OUT TO LUNCH WITH CARDINAL DEW, THE POPE AND THE PRESIDENT

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Cardinal John Dew has presented the Catholic Church, in the latest Welcom, with a vision for her future. Reading it seems like "seeing through a glass darkly" (1 Cor 13, 12).

Could we please dispel that gloom of the "now"- of this passing, secular world - by lifting our eyes and minds to "the things that are above (Col 3:1)?

The good cardinal thought it could be "a bit presumptuous" to speak on "The Future of the Church" but being the humble man that he is, he obliged. Far more presumptuous for me to comment but his speech to the Wellington Archdiocese, having made it to the central spread of Welcom, was drawn to my attention by one of those pesky Rad Trads of the PN Diocese, so here goes (length and tedium alert).

It's natural for NO Catholics, sitting in ever-emptier pews and pondering the Pope's latest, hosting a pagan fertility rite complete with idol-worship -  https://www.catholicnewsagency.com/news/indigenous-ritual-performed-in-vatican-gardens-for-popes-tree-planting-ceremony-60523
in the Vatican Gardens) 
 - to want to know where the Church is heading. 

Supernaturally however, Catholics know from the likes of St Jean-Pierre de Caussade that prayer empowers them to live in "the Sacrament of the Present Moment", because that's where God is encountered - not in the past, not in the future, but now.  Catholics who cling to the Divine Will are indifferent as to their own future because they know God orders all things to the good of those who love Him.

They are however, vitally concerned and zealous for the future of the Church, because all around them they see evidence (as above, in idol-worship) that the Church seems not to love God, and so cannot rely on God to order all things for her good as He ardently wishes to do.

 Cardinal Dew has no doubt that the crisis in the Church, which he defines as 'sex-abuse' but is more authoritatively described by Cardinals Raymond Burke and Walter Brandmuller  -https://www.bbc.com/news/world-europe-47302817
 - as the "homosexual agenda" is "forcing us to look deeply at ourselves".

Instead of looking deeply at ourselves, in yet another futile exercise of navel-gazing 'workshops', 'brain-storming' and 'questionnaires', we can look deeply at Jesus Christ our Lord, who will show us that "where we need to be purified, where we need to be humbled, rely on and trust in God" is - as the cardinal himself admits in calling for a "WHOLE-HEARTED response to change - all day and every day".

And then there's 'the crisis in the environment'; a fave subject of the Pope who challenges us to look after 'Our Common Home' and worries about cities becoming "hell on earth". For the Pope and for the Church, Hell in the hereafter and avoidance thereof is surely the priority and what's more, had that been the case there would be no question of "hell on earth".

Had the Church stuck to her knitting - the Mass, the Sacraments and evangelizing, none of which features in the Cardinal's Church of the Future - 'Our Common Home' would accommodate us all in comfort and the red herring, not to say whale, of 'the environment' would never have  been dragged across the trail of our collective consciousness.

www.americanexperiment.org/2019/07/rejoice-earth-becoming-greener/

In a politely-veiled rebuke for faithful Catholics, the Cardinal says "many people find change hard to cope with. He quotes Cardinal John Henry Newman: "to live is to change".

Anything living doesn't need to keep changing, it has to. No option. Obviously, it's how we change, and how the Church changes, that matters.

Which brings me to Modernism and modernists, of whom Pope St Pius X declared "they lay down the general principle that in a living religion everything is subject to change, and must change".

I'm sure Cardinal Dew would agree that the truth cannot change, that Jesus Christ cannot change. So the truth as revealed in the Gospel cannot change, and is secured in the Catholic Church in what we call the deposit of Faith, just as our money is secured in a bank. 

But robbers can break into banks, and "the hireling, and he that is not the shepherd, whose own the sheep are not, seeeth the wolf coming … leaves the sheep and runs away, and the wolf catches and scatters them"(Jn 10,12).

Yes, we certainly have "the most incredible example of leadership in Pope Francis, who as the Head of the Body of Christ calls some of her most faithful members "fundamentalists, rosary counters, fomenters of coprophagia".
https://www.bbc.com/news/world-europe-47302817

We could be forgiven, or at least understood, for going around with 'a face like a sourpuss' as the Cardinal quotes the Pope (we can assume these people are traditional Catholics)- but hey, we're not an 'organisation', as the Pope describes the Body of Christ. We are not a bank or a company or Rotarians.

Cardinal Dew quotes his predecessor Cardinal Williams presenting papal medals to a couple who'd followed his advice and decided as Catholics to "have fun": "I want people to know they belong to a Church that is lifegiving and enjoyable. 'Negativity and sadness are not Christian attitudes.'"

Try telling that to a Christian suffering from clinical depression. Try telling that to Jesus Christ in the Garden of Olives, feeling so negative and sad that he sweated blood. Or Mary and Joseph, who sought their Child Jesus sorrowing (Lk 2, 48). 

