Shortage or Abundance?

I've been prepping for a day of training for lay ecclesial ministers and experienced one of those major "convergence" things when 10 or 12 separate realizations: theological, historical, and demographic - suddenly coming together in my head and forming a whole that sheds a new light on everything.

I'm still working through it but while doing so, I came across this and I just had to publish a brief compare and contrast. To begin: Two archdioceses, both alike in dignity, in fair Verona where we lay our scene . . .

OK. Maybe not. - but we will start with two archdioceses with populations of 500,000 Catholic apiece.

That's where the similarities end and where a window on the realities of this new world of southern Catholics opens up.

Archdiocese of Cincinnati
500,000 Catholics
221 parishes
493 priests
122 brothers
468 lay ministers

Archdiocese of Lahore, Pakistan
500,000 Catholics

Each is responsible for evangelizing and catechizing and staying in touch with 250 - 500 families.
29 parishes. A rural parish includes 90 - 130 villages
22 priests
12 brothers
190 cyclist catechists

And this glimpse of one catechist:

Arif Noor gets up just before dawn six days a week to rouse children for catechism classes.

“Wake up kids, time to go to church!” shouts Noor as he passes through the streets of Salamat Pura, a small village in a northern suburb of Lahore. About 10 years ago, the 58-year-old Catholic layman became the driving force behind a subsidized Christian educational center at St. Paul’s Church in Lahore archdiocese. Since 2007, the number of centers has risen to 10.

They open at dawn and enable children aged five to 15 to get a religious education. After class, the children go to school, if they attend school, or return home.

The centers are helping to fill the gap left by a shortage of Sunday school teachers in the 29 parishes of Lahore archdiocese.

“There aren’t any Sunday school services specifically for children in our community,” Javaid Joseph, catechist of St. Paul’s Church, told UCA News. “Noor’s program is actually helping our mission.”

Noor, an electrician, is also vice president of St. Paul’s Church.

He said his catechism mission is an act of gratitude for the help his daughter received from a Christian charity after she was badly injured while playing with fireworks in 1986.

I'm sure that the Archdiocese of Cincinnati is worried about its priest shortage. There are 42 parishes without resident pastors. But we live in a world where one diocese's shortage would be another's unimaginable abundance.

A Little Miracle

Many of you read the story of the miraculous recovery of a young married mom named Maryssa, who was on death's doorstep with H1N1 while pregnant. She gave birth last week, and here's a picture of her healthy daughter, whose middle name, Gianna, is in honor of St. Gianna Molla, whose intercession was sought by Maryssa's parents. The next day, Maryssa began to recover, and left the hospital six days later!

Over Ireland

An exhilarating ride over the magnificent land and the people that St. Patrick gave his life to:

The Power of Silence

On Friday evening, after the first session of the retreat I gave outside Halifax, NS, as I was walking back to my cabin, I had to pause. The retreat center is about 45 minutes outside Halifax on a large plot of heavily forested land on one of the many small lakes that are the result of the heavy scouring of the land during the last ice age some ten millennia ago. Because of its isolation, light pollution is hardly an issue. Even Halifax, where half the population of the Province lives, is not much more than a small city.

Like the day that had preceded it, the night sky was absolutely clear, and the stars overhead sparkled and glimmered with a ferocity that I’m not accustomed to, having lived in more densely populated areas all my life. The woods around me were only discernible as a ochre shadow, a jagged tear marking the edge of a star-strewn fabric.

And then I noticed something that absolutely startled me. It wasn’t quiet.

It was silent.

I threw all my attention at that absence, waiting to pick up something – some sigh of the wind in the pines, or the call of a night bird or insect.

But there was nothing. It was thrilling; like a void that had swallowed my young companions, the memory of sound, even time itself. I had to shift my weight and hear the report of pebble on pebble to reassure myself that I had not gone inexplicably deaf.

Of course, the awareness of that kind of silence changes your definition of “quiet.” This morning at the Dominican house in Tempe, AZ, as I sat before the Lord in the chapel, I was mildly annoyed at just how loud the quiet was.

