Easter is Here and Lent is Gone--I mean, concluded... I mean, Lent is fine, but Easter is glory... I mean...

Every time Easter arrives, the feast is full of joy and glory.  It's the resurrection of Our Lord Jesus and the most singular important event in human history!  Embedded in the joy is the relief of Lent being over.  The St. Francises and St. Ignatiuses have eyes to see suffering as it really is: participation in the Passion of Jesus.  I am not in that category.  More often than not, I fight it tooth and nail.

An examination of my Lent is always disappointing.  I have a strange idea of myself that I should come out of Lent completely purified and perfect.  Bad habit x?  Eliminated!  Evangelism efforts?  Tripled!  Sacred Scripture?  Memorized, contemplated, and able to answer every possible question!  It took a few years to come to peace with this high expectations "false me."  Dealing with that kind of unrealistic expectation has one primary peril: I inadvertently assumed that I would be doing the serious heavy lifting.  Grace, the Holy Spirit, yeah yeah, but it was I that had to fix things.  There was no possible way I could ever live up to my own expectations, especially if I relied more on myself rather than God.  That disastrous approach has two outcomes: apathy or an OCD approach (although not in the Carmelite sense).  The former, why even bother if I can't do it?, leads to sloth.  The latter, being anxious and over-scrupulous, leads to even further pride.  I settled for some apathetic Lents in the past, and they didn't do me any lasting good. 

The key is to avoid pride and hit the mark in between two extremes, as our friend Aristotle would say.  Approach Lent with humility--knowing from the beginning our weakness and inability to fix everything ourselves in 40 days.  Also, I think a targeted approach helps during Lent.  In the past, I fasted just to fast.  It's that thing we do during Lent, right?  Instead, target a particular weakness and fast toward that end.  And, to be clear, it should be a spiritual end.  Fasting from a particular food for the sake of losing weight has some spiritual merit, but it's misdirected. 

This year, my wife and I decided to give up sweets.  That practice was my go-to for Lent from my childhood all the way up until college.  I hadn't fasted from sweets for a number of years; trying this year proved more difficult than I expected.  There are two somewhat embarrassing episodes that highlight this...

First, my wife made dinner for some friends who recently had a baby; there were some leftover cookies.  I have some Irish heritage and love St. Patrick, so we agreed that a single, leftover cookie on that day would be ok.  Leading up to St. Patrick's feast day, I found myself craving that cookie.  That was accompanied by a sobering thought: have I ever had such fervor for the Eucharist?  Seriously, I looked forward to a cookie more than the Body of Christ?

Second, my wife and I started the Divine Mercy Novena on Good Friday.  Halfway through the prayer for the day, my mind wandered (in itself, not uncommon)... to breakfast the next day.  Sausage or bacon?  Eggs, for sure... are we out of English muffins?

Yikes.  We both had the realization that, for one, this was a well-aimed penance for the weakness of our appetite for sweets.  In addition, that appetite was stronger than I initially thought. 

I believe our fasting did us a lot of good, and it provided an opportunity to become more humble than before.  To close, here's a passage from St. John Chrysostum.  For everything that changes in the world, human nature does not.  These words sound like he's talking directly to me:

"Sharpen your sickle, which you have blunted through gluttony— sharpen it by fasting. Lay hold of the pathway which leads towards heaven; rugged and narrow as it is, lay hold of it, and journey on.  And how may thou be able to do these things?  By subduing your body, and bringing it into subjection.  For when the way grows narrow, the corpulence that comes of gluttony is a great hindrance.  Keep down the waves of inordinate desires.  Repel the tempest of evil thoughts.  Preserve the bark; display much skill, and you have become a pilot. But we shall have the fast for a groundwork and instructor in all these things."  (Homilies on the Statutes, Homily III, #7)

Streams of Living Water

One of the subjects that captivated my imagination was the "water of life" theme from Jean Corbon's The Wellspring of Worship.  A really, really good book!  I attempted to write a serious article on it, and I may indeed try to get it published some day.  The idea of the water of life comes from a number of Scripture passages--from the Old Testament as well as the New Testament.  The first reading at Mass this morning (see the Sunday readings here) briefly mentions this theme, Is 35:4-7...

Thus says the LORD:Say to those whose hearts are frightened:Be strong, fear not!Here is your God,he comes with vindication;with divine recompensehe comes to save you.Then will the eyes of the blind be opened,the ears of the deaf be cleared;then will the lame leap like a stag,then the tongue of the mute will sing.Streams will burst forth in the desert,and rivers in the steppe.The burning sands will become pools, and the thirsty ground, springs of water.

I think one of the things I love the most about the "living water" motif (which is not the ability to sound pretentious, using words like 'motif') is the visual.  I imagine a parched desert... tumbleweed blowing across... the cry of a bird of prey echoes throughout the landscape... the ground is dry and cracked where there's dirt, and the sand is more arid than something really arid.  (NB: good vocabulary isn't always part of my imaginings) (is using NB: pretentious too?  I'm on a roll!)  Out of this will come streams?  A desert gets barely a hint of rainfall and is the utter antithesis of fertile ground.  Pools?  Rivers?  Springs of water?  The odds of that happening naturally are so infinitesimal that it would be impossible.  

Latch onto that image of the desert.  See how incredibly absurd it would be for the desert to all of a sudden burst forth with streams, rivers, and pools.  With this illustration, Isaiah's prophetic words are showing us: SUCH IS THE POWER OF GOD!  What's naturally impossible is no barrier to Him.  Even the tiniest amount of His grace is stronger than the greatest evil.  

And it's no less absurd when His grace acts in us.  Humans have free will, and thus the power to magnificently screw up our own lives.  Our souls can resemble that desert--dry, parched, and barren.  When we sin, we do so against God and our fellow man.  By all rights, we've earned every tumbleweed and every grain of arid sand in our souls.  For us to fix ourselves, on our own?  Make that barren soul a life-giving, fertile soil?  Impossible.  

Here is God, coming to save fallen humanity.  Here is Jesus, promising "living water" and salvation.  It's not just salvation for (=heaven), but it's also salvation from the barrenness of sin within us.  Come to Him, be healed!  Drink of His living water and never thirst again!

Fr. Barron's "Priest, Prophet, and King"

I somewhat recently watched Fr. Robert Barron's "Priest, Prophet, and King" series, and I loved it.  There are six episodes, and each runs about 20-30 minutes.  I think it's designed that way to make sure that Fr. Barron didn't overload his listeners with depth of content, as well as to fit nicely into an hour-long discussion group format.  I really enjoy Fr. Barron's material; I like his approach, delivery, and I appreciate how he can be profound and simple at the same time.  Here are some of the highlights of the series for me...

