Vatican City, Jun 29, 2017 / 03:01 am (CNA/EWTN News).- On Thursday, the Solemnity of Saints Peter and Paul, Pope Francis said that we can’t just know about our faith, but we must live our faith, with Jesus as the center of our hearts and lives.
“The question of life demands a response of life. For it counts little to know the articles of faith if we do not confess Jesus as the Lord of our lives,” the Pope said June 29.
“Today he looks straight at us and asks, ‘Who am I for you?’ As if to say: ‘Am I still the Lord of your life, the longing of your heart, the reason for your hope, the source of your unfailing trust?’
Jesus is asking us today the same questions he asked to his disciples: “Who do people say that I am?” and “Who do you say that I am?” Francis continued. In the end, only Peter answers that he is “the Christ, the Son of the living God.”
“Along with Saint Peter, we too renew today our life choice to be Jesus’ disciples and apostles. May we too pass from Jesus’ first question to his second, so as to be ‘his own’ not merely in words, but in our actions and our very lives,” he said.
This is the “crucial question,” he continued, especially for pastors. “It is the decisive question. It does not allow for a non-committal answer, because it brings into play our entire life.”
Pope Francis spoke to pilgrims gathered in St. Peter’s Square for his Mass celebrating the Solemnity of Saints Peter and Paul, patrons of the city of Rome. During the ceremony, he blessed the pallia to be bestowed on the 32 new metropolitan archbishops who were present, all appointed throughout the previous year.
The pallium is a white wool vestment, adorned with six black silk crosses. Dating back to at least the fifth century, the wearing of the pallium by the Pope and metropolitan archbishops symbolizes authority as well as unity with the Holy See.
The title of “metropolitan bishop” refers to the diocesan bishop or archbishop of a metropolis, namely, the primary city of an ecclesiastical province or regional capital.
Traditionally the Pope bestows the stole to the new archbishops June 29 each year. The rite is a sign of communion with the See of Peter. It also serves as a symbol of the metropolitan archbishop’s jurisdiction in his own diocese as well as the other particular dioceses within his ecclesiastical province.
However, as a sign of “synodality” with local Churches, Pope Francis decided in 2015 that new metropolitan archbishops will officially be imposed with the pallium in their home diocese, rather than the Vatican.
So while the new archbishops still journey to Rome to receive the pallium during the liturgy with the Pope, the official imposition ceremony is in their home diocese, allowing more faithful and bishops in dioceses under the archbishop’s jurisdiction to attend the event.
In his homily, Pope Francis reflected on three words from the liturgy that he said are “essential for the life of an apostle: confession, persecution and prayer.”
For confession, the Pope spoke of the confession of faith, which means “to acknowledge in Jesus the long-awaited Messiah, the living God, the Lord of our lives.”
We should ask ourselves, he said, if we are “parlor Christians,” who only love to sit and chat about how things are going in the Church and the world, or “apostles on the go,” people “who confess Jesus with their lives because they hold him in their hearts.”
We can’t be half-hearted, he urged, but must be on fire with love for Christ, not looking for the easy way out, but daily risking ourselves to put out “into the deep.”
“Those who confess their faith in Jesus do as Peter and Paul did: they follow him to the end – not just part of the way, but to the very end.”
But doing so isn’t easy, and that’s when we come to the second word, he explained, because following the way of Christ, also means facing the cross and persecution.
Peter and Paul shed their blood for Christ, as well as the early Christian community as a whole. Even today, he continued, a great number of Christians are persecuted.
The Pope emphasized the words of the Apostle Paul, who said “to live was Christ, Christ crucified, who gave his life for him.”
“Apart from the cross, there is no Christ, but apart from the cross, there can be no Christian either,” Francis stated.
The Christian is called to “tolerate evil,” but tolerating evil doesn’t mean simply having patience and resignation, he explained, it means imitating Christ, accepting the cross with confidence, carrying the burden for Christ’s sake and for the sake of others – all the while knowing that we are not alone.
