In Praise of Spanish and Italian Catholicism

In the Olympics of Catholic sanctity and mysticism, France gets the bronze, Spain the silver, and Italy the gold. Italy has the advantage: Rome. Catholicism is properly understood as the co-inherence of Athens [reason], Jerusalem [faith] and Rome [order, law]. But the breathtaking Italian legacy of holiness goes well beyond the legal and institutional. Let's consider the contributions of the two leading nations to the Church in three aspects: religious order, mystics and saints, recent lay renewal movements.

Religious 0rders

Italy has given us the Benedictines, Franciscans, Passionists, Redemptorists, Servites, Poor Clares, Filippini and many others. 

Spain has given us the Jesuits, Discalced Carmelites, Dominicans [founded in France by Spaniard Dominic] and many military orders involved in the Reconquest.

No other nation has made comparable contributions in this area. We have to give Italy the edge in this category. But Spain is a very strong second. 

Saints and Mystics

This is where Italy dominates overwhelmingly:  St. Francis of Assis, St. Clare, St. Catherine of Siena, St. Catherine of Genoa, St. Padre Pio, St. John Bosco, St. Angelina of Foligno,  Gemma Galgami, St. Maria Gioretti, St. Alphonsus Liguori, St. Robert Bellarmine, St. Thomas Aquinas, St. Francis Xavier Cabrini, and recently St. Gianna Molla, St. Pier Girgio Frassati, and St. Carlo Acutis. Italy has the largest number of canonized saints and blesseds, with Spain second and France third. But precise numbers are hard to establish as there is no official master list. Consider a single category: stigmatists. We know of almost 500 such since St. Francis of Assis; 90% are women; 70% are Italian; the two most famous are Italian men, St. Francis and Padre Pio.

Spain had a bumper crop of mystics in the 16th century, the Baroque era, even as it was colonizing and evangelizing much of world: St. John of the Cross, St. Theresa of Avila, St. Ignatius of Loyola, St. Francis Xavier, St. John of Avila, St. Francis Borgia, and St. John of God. Earlier there was St. Isidore the Farmer, and St. Dominic Guzman. More recently: St. Josemaria Escriva and the martyrs of the Spanish Civil War.

Contemporary Lay Renewal Movements

The sixty years since the Council have been catastrophic for the Catholic Church in many ways; but perhaps the single brightest development is the thriving of lay renewal movements. These differ greatly but all manifest: mostly lay, not clerical or religious leadership; strong evangelical focus on the person and event of Jesus Christ; saturation in the Word of God and the liturgical life; intensive community life; vigorous outreach; and a positive reception of Vatican II within a firm Catholic orthodoxy.

Italy has given us Communion and Liberation, Focolare, and San'Egidio.

Spain has given us Opus Dei (earlier, and more clerical in origin), Cursillo, the Neocatechumenal Way,  

The competition here is close. In overall influence the future will tell but I see more intensity in the Spanish movements.

Conclusion

Both national Catholicisms are passionate and pervasive, even in the face of secularization. A useful way to contrast them is to consider the pivotal historic events that formed them.

Italians have the Renaissance: a sublime high point in the integration of the faith with culure, especially painting, sculpture, architecture and literature. Even among those who do not practice the faith, Catholicism is deeply woven into the fabric of life. It seems to go with the flavor of their food, the beauty of their women, the richness of their history.

By contrast, the Spaniards had the Reconquista (720-1492): about 750 years of military combat. Theirs is a martial, agonistic ethos. The triumphant conquest was followed by the expansion into South America. Something like it exploded in the Spanish civil war of the 1930. The Spanish mystics, religious orders, and lay movements all carry an intensity, a passion, a sense of drama. 

Richard Niebuhr classically contrasted the relationship of Christ and Culture. Italy is the epitome of Christ within Culture (although also above) while Spain has always pitted Christ against the antagonist (Moor, Communist, etc.)  And so, we find in Communion and Liberation a renaissance-like confidence and serenity in relation even to a culture turned against God. By contrast, Opus Dei and especially the Neocatechumenate are militant in their battle with enemies of the faith. Italy is Athens; Spain is Sparta. 

