Thursday, September 3, 2015
Monday, July 13, 2015
Commentary: Evangelization in the age of same-sex-stuff
This post was written by Carole Brown, our dear Kerygma friend who is now the Director of the Office of Evangelization for the ArchDiocese of Oklahoma City, OK and was posted on July 13, 2015 and is well worth the read. AMEN!
On the last Friday in June, we woke up to the news that the Supreme Court of the United States had discovered in the vapors of the 14th Amendment of the U.S. Constitution, a right to “marriage” for same-sex couples.
The contrary witness of all previous generations notwithstanding, this puts faithful Catholics in the awkward position of having to publicly defend the truth about marriage in an environment that is becoming increasingly hostile.
As friends and acquaintances, and even the White House, drape themselves in rainbow flags on social media, one senses a growing pressure to abandon our mission to call people to conversion to Jesus Christ, and the way of life that such a conversion involves. When legal rulings come into conflict with what God has revealed, the social environment becomes deeply confusing, and one must have a profound sense of where our anchors are sunk. In other words, why does the Catholic Church oppose this ruling?
The moral conversion to which the Church is bound by its mission is not simply an observance of a set of arbitrary rules leveraged on those who experience same-sex attraction. Everyone who seeks salvation in Jesus Christ is called to chastity.
In that respect, the problem is much bigger than same-sex couples who want legal recognition of their union. If we are honest, we must admit that the widespread practice of contraception and surgical sterilization has lent itself to the argument that same-sex relationships are no different than contraceptive marriages. For if married couples can voluntarily make their union sterile, why shouldn’t unions that are naturally always sterile anyway be given equal status?
And, if marriage can be defined any way one wants, then why shouldn’t pedophiles be given equal access to have their sexual preferences made legal? Or polygamists? And thus, the value of true marriage, and its unique role in the begetting and rearing of the next generation, is rendered virtually meaningless, and the rights and needs of children take a backseat to the sexual preferences of adults.
We can see that in the space of only one generation, a demographic winter is underway in many European countries, where deaths outnumber births by a significant margin, leaving a shrinking youth population to support a growing number of elderly pensioners. It’s clear that personal sexual choices are never purely private — they end up impacting everyone.
But, even if one is unpersuaded by the significant harms to a society that doesn’t value chastity, we have other reasons for our stand. God has revealed himself to humanity in the person of Jesus Christ. Jesus wasn’t just a good teacher, he was actually God, “through whom all things were made”— he is the designer of the human person, the artisan of marriage, the one who said to the first couple, “Go forth and multiply.” Jesus taught us that life on this earth is only the precursor to eternal life, and the big question is, “what must one do to be saved?”
There are important decisions to be made here. Salvation requires faith and baptism – and according to Jesus, it can be won or lost on the basis of having lived according to the commandments (Cf. Matthew 19:16). Jesus gave the apostles the authority to teach in his name (Matthew 28:18), and promised to send the Holy Spirit to guide them to “all the truth” (John 16:13). Whoever listens to the apostles, he said, “hears me” (Luke 10:16). That is why we take seriously what the Church, through her magisterial authority, teaches about sexual morality. This is the narrow path that leads to life, and few are those who find it.
Finding that path and being able to walk it require a profound act of self-entrustment to the Lord.
“I will choose to trust you Jesus, even if my obedience to you brings loneliness, because you are with me.” “I will choose to trust you with my fertility, Lord, because I know you have a plan for us.” “I will choose to give you control over my life, Lord, because I believe that your will towards me is good.” “I will trust you Lord, even when the future looks uncertain, because I believe you can make all things work unto good.”
Such an act of self-entrustment to the Lord unleashes grace and energy to do the right thing, to live a more adventurous way of life that Jesus calls us to — “for I can do all things through Christ who strengthens me” (Phil 4:13).
Following Jesus does not protect us from suffering, in fact it almost guarantees that our lives will be marked to some extent by suffering. But, one thing is certain: compared to eternity, all our difficulties on this earth amount to one night in a bad hotel.
Evangelization in this new situation does not begin by lowering the moral hammer on unsuspecting secularists. It begins in the Catholic household, with us being honest with ourselves: is it my intention to follow Jesus? Can I be obedient to him in the Church?
Honesty begins with sober self-examination, sincere repentance, personal conversion — and a profound entrustment of our lives to God’s providence as we make the adjustments needed to “get with the program.”
It may not be possible to get the proverbial genie back into the bottle in society at large. However, by cooperating with the grace of God, and ordering our lives according to his will, we can still be saved. Only then will we have the moral authority (and the compelling witness) to call others to the same way of life.
http://www.archokc.org/news/5555-evangelization-in-the-age-of-same-sex-stuff
Wednesday, December 10, 2014
What Life Church Is Doing Right
From our dear friend, Carole Brown, Director of Evangelization and Kerygma Alumni, this article was too good not to share. For those of us in the trenches of Catholic- Protestant ministry, may this serve as encouragement that we are on the right path. Enjoy!
