CNA Columns

The cure for the decline of Mass attendance

Fri, 24 May 2013 00:00:00 -0500

By Joe Tremblay

To repeat: How many of us, who sincerely want to do good work for the Lord, spend more time in the office than in the sanctuary? Too many of us who set out to do the work of the Lord would dare not miss a meeting, a conference or a pledge drive, but we let prayer slip away from us too easily (To be sure, I am a work in progress in this regard). We forget that it is not what we do or say that is the most important thing. Rather, it is what God does with what we do or say that makes the difference. Christ said, “Without me you can do nothing.” And Psalm 127 says, “Unless the LORD builds the house, those who build it labor in vain.”

The question then becomes: Are we building in vain? Are we, like the early Christians and St. John Vianney, giving prayer its due? For them, designated times of prayer throughout the day were of the highest priority; more important than any administrative duty. It is what attracted souls to Christ. As Pope Pius XII said in reference to St. John Vianney, “A man who is filled with Christ will not find it hard to discover ways and means of bringing others to Christ."

The way ancient pagan civilization was saved, with all of its cruelty and barbarity, is the same way our post-Christian civilization will be saved. After the martyrs did their part by sanctifying the European and Mediterranean soil with their blood, the monastics (i.e. religious monks and nuns) built upon that foundation through the habit of prayer and penance. They gave us the template of spiritual and evangelistic success.

The early Christians -- the ones who called down God's grace for so many conversions -- were not half as administrative as we are, but they got things done! As Sister Lucia, a Fatima seer, once wrote: We receive more light, more strength, more grace and virtue than you could ever achieve by reading many books, or by great studies. She then added that with a real commitment to prayer we will accomplish a lot in a short period of time.

As for St. John Vianney, he did daily meditations, he visited the Blessed Sacrament, he recited the Rosary, and carefully examined his conscience. But like the early Christians, he did more. He offered spiritual sacrifices for sinners. With St. Paul, he exhorted his parishioners to do the following: “I urge you therefore, brothers, by the mercies of God, to offer your bodies as a living sacrifice, holy and pleasing to God, your spiritual worship.” St. John Vianney also used to say, "The works of penance abound in such delights and joys that once they have been tasted, nothing will ever again root them out of the soul.... Only the first steps are difficult for those who eagerly choose this path."

The Cure' of Ars knew that making spiritual sacrifices on behalf of others was essential. One day, a priest had inquired as to why tens of thousands of pilgrims visited Ars, France; this, just to see the holy priest. In response, St. John Vianney reminded him: “You have preached, you have prayed, but have you fasted? Have you taken the discipline? Have you slept on the floor? So long as you have done none of these things, you have no right to complain.”

Keep in mind that the Catholic parish in Ars was not well attended at all for the first ten years after St. John Vianney arrived. But eventually, what he did to increase Mass attendance worked! It is a recipe for success. In fact, about one hundred years later, the "cure" to low Mass attendance was once again confirmed. As Jesus reminded St. Faustina, “You will save more souls through prayer and suffering than will a missionary through his teachings and sermons alone.”

Assisting at Mass presupposes an active, living relationship with Christ. Without talking to Jesus on a daily basis, without learning more about Jesus through the reading of Scripture on a daily basis and without doing one's best to observe his precepts on a daily basis, the Mass is just another ritual. It's hardly worth getting up for on Sunday mornings. You see, just as a family meal in the home presupposes a pre-existing relationship among family members, so too does the Sacred Meal at the altar presuppose a communion with Christ and his Church. But to ignite the flame of faith -- to stoke the fire of love for our Lord in the hearts of people -- it is absolutely essential "workers in the vineyard" revisit what has proven to work in the past. Not only did St. John Vianney and the early Christians point out the cure to spiritual apathy, the applied it! And, as history reveals, the results were impressive.

The birthday of the Church and the path we choose

Thu, 23 May 2013 00:00:00 -0500

By Archbishop Charles J. Chaput, O.F.M., Cap.

Anything without heart, anything without love – and I mean politics, music, law, art, even religion – anything without love, no matter how brilliant, is finally inadequate and weak. At the end of the day, the human soul yearns to be loved, and to love in return. And it won’t settle for anything less.

God loves us so deeply that he sent his only son to live, suffer, die and rise again for our salvation. That’s the message of Easter. The message of Pentecost – the “birthday of the Church” that we celebrate this Sunday – builds on Easter.

In sending his Holy Spirit to the Apostles in the upper room, God invites each of us to join him in a passion for evangelizing the world. We are Christ’s witnesses. Our mission is to respond to the fire of God’s love. But desire alone won’t remake the world. So how do we accomplish the work God sets before us?

First, we need to wake up, shake off the cocoon of the world’s narcotic noise, and recover our clarity about right and wrong. We do this by praying, and we need to pray every day. Praying, no matter how unfocused we might be at first, clears the head and the heart. It also clears the ears, so we can hear God’s quiet voice.

Setting aside some silent time with God each day plants the first seed of sanity. It sends down deep roots, and the soul grows a little stronger every day. If we listen well enough and long enough, God will tell us what he wants uniquely from each of us.

Second, we need to seek out confession regularly and stay close to the Eucharist. We can’t lose hope when we know we’re forgiven. We can’t starve to death when we’re being fed with the Bread of Life. And the stronger we get in the Lord, the more we have to give to others. The sacraments are literally rivers of grace. They bring us new life. They have real power.

Third, we need to share Jesus Christ consciously with someone every day. We need to make a deliberate point of it. And we don’t have to hit people over the head with the Bible to do it. Life naturally presents us with opportunities to talk about our faith with friends or colleagues. Nothing is more attractive than a sincere, personal witness to the truth. And remember that what we give away in faith, we get back a hundredfold.

Fourth, we need to show a little courage. In the same Scripture passage where Jesus tells us to go and make disciples of all nations, he also tells us that he’ll be with us always, even to the end of the age. If that’s so – and of course, it is so – then what can we really worry about? What better friend can we have in the struggle for the soul of the world, than the God who created it and us?

Fifth and finally, we need to be faithful to those who love us, and to those whom God calls us to love. So often we overlook the simple fabric of daily life and the persons who inhabit it. But that’s where real love begins. That’s where all discipleship starts. It’s why Augustine wrote that “to be faithful in little things is a big thing.”

God made each of us to make a difference. Whether we seem to succeed or fail is not the point. We may never see how God uses us to achieve his will. But it’s enough that we try – and then profound things can happen.

Readers my age may remember that Dag Hammarskjold was secretary general of the United Nations many years ago, during the Congo crisis in the early 1960s. He was also a Christian serious about his faith. Hammarskjold died when his plane crashed on a peace mission in Africa in September 1961. After his death, his diary was found and published under the title, Markings. This is a prayer he wrote in his diary shortly before his death:

[Oh God,]

Have mercy
Upon us.
Have mercy
Upon our efforts,
That we
Before Thee
In love and in faith
Righteousness and humility,
May follow Thee,
With self-denial, steadfastness and courage,
And meet Thee
In the silence.

