Christ is not who we want him to be. . .

From 2008: Hmmmm. . .this one seems particularly relevant these days. . .no worries: there will be a new one tomorrow, one for the readings for Year C.

29th Sunday OT: Isa 45.1-4-6; 1 Thes 1.1-5; Matt 22.15-21
Fr. Philip Neri Powell, OP
Convento SS. Domenico e Sisto, Roma
 

The Pharisees show Jesus a Roman coin and ask whether or not they should pay Caesar’s taxes. Matthew tells us that “knowing their malice, Jesus said, ‘Why are you testing me, you hypocrites?... ‘Whose image is this and whose inscription?’ They replied, ‘Caesar's.’ At that he said to them, ‘Then repay to Caesar what belongs to Caesar and to God what belongs to God.’" Much has been made of this infamous distinction between what is God’s and what is Caesar’s. And even more could be made of it during this tense political season. I have preached before that ultimately the distinction is meaningless because everything belongs to God, including Caesar himself. I will not belabor the point. Rather, this morning the more interesting moment in this story is the moment Jesus calls the Pharisees out for questioning him, or more precisely, for “testing” him. According to Jesus, the Pharisees test him out of a malicious hypocrisy; that is, a hateful insincerity, a spiteful duplicity. Their apparently sincere question about paying taxes is really a contrived event to catch him up, a staged incident, choreographed and scripted to force Jesus into either treason against Rome or blasphemy against God. Jesus skillfully dodges the trap with an ultimately meaningless answer, but Jesus teaches his lesson nonetheless: “I am not who you want me to be, Pharisees.”

Let’s get down to the question: who do you want God to be? Father, Mother, Santa Claus, mischievous elf, mythical Ego, Jungian archetype, Ground of Being? Spiritual direction often starts with a question about one’s image of God. Our prayer life tells us volumes about how we understand who God is for us. In desperate times, an image of God emerges. Suffering carves out of us a hard figure of God. When we reach beyond ourselves, beyond the possibilities of easy helps and cheap fixes, we usually reach out toward heaven and call on our God for His care, His rescue. And this is exactly what we ought to do. There is nothing so humbling and spiritually purifying as a moment of desperation, a flash of weakness, or damaging stupidity that drives us to God’s comfort. But we must be careful: “Why are you testing me, you hypocrites?” Our God is not our student, every ready to be questioned, every ready to be tested.

Obviously, like most politicians probing an opponents weaknesses, the Pharisees are trying to trip Jesus up by asking him the “are you still beating your wife?” sort of question. No answer is good, any answer will be vacuous in the end. The point of the exchange is not to find the truth but to expose a hated enemy as worthy of one’s hate. Jesus calls this attempt malicious and hypocritical. Malicious because their intent is evil and hypocritical because they know that they are not asking a real question but setting a trap. Their insincerity is poisonous. But only to themselves. Who do they need him to be? Or perhaps the best question: who do they hope he turns out to be? Given their institutional investments and political commitments, no doubt the Pharisees hope he turns out to be little more than a madman from Nazareth.

Given your institutional investments and political commitments, who do you hope Jesus turns out to be? Jesus says to give to Caesar what is his and give to God what belongs to Him. Of course, this means that we give all things to God in the end b/c all that belongs to Caesar really belongs to God. For a while, while we walk around on the dirt, we give Caesar his due—his taxes, our obedience to his laws within our duties to God, our civic participation. But in giving Caesar his due now our hearts must always be inclined to a longing and a goal well beyond Caesar’s temporary crown; focused fiercely, permanently on the Crown of Heaven. The Pharisees hope to use this apparently split allegiance to force Jesus into a political-religious quagmire. They need for Jesus to be a madman or a traitor or a blasphemer, so they test him in their malicious hypocrisy, rigging the test to give them the result they hope for; and in getting the hoped-for answer, relieving them of any duty to preach his message, teach his word, or offer him their obedience as the Messiah promised by the prophets.

Rather than giving them what they hope for, Jesus says, in essence, “I am not who you want me to be.” Jesus is not a traitor or a blasphemer. Nor is he a revolutionary or an institutional cog. He is not a preacher of flaccid tolerance nor a fire-breathing demagogue. He is neither Democrat nor Republican; he is not Obama nor McCain. He is the Prince of Peace who comes with a death-dealing sword to deal death to our sin. He is the Lamb of God who comes with a scourge to beat the unfaithful faithful for their hypocrisy and out of his temple. He is the Final Judge who died for us, making us clean before the Father’s throne. He is the Lion of David’s House who gently shepherds, protects, and provides. He tells Isaiah: “I am the LORD and there is no other, there is no God besides me. It is I who arm you, though you know me not, so that toward the rising and the setting of the sun people may know that there is none besides me. I am the LORD, there is no other.”

And no other is the LORD! Not the state, not a political party, not an institution, not a person or an idea or a theory. Nothing made can save us. Nothing passing can give us eternal life. If it can die, it cannot give Life. If it can change, it cannot impart perfection. If it can fail, it cannot gift us with goodness. That we want a man, a party, a system, or an idea to save us, to give us life, to grant us goodness is a sin as old as Eve’s yes to the serpent’s gift. Like the maliciously hypocritical Pharisees, don’t we often find ourselves testing Jesus to see who he will be for us today? Just poking him a bit to see if he will budge on a favorite issue or yield a bit on a favorite sin? Recently, I watched a youtube video of a Catholic rally for Prop 8 in CA. A woman approached the young men and screamed at them: “Jesus preached tolerance!” Since Prop 8 is designed to define marriage as a union between one man and one woman, we can assume that the woman—shown in the video harassing the men—believes that the first-century Jewish rabbi, Jesus, would “tolerate” a marriage among a man, another man, and the first man’s sister. You are either tolerant or you’re not. Tolerance tolerates no intolerance.