“Tolerating evil,” he continued, “means overcoming it with Jesus, and in Jesus’ own way, which is not the way of the world.”
This is why St. Paul writes: “I have fought the good fight, I have finished the race, I have kept the faith.” The essence of this “good fight,” the Pope emphasized, was living “for Jesus and for others,” giving your all. There is only one thing that Paul kept in his life, and that is his faith.
“Out of love, he experienced trials, humiliations and suffering, which are never to be sought but always accepted. In the mystery of suffering offered up in love, in this mystery, embodied in our own day by so many of our brothers and sisters who are persecuted, impoverished and infirm, the saving power of Jesus’ cross shines forth.”
Lastly, Pope Francis said that the life of an apostle must be a life of constant prayer.
“Prayer is the water needed to nurture hope and increase fidelity. Prayer makes us feel loved and it enables us to love in turn. It makes us press forward in moments of darkness because it brings God’s light. In the Church, it is prayer that sustains us and helps us to overcome difficulties.”
When St. Peter was in prison, it tell us in the Acts of the Apostles that “earnest prayer for him was made to God by the Church.”
“A Church that prays is watched over and cared for by the Lord. When we pray, we entrust our lives to him and to his loving care,” he said.
Francis concluded by praying that the blessed Apostles Peter and Paul, may “obtain for us a heart like theirs.”
Hearts that are wearied because they are constantly asking, knocking, interceding, weighed down by the many needs of people and situations that need to be handed over to God, but also at peace, because the Holy Spirit brings consolation and strength through prayer, he said.
“How urgent it is for the Church to have teachers of prayer, but even more so for us to be men and women of prayer, whose entire life is prayer!”
“The Lord answers our prayers. He is faithful to the love we have professed for him, and he stands beside us at times of trial.”
Just as the Lord accompanied the journey of the Apostles, “he will do the same for you, dear brother Cardinals,” he said.
“He will remain close to you too, dear brother Archbishops who, in receiving the pallium, will be strengthened to spend your lives for the flock, imitating the Good Shepherd who bears you on his shoulders.”
[…]
Back when I was a kid, I knew the Church was partly to blame for overpopulation because they forbad birth control. And I eventually came to understand that the Christian prohibition of sex-before-marriage was really all about preventing illegitimate children. Now that we have contraceptives, the prohibition is out-dated.
Don’t get me started on abortion.
.
Thank goodness for Scott and Kimberly Hahn, Janet Smith, the Kippley’s/CCL, and Father Anthony Zimmerman.
.
Is it too much to ask the hierarchy to believe (and actively defend) what the Church taught to the above folks, who taught me?
WHAT are you talking about!! Christ said that out of wedlock sex was sin before there was a Church. This issue in nonnegotiable.
Exactly
The prohibition on sex before marriage has everything to do about immorality and abuse of God’s gifts and NOTHING to do with illegitimacy. And having birth control available has nothing to do with it. Sex with a person not your marriage partner is forbidden. Period.Scott and Kimberly Hahn are faithful converts to Catholicism . Their book Rome Sweet Home goes into some detail about their understanding of the Catholic concept of birth control. In short they dropped their Protestant belief of pro-contraception and accepted Catholic belief. I dont have any idea what you are referncing about them.
I think you are perhaps a bit caught up in the first paragraph and did not well read the second two:
.
“Thank goodness for Scott and Kimberly Hahn, Janet Smith, the Kippley’s/CCL, and Father Anthony Zimmerman.
.
Is it too much to ask the hierarchy to believe (and actively defend) what the Church taught to the above folks, who taught me?”
.
There was a time the Church hierarchy defended the Church’s “family life teachings.” The Hahns, Kipple’s, Smith, Zimmerman (and others) learned them, and were able to effectively transmit and convert others–including me.
.
Very sad the hierarchy doesn’t seem much interested in converting folks these days.
Surely, “not identical.” Not even consistent. But, how to contain the manifest contradictions (!), but without being lured into triggering a replay of the Reformation dismemberment?