The chapel clock tick-tocked loudly, then the furnace rumbled to life, it’s motor a triplet cadence thrumming in perfect synchronicity with the clock’s duplet. The forced air moving through the vent in the small room was a noisy, ten-minute long exhalation that died long after the thermostat hit a chilly (for Phoenix) 69 degrees. Occasionally the window would add it’s own shiver of sound as it vibrated in sympathy with the furnace. So loud was the quiet that I hardly heard the occasional snippet of song from the morning’s early birds.

At the end of C.S. Lewis’ Screwtape Letters, the author of those letters proposes a toast to the minions of hell, looking forward to the day when all of earth is bathed in noise. I sometimes feel as though they’ve succeeded, particularly when I am in airport terminals. There, CNN’s talking heads, mood music meant to calm, and the chatter of innumerable monologues from cell-phone users form a background punctuated by announcements for flight arrivals, departures, gate changes and recorded voices reminding me that we are (still) at a level orange terrorist threat alert. But it’s not that different everywhere I go: the grocery store, downtown, a restaurant.

An empty church can be a refuge, but even there it is not silent, unless it’s located in the country, with thick insulating walls and a distance from the road that took you to it.

Just as we grow hungry every few hours for food, our souls and minds hunger for quiet, and, I now believe, true silence. Just as the grandeur of a vast landscape reminds us of our smallness and the insignificance of our problems, so, too, the vast sonic landscape painted by silence. In that silence, God speaks to our hearts. The saints and mystics of every religious tradition have all discovered that.

But such silence is a scalpel. Using it God would excise the trivialities that occupy us and feed our never-sated anxieties. Silence, when sought and endured, lances the ego grown festering from a glut of information and opinions carried like concealed weapons. Silence – especially our own – is a garden that must be carefully tended if we should ever hope for wisdom to grow.

Catholic Outreach on Canadian Campuses

I had a wonderful experience in Halifax this weekend. The retreat for college students and members of the Catholic Christian Outreach went well, and I have to give a shout out to the CCO. Their website gives a brief description.

Catholic Christian Outreach (CCO) is a university student movement dedicated to evangelization. We challenge students to live in the fullness of the Catholic faith, with a strong emphasis on becoming leaders in the renewal of the world.

CCO was founded at the University of Saskatchewan in Saskatoon, Saskatchewan, Canada in 1988 after receiving the approval of the local bishop. From a humble beginning of four students, the movement now serves hundreds of students on several campuses through a wide array of programs and outreaches.

The young people I met involved with CCO included a young couple with a six-month old girl and several single women from different provinces - all working in Halifax at Dalhousie University and St. Mary's University. St. Mary's used to be affiliated with the Catholic Church, but it seems that the administration of most of the Catholic Universities in the country have been taken over by government agencies. I didn't find out why, though, and those I spoke with about this seemed to take it as a matter of course.

The young adults who work for CCO are involved in evangelization through one to one ministry and small group work. This often takes the form of short small group bible studies that have a focus on the proclamation of the kerygma, the basic kernel of the Gospel that must be proclaimed to call people to conversion to Christ.

CCO's work is seen as:
A response to Christ's command that his disciples "Proclaim the Good News to all creation" (Matthew 28:18-19, Mark 16:15-16).
A concrete way to foster the Church's primary and universal mission of evangelization (Evangelii Nuntiandi, #14).
A positive answer to the call of the Holy Father, Pope John Paul II, for a "new evangelization" in our times.
An active outreach to the distressingly small numbers of believing and practicing youth.
A positive and successful influence in the promotion of religious vocations.
A practical way to respond to cults and fundamentalist sects aimed at undermining the faith of Catholics.
PROCLAIM, EQUIP, COMMISSION
CCO employs a multiplication model of ministry. Like Jesus did, we can invest spiritually in the lives of a few to the point where they in turn can invest in the lives of others. We proclaim Christ to the students, equip them to be mature Christians, then commission them to proclaim to and equip others.

OUR TARGET
Our programs are aimed primarily but not exclusively at university students:
generally between 18 and 30 years of age
both women and men
who are churched, nominally churched, or unchurched
who have been leaders and show further leadership potential.
CCO PROGRAMS
Our programs equip students with the necessary attitudes, skills, and knowledge to become mission-ready, multiplying disciples.

CCO's programs include:
Weekly on-campus faith study groups
One-on-one ministry and leadership training
On-campus large group meetings, teachings, and training
Retreats and conferences
Practical leadership and ministry opportunities
Youth outreaches
Overseas and domestic mission projects
Summer faith sharing groups
Sports, recreation and socials.

