Cardinal Francis Arinze on Radical Discipleship and the Consecrated Life

The Prefect Emeritus of the Congregation for Divine Worship and the Discipline of the Sacraments discusses the origin, nature, and purpose of the consecrated life.

After growing up in Nigeria and being named the youngest bishop in the world at the age of 32, Cardinal Francis Arinze attended the final session of the Second Vatican Council. Following his elevation to cardinal by Pope John Paul II, he was appointed President of the Pontifical Council for Interreligious Dialogue, a position he held until 2002, when he became the first African Cardinal to head a Vatican office, the Congregation for Divine Worship and the Discipline of the Sacraments (2002-08). His biography, God's Invisible Hand, was published by Ignatius Press, as were his books The Layperson’s Distinctive Role, and Meeting Jesus and Following Him.


Cardinal Arinze's most recent book, also published by Ignatius Press, is Radical Discipleship: Consecrated Life and the Call to Holiness (2015), released in conjunction with the Year of Consecrated Life, which began on November 30, 2014 and will conclude with the Feast of the Presentation of Jesus in the Temple on February 2, 2016.

After growing up in Nigeria and being named the youngest bishop in the world at the age of 32, Cardinal Francis Arinze attended the final session of the Second Vatican Council. Following his elevation to cardinal by Pope John Paul II, he was appointed President of the Pontifical Council for Interreligious Dialogue, a position he held until 2002, when he became the first African Cardinal to head a Vatican office, the Congregation for Divine Worship and the Discipline of the Sacraments (2002-08). His biography, God's Invisible Hand, was published by Ignatius Press, as were his booksThe Layperson’s Distinctive Role, and Meeting Jesus and Following Him.

Cardinal Arinze's most recent book, also published by Ignatius Press, is Radical Discipleship: Consecrated Life and the Call to Holiness (2015), released in conjunction with the Year of Consecrated Life, which began on November 30, 2014 and will conclude with the Feast of the Presentation of Jesus in the Temple on February 2, 2016.

Cardinal Francis Arinze, at the Vatican in a February 2013 photo, is the author of a new book, "Radical Discipleship: Consecrated Life and the Call to Holiness". (CNS photo/Paul Haring)

Cardinal Arinze corresponded this past week withCatholic World Report about the meaning and uniqueness of consecrated life, the roots and development of consecrated life, and some of the challenges facing embracing and living the consecrated life today.

CWR: In the Introduction to Radical Discipleship, you focus on how discipleship consists of accepting Jesus invitation, “Follow me.” In what unique ways is the consecrated life an embrace of the call to radical discipleship?

Cardinal Arinze: The consecrated life is an embracing of the call to radical discipleship, the call to follow Christ in a radical way, because the consecrated person takes the vows of chastity, poverty and obedience. The life of Jesus was a model of the three virtues lived to an extraordinary degree of commitment. All followers of Christ are indeed called to live three three virtues, but not in the same way. Consecrated people live the three virtues as vows binding them for their whole lives.

CWR: In your previous book, The Layperson's Distinctive Role, you reflected on the role of the lay person and apostolate. How do the consecrated life and the life of the lay person differ, and how do the two compliment and enrich one another?

Cardinal Arinze: The call to follow Christ as a layperson and the call to follow him as a consecrated person differ in this, that a layperson is called to witness to Christ in the secular sphere, that is, in the family, in work and leisure, in politics and government, and in trade and commerce; whereas the consecrated person is called to live a life of sacrifice of marriage, seeking earthly goods and sacrifice of one's will, and thus show that the attraction of the things of God is stronger than all earthly considerations. The layperson marries, looks for wealth, and conducts his or her own life and strives to do all this with the spirit of Christ.

These two ways of life complement each other. They show us two ways of following Christ. The layperson shows how to use the things of this world and consecrated them to God's glory. The consecrated persons shows how to renounce them for the sake of the kingdom of heaven. Christianity needs both ways of witnessing to Christ.

CWR: Along similar lines, how is consecrated life distinct from the lives of priests and bishops? What confusion sometimes exist about those differences?

Cardinal Arinze: The apostolate of priests and bishops is to celebrate the sacred mysteries, to preach the word of God, and to gather the people of God together in the parish and in the diocese. The vocation of the consecrated person is different. It is to offer to God the sacrifice of the three best things on earth by the three evangelical counsels or vows of chastity, poverty and obedience.

Sometimes the same person can be a priest and also a consecrated person. Examples are Jesuit, Franciscan or Carmelite priests. In the strict sense, a religious or consecrated person is not the same as a priest. The vocations are different. The Church needs both.

CWR: What are the biblical roots of the consecrated life, and has the Church's understanding of the consecrated life developed and deepened over the centuries?

Cardinal Arinze: The biblical roots of the consecrated life from the Old Testament are the lives of the prophets and the nazirites vowed to God (cf. Num 6:6-7). But more specifically it is the life and example of Jesus Christ in the New Testament that motivates the consecrated life. He lived chaste, poor, and obedient to an exceptional degree. He proposed such a way of life to those of his followers who were ready freely to embrace it: “There are eunuchs who have made themselves eunuchs for the sake of the kingdom of heaven. He who is able to receive this, let him receive it” (Mt 19:12). “Sell all that you have and distribute to the poor, and you will have treasure in heaven; and come, follow me" (Lk 18:22). Jesus proposes: he does not impose the consecrated life as obligatory for any of his followers.

