With all of the dialogue, with all of the interventions, with all of the relations from the bishops and delegates in the Vatican Synod on the Youth that is currently ongoing this month, what the average Catholic in the pew and, indeed, what the average Catholic priest in the parish needs, more than anything and more than ever, is to know what exactly the goals and objectives of the Catholic Church are and are not.
We need to know, now more than ever, that the goals and the objectives of the Catholic Church has not and indeed will not change.
It is always one thing and one thing only: Salus Animarum Suprema Lex (The Salvation of Souls is the Supreme Law).
Salus Animarum Suprema Lex, these words which are inscribed on the façade of the Immaculate Conception Center in Douglaston, the home of the Cathedral Seminary House of Formation, the Marriage Tribunal, the Office of Liturgy, and the Bishop Mugavero Senior Priest Residence, words that were first found in a secular source, the Roman orator Cicero’s work, De Legibus, need to be constantly in the forefront of the minds and the hearts of each of us as Catholics, from the Holy Father to the Bishops to the clergy, religious, and lay faithful.
The Church, the People of God, the Mystical Body of Christ, the Bride of Christ, with all its absolutely necessary dialogue with the modern world, always needs to remember that it is primarily concerned with the things of the world to come and to helping her children, like a good mother does, get what’s best for them, not only in this life, but in the life to come: Heaven.
A unity of message, a clear map, is necessary if the Mother that is the Church is to teach her children the way to their true home: salvation in Heaven.
The message has to always be based on the consistent teachings of the Church, found in the sources of Divine Revelation: Sacred Scripture and Sacred Tradition, and interpreted through the consistent Magisterium of the Church, always keeping in mind Salus Animarum Suprema Lex.
Pray that the Synod, as it concludes this week, will always have this in the forefront of its mind.