1. No competition between the baptismal and ministerial priesthood.  We share the same mission, and there is no misogyny, prejudice, or hate behind it.  Everyone can offer sacrifice, but not everyone can offer the Eucharistic sacrifice.  Does that devalue or erase the laity's sacrifices?  No!  We're co-laborers in the same vineyard.

2. The role of the priest is to reconcile God & humanity.  If someone had asked me to summarize what a priest does, I don't think I would've come up with something so simple as this.  Priests do lots of things, but what do they do?  They serve the people of God in the person of Christ, doing the same thing He did for us: healing us so that we can enter into right relationship with God.

3. How key the Temple was... and how the Mystical Body of Christ is the new temple.  The Jerusalem Temple was the literal place of reconciliation for the Jews.  By offering animal sacrifices, the Jewish faithful maintained their right relationship with God.  Had Jesus employed a PR firm, they they would have had an aneurism after hearing his saying, "something greater than the temple is here." (Matt 12:6)  The Temple was the meeting place of heaven and earth, and no place could be more sacred.  The transformation of the new covenant can be seen in St. John's marvelous vision:

Then I saw a new heaven and a new earth; for the first heaven and the first earth had passed away, and the sea was no more.  And I saw the holy city, new Jerusalem, coming down out of heaven from God, prepared as a bride adorned for her husband; and I heard a loud voice from the throne saying, "Behold, the dwelling of God is with men. He will dwell with them, and they shall be his people, and God himself will be with them; he will wipe away every tear from their eyes, and death shall be no more, neither shall there be mourning nor crying nor pain any more, for the former things have passed away."  And he who sat upon the throne said, "Behold, I make all things new."  (Revelation 21:1-5)

4. False worship is not harmless.  The story of Elijah and the 400 prophets of Ba'al is an entertaining read and one that carries a lot of spiritual wisdom in it.  One of the highlights that Fr. Barron pointed out was that false worship always leads to some sort of spiritual harm.  The 400 prophets, when Ba'al didn't respond in a timely fashion, started cutting themselves, as if to cry louder to their god.  (1 Kings 18:28)  Although unseen, we do ourselves great spiritual harm when we worship something other than God.

5. Bad kingship starts with self-indulgence.  Although not all of us are ministerial priests, we are all still part of the baptismal priesthood; and thus we can offer sacrifice.  Similarly, although we do not possess kingdoms like David, Midas, or Henry, we are still to govern our own "kingdom": our body, home, and family.  King David fell into serious sin with Bathsheba; not only adultery, but murder.  Where he lost the spiritual battle?  He got lazy.

In the spring of the year, the time when kings go forth to battle, David sent Joab, and his servants with him, and all Israel; and they ravaged the Ammonites, and besieged Rabbah. But David remained at Jerusalem.  It happened, late one afternoon, when David arose from his couch and was walking upon the roof of the king's house, that he saw from the roof a woman bathing; and the woman was very beautiful.  (2 Samuel 11:1-2)

First, he sent Joab to do his military campaigning for him.  Second, he either slept in until the afternoon or took a long nap in the middle of the day.  Vices often come in bunches--trouble with one leads to trouble with another, and even new vices may pop up as a result.  When David woke up that afternoon, he probably didn't intend to seek out another man's wife, defile her, and then kill her husband.  His sloth made him unable to fight the temptation.  A good lesson for all of us, though the details may (and hopefully do) vary.

6. The gates of hell not prevailing.  Fr. Barron ended the series with this, and it made me want to get up and go to battle.  We know the passage well:

"Blessed are you, Simon Bar-Jona! For flesh and blood has not revealed this to you, but my Father who is in heaven.  And I tell you, you are Peter, and on this rock I will build my church, and the powers of death shall not prevail against it.  I will give you the keys of the kingdom of heaven, and whatever you bind on earth shall be bound in heaven, and whatever you loose on earth shall be loosed in heaven." (Matt 16:17-19)

I'd only ever thought of this with the Church in the defensive posture.  The Church would be assailed, and Satan would send every last warrior to break through the walls.  Fr. Barron flipped the imagery, which I found AWESOME.  The Church and the Mystical Body of Christ is on the attack, sieging the gates of hell.  Through the power of Jesus Christ, the most fearsome warriors of hell stand no chance.  Hell cannot win against the power of His grace any more than a toothpick could overpower a flamethrower.

Fight the good fight of faith (1 Tim 6:12) and be strong in the Lord and in the strength of his might (Eph 6:10) 

7QT: grab bag and the end of the world, 8/1/15

My long-delayed return to the 7QT fray!  

1) It sounds dumb to say, but I care less about clothes.  My wife can attest, I haven't always sought to be the most fashionable guy.  Like many guys (I like to think), apathy often wins over dapper dressing.

The reason I care less about clothes?  Most of my t-shirts have been puked on, peed on, or drooled on.  One t-shirt in particular: Leo emptied the contents of his tiny stomach onto it.  I took it off, put stain remover on it, and it went in the wash.  The next day, when it came out of the dryer, I put it on again.  It took less than 10 minutes for Leo to puke on it again.  

2)  I have another article up at coraevans.com, this time on Ignatian spirituality.  The folks there are remarkably patient with a hack like me.  They kindly helped me finish part two of the treatment on Ignatian spirituality.  

3) I know I'm behind as far as this blog is concerned... this is my first post in a couple months... but the shock of the Supreme Court decision was considerable.  Actually, not so much that it happened (just take a quick stroll through TV shows over the past ten years), but seeing so much dissent among Catholics.  Well, living in a few different parishes and working in the Church for a time after college, that actually isn't all that surprising.  Those thoughts are pretty depressing.  

One Scripture verse that helped me was stunningly simple: 
"All his precepts are trustworthy, they are established for ever and ever, to be performed with faithfulness and uprightness." (Ps 111:7-8)

God's laws are not popular, always convenient, or what we want.  Yet they are trustworthy!  Not because a guy in the Church says so, but because of Our Father in heaven.

Over-the-top picture for purposes of levity

4) As things happen in the world, I wonder how close we are to the end times.  No, really!  I've read Mark Mallett (who's great), Charlie Johnston, and other pings are registering, too.  Charlie is of the opinion that sh-tuff is going to get REAL in 2016 for about a year or so.  I haven't read up on it in a while, but some of the things Charlie said reminded me of what was given to the Medugorje visionaries.   

