OUR FAITH
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Parishioner longs for return of 'old days' Pope Francis
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March 24, 2021 Throughout history, the term “meditation” has had various meanings. Even within Christianity it refers to different spiritual experiences. Nevertheless, some common lines can be traced, and in this we are helped again by the Catechism, which says, the Catechism says: “There are as many and varied methods of meditation as there are spiritual masters. [...] But a method is only a guide; the important thing is to advance, with the Holy Spirit, along the one way of prayer: Christ Jesus” (n. 2707). And here it indicates a travelling companion, one who guides: the Holy Spirit. Christian meditation is not possible without the Holy Spirit. It is he who guides us to the encounter with Jesus. Jesus said to us, “I will send you the Holy Spirit. He will teach you and will explain to you. He will teach you and explain to you.” And in meditation too, he is the guide for going forward in our encounter with Jesus Christ. Thus, there are many methods of Christian meditation: some are very simple, others more detailed; some accentuate the intellectual dimension of the person, others the affective and emotional dimension instead. They are methods. All of them are important and all of them are worthy of practice, inasmuch as they can help. What do they help? The experience of faith to become an integral act of the person: a person does not pray only with the mind; the entire person prays, the person in his or her entirety, just as one does not pray only with one’s feelings. No, everything. The ancients used to say that the part of the body that prays is the heart, and thus they explained that the whole person, starting from the center — the heart — enters into a relationship with God, not just a few faculties. This is how the ancients explained it. This is why it must always be remembered that the method is a path, not a goal: any method of prayer, if it is to be Christian, is part of that sequela Christi that is the essence of our faith.
MAY 20, 2021 THE CATHOLIC SPIRIT
Prayer for Priests
O Jesus, I implore Your divine assistance for Your faithful and fervent priests; For Your priests laboring at home or abroad in distant mission fields; for Your Lonely and desolate priests; for Your young priests; for Your dying priests; For the souls of Your priests in purgatory. But above all, I commend to You the priests dearest to me; the priest who Baptized me; the priests who absolved me from my sins; the priests at whose Masses I assisted and who gave me Your Body and Blood in Holy Communion; The priests who taught and instructed me; all the priests to whom I am indebted In any way. O Jesus, keep them close to Your Sacred Heart, and bless them Abundantly in time and in eternity. Amen.
I am an 80-year-old cradle Catholic, but the Mass doesn't speak to me now. The verbiage keeps changing — what the heck is “consubstantial”? I have belonged to my parish since its inception many years ago, but if I died the priest would not know me now and has made no effort to do so, and I know only about eight people in the entire parish.
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Question Corner By Father Kenneth Doyle I miss the Latin Mass more than ever; when I could go anywhere and hear the same words, it was so comforting. (city and state withheld)
Your question reflects a familiar lament from Catholics in your age group (which, by the way, is my own age group as well). Let me separate your concerns in order to respond. First, I agree with you on the word “consubstantial,” which is technical, heavily philosophical and puzzling to many Catholics. This is what happened: When the current English text came into use (in 2011), the language of the Nicene Creed, which formerly had said “one in being with the Father,” was changed to “consubstantial with the Father.” This was thought by many theologians as well as the Vatican to be a more literal and accurate translation of the language from the Council of Nicaea in A.D. 325, which had defined that doctrine. Next, on the matter of priests knowing their parishioners, the recent history of the Church, especially in the United States, has been marked by necessary par-
ish mergers and consolidations — primarily due to the drop in priestly vocations. Regrettably, a natural consequence is that priests are not able to know as many of their parishioners personally as they once were. You might consider someday dropping by your rectory and simply saying hello to your parish priest, telling him that you miss the “old days” when priests had more chances to meet and get to know their parishioners. As to the language of the Mass, I grew up in the days when it was comforting to be able to go anywhere in the world and hear the familiar sounds of the Latin Mass. But on that, I much prefer the present, when the Mass is said in the vernacular and everyone can understand what the priest is saying. Questions may be sent to Father Kenneth Doyle at askfatherdoyle@gmail.com and 30 Columbia Circle Dr., Albany, NY 12203
