The military regime in Burma is intent on wiping out Christianity in the country, according to claims in a secret document believed to have been leaked from a government ministry. Entitled "Programme to destroy the Christian religion in Burma", the incendiary memo contains point by point instructions on how to drive Christians out of the state.
The text, which opens with the line "There shall be no home where the Christian religion is practised", calls for anyone caught evangelising to be imprisoned. It advises: "The Christian religion is very gentle – identify and utilise its weakness."
A majority of the Karen tribe have become Christians (evangelicals) over the past few decades. Let us pray for them in their suffering.
Another fascinating look at the Burmese Catholics growing under persecution from Catholic World Report and in light of our discussions here:
"Bishop Phamo now wonders whether the government edicts against Church-run institutions really were as devastating as they seemed. "Maybe the ban has turned out to be a blessing in disguise for us," he reflects. With even organized social work now being reserved by the military junta as a state monopoly, the Christian churches had no choice but to concentrate their energies on pastoral work.
Freed from the responsibilities that come with the administration of various institutions, pastors spent more time caring directly for their flocks. In a country that still remains largely under the cover of forests, and where the Catholic congregations are scattered across the map, ordinary pastoral care for parishioners is a time-consuming business. The bishop remarks: "We are now struggling to find time to visit our people more often. So what would our situation have been like if we had institutions to look after?"
Perhaps that personal attention to parishioners--which is practiced not only by Catholics but by the country's other Christian groups as well, for the same reasons--explains why the proportion of Christians within the population of Myanmar has grown in the years since the military takeover. Two decades ago, Christians accounted from 4.6 percent of the national population; today the figure has crept up to over 6 percent."
I got to check in on the blog from the St. Patrick's library and was happy to see a lot of good discussion going on. But I did notice a theme: discouragement about the state of things in local parishes and the gratitude for the support provided by lay movements. I've been there. I know how frustrating it can be when you can't find a parish in your vicinity that provides or a pastor that understands the kind of support that serious lay Catholics long for. While I certainly want to support and encourage the good work of the movement, I also need to affirm that the situation really isn't that lop-sided.
It is happening in parishes around the country. Parishes that are committed to evangelization are to be found in Idaho, Texas, and Iowa. Parishes that are committed to becoming houses of formation for the laity are in Washington, California, and South Carolina. Parishes are forming their own gifts discernment teams in Seattle, San Francisco, Boise, Spokane, Dubuque, Nashville, Houston, Greenville, Atlanta, Colorado Springs. There are whole dioceses in which everyone from the Bishop down to the local volunteer catechists have been through the Called & Gifted process.
On our Institute website, we have a group of links called Parishes of Interest. At the moment, we have 79 parishes listed by state (or country) that we have either worked directly with or that have been recommended to us as exceptional.
We would love to expand our list but we need your help. Are you aware of a parish in the US or elsewhere, that is evangelizing and/or forming and supporting lay apostles effectively and has a website? If so, please post the parish name, location, and website here. Tell the rest of us about this pearl of great price and we'll add it to the list.
One of the surprises about our time at St. Patrick’s in Menlo Park last week was the fact that 2/3 of the 86 men being formed there for the diocesan priesthood are non native English speakers: Hispanic, Vietnamese, Korean, Filipino, even Belgian, and three deaf students! They ranged in age from 22 to mid-50’s. They represent dioceses up and down the west coast: all the Californian dioceses, of course, but also Seattle, Alaska, Portland, etc.
The rector, a very welcoming Sulpician priest, told us that it costs five times as much to educate a single deaf seminarian as it does a hearing one but that the deaf community is seriously underserved. The mix of language, culture, age, and life experiences affects every part of formation.
It was illuminating to talk to the transitional deacons who are going to be ordained this summer. They all seemed palpably excited. They seemed especially interested in our presentation on Church teaching on the priestly task of governance, which includes calling forth the charisms and vocations of all the baptized for the sake of our common mission.
The deacon who drove me to the airport was intriguing: he was born into a Catholic family in Vietnam but did not attend church. He fled Vietnam in the late 80’s and spent time in a refugee camp in Hong Kong. There he was moved by the devotion and self-sacrifice of the priests, sisters, and lay volunteers who left comfortable lives to serve people like himself. This experience of God’s love triggered a conversion and within a year of entering the US, he began studying for the priesthood. He emphasized that he would not first serve in a Vietnamese community but in an “American” parish (his term).
