"Keep up with the Timeless"

by Timothy Card. Dolan, New York

“That old-fashioned, dusty, out-of-it, stuck-in-the-mud Church just has to get with it! She’s got to keep up with the times or she is going to lose folks!”
How often have you heard that?  I hear it at almost every reception, dinner, or meeting I go to, or read some version of it every time I peruse magazines, newspapers, and  blog-sites, or listen to radio or TV.
A subset of this chant is that Good Pope John and the Second Vatican Council were well on their way to making those radical changes in the Church, making it more “relevant and up-to-date,” until that “indecisive” Pope Paul VI, that “closed-minded Pole,” John Paul II, and that “authoritative Panzerkardinal,” Joseph Ratzinger (now Pope Benedict) ruined it all with their oppressive conservatism!
Of course, as is clear from Blessed Pope John XXIII’s moving address solemnly opening the Second Vatican Council — an event we will celebrate on October 11 this year, now the Feast day of Blessed John XXIII, as we open the Year of Faith,– the council was actually called to determine how the timeless deposit of faith could be more effectively transmitted, without compromising or diluting its integrity.  And, according to the teaching of the council itself, it is the pope, united with the bishops of the Church, who are to give and provide the genuine interpretation and implementation of the council’s meaning.
To be sure, Pope John XXIII did distinguish between the content of the Faith — which cannot change — and the way it’s presented, which, indeed, did have to “keep up with the times.”  The genuine renewal in liturgy, catechetics, and theology regarding the laity, marriage, religious life, priesthood, and the Church itself, were all efforts to do that, and is still going on, thank God.
What is clear is that the Church’s divine mission is not to alter her teaching to “keep up with the times,” but to deepen its conformity to what God has revealed in the Bible, the teachings of Jesus, Natural Law, and the Magisterium of the Church.
Our challenge is hardly to change God’s revelation to conform to our whims, or the “changing times,” but to change our lives to conform to His designs.
Here’s the refreshing surprise: the Church’s so-called “old fashioned ideas” are actually more timely, urgent, and “ahead of the curve” than ever! Let me give a few illustrations:
–  The Church teaches that couples should save “living together” and sexual intimacy until marriage. Such a moral approach, as you know, is scoffed at as silly, impractical, and repressive. In fact, “up-to date” thinking posits that it’s good for a couple to cohabitate before marriage. Not only does it save money, but the couple gets to know each other better, and grows more compatible, leading to a happier, more permanent marriage! Right?
Wrong!  Turns out, the Church is wise. It was no Catholic journal, but — just the opposite — the New York Times (April 15, 2012, BW SR, 4) that reported the somber statistics that living together before marriage leads to high rates of marital unhappiness and divorce! So much for the “wisdom of keeping up with the times.”
–  A woman in her late thirties went to her parish priest for help and encouragement. She and her husband, married five happy years, desperately wanted children, and had tried everything.  She honestly admitted that she had lived a very promiscuous life from high school until she met her husband-to-be, and had avoided pregnancy with daily use, for fifteen years, of every contraceptive pill and device available.  Now, her most recent reproductive clinician tells her somberly that such prolonged use had probably damaged her body to such an extent that she cannot conceive.  And she readily admits to her parish priest that she mocked the Church’s teaching on chemical/mechanical contraception!  She has concluded that the Church’s respect for the natural integrity of the body is hardly “old fashioned” at all.
– A man in hospice tells me his deep regrets. He had left his wife and kids a decade ago. His drive was money, prestige, property, and a younger, prettier wife. An old priest friend he had gone to high school with had tried to talk him out of his “jet-set-life-style” years ago, warning him that his life without faith and morals, his worship of money and pleasure, would destroy him. The dying man tells me he dismissed his old priest-friend as “out-of-it,” chanting that “times have changed,” and that the “old traditional ways” were discredited, that the Church had to “get with it.”  And now he is dying alone, recalling the words of Jesus, “What does it profit a man if he gain the whole world, but suffer the loss of his soul.”  He admits it:  the Church was right after all.
The Church is not “out-of-it,” but actually right smack in the middle of it, and really way ahead of us, since she has her eyes on the eternal. She is a seasoned, wise, loving mother, founded by the One who claimed to be “the Way, the Truth, and the Life.” She — the Church — hardly has to change her wisdom; we need to change our lives. Forget “keeping up with the times” in faith and morals. Rather, “keep up with the timeless!”

Is disobedience really the way for a renewal of the Church?