The fascinating contrast of these two influential, promising movements will merit a follow-up essay.

 and serenity in culture. By contrast, Opus Dei and especially the Neocatechumenate are militant in the face of enemies of the faith. The fascinating contrast between these two renewal movements will require a follow-up essay.oooooo

Temptation of Femininity to Pantheism: Monist, Anti-Paternal, Non-Transcendent, Asexual, Sterile

 Men are Atheist; Women are Pantheist

In the USA 65% of atheists are men. They are overwhelmingly young, white, college-educated, male Democrats. In his classic The Psychology of Atheism, Paul Vitz showed that the famous atheists all harbored deep resentments of their fathers: Marx, Freud, Nietzsche, Sartre, Camus, and Feuerbach. Turning Freud on himself, he showed atheism to be quintessentially a masculine psychic violence against the father. It is neither rational, scientific nor intelligent, but emotional, volitional and pathological. It is psychic male violence against the father, male-on-male combat. Militant disbelief is the projection of deep, oedipal psychological forces.

The transcendent Creator God is by definition not knowable by the unaided human intellect. He is not a knowable being, but Being-its-very-self. He is not in or part of the universe, but transcendent of it and yet intimately immanent but never measurable or identifiable in a scientific way. Agnosticism is a reasonable, honest viewpoint as none of  us really know God. The proofs of God's existence are not empirical evidence or logically compelling for the intellect-not-inclined-by-wil- to-believe. "Belief" in God is precisely a volitional act of trust, in some witness, intelligent in its own way, which grants access to a reality unavailable to the unaided intellect. Within belief there is a certain agnosticism:  acknowledgment of human limitation and of divine transcendence. 

The relati0nship of son to father, unlike that of the daughter, includes a battle, an agonistic struggle of one masculine will with another. We recall Abraham's aborted sacrifice of Isaac and even Jesus' initial resistance to the will of his Father in Gethsemane. The daughter's more docile, trusting nature disinclines her to fight with her father. The son must do so, in some manner, to define his own identity and mission. 

And so, male resentment and aggression can take the religious form of atheism. Female atheists [with exceptions like Rand and 0'Hair] are like female chess grand masters: rare. Vitz showed that feminine disappointment with the father more frequently shapes itself as pantheism or humanistic/nature mysticism.

Pantheism: Feminine Rejection of the Masculine

"Pantheism" from the Greek "pan" [all] and "theo" [God] affirms that divinity is present in all life, but not distinct from the universe as we know it. It contradicts theism which affirms an independent Creator who is the source of all being but independent and yet mysteriously immanent as love within Creation. It is not denial of the Divine; but rejection of transcendence, of the paternal and therefore of the "hyper-masculine" transcendence of God. Unlike the hard, decisive, assertive atheistic assault, pantheism is a passive-aggressive diversion, an avoidance of the paternal. It is:

- Monist.  Alterity, "otherness"  is banished: all is harmonious and monotonous. Tensions, binaries, contradictions are eliminated: creator/creation, male/female, natural/supernatural, time/eternity all evaporate into amorphous uniformity.

- Empathy and Compassion, the defining posture of femininity, dominate in response to suffering.  But the physical/emotional sensitivity, without balance of the moral/intellectual/religious, tends to disordered sentimentality: self-righteous, even indignant advocacy of abortion, euthanasia, gender surgery for the young, obsession with faux-victimization, and resentment of the newborn as threatening to scarce resources. 

- Asexual: The violent tension, attraction, fascination, dissonance, asymmetry and mystery of the masculine/feminine is dissolved into monotonous, androgynous gender-as-self-construct. 

- Anti-Male as the distinctively virile is suspect as "toxic masculinity" and the preferred man is reconfigured as soft, sensitive, gentle, passive, and impotent.

- Anti-Female as the distinctively female as virginal and maternal is despised in an angry feminism that apes the depravities of disordered masculinity including careerism, sexual license, and narcissism. 

- Sterility is preferred to fertility which is treated as a pathology by contraception and abortion in the catastrophic rupture of sex from fecundity.

- Animal-idolatry diverts the paternal/maternal instincts to sentimental affection for pets seen as equivalent of the human child.

-  Freedom, Agency and Responsibility of the person are denied as the individual is viewed as determined psychologically by trauma and social circumstances. The reality of judgment, particular and general, as retribution, reward for good and punishment for bad, is despised as cruel. 

- Scientism elevates the empirical method beyond its proper domain into a comprehensive philosophical worldview as that natural mode of knowing is not balanced by metaphysical and religious thinking. And so the invisible, non-measurable and spiritual are systematically excluded from the real. 