Yes, the Church's understanding of the consecrated life has developed and deepened over the centuries. The early Christian community shared their goods. The early Fathers of the Church praised the virgins who formed communities inspired by the Gospel. Saint Anthony of Egypt (251-355) went to live in the desert. Disciples followed. Monasteries grew up with saints Pachomius, Bernard, and Benedict as leaders. Saint Francis of Assisi inaugurated the consecrated life lived not in monasteries but among the people. Nearer our times, some religious congregations have been founded for the medical or educational service of the needy or to look after street children or orphans. The very title of the Roman Curia office which is charged with encouraging the consecrated life has changed in the last forty years from Congregation for Religious to Congregation for Institutes of the Consecrated Life and Societies of the Apostolic Life.

CWR: What is the origin of the three evangelical counsels, and how do they provide a foundation for the consecrated life?

Cardinal Arinze: The origin of the three evangelical counsels is the life and example of Christ. Lives vowed to God in chastity, poverty and obedience are ways of following Christ with radical adherence to his Gospel message. While Jesus invited all his followers to be perfect as their heavenly Father is perfect (cf Mt 5:48), he proposed even more demanding offers to those ready to sacrifice marriage, earthly goods and doing one's own will "for the sake of the kingdom of heaven" (Mt 19:12).

CWR: The number of men and women in consecrated life apparently peaked, in the West, in the 1950s, and then dropped dramatically following the Council. What were some of the reasons for that sudden shift? What has the situation been like in other parts of the world?

Cardinal Arinze: In the final analysis, only God's Providence can exhaustively explain why religious vocations rise or fall in place from time to time. In our weak human ways of explaining such developments we can say: In Europe and North America the number of men and women in the consecrated life went up in the 1950s because people had come out of the sufferings of the Second World War and learned that things of this world are passing away, there was relative stability in society and life in the Church and the family was reasonably stable.

There was a big drop as from the end of the 1960s, not because of the Second Vatican Council, but because of the following developments in the Western world: the welfare state and greater abundance of the goods of this world; the so-called sexual revolution which was really sexual irresponsibility; problems raise by some communications media (especially the TV) which can do much good but also much harm; rapid spread of ideas good and bad; revolt against authority of all kinds especially as from 1968; freedom understood as liberty to do whatever one likes; and growing influence of materialism atheism, communism and secularism. There was also in some places a wrong interpretation of some decrees of the Second Vatican Council.

In Africa and Asia, consecrated vocations have been on the rise. Latin America is in-between the West and Africa. In Africa, in particular, the success of missionary evangelization work and the dynamism shown by the young local churches have meant the growth of larger seminaries and the yearly increase of consecrated men and women. Also helpful is the general good health of the family in Africa, although generalizations should be avoided.

CWR: You write that the consecrated life is prophetic and that it “challenges the current of life in society.” What are some examples of that prophetic quality? 

Cardinal Arinze: The consecrated life, when live authentically, can challenge the current of life in society in the following ways:

A life of vowed chastity is a proof that a life of continence is possible, with God's grace; it is a challenge against sexual irresponsibility, desecration of marriage, divorce mentality, and other sins against God's will for marriage and the family.

The vow of poverty challenges immoderate pursuit of earthly things, stealing, corruption in public life, idleness, and forgetfulness of the poor.

The vow of obedience challenges the abuse of authority, revolt against legitimate authority, selfishness in people in public service, and precipitation of tension, revolts, and wars.

A consecrated person who lives the three vows authentically is delivering a prophetic message to society.

CWR: What are the greatest challenges facing those living the consecrated life today? How can the laity help support and encourage their brothers and sisters living the consecrated life?

Cardinal Arinze: Some challenges facing those who live in the consecrated state are the following:

perseverance, ability to continue even when not sufficiently appreciated by people; constancy in the vowed life year after year; refusing to be carried away by the spirit of the world; and readiness to continue going against the current of life in the world of today. 

The laity can help, support and encourage their brothers and sisters living in the consecrated life in the following ways: prayer, advice, respect, working together at projects, encouraging their children or friends who are called to the consecrated life to embrace that vocation, and by donations in cash or kind.

 See here for the article.

The Simplicity of Truth

God’s teaching, while rich in its depths for theologians, is remarkable in its simplicity for ordinary men. Simplex, the Latin word for simple, means “without fold”—one sheet or layer with nothing hidden under a fold. Complex in Latin means encircled, embraced, and enfolded—“with fold,” something not easily seen or understood. The Ten Commandments are straightforward and direct (without fold), not subtle, nuanced, or roundabout. What is complicated about “Thou shalt not commit adultery” and “Thou shalt not steal”? God’s moral law is explicit and lucid. What is incomprehensible about the Golden Rule or the Two Great Commandments: “You shall love the Lord your God with all your heart, and with all your soul, and with all your mind” and “You shall love your neighbor as yourself”? While the Christian faith has profound mysteries that surpass human reason like the Trinity, the Resurrection and the Immaculate Conception and teaches in paradoxes that transcend logical reasoning (“He who is greatest among shall be your servant; whoever exalts himself shall be humbled, and whoever humbles himself will be exalted”), the moral law is explicit: adulterers and sodomites will not inherit the kingdom of God as St. Paul teaches. “The dictatorship of relativism” in modern thinking identified by Pope Benedict XVI produces the artful complication and obfuscation of truth that confounds the simple meaning of right and wrong.

reniWhat is simpler, the moral law that teaches that contraceptive acts are objectively sinful and inherently disordered or the ideology that argues that it is a subjective matter of individual conscience that varies from person to person and couple to couple? If the truth is simple and one, then evil is legion or many, a number of pieces of parts with no unity. The more exceptions, the more qualifications, the more distinctions—the more obscure the meaning. What is simpler, the Catholic teaching that abortion is an unspeakable evil that is always wrong or the reasoning of the Supreme Court that no one knows when life begins and that it is a private matter between a physician and patient? What is more intelligible, the commandment “Thou shalt not kill” or the argument in Roe v. Wade that killing a child in the womb is legal the first and second trimester but illegal in the third trimester except in the case of a threat to the health or life of the mother? Can anything ever be absolutely true or right if it is always mutating with more modifications? What is more luminously true, Christ’s teaching about divorce, “It was not so from the beginning,” or the legal sophistry that anyone at any time for any reason without any fault may divorce?