Let’s conclude here with this: Jesus fails the Pharisee’s test. Turns out that he is not who they hope he is. He is not the traitor, the blasphemer, the arch-heretic they had hoped for. Neither is he the hippie-dippy feminist peacenik, nor the fiery-eyed God of Righteous Vengeance Come to Smite Our Enemies, nor the sagacious prophet with a stoical temper. He is the Judge, the Lamb, the Prince, the Child, the King, the Seed, the Vine, the Word, the Spirit. He is the LORD. And there is no other and no other is the LORD. 

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Pope Francis' First Message in English!

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Choose: life or death

Ss. John de Brébeuf and Isaac Jogues
Fr. Philip Neri Powell, OP
St Dominic Church, NOLA

Acknowledge Christ, and he will acknowledge you; deny him, and he will deny you. What's at stake in this choice btw acknowledging or denying Christ? Nothing less than our eternal lives. While we still roam around here on Earth, the stakes may not be eternal but they are no less dire. Choosing btw acknowledging Christ or denying him sets us on a razor's edge, carefully balancing our spiritual lives over a great chasm. Think in terms of light and darkness; purity and impurity; health and disease. Think in terms of good and evil; love and indifference; hope and despair. We are constantly being assaulted by the minions of our decadent culture to give up this silly idea that our choices are so black and white; that there are natural consequences to our actions; that we can know right from wrong. And there is some small truth here. Most of our daily choices aren't so clear-cut. Most of what we have to do to survive and thrive sorely tests our ability to distinguish good from evil. However, one choice—the cardinal choice—molds our hearts and minds into a holy pattern: acknowledge Christ or deny him.

This cardinal choice must be made every hour, every minute of the day, every day for as long as we live. Every choice we make, every decision we take is either an acknowledgment of Christ or a denial of Christ. Let your Yes be Yes and your No be No b/c the choice—every single time—is a choice btw Life and Death. Between life and death eternal. If you choose a life with Christ, there's no guarantee that the life you live here and now will be miraculously easier. In fact, just the opposite is true. Those who choose to live with Christ are promised anything but an easy life. Christ's command to love and his commission to preach his Good News to the nations guarantees a life lived under a sword, a life lived at the very edge of violence and persecution. Why? Because our public witness to God's mercy to sinners is poison to the body of the world, and the world will fight us like an infection. The Enemy hates forgiveness, reconciliation, and hope. He hates the light of Truth and will fight those who shine this light on his lies. When you choose to acknowledge Christ, you choose martyrdom. You choose to die—before you die—as a witness, as one who bears testimony to the saving power of God and loving sacrifice of Christ on his Cross.

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A Parable/Thought Experiment

Instead of working on this morning's homily. . .
 

A passenger jet carrying about 250 people is forced by a hurricane to crash land on a remote island.*

Most of the passengers and the flight crew safely evacuate to the beach to ride out the storm.

After a couple of days, the hurricane abates and three members of the flight crew climb the small mountain back to the crashed jet in an attempt to contact help with the cockpit radio.

The crew is gone for two days.  In the meantime, another hurricane hits the island.  When the three crew members fail to return after four days, a small party of passengers climb the mountain and discover that the storm has caused an avalanche and killed the three crew members.  The radio has been destroyed as well.

The passenger-rescue party find three notebooks bound together with a rubber-band and sealed in a heavy-duty plastic bag.  They take the notebooks back to the beach and begin trying to decipher the scribbled notes.  Soon, all agree that the crew members were taking notes on a proposed rescue plan.  But it is unclear whether they themselves were planning a possible rescue scenario, or if they were taking notes on a plan proposed via radio by authorities on the mainland.

The notes indicated that the stranded passengers and crew would have to undertake several arduous tasks in order for any rescue attempt to succeed.  In fact, these tasks would not only deplete their limited food and water reserves, but also place all of them in danger of injury and death.

Two groups quickly formed around two possible interpretations of the three notebooks.  One group, the Rescue Realists (RR), argue that the notes themselves indicate that the crew had been in contact with the mainland and that they should do everything necessary to complete the tasks in order to be rescued.

The Rescue Anti-Realists (RAR) argue that the notes indicate nothing more than a plan to be proposed by the crew to make sure that the stranded people worked together as a cohesive group in order to maintain civilized behavior and the hope of rescue.  Given the obvious tentative tone of the notes, the more dangerous tasks are interpreted as merely brainstorming suggestions rather than requirements to be met for rescue.

Since the radio had been destroyed, there was no viable means of verifying the RR interpretation.  However, the RR camp argues that to ignore the plan would be tantamount to suicide, so the whole group should immediately begin the tasks so as to maximize their chances of rescue.

The RAR argue that since there is no way of verifying the RR interpretation, it would be wiser to ignore those tasks that directly threaten their limited resources and focus only on those tasks that would keep the group together as a community until they were rescued, if they were rescued.

The following are givens:

1). There is no viable, external means of verifying either interpretation.

2). Both interpretations would work to keep the group together as a community.

3). Neither interpretation guarantees rescue, injury/death, or an unusual depletion of resources.  Though everyone agrees that the RR interpretation is more dangerous and likely to deplete supplies more quickly.   

Given all of this, which interpretative group would you join and why?

*This parable is adapted from one proposed by Paul Moser to explain the difference between theological realism and theological anti-realism.  He sees the difference as primarily one of epistemology, that is, what can we know about God and how?

