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Sunday, July 26, 2015

Suffering and Mass

Participation in the Holy Sacrifice of the Mass is essential to the sanctification of our suffering.  According to the venerable Bishop Sheen the Mass has three actions; Offering ourselves (and sufferings) to Christ, die with Christ and rise with Him.  In this way our suffering is given meaning.

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Wednesday, July 22, 2015

Boy Need A Father

The slang expression "Who's your daddy?" holds a lot of of significance these days owing to the "man crisis." A boy passing into young manhood is at a severe disadvantage without a father rooted in the Faith. That is so blindingly clear it seems almost insulting to a person's intelligence to even say it. But it must be said.

No good faithful man in a boy's life is almost guaranteed to spell a world of hurt for the boy — and not just in the usually considered way. Of course the absence of a faith-filled father will create a huge deficit in the boy's life. There are the rare exceptions, of course, that a substitute dad in the form of a grandfather or uncle or even a very involved coach can serve as a good safety net, but those cases are not the rule.

And the great disadvantage is this: Not only does a young fellow not have a strong man to harness all that energy and vinegar of youth and properly direct it, but he has a whole world of horrible men out there willing to lead him down the path of destruction. It isn't really a question of not having a dad as much as it is the question "Who is your daddy?"

There are simply too many men waiting to devour young impressionable boys. From Hollywood celebrities and entertainment industry icons, there are dozens of males who substitute for a missing father. Instead of teaching boys how to be men, they teach boys how to stay boys, self-absorbed juveniles who gratify themselves with sex and video games. But this eventually has the negative impact of building up a rage in boys as they mature into biological males. Somewhere down in their spirit they feel the pain of rejection. This isn't the sad case of a father dying. It's the even sadder case of a father rejecting — actively rejecting his son, and his son knows that on some level and incorporates it into his self-perception. This can inspire a self-loathing and anger and result in all kinds of bad choices which the boy is predisposed to make.

And we aren't talking about just physically absent fathers, but rather spiritually negligent fathers — those who do not pass on or instill the Faith in their children. They rob their child of spiritual security and youthful happiness. Right at the moment that a boy turns to look for his dad, in need of his Heavenly Dad, he quite often finds neither.

What a blow to his psyche and even more shattering blow to his soul. The boy is now left to fend for himself and go in emotional search of his father — any father, if need be. Fueled by anger, a boy can accept any male as his father, figuratively more than literally. So he goes all in on the images of manhood that show him violence, sex, drugs, alcohol — whatever seems to anesthetize the hurt. These things feed his anger more than subdue it. And the ability to go off the rails oftentimes becomes a reality.

The culture is more than happy to lay waste young men, to abuse them by feeding the dark side of their innate masculinity, the destructive side. The culture cares nothing for young men except to profit from them or even exploit them. Boys need a father, a faith-filled man of God to love them deeply who is there for them every day teaching them how to be self-sacrificing. Consider this: Even though strictly speaking He didn't need an earthly father, His Heavenly Father gave charge of Jesus to St. Joseph.

When the final curtain finishes dropping on Western civilization, one of the saddest lines of our history will be the anguished tale of boys who had no fathers to teach them about their Heavenly Father.

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Thursday, July 16, 2015

7 Weapons

Meditating on Christ's words from the cross (spoken from his own, personal pain), can relieve our own suffering.

 From the pulpit of the Cross, Christ’s seven last words are proclamations of victory over evil and death. We can profess His words as a weapon of victory in our own spiritual battles. His words from the cross carry the weight of Christ’s self-sacrificing love that defeats the pride of Satan. When we experience demonic temptations or oppression, we can prayerfully echo Christ’s words from Calvary with the authority of a baptized soul.

The First Word: “Father, forgive them, for they know not what they do”
(Luke 23:34).

In the first lesson from the Cross Christ gives us the weapon of forgiveness. This spiritual weapon overthrows demonic condemnation and hatred. To believe that Christ redeems our fallen nature, and forgives sinners, is to stand with Christ against the ancient Accuser, Liar and Thief. When we forgive those who trespass against us, we are wielding the weapon of forgiveness (fruit of love) and proclaiming Christ’s victory over evil and death. When we humbly receive His mercy into our hearts, we are defeating human and also demonic pride and rebellion by accepting God’s forgiveness.

