Can We Keep Our Children Catholic?

Today's mass readings for the Twenty-first Sunday in Ordinary Time got me thinking about choices and faith.

The first reading comes from the Book of Joshua:

Joshua gathered together all the tribes of Israel at Shechem,
summoning their elders, their leaders,
their judges, and their officers.
When they stood in ranks before God,
Joshua addressed all the people:
“If it does not please you to serve the LORD,
decide today whom you will serve,
the gods your fathers served beyond the River
or the gods of the Amorites in whose country you are now dwelling.
As for me and my household, we will serve the LORD.”

But the people answered,
“Far be it from us to forsake the LORD
for the service of other gods.
For it was the LORD, our God,
who brought us and our fathers up out of the land of Egypt,
out of a state of slavery.
He performed those great miracles before our very eyes
and protected us along our entire journey
and among the peoples through whom we passed.
Therefore we also will serve the LORD, for he is our God.” (Joshua 24:1-2a, 15-17,18b)

I have on my refrigerator, "As for me and my household, we will serve the Lord." But for how long can we parents speak for our household? Most of us have families or come from families that experienced children reaching adulthood and leaving the Church.

The Gospel reading reminds us that in the long run we cannot speak for the faith of anyone but ourselves:

Many of Jesus’disciples who were listening said,
“This saying is hard; who can accept it?”
Since Jesus knew that his disciples were murmuring about this,
he said to them, “Does this shock you?
What if you were to see the Son of Man ascending
to where he was before?
It is the spirit that gives life,
while the flesh is of no avail.
The words I have spoken to you are Spirit and life.
But there are some of you who do not believe.”
Jesus knew from the beginning the ones who would not believe
and the one who would betray him.
And he said,
“For this reason I have told you that no one can come to me
unless it is granted him by my Father.”

As a result of this,
many of his disciples returned to their former way of life
and no longer accompanied him.
Jesus then said to the Twelve, “Do you also want to leave?”
Simon Peter answered him, “Master, to whom shall we go?
You have the words of eternal life.
We have come to believe
and are convinced that you are the Holy One of God.” (John 6:60-69)

That confession of faith is not something that we can give on behalf of another; it must come from that person's heart. But many, sometimes ourselves, have been among the crowd who find the sayings of Jesus hard and leave Him. I was among those once.

God gave us free will so that we may love, for without the ability to freely love we cannot call it love. But that freedom also gives us the opportunity to reject love. The Second Vatican Council in Dignitatis Humanae (Declaration on Religious Liberty), tells us the relationship between conscience and freedom, declaring that we are obliged to follow the truth when we recognize it, but we can neither be compelled to follow that truth nor compelled to recognize it:

The sacred council likewise proclaims that these obligations bind people's consciences. Truth can impose itself on the human mind by the force of its own truth, which wins over the mind with both gentleness and power. So, while the religious freedom which human beings demand in fulfilling their obligation to worship God has to do with freedom from coercion in civil society, it leaves intact the traditional catholic teaching on the moral obligation of individuals and societies towards the true religion and the one church of Christ." (Section 1)

God calls people to serve him in spirit and in truth. Consequently, they are bound to him in conscience, but not coerced. God has regard for the dignity of the human person which he himself created; human persons are to be guided by their own judgement and to enjoy freedom. (Section 11).

Given all of this, are there things we can do to help increase the chances of keeping our children Catholic?

At one time there were Six Precepts of the Church; the sixth was "Not to marry persons who are not Catholics...." Today there are five; the sixth has been left off. It is good that the the sixth has been removed, because the precepts are required, but we must remember that they are minimum requirements. We should do much more. (Just as the the Ten Commandments are minimum requirements; we need to do much more than not kill someone.) While the former sixth precept is no longer required, it should nevertheless be our goal if we are called to the vocation of marriage. Interfaith marriages can be very strong, very faithful, very faith-filled marriages, and as such it is good that they are not prevented. Marrying a Catholic does not guarantee a solid marriage; a Catholic couple are invariably at different stages of spiritual development, different stages of orthodoxy, different stages of religious comprehension. Marrying a nominal or merely cultural Catholic could in fact be more detrimental to one's Catholic faith than marrying a devout person of a different faith. But we must strongly advise our children to take seriously the nature of the faith journey of a potential spouse. Faith matters. If one marries someone of no faith or of nominal faith, or of a faith that rejects or denigrates the Catholic faith, such a marriage may weary and possibly extinguish the Catholic partner's faith.