The most needed help in sharing their faith for many Catholics is the simple courage to actually begin to evangelize, coupled with a conviction that such efforts can prove excitingly fruitful. We give not only doctrinal principles but also clear and practical teachings on how to evangelize. Such teachings are most effective when there is an opportunity to put them into practice in the company of experienced evangelizers.

The young evangelists involved in CCO are very, very committed. They have to fund their salaries each year, which means "support raising" $30,000 Canadian annually. They are sent by the CCO administration to eight university campuses, and their goal is to increase that by twenty over the next twenty years.

This may sound familiar to those of you acquainted with FOCUS, which seems to be an American counterpart to CCO.

Pray for the Christians of Karnataka, India

One consequence of the global shift (via Fides)

Over 1,000 incidents of anti-Christian violence in the past two years in the Indian state of Karnataka, in southwest India.

"Today, March 15, the police went to the Cathedral of Karwar (coastal town in Karnataka) and warned the Vicar General to stop spreading Christian literature and Christian religious pictures because "it offends Hindus." This is just one of the latest examples of the incidents that have been reported to Fides, that show the considerable deterioration of respect for human rights and religious freedom in the Indian state of Karnataka, in southwest India.

Other recent episodes have reached Fides from the local Christian communities: March 8, a Protestant pastor was beaten and injured in Mysore by Hindu activists who brutally interrupted a prayer meeting he was leading. Also in Karvar, in late February, some Hindu radicals blamed local Christians of “forced conversions,” striking them in public and leaving them unconscious in the street.

"Anti-Christian attacks, incidents of persecution, and obvious discrimination take place on a daily basis, amidst the silence of the authorities and the general public," Fides is told by Joe Dias, a lay Catholic and leader of the Catholic Secular Forum, the Indian non-governmental organization that works to defend and promote the rights of Christians, publicly supported by Cardinal Oswald Gracias, Archbishop of Mumbai.

"The attacks are carried out by Hindu militant organizations in the area, with political cover for such attacks being guaranteed by the government of the BJP (Bharatiya Janata Party), the Hindu nationalist party which has been in power in Karnataka for two years," said Joe Dias.

The assessment for this two-year period has been bleak for Christians. "We have documented more than 1,000 anti-Christian incidents in this period. It is unacceptable. The picture that emerges is worse than what happened in Orissa, because there there's been an uprising of public opinion, the outrage of the international community, and the intervention of the federal government. In Karnataka, however, thanks to the underground coverage of the BJP and the state police, there is no cultural or emotional impact on the population. Often there are no official complaints (which the police refuse to record), and there are no articles or reports from the mass media. Everything happens in silence, indifference, and impunity, but the Christian community is obviously suffering," Joe Dias tells Fides."

Global Shift: How Did We Get Here and What Does It Mean?

Our world is shifting under our feet.

A couple years ago, I posted an 11 part series on the growth of Independent Christianity which began with Catholic missiologist Peter C. Phan's evaluation of the famous 1910 Edinburgh Missionary Congress:

Peter C. Phan’s article “Proclamation of the Reign of God as Mission of the Church: What for, to Whom, by Whom, with Whom, and How?” (www.sedos.org/english/phan.htm). Phan’s title intrigued me and I started to read eagerly, only to be stunned by the first few paragraphs:

"But now things have changed, and changed utterly. The change from the enthusiasm and optimism of the World Missionary Conference that met in Edinburgh, Scotland, in 1910—whose catchy slogan was "The evangelization of the world in this generation"—to the discouragement and even pessimism in today’s missionary circles, Catholic and Protestant alike, is visible and palpable. . . .To the consternation of Western missionaries, the shout "Missionary, go home" was raised in the 1960s, to be followed a decade later by the demand for a moratorium on Christian missions from the West.