God does not speak in equivocal language, use technical or philosophical jargon, or communicate with specialized vocabulary. Christ often teaches with the words “Verily, verily, I say unto you,” that is, truly—that is, without any second guessing or confusion. The Beatitudes also have an unambiguous clarity: “Blessed are the pure in heart, for they shall see God.” The innocent, the childlike, those without guile have a clear vision of the light of God. When the Word becomes Flesh in the miracle of the Incarnation, again God reveals Himself with the utmost visibility and light. When Christ asks Peter, “But who do you say I am?” Peter answer with undeniable certainty the self-evident truth: “You are the Christ, the son of the living God.” The simplicity of truth means without confusion, complexity, equivocation, or doubt. Modernity, however, is notorious for what Melville in Moby Dick calls “bland deceits and civilized hypocrisies”—clever, sophisticated, intricate lies that torture the truth by burying it under layers of conflicting opinions, up to date reports, recent studies, scholarly research, recent articles, and repetitious propaganda.

Which is simpler, the Church’s teaching that all human life is sacred, precious, and of inestimable value, or eugenics theories and population control programs that only superior races, classes, or ethnic groups (the “thoroughbreds” and “the fit”) have a right to life and procreation? Which is grounded in common sense and right reason, the Church’s teaching that only God, the author of life and death, determines the moment that a person passes from this world or the freethinking that physician-assisted suicide and euthanasia are matters of personal choice with no reference to God? When every man decides for himself, then the name of evil, “legion,” exalts the chaos of the many opinions above the unity of the one truth. Which teaching is more luminous and based on the accumulated experience of the world, the idea that man is an image of God with a rational, moral, and spiritual nature—a person with inherent dignity and worth who possesses an inviolability of conscience—or the modern view that man is a product of evolution or creature of the state with no God-given rights, not even the freedom of conscience to reject dictates of government that contradict natural law or revealed religion?

What could be clearer than God’s commandment “Be fruitful and multiply,” and what is more self-evident than Nature’s design and God’s purpose for marriage in the exchange of love between man and woman? What could be possibly more perverse than reinventing the meaning of marriage and the family, the most universal of experiences? What could be more complicated than taking pills, resorting to implantations, and suffering tubal ligations and vasectomies with all their medical effects and consequences? What could be simpler than living a chaste, pure life that never risks sexually transmitted diseases or infects others with hepatitis or AIDS? What is more convoluted, unnatural, and irrational than high-risk, promiscuous behavior that invites suffering and tragedy? What is more sensible, planting seeds to bear fruit and engaging in acts that have a natural purpose or planting seeds and then killing the fruit to frustrate the act?

What is more simple and direct than the way God performs miracles: “Go, thy faith hath made thee well,”  “Take up your pallet and walk,” “Do you want to be healed?” God’s ways are not labored, devious, or bewildering. They are forthright expressions of divine power and supernatural intervention that serve a deep human need or answer a sincere prayer. In one simple act God multiplies the loaves and the fish to feed the five thousand.  In the marriage at Cana Christ makes a simple request (“Fill the jars with water”) and instantly performs the miracle of changing it to wine. In one word God heals: “Arise.” Who complicates everything more than modern man who takes a devious course and never a straight road; who resorts to a hundred measures when one will do; who needs cancer-causing pills, problematic surgeries, harmful abortions, and complicated procedures like in vitro fertilization and surrogate motherhood; and who relies on elaborate legal reasoning and artful rationalizations to make evil good and good evil? What could be more plainspoken than Christ’s unequivocal words, “Let what you say be simply ‘Yes’ or ‘No’; anything more than this comes from evil.”

Nature’s language and God’s word resound with simple Yes and No answers: Yes to life, No to death; Yes to the fruitfulness love, No to barren lovemaking; Yes to marriage, No to divorce; Yes to truth, No to lies. But sophisticated modern man who shuns those two simple words and their most basic meanings chooses complexity over simplicity. As Christ reminded Martha, “You are anxious and troubled about many things; one thing is needful” (emphasis added). While modern man can think of endless ways of bypassing, circumventing, twisting, and reinventing unchanging moral truths and traditional norms, he cannot see that truth is one, simple, universal, and eternal—for all men, in all times, in all places, and in all cultures.

.Michell Kalpakgian, Ph.D

CELEBRATION OF PALM SUNDAY OF THE PASSION OF OUR LORD

HOMILY OF HIS HOLINESS BENEDICT XVI

Saint Peter's Square
24th World Youth Day
Sunday, 5 April 2009

Dear Brothers and Sisters,
Dear Young People,

Together with a growing multitude of pilgrims, Jesus had gone up to Jerusalem for the Passover. In the final stage of the journey, near Jericho, he had healed blind Bartimaeus, who called upon him as Son of David, pleading for mercy. Now – having received his sight – he had gratefully joined the group of pilgrims. At the gates of Jerusalem, when Jesus sat upon a donkey, an animal symbolizing the Davidic kingship, there spontaneously arose among the pilgrims the joyful conviction: It is He, the Son of David! Accordingly, they greet Jesus with the messianic acclamation: “Blessed is he who comes in the name of the Lord”, and they add: “Blessed is the kingdom of our father David that is coming! Hosanna in the highest!” (Mk 11:9f.). We do not know exactly what the enthusiastic pilgrims imagined the coming kingdom of David would be like. But what about us, have we truly understood the message of Jesus, the Son of David? Have we grasped what is meant by the Kingdom of which He speaks during his interrogation with Pilate? Do we understand what it means to say that this Kingdom is not of this world? Or would we actually prefer that it were of this world?

