1. continue to emphasize their mission in the world as opposed to focusing on their work as an institution;
2. hold fast to their core beliefs against theological fads;
3. and they will need to embrace methodological diversity among their members.

While I may disagree with some of the particulars of Dr. Stetzer’s analysis (in particular his comments on diversity in church services don’t translate well to Catholic liturgical theology) I do believe that these three basic principles have something to say to Catholics.

Regarding his first point, Dr. Stetzer sees most church activities as falling along a continuum between a missional and institutional mindset. Put simply, a missional church is one which sees it work as outward-focused and is exemplified by the preaching of the Gospel. From a Catholic standpoint we would include charitable acts, the RCIA and support of the missions. An institutional church, on the other hand, is concerned with maintaining its internal structures. It is the finance councils, personnel boards and pension committees.

Obviously all churches maintain some balance between these two extremes. No church can survive for long without thinking about how to pay the bills (even St. Paul had to hit up his churches for cash!); at the same time, a church concerned only with preserving itself will soon become ossified and without life (see, for instance, the many mainline churches that boast huge endowments but a dwindling, aging membership). Dr. Stetzer points out that, in the balance, we must favor the missional role of the church over the institutional, for it is through this evangelizing effort that we fulfill the Great Commission.

Dr. Stetzer also exhorted churches to maintain some sort of confessional discipline. Within our Catholic tradition, this means holding fast to the Creed and the teachings of the Church passed down throughout the centuries. In order to do that we must “always be prepared to make a defense” for our beliefs (1Pet 3:15) and to do so in a way that refuses to fall into a simple denunciation of what we are not. As Pope Benedict XVI  reminds us,

Christianity, Catholicism, isn’t a collection of prohibitions: it’s a positive option. It’s very important that we look at it again because this idea has almost completely disappeared today. We’ve heard so much about what is not allowed that now it’s time to say: we have a positive idea to offer.

Finally, Dr. Stetzer invited us to embrace methodological diversity within our denominations as a way to respect individual Christian communities and as a way to continue our missional work. From a Catholic standpoint, we might take this to mean rejecting a “one size fits all” approach to parish life. While there are a variety of ministries that parishes can be involved in, it does not follow that every parish should be involved in them all. Pastors and parish staffs need to look closely at their surrounding communities and determine the authentic needs of their parishioners and the wider community.

For instance, in the city I live in we have a parish that, after looking at their neighborhood, discerned that they were being called to offer more services to the aging population that made up the bulk of the residences in their area. They do not offer a children’s religious education program or vacation bible school, but partner with another parish to offer these ministries. My son’s parish school, located in an urban part of town, uses as its tagline “The Beauty of God’s Creation in All Its Diversity,” reflecting not only the school’s ethnic diversity but the variety of special education services they provide. Another parish in town does not have a full-time DRE but has a wide range of small faith communities led by parishioners for particular groups with particular interests.

All of these groups are carrying out the Church’s ministry but in very different and particular ways. None of them is “more right” than the other, but are best suited for them. This is not to say that they disagree on the doctrines of the faith, merely that they find various ways to live it out in the life of their parish and reach out to the particular people in their range of influence.

The pressure on churches to compromise and accommodate will only increase in the coming years. While far from a comprehensive program, Dr. Stetzer’s address offers a good start for thinking about how the Church will be called to answer questions from the wider culture.

The first is a one-hour webinar on social networking. This webinar will offer an overview of social networking for beginners with a special emphasis on implications for Catholic educators and catechists. I will take a brief look at the Church’s teaching on social media, examine the most popular social networking sites, and offer guidelines for getting started in the world of social networking.

While the primary audience will be teachers and catechists from the Diocese of Springfield in Illinois, there should be plenty of spaces available. To register, click on the time you would like to attend:

• October 20 at 3:40-4:40p
• October 21 at 3:40-4:40p
• October 21 at 7:30-8:30p
• October 22 at 7:30-8:30p

The second opportunity is a course I will be teaching at the Catholic Pastoral Center in Springfield, Illinois. “The Second Vatican Council: Its History and its Documents” will run for five consecutive Tuesday evenings from October 6 to November 3. We will examine the historical forces that influenced the council, look at selections from the documents, and talk about how the council has been interpreted in the 40 years since it closed. To register, contact the Office for Catechesis.

