Friday, March 30, 2012

Witnesses to the Light


As we prepare ourselves to enter Holy Week I'd like to share these words of Pope Benedict XVI from the second volume of Jesus of Nazareth:

“In living out the Gospel and in suffering for it, the Church, under the guidance of the apostolic preaching, has learned to understand the mystery of the Cross more and more, even though ultimately it is a mystery that defies analysis in terms of our rational formulae. The darkness and irrationality of sin and the holiness of God, too dazzling for our eyes, come together in the Cross, transcending our power of understanding. And yet in the message of the New Testament, and in the proof of that message in the lives of the saints, the great mystery has become radiant light. 

The mystery of atonement is not to be sacrificed on the altar of overweening rationalism. The Lord’s response to the request of the sons of Zebedee for seats at his right hand and at his left remains a key text for Christian faith in general: ‘The Son of man…came not to be served but to serve, and to give his life as a ransom for many’ (Mk 10:45)” (p. 240)

At the beginning of Lent I shared with you about my anticipation of witnessing the Lenten journey of the catechumens and candidates I have been blessed to teach this year at my parish.  God has not disappointed.  I was not surprised to see God's hand in their lives through a variety of situations as they allowed Him to prepare their hearts and minds to come into His Church. Their journeys have illuminated my own this Lent.

Just this week I was moved by the clear anticipation that they have, especially the catechumens, to die with Christ in order to rise to new life as children of God in Baptism.  Their sincerity and desire to confirm and strengthen baptismal grace through Confirmation. The patient, but passionate, anticipation of their first reception of the Eucharist - the source and summit of the Christian life.

My prayer for this Holy Week, in light of their witness, is that I might approach this season of grace with their humility - their zeal - their childlike anticipation.  I pray that I might better offer up any burdens I have to the One who came to "give his life as a ransom for many."

God bless all of you.  I pray that your and my Lenten journeys have prepared us well to celebrate these mysteries. 

By Michael Lavigne

Wednesday, March 14, 2012

Cohabitation: The Elephant in the Room


In my work as a canonist, I have encountered many engaged and divorced Catholics who cohabitate. I have heard plenty of conversations about cohabitation, and one theme I have noticed is that people want to focus on the practical issues. Church ministers talk about how cohabitation makes for poor preparation for marriage, and cite statistics such as the 85% divorce rate among couples who cohabitate. Finances are another favorite topic as many couples claim that the only reason they are living together is to save money. However, the giant elephant in the room is the one issue involved in cohabitation that few people want to talk about: sex. Among people who cohabitate, sex is commonly viewed as a non-issue, for many think that nearly every dating relationship necessarily involves sex. Church ministers avoid the discussion because they fear being viewed as intolerant and judgmental, and don’t want to scare couples away from the Church.

The problem with this avoidance is that few people get around to talking about the Church’s actual teaching on sexuality. In my experience, the vast majority of couples who cohabitate have not had the opportunity to learn what the Church actually teaches. They may know that the Church prohibits all sexual activity outside of marriage, but they couldn’t tell you why. People view the Church teaching on sexuality as they view speed limit laws: a nice rule meant to keep you safe, but one that you can almost always break without penalty. Much ink has been spilled in the discussion of high divorce rates, but not as much on the correlation of cohabitation and divorce.

This is so unfortunate because, let’s face it, the practical arguments against cohabitation are not all that persuasive. You could learn these arguments from a segment on the morning news. Few couples are going to stop living together because of statistics. What is persuasive is a true understanding of the Church’s beautiful teaching on sexuality, and that’s a segment The Today Show isn’t going to be running any time soon. This teaching is complex and holistic, and takes time to learn. I remember attending a marriage preparation class, where the priest presenter was giving the talk on Blessed John Paul II’s Theology of the Body. He only had about an hour, and was clearly struggling trying to figure out how to cram this exquisite teaching into an hour talk. And who can blame him? It is impossible to do this, as you cannot understand the teaching on sexuality without an understanding of the Church’s teaching on the dignity of the person, the Trinity, and many other concepts.

When it comes to cohabitation, what is needed is honesty. Contrary to public opinion, cohabitation is not a personal choice. Couples who cohabitate are making a public statement that they reject the Church’s teaching on sexuality and marriage. Though practical issues may have been a part of the decision, when it comes down to it, cohabitation would not be an option if sexual activity wasn’t involved. Instead of blithely skimming over the issue of sex, couples should be confronted with the fact that their lifestyle is incompatible with their Catholic faith, and in fact bars them from the sacraments. This confrontation should not be angry and condemnatory. Many people have never learned what the Church actually teaches. As Fulton Sheen famously said, “There are not one hundred people in the United States who hate The Catholic Church, but there are millions who hate what they wrongly perceive the Catholic Church to be.” Luckily, our Church leaders are recognizing this fact. Our bishop has just written a wonderful pastoral on marriage. The media has mistakenly claimed that this was written only in response to the upcoming referendum issue of redefining marriage. The truth is that the bishop, in his wisdom, has recognized that the Church’s teaching on sexuality and marriage is often lost, dismantled, and confused. We should not simply criticize people who are cohabitating, but we should challenge them to learn why the Church does not accept cohabitation and reconsider their lifestyle.