- Anosognsic, emotional, unaware as the pantheist does not think ontologically and so does not self-identify with, say, the pantheism of Spinoza or Hegel, but feels union with the divine of nature and denies any transcendent reality. 

- Hysteria as passivity, anxiety and vulnerability in the absence of the paternal and the presence of threats including global warming, fascism, homophobia, racism and other.

- Spiritual, not Religious as pantheists practice individually, rejecting historical-traditional-organized religion. Most identify as "Nones." However the belief system seems strong in mainstream liberal  Protestantism and among more progressive Catholic nuns.

- Cult of the Body.  In the absence of an immortal soul and the afterlife, the human body itself becomes divinized so that health, fitness, diet, looks, and exercise become obsessional. 

- Disenchanted Nature Mysticism. The ecstatic union with nature is trivialized and depleted as the natural order is no longer expressive of transcendent Truth-Goodness-Beauty but is reduced to what is knowable to the human mind and scientific method.

- Desecration, the opposite of consecration, of the human person and the natural world as both are ripped away from communion with the Creator and isolated in sterile, meaningless futility

Conclusion

Pantheism is pervasive across theological liberalism, New Age fashions, and the retreat from traditional Christianity to the impersonality and passivity of alternatives from Asia. 

Like the fruit offered  Eve by the serpent in the garden, it assumes the absence of masculine companionship and replacement of trust in the Father with what is immediate, attractive, seductive. 

It is a sadness to see our sisters lonely, suspicious, sterile... suspicious of God our Father, of their own radiant femininity, and of our iconic, if flawed, masculinity. 

JMJ     Jesus, Mary and Joseph...Pray for Us!

   

,Women atheists, like Ayn Rand and Madalyn 'Hair) are like female chess grand masters: rare and exceptional.

Prayer Before the Eucharist

 Lord Jesus

My friend, brother, captain, king, savior and God

Present in the Eucharistic host,

     so thin, white, light, quiet, humble

Make me like Yourself:

Small, simple, silent, serene,

Poor, powerless, patient, persevering, pure,

Receptive of...and radiant with your holiness.

Amen.

I Am Roman Catholic...

Roman Catholic of a specific type...

- Irish American, fully embracive of the faith I received from family, parish, parochial schools in working class, urban, ethnic, postwar America.

- Vatican II Affirming, in the nuanced, sophisticated hermeneutic of continuity of John Paul and Benedict.

- Boomer Child of the 60s, observant of and fascinated by the Cultural Revolution of my late adolescence and early adulthood, from the serene, safe posture as  Maryknoll college seminarian.

- Philosophically a disciple of the classical Thomism of Maritain/Gilson and the Personalism of Buber/Marcel/Blondel; adversary of the "Great Masters of Suspicion" Marx/Darwin/Freud; follower of the deep-Catholic cultural radicalism of Illich/Schumacher/Ellul/Freire as an alternative to the then fashionable New Left and hippie movements. 

- Jesuit-Trained Theologically, in the classic Catholicism of my teachers Avery Cardinal Dulles S.J. and the saintly Joseph Whelan S.J. and his mentor, the great mystic lay modernist Baron Fredrich von Hugel.

- Evangelically Catholic, after personal encounter with my Savior and Lord, the Divine/Human person of Jesus Christ in a Cursillo at the age of 25 in 1973.

- Charismatic, experiencing "baptism of the Holy Spirit," again in 1973, along with intensive ecclesial community, the gifts of the Holy Spirit, an ecumenical urgency, intimacy with the Trinity, and flaming zeal to share my faith.

- Theologically of the Creative/Orthodox "Communio" School, of John Paul, Benedict, Balthasar and their American disciples led by David Schindlers, junior and senior. 

- Vocationally, non-professionally a Catechist, zealous to hear and echo the voice of Christ within my Church, time and place.

- By aspiration, Friend of the Poor, seeking to emulate, in my limited way, Mother Theresa, Dorothy Day, Catherine Doherty, and countless holy ones...in Magnificat Home (residence for low income women founded and supported by our family and friends), happy visits to local hospital and jail, and variety of rich, random friendships.

- Culture Warrior, battling Catholic progressivism in the Church and Sexual Liberation in society.

- Politically Non-MAGA Republican, prolife enemy of the reconstructed, post-1970 Democratic Party, with economic/political sympathies for the poor and working class.