Prayer
Dear Lord, graciously help me to live today as a forgiven person, opening my heart to you, choosing not to sin because the power of sin has been broken by your passion, death and resurrection. Graciously help me to accept your forgiveness, and to be able to forgive others also. Then I extend the blessing and break the curse of unforgiveness.

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Saturday, July 11, 2015

Patriarch

Someone was joking recently that the reason the Eastern Orthodox cannot have women bishops is because one can’t call a woman “Patriarch.” Behind the wisecrack is some wisdom, and the existence of women ministers in non-Catholic denominations raises the question of just how patriarchal the Christian religion must be.
Is it necessary to call priests “Father” and refer to the Pope as “Holy Father”? The title “Abbot” comes from the ancient term “Abba-Father,” and “pope” comes from the Greek word pappas — “daddy.” Are these no more than human traditions? Are these just social constructs? Or is the idea of “Father Knows Best” woven inextricably into the Catholic faith?
Modernists would argue that all gender identities are inventions from social circumstances. In other words, what we call a “man” or a “woman” is defined by learned customs and conventional traditions. A little girl is given a doll, a play kitchen and fashion cutouts so she learns to do girly things and identify as a woman. A boy is given guns and soldiers, trucks, cars and footballs so he learns to identify as a man.
If gender is learned from society, the modernist contends, male and female family roles are similarly learned. Back in the day, a young man learned that he should go to work and support his family; the young woman learned that she should stay home, have babies and make sure the pot roast was ready for the man of the house when he walked through the door, hung his hat on the rack and called out, “Honey, I’m home!”
Because these roles are no more than social customs, the gender relativist argues, they can be dispensed with. New roles can be devised and learned, and the oppressive, old roles can be discarded. For those who wish to dispense with traditional gender roles, the Catholic Church is seen as an impossibly archaic and obstinate obstacle.
Gender relativists in the Protestant churches see patriarchy as a cruel, oppressive system — all the worse because it wears a smiling Christian mask. The pressure for women’s ordination is driven just as much by the gender relativists as the feminists who believe they are simply arguing for women’s equality. No matter what their belief system or motivation, they all regard patriarchy as an inherent evil — an archaic system devised by Jewish men with long beards thousands of years ago.
While Judaism is patriarchal, it should be remembered that Jewish culture had a higher regard for women and girls than the surrounding cultures. In Greco-Roman paganism, for example, women were regarded as only slightly better than slaves. They were expected to be faithful in marriage, while men were granted the license to have concubines and use prostitutes and catamites freely for their pleasure. Older men were permitted to take girls as young as 9 or 10 years of age in marriage, and newborn daughters were regularly strangled or exposed to the elements, as they were considered less worthy than sons.
Within patriarchal societies today, the same evils persist. Female infanticide and sex-selective abortion are widespread in Hindu and Chinese cultures, while child brides, arranged marriages, female oppression, sex trafficking and female mutilation continue in patriarchal Islamic communities.
In contrast, as Rodney Stark points out in his important book, The Rise of Christianity, the early Christian community honored and respected women. Women had leadership roles in the Christian Church. The first Christians condemned abortion, valued their sons and daughters and rescued abandoned babies. The New Testament may have taught wives to be submissive to their husbands, but the same chapter spent far longer telling husbands to love their wives “as Christ loves the Church and gave himself for her.”
Easy divorce of women was condemned, and widows were both honored and cared for. Christianity may have continued the patriarchal outlook of Judaism and paganism, but it transformed those patriarchal assumptions from the inside out.
The Christian father and husband was not the superior, abusive tyrant of pagan society, but the loving husband and father first hinted at in the Old Testament and then fulfilled in the teaching of Jesus. Jesus Christ brought into focus the idea of God as the loving Father — calling God “Abba-Father” and teaching his disciples to say, “Our Father who art in heaven …”
In his Parable of the Prodigal Son, it is arguable that the main character is not the runaway son, but the loving, understanding and wise father. This forgiving and long-suffering father is the patriarch that Jesus commends and commands us to emulate.
Jesus also brought into focus the idea of God as the loving and forgiving husband, and St. Paul consolidated that teaching with the idea that the Church is the “Bride of Christ.” The teachings of Jesus Christ and St. Paul are divinely revealed. They are not social constructs. Therefore, because of the centrality of God as a loving husband and Father, patriarchy cannot be airbrushed out of the Catholic faith.
Are there abusive husbands, bad fathers, tyrannical priests and overbearing prelates? Of course. But the solution is not to get rid of patriarchy, but to get rid of bad patriarachs. Neither does ordaining women to the priesthood rid the world of overbearing and tyrannical priests and prelates.
The example of Katharine Jefferts Schori — the presiding bishop of the Episcopal Church of the United States of America — should be a caution. Faced with rebellion in the ranks because of the Episcopal Church’s espousal of radical causes, Schori has muscled in to depose more than 700 priests and 12 bishops. She has instigated lawsuits against rebellious congregations, spent millions of dollars on legal fees and grabbed buildings and assets from local congregations, forcing them out of their historic churches. Mothers, it seems, can be just as aggressive, unforgiving and tyrannical as fathers.
Christianity is intrinsically patriarchal, but the patriarch is to be a papa. The Catholic priest is to be a pastor — a loving guide and faithful shepherd. As the Christian husband is to “love his wife as Christ loved the Church and gave himself for her,” so the Catholic priest/bishop is to be the “servant of the servants of God” — a father who loves his children like the father of the Prodigal Son.
The Catholic patriarch should be forever patient, eternally giving and forgiving, remembering that God the Father loved his children so much that he did not spare his own Son. That self-sacrificial love is at the heart of Catholic patriarchy and should be nurtured and strengthened in the home, the community, the Church and the world.
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Sunday, July 5, 2015