Fr. Phillip Neri Powell’s new book, Treasures Old and New: Traditional Prayers for Today’s Catholics, sits comfortably within this movement. Consisting of novenas, litanies, a new rosary, a selection of penitential prayers, and short morning and evening prayers, Fr. Powell has produced a prayer book that blends ancient prayer forms with a modern spiritual sensibility. Far from an easy pietism, these prayers both enlighten and challenge the reader to enter more deeply into the teachings of the Church.

Fr. Powell, a Dominican, is especially careful to balance the affective aspects of these traditional prayers with a fidelity to the Church’s theological tradition. Fr. Powell quotes generously from St. Augustine, St. Cyprian, Pope Benedict XVI, and other intellectual giants of the Church. The result is prayers that are “not only devotional, but catechetical as well.”

I was especially intrigued by the Way-Truth-Life Rosary, a scriptural meditation on John 15:5-6. Instead of focusing on Christ’s life, this rosary presents mysteries of his self-revelation. For instance, the “Mysteries of the Life” include

1. The Death of Death (Isaiah 25:7-8)
2. Exchanging One’s Life (Matthew 16:26)
3. Losing One’s Life (John 12:25)
4. Sacrificing One’s Life (Mark 10:45)
5. Eating from the Tree of Life (Revelation 2:7)

If I had one complaint, it is that only some of the individual prayers have introductions. I enjoyed the background information and would have loved more “behind the scenes” thoughts on the theology of the prayers.

That having been said, Treasures Old and New is a welcome addition to my book shelf and I’m looking forward to two more promised volumes of prayers from Fr. Powell!

Which is to say, they are useful in a society that has largely abandoned the traditional family and the network of support it ensures.

In the past, the elderly were largely taken care of by relatives — usually adult children — in the context of an extended network of family who lived in geographical proximity to one another. There was no question of mom or dad moving to an assisted  living facility; they simply moved in and were cared for at home, with other family members offering support and assistance as needed.

Today, this reality no longer exists — as I see it, for two primary reasons. First, children no longer live close to their parents. I live six hours from my mother; many of the friends I know live even further than that from their parents. In a mobile society, distance limits the amount of direct care children can provide for their aging parents. And given the quality of health care seniors now receive, most are able to live more active lives than their parents are their age. (My mother certainly doesn’t want to leave her home to live with my family. We’d crimp her style!) Second, the Boomers had fewer children than their parents did. This means fewer children sharing the responsibility of caring for aging parents which leads to additional stress as family.

These two factors are only exacerbated when aging parents enter the final phase of their life on earth. Again, given the quality of modern health care, this phase is often marked by catastrophic illness that even the best hospitals and doctors are unable to treat. In this situation children are called on to make excruciating decisions regarding how their parents will be treated and what medical interventions are appropriate. Most are not prepared to make these decisions, either a) because they do not know what their mother or father  would want, or b) because their own unresolved emotional issues make them less likely to accept the reality of impending death and more likely to choose superhuman interventions that only prolong dying. (I’m speaking here extraordinary measures such as choosing to resuscitate a patient in a coma who has gone into cardiac arrest while in the final stages of pancreatic cancer, not ordinary care such as nutrition and hydration either naturally or artificially administered.)

Caring for the dying elderly, especially those we love, is a thankless and heartrending task! And given that reality, the truth is that death panels would be enormously efficient and useful by taking the messy, painful, difficult — and most of all human! – process of dying and placing it in the hands of an impartial and disinterested group of individuals.

And isn’t that what we all want for our loved ones?

221. Which are the chief means by which we satisfy God for the temporal punishment due to sin?
The chief means by which we satisfy God for the temporal punishment due to sin are: Prayer, Fasting, Almsgiving, all spiritual and corporal works of mercy, and the patient suffering of the ills of life.

- Rev. Thomas J. O’Brien, Advanced Catechism of Catholic Faith and Practice (1902)

The other day I wrote about the propensity in our modern society to avoid anything that might limit or impede our ability to “have it all.” While there are many causes for this shift, at least some blame can be attributed to our diminished sense of the value of suffering.