"Just be friendly", Cardinal Dew told his audience. He doesn't have to tell himself that. To him friendliness comes naturally; that's his God-given personality. For other people friendliness, joy and hope spring from the knowledge and love of Jesus Christ. For people not gifted with friendliness, 'being friendly' is not the human thing to do. It's the divine thing, deriving from the inner light which shows everyone to be a child of God.

Cardinal Dew says frequently that "It is belonging that leads to believing, not believing that leads to belonging". But believe me, if I didn't believe, I would not 'belong'. 'Belonging' in the current scenario would do nothing to dispel temptations against faith but only encourage them.

The Cardinal then quotes Pope St JPII's requirements for future priests in relating to others. "Not to be arrogant or quarrelsome but affable, hospitable, sincere in words and heart, prudent and discreet, generous and ready to serve, capable of opening ourselves to relationships and of encouraging the same in other, being quick to understand forgive and console."

 A tall order, enough to put any guy off the priesthood. But there's a way to fill the order which every guy can access" - the Way, who is Jesus Christ. 

In prayer, and more specifically contemplative prayer, the putative priest will come to know Our Lord Jesus Christ, who will reward his pathetic but absolutely necessary attempts at acquiring all the nice qualities listed by JPII by revealing Himself - usually gradually - and slowly transforming his unprepossessing material into an alter Christus.

The Cardinal quotes Suzanne Aubert: "Above all things let us be kind. Kindness is what most resembles God." Hmmm.

I'm not so sure. Kindness is a human quality. Jacinda Ardern for example, is kind. The entire world now knows she's kind, because she put on a hajib and hugged a Muslim woman in Christchurch. But God commands us to love one another in a superhuman way, by loving one another as He has loved us - i.e. by being ready to die for others.

Kind Jacinda however, thinks a mother should feel free to kill her baby in her own womb, no questions asked, up to the age of five months, when that baby has been capable of feeling pain at (latest scientific estimate) eight weeks. In Jacinda we see the terrible deficiencies of human kindness.

Cardinal Dew wants the Church to be expanded theologically. A terrific idea, an essential idea - as long as we're expanded by theologians whose theories have been canonized. St Teresa of Jesus (Avila) Doctor of the Church, whose feast we celebrate this week, for instance, with a modern commentary will guide any keen Catholic to union with God. (Try The Way of Perfection, the study edition with notes by Kieran Kavanaugh OCD.)

That is the future for the Church: union with God. We should aim for no less. The Church "young in spirit" - Cardinal Dew's heart's desire - will be inspired by saints who've walked not the Camino de Santiago (not quite the rage that it was, perhaps because its fruits aren't showing) but the 'straight and narrow' way of Christ which demands rigour, asceticism and "assiduous practice of the virtues" (St Teresa of Jesus).

The "Spirit of God who keeps us young, open to new ideas and fresh ways of operating .. who inspires us to do things differently" will give us His gifts as a help to the virtues: "dona sunt in adjutorium virtutum", but only if we practise the virtues, which the whole Catholic tradition places at the starting point.

"If a soul is seeking God, its Beloved is seeking it much more …. He attracts the soul and causes it to run after Him” (John of the Cross, Living Flame of Love 3,28).

A Church inspired by the Spirit to practise the virtues and so be given His gifts will "never be staid, it can never be boring - especially liturgically - because it is about life" - that is, the life of Christ Himself.

Only then will we have "lifegiving, vibrant liturgies, where everyone participates" (not necessarily physically, for goodness' sake!) "and is caught up in the ceremonies which will energise us to go out and make a difference in society", simply by faith placed on the candlestick of real prayer, which will certainly "shine before men, that they may see (our) good works, and glorify (our) Father who is in heaven" (Mt 5:15-16).

I can't remember where the Gospel tells us that to follow Christ we must be "young in heart and soul" as the Cardinal quotes the Pope, but I suppose that must go to show I'm literal-minded. Becoming "like little children" (Mt 18,3) means above all, being humbly aware of our absolute dependence on God for everything, rather than frolicsome and up for anything.

"The Church of the future must be prayerful and reflective". Of course. She'll be that when we learn the art of silence, especially in church!, in our lifestyle by getting out of screens and useless conversations that go nowhere, and in our hearts by the meditation which leads to contemplation and interior silence.

“What we need most in order to make progress is to be silent before this great God with our appetite and with our tongue, for the language he best hears is silent love” (John of the Cross).

Yes, Your Eminence, it's "communion with God that energises and fortifies us". Literally. Holy Mass is the source of our energy, especially for those very few "individual believers" in NZ who have access to the Traditional Latin Mass which for four centuries was both the sign and pledge of unity of worship in the Catholic Church.

