Saturday, October 23, 2010

Initiation and Welcome

This afternoon I gave a talk at the Regional Religious Education Congress for Our Lady of the Angels Pastoral Region here in Los Angeles.  The title I chose was "The Quality of Our Welcome: A Fresh Look at RCIA."  Christian Initiation is all about welcoming people into our family of faith, and I believe it is important for us to take a close look at just what the rite tells us from the point of view of welcome. 

You can listen to the talk using the embedded player.



If that doesn't work, or if you'd like to download it for playing on an iPod or similar device, youcan access it at the following link.

http://www.archive.org/details/InitiationAndWelcome

You can also download my handout/notes by clicking here.

Marriage and Initiation

One of the sensitive areas that must be dealt with as we, the Church, prepare to welcome new members into our family, is the question of how our understanding of the nature of marriage in itself, as well as marriage as a sacrament, relates to the life of a committed Catholic Christian.  This becomes very real when one seeking to become Catholic has a former marriage that has ended, often tragically and painfully.  If marriage is a commitment for life, the implications of this former marriage must be dealt with.

On September 29, 2010, I gave a talk to the Initiation community of Good Shepherd parish in an effort to surface and begin to deal with these questions as they might come up among those preparing to become catechumens.

You can listen to this talk using the embedded player.  Please note that the talk is in two segments (Marriage-1 and Marriage-2), and you can toggle between the segments with the two little triangles facing the lines right and left.


If the embedded player doesn't work, you can download the talk at the following link as MP3 audio files, which you can listen to on your computer or play on an iPod or similar device.

http://www.archive.org/details/MarriageAndAnnulmentsInChristianInitiation

You can also view and download the notes (4 pages) in PDF format by clicking here.

Monday, October 18, 2010

Turkey drifts closer to the West - ŞAHİN ALPAY

A good article to help understand Turkey today, from a Turkish perspective.

Turkey drifts closer to the West - ŞAHİN ALPAY: "- Sent using Google Toolbar"

Sunday, October 10, 2010

Religion: When America feared and reviled Catholics - latimes.com

Religion: When America feared and reviled Catholics - latimes.com: "- Sent using Google Toolbar"


Excellent article, but the author is wrong on one point: anti-Catholicism is not dead, it just takes different forms. As she quotes Mark Twain, history may not repeat itself, but it does rhyme. See: http://www.amazon.com/New-Anti-Catholicism-Last-Acceptable-Prejudice/dp/0195154800

Saturday, October 9, 2010

Beyond a 'Darth Vader' view of secularism | National Catholic Reporter

Beyond a 'Darth Vader' view of secularism | National Catholic Reporter"

Excellent piece by John Allen on the Synod of Bishops for the Middle East, beginning today in Rome. Pray for them.

When will American Catholics learn that we are a mere 6% of the Catholic population of world, and open our eyes to the reality of global Catholicism?

(Shameless promotion:  The Early Christian World Pilgrimage can help start the process.)

Friday, October 8, 2010

Development of Doctrine: St. Vincent of Lerins

Today's Office of Readings has a piece by St. Vincent of Lerins, who died in 445, on the development of doctrine that is relevant for us today, especially following last month's beatification of John Henry Newman, whose "Essay on the Development of Doctrine" has been so influential in modern theology and Church teaching, as well as misunderstood by the advocates of both "radical change" and "return to tradition."

An instruction by St Vincent of Lerins
The development of doctrine

Is there to be no development of religion in the Church of Christ? Certainly, there is to be development and on the largest scale.

Who can be so grudging to men, so full of hate for God, as to try to prevent it? But it must truly be development of the faith, not alteration of the faith. Development means that each thing expands to be itself, while alteration means that a thing is changed from one thing into another.

The understanding, knowledge and wisdom of one and all, of individuals as well as of the whole Church, ought then to make great and vigorous progress with the passing of the ages and the centuries, but only along its own line of development, that is, with the same doctrine, the same meaning and the same import.

The religion of souls should follow the law of development of bodies. Though bodies develop and unfold their component parts with the passing of the years, they always remain what they were. There is a great difference between the flower of childhood and the maturity of age, but those who become old are the very same people who were once young. Though the condition and appearance of one and the same individual may change, it is one and the same nature, one and the same person.

The tiny members of unweaned children and the grown members of young men are still the same members. Men have the same number of limbs as children. Whatever develops at a later age was already present in seminal form; there is nothing new in old age that was not already latent in childhood.

There is no doubt, then, that the legitimate and correct rule of development, the established and wonderful order of growth, is this: in older people the fullness of years always brings to completion those members and forms that the wisdom of the Creator fashioned beforehand in their earlier years.

If, however, the human form were to turn into some shape that did not belong to its own nature, or even if something were added to the sum of its members or subtracted from it, the whole body would necessarily perish or become grotesque or at least be enfeebled. In the same way, the doctrine of the Christian religion should properly follow these laws of development, that is, by becoming firmer over the years, more ample in the course of time, more exalted as it advances in age.

In ancient times our ancestors sowed the good seed in the harvest field of the Church. It would be very wrong and unfitting if we, their descendants, were to reap, not the genuine wheat of truth but the intrusive growth of error.

On the contrary, what is right and fitting is this: there should be no inconsistency between first and last, but we should reap true doctrine from the growth of true teaching, so that when, in the course of time, those first sowings yield an increase it may flourish and be tended in our day also.

The writers of the New Testament consistently record that Jesus has promised to be with us, his Church, until the end of time, as the head is to the members of a body, and that requires that the Church be true in its belief.  That means that the primary place where infallibility resides is in the believing Church as a whole. The infallibility of the teaching Church, the bottom line of which resides in the Petrine ministry of the Bishop of Rome, exists only to serve the faith of the whole Church, the whole Body of Christ.

Vincent and, much later, Newman insist that development of doctrine must be organic growth, not revolutionary change.  It seems to me that this depends more than anything on a humble, open, and patient dialogue between the believing Church and the teaching Church.   Magisterium always must be a two-way street.  Magisterium is always a ministerium.  The "big" (magis) exists only to serve the "little" (minus).  The representatives of Christ-the Head must always respect the real presence of Christ in the members as well.