Traditionally, suffering was seen as a means of encountering Christ because Christ, in his humanity, endured the same physical and psychological pains we experience. Through his Incarnation Jesus joined himself to the human condition and raised it to perfection, including all of our pains and toils. The Compendium of the Catechism of the Catholic Church says that Jesus’ suffering “showed how his humanity was the free and perfect instrument of that divine love which desires the salvation of all people.” (119) Jesus became one of us and suffered for us out of love.

This shared experience unites us with Christ, especially by reminding us of his Passion and death. This is why our suffering can become a sacrifice to God — Christ’s suffering sanctifies our suffering and makes it holy. Take a moment to think about that: Christ has given us a powerful spiritual weapon in our own human suffering, a weapon the Church has long recognized! It has the power to release souls from Purgatory (no small thing!), serve as satisfaction for our sins and unite us more closely with Christ and the saints!

If only we would remember the power of suffering we might not be so eager to avoid it in our day-to-day lives. We might embrace Prayer, Fasting, Almsgiving, the tiny indignities we face every day all the demands they place on us — demands of humility, hunger, treasure and time. (And for today’s busy person, what is more precious than time?!) We might even cease to look at corporal mortification as a weird medieval relic. Certainly we would recognize the Prosperity Gospel as the heresy it is.

So, the next time you find yourself stuck in traffic or asked to do something extra at work or in the parish, do what your grandparents did: offer it up to the poor souls in Purgatory. They, and you, will be better off for it.

This is not to say that we are less virtuous as a people than those that came before us. It is, rather, that

We know more about what is less than ourselves but less about what is more than ourselves. When we act morally, we are better than our philosophy. Our ancestors were worse than theirs. Their problem was not living up to their principles. Ours is not having any.

Kreeft wrote Back to Virtue in 1986, and shortly after finishing the book I read an article that offers some pretty damning evidence that Kreeft was on to something. The article detailed the National Study of Youth and Religion. This study surveyed over 3,000 American teens about their religious beliefs and found that the overwhelming majority could not offer any articulate explanation or defense of their own religious beliefs or the beliefs of the religious body they belong to. Rather, they espoused what the researchers described as “Moralistic Therapeutic Deism,” a religious philosophy that, while acknowledging the existence of a divine power, sees as the central goal of life being happy and feeling good about oneself.

This god, in the words of the researchers, “is something like a combination Divine Butler and Cosmic Therapist: he is always on call, takes care of any problems that arise, professionally helps his people to feel better about themselves, and does not become too personally involved in the process.”

I hope I don’t have to point out that a religious philosophy more antithetical to authentic Christianity would be hard to find.

Moralistic Therapeutic Deism hinges on a god made, not so much in our image, as to our liking – a god that never criticizes, never badgers, never demands. A god that stays safely away in a box until we find ourselves in some crisis or in some need, who can then be marched out not to make things right but to make us feel better. This is a safe god.

The God of Christianity, however, is not safe. He is dangerous. He pops up when he’s not wanted, not invited. He charges us with impossible tasks. He asks us to build arks, to leave our homeland and travel to a strange new land of promise. He tells us that we are to lead his people out of slavery and gives us the strength to battle giants. He tells us to leave behind our families, our possessions, our lives to follow him. He tells us to take up our crosses.

He asks us, in the mystery we celebrated just two weeks ago, to die with him.

This is a far cry from the disinterested deity society seeks. This is a God who stands for something and expects us to do the same. This God pursues us like a jealous lover, a God so aptly described in Francis Thompson’s poem “The Hound of Heaven”:

I fled Him, down the nights and down the days;
I fled Him, down the arches of the years;
I fled Him, down the labyrinthine ways
Of my own mind; and in the mist of tears
I hid from Him, and under running laughter.
Up vistaed hopes I sped;
And shot, precipitated,
Adown Titanic glooms of chasmèd fears,
From those strong Feet that followed, followed after.
But with unhurrying chase,
And unperturbèd pace,
Deliberate speed, majestic instancy,
They beat — and a voice beat
More instant than the Feet –
“All things betray thee, who betrayest Me.”

What this attitude fails to realize, of course, is that we are finite beings. Despite what we are told in ads, we cannot “have it all” — and even if we could, how would we find the time or energy to enjoy it all? Imagine how difficult it would be to keep track of it. (To say nothing about the taxes!)

