Catholics praying in Beijing on Jan. 30, two days before new repressive regulations of religion went into force in China.CreditRoman Pilipey/European Pressphoto Agency

Opinion | CONTRIBUTING OP-ED WRITER

Why the Pope Is Genuflecting to China

Yi-Zheng Lian FEB. 8, 2018

THE NEW YORK TIMES

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Eyes Opened, Life Site News

“Bishop Marcelo Sanchez Sorondo has moved into the realm of self-parody”

3 hours ago 0 3

“Bishop Marcelo Sanchez Sorondo has moved into the realm of self-parody”

“This sort of political/economic analysis is an embarrassment to the Holy See.” Not for a communist Vatican.
February 7, 2018 (CatholicCulture.org) – If Rome will be preparing for the canonization of Pope Paul VI later this year, only the most hardened ideologues could suggest that this year is the right time to scuttle his heroic encyclical, Humanae Vitae. Come to think of it, maybe the blessed Pontiff—who has already shown his intercessory clout with two miracles involving unborn children—could now intercede to protect the perennial teaching of the Church, which he championed at a great personal cost.
And speaking of hardened ideologues at the Vatican, Bishop Marcelo Sanchez Sorondo has moved into the realm of self-parody with his claim that China offers the world’s best example of implementing Catholic social teaching. What is it that the loquacious Argentine prelate so admires about the Beijing regime? Its commitment to religious freedom? Can’t be. To the principle of subsidiarity? I doubt it; the entire, vast nation is ruled by a central government. Protection of the environment? Not likely; mainland China is the world’s leading polluter. Respect for the rights of workers? Not in the slave-labor industries. Opposition to the death penalty? Guess again. Nuclear disarmament? Nope.
So what is it, then. The bishop cites a “positive national conscience.” I don’t think he’s referring to the Communist Party’s ideology, which seeks to be the “national conscience.” But I’m at a loss to explain what else he might have in mind. And since Bishop Sanchez Sorondo is chancellor of the Pontifical Academy of Social Sciences, this sort of political/economic analysis is an embarrassment to the Holy See.
Read the full article at Life Site News

{I mourn the passing of Germain Grisez.  He and John Finis gave me much encouragement in 1993 when I was composing my dissent from the statement of all but two (myself and Bishop Bernard Ganter of Beaumont) bishops of Texas they released through the Texas Catholic Conference approving the withdrawal of nutrition and hydration from comatose patients.  May his soul and the souls of all the faithful departed rest in peace !!!  +Rene Henry Gracida}

