Fortnight for Freedom

Fortnight For Freedom

As many Catholics know, our bishops have declared a “Fortnight for Freedom,” which will run from June 21-July 4, and will give Catholics a unique opportunity to stand up for religious freedom, the “first freedom” in the United States, which is currently being cast aside by leaders in our government.

By now we should understand the struggle we’re up against, particularly regarding the HHS mandate requiring the Catholic Church, among others, to provide contraception, sterilization and abortion-inducing drugs to its employees, in direct contradiction to their moral beliefs as well as the freedoms guaranteed by our Constitution.

Our bishops have declared this Fortnight for Freedom as a period for prayer, action and catechesis.  It begins on the vigil of the Feast of St. Thomas More and St. John Fisher, two men whose defense of their Faith against an out-of-control government cost them their lives.  It ends on July 4, Independence Day for our country.

See the link below to the USCCB’s Web site, and a special prayer for religious freedom, and investigate what your diocese is doing.  As Catholics and as Americans, it is our right and our duty to stand for the principles that have guided our Church and our country.

http://www.usccb.org/issues-and-action/religious-liberty/fortnight-for-freedom/index.cfm

Also, please watch the video at the link below.  It is an incredible homily about contraception, religious liberty, and our duties of how to vote as Catholics.  It is about 15 minutes long, but well worth it.

http://vod.worshipstream.com/TheMassbyFrChrisHeath

The Power of Confession

The Power of Confession

This week I’m writing about the Sacrament of Confession.  Earlier in the week I tried to show a Scriptural basis for the Sacrament and speculate at some of the Wisdom that would cause God to give us such a great gift.  However, I didn’t even get into the power that hearing the words, “I absolve you from your sins,” from someone who has just heard the worst side of us, has, or the action of Grace in the Sacrament.

I would like to approach these through a story.  A priest friend of mind told me this story that happened when he was a seminarian working in a parish during his “intern” year.  He had been put in charge of teaching second-year Confirmation.

Like all Confirmation classes, his included some students who were there because of a desire to grow closer to God, and some who were there because their parents had forced them to be.  There was one student (“Oscar”), however, who constantly gave him trouble.  He was a gang member from a broken home and made it clear that he didn’t much care about what the teacher was saying, and was there only to please his mother.  My friend was usually happy if Oscar was just quiet in the back of the room because at least that way he wasn’t disturbing class.

Shortly before Confirmation came the time when all the kids would be coming to Confession.  My friend sat in the church that Saturday and prayed for the kids as they were receiving the Sacrament.  He noticed something strange happening in the line, however.  Oscar was in line with the other students but whenever he got to the front, he stepped out of line and got in the back.

This happened about three times until there were only two people left in line.  When the student in front of Oscar went in, there was nowhere else for him to go; he had to be next.  Suddenly he turned around and started walking briskly to the back door of the church.  My friend, from the pew, got up and stood in the aisle, blocking Oscar’s way.  He put a hand on his shoulder and said, “You are going to Confession.  It will be okay.”

Well, Oscar did go, and my friend prayed the entire time.  After forty minutes, Oscar finally came out, with tears streaming down his face.  He sat next to my friend and said, “It’s true.  It’s really true,” and cried.

Oscar was confirmed, left the gang lifestyle, and eventually became a Bible study leader and a youth minister.  All because God had loosed his chains in the Sacrament of Confession.  There are a million such stories of people enslaved by sin who finally, by some Grace, bring those sins to Christ in the Sacrament of Confession, and are set free.

Please listen to the audio clip below as a holy priest gives his perspective on the Sacrament of Confession and the role he plays as a conduit of God’s unfathomable mercy.  And if there are any sins in your life for which you believe you can not be forgiven, bring them to Jesus.  Come to Confession, no matter how long it’s been, and see that no sins are too big for Jesus.  He is waiting for you and as Scripture says, behold, He makes all things new.