It's a hard message--if they're correct, what lies ahead is the worst catastrophe in the history of civilization--and I appreciate Mark's and Charlie's take on their predictions: 

a) they submit whole-heartedly to the Catholic Church, the Scriptures, and Sacred Tradition
b) the strongest theme of Mark's writings is hope
c) Charlie isn't fanatical about the instructions he's given.  He merely passes on the message. 
d) both guys repeat and repeat to return to faith in God

Becoming a Dodgers fan is simply
the right thing to do.

5) One of my favorite homilists, Fr. Robert Barron, is now Bishop-Elect Robert Barron!  The Archdiocese of Los Angeles is lucky to have him.  From my time as a seminarian, I developed a new appreciation for the tough job that every bishop has.  They deal with a lot of crap (more than we ever know about), have to fight for the faith not only in the secular world but with their own clergy & chancery, and somehow have to maintain their own spiritual lives in the midst of all that.  

Maybe Bishop-Elect Barron will have to start rooting for the Dodgers, given his new digs... 

6) Ok, back to #4.  That kind of thing has been on my mind a lot lately.  Watching one of Charlie Johnston's latest videos made it sink in even more.  While the best preparation we can do is spiritual, that doesn't mean that we can't materially prepare.  I don't believe it's a violation in trust to prepare a "Get Home Bag" in case I need to walk home from work.  To that list, I'd add a small copy of the Bible, a rosary, and a St. Benedict medal. 

7) Still on #4.  The mentioning of somewhat specific dates by Charlie Johnston ("sometime in 2016" is as detailed as it gets) raises a red flag in some respects.  I have to mull it over some more, and pray about it even more than that; I don't have a reason not to believe him right now.  Even if his messages are wrong, redoubling our dedication to Christ is never out of season!  

Fast Food for a Hallowed Feast

Today is the great solemnity of Corpus Christi, the Body and Blood of Jesus.  We celebrate the "source and summit of our faith" (Lumen Gentium #11).

If I were throwing a dinner party and had some honored guests, I'd want to serve the greatest food.  The best ingredients and recipes I could muster.  If I met the Queen of England, I'd get my best suit, shave, do my hair, and present myself as best I could.

Why is our liturgical music different?  As time has gone on, I have a harder time with it.  Bad translations, fluffy lyrics, holdovers from the 70s, and not an organ in sight!  The Mass is only seen as a meal, not a sacrifice; the music focuses on the horizontal aspect (the community) rather than the vertical (worshipping God).  Social justice is a popular theme in modern liturgical music, but the definitions for that are varying and vague.  How about we go shelter the dreams of the homeless?  No, really. 

Here are the Latin lyrics of Panis Angelicus, the beautiful text written by St. Thomas Aquinas:

Panis Angelicus, fit panis hominum
Dat panis coelicus, figuris terminum
O res mirabilis!  Manducat Dominum
Pauper, servus et humilis

Te, trina Deitas, unaque poscimus
Sic nos tu visita, sicut te colimus
Per tuas semitas, duc nos quo tendimus
Ad lucem quam in habitas

This is one of those rare hymns that is widely known in the secular world.  The lyrics sing of the Holy Eucharist: Jesus' offering of Himself and the deliverance on a promise to be with us until the end of the world (Matt 28:20).  The Mystery of Mysteries!  Encapsulating all the major high points of the Catholic faith--the Paschal Mystery, the Incarnation, the salvation of our souls, the Mystical Body of Christ and our being drawn into the Holy Trinity... and on, and on, and on.  So the English translation of this great hymn would be carefully wrought, right?

Latin to English, in a Roundabout Way

The "translation" by Owen Alstott that was sung at Mass this morning is a great example of theology being stripped of the supernatural and robbed of depth.  I don't have a good enough knowledge of Latin to do a translation myself, so here's what Wikipedia says:

Bread of the Angels is made bread for mankind;Gifted bread of Heaven of all imaginings the end;Oh, thing miraculous!This body of God will nourish the poor, the servile, and the humble. 

Thee Triune God, we beseech;Do us Thou visit, just as Thee we worship.By Thy ways, lead us where we are heading,to the light Thou dwellest in.

Here are Alstott's lyrics:

Holy and living bread, wondrous food from heaven sent
God's sacrifice foretold, now in our hands we hold
Sign and reality, challenge for us to be
Humble servants to all the poor. 

God, holy Three in One, through this off'ring of Your Son
All now on earth can see, what we are called to be
Hope for a world in need, signs that love can succeed
Where true justice and peace endure. 

Perhaps he didn't intend to actually translate the lyrics; that he composed his own lyrics to go with the melody of Panis Angelicus.  That's the best explanation I can figure, since the his translation doesn't resemble the Latin after the first few words.  Not even close!  Well, the words humble, poor are the same... comments on the faulty translation (FT) below.

Not Too Shabby

I like how the sacrificial aspect to the Eucharist is mentioned.  "God's sacrifice foretold" alludes to the prophecies of the Old Testament.  "This offering of Your Son" makes me think of Jesus as the priest and victim, and the Paschal Lamb from the Book of Revelation.  I also like the mention of "sign and reality"--that is, highlighting the Real Presence of Christ in the Eucharist.

Shabby.  Very Shabby

Overall, my problems with the FT revolve around one central issue: removing the vertical language (=directed toward God and heaven) and replacing it with completely horizontal language (=about the community, the people, and the mission of the people of God).  Theology & spirituality need to keep both in tension; if not, distortions enter.  If a theology is only vertical, it stays in the academies, cathedrals, and monasteries and doesn't go out into the world.  If a theology is only horizontal, everything is human-based.  The focus is on the community, on ambiguously defined words like justice, and making the world into heaven on earth.  In a sense, the community replaces God, and achieving an environment of justice replaces heaven.  Those are extremes, but in my opinion and experience, SO MUCH of post-Vatican II theology and spirituality tends toward the horizontal at the expense of the vertical.

The FT exemplifies this problem, highlighting the horizontal at the expense of the vertical.  "O res mirabilis!" goes from being miraculous to "wondrous", which is nice but not the same.  The "challenge for us to be humble servants to all the poor" is way, way off of the Latin.  Wikipedia's translation says this Heavenly Bread will be food for the poor, servile, and humble.  One could do some theological calisthenics and say that the faithful, in being humble servants to the poor, do in fact feed them.  That's valid to some degree, but not where the song is headed.  Think the manna in the desert... think a generous God Who nourishes His people.  The FT changes direction: the vertical dimension is gone and replaced with the horizontal.  Making it all about us.