Germain Grisez, Christian Philosopher by John Finnis within Natural Law, Philosophy, Religion and the Public Square Feb 07, 2018 08:00 pm http://www.thepublicdiscourse.com/2018/02/21015/ The whole of Grisez’s account of this sense of Christian philosophy repays study, not least as an exploration of the shape that philosophic wonder first takes in a Catholic educated by a warmly believing household; and then of the place of audacious questioning in a Christian faith firmly held for love of God and in hope for God’s Kingdom. Germain Grisez, who died on February 1, early on the eve of Candlemas, wrote the twentieth century’s most adequate, profound, creative, and faithful work of moral theology. And down to his very last days in this world he was working toward a theological book on the Last Things, a work that even in outline had the same unique combination of qualities. But his richest talent was as a philosopher. Speaking of himself on the website he painstakingly constructed over the last decade—a resource set up to endure, complete with a short autobiography, a full and explanatory bibliography, a republication of virtually all his printed and some valuable unprinted works, and a guide to the life and work of more than a dozen of those he counted as his personal colleagues—he rightly says: “in 1978, his understanding of his commitment compelled him to become a theologian but enabled him to do so without ceasing to be a philosopher.” In November 1960, early in his thirty-first year and little over a year after completing (under the formidable Richard McKeon) his University of Chicago PhD on logical theory, Grisez wrote a short but deep-going paper on “The Four Meanings of ‘Christian Philosophy.’” What he there wrote about the first and fourth of these meanings says much of what a truthful obituary needs to say of him, nearly six decades later, when he had in wonderful measure fulfilled what he had long before envisaged as the good to which, and for which, he should commit himself. The first of his meanings of “Christian philosophy” focuses on the philosophers themselves, those who having good will . . . see . . . that their diverse commitments conceal an implicit unity, for one and all they are committed to a reality which lies outside their proper and peculiar interests and beyond their clear vision and grasp. Hence they tolerate diversity of [overarching] commitment . . . because they accept it as a significant and common evil toward whose elimination they must co-operate, using themselves in the service of that one reality beyond interest, in which their diverse explicit commitments implicitly unite. He continues, about philosophers of this kind: Among these . . . some appear pre-eminent over the rest in their extraordinary intellectual competence and activity, in their detachment from both technicalities and vulgar concerns, in their universality of interest, in their indifference to praise and condemnation, in their magnanimity, in their fairness to collaborators and critics, in their sagacity in appreciating the common human predicament, and in their determination to unfold their commitments to the point where their hidden community can appear in reality . . . And that, we can now see, was Grisez’s preeminence, achieved and maintained over many decades even if not widely recognized. Having delineated other characteristics of such philosophers, including that “they know well their limitations,” he concluded his portrait of them in this way: such as these deserve the title “philosopher” . . .  and the title will be qualified by the denominations of commitment—for example, they will call John Henry Newman “a Christian philosopher.” The qualification does not diminish the title, nor is it a mere extrinsic addition to it . . . His outward productions, his utterances and writings, are not what such a philosopher hopes mainly to accomplish, but in so far as those works are relic of his life they will be called after him, “Christian philosophy.” Then his account of the fourth, complementary meaning of “Christian philosophy” focused not on the philosopher so much as on philosophical inquiry’s outcome: We may call a philosophy “Christian” in itself—and denominate its author “a Christian philosopher” from it—inasmuch as that philosophy has the truth that it has in itself at the end of an analysis which is intrinsically related to a Christian’s wonder—wonder that initiated the inquiry preceding the analysis—wonder upon the worlds of which we find ourselves a part: the world of nature signed by the Creator’s hand; the world of truth illumined by the Light of man; and the world of value sanctified by the Love that abides within. The whole of Grisez’s account of this sense of Christian philosophy repays study, not least as—implicitly if not unconsciously, but certainly not exclusively—an exploration of the shape that philosophic wonder first takes in a cradle Catholic educated by a warmly believing household; and then of the place of audacious questioning in a Christian faith firmly held for love of God and—more and more dominant in Grisez’s developing understanding and theology—in hope for God’s Kingdom. In arranging his works for his website, Grisez wrote that his professional commitment “insofar as he was both a philosopher and a believing Catholic” was articulated more in his 1966 paper “The Christian Philosopher,” and that in it he had spelled out “the understanding of the relationship between nature and grace that would remain, though be more fully articulated, in his later works;” and had “made clear the sort of Thomist he would be: one who would begin from Thomas but depart from him insofar as evidence and reasons required.” As the paper put it, Each philosopher must ultimately judge these demands, using his sources of evidence and his reason. He cannot avoid final responsibility for his own judgment, because he has no philosophic superior. Philosophic argument is not a strategy of proselytizing. Genuine philosophy must criticize other philosophy and offer itself to all other philosophy for criticism. This exchange is not a dialogue; it is a bloody conflict without which philosophy would not progress. A main conclusion of the 1966 paper was that “the Christian philosopher’s primary aim” should be to do pure “speculative philosophy—first philosophy, pure metaphysics.” Then: “a secondary, but by no means incidental concern, should be the work of ethics.” But the exigencies of teaching and the crisis of the times meant that Grisez’s first two books, though fundamentally philosophical and certainly not theological, were on ethics: Contraception and the Natural Law (1964), and Abortion: The Myths, the Realities and the Arguments (1970). The critical and historical (and in the latter case also scientific, medical, and legal) parts of each book are of permanent value, but the constructive ethical arguments, especially of the former, have been superseded by Grisez’s later work showing why the firm Christian judgment, from the beginnings of Christianity, that choices of such kinds are opposed both to reason and to revelation is entirely sound. The essential work in pure metaphysics was done by Grisez in his book on the existence of God, published in 1975 as Beyond the New Theism: A Philosophy of Religion and republished in 2005 with a valuable additional ten-page preface and the more suitable title God? A Philosophical Preface to Faith (St Augustine’s Press, South Bend, Indiana). The other book Grisez wrote on metaphysics is a first example of his preference for collaborative philosophical work, Free Choice: A Self-Referential Argument (Notre Dame UP 1977), written in 1973-75 with Joseph Boyle and Olaf Tollefsen (most able former doctoral students of his). The upshot of these two books is that Grisez’s natural law ethics is the most metaphysically well-grounded of all ethical theories of modern times. Collaborative large-scale philosophical works followed even after Grisez’s vocational turn to theology in 1978 (a turn made needful by the absence of serious work responsive to Vatican II’s call for theologians to prioritize moral theology, and by the ever-growing infidelity of theologians, not least moral theologians). Life and Death with Liberty and Justice: A Contribution to the Euthanasia Debate, written with Joseph Boyle immediately before that turn, parallels the book on abortion in its ambition to attend to facts, political theory, and law as well as to ethical foundations and judgments; Grisez’s explanation of its supersession by later work of his accompanies the website version. Nuclear Deterrence, Morality and Realism (Oxford UP 1987), lists me and Joseph Boyle as lead authors but was mostly written by the three of us together in Germain’s office at Mount St Mary’s College, Maryland—a remarkable, unreproducible experience made possible by his matchless analytical and synthesizing powers of grasping and formulating what most matters, and then of planning, outlining, and composing by dictating. As events transpired, the book was a year or two too late to have the impact needed, but it remains unrefuted and as painfully relevant as ever. My own collaboration with Grisez began in 1974, when we drafted the four central chapters on morals in Lawler, Wuerl, and Lawler, The Teachings of Christ: A Catholic Catechism for Adults. My work with him extended (in very subordinate ways and varying degrees) through the three published volumes of his great The Way of the Lord Jesus—Christian Moral Principles (1983), Living a Christian Life (1993), and Difficult Moral Questions (1997). Organizing and chairing open seminars with him at Oxford University and Boston College in 1994-1995 on a number of those 200 difficult questions, I could observe firsthand what intellectual luxuries he had sacrificed, without complaint, in choosing to spend decades teaching seminary students rather than advanced students of philosophy. The extent and something of the topics and domains of our work together have been described by Grisez with characteristic precision. Our last collaborative writing is the Open Letter to Pope Francis of November 2016, about eight positions fostered if not taught by Amoris Laetitia and contrary to the Christian faith. Of these errors, the most important—long antedating that Apostolic Exhortation and contributing greatly to the accelerating decline of Catholicism that (mutilating or ignoring the teachings of the Council) began in the years between Grisez’s two early papers on Christian philosophy—is the eighth: the comfortable thought that “A Catholic need not believe that many human beings will end in hell.” Our discussion of it culminates in these words, close to the center of Grisez’s concern over many decades: Confidently expecting heaven and no longer fearing hell, one reasonably assumes that nothing one does or fails to do is likely to make any difference to what will happen to oneself, one’s loved ones, or anyone else after death. Without a kingdom that must be sought, there no longer is any reason for non-Christians to repent and believe, and Jesus’ exhortation to seek first the Father’s “kingdom and his righteousness” (Mt 6:33; cf. Lk 12:31) no longer evokes the theological hope unsullied by presumption that alone can motivate Christians to live their faith in love, to try to form their children in its practice, and to promote others’ salvation. The attached footnote there cites the published fruits of Grisez’s collaboration with Fr. Peter Ryan, SJ, on the kingdom of God, a project thoroughly outlined but uncompleted at Grisez’s death. Germain Grisez, center, with collaborators and students. Princeton, NJ, December 2017. Our final work together was our participation just before Christmas 2017 at a two-day consultation in Princeton with a dozen or so of those who deploy or actively explore the philosophical approach to ethics that Grisez and then I pursued, partly independently, partly in collaboration (visible or invisible), over the years since I chanced in December 1965 upon his Contraception and the Natural Law. Although advanced in the progressive physical illness that he knew was terminal, Germain was in command of intellectual powers and attainments I do not expect to see matched in this life. They were powers and attainment fired, as they always had been in my acquaintance with him, by a glowing magma of Christian faith, faith that he had the privilege of not only adhering to by rational, critical judgment but also experiencing, with Christian hope to match. The emotions adding their motivation to his reason’s faith and hope could—as ever with Germain—momentarily shake or melt his voice, but not his intellect’s steel and will, nor his gentleness with interlocutors in search of light and explanation. For his help and companionship, God be thanked; and let us pray for his admission to heaven’s full light and society. John Finnis is Professor of Law and Legal Philosophy Emeritus in the University of Oxford and the Biolchini Family Professor of Law at the University of Notre Dame. Copyright © 2018 The Witherspoon Institute, all rights reserved.