The pastoral letter can be read here: http://beautyofmarriage.org/

By Shannon Fossett

Shannon is a Canonist for the Roman Catholic Diocese of Portland

Monday, March 5, 2012

The JPII Generation Comes of Age


Some recent thoughts I've been having about the Church about about where we find ourselves and where I find myself as a young Catholic:

I am a JPII priest.  Seeing Blessed Pope John Paul at World Youth Day in 2002 swept away the final reservations I had about entering the seminary.  “Do not be afraid,” he told us, “to set out into the deep for a catch.” 


By then we knew, I knew, that entering the seminary meant setting out into the deep.  New revelations in the priest abuse scandals were breaking daily.  Every year it seemed that another priest left ministry with a lover, male or female.  The Church had been declining in youth and vigor in Maine for decades.  It was not hard to conclude that my ministry as a priest would be carried out during dark and difficult years for the Church in the West.


The seas had not always seemed so ominous.  I grew up in the Bernadine years.  The years of consensus leadership, of being welcoming and tolerant.  Dialogue was the way to address any disagreement, any difficulty. 


I don’t recall hearing anything about principles, about virtue, about sacrifice, about the truth.  It seems that a whole generation, the generation before me, had been turned off by such things.  They distained talk of objective right and wrong.  Of good and evil.  Of virtue and sin.  And they pointed out continually that such dichotomies were either the mark of simplistic and naïve thinking, or the propaganda of those who seek to control others. 


We were basically taught that the heart of the Gospel was to love others, and that that meant we should always compromise conviction in favor of the person.  The only virtue I recall being drilled into my head was that we seek to be on good terms with everyone, regardless of their point of view.  To be likable.  It was the underlying subtext in most moral narratives: the protagonist gives up his or her convictions or preconceived notions in order to love the antagonist.


I think 9/11 was the first sign that the Bernadine years were over.  People kept asking “Why do they hate us?”  We looked at ourselves, we all seemed likable enough to one another – so we were completely thrown by the idea that someone could possibly not want to get along.  Didn’t they know the golden rule?  What kind of rock were they living under?


Then, for Catholics, came the pedophilia scandals.  And all of a sudden many of us realized that many, many likable people, bishops, priests, and laity alike, had been so concerned about being likable that they had turned a blind eye to horrendous evil right in front of them.  Being likable, being kind, had aided and abetted some of the worst criminals in society while they perpetrated unmentionable crimes right before our noses.


It was all coming down around us in that summer of 2002, the summer of World Youth Day.  And I think it was then, as we looked upon the humble yet strong frame of that man of God, John Paul II, that many of us realized that the generation before us had sold us a useless bill of goods, rather than the Gospel.  We had not been taught the fullness of the faith, we were not given adequate tools to handle real life – to deal with evil, to seek what is good.  We were not trained in the virtues, we were not given a solid foundation in logic and critical thinking, we were not exposed to the cultural and religious treasures of our western heritage.  Instead, we had been brought up by a generation that was convinced that the way to show their love for us was by being likable and entertaining us.  The youth ministry mantra was, I’ll never forget, the “4 F words”: food, fun, friends, and faith.


But in the face of terrorists trying to kill us, criminal priests, divorce, substance abuse, psychological illnesses, violence, and promiscuity, the 4 F words just didn’t cut it, being likable and entertaining didn’t cut it either.  Many of my pears left the faith, tired of being around a bunch of people who seemed obsessed with being likable, rather than being good.  Who didn’t have any answers for the larger questions of life.  Who didn’t seem to want to talk about suffering and death and desire and addiction.


But there were some of us who, through God’s providence and grace-filled guidance, were able to hold on to our faith.  And with much struggle and prayer, we began an arduous transformation, a fundamental shift in the understanding of what it means to love and be loved as Christ has shown us.  To this day we are trying to make that shift, even as we remain a conflicted generation, this JPII generation.


The conflict within the JPIIs is caused by a dissonance between the appetite and the intellect.  Temperamentally, we are deeply uncomfortable with conflict and want people to get along, even if that means sacrificing what we know is right.  Culturally, we were raised on washed out themes – the words to “Hear I am, Lord” ring in our ears, reminding us of the tear-filled retreats of youth even if we know that half the time we were just being emotionally manipulated.  Even though we know we should, we don’t know how to live a life rooted in ritual prayer because our parents didn’t even know what that looked like.  And so even basic spiritual discipline requires herculean effort for us.   Intellectually we lack rigor, we were told that every opinion was valid for so long that we have a hard time being critical, even if we are suspect of what we hear.  We tend toward reactionary extremes, and toward a certain nostalgia for times when there seemed to be greater regard for human excellence and virtue.  But we’re really not sure what that looked like or how to achieve it, because we’ve never experienced it in a living culture.  Instead we grew up on the Nintendo and MTV, the St. Louis Jesuits and cut out butterflies.  A washed out culture, a decadent culture, and a largely secular culture.


