Catholic Identity, redux

Over the past days, several members of the Mirror of Justice have once again contributed thoughts to questions related to Catholic identity, Catholic teaching, and educational institutions that use the moniker “Catholic” in their self-identification. We have done this over the years, and I think this is a proper discussion. I wish we had more agreement on the perspectives and conclusions pertaining to the underlying issues, but we do not. Hence, the discussion needs to be continued. I think the catalyst for our engagement this time on these matters was Russ’s several postings regarding the matter between Marquette University and Dr. Jodi O’Brien.

Today I am not going to discuss papal, dicastery, and conciliar texts that address issues dealing with the nature and identity of Catholic education. Neither will I add my thoughts regarding disagreements by the Church, the Vatican, Rome, theologians and educators—lay, clerical, or religious—on issues involving what is constitutive of Catholic education that is essential to the nature and essence of education that claims to be Catholic.

Today, I shall offer a few comments from Pope Benedict’s homily given earlier this morning at the Mass in Oporto, Portugal commemorating the tenth anniversary of the beatification of the two of the children who were at Fátima when our Blessed Mother appeared to them over ninety years ago. [HERE] (In relevant disclosure, some of my family origins are from Oporto; the rest are from the Açores and Madeira—so the pope’s trip to Portugal has special meaning to me and some of my family! Apparently, I come not from a long line of fishermen—what would our Lord say about that?—but from an ancestry of winemakers and farmers who grew grapes and sold them to winemakers, but I digress.)

Pope Benedict offered a number of thoughts about Christian and Catholic identity that, in my estimation, have a direct and positive link to who we are and whom we freely choose to be—disciples of Jesus Christ and members of the Church—the People of God, the Body of Christ, the Communion of Saints.

While the pope did not make reference to Jesus’ farewell discourse in Saint John’s Gospel and His recognition that He is the vine and we are the branches who are asked to bear much fruit, I think this allusion is related to something the Holy Father did say. Pope Benedict reminded all the faithful—not just those gathered at Oporto—when he said,

My brothers and sisters, you need to become witnesses with me to the resurrection of Jesus. In effect, if you do not become his witnesses in your daily lives, who will do so in your place? Christians are, in the Church and with the Church, missionaries of Christ sent into the world. This is the indispensable mission of every ecclesial community: to receive from God and to offer to the world the Risen Christ, so that every situation of weakness and of death may be transformed, through the Holy Spirit, into an opportunity for growth and life.

He is the vine; we are the branches. But how are the Christian tasks of being these branches to be accomplished? By what means? At what cost? Again, Pope Benedict offers some insight relying on words of his predecessors who were also successors of Peter but intensifying them:

We impose nothing, yet we propose ceaselessly, as Peter recommends in one of his Letters: “In your hearts, reverence Christ as Lord. Always be prepared to make a defense to anyone who calls you to account for the hope that is in you” (1 Pet 3:15). And everyone, in the end, asks this of us, even those who seem not to.

I would like to add that we do not impose by debating, by explaining, by teaching, or by searching for ways that make us better, authentic branches of the vine of Christ, of God. These activities are proposition, and I shall try to make mine ceaseless and with caritas. I, for one, look forward to our discussions of Catholic identity which I am confident have a clear bearing on our development of Catholic legal theory. Let me conclude today’s post with the final words of Benedict at Oporto:

From its origins, the Christian people has clearly recognized the importance of communicating the Good News of Jesus to those who did not yet know him. In recent years the anthropological, cultural, social and religious framework of humanity has changed; today the Church is called to face new challenges and is ready to dialogue with different cultures and religions, in the search for ways of building, along with all people of good will, the peaceful coexistence of peoples... This is the mandate whose faithful fulfilment “must follow the road Christ himself walked, a way of poverty and obedience, of service and of self-sacrifice even unto death, a death from which he emerged victorious by his resurrection” (Ad Gentes, 5). Yes! We are called to serve the humanity of our own time, trusting in Jesus alone, letting ourselves be enlightened by his word: “You did not choose me, but I chose you and appointed you that you should go and bear fruit and that your fruit should abide” (Jn 15:16). How much time we have lost, how must work has been set back, on account of our lack of attention to this point! Everything is to be defined starting with Christ, as far as the origins and effectiveness of mission is concerned: we receive mission always from Christ, who has made known to us what he has heard from his Father, and we are appointed to mission through the Spirit, in the Church. Like the Church herself, which is the work of Christ and his Spirit, it is a question of renewing the face of the earth starting from God, God always and alone.

RJA sj