The shocking letter of a priest with the care of souls. Fewer and fewer penitents, and less and less repentant. The counterproductive effects of a “door” thrown open too wide

by Sandro Magister

ROME, January 9, 2016 – One thing that made the news at the end of the year was the data furnished by the prefecture of the pontifical household on attendance in 2015 at the public audiences with Pope Francis, with numbers down almost by half compared to the previous year:

At the Wednesday general audiences there was a drop from 1,199,000 visitors in 2014 to 704,100 in 2015. While for the Sunday Angelus the fall was from 3,040,000 to 1,585,000.

This does not change the fact that Pope Francis remains overwhelmingly popular. His popularity ratings are not enough, however, to determine what level of effective religious practice corresponds to them.

Other revelations are much more indicative in this regard. For example, the official figures that ISTAT compiles every year in Italy on the daily life of a gigantic sampling of citizens, made up of almost 24,000 families, for a total of 54,000  individuals residing in 850 cities large and small.

In the most recent annual report made public, relative to 2014, the “percentage of persons over the age of 6 who go to a place of worship at least once a week” turned out to be 28.8 percent.

The fact that more than a quarter of Italians go to church at least once a week can be seen as significant, in itself and in comparison with other countries. But if this figure is compared with the results of previous years, here as well a clear drop can be seen.

During the seven years of the pontificate of Benedict XVI, this same indicator was consistently above 30 percent in Italy, on average around 32-33 percent. Decisively higher than in 2014, the first full year of the pontificate of Francis and the one in which his popularity reached its peak.

The following letter takes these statistical indicators into account. But it evaluates the real “Francis effect” on religious life with the more up close and direct gaze of the pastor of souls, of the confessor. Who writes that during this pontificate he has experienced not only a further drop in the practice of sacramental confession, but also a deterioration in the “quality” of the confessions themselves. A deterioration that does not seem unrelated to the use of certain remarks of pope Jorge Mario Bergoglio that have had enormous success in the media.

The author of the letter is a churchman with a high level of scholarly specialization and with significant teaching appointments in Italy and abroad, but who also dedicates a great deal of time and energy to pastoral care.

His evaluations reflect those of a growing number of pastors, who – in a private capacity – do not fail to confide similar concerns to their respective bishops.

And “www.chiesa” also guarantees confidentiality to the author of the letter, who would be too exposed to the predictable retaliation of an ecclesiastical “new establishment” – as he calls it – whose conformist fawning over this pontificate is one of its most deleterious vices.

A confidentiality that allows that “parresia” or frankness of speech so greatly encouraged by Pope Francis himself, who even during a synod wants the attention to be on “what” is said in the assembly, but not on “who” says it.

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“Who are you to judge me?” The confessions of a confessor

Dear Magister,

Not a little has been written on the impact of the pontificate of Pope Francis “ad intra” and “ad extra Ecclesiae,” when it comes to the renewal of the spiritual life of the faithful and their communal participation in that of the Church, as also on the hoped-for return to evangelical and sacramental practice by those who had distanced themselves from it in recent decades. And it has been written from different perspectives: theology, anthropology, history, sociology, culture, communication, and politics. I do not believe it is necessary to add anything in this regard, in part because many of these facts and considerations still need to be digested through calm, critical reflection.

There nevertheless remains open – and in part undecided – the identification of a robust spiritual and pastoral indicator for measuring the effect of a change of personality, discipline, or teaching on souls and on the people of God.

I am aware of this. “Souls” and “people of God” are two theological and ecclesial categories that are decommissioned today, particularly in the statements of the current pontiff and his “new establishment.” But barring evidence to the contrary they are still part of the Catholic faith as confirmed by Vatican Council II itself. And negligence of them carries the risk, which is anything but transitory, of exchanging the “salus animarum” for the “vota aliquorum” and the “bonum populi Dei” for the “popularis consensus.” I translate: the health of souls for the wishes of a few and the good of the people of God for popularity.

