Religion in America

Over the few weeks a lot has been written about the most recent Gallup poll on religion in America.  The gist of the survey is that fewer Americans identify themselves as Christians and, of those who do, fewer are claiming membership in mainline protestant denominations and Catholicism.  The headlines have also focused on the increasing number of folks who say that they are atheists.  Some writers sound almost despairing in their review of the survey results.  It’s as if the end of Christianity is just around the next corner.  Others have analyzed the numbers in any way they can that will shore up their own particular beliefs and prejudices.  I’ve been reading the survey and many of the varied commentaries on it and have come to my own peculiar conclusions.

It’s not that I don’t think information like the Gallup poll can be informative.  But for me, the responses to the survey are even more interesting than the survey itself.  To begin with, what do these survey results have to do with our faith?  Evidently, it’s enough to make many writers and chroniclers wring their hands in anxious worry.  But I think they’re wrong to worry, at least about this.  The Church is not a spreadsheet.  And we’re led by a Shepherd, not an accountant.  There’s a danger in looking at faith through corporate eyes.  We forget that the world’s rules don’t apply to followers of Jesus Christ.  If we allow them to, then we’ve truly lost our way.  Getting us lost is what the world is always trying to do to us.  And we can’t allow it.  

Christ never told us that the Church would enjoy the favor of history.  He told us just the opposite.  “I am sending you out like sheep among wolves”(Matthew 10:16).  “If anyone will not welcome you or listen to your words, leave that home or town and shake the dust off your feet”(Matthew 10:14).  Since the earliest years of the Church, there have been those who have left and those who have rejected Christ outright.  Heresies come and go like the wind.  The faith of Christ isn’t easy.  Many find it too hard to bear.  We have to remember that the only measuring stick for the Church is that tree on Golgotha’s hill.

Jesus has promised to always be with His Church and that the Holy Spirit will always protect and guide His flock.  Did He promise that the Church would never see a decline in members?  No.  And we also have to remember that the United States, which is where the survey was conducted, isn’t the center of the world.  His Church is bearing fruit in great numbers in other countries, especially in what we call “the third world.”  The African continent has a vibrant and growing Church, despite terrible oppression and outright murderous attacks on its members.

The Church is only as healthy and strong as each one of us.  If folks are leaving the Church, we have to look at the example each one of us being for Christ.  The world will know us by the fruit we bear:  love, charity, kindness, joy and peace.  Are we so muddled and lukewarm in our own journey that we are no longer a light in the darkness?  If we drift away from the Sacraments that Jesus gave us, how can we keep our eyes fixed on Christ?  If we aren’t on our knees before Him in Adoration, how can we be surprised when no one else is?  Our faith is not about polls or surveys or spreadsheets—it’s about relationships: my relationship with Christ and with my neighbor.  We have to remember His words above all—“…apart from Me, you can do nothing”(John 15:5).

“So when we preach that Christ was crucified, the Jews are offended and the Gentiles say it’s foolishness.”
—I Corinthians 1:23

Loneliness

I’ve written before about my grandfather’s suicide, which happened many years before I was born.  I’ve shared how I think it affected our family, even to this day.  I wasn’t prepared for the reaction that my words encouraged. I had struggled with publishing our family story because I didn’t want the legacy of my dad and grandfather to be changed in any way by my writing. But I shouldn’t have worried. Instead I’ve heard many stories of other families whose lives have been altered forever by suicide. Beginning in 2009, suicide surpassed car crashes as the number one cause of accidental death in the United States. Everyone knows someone who has died in a car accident so it follows that we all know someone who has taken their own life. Many of us have loved people who killed themselves. And all of us are left with questions.

Is suicide always a sin? The short Catholic answer us “no.” In order for an action to be a mortal sin, the person must 1) know the action is sinful, 2) deliberately and freely consent to the sin, and 3) the action must be gravely sinful. Most people in most circumstances would know that suicide is a grave sin. But there are reasons that can keep a person from being able to make a clear, informed, rational choice. We can imagine so many situations and life events which can conspire in a person’s soul and can affect their ability to think clearly and mindfully. Their thoughts and emotions may have been very impaired at the time of their death. You may have known they were in difficulty. Or maybe you didn’t. Maybe their suicide came as a complete shock—a moment of unbelievable, unknowable loss. We try and understand how they came to want to end their lives. We may never really know the answers to our questions. We wonder if somehow we missed the signals they might have been giving—of despair or hopelessness, or of the plans they were making to escape their pain.

