"The New Evangelization calls Christians to “go fearlessly into the heart of our culture, into the heart of our people's lives, bringing the Gospel into their homes, into all their many occupations, into their schools and into their arts and sciences, into the media and into the political arena,” the prelate said.
“The New Evangelization means we must inspire people to seek Christ in everything they do, to seek to be his friend, to seek to love him, and to glorify him,” he said. The arts, media and ordinary work must point to the mystery of God. It also involves helping people to discover their vocation.
Gomez said the faith of Catholics has been eroded by consumerism and secularism and there must be new efforts in faith education. The areas of focus must be the identity of Christ and the identity of the Church, he said."
In their relatively recent statement on the Eucharist, http://www.usccb.org/dpp/Eucharist.pdf,
the U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops maintains that Catholics are required
to conform their consciences to the Magisterium and they warn that selective
departures from the Magisterium “seriously endangers our communion” with the
Church. Nonetheless, this seems to suggest that some departures might be consistent
with membership in the Church. They proceed to state that those who “knowingly
or obstinately” reject the defined doctrines or definitive moral teachings of
the Church should refrain from receiving communion because they have seriously diminished
their communion with the Church. This too leaves open the question whether
rejection of one teaching is fatal or rejection of more than one teaching is
permissible and, if so, which ones. Certainly the spirit of the Bishop’s
statement seems to suggest that Catholic are to agree or stay away from the
Eucharist.
I do not
have access to recent statistics as I write this. But American Catholics
disagree with many moral teachings of the Church. Between 1963 and 1974, for
example, the majority position of American Catholics shifted away from that of
the Vatican on issues such as whether sex before marriage was always wrong
(from 74% to 35%), whether divorce after marriage is always wrong (from 52% to
17%), and whether contraception is always wrong (from 56% to 16%). The same can
be said of American Catholic priests. The Vatican ,
for example, maintains that homosexual relations, masturbation, and artificial
birth control are always wrong, but only 56% of priests agreed with the Vatican’s
teachings on homosexuality, 28% on masturbation, and 25% on birth control.
What would happen if the Conference made a statement with no
wiggle room, maintaining that if you did
not agree with the Vatican on all of the issues above and many others, you should not receive the
Eucharist (or say mass if you are a priest)? I am uncertain about what the
relevant priests would do. But regarding the lay population I suspect a small
percentage would stay in the Church and not partake in the Eucharist. Many would
leave the Church. And most would simply ignore the Bishops.
I am curious what people think. Assuming their attempts to change minds about morals are for the most part futile, should the Bishops try for a smaller American church filled with people who agree with what they take to be the truth? Could they achieve a church that was homogeneous in belief even if they tried? Why are they not trying for a smaller church? The Vatican won't let them? They don't want it? Alternatively, is the Holy Spirit using the People of God to tell the Bishops something that they do not yet get? Or have the Bishops struck the exact right note?
Rob asks: "If there are certain observable truths about human nature (whether it's a created nature or an accidental nature that has taken hold at this stage of our evolution), those truths have moral implications, don't they?"
My answer (and I am open to being persuaded otherwise) is "no" in the absence of created nature. If there is a "moral law giver," then the truths He placed in human nature have moral implications. But, if all of this is an accident, why should I be morally bound by what is observable in human nature at this stage of our evolution? In other words, why does accidental nature have a claim on how I ought to live and treat other human beings, animals, the environment, etc.? Grotius posited that the natural law held whether or not God existed. Am I being overly simplistic to suggest that the Enlightenment and modernity were a long attempt to work out Grotius' hypothesis? Am I wrong to think that the postmodernists have shown the hypothesis to be false?
Last Friday Texas Governor Rick Perry issued an executive order requiring all entering sixth grade girls in the state to be vaccinated for HPV, a sexually transmitted disease linked to cervical cancer. We've already discussed the wisdom of such moves (here and here); Eugene Volokh weighs in with a series of posts, as does Jonathan Watson.
Dalai Lama Gets Prof's Chair at Emory By THE ASSOCIATED PRESS
ATLANTA (AP) -- The Dalai Lama, exiled spiritual leader of Tibet, has been named a presidential distinguished professor at Emory University, school officials said Monday.
It's the first university appointment the winner of the 1989 Nobel Peace Prize has accepted, the university said.