At St. Blog’s, most of us don’t work in seminaries or with seminarians. I have noticed that so many of our discussions seem to presume that the priesthood will remain what most of us have known: majority native English speaking, European, cradle Catholic. The Fr. O’Malley model. However, according to the Center for Applied Research in the Apostolate (CARA), 25% of all current US seminaries are foreign-born. They come from 84 different countries.
Some seem to believe that we can and should keep out non-Catholic, non-European influences which might “dilute” European Catholic culture and practice as we have known it.
The situation at St. Patrick’s would seem to say it is already too late. Non-European, “non-cradle” Catholicism is not just mushrooming in the global south, it is here in the US. Today. Ordained in three months and coming to a parish near you.
It seems that both Jack and I were felled by a similar malady yesterday--although I've been dealing with mine for about 4 days now. In a strange way, being sick reminds me of my days in Graduate School. Not because I was always sick, but because the community at our Newman Center would have been tripping over themselves to pray for me.
These folks loved to pray for people--specifically praying over them. If someone had a sniffle, or a difficult exam, or a real tragedy in their lives, you could be sure there was a group of folks who would gather round, place a gentle hand upon a shoulder or a head and begin to pray.
We were like spring-loaded prayer warriors, launching ourselves at the darkness in people's lives. It brings a smile to my face--especially as I remember the more light-hearted moments. However, there was something powerful and holy about what they did as well.
When they prayed for something, they expected that God would answer--and in 'miraculous' ways. The amazing thing was, He often did move in a surprisingly tangible way.
Even without the "signs and wonders" that God performed during those days, I took away something very precious. The idea that catholics can, indeed, be open about their prayer lives--sharing the way that God has touched and gifted them, and offering those gifts on behalf of another.
It was different once I graduated and connected with a local parish. There was a "conspicuous silence" within that community that I have found in almost every single parish I've been a member of--with the exception of one. Within those communities there might be individuals who were open and excited about sharing their experience of God. I think there were even small faith groups geard toward that in some places. It always seemed, however, that these were hidden conclaves separated from the rest of the parish--places where folks of 'questionable manners' broke the unspoken code.
As I writer, I am often guilty of taking a bit of poetic license to drive home a point, and perhaps I am doing that here.
But not by much.
Somehow, somewhere we have bought in to the idea that our faith is personal and private--something that we should be careful not to bring out in to polite company or the public square. Something that we should reserve for Sundays within the confines of the parish walls.
We have, as a People, lost our spring.
Or as Jesus might have put it, "We are salt that has lost its flavor."
That is unlike most parishes, which are predicated on providing (a) the sacraments and (b) for want of a better term, pastoral services. Now both (a) and(b), especially (a), are absolutely necessary. But when there is no community based on experiential encounter with Christ in prayer and in each other, the sacraments and services are experienced primarily as institutional dispensations, and the enterprise starts running more on human than divine energy. The ordinary lay Catholic notices that other institutions provide similar services, most of them more reliably than her local church; she treats the sacraments as goodies you "receive" from the institution, which is located in a building complex at which you pull up and get what you're there for before you pull out, never really forming a community of intentional disciples with your fellow parishioners. The Church thus becomes, experientially speaking, a consumer organization, less exciting if occasionally more necessary than the shopping malls. That is often why people are "bored" by church. Given their experience, who wouldn't be?
As we have discussed here in the comboxes and in posts, intentionality (as defined by Mike) and the sacraments are integrally linked. The sacraments in a very real sense form (as in constitute) the community of faith, and lives of intentional discipleship allow the sacramental graces to unfold in our lives--deepening our communion and our growth in holiness, as well as disposing us to live out our secular apostolic office more freely and intentionally.
It's a classic Catholic "both/and" situation. We have, however, not effectively lived out the intentional part. Helping others meet Christ and forming communities of intentional disciples so that they may effectively fulfill their particular secular vocation is not a priority for most parishes--despite that clearly being what the Church has asked them to be.
And so, the parish is experienced as "sacramental way station." People come, get what they need/fulfill an obligation, and then move out. As someone who takes the challenge of the Second Vatican Council and the writings of John Paul II seriously, it is frustrating to see that men and women have to find intentionality and the full riches of the Church's Tradition in a movement rather than in their parish (and I say this as someone who has a tremendous respect for the New Movements). I'm even more frustrated and saddened when men and women feel like they have to leave the Catholic Church to encounter Christ and a life of intentional discipleship.