In addition to the political factors, the collapse of mission as we knew it was also caused by the unexpected resurgence of the so-called non-Christian religions, in particular Hinduism and Islam. The missionaries’ rosy predictions of their early demise were vastly premature. Concomitant with this phenomenon is an intense awareness of religious pluralism which advocates several distinct, independent, and equally valid ways to reach the Divine and therefore makes conversion from one religion to another, which was considered as the goal of mission, unnecessary." [emphasis mine]

As I wrote then "I was incredulous. I knew that the last word one could use of the Christian missionary enterprise at the beginning of the 21st century was “collapse”. Once more, I was standing on the edge of an unbridgeable chasm of experience that yawned between this prominent American theologian and the world I had known. I couldn’t help but wonder if Peter Phan inhabited the same planet as the evangelicals with whom I had lived and studied. Discouragement? Pessimism? Evangelical missionaries have faced the same historical and cultural realities as Catholics since 1960. But they believe that they have been privileged to be part of the greatest expansion of Christianity in history and are absolutely exuberant about the future of missions."

And that exuberance is on display in a global manner in this 100th anniversary of the Edinburgh Conference. There are no less than 4 global congresses being held in honor of the anniversary: in Tokyo, Edinburgh itself, South Africa, and Boston.

By far the largest gathering, Cape Town 2010, will function like an ecumenical council of missions (although it won't last nearly as long as Vatican II!), gathering together over 4,000 hand selected missionary leaders from all over the world to celebrate what God has done in the last 100 years and to take council together about where to go from here. In this age of the internet, the gathering will be beamed to sites all over the world so that additional thousands can take part.

As a preparation for Cape Town 2010, an internet based "Global Conversation" is taking place with a different topic every month. This month's topic is Responding to Religious Pluralism. The lead article has an intriguing title: Sowing Subversion in the Field of Relativism

In December, the topic was "Muslim Background Believers". This topic reflects the tremendous change that has occurred over the past 30 years in the world. Yes, the largest Mosque in the world outside the Middle East now towers over London's Regent's Park. I snapped two women in the most conservative Muslim dress, feeding the pigeons in the shadow of the mosque the last time I was in London. But this is a spiritual shift that cuts both ways.

Consider this summary of what is happening in the Muslim world from the Caleb Resources February, 2010 news letter.

( A bit of background: The term "Muslim background believers" refers to individuals born Muslim who are now following Jesus. Note the term "Christ - followers" below. They may or may not be part of local Christian congregations, who are usually reluctant to trust or accept Muslim background believers. They may not even be baptized. This does not compute in Catholic sacramental theology but there are millions of unbaptized "Christ followers" in the Muslim and Hindu worlds now. A new sort of life long catechumen.)

Since the beginning of the Iraqi war, more than 5,000 Muslims have turned to Christ in Iraq, with dozens of growing churches being birthed across the region. Similarly, pre-9/11 Afghanistan knew 17 Muslim background believers, while today there are more than 10,000. In neighboring Iran, where there were as few as 500 Christ-followers 30 years ago, national pastors suggest this number could now be one million. Perhaps this is due in part to satellite television making gospel broadcasts available at all times in that country; living under a repressive fundamentalist regime may also have some influence.

In Egypt, it’s the JESUS Film that’s increasing in circulation. Whereas in the 90s, sales averaged 3,000 per year, in 2006, the Egyptian Bible Society sold 600,000 copies, as well as 750,000 audio Arabic Bible and 500,000 Arabic New Testaments. Other programs reach a more global audience, such as broadcasts from Norway that can be found on the radio, TV, and the internet. A surprising population where these are received well is among Arabs in the US and Canada, where in the span of a few months, as many as 30,000 have responded with interest in coming to Christ.

Several countries are also seeing a drastic shift in the percentage of the population that is Muslim. Some countries, like Indonesia, don’t even want to know what those numbers are anymore. The last religious census there revealed that 20% of the population chose to be registered as Christians. That was over 30 years ago. In Ghana, the number of those who claim Islam as their religion dropped by 25% in the past ten years. Also in Uganda, the percentage is down from 22% Muslim 25 years ago to around 6% today. The Ugandan church now sends missionaries to places like South America, Japan, and the United States. Meanwhile, a growing missionary force is coming from Latin America, the majority of which goes to serve in the Muslim world.

What this should tell you is that God is continually building his kingdom. As many as 160,000 people a day hear about Christ for the first time, and roughly 3,000 put their faith in him per hour. Two hundred years ago, only 25% of the world’s people had the chance to receive the gospel. Today that number is flipped, with those who haven’t heard about Christ being only 28%.