- Devoted to the Mercy of Christ, as mediated by St. Faustina and St. John Paul. Not so much the diluted, weakened form fashionable under Pope Francis.

- American, patriotic in my embrace of all that is coherent with my Catholic faith [freedoms, rule of law, constitutional democracy, free markets] but critical of residuals of anti-Catholic Protestantism including sexual liberation, consumerism, materialism, individualism,  and unrestrained capitalism.

- Parish and Catholic School are, aside from family, the defining instituti0ns of our faith, despite my youthful infatuation with Illich's "de-schooling" and my admirati0n for homeschooling and my expl0rati0n 0f small, intensive faith c0mmunities. 

- Friend and Fellow-Traveler, adjacent to but not fully immersed participant in Communion and Liberation, Neocatechumenal Way, and 12-step spirituality.  Additi0nally, friendship with the Latin Mass, Cursill0 and Marriage Enc0unter. 

- Associate member of Our Lady's Missionaries of the Eucharist (OLME), with promises (irregularly kept) around Eucharistic and Marian devotion, liturgy of the hours, simplicity of life, and others.

- Philo-Semitic-Judaic, in the tradition of Monsignor John Ostereicher, the Catholic Vatican II reevaluation, and my teachers Rabbi Finkel and Father Frizzel of Seton Hall. This is a fascination and admiration for Jews, their faith, and their amazing cultural achievements, even the problematic ones (Freud, Marx, aggressive Zionism.)

- Philo-Hispanic after time in Mexico and Puerto Rico and especially the shrine of Our Lady of Guadalupe.

- Diplomatically [Catholic} Internationalist and Realist [Niebuhr}, preferring Churchill to Chamberlain in a world full of Hitlers. In my lifetime: Stalin, Tito, Mao, Pol Pot, Idi Amin, Serbian Milsevic, Rwandan genocide of Tutsis, Saddam Hussein, Castros, bin Laden, the North Korean Kim's, the Ayatollahs, Putin, and Al Queda, This is a rejection of [quasi]pacifism, optimistic global progressivism, as well as isolationism and idealized America-first-ism, 

The Catholic world in which I dwell is dizzyingly, heart piercingly, flamingly Beautiful!

I can never be adequately grateful!   

The Loneliness of the Parish Priest

 This essay was inspired by the post by my friend Stephen Adubato in his Substack "Cracks in Postmodernity," "Our Priests are in Trouble: we gotta help them."  With his customary sensitivity, insight and good humor he considers the crisis in the American priesthood. He sees this primarily in our ordinary diocesan clergy who lack the support, accountability, and encouragement enjoyed by those in religious orders, or close to lay renewal movements or others in strong ethnic communities. I find his diagnosis to be accurate. It caused me to consider the nature of Catholic priesthood and its condition in our time. By numbers alone, we are in crisis.

The solitude that defines masculinity (in contrast to the connectedness inherent in femininity) is intensified in the priest. The primal aloneness of Adam was relieved by his ecstatic embrace of Eve "at last...bone of my bone and flesh of my flesh." And so it is with the husband/father. But the Catholic priest, in the violence of sacrifice ("make holy"), renounces that communion. He emulates Jesus alone in the desert and in Gethsemane. There is a fundamental loneliness about the priesthood. A solitude with God and for the Church, bride of Christ.

Let's Go to the Movies

Consider:

- the fornicator-whiskey-martyr-priest in Graham Greene's The Power and the Glory,

- Karl Malden raging at Johnny Friendly's thugs in On the Waterfront, 

-the humble, dignified missionary Gregory Peck in Keys to the Kingdom, 

- the virile Jesuit Jeremy Irons facing down the ferocious Robert DeNiro in The Mission, 

- the depresed alcoholic curate of  Edge of Sadness, [this is a book, not a movie.] 

- Montgomery Cliff heroically defending the seal of confession in Hitchcock's  Confession, 

- Alec Guinness's good natured Monsignor Quixote, 

- Javier Bardem's tormented Fr. Quintana chastely comforting a ravishing Olga Kurylenko in  Into the Wonder,  

- Spenser Tracey's Father (now Venerable) Flannigan of  Boy's Town, 

- Richard Burton's Becket, 

- Mark Walberg's endearing  Father Stu,  

- Max von Syndow's seasoned cleric in  The Exorcist,   

- France's classic Monsieur Vincent, 

- Raul Julia's breathtaking Romero, 

- the levitating St. Joseph of Cupertino in  The Reluctant Saint, 

- another Gregory Peck as  the historic Vatican rescuer of Jews in Scarlet and the Black,  

-  De Niro's careerist cleric facing off his tough detective brother Robert Duval in True Confessions,  

- G.K. Chesterton's charming Father Brown, 

- Pat Obrien mentoring gangster Jimmy Cagney in Angels with Dirty Faces, 

- Bing Crosby and Ingrid Bergman in The Bells of St. Mary's. 