Give us
A pure heart
That we may see Thee,
A humble heart
That we may hear Thee,
A heart of love
That we may serve Thee,
A heart of faith
That we may live Thee,

Thou
Whom I do not know
But Whose I am.
Thou
Whom I do not comprehend
But Who hast dedicated me
To my fate.
Thou –

We live in an era wounded by sadness and cynicism, but also ennobled by men and women of grace; people not so very different from you and me. This year, on this Pentecost, we get to choose which path to follow, because while God’s Holy Spirit calls each of us by name to his service, we have the freedom to say yes or no.

If we really want to preach the Gospel, renew the Church and give glory to God in the years ahead, the only means that will work is to speak the truth in love through the witness of our lives. And it’s always been so.

Lord, make us instruments of your peace – now and always.

Reprinted with permission from the Catholic Philly, official newspaper for the diocese of Philadelphia.

The Catholic Church advances science: part five

Wed, 22 May 2013 00:00:00 -0500

By Sr. Joan L. Roccasalvo, C.S.J.

“The Church is opposed to science; look at the Galileo debacle.” Haven’t most of us heard this criticism of the Church? In fact, one of the best-kept secrets about modern science is the Church’s role in its development. As with the arts, the Church gladly supports scientific pursuits that defer to the moral order.

The Church and Cloning

On May 16 came the news from scientists in Oregon that they could clone human embryos in order to treat human diseases like Parkinson’s, Alzheimer’s, diabetes, and spinal cord injuries. This therapeutic cloning creates life, uses it for therapeutic purposes, and then destroys it.

“Scientists,” writes Archbishop Samuel Aquila, “have discovered how to create perfect human copies, to be used for the sole purpose of growing tissue in the effort to combat disease; then these copies will be destroyed” (National Review Online).

This embryo is a human being, albeit in the very earliest stages of human life. Every person reading this essay was once an embryo that grew into a fetus, and then to an infant baby, and so on along the spectrum of human life. This discovery brings with it the possibility, and indeed the probability, to clone babies. It recalls the cloning of Dolly the sheep in 1996. Now we have the possibility of cloning human beings.

Dr. Daniel Sulmasy, a professor of medicine and bioethicist at the University of Chicago has observed: “This is a case in which one is deliberately setting out to create a human being for the sole purpose of destroying that human being. I am of the school that thinks that that’s morally wrong no matter how much good could come of it.” The timeless principle holds: The end does not justify the means.

Like Archbishop Aquila, Cardinal Sean O’Malley of Boston has stated the Church’s view that cloning is immoral, even if used for therapeutic purposes because it “treats human beings as products, manufactured to order, to suit other people’s wishes” (NY Times, May 16, 2013, A17). The event is fraught with controversy and will be argued on both sides of the argument.

One principle to be kept in mind is this: Whatever can be done is not always moral; whatever is legal is not necessarily moral. The1973 Roe vs Wade decision is one application of this principle.

Behind the process of any scientific thought and pursuit is the concern for the integrity of man and woman as created in the image and likeness of God and for their inviolable dignity from the embryonic stage to natural death.

Flashing back to earlier times when the Church was engaged with scientific pursuits . . .

The Church, Science in the Sixteenth and Seventeenth Centuries
In 1582, the Jesuit polymath Cristoforo Clavius (d 1610) headed the commission that put into effect the Gregorian calendar thus negating the Julian calendar? To synchronize the calendar with the solar year, Clavius calculated ninety-seven leap days every four hundred years. His contemporaries were astounded.

In the sixteenth century and against universally-accepted theory, Copernicus had theorized that the sun, rather than Earth, was at the center of the solar system. Galileo advanced this theory, and his work was praised by Clavius. On Galileo’s visit to Rome, Pius V honored him and his discoveries.

However, the theory jointly held by Copernicus and Galileo stood as hypotheses and not as yet objectively proved. Galileo insisted that the Copernican theory was literally true. Because Protestants had faulted the Church with insufficient attention given to the literal meaning of Scripture, which appeared to contradict the two astronomers, Galileo was asked not to publish the theory until it could be objectively proven. He refused but was eventually proved correct. The Church’s naming him a heretic can be explained but not defended. (Thomas Woods, How the Church Built Western Civilization, 70ff; New Catholic Encyclopedia 6: 250ff). In 1979, John Paul II conceded that the Church had erred in the Galileo incident, and in 1984, all the Vatican documents about the case were made public.

The Church and Modern Science

The name George Lemaître (d 1966) is not a household name as is those of Edwin Hubble and Albert Einstein. Yet, in 1927, this Belgian-born theoretical physicist and priest, applying Einstein’s theory of general relativity, proposed that the expanding universe originated with a primeval atom or, as he called it, “the exploding egg.” Sir Fred Hoyle coined the term, the Big Bang, a jocular and perhaps derisive way of speaking about the anthropic principle or “the primeval atom.” The name, “The Big Bang” eventually held sway. This theory was pertinent to the question of God’s creation of the universe, and some have regarded Lemaître’s discovery as the “creation event,” that is, the universe created itself. How could an effect cause itself to be? Every effect has its cause, immediate or remote.

Prior to Lemaître’s presentation, Einstein (d 1955) was skeptical of the findings but was eventually won over. Standing and applauding at a seminar about Lemaître’s discovery, he said: “This is the most beautiful and satisfactory explanation of creation to which I have ever listened” (“Space/Astronomy”).

One visual depiction of the origin of the universe takes the contemporary mind back to a thirteenth-century French Bible (Codex 2553), where a picture of God the Father is illustrated measuring the world with a compass at the time of Creation.

The distinguished Hungarian Benedictine monk and physicist, Stanley Jaki, (d 2009) taught on issues pertaining to the philosophy of science and theology. He believed that science and theology were compatible and mutually reinforced the quest to understand God. “The regular return of seasons, the unfailing course of stars, the music of the spheres, the movement of the force of nature according to fixed ordinances, are all the results of the One who alone can be trusted unconditionally,” he wrote (Woods, 76).

During his life, Jaki was lauded numerous times as a writer and educator.

The Jesuits and Science

No other religious order has dedicated itself more to studies in science than has the Society of Jesus. There are approximately seventy Jesuit from the seventeenth century to the present who have engaged in scientific research. This list includes such Jesuit-scientists as: Matteo Ricci, (d 1610) who brought scientific innovations to China and who is deeply revered among the Chinese intelligentsia, Francesco Grimaldi (d 1643) and his diffraction of light, Nicholas Zucchi (d 1670), the telescope maker, Giovanni Battista Zupi (d 1650), an astronomer who discovered that Mercury had orbital phases, Ignace Pardies (d 1673) and his influence on Sir Isaac Newton, Francis Line (d 1675 ) the clockmaker hunted down by the English monarchy, Angelo Sacchi (d 1878) the Father of Astrophysics, Roger Boscovich (d 1787) and his atomic theory, Pierre Teilhard de Chardin (d 1955) who was involved in the discovery of the so-called Peking Man, and George Coyne astronomer who has researched polarimetrics and Seyfert galaxies. Last but not least is Guy Consolmagno, who believes that “religious needs science to keep it away from superstition and keep it close to reality, to protect it from creationism, which at the end of the day is a kind of paganism.”