In this anniversary year, I'm going to be posting more on Cape Town 2010, as well as blogging on the remarkable history of Catholic and Orthodox missions (with the help of my friend, Fr. Gregory Jensen, an Orthodox blogger)

In 1800, there were about 106.8 million Catholics in the world.

In 1900, there were roughly 266.5 million Catholics in the world, 75% of whom lived in Europe and North America.

By the end of 2010, there will be about 1.2 billion Catholics, 65% of whom live outside Europe and North America.

10,278% growth in 210 years.

How did we get here and what does it mean?

We didn't get here by accident. The almost complete identification of Christianity with Europe for over a thousand years was a historical and ecclesial aberration. It was the result of historical trauma, not intrinsic to the faith itself.

The foundations of the global shift that we are living through was laid centuries ago by the great figures of the medieval and Tridentine Church, by the likes of Francis of Assisi, Thomas Aquinas, Francis Xavier and Matteo Ricci. In the end, a truly global Christianity was created through the obedience of innumerable great and humble men and women who sought to respond to the command of our Lord himself to make disciples of all nations.

Henriette de Lille, Servant of the Slaves

I am so excited.

I have told the story of Henriette De Lille at every Called & Gifted workshop I have taught for the past 10 years and now comes this wonderful news via the Archdiocese of New Orleans's own Catholic Herald:

"The Vatican’s Congregation for the Causes of Saints, composed of 15 cardinals and arch- bishops from around the world, voted unani- mously March 2 to ap- prove a declaration that Servant of God Henriette Delille practiced “heroic virtue” during her ministry to slaves and African Americans as foundress of the Sisters of the Holy Family in pre-Civil War New Orleans.

The congregation’s declaration has been sent to Pope Benedict XVI, and if he approves, Mother Henriette would be declared “venerable,”

Henriette was a member of a community that very few white Catholics outside New Orleans are familiar with: the Gens de couleur or free people of color. To tell her story, I have to describe placage, a firmly entrenched, deeply racist system in which Catholic women of mixed race became the mistresses of married white Catholic men and a palpable tension always descends over the room. I've even had participants tell me to stop telling Henriette's story because it made them so uncomfortable. I was loath to stop but began to grow anxious until an elegant older black woman in San Francisco put my mind at rest. "I lived it. You preach it!" were her marching orders and I have done so ever since.

Remember that everyone in Henriette's story is a cradle Catholic. The next time you encounter nostalgia for the prefections of pre-Vatican II American Catholicism or the spiritual power of pure Catholic culture, meditate for a few minutes about Henriette and the world she lived in. The whole placage system was created by French speaking Catholics in Saint-Domingue (Santo Domingo) and spread from there to Louisiana where non Catholics were not allowed to lived until the Americans purchased the area in 1803. The Church has found Henriette's remarkable resistance to the "Catholic" culture in which she was raised to be a sign of "heroic virtue".

In Henriette's day, the gens de couleur were free, educated, French speaking, practicing Catholics who sometimes owned their own plantations and their own slaves (some of whom were relatives) and for whom, the placage system was a way of life.

Under the placage system, it was acceptable for a white man to take a colored mistress - who was known as a placee - when she was as young as 12. (Native born persons of mixed race did not think of themselves as either black or white but as "Creoles of color" and many of their descendants today still think of themselves that way. They form a nation within a nation.)

When the white Creole man reached marriageable age, he could choose to retain his placee and so have two or more families: his legal white family and his informal family with a light-skinned Creole woman. His white family usually lived on a plantation outside town and his gens de couleur family lived in a house he provided for them in one of the Creole areas of New Orleans like the Faubourg Marigny. By 1788, 1,500 Creole women of color and black women were being maintained by white men (although not all gen de couleur women became placees). Their children, both boys and girls, were educated in France, as there were no schools available to educate mixed-race children, and it was illegal to teach blacks to read and write.

Henriette was being raised to be a placee as her mother, grandmother, and sister had done before her. Traditionally, these young women would attend the infamous "Quadroon" balls - lavish "debutante" balls to which, beautifully dressed and carefully chaperoned, they would go to meet their future protector. The wealthiest and most illustrious of the Creole families of color formed themselves into the Société de Cordon Bleu around 1780 or 1790 to present their daughters--the best women of color--to the white Creole male elite to form long-term relationships. Men of color were only present at these balls as servants or musicians.