And yet even as conflicted as it is, I believe that gradual conversion was begun and continues in the JPII generation, my generation. Slowly, and with God’s grace, many are breaking free of the appetite for a Church experience that is characterized by a warm and fuzzy group hug among people who like each other, and instead developing the desire for a new and more profound ecclesiology that is rooted in a common fidelity to Christ and sacrifice for the sake of what is true and good and beautiful.  This conversion of appetite in my generation has been largely due to the reforms undertaken during the last 25 years to some of the fundamental structures of the Church.  Doctrinal soundness and rigor in formation has been restored in seminaries for the most part.  Core doctrines of the Church have been clearly expressed in the Catechism and in many wonderful encyclicals and other papal teachings.  The liturgical excesses of the 70s and 80s have for the most part been cleared up and the new translation has brought us into greater continuity with our tradition.  Bishops are for the most part speaking with one voice and in union with the Holy Father.  The basic structures necessary for the continuation of Christianity in the West have been buttressed in recent decades, and the JPII generation is the first to really experience the fruit of these reforms.  Thus we really bear the name of the great reformer: John Paul II.


Yet as much as the JPII generation has been graced by the reforms of these last years, I pray that the hell that is fermenting in the West does not break lose until our children come of age.  They will be much more competent to handle the wiles of the evil one.  They will have had the advantage of clear Catholic teaching from their youth, of being formed by a reasonably intact liturgy and reconstructed domestic ritual of prayer.  And they will not have to contend with an older, ideological and jaded generation that second guesses every effort at holiness and is threatened by any attempt at human excellence.


I am not sure how my generation would handle the full weight of what this culture of death is capable of throwing at us.  The reforms are so new and have only had a decade or two to sink in.  We are still very weak and our training cursory at best.  We are not well supported by family and friends.  Too often we foolishly resort to political power plays, are distracted by worldly fears.  We are easily side-tracked by minor skirmishes, we underestimate the cunning and force of the enemy.  And we are too attached to the things of this world – to our stuff, our esteem, our comfort.  God’s will is often not the first thing on our minds.  We lack the spiritual imagination, depth, and discipline required for the all-out pitched spiritual battle that approaches. 


Thus I think that it is critically important that the JPII generation realize in all humility its limitations, the limitations inherent in the time and place that we were born.  We came of age during a time that was nothing short of spiritually catastrophic.  The bastions had been razed.  Christian culture in the West had been devastated.  Through no fault of our own, we are building from scratch and our generation therefore lacks the sophistication of many generations of Christians who have gone before us.  We are largely incapable of the aesthetic beauty of gothic stained glass, of the heights of contemplative prayer, of the theological prowess of the great doctors of the Church.  Mounting such heights required the dedicated work of successive generations of Catholic men and women, not one generation alone. 


And so such heights are probably not for most of us.  Ours is instead the work of John Paul: the work of the quarry.  We have been called to lay the foundation for such heights to be attained once more.  To take up the backbreaking toil that falls to a first generation: slogging into the mud, into the trenches, working to gradually break up the rubble of vice and error and to lay the foundation stones of virtue and human excellence.  In doing so, we can work to ensure that the Church that is rebuilt upon our shoulders stands not upon the sand of likability and false tolerance, but upon Christ, clearly present in lives rooted in the sacrificial love and fidelity.  And this work, far from being a drudgery, can be a source of joy as we find comfort and consolation in knowing that, as a first generation in the process of building an authentic Christian culture, we stand shoulder to shoulder with the first apostles and countless missionaries who have undertaken such work over the course of the Church’s 2000 years.


In short, our holiness, the holiness of the JPIIs, is unlikely to lie in heights of virtue and excellence – it is more likely to lie in blood, sweat, and tears.  In fidelity: in sacrifice and toil unconditionally offered for the love of Christ and his Church.  It will not be particularly beautiful.  But foundations do not need to be beautiful – they just need to be solid.  And, with the grace of God, we can do that. 

By Fr. Seamus Griesbach at http://sparksandstubble.blogspot.com/

Fr. Seamus is a parish priest sharing thoughts on God, life, and culture with parishioners, family, friends and others at sparksandstubble.blogspot.com. Father Seamus was ordained for the Diocese of Portland, Maine on June 29th, 2007 and received his licentiate in Dogmatic theology from the Pontifical Gregorian University in June of 2008. He now serves as parochial vicar at Saint Paul the Apostle Parish in Bangor, Maine.