"All now on earth can see what we are called to be": really?  It's that clear to everyone?  Wouldn't our churches be more full if this was the case?  And what we're called to be is "hope for a world in need, signs that love can succeed, where true justice and peace endure."  Without actually defining huge terms like justice, peace, hope, and love, these words are empty.  A social work organization could write those exact, same things into its mission statement!  Fr. Dwight Longenecker has a great post on this, I highly recommend it.

In the Latin, the latter half of the second verse talks about heaven.  And yet again, the FT makes it all about us.  If we are "hope for a world in need" and "signs that love can succeed", then, true justice and peace endures!  That is the goal of the Christian life, justice and peace!  Who needs heaven?  Why bother talking about it?


What a shame that such a meaningful hymn has become banal.  The Solemnity of Corpus Christi deserves so much more!

Article #5

I'm still fortunate enough to be able to write articles for the Cora Evans blog.  This latest assignment was to write about an extraordinary conversion, and I picked John Pridmore's story.  It's a fantastic story and a great reminder that God's grace is stronger than any sin or weakness we have.

John's website: http://johnpridmore.yolasite.com/ (has a store with his books and CDs)

Lighthouse Catholic Media: http://www.lighthousecatholicmedia.org/store/speaker/john-pridmore (just his conversion story & book; can download CD or mp3)

http://www.coraevans.com/blog/article/conversion-stories-john-pridmore

Questions without answers

One of the biggest challenges in the history of the Church is communicating the Gospel to the world.  This stretches from age to age: from the apostles, to the evangelizers of northern Europe, to the missionaries that traveled to the Americas and Africa, to the present day. 

Evangelical efforts have always been a mix of success and failure.  This trend is there in Acts of the Apostles—at Pentecost, the very beginning.  Over 3,000 souls chose baptism that day (Acts 2:41), but they were side-by-side with a group that derided the apostles, calling them drunk (Acts 2:13).  Similarly, St. Paul’s preaching at the Areogapus was going fine until he started talking about the resurrection.  Dionysius and others thirsted for more, but still others mocked St. Paul for his teaching. 

In all of our efforts to evangelize, we have to keep a healthy tension between reasonable and positive expectations.  On one hand, the grace of God has power beyond our imagining.  In Mexico, for example, Our Lord sent the Blessed Virgin Mary to St. Juan Diego.  In a brief time, millions converted thanks to that miraculous intervention—accomplishing more than earthly missionaries had in years of effort.  On the other hand, original sin eliminates the chance of converting the entire world to Christ before the end of the world.  There will be no perfect society, no “Christendom” as we would like.  St. Thomas More coined the word “utopia” as the name of his fictional, perfect society.  He made a new word out of two Greek words, which etymologically means “no where.”

I’ve participated in this evangelical challenge at the parish level, as a volunteer with youth groups and religious education classes.  It’s the same question—how do we communicate the Gospel?—with different methods.  Youth group uses a combination of fellowship, catechesis, retreats, and fun activities to try to get the point across.  Religious education goes about it as a school would: classrooms, curricula, text books, and sometimes homework. 

Maybe that’s too lengthy of an introduction to say… whatever the Catholic Church in America is doing on a broad scale to catechize its own members, it’s failing.  There are bright spots and vibrant parishes.  There are other pockets of… well, the opposite.  I’ve already written about it here, but I’ve had more religious education experience since then.  Here are my thoughts, followed up by questions… the thing is, I don’t have the answers, and I don’t pretend to be an expert educator, pastoral minister, or anything close.  I’m a layman who’s been around a lot of clergy and a lot of parishes, that's all. 

And my thoughts really just apply to the parish level, not to parents or families.  That's definitely a conversation worth having--how can parishes help families, the first classrooms of catechesis?

1) Knowledge is key.  I can’t tell you how many small groups I’ve been a part of over the past 10 years… Questions of a religious nature can be answered with vague platitudes that don’t ultimately mean anything.  At the last confirmation retreat I helped chaperone, it became an inside joke in my small group.  Every question could’ve been answered with “peer pressure” or other phrases.  Every time the teens would use those answers, I’d press for more.  

How can we believe in something we don't know much about?  Almost ten years ago, I had a coworker who was a big San Francisco Giants fan.  I am a Dodgers fan (there is nothing more awful to a Giants fan than the Dodgers), so naturally this coworker gave me grief about it.  He asked for the starting lineup of the Dodgers, and I didn't know--he laughed at me, "you call yourself a fan and you don't even know who's on the team?" 

Question: What is the key knowledge that we need to be passing on?  Like I mentioned in my post from a couple years ago (here it is again), I’m not talking about heavy theological knowledge—just the basics.  What brought this question up in my mind is an old Sunday missal from 1941.  At the back, it had lists of prayers and devotions.  One of the sections was called “Prayers to Be Memorized” and had at the top of the page, “Every Catholic Should Know.”  It made me wonder… what would we put in this section now?  It doesn’t seem to fit the catechetical philosophies around today; such a list might be seen as a return to the “pre-conciliar days” of the Baltimore Catechism (my impression is that animosity still exists against that time among the elder generation of the Church).  There would be fights about diversity, social justice, and inclusive language before any updated list of “Every Catholic Should Know” could be completed.

Question: Am I being too cynical on this?

2) Encountering Christ.  Pope Benedict and Pope Francis have talked repeatedly about the need for our encounter with Christ.  Perhaps this is done with regular holy hours, or a retreat, or special groups (e.g. Communion & Liberation, Neo-Catechumenal Way).  Certainly, great ways to encounter Christ are through the sacraments (see #3 below), but some of us need a push to come to a better appreciation of the sacraments. 

Question:  How do you get a “but I’m so busy!” culture (laity and priests included) to buy into the idea of a retreat, or holy hour, or prayer group, etc.?

3) Sacraments!  This probably should’ve been first on the list.  Indeed, if we’re not bringing people to the sacraments, what’s the point of evangelization?  Still, I’d think it would be hard for a non-denominational Christian, a non-Christian, or a lapsed Catholic (who supposedly already knows about the Mass) to attend Mass without them having some knowledge ahead of time (#1) and having enough of an encounter with Christ (#2) to pursue the truth. 

This is also an area in dire need of re-catechesis.  By that, I wonder how many Catholics stand up, sit down, kneel, and receive Communion without really knowing what they’re doing.  I can go through Mass all or in part with my mind elsewhere, even though I’ve been taught how amazing the Mass is. 