In a forthright homily during Chrism Mass (April 5th, 2012) in St. Peter's Basilica, the Holy Father said that renewal of the Church won't come by priests disregarding the Magisterium in order to "bring the Church up to date" but rather through the "radicalism of obedience". In contrast, he made a specific reference to a group of priests who recently argued against Church teaching and for women's ordination.
Words, the silent and sleeping bishops of Austria shoud have said month ago... Instead they keep supporting silently the dissidents.

Dear Brothers and Sisters,

At this Holy Mass our thoughts go back to that moment when, through prayer and the laying on of hands, the bishop made us sharers in the priesthood of Jesus Christ, so that we might be "consecrated in truth" (Jn 17:19), as Jesus besought the Father for us in his high-priestly prayer. He himself is the truth. He has consecrated us, that is to say, handed us over to God for ever, so that we can offer men and women a service that comes from God and leads to him. But does our consecration extend to the daily reality of our lives – do we operate as men of God in fellowship with Jesus Christ? This question places the Lord before us and us before him. "Are you resolved to be more united with the Lord Jesus and more closely conformed to him, denying yourselves and confirming those promises about sacred duties towards Christ’s Church which, prompted by love of him, you willingly and joyfully pledged on the day of your priestly ordination?"

After this homily, I shall be addressing that question to each of you here and to myself as well. Two things, above all, are asked of us: there is a need for an interior bond, a configuration to Christ, and at the same time there has to be a transcending of ourselves, a renunciation of what is simply our own, of the much-vaunted self-fulfilment. We need, I need, not to claim my life as my own, but to place it at the disposal of another – of Christ. I should be asking not what I stand to gain, but what I can give for him and so for others. Or to put it more specifically, this configuration to Christ, who came not to be served but to serve, who does not take, but rather gives – what form does it take in the often dramatic situation of the Church today?

Recently a group of priests from a European country issued a summons to disobedience, and at the same time gave concrete examples of the forms this disobedience might take, even to the point of disregarding definitive decisions of the Church’s Magisterium, such as the question of women’s ordination, for which Blessed Pope John Paul II stated irrevocably that the Church has received no authority from the Lord. Is disobedience a path of renewal for the Church? We would like to believe that the authors of this summons are motivated by concern for the Church, that they are convinced that the slow pace of institutions has to be overcome by drastic measures, in order to open up new paths and to bring the Church up to date. But is disobedience really a way to do this? Do we sense here anything of that configuration to Christ which is the precondition for true renewal, or do we merely sense a desperate push to do something to change the Church in accordance with one’s own preferences and ideas?

But let us not oversimplify matters. Surely Christ himself corrected human traditions which threatened to stifle the word and the will of God? Indeed he did, so as to rekindle obedience to the true will of God, to his ever enduring word. His concern was for true obedience, as opposed to human caprice. Nor must we forget: he was the Son, possessed of singular authority and responsibility to reveal the authentic will of God, so as to open up the path for God’s word to the world of the nations. And finally: he lived out his task with obedience and humility all the way to the Cross, and so gave credibility to his mission. Not my will, but thine be done: these words reveal to us the Son, in his humility and his divinity, and they show us the true path.

Let us ask again: do not such reflections serve simply to defend inertia, the fossilization of traditions? No. Anyone who considers the history of the post-conciliar era can recognize the process of true renewal, which often took unexpected forms in living movements and made almost tangible the inexhaustible vitality of holy Church, the presence and effectiveness of the Holy Spirit. And if we look at the people from whom these fresh currents of life burst forth and continue to burst forth, then we see that this new fruitfulness requires being filled with the joy of faith, the radicalism of obedience, the dynamic of hope and the power of love.

Dear friends, it is clear that configuration to Christ is the precondition and the basis for all renewal. But perhaps at times the figure of Jesus Christ seems too lofty and too great for us to dare to measure ourselves by him. The Lord knows this. So he has provided "translations" on a scale that is more accessible and closer to us. For this same reason, Saint Paul did not hesitate to say to his communities: Be imitators of me, as I am of Christ. For his disciples, he was a "translation" of Christ’s manner of life that they could see and identify with. Ever since Paul’s time, history has furnished a constant flow of other such "translations" of Jesus’ way into historical figures. We priests can call to mind a great throng of holy priests who have gone before us and shown us the way: from Polycarp of Smyrna and Ignatius of Antioch, from the great pastors Ambrose, Augustine and Gregory the Great, through to Ignatius of Loyola, Charles Borromeo, John Mary Vianney and the priest-martyrs of the 20th century, and finally Pope John Paul II, who gave us an example, through his activity and his suffering, of configuration to Christ as "gift and mystery". The saints show us how renewal works and how we can place ourselves at its service. And they help us realize that God is not concerned so much with great numbers and with outward successes, but achieves his victories under the humble sign of the mustard seed.