We have perverted free will — and our language to describe it — to such an extent that we put bandwidth caps and children in the same category as obstacles to our freedom. This is a gross failure to make some fundamental distinctions about authentic happiness and freedom, and one need only look at our culture to see that we are the poorer for it.

This year’s relevancies are often next year’s embarrassments. One who does not appreciate this should meditate on the Nehru Jacket and Death of God movement. The liturgy frees one from such compulsions. It must not succumb to them.

- Aidan Kavanaugh, Elements of Rite (1982, Pueblo)

Part of my interest in Fr. Tolton’s story is personal: he spent his formative years in Quincy, Illinois, and attended St. Francis Solanus College, which later became Quincy University, my alma mater (a number of the photos in the book come from the school’s archives). I remember hearing allusions to the first black priest during my time at Quincy, but it wasn’t until my graduate studies that I became acquainted with the larger story of Fr. Tolton’s life.

Born a slave to a Catholic family near Hannibal, Missouri, his father escaped to join the Union Army at the start of the Civil War; he was killed in battle. When he was 8 Augustine’s mother escaped with the boy and his two siblings across the Mississippi River and wound up in nearby Quincy. There he worked in a tobacco factory by day and, in his spare time and during the winter months, he received instruction from the local priests and religious sisters. It was during this time that he first felt God’s call to the priesthood.

Unfortunately Augustine was turned down by every seminary and religious order he applied to. Undeterred, he traveled to Rome where he studied at the Urban College de Propaganda Fide, after which he expected to be sent as a missionary priest to Africa. Instead he returned to Quincy where he pastored St. Joseph’s, the city’s black parish.

In Quincy Fr. Tolton met with resistance and outright hostility from white Catholics (who resented the donations he received from sympathetic whites) and black Protestants (who resented his evangelization of their congregants). Discouraged and not receiving any support from his bishop, he accepted a transfer to Chicago where he was put in charge of the city’s black Catholics. Starting with a small congregation meeting in a church basement, within a few years he led a growing parish and had begun construction on a new church building. His work in Chicago was cut short in 1897 when, upon returning home from a retreat, he collapsed (most likely as a result of heat stroke) and died. He is buried in Quincy at St. Peter’s Seminary.

Although she did a fair amount of research and interviews for the book (as evidenced by the bibliography), Sr. Hemesath presents Fr. Tolton’s life in a series of fictionalized vignettes, a sort of “speculative biography.” The result is, if not 100% accurate, extremely readable and provides a good picture of what Fr. Tolton’s life was probably like. She is particularly adept at presenting the trials Fr. Tolton endured: the constant rejection by seminaries in his own country, the years spent building up money to pay for studies in Rome, the harassment at the hands of a fellow priest in Quincy. His was not a happy life, insofar as he never seems to have found a place to truly call home where he could be a simple pastor (which seems to have been his only real wish).

On the other hand, his trials never diminished his love of the Church, even in its human brokenness. Fr. Tolton’s example of bearing his cross — a cross of racism, hate and bigotry — in a humble manner, calling on God for strength and help, is a timely reminder of how we are called to live out this Lenten season through almsgiving, fasting and prayer in recognition of our sinful nature. Rather than bemoan his fortune Fr. Tolton sought one thing only: to serve God and his people. May we, too, live out such a simple yet beautiful goal.

Suppose I commit a grave sin.  It does not matter what sort it is.  The materialist says to me, “Yes, you did wrong, according to the customs of our age, and perhaps even according to the dictates of reason, if you follow them to their conclusion,” though of course no one is going to consult a book of modern rationalist philosophy before robbing a bank or deflowering the neighbor’s daughter, and it is much to be doubted that the book would decide the matter anyway.  “But,” he continues, “you were programmed that way.”  And here it does not matter what form the programming takes.  “In fact, there really isn’t a ‘you’ who committed the action; we only use that pronoun because we can’t practically live otherwise.  Now then, don’t you feel better?”  Well, no, I don’t feel better.  I feel immeasurably worse.  For now I am even farther from forgiveness and healing than ever I was.  When I committed the sin, at least I bore the dignity of sin; it was a weight on my shoulders, but it was a weight I took upon myself, and a weight that might someday be lifted.  Now I am told that the weight is simply a part of my makeup; it will never be lifted; I should not even care whether it is lifted.