The Church and Science

The Church continues to support scientific pursuits so long as they uphold the inviolable dignity of the human person made in the image and likeness of God as well as the family, the Domestic Church. There is no contradiction or no opposition between science and the doctrine of the faith about man and woman and their vocation.

The Bible is not a book of science. But in 1996, John Paul II addressed the Pontifical Academy of Sciences, reminding the conveners that “the Gospel truth can shed a higher light on the horizon of your research into the origins and unfolding of living matter. The Bible in fact bears an extraordinary message of life. It gives as a wise vision of life inasmuch as it describes the loftiest forms of existence.”

Cultural imperialism on the march

Tue, 21 May 2013 00:00:00 -0500

By Robert R. Reilly

As June approaches, get ready for the official celebration of “Gay Pride Month” by U.S. embassies abroad.

If sodomy and same-sex marriage are constitutional rights, what is their relationship to U.S. foreign policy? Despite the tremendous controversy regarding these issues within the United States, the Obama administration has gone ahead and placed them at the center of U. S. diplomacy. Why? In Libido Dominandi, E. Michael Jones wrote that the rationalization of sexual misbehavior “could only calm the troubled conscience in an effective manner when it was legitimized by the regime in power… [which] went on in the name of high moral purpose to make this vision normative for the entire world.” Therefore, the Obama administration has undertaken the task of universalizing the rationalization for sodomitical behavior and is doing so with high moral rhetoric – in this case, by appropriating the language of human rights.

The effort began in earnest on International Human Rights Day, December 6, 2011. President Obama issued a memorandum for the heads of executive departments and agencies, directing them “to ensure that U.S. diplomacy and foreign assistance promote and protect the human rights of LGBT persons”. Mr. Obama said that, “The struggle to end discrimination against lesbian, gay, bisexual, and transgender (LGBT) persons is a global challenge, and one that is central to the United States commitment to promoting human rights”.
Austin Ruse, president of the Catholic Family and Human Rights Institute, explained, “They have directed their embassies everywhere to monitor and assist domestic homosexual movements whether the host country and their people accept it or not. The U.S. is very powerful and can force governments to submit to its social-policy views. They are intent on forcing homosexual ‘marriage’ and homosexual adoption on countries that are offended by such things…”

In her International Human Rights Day speech, Hillary Clinton, then U.S. Secretary of State, gave the rationale for this. She came to the defense of those “forced to suppress or deny who they are to protect themselves from harm. I am talking about gay, lesbian, bisexual, and transgender people”, whom she described with a strong Rousseauian echo as “human beings born free and given bestowed equality and dignity…” But, if they were born free, why are they not free now? No doubt, because society oppresses them, just as South Africa once oppressed its black population through apartheid – an example Mrs. Clinton gives. But history overcame that, and since, as Rousseau taught, man is a product of history, history can overcome this, too. Thus, Mrs. Clinton ends with the admonition, “Be on the right side of history”.

In a moment of humility, Mrs. Clinton stated that, “my own country’s record on human rights for gay people is far from perfect. Until 2003, it was still a crime in parts of our country.” It was? What was it? Being homosexual or lesbian was not a crime in the United States, so what was she referring to?

Mrs. Clinton never said, but the it to which she alluded is sodomy, the elephant in the room. She repeated the mantra that “it is a violation of human rights when governments declare it illegal to be gay…” and “it should never be a crime to be gay”. One would have to agree in so far as persecution of and violence against homosexuals is concerned but, as Austin Ruse has pointed out, “Such attacks upon individuals are already recognized as violations of human rights in international law particularly in the 1966 Covenants implementing the Universal Declaration of Human Rights and other existing treaties”. This, then, is moving beyond that to the moral and legal endorsement of certain behavior. Some governments continue to have laws against homosexual acts, which is not the same thing as violating their rights as human beings. Was Mrs. Clinton saying that it is a violation of human rights to declare sodomy illegal?

Apparently, for that would be consistent with Section 1 in the Obama directive, instructing agencies abroad to engage in “Combating Criminalization of LGBT Status or Conduct Abroad”(emphasis added). What kind of conduct might this be? The only conduct that is or has been consistently criminalized by many countries is sodomy. What might be the moral objections to such laws? The somewhat evasive answer in the Presidential Memorandum is because “no country should deny people their rights because of who they love…” In her speech, Mrs. Clinton echoed this response: “We need to ask ourselves, ‘How would it feel if it were a crime to love the person I love?’”

Well, that depends. What if the person one loves is already married? What if the person one loves is a sibling? How about a teacher in love with a student? Or a pastor in love with a choir boy? Or an uncle with his niece? Acting upon any of these loves in a sexual relationship is, in most places, a crime. How it would feel does not really matter since, in each of these cases, it is morally wrong to sexualize the relationship. Feelings do not change the moral nature of an act. Why, if all the above cases deserve prohibition, do homosexuals deserve an exemption when it comes to sodomy?

As with all rationalizations for moral misbehavior, Mrs. Clinton’s speech was rife with denials of reality, three of which came in one sentence. She said, “Now, there are some who say and believe that all gay people are pedophiles, that homosexuality is a disease that can become caught or cured, or that gays recruit others to become gay. Well, these notions are simply not true”. Well, these notions have to be seen as not true for her to promote the “gay” agenda internationally and get away with it. I have never met anyone who believes that all homosexuals are pedophiles. By setting up the pedophile straw man, Mrs. Clinton avoids this unpleasant reality. Whether homosexuality is a disease or not (it is certainly a disorder), there is ample evidence that it can be cured. Some who have become immersed in this life and who later wish to leave it have successfully done so through a variety of therapies. For Secretary Clinton to deny this is an enormous disservice to the very people whose rights she purports to be defending.

Lastly, the bigger the lie, the bolder the assertion – as in Mrs. Clinton’s outright denial that “gays recruit others to become gay”. In my professional career in the arts, I witnessed such recruitment, saw its occasional success, and was several times the object of it. Anyone with a rudimentary knowledge of the homosexual subculture could not possibly make such a statement. This is not to say that all homosexuals recruit, but to assert that none do is a complete denial of reality – which, after all, is the point of the rationalization.

One of the most immediate results of the priority given to the homosexual cause by President Obama and Secretary Clinton has been the profusion of “gay pride” commemorations and celebrations in U.S. embassies abroad. June is the month singled out for this because, in 2000, President Bill Clinton declared June “Gay and Lesbian Pride Month”.

Therefore, the U.S. Embassy in Islamabad celebrated its first-ever lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender (LGBT) “pride celebration” with an event on June 26, 2011. The embassy said the purpose of meeting was to demonstrate “support for human rights, including LGBT rights, in Pakistan at a time when those rights are increasingly under attack from extremist elements throughout Pakistani society.” Richard Hoagland, the U.S. deputy chief of mission, was quoted on the embassy website, as saying, “I want to be clear that the U.S. Embassy is here to support you and stand by your side every step of the way”. However, it is Pakistan’s Penal Code, not extremist elements, that, in Section 377 (introduced at the time of British colonialism), states that “carnal intercourse against the order of nature with any man, woman or animal” shall be punished with some prison term and a fine.

