for the Liturgy of the Hours, vol. VII, Augustinian Press, 1999