“'[S]ynodality is…a spiritual event. That is, [the pope] invites us to listen to one another and, in listening to one another, to listen to the Holy Spirit for what he wants to say to us,’” Koch explained.”
Such listening today entails, as well, listening to all that the Holy Spirit has said to us in the past. Yes? The Magisterium. So, the contradictions are not only about deconstruction of the Church “structure,” but also about the revealed unity of faith and morals (Veritatis Splendor, nn. 95, 115). And, moreover, the elementary, pre-theological and non-demonstrable first principle of non-contradiction.
The fly in the ointment (so to speak) is the strategic positioning rainbow exhibitionism by Cardinal Marx on the C-7 and Archbishop Hollerich as relator-general for the 2023 Synod on Synodality. Both already enlisting the media to help double-speak the contradictions (in the path of Hans Kung et al who earlier worked derail the real Vatican II–the actual documents–with the virtual spirit of Vatican II).
But, now, as for the German synodal wayward, perhaps the pope’s recent and very excellent remarks about “idols” serve especially, and yet obliquely, for whatever is left of the Church in Germany… https://cruxnow.com/vatican/2022/04/pope-urges-priests-to-avoid-idols-that-distract-from-god
You mean the Sin-nod on Sin-nod-ality, don’t you?
Indeed, and I humbly suspect that yours truly introduced that term back in May 6, 2021, as part of a comment that bears repeating today:
“On the ‘path’ with Alice in Wonderland: ‘Would you tell me, please, which way I ought to go from here?’ The Cheshire Cat: ‘That depends a good deal on where you want to get to.’ Alice: ‘I don’t much care where.’ The Cheshire Cat: ‘Then it doesn’t much matter which way you go.’
Or, as Martin Luther once said of the Bible, now with Bishop Batzing’s double-speak: ‘a synod has a wax nose; you can twist it whichever way you want!’
synod = sin nod.”
Kathryn above : Your first paragraph was confusing. I had to read the entirety of your comments several times in order to understand (I think) what you were getting at.
While I once a supporter of contraception/abortion, I am now vehemently opposed to those things–thanks to laymen (Father Zimmerman was a priest, obviously) like the Hahns, etc.
.
I can count on one had the priests I know who uphold the truth on contraception publically (none of them in my own diocese).
.
For nearly twenty years, I sat through homily after homily on social-justice- poor=good people, rich=bad people, and judging is a bad thing to do (very un-Christ like to call someone out on his sin).
.
The homily I once heard that mentioned divorce promoted annullments. I think I heard a sermon on contraception only twice–once at a Rosary Triduum, and once at an NFP conference (so not the Sunday Mass).
.
Since family breakdown is a large component of poverty and social ills (and Church decline), I don’t think it is much too ask for the hierarchy of the Church to actually promote those behaviors that protect against those very ills, especially since the hierarchy never misses a chance to support increased taxes and gov’t funding on services to support the poor trapped in the unhealthy social situations to lead to the poverty to begin with.
I’ve noticed the obsession with governmental solutions by many Catholic Social Teaching advocates. The problem with this approach is the amount of unelected, unaccountable power that this concentrates in the hands of government bureaucracies. This lack of checks and balances is an open invitation to the corruption of those wielding this power. Too little recognition of the effects of Original Sin that are still with us. It’s getting to the point that the government is being treated like an all knowing, all seeing, and all powerful god. No recognition of human weaknesses and limitations.
I write to wonder why so many “Catholic “ websites don’t want any comments from average people. I used to sometimes comment at America but the Jesuits cut me off from commenting because I didn’t take the radical progressive line. This site is the only Catholic site I’ve found that lets average people speak their mind.
Why are so many “Catholic” sites so fearful of hearing from people who aren’t “progressives?”
Perhaps you have answered your own question, that many progressives are deaf, and rigidly in a rut BECAUSE they’re progressive…
But the same is true of many “conservatives,” that many are rigid foot-draggers—but of a different color (and surely not lavender!). My very solid pastor of long ago sometimes barked that he was “orthodox”, not conservative. These two types of rigid bigotry (two, not only conservatives!) are allergic to each other, and the itchy scratching dominates the media run mostly by progressives. It’s all about subscriptions.