In Saint John’s Gospel, after the account of the entry into Jerusalem, there follows a series of sayings in which Jesus explains the essential content of this new kind of Kingdom. On a first reading of these texts, we can distinguish three different images of the Kingdom in which the same mystery is reflected in a number of different ways. John recounts, first of all, that during the feast there were some Greeks among the pilgrims who “wanted to adore God” (cf. 12:20). Let us note the fact that the true intention of these pilgrims was to adore God. This corresponds perfectly to what Jesus says on the occasion of the cleansing of the Temple: “My house shall be called a house of prayer for all the nations” (Mk 11:17). The true purpose of the pilgrimage must be that of encountering God; adoring him, and thus rightly ordering the fundamental relationship of our life. The Greeks are searching for God, their lives are a journey towards God. Now, through the two Greek-speaking Apostles, Philip and Andrew, they convey this request to the Lord: “We wish to see Jesus” (Jn 12:21). These are stirring words. Dear friends, we have gathered here for the same reason: we wish to see Jesus. With this end in view, thousands of young people travelled to Sydney last year. No doubt they will have had many different expectations in making this pilgrimage. But the essential objective was this: we wish to see Jesus.

Concerning this request, what did Jesus say and do at the time? It does not emerge clearly from the Gospel whether any meeting took place between those Greeks and Jesus. Jesus takes a much longer view. The essence of his response to those people’s request is this: “Unless a grain of wheat falls into the earth and dies, it remains alone; but if it dies, it bears much fruit” (Jn 12:24). In other words: what matters here is not a brief conversation with one or two people who then return home. I will come, like a grain of wheat that has died and is risen, in a manner that is totally new and beyond the limits of the moment, to encounter the world of the Greeks. Through the resurrection, Jesus surpasses the limits of space and time. As the Risen One, he is journeying towards the vast horizon of the world and of history. Yes indeed, as the Risen One he goes to the Greeks and speaks with them, he shows himself to them in such a way that they who are far away become near, and it is in their language, in their culture, that his word is carried forward in a new way and understood in a new way – his Kingdom comes. Thus we can recognize two essential characteristics of this Kingdom. The first is that it comes by way of the cross. Since Jesus gives himself completely, then as the Risen One he can belong to all and become present to all. In the holy Eucharist, we receive the fruit of the grain of wheat that died, the multiplication of the loaves that continues to the end of the world and throughout all time. The second characteristic is this: his Kingdom is universal. The ancient hope of Israel is fulfilled: this Davidic kingship no longer has boundaries. It extends “from sea to sea” – as the prophet Zechariah says (9:10) – in other words, it embraces the whole world. Yet this is possible only because it is not a kingship of political power, but is based solely on the free adherence of love – a love which, for its part, is a response to the love of Jesus Christ who gave himself for all. I think that above all we must learn these two things over and over again – universality and catholicity. This means that no-one can propose himself, his culture, his generation and his world as an absolute. It means that we all have to accept one another, renouncing something of ourselves. Universality includes the mystery of the cross – going beyond ourselves, obeying the communal word of Jesus Christ in the communal Church. Universality is always a transcending of ourselves, a renunciation of something that is ours. Universality and the cross go together. Only thus is peace created.

The saying about the grain of wheat that dies is still located within Jesus’ response to the Greeks, in fact it is his response. Then, however, he goes on to formulate once again the fundamental law of human existence: “He who loves his life loses it, and he who hates his life in this world will keep it for eternal life” (Jn 12:25). In other words, the one who wants to have his life for himself, living only for himself, keeping everything to himself and exploiting all its possibilities – is actually the one who loses his life. Life becomes boring and empty. Only by self-abandonment, only by the disinterested gift of the “I” in favour of the “you”, only in the “yes” to the greater life, the life of God, does our life also become broad and great. Thus this fundamental principle established by the Lord is ultimately identical to the principle of love. Love, in fact, means letting go of oneself, giving oneself, not wanting to possess oneself, but becoming free from oneself: not retiring into oneself – (what will become of me?) – but looking ahead, towards the other – towards God and towards the men that he sends to me. And once again, this principle of love, which defines man’s path, is identical to the mystery of the cross, to the mystery of death and resurrection that we encounter in Christ. Dear friends, perhaps it is relatively easy to accept this as the fundamental great vision of life. In practice, however, it is not a question of simply recognizing a principle, but of living according to the truth that it contains, the truth of the cross and resurrection. Hence, once again, a single great decision is not enough. It is certainly important, it is essential to dare to take the great fundamental decision once, to dare to utter the great “yes” that the Lord asks of us at a certain moment of our lives. But the great “yes” of the decisive moment in our life – the “yes” to the truth that the Lord puts before us – must then be won afresh every day in the situations of daily life when we have to abandon our “I” over and over again, placing ourselves at the Lord’s disposal when deep down we would prefer to cling to our “I”. An upright life always involves sacrifice, renunciation. To hold out the promise of a life without this constant re-giving of self, is to mislead. There is no such thing as a successful life without sacrifice. If I cast a glance back over my whole life, I have to say that it was precisely the moments when I said “yes” to renunciation that were the great and important moments of my life.