When I help with baptism prep at our parish, I hand out to the parents an article by Pat McDonough. McDonough is a wonderful syndicated Catholic writer. The article I hand out is "Will our kids be Catholic?" While watching a baptism, she wonders, "how many of these infants would embrace the faith that was embracing them over the baptismal font." Her advice on how to try to keep our children Catholic is to foster a visible, deep faith at home that permeates daily life. Read to our children Bible stories. Develop religious rituals in the family. (I use in baptism prep a moving story from Pope Benedict XVI about how his parents would bless the children before leaving home and the impact that had on him.) Bring children to mass and foster love of the Eucharist. And faith must not strictly be intellectual but emotional as well: "If an emotional connection is not formed between kids and their church while the window of opportunity is still open, chances are the doors to that church will not beckon them inside later in life."

And sometimes none of this is enough. I think of St. Monica, and her wayward son, Augustine. But her prayers, her penance, and God's grace and persistence, brought Augustine back to the faith, to becoming a formative voice in the Church, and to Heaven.

So let us work and pray so that our children, as adults, will come to see no other viable alternative than to declare: "Master, to whom shall we go? You have the words of eternal life."

Charity and Truth

Cokie Roberts, a television and radio journalist and a Catholic, is reported to have said that Pope Benedict XVI was "really lacking in the theological virtue of charity." (I have not been able to find an original source for this quotation.) Whether or not she said this, it is a sentiment held by some, including some Catholics. However, such a viewpoint represents a profound lack of understanding of the Holy Father and of charity.

Pope Benedict's first encyclical was Deus Caritas Est (God is Love). He wrote a post-synodal apostolic exhortation called Sacramentum Caritatis (Sacrament of Charity). His third encyclical was the recent Caritas in Veritate (Charity in Truth). If anything, Pope Benedict is in fact obsessed with the theological virtue of charity. It appears that the mission of his pontificate is to further develop the theology of charity and live that theology out.

Benedict's encyclical, Caritas in Veritate, is in part indebted to his predecessor, Pope John Paul II, who reminded us that true charity is rooted in truth. In his encyclical, Veritatis Splendor (The Splendor of Truth), Pope John Paul tells us that those who criticize the Church for a lack of charity do not understand that charity without truth is not charitable. If we truly love others, we will share the truth with them, because the truth will lead them to goodness and happiness:

The Church's teaching, and in particular her firmness in defending the universal and permanent validity of the precepts prohibiting intrinsically evil acts, is not infrequently seen as the sign of an intolerable intransigence, particularly with regard to the enormously complex and conflict-filled situations present in the moral life of individuals and of society today; this intransigence is said to be in contrast with the Church's motherhood. The Church, one hears, is lacking in understanding and compassion. But the Church's motherhood can never in fact be separated from her teaching mission, which she must always carry out as the faithful Bride of Christ, who is the Truth in person. "As Teacher, she never tires of proclaiming the moral norm... The Church is in no way the author or the arbiter of this norm. In obedience to the truth which is Christ, whose image is reflected in the nature and dignity of the human person, the Church interprets the moral norm and proposes it to all people of good will, without concealing its demands of radicalness and perfection".

In fact, genuine understanding and compassion must mean love for the person, for his true good, for his authentic freedom. And this does not result, certainly, from concealing or weakening moral truth, but rather from proposing it in its most profound meaning as an outpouring of God's eternal Wisdom, which we have received in Christ, and as a service to man, to the growth of his freedom and to the attainment of his happiness. (section 95)

These words of John Paul II have only become more important since he wrote them in 1993. As our culture is plunging ever more deeply into ethical relativism, let us remember that the struggle for truth matters, especially if we are truly concerned with charity and love.

Visible Catholicism

The Booklady has written three postings at her blog on mental prayer on 8/10/09, 8/12/09, and 8/13/09 that I found very informative. I struggle with my prayer life, as I suppose do most who draw breath in this life. The Booklady reminds us of the importance of nurturing our interior life. By doing that, we will give expression to that spiritual life in our daily physical living out of that interior faith. In fact, the deeper our hidden interior life, the more visible will be our exterior faith life. We need to consciously foster that exterior faith life, too. We need to make visible our Catholic faith.