That is one of the reasons why I look to our protestant brothers and sisters to examine how they have built communities of intentional disciples. Not to import incomplete or incompatible theology, but to help us re-root the authentically Catholic things that they have preserved or rediscovered and, on a practical level, examine how they have prioritized and built cultures and structures of intentional discipleship so that we can more effectively do the same in a way that allows us to bring the fullness of the Church's Tradition to the endeavor.
Christocentricity in catechesis also means the intention to transmit not one's own teaching or that of some other master, but the teaching of Jesus Christ, the Truth that He communicates or, to put it more precisely, the Truth that He is. Catechesis Tradendae 6
All in all, it can be taken here that catechesis is an education of children, young people and adults in the faith, which includes especially the teaching of Christian doctrine imparted, generally speaking, in an organic and systematic way, with a view to initiating the hearers into the fullness of Christian life. Accordingly, while not being formally identified with them, catechesis is built on a certain number of elements of the Church's pastoral mission that have a catechetical aspect, that prepare for catechesis, or that spring from it. These elements are: the initial proclamation of the Gospel or missionary preaching through the kerygma to arouse faith, apologetics or examination of the reasons for belief, experience of Christian living, celebration of the sacraments, integration into the ecclesial community, and apostolic and missionary witness. Catechesis Tradendae 18
The specific character of catechesis, as distinct from the initial conversion - bringing proclamation of the Gospel, has the twofold objective of maturing the initial faith and of educating the true disciple of Christ by means of a deeper and more systematic knowledge of the person and the message of our Lord Jesus Christ.(49) But in catechetical practice, this model order must allow for the fact that the initial evangelization has often not taken place. A certain number of children baptized in infancy come for catechesis in the parish without receiving any other initiation into the faith and still without any explicit personal attachment to Jesus Christ; they only have the capacity to believe placed within them by Baptism and the presence of the Holy Spirit; Catechesis Tradendae 19
When I was the Chief Operating Officer of a small start-up publishing company, I spent a good part of my day dealing with employee issues, whether it was job dissatisfaction, job performance, or personal difficulties. Most of the time, it seemed like there was an endless stream of folks who needed to talk with me each day.
I really resented that, thinking that it was keeping me from my real work--until an employee walked in who had obviously been crying. It turns out that this woman's friend had been missing for a few days. The night before she had received a phone call from the police asking her to come down and identify a body. Her friend had committed suicide and she was the only one who could give a positive ID. Naturally, this woman was devastated--I was amazed that she even made it in to work at all.
We talked for quite a while--which mostly meant that I listened as she poured out all of the things that were on her heart. Now, I am not blessed with the charism of encouragement, but I did my best to really be present to her. She was an athiest--and a pretty wild one at that, but while she spoke I had a sense that she was searching for meaning in her friend's death. The only thing I could offer her was my presence--and somehow, for that moment, it was enough. There in my office, I had a sense that, through my willingness to listen, through the offering of my broken and limited gifts, that Christ Himself was present, listening and weeping and holding this woman in His arms.
At the end of our talk, I asked her if she would mind if I prayed for her and her friend. To my surprise, she said "yes." When this woman finally left my office, she still struggled with grief and devastation over her friend's death--but I know that she received some healing and peace in that encounter with Christ.
The whole experience brought me to my knees.
I began to understand that rather than being an interruption in my workday, dealing with the problems of my employees was perhaps my most authentic vocation. God had put me, in that company in that time and that place for a purpose. I began to see my employees as persons whom God had asked me to love and look out for, called to work for what was authentically human and good in their lives. That included making sure the business was healthy and strong.
Each day I sat in the parking lot in my car praying for the company and for each individual employee (we only had about 20). I've never looked at management the same since.
On an earlier post, discussion turned to the institutional and charismatic dimensions of the Church and how there isn't a dichotomy between the two. I made mention of an insightful comment by then-Cardinal Ratzinger that I had found on the subject and thought I would follow up on it with a post.