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Rep Gowdy Trounces Park Service Director

B.O.O.M!  (Remind me to never get on this guy's bad side. . .)

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New Evangelization = Old Evangelization

From a talk given by Archbishop Chaput: 

Some years ago Alasdair MacIntyre wrote that the “new dark ages [are] already upon us”–a darkness brought on not by religion, but by the vanity, moral confusion and failure of the Enlightenment. The key difference between the sixth century and our own, said McIntyre, is that this time “[the] barbarians are not waiting beyond the frontiers; they have already been governing us for quite some time. And it is our lack of consciousness of this [fact] that constitutes part of our predicament.”

You don't have to look too far or all that closely to see that our postmodern cultural landscape is functionally neo-pagan, that is, nihilistic in a way that real Old School Pagans like Plato and Aristotle would find repulsive. 

Quite apart from the mistakes and sins of her own leaders, the Church in Europe in the years since the Enlightenment has faced constant pressure from revolutionary violence, intellectual contempt, ideological atheism, idolatry of the nation state, two disastrous world wars, and mass genocides. And Catholic attempts to hold on to the Church’s privileges have often made conflicts worse.

Today a new and even more effective atheism–the practical atheism of an advanced but morally empty liberal consumer culture–is pushing the Church to society’s margins. This, on a European continent that owes much of its identity and history to the Christian faith. And we can see some of the same trends now in Canada and the United States.

I wonder how many Catholics in the pews are functional atheists. . .not confessed atheists, of course, but that sort of Catholic for whom being Catholic makes no difference whatsoever in their daily lives. 

. . .We need to understand the language and master the tools of the modern world. Through them, with God’s help, we can do a better job of bringing Jesus Christ to our people, and our people to Jesus Christ.

But the main instrument of the new evangelization is the same as the old evangelization. It’s you and me. There’s no way around those words: Repent and believe in the gospel. The world will change only when you change, when we change, because hearts are won by personal witness. And we can’t share what we don’t have.

Read the whole thing. . .well worth your time and effort!
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On clericalism and power

Hear, hear!

Clericalism is a mindset, an attitude, a perspective. It patronizes and denigrates those who disagree and uses ad hominem attacks to belittle. When a priest speaks disrespectfully to an elderly woman and embarrasses her publicly at Mass merely because she exercises her legitimate option (as defined by Rome) to kneel or genuflect at Communion time rather than just stand, that is clericalism. When the faithful are denied their legitimate option to receive Holy Communion on the tongue or confession behind a screen, that is clericalism. When women are ridiculed and scoffed at by priests for wearing chapel veils, which is their option, that is clericalism. When some of the faithful ask the pastor if the Extraordinary Form could be celebrated in their parish and the priest goes ballistic and insults them and calls them fanatical, schismatic rad-trads, that is clericalism. When priests who wear roman vestments and lace albs instead of burlap potato sacks and moo-moo albs are laughed at and slandered by gossip among their brother diocesan clergy, that is clericalism.

Clericalism is also nepotism. Not the kind where relatives are promoted but where ideologues and those who are philosophically and theologically ‘brothers’ take care of one another. When sycophants are rewarded with papal knighthood and are made monsignors for being blindly loyal to their Ordinary, that is clericalism. It is a cheap shot to attack a priest for his personal taste in vestments. What really counts is whether or nor Father preaches and teaches orthodox Catholic doctrine; does he celebrate a reverent Mass; is he living a chaste, honest, and virtuous life on the altar and off? 

 

Some of the most destructive clericalism I've ever witnessed was the product of "Spirit of Vatican Two" elitism, especially in all matters liturgical. 

 

Oddly enough, the most egregious clericalism I've ever encountered came from religious sisters. They were unstinting and unapologetic their use of institutional power to suppress dissent and shape the formation of clergy to their agenda.

And it is impossible to overestimate the prevalence and harm caused by Mean Girl Cliques among clergy and religious. Right now, these cliques tend to be dominated by Baby Boomer clergy/religious with modernist agendas. However, it won't be long before younger clergy/religious form their own cliques in order to defend themselves from their elders.

What lessons are our younger clergy/religious learning from the power plays of their elders? Easy: only power matters. Forget right/wrong, canonical/non-canonical, good/bad, tradition/innovation. When the rubber hits the ecclesial road, all that matters is: who has the power? 

I can tell you from my personal experience: this lesson is not lost on our younger guys and gals nor will it be ignored when they have the power.

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The Mass: a class on the text of the Roman Missal

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The Mass: Line by Line

Fr. Philip Neri Powell, OP

Director of Homiletics, Notre Dame Seminary

A series of six one-hour classes on the Missal text of the Mass*

(We will read and discuss the text of the Mass, focusing on the theology of the Eucharist)

Starting Wednesday, Oct 16 at 7.00pm and meeting for the next five Wed's

St. Anthony of Padua Church

4640 Canal Street

New Orleans, LA

 * Copies of the Missal text will be available

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Feds Shutdown Military Mass

From The Thomas More Law Center:

The Catholic priest who serves this community has been prohibited from even volunteering to celebrate Holy Mass without pay, and was told that if he violated that order, he could be subject to arrest. Protestant services continue to take place.  Only Catholic services have been shutdown.

NB. Only Catholic services are shutdown. . .NOT the Protestant services. This shows us who B.O. thinks the real enemy is.

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The Devil ain't gonna like this!

Our Holy Father, Pope Francis, consecrated the world to the Immaculate Heart of Mary. . .

As one of my brother friars said, "The Devil will see this as a declaration of war."

Gird those loins, brothers and sisters. . .and get on your knees!
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The surest way to ruin your life. . .