We can make our Catholicism visible in little and big ways. On both our cars is a bumper sticker that says, "You can't be Catholic and pro-abortion." My family and I say grace before meals in restaurants. I cross myself when I go by a Catholic Church, even if I am in a car with someone else. On Ash Wednesday, I try to go to mass in the morning so I will wear the ashes all through my work day. Eucharistic processions are a public act of faith and adoration in the Real Presence. I have an image of the Sacred Heart on my key chain, and sometimes a co-worker will need to borrow my keys because I have a master key to certain rooms. I don't eat meat on Fridays throughout the year, and when someone asks me if I'm a vegetarian, it gives me an opportunity to say why I'm not eating meat.

These are all ways (and there are so many others) that give us an opportunity to show the distinctiveness of our Catholicism. We are a consecrated people, a people set apart. We are in the world, but not of the world. As Catholics, we should appear different; our faith should be different from what the world offers. Let us strive to make visible our Catholicism so that others (and ourselves!) may see it, wonder about it, and be changed by it.

Lessons from St. Clement and St. Lawrence

St. Clement of Alexandria (ca. 150-216), wrote in his work, The Instructor of Children (Paidagogos) (written some time before 202):

The greatest of all lessons, so it would seem, is to know oneself. For whoever knows himself will know God; and knowing God, he will become like God, not by wearing gold ornaments and robes which reach to the feet, but by doing good and by requiring as few things as possible. (William Jurgens, The Faith of the Early Fathers, Vol. I, #411, p. 180)

As St. Clement points out, we can know about God by knowing ourselves. The concept of natural law explains how this works. That is perhaps one of the conscious or unconscious reasons why many people nowadays try to dismiss natural law; it is an attempt to rid their (and everyone else's) worldview of God. St. Clement then makes an important point: by knowing God, we will become like God. Adam and Eve falsely believed that by trying to usurp God's authority, they could become like God. However, had they instead focused on knowing God, then they could have become like God. Rather, they revealed that they did not know God at all, for, as the Catechism of the Catholic Church says, Man "let his trust in his Creator die in his heart" and that "[a]ll subsequent sin" would be a "lack of trust in his [God's] goodness" (section 397). Since God is goodness itself, to not trust God's goodness is to not know God.

St. Paul reminds us that even Christ, who is God, did not seek equality of His human nature with his divine nature:

Have this mind among yourselves, which was in Christ Jesus, who, though he was in the form of God, did not count equality with God a thing to be grasped, but emptied himself, taking the form of a servant, being born in the likeness of men. And being found in human form he humbled himself and became obedient unto death, even death on a cross. (Philippians 2:6)

As St. Clement notes, to be like God is not to lord it over others, not to have ostentatious wealth, but "by doing good and requiring as few things as possible." All we need to do is look at a crucifix; there we see the greatest good being done (our salvation) on that "Good" Friday, and we see Christ stripped of everything, requiring no things but His body and blood.

And that brings us to St. Lawrence, whose feast day is today. St. Lawrence suffered martyrdom in 258. In 405, Aurelius Prudentius Clemens wrote an account of Lawrence's death:

The prefect of Rome driven by a greed for gold summoned Lawrence to his court and questioned him about the treasures of the Church. Lawrence, as if ready to cooperate, gave his reply.

'Our church is very rich,' he said.
'I must confess that it has wealth;
Our treasuries are filled with gold
Not found elsewhere in all the world.

Lawrence agreed to surrender the treasure and requested a short delay so that he could gather all the goods and estimate their total worth. The prefect's heart swelled with joy and he readily granted Lawrence three days. He dismissed Lawrence from the court and the latter went forth to carry out his task.

He hastens through the city streets,
And in three days he gathers up
The poor and sick, a mighty throng
Of all in need of kindly alms.
...
He sought in every public square
The needy who were wont to be
Fed from the stores of Mother Church,
And he as steward knew them well.

When the appointed time had come, Lawrence assembled those whom he had gathered before the temple gate. He then invited the prefect to accompany him to view the "wondrous riches of our God."

The prefect deigns to follow him;
The sacred portal soon they reach,
Where stands a ghastly multitude
Of poor drawn up in grim array.

The air is rent with cries for alms;
The prefect shudders in dismay,
And turns on Lawrence glaring eyes,
With threats of dreadful punishment.

Lawrence, undaunted, faced the prefect's rage at the unwelcome spectacle.
He admonished him and urged him to consider a more sublime reality.