It is a divine irony that it was at one of these balls that 11 year old Henriette met Sr. St. Marthe Fontier, the first religious sister she had ever known. (In 1824, for a variety of historical reasons, there were few priests or religious in heavily Catholic New Orleans and only two places where Mass was celebrated: St. Louis Cathedral and the chapel of the Ursuline convent. The old Ursuline convent is the only French colonial era building still standing in the US.)

Sr. St. Marthe has opened a Catholic school for young girls of color and it had become the nucleus for missionary activities. During the night Sr. St. Marthe taught classes in morals and faith to adults and during the day, the young girls were given religious instruction. In order to secure more teachers to help her, Sister St. Marthe trained young colored girls to become teachers. As a result, Henriette began to teach at the Catholic school when she was fourteen years old.

Henriette's family were not happy with her new life (her mother had a nervous breakdown) and especially because she acknowledged her racial background and mixed with the black population. Henriette's parents and siblings listed themselves as "white" for the 1830 census but Henriette referred to herself as a "free person of color". Henriette would pay for that choice and turning her back on a life of privilege.

As a result of declaring herself nonwhite, Henriette was refused as a postulant by the Ursuline and Carmelite nuns, which were open only to white women. Nonetheless, Delille and her friend Juliette Gaudin, a fellow free person of color, continued to pray together and teach nonwhites. In 1836, they privately pledged themselves to God's service. They shared their pledge with two white French immigrants, Père Rousselon and Marie Jeanne Alíquot.

In 1842, Rousselon helped the two women establish a home for elderly nonwhites. With loans and part of her inheritance, Delille bought a house where she could teach religion to nonwhites, despite the fact that educating nonwhites was illegal at the time. A year later, Delille and Gaudin were joined by another free person of color, Josephine Charles. They formed the Sisters of the Holy Family but were not allowed to take formal vows for another 10 years. Henriette's sister, who was the mistress of a wealthy Austrian businessman, introduced Henriette to many wealthy people, who gave generously to support her work. But sometimes, the sisters were so poor in the early days, that all they had for dinner was sweetened water. They had given everything else away.

"There is documentation showing these women did not gloss over the prejudice, the difficulties, the hardships," Archdiocese of New Orleans archivist Charles E. Nolan was quoted as saying on Philly.com. "Still, there's not a note of bitterness--and that's one of the gifts she had, the ability to step beyond all of the hurt and prejudice and take the next step, to do what God called them to do." Sister Sylvia Thibodeaux told the Los Angeles Times, "She was the servant of slaves. You can't get more committed than that."

De Lille died in 1862, the year that the Union Army took New Orleans. She never saw the end of slavery.

And here's a reminder that racism hadn't been purged from Catholic attitudes by 1960.

"In the late sixties, the Sisters of the Holy Family approached the archbishop of New Orleans about embarking on the canonization process. When they asked for his support, he replied, "Why did you all wait so long?" according to the Los Angeles Times. "Clearly this is a life that needs to be elevated to sainthood." The sisters had waited because, before 1960, they doubted the Church would elevate a black woman to sainthood."

Venerable Henriette de Lille sounds very good. Servant of God Henriette de Lille, pray for us.

Living La Dolce Vita as a Lay Student in Rome

If you have ever considered studying in Rome or just living or spending time in Rome, check out this wonderful resource, Lay Students in Rome.

It is a wonderful collection of the best resources to help you negotiate the sweet, sour, and peculiar realities of life in Rome: transportation, the incredible Italian bureaucracy, funding la dolce vita, finding the last Mass on any given day in the Urbe, etc. The website is the work of Maria Colonna, an American who has studied in Rome since 2004 and really knows the ropes!

If you are still at the dreaming stage or seriously planning, start here.

The other hub for lay students in Rome is the Lay Centre, founded by American Donna Orsuto, in 1984. Here lay students can live and experience Christian community - a surprising but real issue in a heavily clerical and religious town. Lay students, without the backing of a diocese or religious community, have to make their own way there.

We got to visit the Lay Centre briefly back in 2000 and meet Donna Orsuto. She introduced me to the wonders of lemoncello.