Dear friends, I would like briefly to touch on two more key phrases from the renewal of ordination promises, which should cause us to reflect at this time in the Church’s life and in our own lives. Firstly, the reminder that – as Saint Paul put it – we are "stewards of the mysteries of God" (1 Cor 4:1) and we are charged with the ministry of teaching (munus docendi), which forms a part of this stewardship of God’s mysteries, through which he shows us his face and his heart, in order to give us himself. At the meeting of Cardinals on the occasion of the recent Consistory, several of the pastors of the Church spoke, from experience, of the growing religious illiteracy found in the midst of our sophisticated society. The foundations of faith, which at one time every child knew, are now known less and less. But if we are to live and love our faith, if we are to love God and to hear him aright, we need to know what God has said to us – our minds and hearts must be touched by his word. The Year of Faith, commemorating the opening of the Second Vatican Council fifty years ago, should provide us with an occasion to proclaim the message of faith with new enthusiasm and new joy. We find it of course first and foremost in sacred Scripture, which we can never read and ponder enough. Yet at the same time we all experience the need for help in accurately expounding it in the present day, if it is truly to touch our hearts. This help we find first of all in the words of the teaching Church: the texts of the Second Vatican Council and the Catechism of the Catholic Church are essential tools which serve as an authentic guide to what the Church believes on the basis of God’s word. And of course this also includes the whole wealth of documents given to us by Pope John Paul II, still far from being fully explored.

All our preaching must measure itself against the saying of Jesus Christ: "My teaching is not mine" (Jn 7:16). We preach not private theories and opinions, but the faith of the Church, whose servants we are. Naturally this should not be taken to mean that I am not completely supportive of this teaching, or solidly anchored in it. In this regard I am always reminded of the words of Saint Augustine: what is so much mine as myself? And what is so little mine as myself? I do not own myself, and I become myself by the very fact that I transcend myself, and thereby become a part of Christ, a part of his body the Church. If we do not preach ourselves, and if we are inwardly so completely one with him who called us to be his ambassadors, that we are shaped by faith and live it, then our preaching will be credible. I do not seek to win people for myself, but I give myself. The Curé of Ars was no scholar, no intellectual, we know that. But his preaching touched people’s hearts because his own heart had been touched.

The last keyword that I should like to consider is "zeal for souls": animarum zelus. It is an old-fashioned expression, not much used these days. In some circles, the word "soul" is virtually banned because – ostensibly – it expresses a body-soul dualism that wrongly compartmentalizes the human being. Of course the human person is a unity, destined for eternity as body and soul. And yet that cannot mean that we no longer have a soul, a constituent principle guaranteeing our unity in this life and beyond earthly death. And as priests, of course, we are concerned for the whole person, including his or her physical needs – we care for the hungry, the sick, the homeless. And yet we are concerned not only with the body, but also with the needs of the soul: with those who suffer from the violation of their rights or from destroyed love, with those unable to perceive the truth, those who suffer for lack of truth and love. We are concerned with the salvation of men and women in body and soul. And as priests of Jesus Christ we carry out our task with enthusiasm. No one should ever have the impression that we work conscientiously when on duty, but before and after hours we belong only to ourselves. A priest never belongs to himself. People must sense our zeal, through which we bear credible witness to the Gospel of Jesus Christ. Let us ask the Lord to fill us with joy in his message, so that we may serve his truth and his love with joyful zeal. Amen.

Copyright by Libreria Editrice Vaticana

The 'Gospel' of Tolerance: You Must Approve

used by permission

(c) by Jennifer Hartline, contributing writer

WASHINGTON, D.C. (Catholic Online) - Stacy Trasancos is one gutsy Catholic.  Last week she wrote a little blog post about how she's getting tired of wondering "what in tarnation we're going to encounter" every time she and her kids leave the house.  Two men ogling each other at the pool?  Two women engaged in public displays of affection in the park?  These are scenes she'd rather her young children not be exposed to every time they go out in public, but it's become impossible to avoid in her community.

For having the nerve to express her objection to immorality, she's become the object of wrath and nasty threats from homosexual activists.  Those who understand how Stacy feels (count me in) also know that her real crime is that she has rejected the Gospel of Tolerance. 

The Gospel of Tolerance really only has one rule: thou shalt tolerate any action, belief, lifestyle, agenda, and person except the person who believes a certain lifestyle, action or agenda is wrong and has the gall to say so out loud.  The Gospel of Tolerance requires that you have no objection to that which it says must be tolerated.  In fact, it requires that you not even question that which it says must be tolerated.

Noncompliance will not be tolerated.