Pakistani students protested against what they called “the attempts of the United States to promote vulgarity in Islamic societies under the pretext of human rights”. One speaker at a demonstration said, “Now the United States wants to project and promote objectionable, unnatural, abnormal behaviors under the pretext of equality and human rights, which is not at all acceptable…If you destroy the morality of the society, you have destroyed it completely.”

In Nairobi, Kenya, June, 2012, the U.S. Embassy hosted what is thought to be the first “Gay Pride” event in that country. John Haynes, a public affairs officer at the U.S. embassy, introduced the event: "The U.S. government for its part has made it clear that the advancement of human rights for LGBT people is central to our human rights policies around the world and to the realization of our foreign policy goals". Homosexual acts are illegal in Kenya, just as they were in parts of the United States until 2003.

This type of thing at U.S. embassies has become standard. As then-Secretary of State Clinton proclaimed in June, 2012: “United States Embassies and Missions throughout the world are working to defend the rights of LGBT people of all races, religions, and nationalities as part of our comprehensive human rights policy and as a priority of our foreign policy. From Riga, where two U.S. Ambassadors and a Deputy Assistant Secretary marched in solidarity with Baltic Pride; to Nassau, where the Embassy joined together with civil society to screen a film about LGBT issues in Caribbean societies; to Albania, where our Embassy is coordinating the first-ever regional Pride conference for diplomats and activists to discuss human rights and shared experiences”.

Secretary Clinton avowed that “gay rights are human rights, and human rights are gay rights”. The problem with this should be self-evident. The promotion of gay rights must come at the expense of the promotion of human rights because the two notions are immiscible. One is founded on the Laws of Nature and of Nature’s God and the other on moral relativism, which eviscerates the very idea of natural rights and the natural law on which they are based. If you have one, you cannot have the other. You have your rights by virtue of being a human being, and not by anything else – not ethnicity, not religion, not race, not tribe, not sexual orientation.

I deplore, for instance, the persecution of Baha’is in Iran and the persecution of Ahamdis in Pakistan. Nonetheless, there is no such thing as Ahmadi rights or Baha’i rights: there are only human rights. And our defense of them comes precisely at the level of principle in the inalienable right to freedom of conscience and freedom of religion. Were we to construct such a thing as Ahmadi rights or Baha’i rights or “gay” rights, we would be eviscerating the foundations for those very human rights, which have to be universal by definition in order to exist. If one has rights as a Baha’i, what happens to those rights if one converts to, say Christianity? Does one then lose one’s Baha’i rights and obtain new Christian rights? What happens to one’s “gay” rights if one goes straight? One does not possess or attain rights in this way. They are inalienable because one possesses them by virtue of one’s human nature. Either they exist at that level, or they do not exist at all. If someone tries to appropriate human rights for something that applies to less than everyone, then you may be sure that they are undermining the very notion of human rights.

If the United States wishes to promote democratic principles and constitutional rule in other countries, but insists on inserting manufactured rights as integral to that program, it will be rejected overall by religious people and by anyone who has arrived at the existence of human rights from natural law. If we wish not only to make ourselves irrelevant, but an object of derision in the Muslim and other parts of world, all we have to do is openly promote the rationalization of homosexual behavior, which is explicitly taught against as inherently immoral by Islam and, in fact, by every minority religion in those Muslim-majority countries, including Christianity and Judaism. If we wish to make this part of American public diplomacy, as we have been doing, we can surrender the idea that the United States is promoting democracy in those countries because they are already responding, “If this is democracy, we don’t want it, thank you; we would rather keep our faith and morals.” But, of course, democracy is not the goal; the goal is the universalization of the rationalization for sodomy. This is now one of the depraved purposes of U.S. foreign policy. The light from the City on the Hill is casting a very dark shadow.

This article derives from a longer piece on Mercatornet.

Gatsby Madness and the Millennials: Another Lost Generation?

Mon, 20 May 2013 00:00:00 -0500

By Emily Stimpson

I was sure I would hate it. Almost one hundred percent sure. But I went and saw “The Great Gatsby” anyhow. Mostly to figure out what all the fuss was about. Or, more specifically, to figure out what all the fuss among twenty-somethings was about.

Over the past few weeks, my “under-30” friends have been talking incessantly about the film. They’ve thrown grand 1920s themed parties and dressed up like flappers before heading out to see the movie. Afterwards,they’ve raved about it.

Considering most of my friends over 30 couldn’t stand the film, that struck me as odd. Why the divide? Was this an instance of taste improving with age or was there something about this particular film that embodied the experience of Millennials, something that Generation X-ers andBaby Boomers missed?

After seeing the film, my answer is, “A little of both.”

A Review In Brief

First things first. The critics who panned the film weren’t entirely wrong. A masterpiece “The Great Gatsby” is not.

For starters, the narrative device used to frame the story—Nick Carraway writing a book about Gatsby from a mental home—was pedantic, heavy-handed, and way beyond Toby McGuire’s emotional range. “Exposition for idiots” was how I described it afterwards. And even that might not be giving enough credit to the idiots, whom I’m pretty sure didn’t need to be explicitly told that the 1920s were a time when life was fast and loose, given that the next two hours were devoted to demonstrating that fact.

Then, there was the acting. Imagine a Gatsby, Nick, and Daisy as rendered by P.G. Wodehouse and a decent college theatre department. Now say a prayer for poor F. Scott Fitzgerald, whose book deserved a much better cast than it got.

All that being said, I didn’t hate the movie. I actually enjoyed it. It was beautiful to watch, overwhelmingly faithful to the book, and the soundtrack, which fused 1920s Jazz with the stylings of Jay-Z, totally worked. Seriously. I can’t believe I’m saying that either. But it did.

In fact, it did more than work. Jay-Z’s music bridged a century, making audible the connections between the world of 1922 and the world of 2013, connections that so many twenty-somethings, wittingly or unwittingly, seem to see.

A Tale of Two Worlds

The film, like the book, shows a world powered by greed, electrified by sex, and running like hell from grief. That world doesn’t want to remember the trenches of Verdun or the shores of Gallipoli. It doesn’t want to ask why millions of young men had to die or what good came from their deaths. By 1922, all searches for meaning in the madness of World War I had come back empty. So people stopped searching. Instead they started grasping—at pleasure, at excitement, at anything that promised to distract them from the wounds they bore within them.

“The Great Gatsby” makes that world incarnate. It also makes incarnate an age of unprecedented wealth, of clothes and cars and cheap electricity. In 1922, almost everything could be had for a price. The age of the consumer had begun, and along with it, the growing belief among the middle class that luxury could be had without work.

At the center of that world, embodying it all, stands Gatsby, a romantic, a dreamer, a man who thinks himself “the son of God” and who believes his destiny is to climb as high as the stars, always moving upwards, capable of anything, even repeating the past.

How could that not speak to twenty-somethings?

Today’s under-30 crowd has grown up in an age of endless war—wars in deserts abroad and in the culture at home. Those wars have left many of them wounded, in soul if not body. Those same wars also have left Millennials cynical about politics and cynical about love. Irony is the spirit of the age.