That's 20 off the top of my head. In each we see a man, a priest, standing alone, heroically. 

[If you, dear Reader, have not seen at least 10 of these films, you are not an authentic, certified Catho-Cinephile like myself!]

Loneliness of the Contemporary Priest

Solitude as configuration to Christ and gift of self to the Church is heroic and holy, But on the negative side, the temptation is to the life of a bachelor: self-centered, ungenerous, detached from the feminine, sterile...however charming, educated, and refined. This toxicity is heightened today as priests are more isolated than ever. In my own parish we have two churches, two rectories, two priests...each lives alone in his own rectory, one mile away from each other.

It was not always this way. In the Church of my childhood, thriving postwar urban America, a typical parish had four or more priests. The pastor was probably well beyond his prime, enjoying his role and a community he had known for decades. He left the running of the large parish (school, nuns, organizations, devotions) to his competent second-in-charge, probably in his 50s or 60s. The youngest priest worked with youth, the school, catechesis, CYO and sports. There might be additional priests with particular ministries, responsibilities and interests. At its best it was a wholesome brotherhood.

Today the 1-priest rectory has become normal. A young priest who shows himself to be competent and reliable will be given charge of a parish within a few years, without the benefit of years of mentoring, friendship and experience.

To survive and thrive as a priest today one needs the moral integrity, resilience, fortitude and wisdom of the 20 priest heroes of the movies mentioned above.  Happily I have known many such priests, over the course of my lifetime. Studies also show a good measure of happiness and wholeness among our priests. The quantity of priests is down; but the quality is high. We are in crisis. But it is not catastrophic. On the whole, I am less critical than my friend Stephen Adubato...edgy, urban, avant-garde, counterculture, anti-bourgeois, no lover of anything suburban.

Society of Jesus and of Maryknoll

Besides diocesan priests here in Newark NJ, over the years,  I have befriended many Jesuits and Maryknolleers. In the individualism of their spirituality and charism they are more like secular clerics  than the mendicants and monks. Their focus is not primarily on the shared life of charity and prayer, but apostolic action. Maryknoll was originally committed to the conversion of pagans but shifted after the War to corporal works of mercy with the poor. This, joined with their American pragmatism,  inclined them post-1965 to sympathy with leftist politics. Their intimacy with the poor, however, has ensured a closeness to Christ. The Jesuits, with their focus on education and upper echelon academics, were even more vulnerable to the errors of the Cultural Revolution. Both are prone, in complex ways, to the fragilities of isolation and loneliness associated with the bachelor life.

The Thriving Priest

What qualities are evident in happy, wholesome priests?

1.  Personal holiness, deep prayer life, intimacy with our Lord Jesus.

2.  Emotional balance, integrity, clear masculine identity, ease in deferring to and wielding authority, substantial if not impeccable freedom from deep-seated compulsions around sex, approval, insecurity, money, status, alcohol/drugs.

3. Realistic, honest reckoning with his own personal weakness and need for God's grace.

4. Solid, chaste, brotherly friendships with other priests.

5. Love for Catholicism in all its richness: liturgical/sacramental, theological, moral, social.

6. Wholesome relationships with laity, including women.

7. Support from family of origin or surrogate.

There are other qualities...administrative ability, personal charm,  intellectual capacity and erudition... nice but not necessary, accidental but not essential to the priesthood.

We continue to benefit from such priests: wholesome, virile, confident, steadfast, sober, balanced, and independent. But their numbers are decreasing. They were common in the prosperous post-war American Church of large families, thick ethnic communities, and Catholic revival. Particularly among us Irish American Catholics. 

The Holy Spirit works in different ways: some predictable; some random and counterintuitive. We see priestly vocations coming from non-religious families; from conversions out of dark lives; and later in life. Not a few are gifted, devout, sincere but afflicted with psychological disorders and compulsions.  These, when not deep-seated and when countervailed by strengths, need not be invincible impediments. We need such numerically. But we also benefit to the degree they confess and surrender to God's healing grace. Familiarity with their weaknesses, failings and addictions make them, for us, "wounded healers."