If you'd just like to dip your toe into The City, the Lay Centre is offering some really interesting week long seminars this summer (2010) which are inexpensive and can be taken for graduate credit:

Praying With the Saints in Rome
Towards Co-Responsibility of Priests and Laity: Wisdom from the Past, Hope for the Future

The last seminar is particularly interesting to me. As the blurb reads:

“To what extent is the pastoral co-responsibility of all, and particularly of the laity, recognized and encouraged? In past centuries, thanks to the generous witness of all the baptized who spent their life educating the new generations in the faith, healing the sick and going to the aid of the poor, the Christian community proclaimed the Gospel to the inhabitants of Rome. The self-same mission is entrusted to us today, in different situations, in a city in which many of the baptized have strayed from the path of the Church and those who are Christian are unacquainted with beauty of our faith. . . .”

In this year dedicated to the priesthood, it seems appropriate to reflect on the treasures of our tradition which speak to the ways that co-responsibility has been promoted in the past while recognizing, in the words of Benedict XVI, that “[t]here is still a long way to go. Too many of the baptized do not feel part of the ecclesial community and live on its margins, only coming to parishes in certain circumstances to receive religious services. Compared to the number of inhabitants in each parish, the lay people who are ready to work in the various apostolic fields, although they profess to be Catholic, are still few and far between.”

Using Rome as a classroom, this program will offer an historical and theological survey of how laity and ordained have promoted the communion and mission of the Church.

Some key historical figures to be included in the program are St. Paul and his co-workers, St. Justin Martyr, St. Lawrence, St. Gregory the Great, St. Catherine of Siena, St. Bridget of Sweden, St. Frances of Rome, St. Vincent Pallotti and John Henry Newman.

Special attention will be given to the ways co-responsibility is lived today by focusing on some specific examples: the Sant’Egidio Community and other new lay ecclesial movements.

Ah, Rome as a classroom! What a incredible place - in purely human as well as spiritual terms. I can't make it this year but if you do, be sure and let me know what it was like.

Red Eyes at Morning...

I took a redeye flight from Phoenix to Newark, NJ, where I connected to a flight to Halifax, Nova Scotia, arriving at noon Atlantic time. I am staying tonight with the Companions of the Cross community in Herring Bay, just outside the city. It's a quaint little town that clings to the sides of a small inlet that opens into the Atlantic just a couple hundred yards (I mean, meters) from the glebe (rectory). Rather than take a nap, I decided to explore because it was a wonderfully sunny day, and there were signs that spring's on its way to Nova Scotia, so here are a few pictures.


I walked for about an ninety minutes, but took a number of pictures of the countryside, including an old graveyard with a headstone dating to 1866 - about the time a Catholic church was built in the town. The Companions - Frs. Randy, Rob, Allen and Jamey, staff three small parishes outside Halifax, along with the campus ministries at St. Mary's college and Dalhousie University. I'll be giving a retreat to college students and young adults this weekend.

Tomorrow's supposed to be sunny and warm, so I'll walk a bit downtown, maybe sample a little Tim Horton's coffee, and try to blend in before heading up to the retreat center. Right now, I'm going to bed, and look forward to being dead to the world.

Finding Peter

Fr. Mike is a gifted writer and I really like this blurb he wrote for our parish mission in LA last week.

"In the very marrow of our bones and beyond lies a hunger, an emptiness, a searching for something that is impossible to name until it is found. Jesus likened it to a buried treasure discovered, or a merchant seeking fine pearls. Usually we seek it in things we can buy, honors we can win, or various kinds of success, but those never fully satisfy us. But the individuals in these two parables have discovered a purpose that guides how they act in the world.

That can describe your life, too. Traditionally, the Church has called it a vocation, a call from God that brings meaning and satisfaction to our lives through a work that we are given to do.""

I liked it beause it sums up a longing that we have discovered that many lay Catholics, disciples or not, have - a longing for a really significant life. This longing can be the door through which those who are not yet disciples encounter the Christ who calls them to follow him and who is the source of all vocations. As Hans Urs von Balthazar pointed out:

“Simon, the fisherman, before his meeting with Christ, however thoroughly he might have searched within himself, could not possibly have found a trace of Peter.
-Prayer, p. 49.