I leave to the devotees of the sociology of religion, of the public communication of the faith, and of ecclesiastical politics every consideration on the mass participation of the faithful and of nonbelievers in public events at which the Holy Father is present (general audiences, Angelus, liturgical celebrations, etc.) – the official statistics on which as furnished by the prefecture of the pontifical household show a marked decrease from the first to the third year of the pontificate of Pope Francis – and on the possible significance that these numbers might present in terms of conversion to the Gospel and adherence to the pontiff’s message “urbi et orbi” for a “new springtime” of the Church, characterized by the “doors” being thrown open with facility for all (if memory serves, however, the Gospel of Luke speaks of a “narrow gate” through which one must “strive” to enter, make an effort, and of the “many who will seek to enter but will not be able”).

I would like instead simply to communicate the experience – the facts as they present themselves in the daily like of pastoral work on the periphery, so that “contra factum non valet illatio” – of a priest who dedicates his remaining time and energy, after fulfilling the primary ministry that the bishop has entrusted to him, to the work of sacramental reconciliation, convinced that the mercy of God passes above all, in the ordinary and always accessible way, through the discretion of the dim partition and the narrow window of the confessional, and not by entering, in the beacon lights of the basilica and before the eyes of all, through the great doors of the Holy Year (the merit of which is another: that of obtaining remission before God of the temporal punishment for sins already remitted, as for their guilt, in the sacrament of confession, which remains the first and fundamental vehicle of God’s mercy toward us sinners, after baptism).

The facts are these. Since the opening of the Holy Year backed by Pope Francis and on the occasion of the Christmas festivities of 2015 – as also since Jorge Mario Bergoglio has been sitting on the throne of Peter – the number of faithful who approach the confessional has not increased, neither in ordinary time nor in festive. The trend of a progressive, rapid diminution of the frequency of sacramental reconciliation that has characterized recent decades has not stopped. On the contrary: the confessionals of my church have been largely deserted.

I have sought comfort for this bitter consideration by imagining that the basilicas connected to the Holy Year in Rome or in other cities, or the shrines and convents, have been able to attract a larger number of penitents. But a round of phone calls to some fellow priests who regularly hear confessions in these places (using the opportunity of the Christmas wishes that I extend every year) has confirmed my observation: lines of penitents that are anything but long, everywhere, even less than at the festivities of past years.

And there is also less and less news of memorable conversions of sheep lost for many years and returning to the sheepfold of the Good Shepherd through the “useless servants” of his mercy that we priests are. When this happens, very rarely, there is neither explicit nor implicit reference to the person or the word of the current pope more than there was in the past for his predecessors (how many young people came back from the World Youth Days and put into practice their resolution of frequent confession!).

Distrusting the value of the numbers, because even the salvation of one soul has an infinite value in the eyes of God, I reviewed the “quality” of the confessions I have heard and I asked – while respecting the secret of the confessional concerning the identity of the penitent – for news from a few fellow confessors of long experience. The picture that presents itself is certainly not a happy one, both concerning the awareness of sin and in reference to the awareness of the prerequisites for obtaining God’s forgiveness (in this case as well, I know that the term “forgiveness” is giving way to “mercy” and is in danger of being mothballed soon, but at what theological, spiritual, and pastoral cost?).

Two examples stand for all. One middle-aged gentleman whom I asked, with discretion and delicacy, if he had repented of a repeated series of grave sins against the seventh commandment “do not steal,” of which he had accused himself with a certain frivolity and almost joking about the circumstances, certainly not attenuating, that had accompanied them, responded to me with the words of Pope Francis: “Mercy knows no limits” and by showing surprise that I would remind him of the need for repentance and for the resolution to avoid falling back into the same sin in the future: “I did what I did. What I will do I will decide when I go from here. What I think about what I have done is a question between me and God. I am here only to have what everyone deserves at least at Christmas: to be able to receive communion at midnight!” And he concluded by paraphrasing the now archfamous expression of Pope Francis: “Who are you to judge me?”

One young lady, to whom I had proposed as an act of penance connected to the sacramental absolution of a grave sin against the fifth commandment “do not kill” that she kneel in prayer before the Most Holy Sacrament exposed on the altar of a church and perform an act of material charity toward a poor person to the extent of her means, responded to me with annoyance that “no one must ask for anything in exchange for God’s mercy, because it is free,” and that she had neither the time to stop at a church to pray (she had to “run around doing Christmas shopping downtown”), nor money to give to the poor (“who don’t even need it that much, because they have more than we do”).

It is evident that a certain message, at least as received from the pope and come down to the faithful, easily lends itself to being misunderstood, mistaken, and therefore of no help in the maturation of a sure and upright conscience in the faithful concerning their sins and the conditions of their remission in the sacrament of reconciliation. With all due respect to Msgr. Dario Viganò, prefect of the secretariat for communication of the Holy See, the “zigzag course” through concepts without ever pausing to clarify any of them – which he recognizes as a gem of the “communication style of Pope Francis,” capable of “making him so irresistible” to the modern listener – presents a few spiritual and pastoral inconveniences, far from trivial if they have to do with grace and the sacraments, the treasury of the Church.

I will stop here, so as not to exploit your patience in reading me. I am not making the claim of proposing as a thermometer of ecclesial faith and life the quantity or quality of confessions and, more in general, of recourse to the sacraments, nor of making them an exclusive parameter for the evaluation of a pontificate or of the state of the Church’s health. This would not be fair and would lose sight of other dimensions of life according to the Gospel and the ecclesial mission.