With all those wounds and all that cynicism, the Millennials know, far too young, what it is to run from grief, drink away confusion, and settle for sex when real love can’t be found. They’ve been to the parties and danced the dances. Or they’ve watched their friends dance them. They also know, in a way T.S. Eliot couldn’t have fathomed, what it means to be “distracted from distraction by distraction.”

Likewise, today’s twenty-somethings know excess. Forget the Lost Generation. No generation before the Millennials has had as much or had it so quickly. They have never known a world without Amazon One-Click or iTunes. They have lived the whole of their existence as consumers, swimming in a sea of stuff.

Last but not least, like Gatsby, Millennials want to shine. In fact, as a generation, they believe they were made to shine. No demographic in the world scores as high on the narcissism index (yes, that’s a real thing) as Millennials. What Gatsby came by naturally has been instilled in them through the instant fame promised by Reality TV, and two decades of “I am special” curricula in schools.

In sum, Gatsby’s world is our world … albeit with fewer smart phones and better clothes.

Accordingly, whether they’re wounded or witnesses to wounds, consumers or critics of consumerism, dreamers who believe in love or skeptics grown cynical from disappointed love, there’s something in “The Great Gatsby” to which just about every Millennial can relate. It’s the story of their generation, almost as much as it is the story of their great-great grandparents’ generation, albeit in a more elegant package (which itself is another reason for its appeal—most Millennials only regular encounter with elegance being a MacBook Pro).

The Witness of Gatsby

The connections between the two ages is a connection easily made. No question about that. There is a question, however, about what lesson Millennials are drawing from the movie.

Do they walk away believing as the narrator does, that Gatsby was a tragic hero, a true romantic, the most hopeful man in the world? Do they see greatness in his aspirations to shoot through life like a starablaze? Do they aim to follow his path?

Or do they see the truth of it all?

The truth is that Gatsby wasn’t hopeful: He was delusional. He manufactured a life, and he manufactured a love, fabricating an identity for himself just as he fabricated an ideal woman from his memories of a real woman. He created a false picture of their love in his mind, then refused to see ther eality before his eyes—the reality of her littleness and betrayal—because it wasn’t what he wanted to see.

Everything Gatsby’s age promised, everything Gatsby sought, disappointed in the end. Wealth, Power. Pleasure. Romance. All that burning and blazing came to nothing, a nothing encapsulated by the bullet which pierced Gatsby’s chest.

The reason for that end, as my friend Chris said to me afterwards, is this: “Pretentions to divinity always end in death.”

You see, we are called to greatness, each and every one of us. We are called to be sons and daughters of God. That instinct—in Gatsby, in Millennials, in anyone—isn’t wrong. But power, wealth, and fame don’t make a person great. Love does that—love for God and love for one another. Likewise, we’re not born sons and daughters of God. We’re made that way by baptism. It’s a gift, not a given.

If we assume the gift without realizing how gracious it is, and then pursue greatness by trying to blaze through the sky on an ever-upward trajectory, we will crash and burn. There will be no life. There will be only death.

If it’s life we want, then it’s love we need to pursue—not the type of self-seeking, self-satisfied love the world glorifies, not the type of love which looks to another human person for meaning and fulfillment—but love which denies itself for the sake of the other and which knows true fulfillment and meaning can be found in only one Person, Jesus Christ.

The way to that love is narrow, not wide. It’s easy to blaze through the sky. It’s difficult to lay oneself low, to be little and humble and meek, to seek to serve rather than be served, to affirm rather than be affirmed. There’s scant glamor in that way, but in the end, it’s the only way worth taking.

Gatsby never saw that. He was a fool. Fitzgerald saw some of it. He at least knew Gatsby was a fool. He knew the whole spirit of his age, a spirit in which he nevertheless fully imbibed, had it all wrong. But he didn’t know how to get it right.

We do. The Church has handed it to us on a platter. We just have to live it. And we have to help others live it too. For parents, for siblings and friends, as well as for those working in youth and young adult ministry, the popularity among Millennials of “The Great Gatsby”—the longing of so many young people for greatness and love, beauty and healing, poetry and transcendence—stands as a lesson in who the Millenial generation is, what they want, and what they need.

It’s also a reminder that the Millennial Generation hasn’t become another Lost Generation just yet.

The 'shock' of Gosnell

Mon, 20 May 2013 00:00:00 -0500

By Brian Caulfield

Sickened and horrified but not at all surprised. That’s how veteran pro-life activists have responded to the oh-so-late charges against and murder conviction of Philadelphia abortionist Kermit Gosnell.

Those who have stood outside of abortion clinics praying or counseling women have known for years that these horrid practices take place unexamined – “snipping” the spines of born babies, placing them in jars, or leaving them in bedpans to wriggle and die unaided. They have stood on the sidewalks and witnessed first-hand that many police are more concerned about preventing pro-lifers from crossing the imaginary, court-imposed “bubble zone” outside of clinics than helping the teen limping out the door alone after an abortion, or asking too many questions of a paramedic when an ambulance carts away another girl through the back door. Pro-lifers have seen too many cops look the other way, too many emergency rooms fail to report abortion as the source of a girl’s bleeding, too many violations unchecked because the health inspectors wish to see no evil when it comes to abortion.

No, sad to say, long-time pro-lifers are not shocked by Gosnell. He was just a bit more messy and less crafty than the average abortionist, but his grisly practices are common for the industry. Just ask the young women after they leave the abortion mill, as pro-life counselors have been doing for years. They talk about girls moaning in pain in other rooms, blood on the floor and sinks, the cold hands of the abortionist and the lies laid one atop the other about their stage of gestation, the size of the unborn baby, the little being’s beating heart and response to pain.

Just ask the abortionists who have left the industry and told their stories in books, radio and TV shows, and You Tube videos. They’ve been saying the same thing over and over, yet they’ve been ignored by the mainstream media and by lawmakers and health inspectors. They could have told the nation years ago about Gosnell and his ilk, if anyone in power would have listened. But when Big Abortion whistles the cultural and media tune, such former abortionists are looked upon as traitors to the cause, untrustworthy, or religious fanatics.

Everyone is now horrified at the gory details from the Gosnell trial and astounded by the lack of oversight by Pennsylvania officials, right up to the “pro-choice” governor. You would think that surely now there will be an outcry to cause the abortion industry to retreat and reform. But don’t be too sure that enough people, government officials and mainstream media outlets will care enough to push for change. Those “pro-choicers” who have been shamed into outrage remind me of the corrupt official in the movie “Casablanca” who claims to be “shocked, shocked to find that gambling is going on in here” as the casino cashier hands him his winnings. In predictable form, the abortion industry has distanced itself from Gosnell, calling him an “outlier” and even blaming pro-lifers for making abortion appear so unseemly that only hacks like Gosnell get into the business.

That is why we must keep up the pressure, contacting our lawmakers, posting and tweeting the facts of the trial, telling our “choice” relatives, friends and neighbors about the horrors of abortion, supporting our local pro-life pregnancy center, and even joining a local group that prays peacefully outside an abortion facility. The dark door of abortion has been pried open a crack, and we must use this rare opportunity to let in the light of truth, for the sake of pregnant women and their babies.