At the end of the passage, Saint John uses a modified form of Jesus’ prayer in the Garden of Olives in his redaction of our Lord’s “Palm Sunday” sayings. First comes the statement: “my soul is troubled” (12:27). Here we see Jesus’ fear, amply illustrated by the other three evangelists – his fear before the power of death, before the whole abyss of evil that he sees and into which he must descend. The Lord suffers our fears together with us, he accompanies us through the final anguish into the light. Then, in John’s narrative, Jesus makes two petitions. The first, expressed only conditionally, is this: “What shall I say – Father, save me from this hour?” (12:27). As a human being, even Jesus feels impelled to ask that he be spared the terror of the passion. We too can pray in this way. We too can grumble before the Lord, like Job, we can present him with all the pleas that arise within us when we are faced with the injustice of the world and the difficulty of our own “I”. When we come before him, we must not take refuge in pious phrases, in a world of make-believe. Praying always also means struggling with God, and like Jacob, we can say to him: “I will not let you go, unless you bless me!” (Gen 32:26). But then comes Jesus’ second petition: “Glorify your name!” (Jn 12:28). In the Synoptics, it is expressed in another way: “Not my will, but yours be done!” (Lk 22:42). In the end, God’s glory, his lordship, his will, is always more important and more true than my thought and my will. And this is the essential point in our prayer and in our life: learning this right order of reality, accepting it intimately; trusting in God and believing that he is doing what is right; that his will is truth and love; that my life becomes good if I learn to adhere to this right order. The life, death and resurrection of Jesus are for us the guarantee that we can truly trust God. It is in this way that his Kingdom is realized.

Dear Friends! At the end of this liturgy, the young people of Australia will hand over the World Youth Day Cross to their counterparts from Spain. The Cross is on a journey from one side of the world to the other, from sea to sea. And we are accompanying it. With the Cross, we move forward along its path and thus we find our own path. When we touch the Cross, or rather, when we carry it, we touch the mystery of God, the mystery of Jesus Christ. The mystery that God so loved the world – us – that he gave his only-begotten Son for us (cf. Jn 3:16). We touch the marvellous mystery of God’s love, the only genuinely redemptive truth. But we also touch the fundamental law, the constitutive norm of our lives, namely the fact that without this “yes” to the Cross, without walking in communion with Christ day by day, life cannot succeed. The more we can make some sacrifice, out of love for the great truth and the great love, out of love for the truth and for God’s love, the greater and richer life becomes. Anyone who wants to keep his life for himself loses it. Anyone who gives his life – day by day in small acts, which form part of the great decision – that person finds it. This is the challenging, but also profoundly beautiful and liberating truth that we wish to enter into, step by step, as the Cross makes its journey across the continents. May the Lord bless this journey. Amen.



© Copyright 2009 - Libreria Editrice Vaticana

OF HUMAN DIGNITY: THE DECLARATION ON RELIGIOUS LIBERTY AT 50

Vatican II ended in December 1965 with an outpouring of enthusiasm and hope. The Council's hope was grounded in two things: a renewed Catholic faith, and confidence in the skill and goodness of human reason.

Half a century has passed since then. A lot has happened. The world today is a very different place than it was in 1965. And much more complex. That’s our reality, and it has implications for the way we live our faith, which is one of the reasons we’re here tonight.

Hope is one of the great Christian virtues. Christians always have reason for hope. As we read in John 3:16, “God so loved the world that he gave his only son, that he who believes in him should not perish but have eternal life.” God is alive. God loves us. God never forgets us.

But Christians also need to see the world as it really is, so as better to bring it to Jesus Christ.

In some ways, the Council's Declaration on Religious Liberty—Dignitatis Humanae in Latin, or “Of Human Dignity” in English—is the Vatican II document that speaks most urgently to our own time. The reason is obvious. We see it right now in the suffering of Christians and other religious believers in many places around the world.

Pope Paul VI, who promulgated Dignitatis Humanae, saw it as one of the most important actions of the Council. It changed the way the Church interacts with states. And it very much improved the Church’s relations with other Christians and religious believers. So I'm grateful to Father Billy and Bishop Senior for organizing these talks on the declaration. And I'm glad to offer my own thoughts this evening.

My job tonight is to give an overview of religious liberty issues: the problems we currently have, and the ones we'll face in the years ahead. I'll do that in three parts. First, I'll outline what the Church teaches about religious freedom. Second, I'll list some of the key religious liberty challenges heading our way. Third, I'll talk about why the Council was right. Not just right in its teaching about religious liberty, but right in its spirit of hope. And that spirit of hope needs to live in our hearts when we leave here tonight.

So let's turn first to what the Church teaches about religious freedom. And we should start by recalling the nature of the world that the Church was born into.

One of the themes of the Enlightenment in the 18th century, which still has great influence today, was a kind of “anything but Jesus” attack on religious superstition, and a special distaste for the legacy of the Catholic Church. Enlightenment philosophers wanted to recover the habits of reason and learning they thought were embodied in ancient Classical culture. But this is rich in irony, because the Classical age itself was deeply religious at every level of life. The gods were everywhere in daily routines and civic power.

To put it another way: Early Christians weren't hated because they were religious. They were hated because they weren't religious enough. They weren't killed because they believed in God. They were killed because they didn't believe in the authentic gods of the city and empire. In their impiety, they invited the anger of heaven. They also threatened the well-being of everyone else, including the state. The emperor Marcus Aurelius—one of history’s great men of intellect and character—hated the Christian cult. He persecuted Christians not for their faith, but for what he saw as their blasphemy. In refusing to honor the traditional gods, they attacked the security of the state.

Why does this matter? The reason is simple. T.S. Eliot liked to argue that “no culture has appeared or developed except together with a religion.” Nor can a culture survive or develop for long without one. Christopher Dawson, the great historian, said the same. Religious faith, whatever form it takes, gives a vision and meaning to a society. In that light, pagans saw the early Christians as a danger, because they were. Christianity shaped an entirely new understanding of sacred and secular authority. Christians prayed for the emperor and the empire. But they would not worship the empire's gods.