We cannot depend upon the paradigm of priest as lone ranger without Tonto;  as Shane who rides into town, kills the bad guys, rescues the widow and child, and rides lonesome into the sunset; as John Wayne who rescues his Natalie Wood niece from the Indians, in The Searchers, and moves on in a mysterious solitude.

Communion in Intimacy, Transparency, Accountability, and Support

The contemporary priest needs, not independence-autonomy-isolation, but a strong network of support, candor, vulnerability, and accountability. This can take many forms: friendship, family, spiritual direction, priest support groups, counseling and therapy. It is particularly strong in:

- Twelve step groups. These are absolutely necessary for the priest enslaved by addiction. As an ealier generation benefited from AA priests, so today, with the pandemic of pornography, not to mention the homosexual priest abuse scandal, priests benefit from Sexaholics Anonymous, a program that precisely mirrors Catholic understanding of chastity and sexual sobriety. 

- Lay Renewal Movements. Outstanding here is the Neocatechumenal Way which fosters an environment of startling honesty. Openly, in the company of men and women, participants speak candidly of personal struggles with chastity, within family and marriage, and other. With my own Irish Catholic background, I was taken aback at first. But I could see that it represents a certain wholesome "triumph of the therapeutic." I understand it is good for priests. 

The priest's role is to represent Christ as teacher, authority, presider over liturgy, leader-king, and moral exemplar. This is a heavy burden to carry continually. "Walking" as a brother in the "Way" provides a space of freedom, honesty, accountability and encouragement. 

 A different reality is operative in Communion and Liberation which does not provide the same intensity but the lighter, fresh, liberating, wholesome, serene positivity of founder Luigi Giusanni in the male/female friendship.

- Some religious orders.  My family has close familiarity with the Franciscan Friars of the Renewal, a young order, birthed nearby in NYC, which has a strong charism: closeness to the poor, fervor in evangelization, flawless loyalty to Catholic teaching, an ethos of priestly virility, embrace of much that is new-yet-Catholic in the Church. These friars cultivate a brotherly intimacy that is strengthening.  By contrast, many of the older orders, robust in 1965, now in decline, retain the lonesomeness-autonomy of the lone ranger without Tonto. 

Ethic Parishes?  In the above, I entirely agree with Stephen's post. Not so much with regard to ethnic parishes. Such are a thing of the past. I have spent my entire adulthood in Jersey City, close to NYC, Newark and the Oranges. Ethnic parishes are a relic of the past. Stephen is nostalgic and sentimental here, attached to the idealized urban Italian Catholicism of his memorable grandfather. What is remarkable, however, especially with Italians but also us Irish, Polish and others: despite the baptism into bourgeois mediocrity of suburban life, secularity, careerism, consumerist materialism, sexual liberalism, upper class conservatism, and even the mafia, ethnic Catholicism retains a deep grip on the soul. My experience with lapsed Catholics, non-practicing and absent from the sacraments for decades, is that they retain intense, deep if sporadic attachment to the faith of their families. This cannot be unrelated to the indelible seal received at baptism. It will serve them, especially with the last rites, at death and particular judgment. 

Seminaries now require a new "propaedeutic year" of formation in personal spiritual and emotional health, before theology. My hope is that a key focus is on the building of a permanent network.

Communion with the Bishop

A pronounced element of our priestly crisis, clear in recent studies, is the disconnect from the bishop. In wake of the Dallas Charter, priests distrust their "father figure" as the sheriff, prosecutor and judge of wrongdoing. Fr. Tom Guarino of Seton Hall has carried on the prophetic mission of Avery Cardinal Dulles in challenging this injustice. 

I see the problem as systemic, not the personal fault of our bishops who are on the whole decent, intelligent, competent, loyal priests. The Church has exploded malignantly in institutions like schools, hospitals, social care and other. The bishop is in fact the CEO of a multi-millionaire organization. The time has come for the hierarchical/institutional Church to divest, surrender the works of mercy to the laity, and focus upon the actual purpose of the priesthood as: announcement of the Word, celebration of liturgy and sacraments, fostering of holiness, and strengthening of communion in charity.