The 'therapeutic cloning' of human embryos

Fri, 17 May 2013 00:00:00 -0500

By Archbishop Samuel J. Aquila

The embryos killed are the first class of victims; the second class of victims will be the rest of us.

Oscar Wilde’s The Picture of Dorian Gray is the sort of timeless morality tale students read as an antidote, or at least an objection, to the hedonism that seems to follow naturally from youthful ideas about immortality.

The story is familiar to many: Dorian Gray is a narcissist who wishes that a portrait of him — his copy in paint — would age in his place. His wish comes true, and though his life is corrupted by a pursuit of pleasure, only his painted visage bears the effects. Dorian himself is visibly unscathed, though the novel’s fatal climax exposes a soul rendered ugly by a life of egoistic debauchery.

The Picture of Dorian Gray took on a particular prescience yesterday. Scientists at Oregon Health and Science University reported a successful incidence of cloning, one that relied on the same method that researchers used 17 years ago to clone Dolly the sheep. This week, the cloned embryos were not sheep; they were human beings. The work is heralded as the success of “therapeutic cloning.”

We will hear a lot about therapeutic cloning in the news this week. Researchers distinguish between “therapeutic cloning,” which creates embryos in order to harvest their stem cells, and “reproductive cloning,” which has the intention of a live birth. The Oregon researchers insist that theirs was not an act of “reproductive cloning.”

But the distinction is spurious. Both types of cloning are reproductive. Both bring a new human being into existence. In fact, so-called therapeutic cloning is the more heinous because the process is intended to create life, exploit it, and then destroy it.

Consider what the cloning breakthrough means. Scientists have discovered how to create perfect human copies, to be used for the sole purpose of growing tissue in the effort to combat disease, and then these copies will be destroyed. From a scientific perspective, this breakthrough could solve, among other problems, that of tissue rejection or a delay that renders organ transplant unfeasible. From the standpoint of materialism, there has been no greater advance in regenerative medicine. Through therapeutic cloning, a person’s health can be enhanced immeasurably — and only the copy, the embryo, will suffer the effects.

The problem is that the embryo is not merely a copy. The embryo is not an extension of the patient who donated the DNA, a cell bank to be utilized without consequence. The embryo, though genetically identical, is a new manifestation of human life, endowed by its very being with dignity. The embryo is a human being.

The humanity of the cloned embryo will be aggressively denied in the weeks to come. Though human life demonstrably begins at the embryonic stage of development, the created embryo will be presented as a collection of tissue, a biological tabula rasa from which organs can be grown. Scientists will seek more funding, and the Dickey Amendment, which prohibits federal funding for the creation of cloned embryos, will be attacked.

In 1968, Pope Paul VI warned in Humanae Vitae that the sexual revolution, beginning with a cultural acceptance of the contraceptive mentality, would lead to a wholesale denial of human dignity and the family. Now we are cloning embryos to destroy them. It will be only a matter of time before therapeutic cloning will cede to reproductive cloning. If we don’t seriously contemplate the ethical consequences of therapeutic cloning now, eventually cloned human beings will be born in America.

The “progress” of therapeutic cloning will not be victimless. But the victims will be hidden from sight, tucked away in the dark like Dorian’s decaying portrait.

The first class of victims, and the ones most pressing on our consciences, will be the embryos: brought into existence to be used, and then killed. If nurtured, as in a womb, these embryos would grow into fetuses, and then infants, and then children. They are, no matter their size, human beings. But because they are small and have no voice and offer such tremendous possibility, they will be ignored.

The embryos will be a class of human beings created only to be exploited and discarded.

The second class of victims will be the rest of us. We will be the ones remaining healthy and making progress and defeating disease — all by means of killing. We will be the ones who appear beautiful, while our souls embrace the most harrowing kind of social utilitarianism and darkness. If we ignore the problem, as we have done with contraception and abortion, we will only sink into a more violent depravity, like the one that befell vain Dorian Gray. We will be the ones whose portrait grows ever uglier, and who grow ever closer to madness.

This article first appeared on National Review Online and has been reposted with permission.

Kermit Gosnell and the death penalty

Fri, 17 May 2013 00:00:00 -0500

By Louie Verrecchio

Imagine the scene in the Pennsylvania State House of Representatives as the Chairman of the Judiciary Committee calls the meeting to order with three decisive blows of the gavel:

A hush falls over the unusually large throng of observers as the presiding legislator greets the star witness and asks him to identify himself, stating his cause, that it may be noted in the official record.

As a barrage of flashbulbs and the rapid fire sound of clicking shutters emanates from the pool of photographers huddled in the media gallery, a voice rings out from the witness table, “I am Charles J. Chaput, Archbishop of Philadelphia, and I am here to plead for the life of Kermit Gosnell.”

A spectacle such as this, depending upon who you ask, would either be a beautiful witness to Catholic teaching, or a regrettable distortion of the same.

Thanks to a plea deal, however, Kermit Gosnell, who was convicted of three counts of first-degree murder, one count of infanticide, and one count of involuntary manslaughter (among other things) was able to avoid a sentence of death, thereby averting any possibility that the scene just described might actually take place.

That doesn’t mean that people aren’t talking about it, however. On the contrary, the heinous nature of Gosnell’s crimes has brought debate over the fittingness of capital punishment back into spotlight where it belongs.
Catholics are divided on the topic, generally falling into any number of “camps” which includes:

• Those who embrace the John Paul II opinion that short of protecting society from imminent danger the death penalty it is always an affront to human dignity

• Those who reject the death penalty with the belief that it is incompatible with the Christian duty to extend mercy and forgiveness

• Those who believe that life imprisonment, as opposed to a death sentence, is the best, or only, way to allow for the perpetrator’s repentance and conversion

• Those who support the death penalty out of anger and vengeance, sometimes expressed in judgmental fits of rage

And then there is the smallest camp of all:

• Those who have a good working knowledge and appreciation for the well-established Catholic doctrine concerning the State’s right to administer the penalty of death

With this in mind, let’s take a necessarily abbreviated look at the traditional doctrine of the Church on capital punishment, a teaching which remains entirely valid today.

The first thing one should know is that this teaching is founded upon the authority of Sacred Scripture and the witness of sacred Tradition as articulated throughout the centuries.

The Catechism of Trent offers the following concise presentation:

The power of life and death is permitted to certain civil magistrates because theirs is the responsibility under law to punish the guilty and protect the innocent. Far from being guilty of breaking this commandment [Thy shall not kill], such an execution of justice is precisely an act of obedience to it. For the purpose of the law is to protect and foster human life. This purpose is fulfilled when the legitimate authority of the State is exercised by taking the guilty lives of those who have taken innocent lives.

In the Psalms we find a vindication of this right: “Morning by morning I will destroy all the wicked in the land, cutting off all evildoers from the city of the Lord” (Ps. 101:8).

(Roman Catechism of the Council of Trent, 1566, Part III, 5, n. 4)

While the post-conciliar bishops tend to focus almost exclusively on the duty to protect human life (albeit extrapolated to include even the life of the guilty), the traditional approach charges the State also with “fostering” human life; that which cannot be confined to the purely physical alone, but also includes the spiritual life of man.