28^th Sunday OT
Fr. Philip N. Powell, OP
St Anthony of Padua/Our Lady of the Rosary

Here’s the surest way to ruin your life: never say “thank you.” Live as if you are entitled to everything you have, everything you receive. Live as if you are responsible for your successes, your moments of greatness (large or small). Live as if you are self-sufficient, independent, in need of no help, in need of no one else. Clench you fist when a hand is offered. Close your heart when a hand reaches out. Recoil in horror when someone suggests that you could use assistance. Believe that you can do it all by yourself. When you fail there is no one else to blame. When you succeed there is no one else to credit. And when you die, you die alone. Never say “thank you” and watch your days unravel behind you like an ugly scarf snagged on a barbed-wire fence. A life of ingratitude is a life without grace, without gifts and it is a life unworthy of holiness. It is better to be a leper willing to ask God for healing than a well man who cannot/will not come to God with thanksgiving. Therefore, “in all circumstances, give thanks, for this is the will of God for you in Christ Jesus.”

Paul writes to Timothy that he, Paul, is a criminal for the gospel, a man put in chains for preaching the Good News to Jews and Gentiles alike. And though he is suffering in chains for the sake of Christ and Christ’s body, “the word of God is not chained.” We can add here: “…and the word of God will never be chained.” Though courts, kings, governors, and states may strive to whip the Word with judicial rulings or bury it in paper prisons or poison it with the deadliest medicines, the Word will not be whipped, buried, or poisoned. In fact, Paul, noting the persistence of the Word for him, says, that because the word is not chained, “I bear with everything for the sake of those who are chosen, so that they too may obtain the salvation that is in Christ Jesus…” The Word endures, carries on, lives always. And for this, we must give thanks. You must be the one healed leper in ten who returns to give God thanks, or Christ will wonder about you, “Where are the other nine?” 

 

Before asking how gratitude works for us spiritually, let’s take a moment to explore the possible reasons for being ungrateful. Why do we sometimes fail to give God thanks? First, we may not understand the “giftedness” or “givenness” of our lives, that is, we may not understand the fundamental animating principle of human life. My life, your life is a gift, meaning that that we exist at all is a present from God. God did not need us at the beginning of all thing. He does not need us now. And will never need us. Reality’s creation from nothing was a gratuitous, singular event, a wholly unnecessary one-time occurrence. The on-going presence of Something rather than Nothing is gratuitous as well. That we are still here is a gift. Second, the psychological motivations we need to accomplish anything often rely on the notion that we achieve our successes and that we fail in our failures. In other words, it seems that in order for us to do anything good at all we must believe that anything we do well results from personal talent and hard work. Why give thanks to someone not directly involved in the work of my success? Of course, this denies the first principle of creation: everything I am and everything I have is a gift from God. My talent, my drive to work hard, my need to succeed—all are gifts. Third, so delighted are we in our successes we often need to claim total credit in order to feel worthy of the success. If I am to succeed again, I have to come to the conclusion that I am solely responsible for that success. To do anything less is to risk a future failure. Finally, since the first bite of the apple in the garden we have been tempted to believe that we can become god w/o God. One god has no need to thank another god for anything. Our declaration of independence from the engines of divine perfection means that we think we are capable of saving ourselves. All we need for salvation is determination, the right doctrines, sufficient work, and a heart cold enough to reject any outside help offered—human or divine. We fail to give God thanks out of ignorance, pride, a cold heart, and vanity. 

 

Why should we give God thanks? Given what we already know about our creation—that we were created gratuitously—we can see that acknowledging our existence is first and foremost a matter of justice: we owe God our gratitude. Our thanks is due. Our thanks to God is also a matter of acknowledging the most basic truth of our lives: we are creatures created by a Creator. We are not random collections of chemical and electrical processes. We are not genetic productions accidentally generated by ideal cosmic and climatic conditions. We are beloved creatures, loved by our Creator. And as creatures loved first by God, we love back and give thanks for that love. The spiritual benefit, that is, the advantage that accrues to us when we are grateful to God is an increase in humility, an increase in our appreciation of our givenness, our total dependence on God as our Creator and Sustainer. Humility is the measure we use to determine the degree to which we are radically aware of our dependence on God. Your humility means that you know you are a gift given for no other reason than to love and be loved.

Here then is the surest way to ruin your life: fail daily to give thanks to God. Get up in the morning and go to bed at night as if you are entitled to everything you have, as if you were owed everything you have received. Get up in the morning and go to bed at night as if you alone achieved all of your successes, as if you orchestrated all your moments of greatness. Go day to day through your life utterly alone, in need of no one, in need of nothing but your own ingenuity and hard work. Grit your teeth when help is offered and say, “No, thank you.” Lock up your heart when a hand reaches out and say, “No thanks.” Shrink back in disgust at yourself and everyone around you when you fall and refuse help. Know in your ungrateful heart that you can do it all by yourself. 

 

Or, you can be trustworthy. You can be grateful and flourish in blessing. You can be the one healed leper who returns to thanks to God. You can be Naaman, who is healed in the Jordan, his flesh like the flesh of a little child. And you will be the one to hear Christ say, “Stand up and go; your faith has saved you.” Our Lord has revealed his saving power to the nations. Whatever you do, do not be among the nine ungrateful hearts who think that their healing is an accident. There is nothing accidental about the Cross, or Christ’s death for us on the Cross. He died on purpose, with a purpose. For us, he died knowingly, freely. And because of his love for us, we are free. Give thanks to God and make your life, this life right now, a living sacrifice of praise and thanksgiving!

