If you live in Michigan....

Do your best to attend this.

If you don't live in Michigan, consider praying for everyone involved in this, as well as for +Paul Schultz who does a lot of this work.

What Should We Confess: New CL Column

After what seems like a billion columns on the sacrament of confession, wrote the last one today.  (At least for now!)  There was some things I would have loved to get to, but i'll admit, I'm burned out on that particular topic.  Expect some more here on the blog in the future.  One example:  Paul VI stated confession was the key to living Ephesians 5, which both Leo XIII and Blessed John Paul II viewed the essence of the Christian mystery.  Why?

Today's column covers two topics:  should we confess only mortal sins, and how often should we go to confession?

Leo XIII, John Paul II, and the Purpose of Society

In a previous essay, I introduced a point that some found surprising:  When trying to understand Blessed John Paul II's Man and Woman He Created Them, one should look to the Catholic Social teaching of Leo XIII for insight.  The root of both Leo's social magesterium and Blessed John Paul's Wednesday audiences stem from the fact that man was created in the image of God, and hence for union with God.  I would like to continue in that vein of thought today.

Why does society exist in creation?  Even amongst the beasts of the earth there exists hierarchies within their circles.  As the highest of animal creation, the society of man is far more advanced than those of beasts.  Why should such a society exist?  In his encyclical Immortale Dei Pope Leo gave the following profound insight:

Man's natural instinct moves him to live in civil society, for he cannot, if dwelling apart, provide himself with the necessary requirements of life, nor procure the means of developing his mental and moral faculties. Hence, it is divinely ordained that he should lead his life -- be it family, or civil -- with his fellow men, amongst whom alone his several wants can be adequately supplied.

Man exists in a society because he must by his very nature.  He is not perfect, and as a result will always lack in some things which others will complement him in.  From this simple insight flows all of Catholic social teaching.  The Social Magesterium of the Church teaches how individual Catholics interact with civil society, government, and vice-versa for both.

Blessed John Paul II takes this insight and probes even deeper.  He asks his audience to ponder why this is the case (why can man only find satisfaction through the other), and believes the answer is found in man's creation as male and female:

When God-Yahweh said, "It is not good that man should be alone," (Gn 2:18) he affirmed that "alone," man does not completely realize this essence. He realizes it only by existing "with someone"—and even more deeply and completely—by existing "for someone."

According to John Paul, the mystery of creation sheds new light on this timeless truth explained by Pope Leo.  It is not enough that man simply live in a society so that only his needs are taken care of.  Such a society cannot last because it is full of nothing but selfish individuals.  As a result, Pope Leo speaks of the necessity of people living for the common good. (ID 3)  For John Paul, the only way one can live for the good of society is by living "for" that society, and at its most basic institution, the society of marriage, where two become "one flesh."

Through our relationship with others as male and female, we discover the truth of our existence.  John Paul II references the Second Vatican Council when he states the following:

 Let us recall here the text of the last Council which declared that man is the only creature in the visible world that God willed "for its own sake." It then added that man "can fully discover his true self only in a sincere giving of himself".

Pope Leo XIII discusses the nature of man in different terms, but terms I believe are essential to understanding John Paul's teaching:

Nature and reason, which command every individual devoutly to worship God in holiness, because we belong to Him and must return to Him, since from Him we came, bind also the civil community by a like law.   (ID 6)

Now as you read this, you might go:  these two aren't alike at all.  There's absolutely no relation!  John Paul II is concerned with the gift of self, and Leo is concerned with the worship of God as a result of our roots.   The answer to this conundrum is Jesus Christ.  Christ lived a life of complete sacrifice and self-donation when He left His heavenly home to become man.  He showed the depths of that self-donation when he died for our sins on the Cross, and because of that self-donation, returned to His heavenly home.

When Christ calls us to self-donation as He did, He calls upon us to return to our original calling, and through that calling, return to the Father.  The purpose of John Paul II's Wednesday audiences is to provide insight into how recognizing the truth of our creation as male and female can lead to the Father.  In this one could say he is providing a legitimate development of Leo's profound insight.

Leo XIII and the "Ends" of Marriage

Whenever the issue of the ends of marriage is discussed, the issue will normally be defined in the following way, no matter who you talk to. Before the Second Vatican Council, the Church allegedly focused almost solely on the procreative ends of marriage. After the Second Vatican Council, the Church in a legitimate development of doctrine, decided to focus on the unitive ends of marriage alongside the procreative. The one thing remarkable about this interpretation is how consistent it is across the ideological spectrum. Individuals like Dr. Jay Boyd (professed traditionalist and believer that natural family planning is destroying marriage) bemoan this turn of events, while those like Christopher West and Dr. Janet Smith (who snidely refers to this set of circumstances as "yesterdays church") celebrate it.  I'm not just of the opinion that both sides are wrong.  I'm of the opinion that this debate is for the most part pointless.