Question: Have we reformed the liturgical reform enough?  I don't think so.  As I get older and time goes on, the more I think Mass needs to become more sacred.  The more familiar it’s become, the less special it is.  And if Mass is not all that special, if it’s become “protestantized” (as some conciliar reformers wished and deliberately acted), why bother going to a dull Mass if the local mega-church has better music, better preaching, and a coffee stand?  Ad orientem and music are the two places I think they should start.  Unfortunately, I don’t see the bishops getting behind that anytime soon. 

4) Fellowship outside of Mass.  This is a personal thing for me, and I know not everyone has this need like I do.  Still, I look at the examples of the mega-churches.  They have a small group for everything!  In addition to youth groups and junior high groups, they have them for men, women, moms, young adults, older adults, Bible studies, book clubs… and on and on.  Whatever the interest, whatever the need, most likely there’s a group for that.

We’re all spiritually part of the Body of Christ, and we experience that par excellence in the Sacrifice of the Mass.  My guess is that the goal of these groups is to provide a follow-up, more visible sign of unity within a parish. 

Question: How do you convince priests to get behind something like this, over and above the regular ministries that already take a considerable amount of volunteers and effort?

There.  I feel better now. 

Published Article #2

I received a second assignment from the blog of www.coraevans.com, on the topic of evangelization.  It was an interesting article to write--on one hand, it's easy enough to talk about.  I can point out what we should do and how we should go about it.

On the other hand, I feel that I'm genuinely awful at evangelizing.  I try my best, but I have more mistakes than successes.  By successes, I mean that I don't feel I say the right thing, convey Church teaching effectively, or take advantage of all the opportunities I'm given.  The more I read about the subject--especially in JPII's Redemptoris Missio, Paul VI's Evangelii Nuntiani, and in the life of St. Martin of Tours--the harder it was to look in the mirror.  Now if I can just take my own advice!

http://www.coraevans.com/blog/article/evangelization-our-role-obligation-and-approach

Breaking through Apathy, Catechetical Enemy #1

Sometime last year I participated in Eucharistic adoration with a little praise & worship music thrown in; I helped with the musical side of it.  Being in the front, I had a clear view of the whole church--and the kids who, by their body language, couldn't care less about what was happening.  I don't mean that in a judgmental way; there's no way I could possibly know what was going on in their mind or their soul.  Were seeds planted?  Were they interiorly enjoying it while exteriorly loathing it?  Who knows...

I found out later that day that the adoration was specifically for a confirmation class.  After learning that, I wasn't surprised.  Sorry folks!  The teachers of those classes and the associated youth ministers are great.  They do something very difficult and thankless.  The kids?  Man.  I've volunteered with confirmation class kids in religious education/youth group in multiple parishes, three in Oregon and one in California.  My experience at adoration was entirely consistent with all three parishes.

Here's how I'd summarize my confirmation class experiences to date, as a catechist:

1) For the most part, the kids were there because their parents made them.

2) Based on their level of knowledge of the faith, it seemed like most of the kids' families were not practicing.  And here I'm not critiquing an incorrect pronunciation of 'anamnesis'; it was basic matters of faith.

3) The sacrament seemed like a stamp on a passport, or a culturally expected formality.

I don't think my experiences were unique to me.  Here are some thoughts and feelings:

Sorrow.  It breaks my heart for a few reasons.  First and foremost, I have to admit, is my pride.  This is my faith, my church, and, well, my music that they're brushing off.  In addition to any selfish reasons, it's sad that a personal encounter with the Holy Spirit is treated on the same level (or worse) as an after-school club, a sports team, or any other extracurricular activity.

Something's wrong with our system...  Joanne McPortland wrote this blog post a while ago that ignited a maelstrom of discussion on the subject of children's catechesis.  Her main takeaway is a good one: if the parents & adults aren't catechized, even the most effective catechesis might not stick.  It's really simple math:  

[Religious education for one hour a week + Mass for one hour a week (hopefully) = 2 hrs/week] vs. [school all day, Mon-Fri + TV, movies + video games + sports after school and on the weekends = waaaaay more than 2 hrs/week]  

Solutions?  I'm not an expert educator, and I don't have the most extensive parish experience.  Still, I have two thoughts on what to do.

The biggest challenge, in my eyes: how do you communicate this is special?  Part of this is the witness of the teacher.  I remember from an old confirmation class years ago, one of the volunteer teachers was asked by a kid about the Catholic teaching on abortion.  She conveyed what the Church officially taught in a voice that sounded like she was rolling her eyes.  The connotation in her voice said so much more than her words!  On the other side of the coin, listen to someone like Mark Hart give a talk.  He's excited and he's very convincing that he's convinced about the truth of the Catholic faith.  In all likelihood, very few catechists have the ability/experience to be a dynamic speaker like Mark Hart.  Still, everyone who loves their faith has something they can say.

In my archdiocese, confirmation is done in high school.  At this age, I think a confirmation program ideally should have a specific goal: helping transition the kids from a child-like faith (not in the biblical sense, see Matt 18:3) to an adult faith.  How exactly to do this?  heh heh... good question... the kids should have a mix of things: experiences with different types of prayer, learning about the faith, reading the Scriptures, and frequent sacraments.  In essence, what every adult believer should have as part of their life.

I hope the landscape changes.  In the meantime, I'll be working on becoming a better witness.

Msgr. Knox and the Parables of the Kingdom

I wrote previously on the parables of the Kingdom in the Gospel of Matthew.  They fascinated me then, and I read a great reflection on them that continued the wonder.  Alongside reading the Gospel of Matthew, I've been making my way through In Soft Garments by Msgr. Ronald Knox.  He uses the parables of the mustard seed and the leaven to put a frame on the issue of the Church and human progress.

Here are some extended quotes, and any attempt at a summary wouldn't do him justice.