On the dangers of using secular partisan labels in the Church

Fr. Mark Massa, S.J. was the speaker last night at NDS' annual Msgr. Tekippe Theological Forum.

His lecture was titled, "A Pox on Both Your Houses: Moving Beyond Conservative and Liberal Labels in the Church." 

Fr. Massa argued that the use of secular political labels to describe ideological parties within the Church is not only historically and theologically inaccurate, it's destructive as well.

He pointed out that using labels like "progressive," "traditionalist," etc. to denote one's posture toward change in the Church suggests that change is somehow an option for us, something that we can legislate or avoid.  He surveyed the use of partisan labels in our history, noting that only in our very recent history have we adopted secular labels to denote ideological differences.

Part of the reason for this adoption of secular partisan labels has to do with the introduction and development of historical consciousness in late 19th and early 20th century theology (esp in Biblical scholarship).  Though historical consciousness helped the Church to better understand how our faith has responded over time to various cultural-political challenges, its introduction into ecclesial life wasn't pretty. The modernist crisis in the European Church after the French Revolution was largely the result of the historical consciousness of change crashing into an institution unprepared for its challenge. 

Our current ecclesial polarization results from the Church "putting off" dealing with the inevitability of change. VC2 gives us the tools for recognizing and managing ecclesial change; however, because we put off dealing with the inevitability of change for so long, what could have been a renewal post VC2 became a revolution instead.

Generally, I agree with Fr. Massa's view. It seems to me that change is inevitable and that a historical consciousness of how we respond to various challenges both inside and outside the Church is here to stay. 

Two points:

1). Though he didn't argue the point directly, it would seem reasonable to suggest that using secular partisan labels also places our anxieties about immediate change at the center of the Gospel rather than seeing these worries as peripheral to Christ's charge to go out and preach. In other words, as a Church, we risk damaging the Gospel message in this century by failing to think in centuries as the Church always has.  The use of secular partisan labels stunts our ability to think in centuries.

2). Whereas historical consciousness is primarily a way of describing changes in the Church, it came to serve as an argument for prescribing particular changes.  In other words, that the Church changes to meet various secular challenges has become an argument that the Church ought to change to meet various secular demands. This strikes me as a non sequitur. So, I wonder if those in the Church who advocate for particular changes using historical consciousness as their warrant recognize this is/ought fallacy as a fallacy?

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Advanced Preaching seminar description

HP 602 Special Topics in Homiletics/Preaching: Preaching to Nihilists

“If you live today, you breath in nihilism. In or out of the Church, it's the gas you breathe” (F. O'Connor, The Habits of Being, 1955). 

As the pervasive mood of postmodern culture, we might say that nihilism is less a breathable gas than it is a poisonous cloud. It erodes our already imperfect grasp on knowable truths; dissolves the bond between the goodness of being and our moral acts; and vandalizes our faithful efforts to understand the ordered beauty of God's Self-revelation in created things. Whether nihilism is taken to be a method of thinking about the world or a consumerist lifestyle-choice, its influence on the human person is pernicious. How does the Catholic preacher account for this influence? How do we preach the Good News to a culture that has come to understand the human person as nothing more than a thinking animal destined for annihilation after death?

This seminar will survey the literary, historical, philosophical, and theological origins/development of nihilism in western postmodern culture and explore strategies for responding to its cultural influence in our parochial preaching. We will read texts from Nietzsche, Heidegger, Vattimo, R. M. Rilke, Flannery O'Connor, Cormac McCarthy, the Death of God theologians, and J-L Marion. Students will write one seminar paper (10-12 pgs.) and two Sunday homilies. Prerequisites: HP 504, 505. Limited to 8-10 students.

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The modern homiletical crisis

Among the books and articles I'm reading to prepare for the Advanced Preaching Seminar at NDS this spring is an excellent book by Phil Snider, titled, Preaching After God.

The first two chapters of this book lay out what Snider calls "the modern homiletical crisis." Basically, he argues that the liberal/progressive theology of modernist Christianity has left progressive ministers and preachers with little to say about God.

He charts the development of modernist theology through several philosophical veins, including the usual suspects: Kant, Hegel, Fichte, and, of course, Schleiermacher. 

Despite his embrace of progressive theology, Snider laments the "death of God" in liberal Protestant preaching, noting that preaching in the mainline churches has become little more than politically tinged ethical exhortation. 

In theory and practice, Christian progressives have replaced theology with anthropology.*

He writes, "Activism became the rule of the day in modern preaching largely because God was not longer identified as anything other than a projection of the best intentions and ideals of the human spirit, if anything at all, and religion was reduced to activism. . .When one considers the import of Kant and Hegel on liberal theology, it's no coincidence that sermons that fall prey to the modern homiletical crisis (1) place primary emphasis on a Christianity that is boiled down to ethics. . .and (2) lose sight of the infinite qualitative distinction between God (the wholly other) and human beings. When God is just a manifestation or extension of our best selves on our best days, when there is no infinite qualitative distinction between human beings and the 'wholly other,' then God is, for all practical purposes, dead" (66).

To any Catholic who's been paying attention to parochial preaching in the last 40 yrs. this diagnosis of liberal Protestant preaching should sound eerily familiar. 

Having misinterpreted and misapplied the Second Vatican Council's invitation to engage modern culture in dialogue, ecclesial elites have so domesticated the Divine that it is almost impossible for them now to understand the Church as anything other than a social service agency.  

The task of Catholic homiletics in the 21st century is to explore ways of returning a sense of the "infinite qualitative distinction" btw Creator and creature to our preaching w/o portraying God as inaccessible. Part of this project then will be to re-establish the event of the Incarnation as a central theme of Catholic preaching.