Meanwhile, a real conservative and a real progressive (probably the former more than the latter?) would be reassured by St. John Henry Cardinal Newman’s Sermon VI for the 6th Sunday of Lent, which concludes:
“God grant that we may not attempt to deceive our consciences, and to reconcile together, by some artifice or other, the service of this world and of God! God grant that we may not pervert and dilute His holy Word, put upon it the false interpretations of men, reason ourselves out of its strictness, and reduce religion to an ordinary common-place matter–instead of thinking it what it IS, a mysterious and supernatural subject, as distinct from anything that lies on the surface of this world, as day is from night and heaven from earth!”
As for Jesuits, I have personally known three (three!) who were also unambiguously Catholic, partly because none worked in the media, none confused matters of prudential judgment with dogma, none still read much what has become of America magazine, and certainly none sipped at the tainted waters of the National Catholic Report (a self-banished “commentator” on things Catholic, but no longer recognized as a Catholic publication).
It’s quite simple, sadly enough. Those sites are focused on pushing a specific narrative in order to advance a left wing political and social agenda. Dissenting voices expose and challenge those false narratives, so they need to be silenced.
Bill, I would say you are correct to characterize America as “Catholic.”
Because I certainly wouldn’t call it Catholic.
Sending all at CWR, Easter Greeting.
I think Kathryn has a good tack. Her direction and concerns can be understood as charted through VATICAN II and Paul VI.
Please consider this word “tack”, in its varied senses.
The thing complained of has 2 external parts, what is preached and what is not preached; and the ones who are on the receiving end, are put into different kinds of apposition. If you have to go head-on against it -the preaching, say,- those in charge then want to be very gracious and can insist how accommodating everyone needs to be.
Also, the preaching on the 2 sides, is said to be “spiritual”. Consider: If you take it as an assignment to reflect in silence on what is offered and so “come to allow yourself to grow in wisdom quietly and humbly”, because, as some hold, “it is the way of Therese of Lisieux”, then, what borderland area would it be that you have entered into there?
Cardinal Koch had an interview with Vatican Radio January 17 2014 and it was reported in CWR a few days later -in the link. I have read CNA’s report here April 2022 and CWR’s report there January 2014. With both I am unable to decide what Cardinal Koch is leading, other than “seamless garment unity” of 2014 possibly being carried along through “dialogue” of 2022.
In the whole 8-year span, his propositions and arrangements are almost identical in opacity and if he were a prism the light would not refract! I apologize for this frankness. And if I try to apply Cardinal Newman’s exhortation, above, quoted by Peter D. Beaulieu, I find I don’t know how. Good thing because I likely would make a total mess of it for Newman, the way things are positioned.
Jesus’ tunic was never torn. The ones who were interested in it cast dice for it!
If you want to make allegory from Scripture, please try to be true to the scripts.
But I also would take Peter D. Beaulieu to task here. The touchstone on everything is surely NOT the state of the NC REPORTER nor the “3 Jesuits” known by Beaulieu!
***
‘ Most people have a plane-like vision, stuck to the earth, of two dimensions. When you live a supernatural life, God will give you the third dimension: height, and with it, perspective, weight and volume. ‘
Escriva, THE WAY 279
https://www.escrivaworks.org/book/the_way/point/279
https://www.catholicworldreport.com/2014/01/20/cardinal-koch-putting-christs-seamless-garment-back-together-interview-about-church-unity/
Kathryn above – Most people don’t see the link from abortion back to contraception. Persuading them of it is a very high hill to climb these days and I think that’s why most priests and bishops steer clear of the subject (and that is making the very unsure assumption that they are convinced themselves). So, yes, I agree that lay leaders like Janet E. Smith and the Hahns are courageous and prophetic. I’m not familiar with the Kippleys/CCL.