Conclusion  

Two urgencies present themselves:

- Cherish, in gratitude, our priests who sacrifice themselves to bring us Christ in Word and Sacrament.

- Pray for our priests, pray for more priests, pray for our own children/grandchildren to answer the call to priesthood and religious life.

Thank you Lord for the priesthood and our sacramental life.

Thank you for each of our priests.

Sanctify them with your Holy Spirit.

Send us more priests and consecrated.

Choose from our own family men and women to serve you in this special way.

 

Prayer for my Mission

 Make me Lord

An agent of your Mercy.

The servant of your little ones.

An echo of your Truth.

A radiance of your holiness.

Amen.

Fasting

Today being Good Friday, I review my 78th lent and find my fasting was well above my norm.

Confession of a Non-Faster

My norm is very low: not zero but close to it. I believe in fasting. Jesus himself said some demons cannot be cast out except with prayer and fasting, But I pretty much never fast. I can't fast. I have a constitutional aversion that I have not been able to overcome. But this lent I made some progress. Part of it may be that my appetite is diminishing as I age. The rest is God's grace.

I am product of my time and place: with my boomer generation, I am soft. We were protected, secure, comfortable, and generally indulged. We are not tough. Our parents were tough: Great Depression, War, large families, marvelous church, exploding economy, containment of communism, a peaceful and prosperous world order. Even now we retirees receive inordinate money from the government and sit on assets while the young cannot purchase homes. I am ashamed of myself and my cohort.

What I Have Learned About Fasting

1. Intercession.  

The only thing that ever motivates me to fast, that overcomes my resistance, is intercession. At various times in my life, when someone dear to me was in trouble, I easily fasted as part of my intercession. Whenever I felt hungry I thought of my dear one. I felt an aversion to eating. For example, I have done the three day fast on liquids only. After the first difficult day, it became easier as my stomach shrank. When I broke the fast I was not terribly hungry. Additionally there is the well known physical benefit f the purging.

2. Spiritual Leisure: Freedom from Stress

I cannot fast when I am at all stressed. In 12-step spirituality we learn (HALT) to avoid becoming Hungry, Angry, Lonely or Tired as our tendency is to treat these with our preferred addiction. I would add to that stress. Stress for me is aggravated by hunger. Eating comforts me and diminishes anxiety. For example, my current schedule has me attending to the needs of our home for women on Monday and Tuesday: paperwork, repairs, personal problems. There is a lot going on. I do not even think about fasting. This may be part of why I avoided fasting: most of my adult life had me engaged in a degree of stress. There is some wisdom in this. The non-fasting may have been in part a prudent if humbling deference to my psychological weakness.

3. Spiritual Leisure and Delight.

The underlying psychology of my daily routine has me looking forward to my next meal, however modest. Eating may be the most steady, dependable, satisfying aspect of my day.  For me to fast I need to replace those delightful punctuations with spiritual ones. So, I can fast when I know I will take a long, quiet walk; spend time in Church, alone; do some spiritual reading; maybe even take a nap. In short, my craving for pleasure and delight gets redirected to the spiritual. Fasting becomes easy.

4. Communal, not Individual.

Catholic fasting is not an act of the will by a solitary individual. It is a corporate thing. Everyone is giving up meat and eating fish on Friday. Everyone! We are by nature intrinsically mimetic and social; and so it is with fasting. Recall that the preaching of Jonah provoked all of Nineveh, from king to the animals, to fast in contrition. In the catechetical confusion that prevailed after 1965, fasting fell of fashion in progressive circles. Traditional Lenten practice indicated fast, prayer and alms. But up-to-date priests would dismiss fasting in favor of acts of charity. This was a huge mistake: charity and discipline work together, not against or in place of each other. The pendulum is swinging back. Fasting is cool again.  My nephew is doing Exodus 90, a demanding program of masculine discipline. A grandson gave up all sweets; another takes cold showers; my wife gave up wine. I love to hear these things. They encourage me. And I feel that I am a little part of a very large ecclesial movement. Every Ash Wednesday Jesus directs us to our rooms to fast quietly and covertly rather than seek approval. That valid truth needs to be balanced: we need let our light shine so as to encourage and strengthen each other, in the mimetics of holiness.

Tomorrow evening we will transition within the Paschal Mystery into Easter, 50 days of festivity and feast. May the Holy Spirit deepen, intensify, purify, and strengthen us in communion, compassion, and spiritual delight!