* Snider sees some hope for progressives in deconstructionism. My sense is that this is a dead-end for Catholic preaching as a solution. There may be uses for deconstruction as a heuristic but ultimately Catholic preaching cannot jettison metaphysics. 

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"If they are going to follow Christ in today’s environment something more rigorous is needed. . ."

Very enlightening interview with the Eastern Province Dominicans* about their phenomenal growth in vocations. . .

One fact I didn't know and kinda shocked me:  "Right now our Province has 70 men in formation for the priesthood and cooperator brotherhood."

Seventy?!?! Wow. "70 men in formation" means that the EDP has a total of seventy men in the novitiate and studium, i.e. novices and seminarians.

Oh, and they have charts too!

* Oddly, the friar giving the interview isn't identified, though I'd bet it's Fr. Benedict Croell, OP, vocations promoter for the EDP.
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My Anxious Monday of Waiting

One week ago today at 5.50am, I was driving down the Carrollton Ave exit off I-10 when I felt a weird sensation from the brake pedal. . .sort of like a pause in the braking-grip.

Just as I was noticing this weirdness, the Check Engine light on my dash lit up. 

After suppressing a spike of panic, I waited for the engine to erupt in flames, or to simply fall out of the bottom of the car and leave me pedaling the Toyota a la Fred Flintstone. . .

No explosion. No wrenching crash of metal.

When I got to my office, there was an email waiting for me from the place where I get a three-month oil change. Ah, I thought, The Car is in cahoots with the Oil Man. Easy fix. Regardless, I spent the rest of that day dreading the drive back to the priory.

Being a good postmodern-sort, I googled, "Check Engine light" and discovered that this phenomenon could indicate anything from a sticky fan belt to a diseased transmission.

Great. My history with car repair is a long, sad tale, involving thousands of dollars, weeks of anxiety, and lots of begging for rides.

Saturday: got the oil changed. "Check Engine" still shined brightly from the dash.

Monday: off to see Mr. Ray at Fleur de Lis Auto Care. 

I spent the morning in my room dreading the call from Mr. Ray. 

In my head, the news went like this: "Father, your transmission is attached to the engine with a bent paper-clip and the axles are held together with chop-sticks and duct tape."

Me: "Great. I'll bring over a new box of paper-clips and a roll of duct tape!"

When the call came. . .I jumped. 

Mr. Ray: "Father, we put the scanner on your car. . .[thundering drum roll]. . .the gas cap was loose."

So. All it cost me was a little humiliation and a lesson in Gas Cap Tightening Procedures.

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California's neo-feudalism

And they did it all w/o any GOP "obstructionism"!

". . .the Golden State now suffers the highest level of poverty in the country—23.5 percent compared to 16 percent nationally—worse than long-term hard luck cases like Mississippi. It is also now home to roughly one-third of the nation’s welfare recipients, almost three times its proportion of the nation’s population."

A fascinating read. 

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Seeing with faith

27^th Sunday OT

Fr. Philip Neri Powell, OP

Our Lady of the Rosary, NOLA

In a homily delivered in Assisi, Italy on the feast of St. Francis, the Holy Father asks, “Where did [St.] Francis’s journey to Christ begin?” His answer to this question is frightening. His answer shows us why Paul must encourage Timothy: “God did not give us a spirit of cowardice.” And why the apostles beg the Lord: “Increase our faith.” His answer even shines light on why the prophet Habakkuk wails at God: “How long, O Lord?. . .Why do you let me see ruin; why must I look at misery?” Where did St. Francis begin his journey to Christ? The Holy Father answers: “It began with the gaze of the crucified Jesus. With letting Jesus look at us at the very moment that he gives his life for us and draws us to himself.” To look and see such misery and knowing all the while that Christ's ruin is our repair. . .no one possessed by the spirit of cowardice could watch this. No one lacking in faith would be pulled into his gaze from the cross. Accepting and living the Good News of Jesus Christ is one life-long act of courage, one small act of faith after another. But neither Christian courage nor faith in God deserves applause or gratitude. Why? B/c we are drawn to Christ. . .by Christ. 

 

Our Holy Father says that our journey to Christ begins “with letting [the crucified] Jesus look at us at the very moment that he gives his life for us and draws us to himself.” What does he mean by “letting Jesus look at us”? No one needs my permission to look at me. They just look at me and here I am, being looked at. All of us are seen everyday without even knowing it. We look at others all the time w/o their permission. But couldn't we say that the difference btw Looking and Seeing is the same as the difference btw Hearing and Listening? What's that difference? Attentiveness, intention? I can hear but do not listen; I can look but do not see. Does this sound familiar? Jesus teaches his students that they will meet people along the Way who hear and look but do not listen or see. These people will hear with mistrustful ears and look through cowardly eyes. Attentiveness and intention make a difference, of course, but the difference that makes The Difference is faith. Jesus doesn't just look at us from the cross; he gazes at us. He looks with intent, with purpose, and if we let him gaze at us, we return his gaze in kind. We are drawn to him and our looking becomes seeing with faith.

Notice why the apostles suddenly beg the Lord to increase their faith. They ask him how many times they should forgive a brother who sins. Jesus says, “. . .if he wrongs you seven times in one day and returns to you seven times saying, ‘I am sorry,’ you should forgive him.” The apostles immediately see the connection btw forgiveness and faith, and they immediately recognize the weakness of their faith. To forgive someone who sins against you over and over again requires a great deal of confidence in the power of mercy to correct error. It also requires a strong sense of one's own sinfulness. But the purpose of forgiving others is to draw us back to the Cross and the merciful, dying gaze of Christ, the one who makes all forgiveness possible. When you forgive someone who sins against you, you bring the merciful gaze of Christ to them. You become Christ for them in that moment. That takes courage. It takes courage and a deep trust in the fact that not only are their sins forgiven but so are yours. The apostles know this, so they beg Jesus to increase their faith, to add to their ability to trust. Unfortunately, the apostles don't yet quite grasp how faith works. They still see faith as a quantity, a measurable amount of something that can be increased or decreased. Jesus, as usual, reveals the truth.

