On the “Best of Imus” this week, the “Mensa Meeting” segment caught my attention as Mrs. Deidre Imus—a graduate of Villanova and member of its much-heralded women’s track team during her undergraduate years—professed herself to be a “Catholic.”
The reason Mrs. Imus’ profession of faith caught my attention is that on previous occasions, she has espoused moral positions that are 100% opposed to Church teaching, for example, the so-called “right” for homosexuals to "marry." Deidre Imus has also provided ample indications that she does not regularly attend Mass, if at all. Furthermore, she has espoused religious ideals concerning prayer and abstinence on her husband’s cable television morning show that are more rooted in and in synch with pantheism and nature worship than the Nicene Creed.
In these ways, Deidre Imus is similar to so many people who call themselves “Catholic” today—and especially those who are graduates of Catholic universities and colleges. Perhaps 75% of U.S. Catholics think and conduct themselves just Deidre Imus does. “I am a Catholic,” they say, suggesting that being Catholic is a matter of how each individual defines the Catholic faith and its practice rather than as the Church defines the faith and its practice. It’s all so very “democratic,” “inclusive,” and “non-judgmental.” And, besides, how can that many “Catholics” be wrong?
It also happens that I was sent an email this week containing an article published by a British newspaper. The article concerned the decline of the Anglican Church. But, more important—insofar as I was concerned—were the two pictures the newspaper printed to illustrate the article’s contents.
One of the pictures depicted an Anglican church service on what likely was just another, ordinary, ho-hum Sunday. In a very large and beautiful church, a handful of congregants appeared to be attending the service. Maybe there were twenty; most were females, with an average age that I would judge to be about seventy-five years.
The second picture depicted a mid-day prayer service at a mosque located in the same neighborhood as the Anglican parish. The congregation not only filled the mosque—with congregants positioned in neat, straight rows—but also pouring out of the mosque’s front doors. The congregants—young and old, but mostly it appeared in their late thirties or early forties—filled the street not just in front of the mosque, but up and down the street as well. In the picture, every congregant was kneeling prostrate in prayer, facing Mecca.
The contrast in these two worshipping communities could not be more stark.
Let’s consider the “bigger picture.”
In the Anglican Church, members are not required to attend weekly services. In fact, they are allowed to believe pretty much anything they want, even if what they believe contradicts scripture and Church teaching. The pews of most Anglican parishes are empty. Research indicates that the Anglican Church is not declining. No, it is dying.
Among the five pillars of Islam is daily prayer. In practice, what this means is that every Muslim must pray five times daily (early morning, noon, mid-afternoon, sunset, and evening), bowing to and then prostrating themselves in submission before God, having previously purified one’s hands and feet with water (or sand), and facing toward Mecca. Communal prayer is preferred to individual, private prayer. And this is to say nothing about Ramadan, the month-long fast from sunrise to sunset. Mosques are filled to overflowing, not just in England but globally. Research suggests that the Muslim faith is expanding exponentially. It may very well be the most influential if not dominant faith in Europe and Southeast Asia within a couple of decades.
The point I wish to make today concerns what those two pictures reminded me about this past week and today’s Solemnity of Corpus Christi. Did you know that the largest religious denomination in the United States are Catholics who have fallen-away from the Church and don’t practice the faith or believe much of what the Church teaches? Like Deidre Imus, most of these women and men desperately want the Church to reform itself in their image and likeness, to teach what they want to hear and, in short, to “get with the times.”
Also this past week, the Bishop of Sioux City (Iowa), the Most Reverend R. Walker Nickless, addressed this very matter in a pastoral letter to the priests, religious, and laity of his diocese. This shepherd challenged his sheep to do something that's quite likely to irk many Catholics: To learn to “exorcise” what Bishop Nickless called “the so-called ‘spirit of Vatican II’ to end the secularization that has ‘wreaked havoc’ on the Church since the Council.”
Before judging Bishop Nickless a “knuckle-dragging theological Neanderthal,” as many Catholics today might, stop and consider Bishop Nickless’ analysis of what he believes has transpired during the five decades since Vatican II. Bishop Nickless wrote:
We must stop speaking of the “Pre-Vatican II” and “Post Vatican II” Church.
The “hermeneutic of discontinuity,” under the guise of the “spirit of Vatican II,”
sees the Second Vatican Council as a radical break with the past. There can
be no split…between the Church and her faith before and after the Council.