Revisitng the "Westian Wars"

When the so-called "Westian Wars" erupted in 2010, I found myself working together with those like Dawn Eden and Fr. Angelo Geiger in attempting to critique some of the more outlandish views of Christopher West in his presentation of Blessed John Paul II's "Man and Woman He Created Them."  If one looked at the tale of the tape, this really was David versus Goliath.  One popular author and several relatively unknown bloggers waging a combox war against one of the biggest Catholic speakers in America, one of the foremost experts on Humanae Vitae, one of the most prominent Catholic publishing companies, as well as the one of the largest Catholic Web Magazines.

Charity Reigns Within the House of God

For all of the good that social media has given us, one cannot deny the negatives that have come with it.  One of the biggest negatives is the way we dehumanize those we disagree with on the blogosphere.  One would think that Catholics would be above this.  One thinking this would also be incredibly naive.  Sadly, some of the most well known Catholic bloggers are professionals at little else nowadays than dehumanizing those they disagree with.  When you rebuke them, others will rebuke you, reminding you that "they also do a lot of good which you don't see, so you should let it go."

While we should always make accommodation for fallen human nature, we shouldn't hesitate to realize what we are doing is making an accommodation.  These types of individuals do just as much damage to the gospel as the benefit they do from that positive work.  St. Cyprian elaborates on this issue in On the Unity of the Church:

Therefore also the Holy Spirit came as a dove, a simple and joyous creature, not bitter with gall, not cruel in its bite, not violent with the rending of its claws, loving human dwellings, knowing the association of one home; when they have young, bringing forth their young together; when they fly abroad, remaining in their flights by the side of one another, spending their life in mutual intercourse, acknowledging the concord of peace with the kiss of the beak, in all things fulfilling the law of unanimity. This is the simplicity that ought to be known in the Church, this is the charity that ought to be attained, that so the love of the brotherhood may imitate the cloves, that their gentleness and meekness may be like the lambs and sheep. What does the fierceness of wolves do in the Christian breast? What the savageness of dogs, and the deadly venom of serpents, and the sanguinary cruelty of wild beasts? We are to be congratulated when such as these are separated from the Church, lest they should lay waste the doves and sheep of Christ with their cruel and envenomed contagion.
 

The people that St. Cyprian has in mind are primarily heretics, but it is interesting that he first slams them for horrible morals in their lack of charity, not horrible doctrine.  (He touches upon the doctrine in the next segment.)  In the mind of this great saint, a lack of charity has no place within the Church.  By her very nature as an evangelical church, charity is part of the Catholic Churches nature. 

Some will counter "well sorry, I believe that error needs to be condemned as error, and we shouldn't be having a tea party with evil people."  Of course nobody is saying you cannot condemn error.  Indeed, St. Cyprian is very strong in condemning error in this and several other treatises.  The point is instead to stick to issues, not the person as much as possible.  Whenever you bring up the defects of another, ask yourself "is this relevant to the argument."  If it isn't, then don't bring it up.

Another point is to show charity to those within your own house.  You don't have to like them.  Yet to hold those as less than Catholic than you are (especially when the Church has not specifically said so) is a sin against charity, and this damages the effectiveness of your message.  To treat anyone as somehow less than human because of said disagreements is beyond shameful, and it doesn't matter how much good that individual has done over the years for the cause.

Catholic Social Teaching: From Leo XIII to the Theology of the Body

I'm doing a somewhat thankless task.  For one reason or another, traditionalists do not like John Paul II's Man and Woman He Created Them, popularly known as the Theology of the Body, hereafter TOB.  More often than not, this is done because a lot of the top evangelists of TOB are from a certain school of thought which looks with disdain upon most if not everything before the Second Vatican Council.  Hence Janet Smith, Fr. Thomas Loya and others speak with derision of "yesterday's Church" which wasn't very good at a lot of things, except repressing the truth about sexuality, which they excelled at.  Traditionalists rightly realize this is a load of crap, but all too often ignore Blessed John Paul's teaching about this subject as well.

Latest at Catholic Lane: Why Go to Confession?

At Catholic Lane I offer a bit of biblical study on why we go to confession, and why I think our catechesis towards the sacrament is flawed and ineffective.

The Evangelical Purpose of the Church

Why are we Catholic?  What's the point?  I think this simple point is lost in a lot of the technical discussions Catholics (especially those in the blogosphere) engage in.  This point is lost to the detriment not just of our souls, but of Catholicism as a whole.  Indeed, one of the biggest problems we suffer in the Church today comes from getting the answer to these two questions wrong.  The comforting thought is that the problem we are experiencing today is something that Christians throughout history have confronted.  If we are to solve this problem, we should look to these sources.

On. St Cyprian

As soon as I enter the whole TOB/NFP discussion again, I find myself immensly bored by it.  Time to do stuff I find more fun and edifying.  Over the next week or so will be doing a bit of commentary on St. Cyprian's On the Unity of the Church and how it offers lessons for Catholics today about how to look at the Catholic Church.