Our vocation is a mystery that is revealed through a lived encounter with Christ. Jesus knows who we were created to ultimately become. We don't. He has to reveal it to us as we walk through this life with him.

One of the most devastating consequences of our failure to evangelize large numbers of our own, is the fact that we are only calling forth a tiny percentage of the vocations that God has given us.

As soon to be Blessed John Henry Newman noted, we can never be thrown away. Not as long as we walk with him. But the terrible irony is that, my vocation can be unintentionally obscured by another's failure to share the basic kerygma and call to discipleship with me. As a failure to water newly sown seeds in the spring can mean that they never germinate and bloom.

If i never follow Jesus as a disciple, I can never be sent by him as an apostle.

Talkin' About Jesus

Another e-mail gem from a collaborator:

This weekend I did a presentation for the Archdiocese as part of their Catechist Certification process on the Origin and Mission of the Church. After the presentation another Catechist who has a charism of evangelism was very excited.

Her response to me was,

“You know, I just realized from your teaching that I don’t talk about Jesus.

It’s like when I tell people about my mother, I don’t tell them facts as she relates to me, she gave birth to me, etc, rather I tell others about my mother - her spirit, her soul. She is one of the most wises persons I have ever met. She has the most joyful spirit and a passion for life that is caughty. That is the way I need to talk about Jesus. He is not an idea, but a living person. And when we proclaim the gospel message to others, it can’t merely be about what Jesus has done for me as in faith sharing. It needs to be about what type of person He is, His likes and dislikes, what he enjoys, everything that makes Him who He is - anything to attract people to Him.”

This is an excellent reminder for me this Lent as well.

Thanks for the Mystery!

I just came across this line in one of my overdue e-mails and had to LOL!

"a knowledgeable investment banker to say of it (a non-profit) recently “Logos is not a business, it's a mystery.”

Heh. This is the kind of observation that makes you want to laugh and cry at the same time.

It could truly be said of the Catherine of Siena Institute (and many other Catholic non-profits, I'm sure,
"it is not a business, it's a mystery." A mystery held together by duct tape, paper clips, and the Providence of God.

Lord, thanks for the mystery! :-}

New Catholics: Easter, 2010

There has been much talk of larger than usual numbers of adults entering the Church this Easter. And not just the usual 150,000 or so in the US:

3,000 will be received in Hong Kong

650 will be received in Vietnam

There's been considerable talk about the 2,062 in the Archdiocese of Atlanta

But the 3,000 new Catholics in Dallas easily beats that and Houston's nearly 2000 catechumens and candidates practically matches Atlanta's numbers.

1,100 in the Archdiocese of Denver

675 adults and their sponsors filled our little Cathedral here in Colorado Springs for two Rite of Election Masses.

1,600 in the Archdiocese of New York

Over 1,000 in St. Petersburg, Florida

774 are joining us Diocese of Arlington, Virginia

The Archdiocese of Cincinnati will see 1049 catechumens and candidates- which is typical of the numbers they have seen over the past several years.

895 in Philly

1,400 in San Diego

and many, many more in the nearly 3,000 Catholic dioceses throughout the world. Only God knows how many are on that journey this year.

Are you one of them? Do you know someone who will be entering the Church at Easter? What's happening in your diocese or parish?

Glimpsing the River of Grace

Traveling and e-mail don't go together. Yesterday, I deleted 1700 less important e-mails that I received last month and now am actually reading and responding to what is left. I found this wonderful story from one of our collaborators that I thought I would share:

"I wanted to share this story I heard in the discernment interview I did of a woman with the Charism of Evangelism and Intercessory Prayer who goes to a certain block in her neighborhood run by pimps and knocks on the motel doors where the prostitutes are and ministers to them and asks them if she could pray with them. Many of them have returned to the faith."

One of the great privileges of facilitating the discernment of others is being given these tiny glimpses of the power of the Holy Spirit at work through laypeople. Multiply this anecdote by millions and it gives some sense of the hidden work of redemption being accomplished through the "yes" of ordinary men and women at this very moment as I type this sentence.

I often wish I could have a much better sense of the river of grace that is flowing through our world, a river that is hidden or obscured most of the time. A river that is known in its fullness only by God.

Part of the joy of heaven will be to finally be able to see and rejoice in the many miracles and transformations that were hidden from us during our earthly lives.