For Christians, the distinction between the sacred and the secular comes straight from Scripture. In the Gospel of Mark, Jesus himself sets the tone when he tells us to render unto Caesar the things that are Caesar's, and to God the things that are God's. But if that’s true, then how do we explain 16 centuries of the Church getting tangled up in state affairs? The details are complicated, but the answer isn't. Christians are amphibian creatures. God made us for heaven, but we work out our salvation here on earth. As the Roman world gradually became Christian, the Church gained her freedom. Then she became the dominant faith. Then she filled the vacuum of order and learning left by the empire’s collapse. Religious and secular authority often mixed, and power is just as easily abused by clergy as it is by laypeople. The Church relied on the state to advance her interests. The state nominated or approved senior clergy, and used the Church to legitimize its power.

Of course, the idea of the “state” is a modern invention. I use it here to mean every prince or warlord the Church has faced through the centuries. The point is this: Over time, and especially after the Wars of Religion and the French Revolution, the “confessional state”—a state committed to advancing the true Catholic religion and suppressing religious error—became the standard Catholic model for government.

That’s the history Dignitatis Humanae sought to correct by going back to the sources of Christian thought. The choice to believe any religious faith must be voluntary. Faith must be an act of free will, or it can’t be valid. Parents make the choice for their children at baptism because they have parental authority. And it’s important that they do so. But in the end, people who don’t believe can’t be forced to believe, especially by the state. Forced belief violates the person, the truth and the wider community of faith, because it’s a lie.

Or to put it another way: Error has no rights, but persons do have rights—even when they choose falsehood over truth. Those rights aren’t given by the state. Nor can anyone, including the state, take them away. They’re inherent to every human being by virtue of his or her creation by God. Religious liberty is a “natural” right because it’s hardwired into our human nature. And freedom of religious belief, the freedom of conscience, is—along with the right to life—the most important right any human being has.

Having said this, we should recall what Dignitatis Humanae doesn’t do. It doesn’t say that all religions are equal. It doesn’t say that truth is a matter of personal opinion or that conscience makes its own truth. It doesn’t absolve Catholics from their duty to support the Church and to form their consciences in her teaching. It doesn’t create a license for organized dissent within the Church herself. It doesn’t remove from the Church her right to teach, correct and admonish the baptized faithful—including the use of ecclesial penalties when they’re needed.

It also doesn’t endorse a religiously indifferent state. It doesn’t preclude the state from giving material support to the Church, so long as “support” doesn’t turn into control or the negative treatment of religious minorities. In fact, the declaration says that government “should take account of the religious life of its citizenry and show it favor [emphasis added], since the function of government is to make provision for the common welfare.”

In its own words, Dignitatis Humanae says “religious freedom . . . has to do with immunity from coercion in civil society [emphasis added]. Therefore it leaves untouched traditional Catholic doctrine on the moral duty of men and societies toward the true religion and toward the one Church of Christ.”

In the same passage, the Council Fathers stress that the “one true religion subsists in the Catholic and Apostolic Church,” and that “all men are bound to seek the truth, especially in what concerns God and his Church, and to embrace the truth they come to know, and to hold fast to it.”

To put it another way, Dignitatis Humanae is not just about freedom from coercion. It’s also about freedom for the truth. The issue of truth is too easily overlooked.

The declaration took four drafts to complete. And it created a great deal of internal debate. Karol Wojtyla took part in Vatican II as a young bishop. He supported Dignitatis Humanae and became a great defender of religious freedom as John Paul II. But he resisted an early draft of the declaration precisely because it failed to make a strong connection between freedom and truth. The two go together.

What John Paul saw, and what the Council Fathers addressed in the declaration’s final draft, is that words like goodness, freedom, and beauty don’t mean anything without an anchor. They’re free-floating labels—and very easily abused—unless they’re rooted in a permanent order of objective moral truth. We see that abuse of language every day now in our public discourse. But I’ll come back to that in a moment.

In the mind of the Council, religious liberty means much more than the freedom to believe whatever you like at home, and pray however you like in your church. It means the right to preach, teach and worship in public and in private. It means a parent’s right to protect his or her children from harmful teaching. It means the right to engage the public square with moral debate and works of social ministry. It means the freedom to do all of this without negative interference from the government, direct or indirect, except within the limits of “just public order.”

Before we turn to the second part of my remarks, it’s also worth noting that the full title of Dignitatis Humanae is: On the right of the person and of communities to social and civil freedom in matters religious. Religious liberty belongs not just to individuals, but also to communities. Civil society precedes the state. It consists of much more than individuals. Alone, individuals are weak. Communities give each one of us friendship, meaning, a narrative, a history and a future. They root us in a story larger than ourselves or any political authority. Which means that communities, and especially religious communities, are strong—and necessary mediators between the individual and the state.

So let’s move now to some issues we’ll face in the years ahead. We’ll start on the global level.

This year marks the 100th anniversary of the Armenian Genocide. Armenians were the first nation in the world to adopt Christianity in A.D. 301. Starting in 1915, Turkish officials deliberately murdered more than 1 million members of Turkey's Armenian minority. The ethnic and religious cleansing campaign went on into the 1920s. The victims were men, women, and children. And they were overwhelmingly Christian. Turkey has never acknowledged the genocide. It’s one of the worst unrepented crimes in history.

That kind of ugliness may sound impossible in our day. But today we have our own tragedies—from church bombings in Pakistan to the beheadings of Christians in North Africa. More than 70 percent of the world now lives with some form of religious coercion. Tens of thousands of Christians are killed every year for reasons linked to their faith. North Korea has wiped religion out of its culture. China runs a sophisticated security system to interfere with, and control, its religious communities. Islamic countries have a very mixed record. Muslim states range from relative tolerance to repression and forced conversion of religious minorities. And the persecution has grown worse as Islam has radicalized. Shari’a law claims to protect religious minorities. In practice, it slowly smothers them.