But we should also not neglect to take into consideration some worrying signals that are coming from the churches of the “periphery,” as also from those of the “center.”

Those bishops were not entirely wrong who, at least until Vatican Council II and in many cases even afterward, during pastoral visits in their dioceses asked the priests above all how many confessions and how many communions they administered in a year, comparing them to the number of baptized entrusted to their care.

Nor were those popes wrong who, in the past, had the bishops on their visits “ad limina apostolorum” deliver to them the overall number of sacraments administered in their dioceses.

They were bishops and popes who drew useful indications on the state of the care of souls and the holiness of the people of God simply from the medicine of souls and from the vehicle of sanctifying grace.

They certainly did not have at hand the whole apparatus of institutions, communications, technology, and organization made possible by religious sociology and by the print and broadcast media, but they did have the humble certainty that it is not by coddling the cultural and anthropological fashions of the time that souls are saved, nor by following in the wake of individual and social (re)sentiments and demands inside and outside the Church that the people of God are strengthened on the path of holiness.

Thank you for your attention and many cordial greetings, “ad maiorem Dei gloriam.”

[Signature]

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English translation by Matthew Sherry, Ballwin, Missouri, U.S.A.

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De Mattei: The spirit of resistance and love for the Church

Labels: de Mattei, Ostpolitik

By Francesca Romana at Wednesday, February 07, 2018

Tagged as “War on Women”, abortion rates, Peter Singer, pro-choice, public health, Sex selection, World Health Organisation

By Regis Nicoll

Regis Nicoll is a retired nuclear engineer and a fellow of the Colson Center who writes commentary on faith and culture. His new book is titled Why There Is a God: And Why It Matters.

I’m going to start with the second, or Vatican Council II. One of the many problems tackled by the Vatican Council was how to work for Christian unity, or how to heal the divisions in the church that Jesus established. This included the division between the east and west, the Catholic and the Orthodox that goes back over a thousand years and the more recent division between Catholic, Protestant and other religions that call themselves Christian.

In the Council’s decree on ecumenism, the council tried to get Catholics to see how much we have in common with other Christian churches, to emphasize the beliefs we agree on rather than to concentrate exclusively on our differences in belief and practice. This was a good idea, but I think an unforeseen problem developed. With the effort to see what we believe together, there arose a tendency to water down Catholic beliefs, to dilute Catholic dogmas, to overlook differences, to pretend that they were not there in order to look friendly, more acceptable to non-Catholic Christians. The result, as many of us know was lukewarm Catholics. Catholics were saying things like: “it doesn’t make any difference what you believe as long as you’re sincere” or “as long as it makes you feel good”. Some Catholics, seduced by self-declared theologians began to hold that there are no absolute truths. There’s no right or wrong, black or white. Everything is gray. It can be anything you want it to be. Incidentally, when I refer to Catholics, I am not restricting it to just laity. With such an approach, that of `no-restrictions, no-obligation invitation’, we should have expected to see a great flow of other Christians into the Catholic Church.

We did not see any such flow, but we did see a tremendous flow of Catholics out of the ranks of truly believing and practicing Catholics. We saw the tragic drop in Sunday Mass attendance, from over 75% to less than 25%. Something went drastically wrong.

It’s still good for us Catholics to know what beliefs we hold to in common with other Christians, but now, it has become more urgent that we Catholics know how we are different; to recognize the treasures of faith that we have; treasures rejected or abandoned by other Christians. Today, we will concentrate on the principal Catholic belief that makes us Catholics different – different from the great majority of other Christians. That, of course, is our belief in the Real Presence of Christ in the Holy Eucharist.

We Catholics are different because we take Jesus Christ at His word. We believe that Jesus gave us His own body and blood in the special sacrament we call the Holy Eucharist. We Catholics actually believe that Jesus is really present in this sacrament! For us Catholics, the Holy Eucharist is not just a symbol. It is not just a memory. It is not just a promise. It is really Jesus Christ. The Holy Eucharist is not some ‘thing’. It is some ‘one’. It is Jesus, our Lord and our God. This is what we mean by the Catholic doctrine of the Real Presence of Christ in the Eucharist. This is why we call the Holy Eucharist “the Blessed Sacrament”.

All the sacraments are blessed! All the sacraments give us the grace of Jesus but this sacrament gives us Jesus himself. This is what we Catholics believe.

Why do we believe this? Not because some theologians say so, not even because the Church says so. We believe this for only one reason, because Jesus Christ says so, and we believe Him.

Many who try to follow Jesus do not believe this, as we Catholics do. This fact should not surprise us any. Jesus had the same problem with some of His own disciples. When Jesus first told His own followers that He would give His body and blood as food and drink as spiritual nourishment for the soul, many of His followers – His disciples – would not accept that. They could not believe Him, so they left Him. Jesus did not try to call them back. He didn’t say, “Now, wait a minute! You misunderstood me! I was only talking symbolically”. No! He let them go. If they could not believe Him, they could not be His disciples. It was that simple.

Then Jesus asked His apostles if they wanted to leave Him too. He was ready to let His apostles go also. We know that Peter, speaking for the group said, “Lord, to whom should we go? We know that you only, have the words of eternal life”.

The apostles took Jesus at His word, and we do too.

This sacrament of the Holy Eucharist comes to us through the sacrifice of the Holy Eucharist, the sacrifice of the Mass. This is evident because the Mass is the renewal of Jesus’ death on the cross. In this sacrifice He gave up His human life, His physical body and blood, for our salvation. It was at the Last Supper that Jesus instituted the sacrament and sacrifice.

It was the night before He died. Jesus knew that He soon had to leave His friends. Friends He loved so much. He wanted to leave them something to remember Him by, but He did much better than that, He left Himself.

