A Blog for Dallas Area Catholics

Weighing in on the attacks on Benedict XVI March 29, 2010

Steve Kellmeyer of www.culturewarnotes.com has a post up discussing the most recent attacks on Pope Benedict XVI and his possible prior handling of priest abuse cases.   With Steve’s great knowledge of Church history, he does a really good job of pointing out how small, historically, even the alleged action, or lack thereof, by the Pope really is.  Furthermore, Steve reminds us that these horrid things go, abuse in the Church is much more rare than in other institutions.  Nonetheless, the Church should be held to a very high standard, and the pink palace seminaries and self-perpetuating groups of active homosexual clergy need to be removed from the Church, root and branch. 

Some will use this latest round of scandals as an excuse for leaving the Church, as others have done before.  This is a great tragedy, for those who leave personally and for the Church as a whole.  Everything surrounding this scandal redounds to poor formation.  In the recent past in the Church, many priests were not well formed, and many people who should never have been allowed to even enter seminary have become priests.  These people have propagated scandals in the Church ranging from liturgical abuses to the horrific abuse of almost exclusively male minors.  Poor formation affects the laity involved, and those who are not well formed enough in their faith may look on the Church as monstrous due to the actions of these few priests.  The response to the crisis especially in this country doesn’t help this, as it is targeted solely on damage-limitation and does not get into the root causes of this scandal, which is loss of faith brought about by poor formation. 

To prevent this scandal from recurring, there needs to be a sea-change in thinking within the Church on many issues, but not on those the progressives would think.  What is not needed is an end to priestly celibacy or the all-male priesthood, but a re-evaluation of standards of formation from the lowest parish level up through the highest realms of theological formulation.  Far too many Catholics do not know their faith, and I include myself in this group.  I know more about the Faith than probably 90+% of present day Catholics, and yet my own formation would probably have been viewed as pretty poor by the standards of an average adolescent going through Confirmation 60 years ago.  In the interests of ecumenism, we have lost a great deal of what makes the Catholic faith so unique, so true and so valid, in any time.  We have lost a concept of how the Church views justification and salvation, the essential role of purgatory and the great grace of the indulgences Christ provides through His Church to help speed our way to Heaven.  We have lost sight of how works are tied to salvation, but only in a system of saving grace that comes through faith that Jesus Christ offered the perfect sacrifice for our sins.  We’ve lost knowledge of great works of prayer and penance from the past that used to be commonplace, even among the barely literate.  Not very long ago, virtually every Catholic prayed and practiced The Imitation of Christ, and the Raccolta, but very few Catholics know of these works anymore.  They’ve been replaced by Joyce Rupp and wisdom circles, or Thomas Keating’s enneagrams.  This, is an incalculable loss. 

I pray, I pray every day, that we will see a great restoration of Catholic faith formation.  We should all pray for this.  But even more, we, the laity, must start to insist on much better formation, and liturgy, and all the other great works that not only help form the faith but that also immensely strengthen Catholic identity.  The Roman Catholic Faith is the One, True Faith instituted by Jesus Christ!  Either you believe that, or you don’t.  And if you do, shouldn’t Truth demand that we should have the most beautiful, uplifting Churches possible, the absolute best formation, a reverent, pious liturgy, and a constant focus on the incredible uniqueness and beauty of our Faith?  Half-measures, attempts at accomodating the world, and well meaning but ultimately destructive ecumenism have failed, demonstrably.  We must insist on a restoration of all that is great and unique in Catholicism.  If we do not, the Church will not be lost, for it cannot be lost, but it will continue to be diminished, and countless souls will be lost in the process.  I cannot stand for that.

If what I have written above resonates at all with you, please consider in Charity contacting your parish priest, or even the Chancery.  Exhort them to enliven our Faith!  Let us have more Confession, more Adoration, Eucharistic processions, Marian processions, more faithful and beautiful Liturgy at Mass, and constantly improving formation.  All of the above, and more, are needed, and will bring great Graces to the Church.  We must do all we can to insist on the fullest Catholic faith and identity possible.  Through such a great restoration, we will see the scandals of the recent past and present all but disappear.

UPDATE:  Fr. Dwight Longenecker has alot of thoughts along the same lines as me.   An example:

1. We’re soft and decadent. We give ourselves too much of a break. We’re materialistic, self indulgent and too easy to let ourselves off the hook. What we need is some good old fashioned asceticism. Let’s look to the desert fathers who, repelled by the decadence of established Roman Christianity, fled to the desert to practice mortification. “These only come out by prayer and fasting…”

2. We’ve lost the idea that we’re involved in a spiritual battle and that the devil is like a roaring lion stalking about seeking whom he may devour. What we need is more prayer and a new alert and vigilant spirit that does not give the devil even one toe in the door. We need that vigilance first for ourselves and for our brothers and sisters. St Therese cries out, “Sanctity! It must be won at the point of a sword!” Call on the angels and saints.

8. We’ve replaced worship with good works. We’ve made the church into a social services organization, a fund raising agency, a school, a charity, a glorified soup kitchen, a babysitting service, a luncheon club, a dating agency, a social networking group, a group therapy session, a singalong and just about anything  but the gathering together of the saints of God. Only when we worship the Lord in the beauty of holiness will we begin to be transformed not by our good ideas and good works, but by contact with God’s awesome grace, and only when we are truly transformed can we hope to transform the world. Thomas a Kempis says, “Why do you wish to change the world when you cannot change yourself?”