by Brother Javier Hansen, F.S.C.
THE APPROACHING SYNOD on “Young people, faith and vocational discernment” next month in Rome is of huge importance to the Church. If you had told me the role I would be playing in this task a year ago, I would not have believed you.
A faux leather-bound Bible lay on the sidewalk as the crowds walked on by. It was a recent mid-August Sunday afternoon in Union Square near 15th Street. A few feet in front of the Bible stood a young 20-something man texting on his iPhone.
In the immediate aftermath of Archbishop Carlo-Maria Vigano’s “Testimony,” and its statement that Pope Francis knew of the dereliction of former Cardinal Theodore McCarrick, and lifted the sanctions against him that had been imposed (but never seriously enforced) by Pope Benedict XVI, the polemics within the Church immediately intensified.
Catholics filled with righteous anger over the vile behavior of the former archbishop of Washington, Theodore McCarrick, and Catholics determined to help reform the Church in order to cleanse the Church and prevent similar wickedness in the future, have something to learn from Rabbi Fackenheim. In our case, the lesson must be: Don’t give the Evil One victories.
If you attend any major Catholic gathering throughout the United States, chances are that talks are offered in the two predominant languages in which most Catholics worship in the country, namely English and Spanish.
My sacramental theology class during formation included so much information about the matter, form, minister and recipient of each sacrament. It was wonderful for someone like me, a “cradle Catholic” who does not recall learning all these essential facts.
TAKE MY WORD FOR IT: You don’t want to be around me at breakfast. I am not a chipper morning person, and it’s best to leave me to the coffee and the newspaper – and I mean newspaper, not online edition – until I become fit for human company.
WITH HIS BIGGEST GRIN, my toddler came to show me the water balloon he was gifted from a friendly mom at my neighborhood playground.
CATHOLICS IN THE United States have excelled in developing amazing structures and resources for pastoral leadership formation at all levels in seminaries, houses of formation, colleges and universities, pastoral institutes, online programs and catechetical formation initiatives, among others.
JULY 25 WAS THE 50th anniversary of Humanae Vitae, Blessed Paul VI’s encyclical on the integrity of love and the appropriate means of family planning. Issued during the cultural meltdown of the 1960s, and in a year when irrationality stalked the entire Western world, Humanae Vitae instantly became the most vilified act of the papal magisterium in history. And to what should have been their shame, entire national episcopates distanced themselves from Pope Paul’s teaching by a variety of stratagems, many of which exhibited some degree of theological confusion and some were downright cowardly.