'These poor of ours are sick and lame,
But beautiful and whole within.
They bear with them a spirit fair
And free from taint and misery
...
'These humble paupers you despise
And look upon as vile outcasts,
Their ulcerous limbs will lay aside
And put on bodies incorrupt,

'When freed at last from tainted flesh
Their souls, from chains of earth released,
Will shine resplendent with new life
In their celestial fatherland.

'Not foul and shabby, or infirm,
As now they seem to scornful eyes,
But fair, in radiant vesture clad,
With crowns of gold upon their heads.

The prefect was neither amused nor edified. He accused Lawrence of making him a laughingstock, of mocking him, and of staging a farce. He promised that Lawrence would pay for it with a slow and lingering death. The prefect then prepared a bed of coals and ordered Lawrence to ascend the pyre and lie on the bed he deserved.

Thus spoke the prefect. At his nod
Forthwith the executioner
Stripped off the holy martyr's robes
And laid him bound upon the pyre.

Prudentius wrote that the "martyr's face was luminous" and that "round it shone a glorious light" but noted that this phenomenon was only visible to the baptized. Similarly, he wrote that, "the very odor given forth by holy Lawrence's burning flesh was noxious to the unredeemed and to the faithful nectar sweet." The poet then presents the final moments in the life of Lawrence in a paean that has resounded through the centuries.

When slow, consuming heat had seared
The flesh of Lawrence for a space,
He calmly from his gridiron made
This terse proposal to the judge:

'Pray turn my body, on one side
Already broiled sufficiently,
And see how well your Vulcan's fire
Has wrought its cruel punishment.'

The prefect bade him to be turned.
Then Lawrence spoke: 'I am well baked,
And whether better cooked or raw,
Make trial by a taste of me.'

He said these words in way of jest;
Then rising shining eyes to heaven
And sighing deeply, thus he prayed
With pity for unholy Rome.
...

Thus ended Lawrence's fervent prayer,
Thus ended, too, his earthly life:
With these last words his eager soul
Escaped with joy from carnal chains.

Some noble Romans, who were led
By his amazing fortitude
To faith in Christ, then bore away
The hero's body from the scene.

The prefect's "greed for gold" is like what St. Clement described as "wearing gold ornaments and robes which reach to the feet." But St. Lawrence knew that by emptying ourselves like Christ, we become like Christ, that by serving, we will be saved. If we can learn the lessons which these two great saints are teaching us, then we will become like God.

Devotion to the Sacred Heart

On the Feast of the Sacred Heart, I decided that I would adjust my schedule to attend mass on the first Friday of each month. I was off from work on the first Friday in July. Today I modified my work schedule so I could go to mass first and then go into work later. I don't know what has drawn me to this devotion, and I have much to learn about this devotion. However, I am very glad to be doing this.

St. John Vianney has a wonderful quotation about the Sacred Heart that I find very moving:

Let us open the door of the Sacred Heart, and shut ourselves in for a moment amidst its divine flames; we shall then realize what God's love means.... (Thoughts of the Curé d'Ars, p. 39)

St. John's reflection reminds me of the story in the Book of Daniel of Hananiah (Shadrach), Mishael (Meshach), and Azariah (Abednego), where the Babylonian King, Nebuchadnezzar has the three Israelites thrown into a fiery furnace for not worshipping the Babylonian gods (Chapter 3). Instead of being consumed, "they walked about in the midst of the flames, singing hymns to God, and blessing the Lord" (Daniel 3:1, following Daniel 3:23). Azariah goes on to say: "And now with all our heart we follow thee, we fear thee and seek thy face" (Daniel 3:18). Then a song of praise is given by the three youths:

Bless the Lord, Hananiah, Azariah, and Mishael, sing praise to him and highly exalt him for ever; for he has rescued us from Hades and saved us from the hand of death, and delivered us from the midst of the burning fiery furnace; from the midst of the fire he has delivered us. Give thanks to the Lord, for he is good, for his mercy endures for ever. (Daniel 3:66-67)

Sometimes in confession the priest will say, "Give thanks to the Lord, for he is good," to which the penitent responds, "His mercy endures forever." I heard that in confession for the first time on Monday. I like that very much. The story of Daniel makes me think of Jesus' Sacred Heart in the sense of being in the fire without being consumed (also reminding me of the Burning Bush), of being protected by God, of being loved despite our sinfulness (much of the prayer of Azariah and the song of the three youths is about Israel's sinfulness and God's mercy). I want to reflect more on St. John's words as I try to enter into the mystery of God's love through the devotion to Jesus' Sacred Heart.