In overlooking this truth, one can easily lose sight of the reality that proportionate punishment justly rendered can have a purifying effect on the soul, thereby fostering the spiritual life of the guilty.

Also missing from the modern approach is the traditional awareness that the death penalty need not be considered an act of vengeance as so often alleged by its detractors.

The secular power can without mortal sin carry out a sentence of death, provided it proceeds in imposing the penalty not from hatred but with judgment, not carelessly, but with due solicitude. (Pope Innocent III, DS 795/425)

Even in the case of the death penalty the State does not dispose of the individual’s right to life. Rather public authority limits itself to depriving the offender of the good of life in expiation for his guilt, after he, through his crime, deprived himself of his own right to life. (Pope Pius XII, Address given September 14, 1952)

In a (highly recommended) 2001 article for First Things, Catholicism & Capital Punishment, Cardinal Avery Dulles offered an in-depth treatment of the topic in which the eminent theologian stated:

Summarizing the verdict of Scripture and tradition, we can glean some settled points of doctrine. It is agreed that crime deserves punishment in this life and not only in the next. In addition, it is agreed that the State has authority to administer appropriate punishment to those judged guilty of crimes and that this punishment may, in serious cases, include the sentence of death … The Catholic magisterium does not, and never has, advocated unqualified abolition of the death penalty.

Contrast this with the condescending comments offered by Tommaso Di Ruzza, a “desk officer” at the Pontifical Council for Justice and Peace, who said in a recent Catholic News Service interview, “It is not a message that is immediately understood - that there is no room for supporting the death penalty in today's world.”

This particular viewpoint, while a substantial departure from the authentic doctrine of the Church, also happens to be shared by many, including even the majority of bishops.

Archbishop Chaput, for example, wrote in a recent column:

Even when a defendant is well defended, properly tried and justly found guilty, experience shows that capital punishment simply doesn’t work as a deterrent. Nor does it heal or redress any wounds, because only forgiveness can do that. It does succeed though in answering violence with violence — a violence wrapped in the piety of state approval, which implicates all of us as citizens in the taking of more lives.

Though well in keeping with the mindset of recent popes, the archbishop’s remarks are at odds with the traditional teaching on a number of important points, including the fact that capital punishment is not best considered as an attempt by the State to deter the commission of similar crimes in the future.

Secondly, as a matter of proportionate punishment, the death penalty is properly understood in Catholic teaching as an attempt to redress and to heal spiritual wounds.

Thirdly, when the civil authority lawfully carries out the death penalty, it not a de facto act of violence, much less is it “wrapped in the piety of State approval” inasmuch as the authority to carry out such acts comes not from the State itself, nor from its people, but from God.

Lastly, “forgiveness” and capital punishment are not mutually exclusive as the archbishop implies. Forgiving those who trespass against us is indeed an occasion of healing for the forgiver, but not necessarily so for the forgiven, whereas just punishment, duly accepted by those who deserve it, is.

For instance, St. Thomas Aquinas affirmed that the death penalty, inasmuch as it is proportionate retribution justly rendered, can have a purgatorial effect on the guilty that carries with it a powerful impetus for conversion.

All of this said, one wonders what caused our churchmen to move so far away, so quickly, from well-established Catholic teaching on the matter.
The most common answer, it seems, lies in the assertion that modern man (understood as referring to those living in the age of post-conciliar enlightenment) has a deeper understanding of human dignity than did previous generations.

Cardinal Dulles, however, didn’t believe it.

Arguments from the progress of ethical consciousness have been used to promote a number of alleged human rights that the Catholic Church consistently rejects in the name of Scripture and tradition. The magisterium appeals to these authorities as grounds for repudiating divorce, abortion, homosexual relations, and the ordination of women to the priesthood. If the Church feels herself bound by Scripture and tradition in these other areas, it seems inconsistent for Catholics to proclaim a “moral revolution” on the issue of capital punishment.

So, if not the product of a moral awakening, what then accounts for this rapid journey away from the traditional Catholic position on capital punishment?
In my estimation, the answer is twofold, relatively simple, and radically disturbing.

Throughout the post-conciliar period, the hierarchy’s preaching has reflected a hyper-inflated sense of human dignity that has obscured a number of important truths that weigh heavily in the Church’s traditional understanding of capital punishment as a matter of justice. Among them, the fact that human dignity can be diminished and even lost, and the very closely related understanding that human dignity is not possessed in equal measure by all. (A principle treated in greater detail in this column.)

As such, clergy and laity alike have largely fallen into the error of believing that when the State takes the life of a murderer, it is essentially repeating his crime, and this brings us to the second factor; namely, the distorted post-conciliar view of the State.

From the time of Vatican Council II and the promulgation of Dignitatis Humanae, the Church has refrained from preaching the immutable truth that the State derives its authority neither from constitutions nor the will of the people, but from Almighty God to whom the State is beholden, regardless of the particular form of government in which it operates.

Lost in the murkiness is the Catholic understanding of the civil authority as a representative of God, and whose authority is reflective of the hierarchical order that the Lord established within creation.

As such, it is no longer clear in the minds of moderns that the death penalty can indeed be visited upon the guilty, by the State, not simply as a means of protecting others, but as a means of visiting retributive justice upon the guilty in the name of God, thereby rendering a genuine and valuable service to the common good.

Needless to say, opinions will continue to vary as to whether or not the likes of Kermit Gosnell justly deserve the death penalty. I can accept that.

What I will not accept without protest, however, are opinions that are based upon a distorted representation of Catholic doctrine, especially when such are put forth by our bishops.

The cure for the decline of Mass attendance

Fri, 17 May 2013 00:00:00 -0500

By Joe Tremblay

In the 1950s, on his Emmy Award winning series, "Life is Worth Living," Bishop Fulton Sheen warned believers – but especially Catholics – that during times of prosperity church leaders are apt to become administrators who sit behind desks. The emphasis is more on the office than it is on the mission field. However, during times of adversity, church leaders are more likely to be out there in the mission fields as shepherds with the people. And as for the laity, when talking about the Sacrament of Confirmation in a different address, Bishop Sheen reminded his listeners of the following:

“The laity will have to come to a comprehension that our blessed Lord was not crucified in a cathedral between two candles but in the world, on a road way, in a town garbage heap…He place Himself at the very center of the world, in the midst of smut, thieves, soldiers and gamblers.”

Followers of Christ are once again returning to a time of adversity. Prosperity has softened us up and turned us into administrators rather than shepherds and missionaries. We Catholics are beginning to realize that what we have been doing – or not doing – in the last fifty years has not been working. Case and point:

In a local Catholic diocesan newspaper, The Compass, it was reported that Mass attendance has dropped annually about 3 percent; and for the last 10 years, 21 percent. The total number of parishes in the Diocese of Green Bay that has shown signs of growth in recent years is 24. But the sum total of parishes that have decreased is 133.