He says, “If you have faith the size of a mustard seed, you would say to this mulberry tree, 'Be uprooted and planted in the sea,’ and it would obey you.” Faith isn't measured in quantities; it's measured in acts of courage and obedience. As the good habit of trusting in God's loving-care, faith—even the size of a mustard seed—can accomplish the seemingly impossible. If this seems improbable, then consider the strength it would take to forgive someone who sinned against you seven times, or seventy-seven times. That's not a feat of brute physical strength but rather a feat of spiritual strength. What does it say about you and your relationship with God that you can show mercy to a person who's hurt you seventy-seven times? It says that you are painfully aware of your own sinfulness and your own need for mercy. That you can forgive them—even just once—is an act of courage, an act done in fear despite that fear. If you trust that Christ died on the Cross for you and even now draws you into a life of holiness with his dying, merciful gaze, then that trust must be shared, given out. We cannot follow Christ unless we are ready to become Christ. And that kind of trust can be large or small so long as it is also strong.

You might be thinking right now: I'm not THAT strong. Lord, give me strength! Excellent prayer. Paul writes to Timothy, “For God did not give us a spirit of cowardice. . .So do not be ashamed of your testimony to our Lord. . .but bear your share of hardship for the gospel with the strength that comes from God.” The spirit that God gives us is His Holy Spirit, the spirit of love. When we call upon the strength we need to endure and thrive, we are not calling upon any created power, any merely human reserve of energy or vigor. We call upon the gift of God Himself, the freely given presence of Love Who is God. Like faith and hope, this love is bound to us in our human nature; that is, wired into each of us from the moment of our conception. There is never a question of whether or not we “have faith” or whether or not we “have love.” We do, by nature. The question is whether or not we will use God's gift of freedom to love freely, forgive extravagantly, and bear witness to His mercy! Any and every strength we have is from God, but it is only with our cooperation, our permission that faith, love, and hope mature. IOW, we allow the crucified Jesus to see us. And we look back at him, seeing, trusting. 

 

What do we do when our trust is weak? What do we do when, like Habakkuk, we hear ourselves crying out to God, “Why do you let me see ruin; why must I look at misery?” In that same homily in Assisi, our Holy Father says, “The cross does not speak to us about defeat and failure. . .When we let the crucified Jesus gaze upon us, we are re-created, we become 'a new creation.' Everything else starts with this: the experience of transforming grace, the experience of being loved for no merits of our own. . .” Being loved for no other reason than that God is Love is the transforming grace—the life-changing gift—we need to endure, and not only endure but prevail. When your trust in God is weak, invite Christ to look at you and to see you and to gaze into your heart and mind. Let him see—truly see—your weakness. Let him take it to the Cross for you. And let him make it holy in sacrifice, give it to his Father as an offering. Return his gaze; let yourself see—truly see—what he did for you on the Cross and all that his death and rising again accomplished. Then, remember Paul's words to Timothy: “Do not be ashamed of your testimony to our Lord. . .”

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On being set aside. . .

NB. From 2009. Alas, never preached this one. . .I was looking for an example of a meditative homily to show my students.  What do you think?

7th Sunday of Easter: Acts 1.17-17, 20-26; 1 John 4.11-16; John 7.11-19
Fr. Philip Neri Powell, OP
Convento SS. Domenico e Sisto, Roma

Walking the streets of Rome can teach you a lot about negotiation. Walk up the Via del Corso on a Saturday afternoon. Sidewalks jammed with idly strolling citizens. The street choked with wandering tourists lost in their maps. Fashionistas linger in front of the shop windows, damming up traffic, sending thousands into the street to play catch with the taxis. For someone with a destination in mind, a purpose and a goal, taking the del Corso is an adventure in paying attention, dodging threats of bodily harm, and negotiating the perils of polite society. Will that bus stop at the crosswalk? Will the group of trendy ladies in front of me stop suddenly to squeal over a pair of Ferragamo pumps? Do I need to say “excusa” every time I bump into someone? What degree of impatience do I express when zipping past the amorous couple clogging up the sidewalk with their public display of sloppy affection? You have a goal, a purpose; you have a destination and a mission. You don’t have the time or the patience or even the inclination to suffer these social obstacles lightly, to indulge these worldly distractions with anything less than haughty contempt! How often do you sigh in angry exasperation and imagine yourself screaming: “For the love of all that is holy: move!” When you are a Christian and the world you live in is the Via del Corso on a Saturday afternoon, how do you negotiate the traps, the potholes, the slippery curbs? How do you weave through the foot traffic without landing in the street dodging the buses? Do you surrender to the flow, slow your pace, assume your place in the crowd, and hope your destination comes to you? What happens to the urgency of your mission? Your schedule? One vital point to keep in mind when thinking about these questions: as Christians, we are set apart; we are not set above.

Knowing that his time draws near, Jesus commends his people to the Father. Lifting his eyes to heaven, he prays to God: “I speak this in the world so that they may share my joy completely. I gave them your word, and the world hated them, because they do not belong to the world any more than I belong to the world.” What could Jesus mean? Of course, we belong to the world! We need food, drink, clothing. We are as much affected by gravity, the weather, and the passage of time as anyone else. We have jobs, kids, taxes, and all sorts of worldly ties. We are bound to all the physical necessities of living well in our skins. How exactly do we not belong to this world? What sets us apart? In other words, how are we consecrated in truth? And how does this complete our joy in Christ?

