Catholicism can and must change, Francis forcefully tells Italian church gathering

[clem456]

Few people actually learn that Tolkien was Catholic.

Not sure what your point is.

 

[guanophore]

Not sure what your point is.

Just that his faith and his world view were infused into his writing.

 

[clem456]

Just that his faith and his world view were infused into his writing.

Yes they are.
In Tolkien we have an explication of Gospel values and living. Explication contrasts with vagueness and personalized experience. The Gospel, which is the Good News of Jesus Christ, is to be communicated, not grasped at for the sake of one’s personal experience. The Gospel is to be poured out, as Christ is and does, intentionally, explicitly.

Tolkien’s writing is a good example of intentional discipleship, contrasted with accidental and passive reception. Passivity is the bane of Christianity. Passionate is not the same as passive. Christ pours himself out in his passion, but he is not passive. Every age has it’s passive mode. Some are passively living a sacramental and doctrinal life. Some are passively living a personalized prayer life cloaked in high spiritual experiences. Christ is our example of an integrated human fullness, living a full, conscious, and active participation in the Father’s love.

It is mystifying how the proclamation of the Kerygma can be seen as incidental head knowledge to the communication of the Gospel, subordinate to “experience”. Really, is Christ’s life so dull and unappealing that we cannot communicate it in a compelling way that holds the attention of a high school class? We must default to grasping at other experiences, because his story is so devoid of life? We must relegate the communication of his life to incidental and optional head knowledge? We don’t give others enough credit, especially our young people. We patronize them, in the belief that watering down the Gospel will make it more appealing. Really will that work?

If we are to experience and communicate God’s love, we have to know what it is, in addition to the good experience of it. If we are going to love, we have to know a person in a real way, a substantial way, an incarnate way. Not gnostically. And communicate that love to others with some specificity. Love is like a current. It is not simply received in grace and then sat on. Grace is not force, it asks for a response. If love does not flow through us in communication, then we do not know what (who) it is. Love involves the intellect as well as the heart, the whole being.

Tolkien does this passionately, intentionally.

If anyone is interested, Sherry Weddell has a great book in the area of discipleship and evangelization called “Forming Intentional Disciples”.
One of the terms she uses to describe the problem above is “spiral of silence” in reference to the person of Jesus Christ.

 

[clem456]

Quoting from Sherry Weddell’s book Forming Intentional Disciples:

My Friend Mark Shea had an experience that speaks volumes about the spiritual literacy of twenty-first century Americans. He was at work when his co-worker’s radio began playing Joan Osborne’s “What if God Was One of Us”. Mark’s co-worker looked thoughtful for a moment and said: “Wouldn’t that be a great idea for a story?” Mark said “What?”

She replied “Suppose God became a human being. Wouldn’t that make a great story?” The woman speaking was a college-educated professional living and working in the heart of one of the great urban centers of a nation ostensibly filled with Christians. She was genuinely surprised when Mark explained that her “story idea” was in fact the great story that has dominated Western history for 2000 years.

We must be clear: The purpose of evangelization is not waking up a generic faith. Evangelizers seek to bring people to an encounter with the person of Jesus of Nazareth, born of the Virgin Mary, crucified under Pontius Pilate, risen from the dead. Our own personal witness can help illuminate and make living, compelling, and believable aspects of Jesus’ story, but it cannot take the place of Jesus’ story. As Father Cantalamesa preached in front of Pope Benedict and the Papal household:

To re-evangelize the post-Christian world it is indispensable, I believe, to know the path followed by the Apostles to evangelize the pre-Christian world...

…The preaching, or kerygma, is called the “Gospel”; the teaching, or “didache”, instead is called the “law”, or the commandment of Christ that is summarized in charity. These two things, the first- the kerygma, or Gospel- is what gives origin to the Church; the second- the law, or the charity that springs from the first, is what draws for the Church an ideal of moral life, which forms the faith of the Church. In this connection, the Apostle distinguishes before the Corintians his work of “father” in the faith from that of pedagogues who came after him. He says "For it is I, through the Gospel, who has begotten you in Christ Jesus. (1 Corinthians 4:15).

Therefore, faith as such flowers only in the presence of the kerygma, or the announcement, “How are they to believe”- writes the Apostle speaking of Christ,- “in him of whom they have never heard? And how are they to hear without a preacher?” Literally, “without someone who proclaims the kerygma” (choris keryssontos). And he concludes: "So faith comes from what is heard, and what is heard comes by the preaching of Christ (Romans 10:17), where by “preaching”, the same thing is understood, that is, the “Gospel”, or kerygma.
If Christian faith flowers only in the presence of the kerygma, what does that mean for our pastoral practice? How is our generation to believe without someone who proclaims the kerygma? We can no longer assume that people around us already know the story. On the contrary, we have to presume that (a) many don’t know the basic facts of the Story; (b) a good deal of that they know may be “wrong”; (c) they don’t know how the parts of the story fit together to make a whole; and (d) they don’t know what the story means for them personally. Nor do they know what it means for their family, friends, neighbors, co-workers, or the world.
…
We must respect their right to hear the story.

bolding is mine
One thing is for sure, people who show up at Mass, or RCIA, or high school religion class, to hear the Gospel have something in common.
Even if they are showing up out of someone’s sense of obligation instead of pure and perect love…
They are present. It’s not our job to disparage their motivations for being there, we are simply present together in the same room. Christ (with the cooperation of parents etc…) has brought them to us, and we have an obligation to pass along his life and faith. Explicitly.

 

[guanophore]

Quoting from Sherry Weddell’s book Forming Intentional Disciples:

bolding is mine
One thing is for sure, people who show up at Mass, or RCIA, or high school religion class, to hear the Gospel have something in common.
Even if they are showing up out of someone’s sense of obligation instead of pure and perect love…
They are present. It’s not our job to disparage their motivations for being there, we are simply present together in the same room. Christ (with the cooperation of parents etc…) has brought them to us, and we have an obligation to pass along his life and faith. Explicitly.

Indeed we must meet them where they are, especially when they are present. We must fully, faithfully, and forcefully proclaim the Gospel as Peter did on Pentecost.

 

[fred_conty]

Christian discipline is an open system but I did not think that doctrine could be changed…

It can’t because it is truth and truth is one.

I’m not sure what he means by open system, but I think he means to be “open” hearted to all as Christ’s heart was. For he dined with sinners and publicans, explaining to them what the kingdom was about in a patient way.

He went about DOING good to all and not just teaching theory. He loved the poor and the sick and helped them. I guess it might be said that Jesus was carrying out the spiritual and corporeal works of mercy to all and practicing what he preached.

I think this applies especially to our weak Catholic associates … kindness and helpfulness.