The Council’s meaning must be found only in the letter of the documents
themselves. The so-called “spirit” of the Council has no authoritative
interpretation. It is a ghost or demon that must be exorcised if we are to
proceed with the Lord’s work.
It is crucial that we all grasp that the hermeneutic or interpretation of
discontinuity or rupture, which many think is the settled and even official
position, is not the true meaning of the Council.
Bishop Nickless situated all of this:
The cultural upheaval of the 1960s and 70s precipitated a shift in
perspective about the Church, and it began to seem that “nothing was
certain or solid” in its teaching or liturgy. Sometimes, we set out to
convert the world, but were instead converted by it. We have sometimes
lost sight of who we are and what we believe, and therefore have little
to offer the world that so desperately needs the Gospel.
For Bishop Nickless, the problem is what theologians have called the “hermeneutic of discontinuity,” he wrote, which “emphasizes the ‘engagement with the world’ to the exclusion of the deposit of faith.” Nickless continued:
This has wreaked havoc on the Church, systematically dismantling
the Catholic Faith to please the world, watering down what is
distinctively Catholic, and ironically becoming completely irrelevant
and impotent for the mission of the Church in the world. The Church
that seeks simply what works or is “useful” in the end becomes useless.
Bishop Nickless claims to have “no other desire” than to see the reforms of Vatican II implemented properly.”
What the great majority of Catholics today believe that means stands in antithetical opposition to what it means to Bishop Nickless and, it might be added, the Church’s Magisterium.
In today’s gospel, Jesus tells his disciples: “You give them something to eat.”
The “them” is the crowd, the multitude of people who are hungering for the Way, the Truth, and the Life, but who are searching for it in every nook and cranny of this world where it’s never going to be found. To this crowd, Jesus speaks and acts not like the Jewish religious authorities but in a completely new and entirely different way. They say that Jesus teaches with “authority,” that is, someone who is genuine and consistent, who speaks and acts with truth, who gives the hope that comes from God, and who is the revelation of God who is love.
The “you” are the disciples. And, those disciples are us. Jesus said: “You yourselves give them something to eat.” Will we respond to Jesus’ challenge by telling the multitude of people today who are hungering for the Way, the Truth, and the Life simply what they want to hear?
If not, where are we to be nourished and strengthened to tell the multitude what God desires them to hear and what they truly need to hear?
Today we celebrate the Solemnity of Corpus Christi, the Body and Blood of Christ. We have gathered around the Lord’s table, upon which Jesus once again gives us his true body and his true blood, making present today on this altar the sacrifice of the Cross on Mount Calvary. Listening to his Word from scripture and nourishing ourselves with his true body and blood, Jesus nourishes and strengthens us in a truly amazing way: He transforms us from a multitude of anonymous individuals—nameless and faceless people in a crowd—into a community whose individual members’ faith in God’s only begotten Son enables them to live together as disciples. To the degree this amazing transformation takes place and we become that community, this celebration of the Eucharist is a moment of true communion with Jesus alive and present in our midst.
A lot of people who have fallen away from the Church and a lot of young people who soon will fall away from the Church have many complaints about Sunday Mass. The obligation to attend is bad enough, they opine, depriving them of their “Sabbath rest,” which is to say, Sunday begins with “It’s all about ME.” At Mass, if it’s not the music, it’s the boring homily, or the discomfort experienced in this building. Yet, if we understand what the personal transformation the body and blood of Christ can effect in us as disciples, it’s not the quality or the type of music that effects true communion. It’s not the quality of the homily or the priest’s delivery that effects true communion. It’s not the grandeur of the building or it simplicity that effects true communion. Yes, it is true that good music can uplift the heart and mind to God. Yes, a good homily and a good delivery can also uplift the heart and mind to God. And, yes, a grand edifice or a simple cabin can transport the heart and mind from the things of this world to those of the heavenly realm.
But, all of that is unimportant because none of it—the music, the homily, the priest’s delivery, or the grandeur or simplicity of the building—has the power to effect true communion. Only the Word as well as Jesus' body and blood—making present here and now the sacrifice of the Cross on Mount Calvary—can effect true communion, transforming each of us from anonymous people in a crowd—a multitude—into an authentic community of disciples who provide for the multitude. The Sunday Mass, then, is the sacrament of communion that heals the devastation caused by individualism so that we can live together as disciples and proclaim to the multitude our faith in Jesus—who is the Way, the Truth, and the Life.