But in the New Mass (Novus Ordo) also, we receive the Body and Blood of our Lord Jesus Christ. The Mass is surely the best place for "daily reflection on the Scriptures" - and don't say it's impossible, because if daily Mass is God's will for you, he will re-organize your life to fit it in.

It's Jesus Christ Himself who in contemplation and in the Mass teaches us "how to connect faith to life, to professional life", and it shouldn't be limited to "Sunday worship" (I prefer to use the word Mass, which differentiates the unbloody re-enactment of Calvary from the mere words, holy though they may be, of Protestant ceremonies).

"From the beginning of his papacy Pope Francis has called us togo to the edges, to the peripheries." On the other hand, Cardinal Josef Ratzinger (later Benedict XVI) comments, on the 'New Mass' that  "the turning of the priest toward the people has turned the community into a self-enclosed circle. In its outward form it no longer opens out on what lies ahead and above,but is closed in on itself" - which suggests, doesn't it, that a lot of what Pope Francis complains about in the Church today originated in the New Mass ...

"The Church," the Cardinal quotes the Pope as saying, "must step outside herself. To go where?"

 A Church revitalized by personal, intimate friendship with Jesus Christ will go into prisons to teach prisoners how to pray. Into university hostels and pensioner flats where young and old die alone, to teach them the friendship of Christ. Onto footpaths outside hospitals where they kill babies, to support the poor mothers in the ways they need most. Onto the Golden Mile in Wellington with the SSPX priests to show diocesan priests, bishops and our cardinal how to March for Life.

We can expand theologically by reading what St Thomas Aquinas has to say about immigration: that a nation has a duty to its citizens not to admit immigrants that are hostile or not amenable to their culture, and to administer its law in their regard. We can expand theologically by investing in parish and academic programmes like those available at the Augustine Institute, to equip us intellectually and  spiritually to live our faith.

Catholics will do this to save our souls. By concentrating on saving souls we will concentrate on the Evangelical Counsels - Poverty, Chastity and Obedience - and by assiduously practising the cardinal virtues of prudence, justice, fortitude and temperance, and so will save the planet as well as our souls.

"Our task, as Church," is to show people Jesus Christ and the joys he longs to give us, in this life and the next.

"I want to conclude", said his Eminence, "by quoting from two Presidents of the United States - not the current President". Here we can take it there was a pause for guffaws at the expense of President Donald Trump, who in spite of his flaws is the greatest pro-life president in US history, having defunded International Planned Parenthood, cut $69m PP funding, defunded the pro-abortion UNFPA, provided conscience protection for pro-life doctors and appointed dozens of conservative judges.

The Church of the future must be one led by the Pope, and not anyone else no matter how much "they don't mind who gets the credit" (the cardinal, quoting President Harry Truman). "The only authority . (she will) have is the authority of service" (Pope Francis) but it must be only service of Jesus Christ, to the greater glory of God.

Cardinal Dew gives Theodore Roosevelt a trot, too:"The credit belongs to the man/woman who is actually in the arena … whose face is marred by dust and weath and blood; who strives valiantly; who errs, and comes short again and again". Who does that sound like? Donald Trump.

Cardinal Dew calls us to that arena, and thinks of the followers of Jesus who "turned and walked away because they could  not understand what Jesus was saying". The  cardinal is, as always, being kind. Jesus however went on, according to the Douay Rheims, to "correct their gross apprehension of eating his flesh and drinking his blood in a vulgar and carnal manner, by letting them know he should take his whole body living with him to heaven, and consequently not suffer it to be, as they supposed, divided, mangled, and consumed upon earth."

But there are some of you that believe not. For Jesus knew from the beginning who they were that did not believe (Jn 7,65). Pride caused this "gross apprehension of eating his flesh",  and pride refuses now to accept the doctrine and tradition of the Church as formed and taught over the centuries, pride that wants to update and modernize and change it, to be cool and 'relevant'; the heresy of modernism has its root in pride.

The challenge is for the laity as it was during the Arian crisis, when as Cardinal John Henry Newman notes, it wasn't until after Arianism was declared a heresy that eighty per cent of the Church's bishops fell into this error, while still reigning in their respective dioceses; and that in the end it was the laity, not the hierarchy, who kept the Faith and were used by God to save the Church. 

As Cardinal Newman relates, the laity remained faithful by adhering to the tradition of the Apostles; as St Basil says, by refusing to attend Masses celebrated by those infected with Arianism, and by withstanding being "vigorously punished".

Yes, Your Eminence, it is perhaps more of "a dare" today than ever before, to live the Gospel. This is a wonderful time to be a Catholic; it's a wonderful time to be a priest. The risks are greater and so the rewards are greater.

By God's grace and by the intercession of the Theotokos, Mary the Mediatrix of  all graces, the saints of today will be greater than those who came before us.