Dear St. Rita Parishioners,
On Monday, June 29, we celebrate the Solemnity of Saints Peter and Paul, the two greatest Apostles of the Church. Peter was chosen by Our Lord Himself to be the Rock upon which He would build His Church, and Paul likewise was chosen to be the Apostle to the Gentiles despite his fierce initial opposition to Jesus and the fledgling Church. The Church celebrates these two Apostles together not because She can’t figure out which one is greater, but because they are both considered founders of the Church of (and at) Rome. Theirs is the only liturgical celebration among the Apostles given the rank of Solemnity, and while individually they have their own Feasts (the Chair of St. Peter on February 22 and the Conversion of St. Paul on January 25), together they represent something more than their individual accomplishments.
The Church of Rome is the Mother Church of the Universal Church. Her Cathedral, St. John Lateran, is the Pope’s Cathedral and thus the Cathedral of the whole world. It is good, then, that we have a great love for the Eternal City, but even more so for the Church which is found there. It is not that we care for Rome to the neglect of ourselves, but we care for the Church of Rome because She is our Mother, and to care for our Mother is an essential part of caring for ourselves. We would not be ourselves without this Mother, and to neglect her is to forget and distort our identity as Catholics.
It is currently in vogue, particularly in “conservative” factions[i] in the Church, to readily and publicly criticize and attack the Pope and practically anything that comes out of Rome, because it doesn’t conform with their, in this case conservative, worldview. Liberal Catholics spent many years criticizing Pope St. John Paul II, and there was a huge dissent in the Church in 1968 following the promulgation of Humanae Vitae by Pope St. Paul VI, and his teaching against artificial contraception. The point is that this type of criticism of Rome is not a liberal or conservative thing; it’s a liberal AND conservative thing. But, it’s not a Catholic thing.
I do not mean to say that there is no room for critical engagement of the Pope’s or the Vatican’s governance of the Church. I do mean to say that the type of criticism that we are seeing now tends towards opposition, attack, and even dissent more than engagement. For example, when certain people are angry that Pope Leo’s encyclical does not mention the Name of Jesus more than 10 times, they use (consciously or not) as an underpinning for the idea that the Church in Rome has gone totally off the rails, and they really just care about social justice (a concern of liberal politics), and that therefore they must also be interested in promoting all of the other concerns of liberal politics, some of which are sinful, and so clearly Rome has jettisoned Jesus Himself, and so the Church is basically on the point of defecting and of becoming entirely counterfeit, untrustworthy, full of false belief, and therefore NOT the Body of Christ or the vehicle through which I am saved.
I don’t mean to denigrate folks who are disconcerted by certain aspects of the Synodal Way (especially in Germany) which more or less openly seem to try to promote things like homosexuality (a concern of liberal politics). We should be disconcerted at such things. Nor do I mean to suggest that we ought not to work for goodness in the Church. I do mean to suggest that there is a better way of going about things than publicly lambasting Rome or the Pope or running off to SSPX or something silly like that. Our response to difficulties that we discover in the Church should be rooted in our love for the Church of Rome, and in our love for the Saints who brought the Church to Rome, Peter and Paul.
Therefore, we can think more in terms of, “How can I love and serve the Church in a time of confusion?” rather than “The Church is going off the rails!!” There have always been bad apples in the Church, and even in the hierarchy, going all the way back to Judas (who, by the way, was chosen by Jesus, too). We as a Church have a wonderful opportunity to engage each other well, with vulnerability (which is a bad word in some circles) and strength, both of which are necessary for healthy relationships. Engaging with the Church, with Rome, and with the Holy Father in a healthy way, however, has the potential to bear great fruit in the modern world.
Using the same example of the Pope’s encyclical, we might start think about it all differently if we realized that the Church’s first social encyclical, Rerum Novarum by Pope Leo XIII, also does not mention the Name of Jesus more than 10 times. Then, we might start to ask ourselves why a rational person of good will (it is a precept of charity to always presume this at the outset) would approach things this way. If we do so, we might discover that the Church, when She engages the culture, always tries to find common ground. Notice, for example, St. Paul preaching in the Areopagus in Athens. He uses what he finds already present in the culture (a shrine to an unknown god and their own poetry) to begin his evangelization. The Church increasingly is engaging with non-believers and so desires to offer credible witness of charity for their sake, so as to create an opening for the Gospel itself.
Is there room for more Christ-centered language in this endeavor? For sure. But who is going to put that language out there? If the Church isn’t doing it Herself, perhaps you and I can. A great service to the Church and to many of Her faithful would be to explicate the Church’s social doctrine according to more Christological and Scriptural language. To do so would be to pray with and reason about the teaching of the Church as She expresses it, and then to preach it using words that your listeners will find more accessible. There is nothing evil here, but instead this approach both fulfills a perceived need while respecting and honoring the Church and Her teaching. There are probably countless other examples where an approach like this could contribute beautifully to the Church and Her mission of the salvation of souls.
Because that is why Peter and Paul came to Rome – to fulfill God’s command to make disciples of all nations, to baptize in the Name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Spirit, and to teach them to observe all that Christ has commanded.
In Christ,
Fr. Christensen
[i] I hate the terms “liberal” and “conservative” as applied to factions in the Church, because they are political terms. Sadly, however, many people do conflate their politics and their religion, which necessarily makes their politics into religion. Religion is about right worship of God and love of neighbor. Politics must apply truth (including truth about God and the Church) to a particular society according to the virtue of prudence and the common good.