Perhaps similar to the first disciples as they were portrayed in today’s gospel, many of us may also feel impoverished, believing that we do not possess what it takes to live as authentic disciples. But, that’s to think as an individual because what disciples need is to live together in shared discipleship. It is that little bit that each of us possesses—the poverty of those five fish and loaves we collectively have to offer—that can feed the entire multitude, whose members are hungering for the Way, the Truth, and the Life. None of us should ever fear offering what little we may possess—no matter how meager or humble that portion may be—because only by sharing that portion, in making ourselves a gift and allowing Jesus to take it and bless it, will our lives as disciples bear much fruit as a community.
For Catholics, celebrating the Mass each week is mandatory, but not for the reason that it’s Church law. Instead, the Church made it a law because God has entered into the darkness of death in the sacrifice of the Cross to give us life. In the Mass, Jesus makes himself the true food that sustains us as his disciples even in those times when our life’s path becomes tough and many obstacles slow our forward progress. In the Mass, Jesus makes us to travel his path, of sharing what little we may have or what little we are that if shared, becomes wealth because God’s transforming power—which is love—descends into our poverty to transform it into divine riches to be shared with the multitude.
On this Solemnity of Corpus Christi, the Church reminds us to worship Christ who is truly wholly and truly present in the Eucharist. But, more than that: To allow Jesus to transform us into a community of disciples who leave behind their individualism and aren’t afraid to give and then to share what they possess in common with those who so desperately hunger for the Way, the Truth, and the Life yet are looking for it in all the wrong nooks and crannies of the world. The "communion" that happens "in here" is only one half of the proposition. The other half of the proposition is the "communion" that Jesus' disciples effect "out there," nourished and strengthened by Word and Sacrament in here.
Discipleship requires being nourished by Word and Sacrament in the regular celebration of the Eucharist. Let us pray that we might participate fitfully in the Mass each Sunday, at a minimum, so that Jesus will transform us to follow his Way, to live His truth, and to be His life in communion with others "in here" by sharing what we have "out there" with who are hungering for the Way, the Truth, and the Life—beginning perhaps first with those fallen away Catholics. Then our lives will bear much fruit.
The reason Mrs. Imus’ profession of faith caught my attention is that on previous occasions, she has espoused moral positions that are 100% opposed to Church teaching, for example, the so-called “right” for homosexuals to "marry." Deidre Imus has also provided ample indications that she does not regularly attend Mass, if at all. Furthermore, she has espoused religious ideals concerning prayer and abstinence on her husband’s cable television morning show that are more rooted in and in synch with pantheism and nature worship than the Nicene Creed.
In these ways, Deidre Imus is similar to so many people who call themselves “Catholic” today—and especially those who are graduates of Catholic universities and colleges. Perhaps 75% of U.S. Catholics think and conduct themselves just Deidre Imus does. “I am a Catholic,” they say, suggesting that being Catholic is a matter of how each individual defines the Catholic faith and its practice rather than as the Church defines the faith and its practice. It’s all so very “democratic,” “inclusive,” and “non-judgmental.” And, besides, how can that many “Catholics” be wrong?
It also happens that I was sent an email this week containing an article published by a British newspaper. The article concerned the decline of the Anglican Church. But, more important—insofar as I was concerned—were the two pictures the newspaper printed to illustrate the article’s contents.
One of the pictures depicted an Anglican church service on what likely was just another, ordinary, ho-hum Sunday. In a very large and beautiful church, a handful of congregants appeared to be attending the service. Maybe there were twenty; most were females, with an average age that I would judge to be about seventy-five years.
The second picture depicted a mid-day prayer service at a mosque located in the same neighborhood as the Anglican parish. The congregation not only filled the mosque—with congregants positioned in neat, straight rows—but also pouring out of the mosque’s front doors. The congregants—young and old, but mostly it appeared in their late thirties or early forties—filled the street not just in front of the mosque, but up and down the street as well. In the picture, every congregant was kneeling prostrate in prayer, facing Mecca.
The contrast in these two worshipping communities could not be more stark.
Let’s consider the “bigger picture.”