Yes, we can always take better care of one another. If a friend or family member makes us wonder if they might be considering suicide, we should ask them. This is an act of love. Your care and concern might be the very thing they’ve most hungered for. There are resources in every community that can help someone who’s hurting and desperately sad. We’re connected to each other and the Lord binds us together in His holy communion. That binding isn’t just symbolic but is a true “oneness” that exists in Christ and His Church. It means that we bear with one another through all difficulties and we stand with one another in our pain. We pray for the hurting and the lonely in our midst. Loneliness may be at the heart of so many of our world’s hurting ones. St. Teresa of Calcutta thought so. She said, “The most terrible poverty is loneliness and the feeling of being unloved.”

Who do you know that is lonely?  The widow down the street. The young man living on his own. The retiree diagnosed with a return of his cancer. Our lives are knit together through Christ’s redemptive love and He commands us to love one another (John 13:34-35). This is not a theory or idea. This is how we love: by being Christ to our neighbor. It means taking the time to get to know the people in our lives. It means introducing ourselves to the new faces at Mass and taking an active part in the ministries in our parish that serve others. Stewardship is more than dropping an envelope in the offertory and getting up to lector every month or so. A steward cares for God’s creation and that means caring for the vulnerable. Don’t be afraid to reach out. Ask the young man to your family table. Offer to drive the widow to Mass next Sunday. You may be the light they’ve been searching for. And pray, always pray. A Rosary for their intentions can open the floodgates of grace. And help is out there. The National Suicide Prevention Hotline is a network of more than 150 crisis centers around the country. Calling 1-800-273-8255 can get free, confidential and local help for anyone who’s suffering and depressed. Don’t miss the chance to be the love and the help someone needs when they need you the most. You’ll be sharing the love and the hope of Christ and His Church. And you just might save a life.

“They help each other and say to one another, ‘Be strong.’” Isaiah 41:6

The Wounds of Christ

There’s an old saying that goes no matter what we humans have accomplished on this earth, there are only 5 that are eternal. What are they? The 5 wounds of Christ. All of the Savior’s love for you and for me is revealed in those wounds. His pierced hands and feet and the gash in His side made by the Roman soldier’s spear shout out: “I love you and I forgive you!”  These wounds that we made with our sins are in heaven today. The angels and the saints are gazing upon them now as Christ sits with His Father in glory on the throne. Of all the wonders of this world, Christ chose His wounds to take back home with Him. They are precious beyond price and we should treasure them for what they are.

Catholics have a long and rich devotion to the Sacred Wounds of our Lord. We love the Crucifix of Christ with Jesus’ Body as a holy reminder of His sacrifice and love. We kneel and pray before the Crucifix just as if we were before Him on that Good Friday noon in Jerusalem. Those hours he spent wounded for us on the Holy Cross are the “high point” of His life on earth. As the Servant, He literally poured out His life to save you and me. In His wounds, Christ is most truly and fully- revealed. “For this reason I came into the world (John 12:23).  His wounds are the most intense revelation of His relationship with the Father. In them we see the full unfolding of God’s plan for our redemption, laid before the foundation of the world. The wounds are perfect sacrificial love–agape–which holds nothing back and offer nothing less than everything.

Other Christians sometimes think we Catholics have a kind of morbid fascination with the wounded Christ perpetually hanging in agony on the crucifixes in our churches and on the chains around our necks. They might prefer the bare cross instead. But I think when they do this, they’re missing out. They see the suffering Christ and want to move on to Easter morning, putting Good Friday in the past. But in truth, Christ’s perfect love for us is an ongoing sacrifice—a total and constant giving of the Son to the Father, for our sake. The wounds of Christ are the slaying of the Lamb. He lives in a state of holocaust, not as a mere historical moment in 33 A.D., but as His state of being, inside and outside of time. This is why the Mass is a re-presentation of Christ’s ongoing sacrifice, not merely a symbolic remembrance of a meal shared with His friends. This is why His wounds, and what they are and what they mean, should be ever-present to us.

His wounds are nothing less than life itself for us for from them spilled His Most Precious Blood, our salvation and our hope. In this way, the Sacred Wounds are the “porta caeli”, the doorway to heaven. St. Paul knew this to be true. When he wrote to the church in Corinth, he emphasized the sacrifice, the woundedness of Jesus.  “When I came to you, announcing to you the testimony of Christ, I did not bring exalted words or lofty wisdom. For I did not judge myself to know anything among you except Jesus Christ and Him crucified” (I Corinthians 2:2). Through His wounds we receive the New Covenant of the Lamb and the graces we need for salvation. From His wounded side flowed the blood and water (the Eucharist and Baptism) and the Church is mystically born in these two Sacraments.