The Sacrament of Confession

The Sacrament of Confession

When I was in college a baseball teammate of mine tried pretty hard to convert me to his ‘Bible Church.’  Unfortunately I wasn’t the Catholic I should have been at the time, but somewhere along the line I had learned that the Catholic Church is the Church that Christ founded.  Frustrated, my teammate gave up on me for a while, until one day after practice, when he asked me if I still attended “that Catholic Church.”  I told him that I did and his response I thought was a little odd: “But where is Confession in the Bible?”  I pointed him to John 20:21-23.  He was totally unfamiliar with the passage, but that was the last exchange we ever had about religion.

It is interesting that as Catholics, when our Faith is challenged by Protestants, almost invariably one of the first things they will bring up is Confession.  They seem to think it is a medieval invention by priests intended to maintain control and to humiliate the Faithful, as well as make themselves necessary mediators, usurping the unique mediation of Christ, the ‘one mediator between God and man.’ (1 Tim. 2:5)

This being the case, we should have a solid response so that when we are challenged we will be able to share the Truth with our brethren, and so that we will not be led astray.  As always, I must first confess that I am not qualified to give a completely comprehensive defense, and would recommend seeking other resources as well.  Catholic Answers has quite a few.

This week I would like to focus on this incredible Sacrament.  I intend first to show that it is Scriptural, and then to demonstrate that it is one of the most amazing gifts of love our Savior has given us.  Finally, in ‘The Fathers Speak,’ at the end of the week, I will give ample evidence that this Sacrament dates to the early Church and not simply to the Middle Ages.

I will begin with the Scripture passage that I gave my friend those many years ago - John 20: 21-23: “[Jesus] said to them again, ‘Peace be with you.  As the Father has sent me, so I send you.’ And when he had said this, he breathed on them and said to them, ‘Receive the holy Spirit.  Whose sins you forgive are forgiven them, and whose sins you retain are retained.”

This is a very clear text showing Jesus giving the Apostles the power to forgive sin, but a deeper examination may help our challengers see even more clearly what is going on.

Jesus begins by saying, ‘As the Father has sent me, so I send you.’  In other places in Scripture He tells the Apostles that whoever hears them hears Him, and whoever rejects them rejects Him.  He gives them the power to bind and loose (Mt. 18:18).  Clearly Jesus, in many places in the Gospels, shares His authority with His Apostles.  And when Jesus healed of the paralytic He made it perfectly clear that He had the authority to forgive sins (Mt. 9:2), not just as one man forgives another, but as God.

By immediately telling the Apostles in verse 23 that whose sins they forgive are forgiven and whose sins they retain are retained, it is clear that his ‘sending them as the Father sent Him’ includes the forgiving of sins, in His Name.  That is why He breathed on them and gave them the gift of the Holy Spirit.  Only with a power that comes from God can they forgive sins in His Name, so that they are truly forgiven.

St. Paul recognizes this in his second letter to the Corinthians.  He tells the people that God has reconciled the world to Himself through Christ, and given the Church ‘the ministry of reconciliation’ (2 Cor. 5:18).  He says it includes a message of reconciliation and also implores the Corinthian Christians, who have already been baptized and accepted Jesus as Lord, to ‘be reconciled to God’ (verse 20).

In James 5:13-15, the Apostle gives us a beautiful description of the Sacrament of the Anointing of the Sick.  He clearly indicates that this Sacrament is to be performed by the priests and includes the forgiveness of sins.  Though it is not Confession, it shows that the priests have the power to forgive sin.  Immediately after, he tells people to confess their sins to one another.  It does not specifically tell them to confess to a priest but reading verses 13-16 together it makes a lot of sense in light of the Sacraments of the Church.

Why, then, did Jesus give us this Sacrament instead of allowing us to just ‘go directly to God,’ as many people Catholic and non-Catholic alike, claim to do?

Certainly we go directly to God with our sins and contrition for those sins, and we should make an examination of conscience at least daily.  But when we go to Confession, we are not confessing to a man and hoping he will forgive us, we are taking our sins to Christ and through the authority received at his ordination, the priest is the minister of Christ’s own forgiveness.

But again, why?  We can’t completely understand, with our limited minds, why God does something, but we can certainly understand to a degree.