In the Anglican Church, members are not required to attend weekly services. In fact, they are allowed to believe pretty much anything they want, even if what they believe contradicts scripture and Church teaching. The pews of most Anglican parishes are empty. Research indicates that the Anglican Church is not declining. No, it is dying.
Among the five pillars of Islam is daily prayer. In practice, what this means is that every Muslim must pray five times daily (early morning, noon, mid-afternoon, sunset, and evening), bowing to and then prostrating themselves in submission before God, having previously purified one’s hands and feet with water (or sand), and facing toward Mecca. Communal prayer is preferred to individual, private prayer. And this is to say nothing about Ramadan, the month-long fast from sunrise to sunset. Mosques are filled to overflowing, not just in England but globally. Research suggests that the Muslim faith is expanding exponentially. It may very well be the most influential if not dominant faith in Europe and Southeast Asia within a couple of decades.
The point I wish to make today concerns what those two pictures reminded me about this past week and today’s Solemnity of Corpus Christi. Did you know that the largest religious denomination in the United States are Catholics who have fallen-away from the Church and don’t practice the faith or believe much of what the Church teaches? Like Deidre Imus, most of these women and men desperately want the Church to reform itself in their image and likeness, to teach what they want to hear and, in short, to “get with the times.”
Also this past week, the Bishop of Sioux City (Iowa), the Most Reverend R. Walker Nickless, addressed this very matter in a pastoral letter to the priests, religious, and laity of his diocese. This shepherd challenged his sheep to do something that's quite likely to irk many Catholics: To learn to “exorcise” what Bishop Nickless called “the so-called ‘spirit of Vatican II’ to end the secularization that has ‘wreaked havoc’ on the Church since the Council.”
Before judging Bishop Nickless a “knuckle-dragging theological Neanderthal,” as many Catholics today might, stop and consider Bishop Nickless’ analysis of what he believes has transpired during the five decades since Vatican II. Bishop Nickless wrote:
We must stop speaking of the “Pre-Vatican II” and “Post Vatican II” Church.
The “hermeneutic of discontinuity,” under the guise of the “spirit of Vatican II,”
sees the Second Vatican Council as a radical break with the past. There can
be no split…between the Church and her faith before and after the Council.
The Council’s meaning must be found only in the letter of the documents
themselves. The so-called “spirit” of the Council has no authoritative
interpretation. It is a ghost or demon that must be exorcised if we are to
proceed with the Lord’s work.
It is crucial that we all grasp that the hermeneutic or interpretation of
discontinuity or rupture, which many think is the settled and even official
position, is not the true meaning of the Council.
Bishop Nickless situated all of this:
The cultural upheaval of the 1960s and 70s precipitated a shift in
perspective about the Church, and it began to seem that “nothing was
certain or solid” in its teaching or liturgy. Sometimes, we set out to
convert the world, but were instead converted by it. We have sometimes
lost sight of who we are and what we believe, and therefore have little
to offer the world that so desperately needs the Gospel.
For Bishop Nickless, the problem is what theologians have called the “hermeneutic of discontinuity,” he wrote, which “emphasizes the ‘engagement with the world’ to the exclusion of the deposit of faith.” Nickless continued:
This has wreaked havoc on the Church, systematically dismantling
the Catholic Faith to please the world, watering down what is
distinctively Catholic, and ironically becoming completely irrelevant
and impotent for the mission of the Church in the world. The Church
that seeks simply what works or is “useful” in the end becomes useless.
Bishop Nickless claims to have “no other desire” than to see the reforms of Vatican II implemented properly.”
What the great majority of Catholics today believe that means stands in antithetical opposition to what it means to Bishop Nickless and, it might be added, the Church’s Magisterium.
In today’s gospel, Jesus tells his disciples: “You give them something to eat.”
The “them” is the crowd, the multitude of people who are hungering for the Way, the Truth, and the Life, but who are searching for it in every nook and cranny of this world where it’s never going to be found. To this crowd, Jesus speaks and acts not like the Jewish religious authorities but in a completely new and entirely different way. They say that Jesus teaches with “authority,” that is, someone who is genuine and consistent, who speaks and acts with truth, who gives the hope that comes from God, and who is the revelation of God who is love.
The “you” are the disciples. And, those disciples are us. Jesus said: “You yourselves give them something to eat.” Will we respond to Jesus’ challenge by telling the multitude of people today who are hungering for the Way, the Truth, and the Life simply what they want to hear?