"... the growth of the mustard seed shows you the Christian Church as a body which swells in size, whereas the spread of the leaven shows you the Christian gospel as an influence which radiates fore and communicated it to its neighbourhood.  The tree takes something from its surroundings; takes nourishment from the earth and the moisture and the sunlight, and so grows bigger: and the Church takes something from her surroundings, takes the souls of men from the world and incorporates them into herself.  The leaven gives something to its surroundings, infects them with its own life; so the Christian gospel gives something to its surroundings; communicates to mankind its own spirit of discipline and its own philosophy of life." (pg. 166-167)

"One word needs to be added, not less important.  Our Lord says that the mustard tree is to grow out of all recognition; he doesn't say that it is to grow indefinitely; does not mean us to understand that there will ever be a time at which the whole of mankind will be even nominally Christian.  His prophecy that his Gospel will be preached in the whole world is sufficiently fulfilled if all mankind has a real chance of hearing it.  Similarly, when he says that the leaven hidden in the meal spread till the whole was leavened, I don't think we are necessarily to understand this as meaning that there will be a time at which the principles of Christian charity towards one's neighbour will dominate the counsels of humanity.  We are to understand that the Christian message will make itself felt throughout the world which harbours it, not necessarily that it will triumph.  Don't be disappointed, therefore, if it appears--it may perfectly well come to appear so in your lifetime--as if things were going backwards instead of forwards, as if the world were relapsing into barbarism instead of following along the path marked out for it by what we call civilization.... the social influence of the Church is in reality a by-product of her activity; it is not her life.  Her business, ultimately, is with the individual soul, and the promises by which she lives are not limited within the these narrow horizons.  The leaven is there, and it does not lose its virtue with the centuries.  But whether in our particular age the time is ripe for its manifestation, that we cannot know."  (pg. 172-173)

The latter quote put the modern world into good perspective, I think.  Couldn't Knox be writing for today, and not the 1930s?  Doesn't the world seem to be going backward instead of forward?  It slips my mind frequently, but it's key to our spiritual life: Christ has won the war, yes, but the victory will not come in this world until the end of time.  Until then, we are in the midst of the battles.

The Blast Zone

This weekend, we watched "August: Osage County" starring Meryl Streep and Julia Roberts.  This does contain spoilers, so if you're interested in seeing the movie, first please reconsider.  If you still want to see the movie, stop reading.  Good acting throughout, but not a light movie.  Very dark, despite the previews.

The movie chronicles a few days in the life of an extremely dysfunctional family.  Unfortunately, "extremely dysfunctional" is an understatement.  The twists and turns of the plot reveal level after level of pain.  Just when you think it can't get any worse for the family, it does!  What I found interesting in the movie was how each character dealt with pain.  My CPE supervisor would've had a field day with this movie.

Okay, final warning about the spoilers.

You look at the events of the movie, and how tragic they are.  The drug-addicted Meryl Streep; Julia Roberts, whose husband recently left her and who can't relate to her daughter; one sister who engages in an incestuous relationship because she can't find anything else; another sister who "has everything she wants" but also has a massive front built up to shield her from the deep sadness inside her; the alcoholic husband of Meryl, who hires a cook to take care of his wife and then leaves her, only to commit suicide.  Quite literally, every character in the movie has a deeply traumatic flaw/pain/event and it all explodes in the end.

I tried to imagine real people going through that... a real family.  It would be a wonder if there weren't more suicides!  Three thoughts struck me.

First, that simple verse from the letter of James: the wages of sin are death.  Not might be death, only death if you don't psychologically process your sins well.  A very plain equation.  Sin = death.  Bringing in adultery, addictions, and other dysfunction into life?  There's only one outcome if we don't root it out of our lives.

Second, sin is not a private matter.  No matter how we try to convince ourselves to the contrary (and our culture is convinced that sins can be private), we have to go back to the previous point.  Introducing sin into our lives inevitably affects others.  In the movie, two couples' poor choices scarred their lives, all of their children (4 total), their children's spouses, and their grandchild couldn't escape, either.  At its very nature, sin is destructive--of grace, of good things, and of anything good in our lives.  Give Satan his chance and he'll make the most of it.

Third, as I had compassion on these fictional folks in the movie, I realized that the explosion of darkness and sin wasn't a sudden onset.  These poor people set the stage for this nastiness long ago.  Meryl Streep & her husband chose addictions rather than a life-giving marriage (in the opening of the movie, the husband tells the cook that he and his wife had made an arrangement long ago, not to bother each other about their respective addictions).  Meryl's sister chose to have an affair to cope with her husband's smoking habits (not cigarettes).  The mess that their families became was a direct result of those choices.  Isn't it the same with us?  Problems we have in our spiritual life don't usually come out of nowhere.

Although I was somewhat depressed after watching this movie, it was an interesting insight into human nature.  It convinced me, even more than before, of how much we're in need of a Savior.  Thank you Lord!

It's Everything

Have you ever read passages of the Scriptures and marveled, feeling like you're reading them for the first time?  I had that feeling reading Matthew 13.  I'd heard homilies on all the individual parables of the Kingdom, but I couldn't remember the last time I'd looked at them as a composite whole. And what profundity!  It was awe-inspiring to "cast my net into the deep.

Matthew 13 is essentially the third Luminous Mystery--the proclamation of the Kingdom.  Jesus tells seven parables, teaching about the Kingdom of God.  He explains two of them and the chapter closes with he famous phrase, "a prophet is not without honor except in his own country" (13:57).  The seven parables are:

1) The Sower (rocky ground, fertile ground, etc.)
2) The Wheat & the Weeds
3) The Mustard Seed
4) The Leaven
5) The Treasure in the Field
6) The Pearl of Great Price
7) The Fishing Net

Rather than go over these one by one, here are some thoughts about the stories as a whole...

-I'm still taken with Pope Benedict's idea that in preaching the Kingdom, Jesus was actually preaching Himself.  More specifically, His Mystical Body.  It was in the first of the Pope's three Jesus of Nazareth books.  Reading the parables in that light, Jesus is the sower, the farmer, the treasure, the pearl, and the fisherman.  It adds a rich layer of meaning.

-The Kingdom is incredibly valuable.  And in one of those Christian paradoxes, it has a price even though it's free.  The merchant and the man who bought the field sold everything to gain their respective prizes.  All too often, we think about giving up worldly things for the Kingdom as a straight loss.  That is, we believe the secular world: giving things up for the Kingdom is like throwing something away.  We go from having something to having nothing.  But the parables assure us that the secular world is mistaken!  The two figures gain something of inestimable value.  It's not an empty trade.

-I was somewhat surprised at how clearly Jesus includes an eschatalogical element in two of the parables: the wheat and the weeds, and the fishing net.  There's no getting around it!  At the final judgment there will be a separating of the wheat and the weeds, the good fish and the bad fish.  To me, Jesus is very blunt here.