First, sin makes us slaves, and keeps us in darkness.  It is easy to tell God we are sorry for our sins, but in Confession, we have no choice but to bring them into the light.  As with all darkness, once it is brought into the light, it loses its power.  Confession forces us to face the ugly realities about ourselves, and to take power over them.

It also forces us to examine our consciences.  If we are to make a good Confession, we have to honestly look at our weaknesses and failures, which blesses us with self-knowledge and humility.  The humility it requires to go to Confession in the first place allows that necessary virtue to develop in us.  The Sacrament also allows us to benefit from the counsel of a priest.  Certainly the fields of psychology and counseling are very valid and valuable, but many professionals in the field will admit that what many of their clients need is Confession.  They confess to a counselor who can not give them true peace and forgiveness, when what they really need is a priest.  Again, this only refers to a percentage of people seeking counseling and a good counselor may benefit all of us at times.  But a counselor will never be a substitute for a spiritual director, or a Confessor.

I tell my students that one of the greatest predictors of their future happiness is whether or not they make regular Confession a habit.  Nothing else keeps us grounded, or gives us peace in the same way.  These are only a few of the blessings of the Sacrament of Confession, and I have not even yet touched on the incredible blessing of hearing the words, “I absolve you of your sins,” which I will speak about later this week.

Finally something should be said to those Catholics who refuse to go to Confession because they tell God they’re sorry for their sins privately, on their own terms, and have decided that He must have freed them from their sins regardless of the fact that the Church tells us that at least mortal sins must be brought to Confession.  If not, it’s His fault.

God has given us everything.  He died so that we would be freed from sin and have everlasting life.  Even after accepting Him sometimes we fall, perhaps even very seriously, and He has given us a Sacrament with so many blessings and Graces that frees us again, and again, and again.  Yet there are those who are members of the Church, and know that they should go to Confession, yet refuse.

If we were dying from a deadly disease and a doctor were to prescribe a treatment guaranteed to cure us, if we were to refuse to take it, could we blame the doctor?  Would it be rational to say, “No, I will not take this treatment that I know will cure me, but I do want to be cured.  If I am not, it is not my fault; it’s the doctor’s?”  Of course that would not be rational.  The truth is, in that situation, it would be true to say that we did not really want to be healed, at least not enough to take the necessary treatment.

The same is true for Confession.  If we refuse to receive this great gift, it is silly to say we really want to be freed from our sins.  If we did, we would take the treatment.  That being said, I know it can be scary.  I am not judging Catholics who don’t go to Confession.  I have been there.  But I want to encourage them to go.  Just go.  Our trust must outweigh our fear.

          In a few days I will share a true story of the healing power of Confession that was told to me by a priest.  It is one of a million such stories.  I will also share some audio of another priest sharing his perspective on Confession that is incredibly beautiful and reminds us that all the priest wants to do is bring us back to God.

          I will finish today with this thought: A man was complaining to his Catholic friend about how cruel it is for people to have to go to Confession.  “My nephew goes to Confession regularly,” he said, “and he’s always nervous before going.  Why should he have to go through that?”  “I believe you,” said the man’s Catholic friend, “that your nephew may be nervous going into Confession.  But what is he like coming out?”  

That is a feeling, a reality, that can be found nowhere else in the world.

A Light in the World

A Light in the World

My wife and I recently learned the happy news that we are pregnant with our fourth child.  (Well, she is, actually.)  This news has brought us great joy, but it has also placed us squarely on the wrong side of our secular culture’s “morals.”  We are now officially menaces to society, contributing to overpopulation and acquiring an indefensible “carbon footprint.”

Now, to our friends and family of Faith, this is a happy announcement.  As Catholics, we are all called to be open to life in our marriages.  God may not bless our marriages with children, but we promise on the day of our wedding that we will accept the children He wishes to give us.  God has a Father’s Heart, He loves children, and we are called to be generous with our fertility.  Large families should be a sign to the world of God’s fruitful Love.

However, judging by the comments my friends with four kids or more have gotten, and the few my wife has even gotten in public with three, the world sees things very differently than God does.  And it will react to our joyous news in a far different manner than the community of Faith.

