Category: Catechism

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Recognize your Dignity

“Christian, recognize your dignity and, now that you share in God’s own nature, do not return to your former base condition by sinning. Remember who is your head and of whose body you are a member. Never forget that you have been rescued from the power of darkness and brought into the light of the Kingdom of God.”

Vaticana, Libreria Editrice. Catechism of the Catholic Church . United States Conference of Catholic Bishops. Kindle Edition. Paragraph 1691

The Catholic catechism speaks clearly about politics and social justice. In this election year we need to be reminded of what it says.

    Why?

    Not because I think it is authoritative and should be followed (I’m not Catholic). It is one voice among many.

    But it’s an important voice in a time when large swaths of the church in the US – including Catholics, Protestants, and Evangelicals – have aligned with a single political party whose policies, words, and deeds are considered ‘right’ or at least ‘acceptable’ in order to achieve a political end.

    It’s a voice coming from a long historical perspective and broad geopolitical context. It gives space for the Oscar Romeros and Dorothy Days of this world. It punctures the bubble of the popular ‘Make America Great Again’ political movement. It is much needed in the nano-second we are living in now.

    The quote above is how the section starts. It hearkens us back to Jesus, the Light not overcome by darkness, our Head to whom we give our allegiance, the One who spoke the words of the Sermon on the Mount (see the previous post).

    His voice is the one we need to hear clearly in this election season and in all seasons. I think the voice of the Catholic Catechism can help us.

    Grace and peace to you

    dw

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    Search and rescue

    So that this call should resound throughout the world, Christ sent forth the apostles he had chosen, commissioning them to proclaim the gospel: “Go therefore and make disciples of all nations, baptizing them in the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit, teaching them to observe all that I have commanded you; and lo, I am with you always, to the close of the age.”4 Strengthened by this mission, the apostles “went forth and preached everywhere, while the Lord worked with them and confirmed the message by the signs that attended it.”5

    4 Mt 28:18-20 5 Mk 16:20

    Catechism of the Catholic Church, paragraph 2

    In our age, the idea of “making disciples” is often met with a good deal of skepticism.  For good reason.

    Conversion is too often coercion.

    The “good news”, instead of resounding, too often amounts to irritating noise (at best) or really bad news.

    Too often the good news is disconnected from the sheer goodness of God and amounts to no more than another avenue for human pride, prejudice, power, and greed.

    God calls us to seek him because he is the best there is.

    He has made a way for us to recognize and find him – Jesus. 

    He sends search teams to find and rescue us, to bring us across the border into his kingdom, to foster and adopt us as children, family.

    That is the good news, the really good news.

    May that news resound throughout the world.

    Grace and peace to you…

    dw

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    To Know and Love God

    God, infinitely perfect and blessed in himself, in a plan of sheer goodness freely created [man and woman] to make [them] share in his own blessed life. For this reason, at every time and in every place, God draws close to [them]. He calls [them] to seek him, to know him, to love him with all [their] strength. He calls together all [people], scattered and divided by sin, into the unity of his family, the Church. To accomplish this, when the fullness of time had come, God sent his Son as Redeemer and Savior. In his Son and through him, he invites [all] to become, in the Holy Spirit, his adopted children and thus heirs of his blessed life.

    Catechism of the Catholic Church, paragraph 1

    To me, these words are beautiful.  They express the “good news” in a deep and rich way I don’t often hear.  They tell of a God who is good and seeks to share goodness with the likes of me.  They acknowledge how broken and scattered we are. They invite us to seek God, to know him, and to love him. To be family with him and with each other.

    The words can also be jarring. I’m sure you noticed I replaced all the references to man and men with more inclusive words. I’m sure this will offend some. But leaving the original words may offend more. More importantly, they may be a barrier to someone who needs to know there is a God and that God loves them.

    The word Church can be jarring.  It’s easy to think that if the Church is indeed God’s family, we might not want anything to do with either him or his family.  Sadly, the church deserves most of the bad reputation it has. I hope we can put aside whatever bad experiences or associations we have and try to hear the bigger message about God’s intentions and actions.

    Grace and peace to you…

    dw

    p.s. I’ve written about this paragraph before, here.

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    The first words

    “FATHER…this is eternal life, that they may know you, the only true God, and Jesus Christ whom you have sent.”1 “God our Savior desires all men to be saved and to come to the knowledge of the truth.”2 “There is no other name under heaven given among men by which we must be saved”3 the name of JESUS.

    1 Jn 17:3.  2 1 Tim 2:3-4.  3 Acts 4:12.

    Catechism of the Catholic Church – very first words

    Some years back I was blogging regularly about the Catechism of the Catholic Church. 

    As a Protestant. 

    A Protestant offended by what other Protestants were saying about Catholics. (I will share more about that another time.)

    I blogged for at least two years, going through the Catechism paragraph by paragraph. Then I stopped (I can’t remember why) and everything sat dormant. I finally took it offline and forgot about it.

    About a month ago I remembered it and read through the first sixty entries. I will be sharing some of them here over the next few months. I think it’s worth it, for me and for you.

    Why, you might ask. Who cares about the doctrinal divisions between Catholics and Protestants? Really, with all the division in our world, why pay attention to that one?

    One reason tops them all: Jesus begged the Father that we might be one as they are one.

    And here we are, divided as can be.

    For His sake, can we not try to understand each other and help each other along the narrow path, often difficult to find, that leads to Him, to life itself? Maybe this little exercise will help us.

    That’s why.

    Grace and peace to you…

    dw

    (It just so happens the first sentence in the quote above is, for me, the most important verse in scripture and is the origin of a A Prayer for Eternal Life, one of the most-visited posts here.)

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    A plan of sheer goodness

    I am not a Roman Catholic; reading the Catechism of the Catholic Church is not something that would have ever occurred to me to do. But I kept running into Catholic writers, one after another, who wrote about faith and life with a richness I hadn’t seen before: Walker Percy, Flannery O’Connor, Thomas Merton, James Martin, and Jean Vanier to name a few.  So I spent several years looking into Roman Catholicism in depth, which included reading through the Catechism…twice.

    Continue reading “A plan of sheer goodness”