Even in Europe, laws that interfere with religious dress, practice and public expression are on the rise. The postwar founders of European unity—committed Catholic men like Alcide de Gasperi, Robert Schuman and Konrad Adenauer—assumed the Christian heritage of their continent. Today the European Union ignores it, and in practice, repudiates it. In doing so, Europe robs itself of any real moral alternative to the radical Islam spreading in its own countries.

And what about the United States? Compared to almost anywhere else in the world, our religious freedom situation is good. Religious believers played a very big role in founding and building the country. Until recently, our laws have reflected that. In many ways they still do. A large majority of Americans still believe in God and still identify as Christian. Religious practice remains high. But that’s changing. And the pace will quicken. More young people are disaffiliated from religion now than at any time in our country’s past. More stay away as they age. And many have no sense of the role that religious freedom has played in our nation’s life and culture.

The current White House may be the least friendly to religious concerns in our history. But we’ll see more of the same in the future—pressure in favor of things like gay rights, contraception and abortion services, and against public religious witness. We’ll see it in the courts and in so-called “anti-discrimination” laws. We’ll see it in “anti-bullying” policies that turn public schools into indoctrination centers on matters of human sexuality; centers that teach that there’s no permanent truth involved in words like “male” and “female.” And we’ll see it in restrictions on public funding, revocation of tax exemptions and expanding government regulations. We too easily forget that every good service the government provides comes with a growth in its regulatory power. And that power can be used in ways nobody imagined in the past.

We also forget Tocqueville’s warning that democracy can become tyrannical precisely because it’s so sensitive to public opinion. If anyone needs proof, consider what a phrase like “marriage equality” has done to our public discourse in less than a decade. It’s dishonest. But it works.

That leads to the key point I want to make here. The biggest problem we face as a culture isn’t gay marriage or global warming. It’s not abortion funding or the federal debt. These are vital issues, clearly. But the deeper problem, the one that’s crippling us, is that we use words like justice, rights, freedom and dignity without any commonly shared meaning to their content.

We speak the same language, but the words don’t mean the same thing. Our public discourse never gets down to what’s true and what isn’t, because it can’t. Our most important debates boil out to who can deploy the best words in the best way to get power. Words like “justice” have emotional throw-weight, so people use them as weapons. And it can’tbe otherwise, becausethe religious vision and convictions that once animated American life are no longer welcome at the table. After all, what can “human rights” mean if science sees nothing transcendent in the human species? Or if science imagines a trans-humanist future? Or if science doubts that a uniquely human “nature” even exists? If there’s no inherent human nature, there can be no inherent natural rights—and then the grounding of our whole political system is a group of empty syllables.

Liberal democracy doesn’t have the resources to sustain its own purpose. Democracy depends for its meaning on the existence of some higher authority outside itself. The Western idea of natural rights comes not just from the philosophers of the Enlightenment, but even earlier from the medieval Church. Our Western legal tradition has its origins not in the Enlightenment, but in the 11th and 12th-century papal revolution in canon law. The Enlightenment itself could never have happened outside the Christian world from which it emerged. In the words of Oxford scholar Larry Siedentop—and in contrast to ancient pagan society—“Christianity changed the ground of human identity” by developing and uniquely stressing the idea of the individual person with an eternal destiny. In doing that, “Christian moral beliefs emerge as the ultimate source of the social revolution that has made the West what it is.”

Modern pluralist democracy has plenty of room for every religious faith and no religious faith. But we’re lying to ourselves if we think we can keep our freedoms without revering the biblical vision—the uniquely Jewish and Christian vision—of who and what man is. Human dignity has only one source. And only one guarantee. We’re made in the image and likeness of God. And if there is no God, then human dignity is just elegant words.

Earlier I said we need to leave here tonight with a spirit of hope. So let’s turn to that now in these last few minutes before we have questions and discussion.

We need to remember two simple facts. In practice, no law and no constitution can protect religious freedom unless people actually believe and live their faith—not just at home or in church, but in their public lives. But it’s also true that no one can finally take our freedom unless we give it away. Jesus said, “I am the way the truth and the life” (Jn 14:6) He also said, “You will know the truth, and the truth will make you free” (Jn 8:32). The Gospel of Jesus Christ is for people who want to be free, “free” in the truest sense. And its message is meant for all of us; for all men and women—unless we choose to be afraid.

Looking back over the past fifty years, and even at our lives today, I think it’s too easy to see the problems in the world. It’s too easy to become a cynic.

There’s too much beauty in the world to lose hope; too many people searching for something more than themselves; too many people who comfort the suffering; too many people who serve the poor; too many people who seek and teach the truth; too much history that witnesses, again and again, to the mercy of God, incarnate in the course of human affairs. In the end, there’s too much evidence that God loves us, with a passion that is totally unreasonable and completely redemptive, to ever stop trusting in God’s purpose for the world, and for our lives.

The Second Vatican Council began and ended in the aftermath of the Holocaust and the worst war in human history. If there’s an argument to be made against the worthiness of humanity, we’ve made that argument ourselves, again and again down the centuries, but especially in the modern age. Yet every one of the Council documents is alive with confidence in God and in the dignity of man. And there’s a reason. God makes greatness, not failures. He makes free men and women, not cowards. The early Church father Irenaeus said that “the glory of God is man fully alive.” I believe that’s true. And I’d add that the glory of men and women is their ability, with God’s grace, to love as God loves.

And when that miracle happens, even in just one of us, the world begins to change.

Charles J. Chaput, O.F.M. Cap., is archbishop of Philadelphia.

Link here.

Summer pictures of Hermitage area.

Entrance to Hermitage Lane.

My Dog's name was Crumb; her mother's name was cookie.

Lane to Hermitage.

 Path off lane to a lookout.