Over the centuries, many saints have venerated the Sacred Wounds, from St. Bernard of Clairvaux to St. Francis of Assissi and his friend, St. Clare. St. Thomas Aquinas wrote extensively about Christ’s wounds. But it’s in “The Imitation of Christ” by Thomas à Kempis where us “struggling” saints can read a valuable lesson. “If you cannot soar up as high as Christ sitting on His throne, behold Him hanging on His Cross.”  Thomas encourages us to rest in Christ’s wounds, to abide in them, to hide ourselves in them. I’m not a philosopher and I’m certainly no theologian. But I can behold Christ on His Cross and when I do, I know how much He loves me. I know my sins wounded Him and I know His loving sacrifice is saving me from what I truly deserve. In His wounds I see His glory and His victory over sin and death. And if Jesus did so much for me and loves me so much that He keeps the wounds I gave Him and has them still in His Body at this moment in heaven—can’t I spend a few moments thanking Him prayer?

“Holy Mother, pierce me through,

In my heart each wound renew

Of my Savior crucified.”

     —Prayer in Honor of the 5 Wounds

“…by His wounds we are healed.”

—Isaiah 53:5

Becoming Catholic

A friend of mine recently told me that at her small Evangelical church the ladies make baskets of homemade cookies each Sunday. These goodies are handed out to any visitor attending their church that day. In exchange, the ladies get the visitor’s name, address, and phone number and arrange a home visit with them the following week. Their cookie ministry is the opening salvo in an orchestrated outreach to welcome people into their church and invite them to become members.  My friend shared that she believes it is an important part of her Christian faith to actively welcome new members and to help interested individuals and families to join their church. As for membership, the person has only to publicly state their desire to join and they are accepted as members that same day. There’s not even a baptismal requirement since her church doesn’t teach that baptism is necessary for church membership.

Becoming Catholic is, to say the least, a bit of a different story. We have a process lasting between six or eight months during which persons desiring to become Catholic meet in a group setting for prayer, instruction, and guidance. This is called RCIA or the Rite of Christian Initiation for Adults. It’s modeled on the practices of the very early Church and has been more widely-implemented in the last 20 years or so. Back when I joined the Church in 1977 the process was a bit more informal. Okay, it was a LOT more informal. As a college sophomore with a year of Catholic theology and philosophy under my belt, I met three times with my local pastor before receiving the Sacraments of Baptism, Confirmation, and first Holy Communion–all on the same day. There was no exhaustive instruction in Church history or dogma, no in- depth discussion of the Sacraments, no time for reflecting on what it meant to journey from my Southern Baptist roots to the Church of Rome. I swam the Tiber in record time and arrived in St. Peter’s Square hardly knowing what I’d done. It was exhilarating and overwhelming. And it was wrong.

Don’t misunderstand me though. I certainly don’t fault the pastor (now deceased) who took me in. At the time, he was doing exactly what most every other Catholic pastor was doing. But my lack of preparation took me years to sort out. To begin with, I thought my becoming Catholic was a private matter between me and The Lord. My understanding of salvation and redemption remained very Protestant. I was confused about the Saints and about Mary. Purgatory had me flummoxed and confession scared me to death. What had drawn me to the Church was the Holy Eucharist and that’s what (Who) I clung to. But my early years as a Catholic were a kind of blur of questions and uncertainty. Thankfully, I was attending a solidly Catholic university surrounded by faithful professors and priests who formed my faith community. And I was able to study in Rome, which never hurts.

Looking back, it’s a wonder I remained Catholic through those early years of my infancy in the faith. For everyone who complains about how hard it is to become a Catholic let me just say: savor your journey through RCIA. Every parish doesn’t have a 5-star program, but allow yourself to be immersed in the process anyway. If you’re being called to the Catholic Church, it’s Christ who is calling you and He’ll be there with you every step along the way. You can enrich your experience by becoming a part of your parish’s faith community even before you’re a full member. Go to Mass every Sunday and make a holy hour of Adoration as often as you can. Read the Catechism and write down your questions. Read some of the Gospels every day and listen to what Jesus might be saying to you in them. Make friends with the parish secretary–she or he knows everyone in the parish and all the programs and ministries that might interest you. The priest’s schedule might be very busy but his secretary can be a great resource for you.

And remember that the journey to becoming Catholic isn’t just about you and God. Catholicism is a family of faith that includes your RCIA group and sponsors, your pastor and lay ministers, the parish and the larger diocese, the worldwide Catholic Church, plus the saints in heaven and the souls in purgatory. We’re all in this together. Be patient with us and with yourself. Remember that most RCIA programs begin in late summer or early fall and usually meet every week until Easter when you’ll receive the sacraments and come into full communion with the Church. Call your local parish and ask about their RCIA schedule. Your months of preparation will lay a fertile groundwork for a lifelong faith.

“About Jesus Christ and the Church, I simply know they are one thing…”

—-St. Joan of Arc