Five Ways We Fall

The Five Ways We Fall. Here, Bishop Sheen outlines Simon Peter’s fall (and ours):
 
1. Neglect of prayer. He notes that while the Lord commands us to “watch and pray,” we sleep. Our neglect of prayer begins one piece at a time. First, we cease to fulfill the obligation (say the Office, if one is a member of the clergy). Next, our time spent in prayer declines. And finally, as though a light switch had been pushed, our prayer life goes dormant.

2. Substitution of action for prayer. In recalling how Peter severed the ear of the High Priest’s servant, Sheen reminds us of Jesus’ miracle in healing that ear and restoring to him the gift of hearing. In using this example, he warns us to be aware of falling into an “extra-active” mode of living our lives—especially one that precludes prayer. For in doing so, our actions will sometimes end in violence and the choosing of our enemies.
 
3. Following the Lord from far off. After denying Jesus, Peter was ultimately “dragged to the foot of the Cross.” Given the Signs of the Times that were playing out in his midst, it was clearly dangerous to follow the Lord too closely. Using this faulty wisdom, he ponders how often we follow far behind His footsteps so as to not be recognized as a close follower?
 
4. Focus on creature comforts. Rather than going out into the Lord’s vineyard and doing the work that needs to be done, we instead insist upon resting and warming ourselves by the fire. In walking down this road, Sheen notes that complacency sets in.
 
5. Focus on creature friends. Here, Bishop Sheen declares that we agree to make spiritual retreats as long as Jesus Christ is not discussed. The rationale? Our Lord places too many demands upon us, especially in regard to the way we should live our lives. Given this, it is better to leave Him in the background. However, in leaving Him there, we deny His Holy Path and instead choose creatures with similar views. Hence, we fulfill the words of St. Peter: “Truly, I do not know the man.”
 
But in falling, Jesus encourages us to rise again…
 
After this many of his disciples drew back and no longer went about with him. Jesus said to the twelve, “Will you also go away?” Simon Peter answered him, “Lord, to whom shall we go? You have the words of eternal life; and we have believed, and have come to know, that you are the Holy One of God.” (John 6:66-69)
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