If not, where are we to be nourished and strengthened to tell the multitude what God desires them to hear and what they truly need to hear?
Today we celebrate the Solemnity of Corpus Christi, the Body and Blood of Christ. We have gathered around the Lord’s table, upon which Jesus once again gives us his true body and his true blood, making present today on this altar the sacrifice of the Cross on Mount Calvary. Listening to his Word from scripture and nourishing ourselves with his true body and blood, Jesus nourishes and strengthens us in a truly amazing way: He transforms us from a multitude of anonymous individuals—nameless and faceless people in a crowd—into a community whose individual members’ faith in God’s only begotten Son enables them to live together as disciples. To the degree this amazing transformation takes place and we become that community, this celebration of the Eucharist is a moment of true communion with Jesus alive and present in our midst.
A lot of people who have fallen away from the Church and a lot of young people who soon will fall away from the Church have many complaints about Sunday Mass. The obligation to attend is bad enough, they opine, depriving them of their “Sabbath rest,” which is to say, Sunday begins with “It’s all about ME.” At Mass, if it’s not the music, it’s the boring homily, or the discomfort experienced in this building. Yet, if we understand what the personal transformation the body and blood of Christ can effect in us as disciples, it’s not the quality or the type of music that effects true communion. It’s not the quality of the homily or the priest’s delivery that effects true communion. It’s not the grandeur of the building or it simplicity that effects true communion. Yes, it is true that good music can uplift the heart and mind to God. Yes, a good homily and a good delivery can also uplift the heart and mind to God. And, yes, a grand edifice or a simple cabin can transport the heart and mind from the things of this world to those of the heavenly realm.
But, all of that is unimportant because none of it—the music, the homily, the priest’s delivery, or the grandeur or simplicity of the building—has the power to effect true communion. Only the Word as well as Jesus' body and blood—making present here and now the sacrifice of the Cross on Mount Calvary—can effect true communion, transforming each of us from anonymous people in a crowd—a multitude—into an authentic community of disciples who provide for the multitude. The Sunday Mass, then, is the sacrament of communion that heals the devastation caused by individualism so that we can live together as disciples and proclaim to the multitude our faith in Jesus—who is the Way, the Truth, and the Life.
Perhaps similar to the first disciples as they were portrayed in today’s gospel, many of us may also feel impoverished, believing that we do not possess what it takes to live as authentic disciples. But, that’s to think as an individual because what disciples need is to live together in shared discipleship. It is that little bit that each of us possesses—the poverty of those five fish and loaves we collectively have to offer—that can feed the entire multitude, whose members are hungering for the Way, the Truth, and the Life. None of us should ever fear offering what little we may possess—no matter how meager or humble that portion may be—because only by sharing that portion, in making ourselves a gift and allowing Jesus to take it and bless it, will our lives as disciples bear much fruit as a community.
For Catholics, celebrating the Mass each week is mandatory, but not for the reason that it’s Church law. Instead, the Church made it a law because God has entered into the darkness of death in the sacrifice of the Cross to give us life. In the Mass, Jesus makes himself the true food that sustains us as his disciples even in those times when our life’s path becomes tough and many obstacles slow our forward progress. In the Mass, Jesus makes us to travel his path, of sharing what little we may have or what little we are that if shared, becomes wealth because God’s transforming power—which is love—descends into our poverty to transform it into divine riches to be shared with the multitude.
On this Solemnity of Corpus Christi, the Church reminds us to worship Christ who is truly wholly and truly present in the Eucharist. But, more than that: To allow Jesus to transform us into a community of disciples who leave behind their individualism and aren’t afraid to give and then to share what they possess in common with those who so desperately hunger for the Way, the Truth, and the Life yet are looking for it in all the wrong nooks and crannies of the world. The "communion" that happens "in here" is only one half of the proposition. The other half of the proposition is the "communion" that Jesus' disciples effect "out there," nourished and strengthened by Word and Sacrament in here.
Discipleship requires being nourished by Word and Sacrament in the regular celebration of the Eucharist. Let us pray that we might participate fitfully in the Mass each Sunday, at a minimum, so that Jesus will transform us to follow his Way, to live His truth, and to be His life in communion with others "in here" by sharing what we have "out there" with who are hungering for the Way, the Truth, and the Life—beginning perhaps first with those fallen away Catholics. Then our lives will bear much fruit.
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