Many of the great heresies in Church history are deeply rooted in a distorted view of the relationship between heaven and earth, body and soul, world and Church. Like most heresies, these distortions exaggerate a distinction, mutate a vital difference, and privilege one extreme over another. In the early Church, most heresies exaggerated the spiritual over the material, leaving us with a disembodied Christ and a purely mystical, intellectual faith that proclaimed the evils of the flesh and demanded radical asceticism. Today, we tend to the other extreme, privileging the material and historical, leaving us with a Christ who is just some guy who said some interesting stuff about the need for social change. Among those who saw the world as a place of greed, lust, and gluttony, the only way to combat murderous distraction was to withdraw into the desert to seek out a spiritual purity in extreme practices of bodily mortification. Among those today who see the spiritual, especially the moral, as a kind of straight-jacket, a fuddy-duddy fussing about mythical codes of behavior, the world is a place of license, freedom, unlimited choice. Even among some Christians, the world is to be revered, imitated, and lauded, if not worshiped. What both the desert-dwellers and the world-worshipers fail to see is that the “world” Jesus implicitly condemns is not the material world, the cosmos of stuff and physical law, but that time and place where the powers of rebellion and strife hold sway, the material and spiritual battlefield where obedience to God and the temptation to disobey God compete for our allegiance. This is the world we are in and yet the world we do not belong to.

To be consecrated in the truth in this world is to be set aside by grace to achieve a divine purpose wherever you find yourself. You will not fulfill your divinely gifted purpose by hating the material world and living only for the spiritual. You will not fulfill your divinely gifted purpose by hating the transcendent world and living only in the flesh. We are body and soul. Neither one nor the other wholly without the other. If you are only your soul, then what you do materially is irrelevant to your spiritual growth. Be spiritual! And be as you please. If you are only your body, then what you believe about the spiritual is irrelevant to your material growth. Just do it! And do anything you please. Christians are saddled with a much more difficult task: as embodied souls consecrated in the truth, we are bound materially to a world ruled by sin and obligated to achieve spiritual purity in the midst of physical temptation. What we do materially affects us spiritually. What we believe about spiritual truths affects us materially.

If this is true, and it is, what good does it do us to be consecrated in the truth? We are set aside not above. “To consecrate” means “to aside for a specific purpose.” We consecrate things, people, places. We don’t use the altar as a card table. We don’t use a chalice to chug beer. Priests and religious do not participate in government as elected or appointed officials. As baptized priests, prophets, and kings of the Father’s Kingdom, we are set aside to work toward and achieve a specific goal, an end that perfects us in all His gifts. Notice that Jesus does not say that he has removed us from the battleground of this world. He does not elevate us above it or subject us to it. He does not say that we do not belong in the world. He says that we do not belong TO this world. We are not slaves, citizens, or subjects of the dominion of the Enemy. Our purpose is not defined by the laws of nature or the rules of engagement followed by the Enemy. We are free. We are free from this world in order to be free for this world. Not above the world. Not of this world. But in it and beside it, not belonging to it, but free to show a better way, a divinely gifted Way.

Our joy is completed not by worldly victory or political conquest. We are not given a completed joy by winning elections or getting federal funding. There is no joy in making ourselves slaves to a world we do not belong to. There is no joy in raising ourselves above it all, or fleeing into the desert to watch it all burn. Our consecrated work, our baptismal duty is right in the middle of the mess, squarely centered in the heart of the world, right where the Enemy is strongest. We are chosen to be vessels and conduits of God’s love for the world and to the world not because we are morally superior or spiritually invincible. We are neither. We are chosen because we chose to answer His call to be everything He made us to be in love. A choice anyone can make.

To this world, we are dramatic, pathetic failures. Lost and hopeless zombies driven by superstition and irrational religious mythology. In this world, we can be tragic examples of hypocrisy, self-righteousness, and religious zealotry. For this world, we are a comedic scandal that brings salvation and peace. But for this to work, we must be set aside in truth. Engaged but detached. Involved but distant. Who and what we are most fundamentally is found in our end not in the means we use to get there. But our means must always prophesy the truth of the gospel. How else do we witness to our divinely gifted end if not through our divinely gifted means?

We are consecrated in the truth so that our joy may be complete. We are set aside in Christ by Christ so that we may come to him in the end wholly joyful, perfected in love. John writes: “Beloved, if God so loved us, we also must love one another. No one has ever seen God. Yet, if we love one another, God remains in us, and his love is brought to perfection in us.” Our nearly impossible task is to love God and one another in a world ruled by the Enemy. Tempted though we are by passions unruled by reason, we are set aside for a purpose. That purpose and its pursuit is how we succeed—in our witness, in our ministries, in our duties to Love Himself.

In and beside this world, shining out the love and mercy we have received, we bring our joy to its highest human perfection. Beyond this world, having done as we promised to do, we become Joy, seeing Truth Himself face-to-face.

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The Mass: Line by Line

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The Mass: Line by Line

Fr. Philip Neri Powell, OP

Director of Homiletics, Notre Dame Seminary

A series of six one-hour classes on the Missal text of the Mass*

(We will read and discuss the text of the Mass, focusing on the theology of the Eucharist)

Starting Wednesday, Oct 16 at 7.00pm and meeting for the next five Wed's

St. Anthony of Padua Church

4640 Canal Street

New Orleans, LA

 * Copies of the Missal text will be available

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