Perhaps one of these days I will write an article on all the reasons why the overpopulation hype is a heap of nonsense.  Overpopulation is not truly a problem.  In fact, Catholic children from large families may be the only hope our secular neighbors have of ever receiving Social Security or Medicare, given our current demographic nightmare.  But that’s not the point of this post.  See the Population Research Institute for plenty of important facts and information, and links to other useful resources.

I am also not a global warming alarmist, but I believe in clean air and water as much as anyone, and my family tries to be good stewards of God’s creation.

But the fact is, there is a mentality rampant in our society that compels total strangers to verbally attack parents with more than a couple of kids, or to stare at them like they would never dare do to someone with a disability, for example.

Why is this?  Some of it is pure nastiness.  But many believe the ideology extolled by modern Western culture.  Perhaps they feel a sense of moral superiority that gives them license to be rude to complete strangers (nastiness again).  Let’s face it, it has been a brilliant scheme of the devil’s to turn decisions about having children into totally selfish ones and then provide a framework for feeling righteous about it.

Regardless of the level of nastiness in the motives of another, that is not really for us to judge (we have no way to anyway), and the important question is, how should we respond?

It is tempting to respond with a wise crack or a verbal snipe of our own.  Perhaps we should make a rash judgment about their motive, and berate them for it.  But if we are trying to be a light in the world, if we want our families to be a sign of God’s Love, then we had better respond as Christians.  And that means one thing, charity. 

We may have reasoned discussions with our loved ones who have adopted the world’s mentality, but most likely not with the stranger in the parking lot or the check-out line.  We should be prepared to, I suppose.  But we certainly need to respond with patience and with charity.  There is probably no one-size-fits-all response, but getting upset, defensive or accusatory will do no one any good.  So whatever we say, it should uphold Truth, and do so with charity.

This, however, is not always so easy.  If someone is willing to attack us out of the blue, they are probably not bringing much charity to the table.  It will take strength of character not to respond in kind.

There is an interesting parable, from India, I think.  It seems a man saw a scorpion stuck on a rock at the edge of a river, surrounded by water in a storm.  The water was rising and it was clear that the scorpion was going to drown.  So the man reached out to pull the scorpion off the rock and onto dry ground, when it stung him.  He pulled his hand back but a moment later reached out again, only to be stung again.  A third time he began to reach his hand to the creature when his friend called to him: “What are you doing?  If you keep trying to save that scorpion, he will just keep attacking you.”  “I know,” said the first man, “but I will not let his nature, which is to fight, overcome my nature, which is to love.”

Well we are not dealing with mere scorpions, but human beings made in the Image and Likeness of God.  Our nature comes from God and we must not let it be dictated by our neighbor.

Where will we find the strength do this?  We must see our detractors, not as enemies, but as Christ, in whose Image and Likeness they were created.  This is what Mother Teresa did in Calcutta.  She spent time with Jesus in the Blessed Sacrament and when she went out into the streets, she saw Him in the poor.  If we are to see Jesus even in our enemies, at least potentially, and so find the strength to love them, we must spend time with Him.  And some of that time needs to be with the Blessed Sacrament, in Adoration.  If we come to know Him in this great Sacrament, we will fall more deeply in love with Him, and the prayer will come true that says: O Jesus, meek and humble of Heart, make my heart like unto Thine.

Link - Dreams for our Daughters

Link – Dreams for our Daughters

One of the many casualties of the HHS mandate war between the Obama administration and people of Faith is an understanding of what Blessed Pope John Paul II may have called the “Feminine Genius.”  It is not just the Constitution that is being trampled, but a proper understanding of the nature and beauty of sexuality.  It is true that generally speaking, this has been lost a long time ago in our culture, and the nature of the current debate is in many ways a symptom of that.  But the dignity of women, particularly with regard to the role they play in transmitting life, has been taking a particularly hard beating lately.

This is a teachable moment for the Church.  At the link below, Denise Hunnell approaches the issues surrounding the HHS debate with a more comprehensive approach that tries to restore the dignity that the Administration seems to want to deny women, and to appreciate the “Feminine Genius.”

http://www.hliamerica.org/truth-and-charity-forum/my-dream-for-my-daughter/