-Evil has a strange relationship to the Kingdom, but it won't be sorted out until the end of time.  On one hand, it's not a constituting part.  How could it be?  On the other hand, it's inseparable, since it's a result of the fall of man.  We can no more completely escape evil than we could escape our shadow.  In the parable of the wheat and weeds, the farmer (=Jesus) tells the workers not to pull up the weeds... lest the wheat come up with them.

I remember doing a paper for one of my history classes, regarding a movement of a number of utopian societies in turn of the century America.  It was interesting, but I couldn't help but think it a misguided effort.  These two parables?  Utopian societies have never & will never work.  Period.

To wrap this all up...

When I finished reading Matthew 13, I asked myself a question: what is the Kingdom for?  After all, you can define something in multiple ways.  Reflecting on Matthew 13, there are a few functions of the Kingdom of God.  First, it's meant to grow in us.  Individually and collectively!  And by growth, don't miss the parable of the sower--the seed that landed on fertile ground produced a hundred fold.  We're offered an infinite gift!  Second, it's something of incredible value.  It's everything, pure and simple.  Third, the Kingdom is meant to usher us to/into/through the end times.  We can't lose the teleological focus of our faith.  Too often we focus on the end times in the negative sense, or as something that's an end unto itself.  It's rather another step in the journey to our ultimate destination: heaven (hopefully).  Fourth, the function of the Kingdom is to detach us from the world.  There is a cost to discipleship that we can't escape!  Not everything is compatible with Christianity; no amount of wishing on our part can reconcile Christianity and opposing morals.

Spiritual Lessons from the Book of Revelation, Part I

Somewhat recently I finished an .mp3 series on the Book of Revelation.  The seven-talk series, "Unveiling the Apocalype," was given by Fr. Alfred McBride, OPraem and one of the Catholic Courses.  The imagery in the final book of the Bible is foreign, to say the least.  Seven heads with seven crowns and four horsemen and the dragon?  Well, okay, the symbolism of the dragon is pretty obvious.  The rest of the imagery, however, can be less than obvious... hence my need for a survey of the book.

Rather than go into the decoding of Revelation, I'd rather write about the spiritual lessons that I gained from Fr. McBride's talk series.

1) One of the foundational paradoxes of Christianity is the cross and resurrection.  Suffering and the promise of heaven.  While the two concepts are opposed in human thinking, God has revealed and displayed them to be inseparable.  St. John repeatedly reminds the reader of this, exhorting them to be "faithful unto death," after which believers will be given "the crown of life" (Rev 2:10, letter to the church at Smyrna).  Suffering is a given in life, whether we face violent persecution or not.  Our response to it can lead to heaven!

2) That leads into the second point, something most often forgotten in suffering: Jesus is never absent from His Church, His people.  It's tempting to think that suffering is proof of God's absence; either He is indifferent, is otherwise busy, or does not care.  That's a very understandable human reaction... do any of us like suffering?  We wouldn't let our loved ones suffer if we could avoid it.  So why would God Who IS love (1 John 4:8) let us suffer?  This is something mysterious to us, but Jesus came to teach us and show us the way.  He revealed to us that the way to the Father (=to heaven) is through Him (John 14:6); and in following Jesus, we must take up our cross as He took up His (Luke 9:23).

In the beginning of the book, however, St. John takes this idea deeper: "I John, your brother, who share with you in Jesus the tribulation and the kingdom and the patient endurance..." (1:9).  Jesus cannot be separated from His Church, His beloved Bride!  He has preceded us in suffering: "we have not a high priest who is unable to sympathize with our weaknesses, but one who in every respect has been tempted as we are, yet without sinning.  Let us then with confidence draw near to the throne of grace, that we may receive mercy and find grace to help in time of need" (Heb 4:15-16).  If we ever get tempted into thinking that Jesus didn't experience the level of our suffering?  He felt the deep emotional pain of being abandoned and hated by the people he loved so dearly; he felt the physical pain of being tortured and killed in an agonizingly slow manner.  I'd think He could understand our sufferings after going through that...

3) We cannot be indifferent to spiritual warfare.  The war rages whether we act or not; indeed, our inaction is a weapon in the hand of the enemy.  he who has been cast down into the pit (whose name I won't type) is aggressive and seeks humanity's destruction.  St. Peter saw this, warning of a "roaring lion, looking for someone to devour" (1 Peter 5:8).  Revelation 12 describes the evil one as coming "down to you in great wrath"; he is not a harmless, red, horned sprite.

4) There are great catastrophes depicted in Revelation, with the four horsemen (ch. 6), seven seals (ch. 6-8), and seven trumpets (ch. 8-10, 11:15ff).  This echoes back to #2 above, why would God let humanity suffer such a fate?  It's important to see these catastrophes as calls to conversion.  It's also important to note that the tribulations are not penned by a capricious God.  Much of these judgments were consequences of sin and of human free will.

Stay tuned for part 2...

Go West, Catholic Men

This weekend I was away at a brief men's retreat in Pendleton, OR (www.gowestcatholicmen.com).  The retreat began on Friday evening and went nearly all day Saturday.  Bishop Carey from the Diocese of Bend celebrated our two Masses and gave a talk on Friday night.  We were also graced to have confessions available the whole time, talks by three other priests, and a magnificent holy hour to conclude the weekend.

I wanted to offer a few reflections from the weekend...

-The Hispanic youth group from a neighboring parish came to do a living Stations of the Cross.  I thank Mel Gibson for his work on the movie "The Passion."  For all the controversy surrounding him and the making of the movie, there are some very moving and beautiful scenes.  I'm very thankful for the movie!  One of my favorite scenes is Jesus encountering His Mother while carrying His cross.  In the movie, Mary sees Jesus fall and has a flashback of watching a five year old Jesus trip and fall.  It was very tender and an insight into the mind of a mother.  At the living stations on Friday, I couldn't help but recall that scene from the movie as Mary came running to Jesus and embraced His legs.  Our Lady is a great model for us in the love she has for Jesus.

-One of the priests, Fr. Robert Greiner of the Diocese of Bend, spoke about Catholics in the modern world.  Specifically, he confronted every single uncomfortable Church teaching and reminded us: if we believe the Catholic Church was instituted by Christ, these matters of faith are there for us to believe.  Period.  The Church's teachings on contraception, abortion, euthanasia, and homosexual unions aren't unclear because of something the Church did/said; the Church is very clear.  The problem is with the minds of believers, taken in by the world's opinions.  Those that dissent from the Church's teachings might have the best of intentions; they might be brilliant intellectuals; they might have less than pure reasons for turning away from the Catholic faith.  Wherever they are on that spectrum, they lack one thing: obedience.