However, the Church on a national level is no less promising. In her book, Forming Intentional Disciples, Sherry A. Weddell reported that there are four times as many people leaving the Catholic Church than entering it. From 2000 to 2009, the rate of adults entering the Church dropped 35 percent. If unchecked, the projected results are sobering. She said,

“If this trend does not change, in ten years it will cease to matter that we have a priest shortage. The Builders will be largely gone, the Boomers retiring, and our institutions – parish and schools – will be emptying at an incredible rate. Sacramental practice will plummet at a rate that will make the post-Vatican II era look good, and the Church’s financial support will vanish like Bernie Madoff’s investment portfolio.”

Nearly a hundred years ago, just when it was becoming clear that Christian civilization was becoming a thing of the past, Pope Benedict XV wrote: “By God's good pleasure, things are preserved through the same causes by which they were brought into being…” In other words, the causes which brought into being a Church capable of producing numberless converts and Christians institutions, are the very causes that will duplicate the same results.

I recently gave a presentation on an encyclical by Pope John XXIII, written in 1959. The encyclical was on St. John Vianney, also known as the Cure' of Ars. He was a priest who lived from 1786 to 1859 in France. He embodied the principles that made the Catholic Church so attractive in the first thousand years.

As stated in previous articles, during the first millennium of Christianity, over 70 percent of the popes were canonized Saints. This translated into great bishops, priests and lay people. But among the popes in the second millennium, roughly 6 percent were honored as Saints. If we were to ask the reason behind this differential, we would do well to consider why St. John Vianney attracted tens of thousands of souls to his parish Ars, France. Indeed, he spent about a third of his priesthood in the confessional.

However, before people travelled from distant lands to consult him, the holy priest prepared for them. He spent the first ten years of his priesthood – from 1818 to 1827 – begging God, in prayer and fasting, for the conversion of sinners. That’s right. Those first ten years were quiet and uneventful. But he took advantage of that time to intercede on behalf of his parishioners and those souls that would soon come to see him. And even after they came, he never neglected his times for prayer.

St. John Vianney used to say, "A priest must be especially devoted to constant prayer" and "How many people we can call back to God by our prayers!" For him, the emphasis was on the sanctuary or spending time before the tabernacle; not so much on the office or on meetings. He took for granted that prayer was the holiest of works. Far from being idle, to pray is to act on the First Cause of conversion. Just as prayer is a conversation with God, conversion is the work of God. The former gives fuel to the latter. Every ounce of supernatural life has to be drawn from him. Indeed, Christ is the life-principle of our work.

How many of us, who sincerely want to do good work for the Lord, spend more time in the office than in the sanctuary? Or it may be that we are so busy with external works, we neglect our own spiritual needs. But like the early Church Fathers who put prayer as their first priority, St. John Vianney never neglected his own spiritual needs because he was too busy serving others. Pope John XXIII warned the clergy in 1959 about the preoccupation with external works: “Priests in Our own day, are likely to attribute too much to the effectiveness of external activity and stand ready and eager to immerse themselves in the hustle and bustle of the ministry, to their own spiritual detriment!”

Part two to “The Cure of Mass Attendance Decline” next week.

What would your parish look like if...?

Wed, 15 May 2013 00:00:00 -0500

By Jon Leonetti

Despite the way my office usually looks, I’m something of a perfectionist. It’s not that I always see the glass half-empty, just that I think about what might make the glass and whatever else is in it a littler bit better. I know that it drives some of my friends nuts, but when I sit in the pew on Sunday morning I’m not judging how bad things are (actually my parish is really good, otherwise I wouldn’t be there); rather, I’m imagining – imagining what more it could be.

Many days throughout the year I spend in different parishes around the country giving what’s called a Parish Mission. And often I challenge the hard working faithful on the last evening with the same commission I am challenged with by those who love me.

What would your parish look like if being a parishioner at Saint So-And-So's actually meant something, really meant something, so that your friends and neighbors who know nothing of the faith know that what it means to be a member of your parish is to be a Christian who takes his faith life very seriously? What would it be like if every one of us really treated the patron saint of our parish as our own special model and guide, if we prayed for their intercession before any major parish activity, and if we strove to imitate their strongest virtues and taught our children to do the same. What would your parish look like if everyone in your parish was so proud to be a part of it that they would beg as many of their friends and family as they possibly could to give it a try, even for just one week.

Imagine the ushers after Sunday Mass not just simply smiling while handing you the bulletin to place in the backseat of your car, but calling you by name and asking how your week was. Imagine a Mass where everyone sings, whatever the style and however good – or bad – the organist or other musicians are. Imagine a homily so good that you find yourself still talking about it Wednesday evening. Imagine your parishes intentions being intentional, and your concern for your neighbor so real that you find yourself praying for them and their intentions at your family dinners. Imagine a church where at communion time everyone approached slowly and reverently, and received the Eucharist as though it were the most important thing they did all week. Imagine if every time a baby cried your first instinct and that of those around you was to give thanks to God for the gift of the baby, and not to wonder why the parents haven’t taken her out yet. Imagine a church full fifteen minutes before Mass prayerfully preparing for the true presence of Jesus to enter into their souls, and where people stay five minutes after to give thanks to God for the Gift they have received.

What would your parish look like if every day were like a Sunday? What if daily Mass were more than a few people and the schoolchildren showing up once a week? Can you imagine showing up on Saturday to help with a car wash or parish clean up and seeing as many people in line for confession as the penance services during Advent or Lent? What would it be like if your parish were known as the premier place in your city for social outreach, feeding the poor, helping those pregnant and in crisis, assisting immigrants, and helping people save their houses? What would it be like if your parish were like so many Protestant churches: everyone belongs to a Bible study as well as taking part in some special ministry of prayer? What if every parishioner who was able to drive volunteered to take communion to some elderly or homebound person, reminding them that they are loved and not forgotten about by the parish? What if you felt so confident in the prayer lives of your fellow parishioners that you genuinely felt comfortable asking them to pray for your specific struggles or concerns, and in addition, took their prayer requests as seriously as anything else you are asked to do all week?

What if instead of passing by your priest after Mass with a handshake and smile, you asked him what specific parish needs you can fulfill that week? What if you started to treat your priest as though he really was the spiritual father of your parish and of your family; if you invited him out to eat, had him bless you and your kids before he left the house, and went to him first when you have some serious personal problem? What if you know the deacon not only from sometimes seeing him on the golf course, but even more from seeing him at the soup kitchen or working with St. Vincent de Paul? What would your parish look like if the priests, deacons, religious, and lay ministers were all so impressive that every parent encouraged their kids to consider a religious vocation instead of trying to steer them away from it because of money? What would your parish look like if it were really beginning to make you into a saint? What would you begin to look like? How would it change your marriage? How would it change your kids?

So when I sit in the pew before Mass with a look on my face that might be hard to read, I’m imagining things being different, being even better than they are now. But it’s not because I’m disappointed in your parish or my parish or any other. It’s because every time I gather with God’s people for Holy Mass I see the true potential within me and within you. Why? Because God’s there, and this is what God longs to do with us. St. Irenaeus says that “The glory of God is man fully alive.” Just imagine: What would your parish look like if every man, woman, and child, every family, every couple, every single, every priest, every religious, every layperson, everyone on the books at your parish were made just a little more alive each day, each week, each year? I’ll tell you what your parish would look like...it would change the world.