The Tibetan leader said in a university statement that he looks forward to offering his services to students and the community.
''I firmly believe that education is an indispensable tool for the
flourishing of human well-being and the creation of a just and peaceful
society, and I am delighted to make a small contribution in this regard
through this appointment,'' he said.
He is expected to deliver his inaugural lecture during an Oct. 20-22
visit to the university, and to participate in a conference on science
and spirituality and an interfaith session on religion.
Emory also is creating a fellowship in the Dalai Lama's name to fund
annual scholarships for Tibetan students who attend its undergraduate
and graduate schools.
The Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith is working on new documents addressing bioethics (with no change in teaching on the use of condoms) and natural law, which is "the only possible foundation for fruitful inter-religious dialogue."
A nice piece, from the NYT travel section, about Flannery O'Connor's Georgia stomping grounds:
O’Connor’s short stories and novels are set in a rural South where people know their places, mind their manners and do horrible things to one another. It’s a place that somehow hovers outside of time, where both the New Deal and the New Testament feel like recent history. It’s soaked in violence and humor, in sin and in God. He may have fled the modern world, but in O’Connor’s he sticks around, in the sun hanging over the tree line, in the trees and farm beasts, and in the characters who roost in the memory like gargoyles. It’s a land haunted by Christ — not your friendly hug-me Jesus, but a ragged figure who moves from tree to tree in the back of the mind, pursuing the unwilling.
Many people — me for instance — are in turn haunted by O’Connor. Her doctrinally strict, mordantly funny stories and novels are as close to perfect as writing gets. Her language is so spare and efficient, her images and character’s speech so vivid, they burn into the mind. Her strange Southern landscape was one I knew viscerally but, until this trip, had never set foot in. I had wondered how her fictional terrain and characters, so bizarre yet so blindingly real, might compare with the real places and people she lived among and wrote about.
Hence my pilgrimage to Milledgeville this fall, and my race against the setting sun.
Cardinal Cormac Murphy-O'Connor writes, "Regulation Must Not Trump Conscience":
The deepest convictions of the Jewish, Christian, Islamic and Sikh faiths are that a child prospers in the care of a father and a mother.
Leaders of these faiths have appealed for space in which this conviction can be respected in the public sector. They have appealed for respect for their religious conscience, so that the contribution of well-established agencies, working for the common good, such as Catholic adoption agencies, can continue. These appeals have been turned down. We are being told that, in this matter of adoption, religious conscience is over-ruled by regulation.
There is no doubt that holding together a wide range of convictions in a society in which public authorities strive to be secular is a difficult task. But being secular does not mean closing down the space in which religious conviction and motivation can shape and contribute to the common good.
TREVISO, Italy, JAN. 29, 2007 (Zenit.org).- The modern Catholic world suffers from three main weaknesses, says the secretary of the Pontifical Council for Justice and Peace.
According to Bishop Giampaolo Crepaldi, Catholics during the last decades have shown the following weak points: the promotion of the notion of secularism as neutrality, thus weakening its identity; an inability to understand that the issues of life and bioethics are also social and political issues; and the failure to promote the Church's social doctrine in a systematic and comprehensive manner.
The Vatican official opened a recent seminar on "The Common Good and the Social Doctrine of the Church from the Second Vatican Council to Benedict XVI."
"We have all endured many difficult periods in our recent history," said Bishop Crepaldi at the Jan. 20 seminar, sponsored by the Italian episcopal conference. "We have not always succeeded, despite the careful guidance of the magisterium, in resisting leaps forward, partisan interpretations and the weakening of our identity.
"A theology of the separation between faith and politics has been alternating with a theology of direct engagement, while, at the same time and almost undetected, a culture of agnosticism and relativism was advancing, becoming imposing and almost dictatorial, striking the very heart of the Christian message and radically hindering its reception."
Bishop Crepaldi contended: "Once we lose sight of the fact that man is 'capax veritatis,' it is impossible to think that he can be 'capax Dei.'"
According to the prelate, the current Catholic challenge is to reflect in depth on "our own roots because the anthropological question has now become the social question."
"We will not be able to make a valid contribution to the common good," he said, "unless we expand the culture of life, from bioethics and beyond bioethics, and succeed in making it a true social and political culture."