Valley view.

 More lane.

 Lane's end at valley.

 Deck for Hermitage.

Deck

A WINTERY SCENE.

I live, during the coldest part of winter, in a rented farm house [anex] near the Hermitage

Winter at the annex.

Near the Hermitage annex.

Pope Enters a Monastery – to Teach us All How to Pray in the ‘Real World.

posted by Deacon Keith Fournier

On Sunday, October 9, 2011, Pope Benedict XVI presided over Second Vespers with the Carthusian monks at Serra San Bruno. From the Chapel of that Carthusian monastery he shared beautiful  insights on silence and prayer which should be considered by all who bear the name Christian. His words brought me back to the days surrounding his election to the Chair of Peter.

Those who study the early days of Popes often watch for two things at the beginning of their service, the name they choose and the content of their first homily for clues to their pontificate. When Joseph Cardinal Ratzinger chose the name Benedict he sent a signal concerning the centrality of prayer. He has spent his pontificate teaching about that centrality.

One of the young priests offering commentary during those historic days noted that then Joseph Cardinal Ratzinger visited Subiaco before all the events in Rome began. He prayed and rededicated himself to the work of the Church for the future. Interestingly, a short while later he was called to occupy the chair of Peter. He took the name Benedict.

Saint Benedict is the father of Western Monasticism.  As a young man he fled a decadent and declining Rome to give his life entirely to God and went to Subiaco. The cave that became his dwelling is now a shrine called “Sacro Speco” (The Holy Cave). It is still a sanctuary for pilgrims. The Pope who took his name went to that same cave for prayer just before he was elected. He has not stopped showing us the way of prayer ever since. 

The Pope did not enter the monastery for the rest of his life. He entered the monastery to make a point. He told the monks: “Dear brothers you have found the hidden treasure, the pearl of great value (cf. Mt 13:44-46); you have responded radically to Jesus’ invitation: “If you would be perfect, go, sell what you possess and give to the poor, and you will have treasure in heaven; and come, follow me” (Mt 19:21). Every monastery — male or female — is an oasis in which the deep well, from which to draw “living water” to quench our deepest thirst, is constantly being dug with prayer and meditation. …

“Technical progress, markedly in the area of transport and communications, has made human life more comfortable but also more keyed up, at times even frantic. Cities are almost always noisy, silence is rarely to be found in them because there is always a lingering background noise, in some areas even at night… Some people are no longer capable of remaining for long periods in silence and solitude…”

We are all called to prayer, no matter what our state in life or vocation. We are invited to build a virtual monastery in the midst of a world which has lost its soul. However, we need to grow in our understanding of what prayer is and grow in our understanding of who we are called to become in Christ. Prayer is an ongoing dialogue of intimate communion with God, through Christ and in the Holy Spirit. In an age of fast food, fast cars and fast internet, we seem to be running all the time. Yet, even with our digital calendars, we risk missing the most important meeting of all, our appointment with the Lord. We place our very selves at risk. 

That is not to say that these technological advances have to be an impediment to the encounter with the Lord called prayer. Rather, when we allow them to become our measuring stick for satisfaction in every area of our lives, we will look for quick prayer and quick “results”, from what we believe are “our” efforts. Prayer is not about results or even our efforts, but about love.

In fact, prayer is really not about us at all, but about the “One” who hungers to be known and loved, the “Other”, who calls us into the intimacy of communion with Himself, in and through His Son and lives His life within us – and through us – by His Spirit. The Lord whom we seek is outside of time, having given time as a gift to those whom he now prepares for eternity. He dwells in the eternal now and invites us through prayer along a path to the fullness of life.

Preparing ourselves for prayer means learning to silence the clamor of the age, stop the ever accelerating pace of the futile quests that so often occupy our hearts, and live in the eternal now by surrendering ourselves – and even our best aspirations- to the One who created us –and now re-creates us- in His Son Jesus Christ. It is there, in the emptied place, in the stillness of the eternal now, where we prepare a room for the King of all hearts. And, in that encounter, we soon find the longing of our heart fulfilled.

The Holy Spirit is calling for a generation of contemplatives in every state in life and vocation in Christ. We tend to believe that the contemplative life is reserved for those who, by special vocation, can “leave” the world, such as contemplative monks and nuns. They are a true treasure and a prophetic sign of the life to come. However, all who are baptized into Christ are called to the same encounter with a different response.

Isaac of Ninevah was an early eighth century monk, Bishop and theologian. For centuries he was mostly revered in the Eastern Christian Church for his writings on prayer. In the last century the beauty of his insights on prayer are being embraced once again by both lungs, East and West, of the Church. He wrote these words in one of his many treatises on Prayer:

“When the Spirit dwells in a person, from the moment in which that person has become prayer, he never leaves him. For the Spirit himself never ceases to pray in him. Whether the person is asleep or awake, prayer never from then on departs from his soul. Whether he is eating or drinking or sleeping or whatever else he is doing, even in deepest sleep, the fragrance of prayer rises without effort in his heart. Prayer never again deserts him.

“At every moment of his life, even when it appears to stop, it is secretly at work in him continuously, one of the Fathers, the bearers of Christ, says that prayer is the silence of the pure. For their thoughts are divine motions. The movements of the heart and the intellect that have been purified are the voices full of sweetness with which such people never cease to sing in secret to the hidden God.”

There is a growing fascination with books about prayer and the monastic life across the entire Christian community. There is also a resurgence of interest in the Rule of Benedict and the writings of the early fathers of the Church about prayer. It all reflects the deep hunger in our hearts for God. We were made for communion with Him. Pope Benedict XVI entered the monastery to show us athe way we can all find the intimacy of that communion in the midst of our daily lives and be changed in the encounter. That way is prayer.

Link