At the Last Supper, Jesus was looking ahead to the next day when He would die on the cross. This is why He said, “This is my body, which will be given up for you. This is my blood, which will be shed for you”. Then He commanded “Do this in memory of me”. We fulfill that command every day. As Jesus at the Last Supper was looking ahead to Calvary, so we in the sacrifice of the Mass, look back to Calvary.

This is why St. Paul could say: “When we eat this bread and drink this cup, we proclaim the death of the Lord”. It’s the same sacrifice on the cross and in the Mass – the same sacrifice.

Jesus chose this very special way to remain here with us. It was not just an empty promise when Jesus said, “I will be with you all days, even to the end of the world”. He meant that! Jesus remains here with us today in the Mass as our Savior, in Holy Communion, as our spiritual food and in our tabernacle as our friend. Jesus died on the cross to give us this sacrament of His presence among us. This is the sacrament of Jesus’ love for us.

I like the way Blessed Mother Teresa put it. She said, “When we look at the cross, we know how much Jesus loved us. When we look at the tabernacle, we know how much Jesus loves us now“.

Some Catholics think, that we can share in the Eucharist and gain grace from the Eucharist only in the Mass by receiving Holy Communion. This idea limits the power and the love of Jesus too much. Certainly participation in the sacrifice of the Mass and receiving Holy Communion is the most powerful source of grace for us, but it is not the only source of Eucharistic grace. After the sacrifice is completed, the sacrament continues on. Jesus, in His sacramental body and blood remains here with us as our friend, just as He promised. This is why Eucharistic Adoration is so important.

This is why we should visit our friend, Jesus, in the Blessed Sacrament, to return His love for us and to draw spiritual strength and nourishment and encouragement from that love.

Unfortunately, there are many in the Church today who do not see the need or the value of Eucharistic Adoration. Some even oppose it, claiming that adoration of Our Lord in the Holy Eucharist is out of date in today’s modern church

That’s why it is so important for us today to realize that Eucharistic Adoration is very much in accord with the teachings of the Church, and especially of Vatican II.

One of the main points of Vatican II was to emphasize the importance of the Eucharistic liturgy in the worship of God and in the development of our own personal spiritual life. The Vatican council strongly advised us that the sacrifice of the Holy Eucharist, the Mass, should be the principal expression of our faith, and that all other devotions should spring from the Mass and leads us back to the Mass. Eucharistic Adoration does exactly that.

All experience shows that private prayer and adoration of our Lord in the Eucharist causes more frequent and more intense participation in the Mass.

Despite this teaching of Vatican II, about the Holy Eucharist, almost immediately after the Council, we began to see a steady tragic decline in respect for the Holy Eucharist. In some cases, the Mass seemed to be transformed from the worship of God to the entertainment of the people, then, to the worship of each other.

Reverence for the Blessed Sacrament diminished. Genuflections expressing our faith in the Real Presence of Jesus almost disappeared. Prayerful silence in our churches gave way to socializing.

For many, the church became a social hall instead of a sacred place for prayer and worship. The sacrifice of the Mass was often used as a vehicle for political statements. Eucharistic devotions were ridiculed as “old church”, and almost disappeared from the Catholic scene. Today we have a generation or two of young Catholics who have never even seen benediction of the Blessed Sacrament. Any document of Vatican II or any statement of the Church directed none of this decline. It’s contrary to the faith and practice of the Church. This is why Pope John Paul has led the counterattack to restore the Holy Eucharist to its rightful place in the worship and spiritual life of the Church. Every year of his pontificate, Pope John Paul has written a pastoral letter about the Holy Eucharist to all the bishops and priests of the church. In these letters, the Holy Father demanded a stop to the abuses being committed against the Blessed Sacrament. He pleaded for a return to the reverence and traditions of the past, especially for the adoration of our Lord in the Blessed Sacrament. The Holy Father reinforced his words with action. In 1991, Pope John Paul began perpetual adoration of the Eucharist in St. Peter Basilica in Rome. In 1991, the Holy Father approved the canonical establishment of the lay association for perpetual Eucharistic adoration to promote adoration in every Catholic parish throughout the world. This is the lay association that I work for. Shortly after the Air Force retired me, this lay group recruited me and for the past twelve years they have been sending me to parishes all over our country to promote Eucharistic Adoration.

Listen to what the Holy Father says. Pope John Paul says this: “The Church and the world have a great need of Eucharistic worship”. Jesus waits for us in this sacrament of love. Let us be generous with our time in going to meet Him in adoration. Notice how the Holy Father is asking you to be generous with your time. He is not asking for your money but something much more precious – your time.

A few years ago at the International Eucharistic Congress in Spain, the Holy Father in his remarks at the opening of the Congress said – first, he thanked all the parishes and people who had promoted adoration of the Eucharist in preparation for the International Eucharistic Congress. Then he prayed that such perpetual exposition and adoration of the Eucharist would be established in every Catholic Church throughout the world.

There is no question or doubt about where Pope John Paul stands with regard to adoration of the Holy Eucharist.

During these past twelve years I’ve been in parishes all over our country and beyond preaching on Eucharistic Adoration, often helping parishes start a program or helping them give a boost to a program already established. I’ve learned a lot. I’ve learned, particularly, of the great benefits from the people who participate in Eucharistic Adoration. They tell me what it’s done for themselves and their families.

I’ve learned from pastors, too, about the growth of spirit and spiritual life in their parishes. They’ve told me about the increase in attendance at Mass on Sundays and weekdays, stronger marriages and happier families, and about the increase in vocations to the priesthood and religious life. One pastor told me that since his parish began perpetual Eucharistic adoration, his Sunday and weekday Mass attendance has doubled and the Sunday collection has tripled!