The Gospel of Tolerance only contains one verse:  "Judge not, lest ye be judged."  It should be edited, however, to read more accurately, "Judge not me nor anything I say, do, or want, lest ye be judged intolerant."  In the vocabulary of the Gospel of Tolerance, sin has no meaning.  It has no concept at all.

Those who preach this gospel have fashioned a "christianity" more to their liking, since the real thing cannot be tolerated.  Theirs is a toothless kitten; soft, warm, cuddly, sleepy and sentimental.  Its only purpose is to soothe and affirm.  It makes no demands.  It certainly will not tolerate any demands forthcoming!

If their christianity has a savior at all, he is merely an amiable, sympathetic mascot for their cause and the only thing he ever said was "Don't judge."  The only "sin" to require forgiving is the sin of intolerance, which of course is only committed by those who object to being told what they can and can't object to.

The Gospel of Tolerance is a ruse; it's just a marketing ploy.  The real goal here is submission.  It's not enough to "get along" or tolerate quietly.  You must approve.  You don't dare disapprove publicly.  Those who don't tow the line will be punished. 

Just ask the teachers who've been suspended for expressing opposition to gay "marriage."  Or the Catholic health care facilities being told they must dispense contraception against their explicit beliefs; or the Catholic adoption agencies that must close down to avoid being forced to place children with homosexual couples against their explicit beliefs (beliefs they're supposed to have the freedom to live by). 

Ask the business owners now fighting lawsuits because they don't wish to participate in gay weddings or receptions. When did they lose the right to run their own business as they wish?  Under the Gospel of Tolerance, there is no freedom to disagree, no right to object.  You must submit.  Either carry the banner or risk losing your livelihood and liberty.

Well here's a radical piece of truth for you:  tolerance is not a virtue.  It's not a moral victory to acquiesce to evil.

"We need to remember that tolerance is not a Christian virtue. Charity, justice, mercy, prudence, honesty -- these are Christian virtues. And obviously, in a diverse community, tolerance is an important working principle. But it's never an end in itself. In fact, tolerating grave evil within a society is itself a form of serious evil." - Archbishop Chaput

It used to be that we could hate the sin and love the sinner, but the problem is now we're not allowed to hate the sin anymore!  We have to love the sin, celebrate the sin, and above all, stop calling it sin!

It's not intolerant to make the judgment that something is morally wrong and oppose it.  Just as sex does not equal love, neither does tolerance!  There is such a thing as sin, and it leads to death, and Love demands that we tell our brothers and sisters the truth so that they might decide to reject sin and gain life.

Christians now find themselves in the sobering territory of the new Dark Ages, when evil is called good and darkness is called light. (Isaiah 5:20)

Well, I'm with Stacy.  I've had it with all this darkness parading around as light, being championed by the government, paid for with my tax dollars, shoved in my face and my children's faces and rammed down our throats.  I'm tired of being branded a hateful bigot for not abandoning the moral truths that have been the foundation of the human race since time began.  And frankly I couldn't care less if you find that intolerant.

I find it intolerable that our children's innocence is being ripped away from them beginning in Kindergarten with the new mandate of Sex-Ed that indoctrinates them into embracing and celebrating homosexuality, trans-sexuality, gender-neutral insanity, every imaginable manner of promiscuity and abortion.  It's intolerable that our kids are seen as "sexual beings" rather than human souls.

What's truly intolerable is that the adults in power are robbing the children of childhood purity to further their own immoral agenda.  What's horrifyingly intolerable is that killing an innocent child is considered a woman's sacred "right."

It is intolerable that my children will probably not be able to make it to puberty without learning about sodomy and "gay marriage."  It is intolerable that before they can even drive a car they will also be convicted of intolerance if they dare to defend true marriage and sexual purity.  It's intolerable that they are growing up in a culture that defiles marriage, corrupts the family, perverts sexuality and destroys human life.

The irony is that because I believe that babies in the womb have the right to live and be born and children have the right to a mother and a father who are married to each other and that sex is sacred and beautiful and should be treated accordingly and that marriage only exists between a man and a woman because that is God's plan for the human family, I'm the one who's called an enemy of freedom and human rights and an intolerant bigot.

Then so be it.  Far better to be called intolerant than to call evil good.

One last thought - I recently read someone's description of people who were "good Christians" and it boiled down to this:  good Christians are tolerant of others.  There's that cuddly, feel-good christianity again. 

Find your courage, people.  The false gospel of tolerance is not our salvation and it will not bring us peace.  There is Good News to share and we have to live it without fear!




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Jennifer Hartline is a grateful Catholic, a proud Army wife and homeschooling mother of three.  She is a contributing writer for Catholic Online.  Visit her online at Wake Up, Deborah! and MCH.