Obedience is a dirty word in American culture.  It has connotations of subservience, inferiority, blind submission... and in religious circles (not just Catholic, I'm guessing) it can come across as checking your brain at the door and believing "because the Bible/Church/Pastor/etc. says so."  If that were truly the case, why would the Catholic Church bother to have a Catechism, a summary of its belief?  Why would the popes have issued volumes of encyclicals?  Why would the Church councils have published their decrees?  Wouldn't it have been easier for Pope Benedict to say, "Your concern is to believe X, Y, and Z.  Do not trouble yourselves with why."

Actually, I think those Catholics that hold to that negative definition of obedience are stuck in the past.  Obedience to Church teachings as something robotic and archaic?  Really?  Have they read anything by John Paul II or Benedict XVI?  Do they see how the Church has published the contents and reasons behind her faith for all the world to see?  Obedience is a dynamic virtue, not a passive one.  The Catholic faith makes demands on our intellect and does not seek to destroy it.  (check out the old Catholic Encyclopedia article on obedience)

I think the final word on obedience rests on one central question: is Jesus really Who He said He is?

Trying to See Through the Cloud

Fervor, ironically, can be fickle.  Driving home from work yesterday, I listened to Catholic Answers on the radio.  Curtis Martin was the guest; he is the founder of FOCUS ministries, which runs faithful Catholic campus ministry programs at 74 universities.  It sounded like their ministry was just like a Newman Center, with the exception that they’re an organization independent of a diocese.  

Curtis talked about evangelization in a simple way.  I found it very comforting—which again is odd, since that’s not the feeling I get when I think of evangelization.  He said over and over that Catholicism works—it just needs to be presented well.  Even further, it needs to be presented as a powerful, fulfilling relationship with the God who loves us without question.  It really is Good News!

It lit a fire in my heart and I arrived home excited.  I picked up Pope Benedict’s Jesus of Nazareth (vol. 1) and eagerly started reading.  A big question floated in my head—how do I evangelize?  What do I do?  I wanted to hit the ground running! 

And then, life.  Dinner, exercise, watching a little TV/spending time with my lovely wife, and then bedtime.  The fervor?  The question went from an exciting prospect to a simple curiosity.  

Maybe the first step is to let go of what I think evangelization is supposed to look like.  Three images stick in my head.  The first?  St. John the Baptist.  Preach in public in a loud voice.  Terrifying.

The second is that I would have to walk up to random people to ask them about Jesus.  It happened to me once in college, while I was walking out to the parking lot.  The guy’s approach was perfect for the situation, but the very thought of doing that to a stranger makes me very nervous. 

Finally, part of me thinks that evangelization is necessarily successful.  Just convey the Truth in the right way, and poof!  They’ll come running into the Church!  Well, that’s not really true.  I remember one of the things Fr. Jerome (of happy memory) told me once.  Some of the greatest saints are some of the greatest failures, by human standards.  My patron, St. Francis Xavier, was a failure in China and Japan despite having some success in India.  

To sum up: I don't know what evangelization "is" for my state in life.  My three images are more caricatures of evangelization more than anything else.  Yeah yeah, there's the St. Francis quote.  But too many people--myself included--use that quote as an excuse for inaction.  I don't know what it will look like or what God will ask of me.  Right now, I pray for openness and willingness to hear His voice. 

The Defining of the Immaculate Conception

Sometimes people have funny ideas about the Catholic Church--wait, take out the "sometimes."  From the Middle Ages on, the Catholic Church has this persona of a stingy headmaster, sternly rebuking its children and using its power capriciously. 

I'm not denying abuses of power... but I'm not getting into that particular subject on this post.  If critics are going to blast us when we're in the wrong, in all fairness, they should give us kudos for what we do right.  (bwahahahahahahaha!!!  Kidding.  Can you imagine that?  Neither can I.  Really, it would be nice)  I'd like to highlight a great positive: the Apostolic Constitution Ineffabilis Deus promulgated by Pope Pius IX in 1854.  The Constitution defined the dogma of Our Lady's Immaculate Conception.  You can read it yourself at New Advent, home of the Catholic Encyclopedia. 

To start the Constitution, the pope covers three main ideas: Mary has a place in the economy of salvation, the idea that Mary was immaculately conceived wasn't something new in the history of the Church or the sensus fidelium, and it's something worthy to be celebrated in the liturgical & devotional life of the Church.  The Holy Father then proceeds to examine Catholic Tradition, councils, and the extensive treatment of Our Lady by the Fathers of the Church.  They read the Old Testament typologically and saw Mary everywhere.

Next, Pius IX noted that the Holy See had been petitioned before on the matter of defining the Immaculate Conception.  Most recently, Pope Gregory XVI (Pius IX's immediate predecessor) had been petitioned about the matter.  Pius IX's first step?  He established a commission to study the matter.    Then, he wrote all the bishops in the world asking for their opinion.

Hmm.  That's odd, it doesn't sound too autocratic to me.  The Constitution proceeds to define the doctrine:

"We declare, pronounce, and define that the doctrine which holds that the most Blessed Virgin Mary, in the first instance of her conception, by a singular grace and privilege granted by Almighty God, in view of the merits of Jesus Christ, the Savior of the human race, was preserved free from all stain of original sin, is a doctrine revealed by God and therefore to be believed firmly and constantly by all the faithful."

After that, the pope warns any Catholic who dissented from the teaching.

Here again... The Church would issue anathemas, right?  And punish all dissenters?  And banish them to hell?  Right?  That's what the Church does!  Sorry to disappoint those who hold a Catholic stereotype.  Pius IX presented dissent for what it really is: an action by a believer where he/she creates his/her own consequences.  In the action of dissent, that person would separate him/herself from the Church and do harm to their own faith.  Yes, the Church is presenting a doctrine for belief--but she provides pages and pages why the belief is in line with the deposit of faith.  If the Catholic Church was the severe, rigid autocrat as it is believed to be, why didn't Pius IX just write a letter, commanding belief or else?

From the ending paragraph of Ineffabilis Deus:
"Let them [the children of the Church] fly with utter confidence to this most sweet Mother of mercy and grace in all dangers, difficulties, needs, doubts and fears.  Under her guidance, under her patronage, under her kindness and protection, nothing is to be feared, nothing is hopeless.  Because, while bearing toward us a truly motherly affection and having in her care the work of our salvation, she is solicitous about the whole human race."

O Holy and Immaculate Virgin, pray for us!