On Palm Sunday
this year, I was standing in the foyer of one of the metro parishes where a
liturgically sensitive usher was holding the stragglers at bay as the
solemnities began.
I found a place
to lean against the wall when suddenly a man came up to me and said, “Is this
church always this crowded?” Since I was a visitor too, I indicated that I
wasn’t sure. He clucked his tongue impatiently and said, “I’m going to Life
Church.” I found myself thrust into an evangelization emergency, and I needed
to give him a good reason to stay, pronto! I searched my mind — what did we
have that they didn’t have? Of course. The Eucharist! So, I quickly uttered
some hasty words of encouragement, that he shouldn’t miss out on the Bread of Life.
His eyes glazed over and his words stung: “Some people are born to be Catholic,
and some people are born to run away from the Catholic Church. I’m running
away.” He turned on his heel, and left.
I know that many
parents with adult children are heartbroken by the fact that their kids have
abandoned the faith of their childhood in favor of churches like this. They say
they are being “fed” there. What is a parent to do? What is the Church to do?
Surprisingly, one
thing that evangelical churches do extremely well is a perfectly Catholic thing
to do, and something we can learn. Life Church, like many other evangelical
churches, effectively announces the core message of the Good News of the
Gospel, in a thousand different ways. This core message so permeates the
consciousness of these Christians that it shapes their welcome, their formation
and the whole atmosphere.
The core message
of the Gospel is called the “kerygma” (ker-IG-ma), or the “initial
proclamation” of the Gospel. Recovering the kerygma is part of the culture
shift within the Church to which the New Evangelization is calling us. Saint
John Paul II referred to the kerygma as “the conversion-bringing proclamation
of the Gospel … the initial ardent proclamation by which a person is one day
overwhelmed and brought to the decision to entrust himself to Jesus Christ by
faith.” (cf. “Catechesis in Our Times,” 19, 25) This initial proclamation is
the “permanent priority” of the Church’s mission. In “Mission of the Redeemer”
44, he wrote:
“The Church cannot
elude Christ's explicit mandate, nor deprive men and women of the ‘Good News’
about their being loved and saved by God. Evangelization will always contain –
as the foundation, center and at the same time the summit of its dynamism – a
clear proclamation that, in Jesus Christ ... salvation is offered to all
people, as a gift of God's grace and mercy."
Pope Francis
summarized the kerygma this way, “Jesus Christ loves you; he gave his life to
save you; and now he is living at your side every day to enlighten, strengthen
and free you.”
Saint Paul once
distinguished between those members of the Church who needed milk, and those
who needed meat. “I fed you milk, not solid food, because you were unable to
take it. Indeed, you are still not able, even now …” (1 Cor 3.2) After the
Protestant reformation, Catholics began to dwell almost exclusively on our
doctrinal, sacramental and moral teaching — the “meat” of the faith – to
emphasize those things which distinguish us from Protestants.
Only since the
20th Century catechetical movement, led by Joseph Jungmann and Johannes
Hofinger, has the kerygmatic aspect of catechesis started to gain traction
again in magisterial teaching.
Recent popes have
indicated that without the conversion prompted by the kerygma, catechesis does
not have a proper context within which to take root. Pope Francis gave an
earthquake of emphasis to the kerygma, in “Joy of the Gospel.” He writes:
“This first
proclamation is called ‘first’ not because it exists at the beginning and can
then be forgotten or replaced by other more important things. It is first in a
qualitative sense because it is the principal proclamation, the one which we
must hear again and again in different ways, the one which we must announce one
way or another throughout the process of catechesis, at every level and moment.
We must not think that in catechesis the kerygma gives way to a supposedly more
“solid” formation. Nothing is more solid, profound, secure, meaningful and
wisdom-filled than that initial proclamation. All Christian formation consists
of entering more deeply into the kerygma, which is reflected in and constantly
illumines, the work of catechesis, thereby enabling us to understand more fully
the significance of every subject which the latter treats.” (“Joy of the
Gospel,” 164)
Only a person who
has joyfully entrusted himself to Jesus Christ is in a position to take on
board the high standard of moral living that he revealed, or to fruitfully
receive the sacraments. Pope Francis further wrote:
“ … (the kerygma)
has to express God’s saving love, which precedes any moral and religious
obligation on our part; it should not impose the truth but appeal to freedom;
it should be marked by joy, encouragement, liveliness and a harmonious balance,
which will not reduce preaching to a few doctrines, which are at times more
philosophical than evangelical. All this demands on the part of the evangelizer
certain attitudes, which foster openness to the message: approachability,
readiness for dialogue, patience, a warmth and welcome which is
non-judgmental.”
The “culture of kerygma” is what Life Church, and most
evangelical congregations, do really, really well. If we can internalize the
kerygma in our own lives and develop a more kerygmatic culture ourselves, the
welcoming atmosphere of our churches will be transformed. Our children will not
only stay Catholic, but catechesis will be set in its proper context. And
furthermore, evangelicals will be more likely to find the fullness of their
faith. Originally posted here: http://archokc.org/news/4216-commentary-what-life-church-is-doing-right
Tuesday, November 18, 2014
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)