As a member of a lay ecclesial movement, I am often asked how it affects my involvement with my local parish and whether I see these two aspects of the Church's life as opposed to each other. (I do not, for the record.) In response to a comment on Integrity, I started a series (still incomplete) called "Parishes vs. Movements?". In looking at the question of why movements at all, I stumbled across the following quote of Cardinal Ratzinger:
The duality of institution and event, or institution and charism, immediately suggests itself as a fundamental model for resolving the question. But if we try to analyze the two terms more closely in order to arrive at valid rules for defining their relationship, something unexpected happens. The concept of "institution" comes to pieces in our hands when we try to give it a precise theological definition. After all, what are the fundamental institutional factors in the Church, the permanent organization that gives the Church its distinctive shape? The answer is, of course, sacramental office in its different degrees: bishop, priest, deacon. The sacrament that, significantly, bears the name ordo is, in the end, the sole permanent and binding structure that forms so to say the fixed organizational pattern of the Church and makes the Church an "institution." But it was not until this century that it became customary, for reasons of ecumenical expediency, to designate the sacrament of ordo simply as "office" [Amt]. This usage places ordo entirely in the light of institution and the institutional. But this "office" is a "sacrament," and this fact signals a break with the ordinary sociological understanding of institutions. That this structural element of the Church, which is the only permanent one, is a sacrament, means that it must be perpetually recreated by God. It is not at the Church's disposal, it is not simply there, and the Church cannot set it up on its own initiative. It comes into being only secondarily through a call on the part of the Church. It is created primarily by God's call to this man, which is to say, only charismatically-pneumatologically. By the same token, the only attitude in which it can be accepted and lived is one unceasingly shaped by the newness of the vocation, by the unmanipulable freedom of the pneuma. The reason -- ultimately, the only reason -- why there can be a priest shortage is this. The Church cannot simply appoint "officials" by itself, but must await the call from God. This is why it has been held from the beginning that this office cannot be made by the institution, but has to be impetrated from God.
I found this a striking explanation of how the charismatic and institutional dimensions of the Church are intertwined.
. . .the Catholic Church, at least in this and other developed countries, is just too bloody institutional. That accounts for a great deal, if not most, of what bothers me. What got me thinking about this are two facts of which I have lately been reminded: the indulgence of Archbishop Wuerl of DC in Speaker of the House Nancy Pelosi's "celebration" Mass at Trinity College, where of course the pro-abortion pol received the Eucharist, despite USCCB and Vatican guidelines; and the explosive growth of Pentecostal churches throughout the Christian world. The former, discussed in an informative and lively threadat Amy Welborn's Open Book, exemplifies not rocking the boat against powerful cafeteria Catholics; the latter now presents us with what is arguably the numerically largest form of Christianity next to Catholicism itself. The former signifies institutional thinking; the latter signifies that such thinking is missing something.
Although he doesn't come right out and say it, perhaps the 'something missing' is intentionality--in formation and discipleship. We've talked a little bit about the reasons why Pentecostal Christianity seems to be the fastest growing section of the Church today, but one of things it does seem to have is an emphasis on encounter and relationship with Christ through the power of the Holy Spirit.
Like Michael, I too don't believe that the Church can survive without its institutional side. Christ embraces the whole of our humanity--"stuff" matters. The reality is that where two or three are gathered in Jesus' name both Christ and politics are in their midst. The question is which will we follow?
So often, we, the members and leaders of the Spouse of Christ, the Church, act as if we were the Widows of Christ--stumbling along purely on our own human effort--forming and calling committees and commissions, acting as if we can deploy merely institutional resources toward particular issues.
So, I do have some questions:
Why are the pentecostal and other evangelical denominations growing at an explosive rate relative to our own?
Does intentionality matter?
How do we bring that intentionality into our own communities? What are the concrete things that can be done to accomplish this?
Discussions regarding who is or who is not eating in the "cafeteria" are not helpful to the dialogue, but I would imagine just about anything else is.
Last Spring, while teaching a workshop at a parish in California, I was doing Gifts Discernment Interviews with several of the workshop participants. One woman, a fairly soft-spoken and shy person, scored high on the Craftsmanship charism while taking the Gifts Inventory. As we began to unpack her experiences relating to this charism--particularly with art--I discovered that she was, indeed, an artist. She even had a website where she stored her work.
The interesting thing was that only a few people who knew her knew she was an artist. At the end of the interview, she indicated that she wanted to explore the Craftsmanship charism more but didn't know where she should start. I suggested that perhaps she should let others begin to see her artwork. The parish had a wonderful hall, and I said it would be great to put on an art show at the parish. After all, it was the first step to letting others see her work, and the parish would be a safe environment to start doing so.
I was lucky enough to go back to the parish about 6 months later and was delighted to find out that this woman did, indeed, hold an art show at her parish. Her work elicited such a positive response that she has started to do and show her artwork out in the local community--allowing others to have an encounter with God in the beautiful work she produces.
Sometimes, we only need a little nudge from our fellow brothers and sisters; God takes care of the rest. That's why it is so important to talk about our experiences of being used by God with each other.