Instead of advancing a single link from “abortion back to contraception,” is there a THREAD…
…running from contraception through abortion, to open marriages, to cohabitation and a divorce culture, to a non-binary/homosexual subculture and gay “marriage,” and then to polygamy beginning already with acquiescence to Islamic practices across many parts of Europe (in France, between 150,000 to 400,000 residents in polygamous households (Philip Jenkins, “God’s Continent, 2007), to Western open-range gender theory and transgenderism?
In 1948 the defeated minority at the Anglican communion Lambeth Conference (earlier approving contraception) told it like this:
“It is, to say the least, suspicious that the age in which contraception has won its way is not one which has been conspicuously successful in managing its sexual life. Is it possible that, by claiming the right to manipulate his physical processes in this manner, man may, without knowing it, be stepping over the boundary between the world of Christian marriage and what one might call the world of APHRODITE, the world of sterile eroticism?” (Cited in Wright, “Reflections on the Third Anniversary of a Controverted Encyclical,” St. Louis: Central Bureau Press, 1971).
Pope Paul VI enlarged the warning, in his Humanae Vitae (Of Human Life, 1968), on the future of a morally unhinged world, the contraceptive mentality — and STATE POWER.
Dismissed at the time as an alarmist, he asked,
“Who will stop rulers from favoring, from even imposing upon their peoples, if they were to consider it necessary, the method of contraception which they judge to be most efficacious?” Today, from the Administrative State, in kindergartens a balanced diet soon of FDA-approved sugar-free cookies together with gender/transgender theory ideology.
Neither a single link nor a thread, but instead the real “seamless garment.” The hour is late…
Thank you Peter D. Beaulieu for deepening your thought here.
As for Cardinal Koch, I still am “not getting it”. Sorry. It could be one of my gears is stuck or something so. The EWTN interview is said to be scheduled for airing April 24 2022; but the article did not say which EWTN program will carry it or what time; and I can’t find it on the EWTN Schedule for that day.
For now, I just don’t get it -:
‘ “I don’t see these as identical. For the pope, synodality is … a spiritual event. That is, he invites us to listen to one another and, in listening to one another, to listen to the Holy Spirit for what he wants to say to us,” Koch explained.
“In Germany, I have the impression that synodality consists in dealing with the structures, something that Pope Francis already urged very energetically in his “Letter to the People of God” in Germany, that it is first and foremost not about structures but spirituality. And secondly, that the synodality on the whole should serve evangelization, as the pope has now also established in the Apostolic Constitution for the Roman Curia.” ‘
John and Sheila Kippley were the founders of the Couple to Couple League. They went on to found another NFP organization called NFP and More.
.
Contraception is “intrinsically disordered” by itself–it’s link to abortion, while not irrelevant, is not the reason the it is forbidden. And I agree, I think it is a “very unsure assumption” the hierarchy is convinced of it.
Ever warning given in early 1960 by originally Pope John 23 about what the contraceptive pill would do to marriage, to women, to men has come to fruition. Breakups, unfaithfulness, sex from young ages. abuse of women, poor self esteem for women who have become sex slaves, not liberated,
sexual deviations, males becoming the clowns to perform with women dominating. The list goes on and on and everyone is so unhappy, and cannot find any beauty in the gifts God has created. I have been teaching the Billings Ovulation Method since 1970 and have watched the rot set in with no support from our pulpits. Yes Janet Smith has spoken at our conferences together with many wonderful people, including Drs John and Lyn Billings, who dedicated their entire lives to God’s plan for marriage.
Ever since the Bismarck Kulturkampf «Germany» has been trying to domesticate the Catholic Church. Not satisfied with the various schisms and trends of the «Lutheran» and «Calvinist» variety the so called Old Catholics were encouraged in their anti-romanist trajectory.
All of these schismatics are struggling against the processes of secularism, indifferentism and a general European/Western cultural decline.
These neo «German Catholics» plainly do not read history, or arrogantly assume history never repeats.
Islam, biding its time off stage, certainly does. The slow capture of the once Christian Levant and Near East is tangible proof of that.
A divided house will ineluctably collapse.