Sacrament of Love and the Feast of St. John Vianney

I did something this week that I have never done in my 46 years on this earth. Yesterday, I went to confession one week after I had my last confession. I hope to make a habit of weekly confession. For a while I thought, "What will I have to confess after only one week?" (Self-awareness is sometimes not my strong suit.) As I was conducting my examination of conscience, I had trouble remembering my sins from just a couple of days ago; how pathetic were my powers of recall for confessions that were 6 weeks or 6 months apart?

This happened to be a particularly moving confession. It is important for me to remember that how confession feels is not an indication necessarily of its effectiveness, but certainly when it does feel good, that certainly is motivating.

I continue to be very nervous about going to confession. When I was a boy, I used to read Charles Schulz's Peanuts before confession to try to calm my nerves. As an adult, when I get ready to confess, I sometimes think about not going. Yesterday when I went to confession, I had that feeling, but then I thought, "Satan would like nothing better than for me to walk out of here right now without going to confession." That idea helped.

After confession, I went to the Blessed Sacrament to say my penance. The words "Sacrament of Love" came to me. Pope Benedict has called the Eucharist the "Sacrament of Charity" (Sacramentum Caritatis). However, there he discusses the "intrinsic relationship" between the sacraments of Eucharist and Reconciliation (Chapter II, sections 20-21). The Sacrament of Reconciliation is also a sacrament of love, as God shows His love for us through the gift of His mercy, a wonderful complement to the gift of His sacrifice in the Eucharist. And then I thought about how all the sacraments are signs of God's love for us, giving us the grace to to love Him as we ought. Pope Benedict talks about the relationship between the Eucharist and the other sacraments (sections 16-29).

In this Year of the Priest and its patron, St. John Vianney, whose feast day is today, we pray that our priests and deacons will catechize the laity on the importance of frequent confession. We also pray that those laity who do go to confession will encourage their fellow Catholics on the need to go to confession. Two of my friends go to confession weekly, and because they spoke openly about it to me, their example inspired me to try to do the same. I was in the stands at a parish football practice with one of those friends, talking about confession while our sons were on the field; hopefully our conversation was overheard by others and got them thinking about going to confession more (or at all). "Encourage each other daily while it is still today" (Hebrews 3:13, which we say in the Liturgy of the Hours in the Invitatory prior to reciting Psalm 95).

The Food Which Endures

Today's Gospel reading for the Eighteenth Sunday of Ordinary Time is the passage that contains the title of this blog (my title comes from the Revised Standard Version rather than the New American Bible):

When the crowd saw that neither Jesus nor his disciples were there,
they themselves got into boats
and came to Capernaum looking for Jesus.
And when they found him across the sea they said to him,
“Rabbi, when did you get here?”
Jesus answered them and said,
“Amen, amen, I say to you,
you are looking for me not because you saw signs
but because you ate the loaves and were filled.
Do not work for food that perishes
but for the food that endures for eternal life,
which the Son of Man will give you.
For on him the Father, God, has set his seal.”
So they said to him,
“What can we do to accomplish the works of God?”
Jesus answered and said to them,
“This is the work of God, that you believe in the one he sent.”
So they said to him,
“What sign can you do, that we may see and believe in you?
What can you do?
Our ancestors ate manna in the desert, as it is written:
He gave them bread from heaven to eat.”
So Jesus said to them,
“Amen, amen, I say to you,
it was not Moses who gave the bread from heaven;
my Father gives you the true bread from heaven.
For the bread of God is that which comes down from heaven
and gives life to the world.”

So they said to him,
“Sir, give us this bread always.”
Jesus said to them,
“I am the bread of life;
whoever comes to me will never hunger,
and whoever believes in me will never thirst.” (John 6:24-35)

Our days are so caught up in working for the food that perishes, in making a living or making dinner. These are not unimportant things. We need food to maintain the health of our bodies, and we should be very concerned for the hungry. We need to support our families and do the things necessary to take care of them. But we need to remember the example of Martha and Mary. When it comes to daily service versus religious devotion, we don’t neglect the one for the other. There is a time for one, and a time for the other. We can even integrate the two. But, as St. Benedict reminds us, “Let us do now that which will profit us for all eternity.”