else flows from that. There were to be no exceptions to the scope of the Church’s evangelization. So, the council taught that public life, including the tangled world of politics, was a field to be evangelized and thereby revitalized with the leaven of Christian truth. That meant, in the main, lay Catholics working in the public space to promote the dignity of the human person and the common good. Gaudium et Spes had a lot to say about the Christian responsibility to contribute to the common good, about which it took a broad view: by the “common good,” Vatican II meant not just a prosperous economy, environmental protections, proper health care, and the legal protection of basic human rights, but the ongoing pursuit of a social order characterized by truth, justice, virtue, solidarity, and mutual responsibility. Meeting that responsibility to advance the common good, the council taught, required Catholics to lead coherent lives. The Pastoral Constitution therefore reminded the people of the Church that “it is a mistake to think that, because we have here no lasting city, but seek the city which is to come, we are entitled to shirk our earthly responsibilities.” There could be no such shirking, for “by our faith, we are bound all the more to fulfill these responsibilities according to the vocation of each.” Thus, life in politics, which the council described as a “difficult yet noble art,” ought to be lived as a vocation by Catholics. And there could be no bifurcation in living out that vocation, or indeed any other. “One of the gravest errors of our time is the dichotomy between the faith which many profess and the practice of their daily lives.” The prophets of the Old Testament had
“vehemently denounced this scandal,” Gaudium et Spes noted, as did Christ himself, who “with greater force threatened it with severe punishment.” There could be no “pernicious opposition” between a Catholic’s “professional and social activity,” on the one hand, and his or her “religious life,” on the other. Coherently Catholic public officials, whose faith illuminates the truths that make for human flourishing and who integrate those truths into their political lives, are the Catholics who best reflect the Church’s intention to “establish and consolidate the human community according to the law of God.” Catholics who promote or who refuse to take effective action against grave offenses against human dignity (among which Gaudium et Spes listed abortion, euthanasia, and violations of the human person through mutilation) not only fail to contribute to the common good while doing severe damage to society; they also declare themselves incoherent Catholics, who are, objectively, not in full communion with the Church. This is the challenge that the most progressive document of the Second Vatican Council puts today before the President of the United States, the Speaker of the U.S. House of Representatives, U.S. senators from both sides of the aisle, and the many other public officials who persist in living a “pernicious opposition” between their “professional activity” and their “religious life.” It is not a partisan challenge. It is not a traditionalist challenge. It is not a politicized challenge. It is Vatican II’s challenge. Their fellow-Catholics among the laity have an obligation to bring this challenge of coherence to the attention of these brethren in Christ. So do their pastors.
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Church must evangelize modern world
The Second Vatican Council’s Pastoral Constitution on the Church in the Modern World (often referenced by its Latin title, Gaudium et Spes) is typically regarded as the most “progressive” of the 16 documents of Vatican II: the conciliar text that bespoke a new Catholic embrace of modernity while aligning the Church with liberal democratic po-
litical forces throughout the world. Like every other conciliar document, however, the Pastoral Constitution only comes into clear focus when it is read through the prism of the council’s two most authoritative texts, the Dogmatic Constitution on Divine Revelation (Dei Verbum) and the Dogmatic Constitution on the Church (Lumen Gentium). Dei Verbum taught that God really does speak to humanity in history, and that the revelation of God’s intention for humanity, definitively manifest in Jesus Christ, is binding for all time. Lumen Gentium taught that the Church is a “sacrament” or “sign and instrument….of communion with God and unity among all men,” The Church embodies that by heeding the Great Commission: by proclaiming and living the Gospel of Jesus Christ, thus bringing the truth about God and us to the whole world. That, according to the two fundamental documents of Vatican II, is the best thing the Church can do for the modern world: evangelize it. Everything