Of course I’ve also heard some objections to Eucharistic adoration. Some complain that Eucharistic adoration is too private, too personal and even too quiet. This complaint seems to be based on the idea that our worship of God must always, always be a community exercise. It must always involve a lot of people, with much activity and maybe even lots of noise. Prayer does not always have to be that way. Jesus himself showed us that. Look at the examples in the life of Jesus. Throughout His life as a good, practicing Jew, Jesus faithfully participated in the public worship of God by attending the services in the temple at Jerusalem, or in the local synagogues. Just as we assist at Sunday Mass, we are following the good example of Jesus, but Jesus also frequently went off by himself to pray – in the desert, up on the mountains, to be alone with his Father, to communicate with his Father privately to pray quietly, to worship, to thank, to ask for help and strength, especially before major events and decisions in His life. Jesus prayed in private for forty days in the desert before beginning His public ministry. Again, before he chose the twelve apostles, from among his disciples, Jesus spent the whole night in private prayer. The night before he died, Jesus prayed alone to his Father asking for the strength to bear the suffering that He knew that was coming to Him the next day. We should follow this example of Jesus also.

Another problem we often hear is the lack of time, especially with so much work to do for God and His people. Some ask, “Can we really justify the luxury of spending time in private prayer? Wouldn’t it be better to spend that time, say, visiting the sick”? To answer that question, let me turn again to Blessed Mother Teresa. You can see I’m a great fan of Blessed Mother Teresa, but then who isn’t? The whole world knows that Blessed Mother Teresa’s sisters devote their lives to seeking out and caring for the most helpless and abandoned of the poor, the sick and the homeless. Most of the world knows and admires the work of Mother Teresa’s sisters, but I doubt that many know about the prayer life of their community. Each day, before they go out into the streets to find the sick and the dying, Blessed Mother Teresa’s sisters spend two to three hours in prayer, assisting at Mass and in adoration of the Blessed Sacrament. Once a well-meaning critic asked Blessed Mother Teresa how she could justify her sisters’ spending so much time in private prayer instead of using that time to serve the sick and the poor. Blessed Mother Teresa replied, “If my sisters did not spend so much time in prayer, they could not serve the sick and the poor at all”. Their prayer before the Holy Eucharist is the source of the strength and all that is needed to carry out their extremely difficult apostolate.

The love of God must be expressed and strengthened so that love of neighbor might flow from it.

One time when Blessed Mother Teresa was visiting in our country, a group of American women asked her what they could do to help her in her work. Blessed Mother Teresa replied, “The greatest help they could give her would be to spend one hour each week in silent adoration before the Blessed Sacrament”. That is good advice for us too.

Sometimes those who object to Eucharistic adoration complain that adoration is too much “Jesus and I”. They charge that adoration intends to be selfish, turning our thoughts and attention inward instead of reaching out to others. Again, an obvious response is to look at Blessed Mother Teresa’s sisters and just to mention the time they spend in private prayer and adoration. I doubt that anyone can match their concern for their neighbor, especially for the most desperate of the abandoned. Who would dare to call their work selfish? Any pastor who has Eucharistic Adoration in his parish will testify that the regular adorers are among the most active members of his parish. From my own experience, preaching in many parishes, I know that active adorers are very often, also the most active pro-lifers in the parish. If we could get adoration going in every Catholic parish, perhaps we could at least get Catholics out of the business of killing babies.

In 1996, Pope John Paul wrote a letter commemorating the 400th anniversary of the Forty Hours devotion. He wrote this: “Closeness to the Eucharistic Christ in silence and contemplation does not distance us from our contemporaries but on the contrary, it makes us open to human joy and distress, broadening our hearts on a global scale. Anyone who prays to the Eucharistic Savior draws the whole world with him and raises it to God”. Obviously, there is nothing selfish about Eucharistic Adoration.

Some of the mistakes about Adoration and all other personal devotions and private prayer, I think, are rooted in a misreading and misunderstanding of Vatican II.

One of the main thrusts of Vatican II was its emphasis on the social nature of man, and consequently of the church. Man is a social being. He lives in a community – the family, parish, city, nation, and world. The church, too, is social. In the “Constitution of the Church in the Modern World”, Vatican II declared that the role of the church is not to oppose the world, not to conquer the world but to work with the world to improve it. Carrying this social concept into the realm of worship, Vatican II issued the Constitution on the Liturgy, emphasizing the social and community nature of the worship of God.

This document with the subsequent decrees implementing it directed the changes, which were probably the most visible results of Vatican II, had the greatest impact on the everyday Catholic. These changes were all aimed at a greater understanding and participation in the liturgy by the faithful. Community participation has always been the ideal but it was not easily accomplished. Despite the difficulties in the early days after Vatican II, I think we can say that now, the social nature of the worship of God and community participation in the liturgy is generally acceptable.

With participation in the liturgy and the emphasis on the Mass as community worship, a new problem has arisen, an unfortunate side effect. Some Catholics now have the idea that there is no longer any need for personal, private prayer. Even at non-liturgical devotions such as the Rosary, Stations of the Cross, Novenas, and Benediction, that all these are now obsolete. Some even go so far as to say that such devotions are discouraged and even forbidden by Vatican II and that’s utter nonsense.

There is nothing in Vatican II that supports any of these ideas. In fact, the Council said just the opposite. In the Constitution on the Liturgy, the Council says: “The spiritual life is not limited solely to participation in the liturgy. The Christian is indeed called to pray with his brethren but he must also pray to the Father in private”. Long before Vatican II, we had the words and example of Jesus himself attesting to this need. Jesus constantly exhorted his followers to pray. As I mentioned earlier, He often went off by Himself in the desert or up on the mountain to pray. We always have a need for personal communication with God. No matter how much community prayer we have, no matter how good the participation is, we all still need personal communication with God, which can be achieved only through personal prayer. Personal prayer is needed for its own sake as well as for the sake of liturgical community worship. Community worship depends on personal prayer. Trying to build community prayer without personal prayer is like trying to build a brick church without the individual bricks. Proper participation of liturgical worship (community prayer) can be achieved only by a soul prepared and energized by personal devotion and private prayer. Those who habitually criticize the past and old ways often charge that Catholics at Mass concentrated on externals. But too often today, participation in the sacrifice of the Mass is just that, concentration on externals – music, banners, symbols, and novelties with no apparent realization of the great mystery and sacrifice being re-enacted at the altar. That realization only comes with personal prayer and meditation.

External worship, no matter how beautiful, is hollow, if not animated by internal worship. That’s why community prayer needs and depends on personal prayer.

Personal prayer is needed for its own sake, also. It is true that man is a social being. He must live and worship as a member of the community, but first, as an individual. There are certain activities of his life that man must do himself, for himself. I think there is an apt analogy between the physical life of man and his spiritual life, between the needs of his body and the needs of his soul. The human body needs food, air and rest to remain alive. Each human being, to maintain normal human life has to supply these needs himself. No one can eat, breathe or sleep for you. You’ve got to do it yourself! Without the proper physical nourishment of food, air and rest, no man or woman can carry on physical activity and growth. The undernourished individual cannot fulfill his role in the community as a social being.

The same thing applies to the spiritual life. The soul needs the spiritual food of the Eucharist, the spiritual rest of meditation and the spiritual air of prayer. Without this proper spiritual nourishment the human soul cannot mature and flourish spiritually as an individual and consequently cannot fulfill his role in worshipping God as a member of the community. The individual can go through the motions of public prayers, singing, standing and kneeling, but it is only external worship. Missing is internal worship which results only from personal communication with God. Just as air is essential to physical life, so prayer is essential to spiritual life. When you stop breathing, you are dead physically. When you stop praying, you are dead spiritually.

Some of you might be wondering why I’m making such a big issue of this, why I think it is so important to be talking on this subject now. After all, the doctrine of the Real Presence of Christ in the Eucharist has been the heart of our Catholic faith, devotion and worship from the very beginning of Christianity. But, we all know also, the current symptoms in the church tell us it’s time again to do some serious thinking about this farewell gift that Jesus gave to us. We’re all familiar with the surveys conducted a few years ago that seem to lead to the conclusion that only about twenty-seven percent, I think it was, twenty-seven percent of Catholics believe in the Real Presence as the Church teaches it.

Personally, I think that the observers interpreted the result of that survey a little bit wrong. I don’t think that it was only twenty-seven percent believed; it might have been only twenty-seven percent knew the teaching of the Church. That’s our big problem, a case of simple lack of knowledge. Most of these Catholics just do not know what they believe, or what they as, Catholics should believe. They simply have not been taught the Catholic faith. Look at the condition of Catholic education for the past thirty-five years. Fortunately the Catholic bishops have finally realized that it is a disaster. Most a few years ago, the Archbishop who headed the commission on education publicly declared that the Catholic religious education is a shambles and had been that way for at least thirty years. The result is two or three generations of young Catholics who know virtually nothing about their faith. They do not know what they believe or why they believe. The older generations have heard very little to reinforce what they have learned in their youth. Obviously, we have a lot of re-educating to do.

One final area must be considered. Spending time with Jesus in adoration should not strike us as unusual. It is really a very natural human activity. When two people love each other, they want to spend time together to visit, to get to know each other better. You cannot love someone you do not know. Adoration of our Lord in the Eucharist is your chance to know Jesus better.

One of the best aspects of Eucharistic adoration is this: how you spend your time with Jesus is entirely up to you. There is no one preaching to you, reading to you, telling you when to stand, sit, kneel, sing this or whatever. You are on your own. In most adoration chapels there are books available, some holy hour books, to help you get started if you need them. Most of us do at times but you’re basically on your own. You spend your time with Jesus any way you want. You can pray your Rosary, you can read your Bible, or you can do some other spiritual reading. But I always say: remember, you are there to visit with your friend, Jesus. Talk with Him; tell Him your problems, your needs or your concerns. Tell Him about your joys, too. Chances are He doesn’t hear about those very often! Sometimes I think all Jesus hears from a lot of us is the complaints and the “gimmes”. Lord, gimme this and Lord gimme that. But most important, is to stop and listen, let Jesus do some of the talking. He’s been waiting for a chance to visit with you, but your life is so busy with work, family and school, your line is always busy. Jesus can’t get through to you. It’s time to give yourself a break. Take a little time out for a private visit with your best friend, Jesus. The whole purpose of our human existence is to live forever with the Blessed Trinity in heaven, to enjoy forever, the victory of Jesus over sin and death. We get a foretaste of that eternal happiness and peace when we visit and adore Jesus in the Blessed Sacrament.

This is why thousands of people from all across our country will testify that one hour each week with Jesus in the Blessed Sacrament is the most peaceful, the most satisfying hour of their whole week.

So finally we go back to our subject entitled: “Why Eucharistic Adoration”? Why should you spend time visiting with Jesus in the Eucharist, simply because Jesus himself, your best friend, invites you. He said it so warmly, “Come to me, all you who are weary and burdened. Come to me and I will refresh you”. Who could refuse such an invitation from your very best friend? God Bless You.