So you asked me for a brief description of what was my involvement with CCHD. I worked in a diocese where one of my jobs was CCHD diocesan director of CCHD. I came to see that one of the primary functions of CCHD was catechetical in nature. What I would do is get to know people in the community (a result of some of my other duties in the diocese) and help people organize themselves so that their children could go to good schools and safely live and grow in their communities. The focus of CCHD groups is developing healthy communities (read communities built on Catholic ideals) with the family as the benefactor of a safe and healthy community. The reason is that when families have safe and healthy communities to live in, there is fertile ground for the reception of the Gospel. It is much harder to catechize people when they are not living in a safe and healthy community.
This is a problem for me as well. Once people see that merely temporal activities will change their state, why would they *then *
become more receptive to the Scripture? It seems to me that what they will learn is that the don’t need God to improve their lot, just a few temporal measures and some money.
It sounds like you had interesting work which you enjoyed
What I am interested in finding out is, what was the end result? Say you worked with a community with no Catholics, and through the organization improvements were made which benefited all or a considerable number of them.
Were there people who then converted? Was there a follow-through of Catholics who discussed the Faith with them?
But this is not Catholic! We are good, but harmed by original sin or concupiscence. This must be taken into account, and I see that this is another area of difference.
As far as how many people were converted to Catholicism…I would say that the parishes with which I worked closely, around CCHD issues, tended to have some of the larger RCIA programs too. Not to mention that people who had been Catholic all their lives, came to love the Church more deeply.
When people are involved in their community, inside and outside of the parish, the parish often attracts people because people are going out into the community as representatives of their parish. I don’t mean representative in the same way that the pastor is the representative. I mean that people meet each other and they will mention that they belong to such and such a parish…why don’t you come and join us and thus the larger RCIA groups.
Temporal acts have direct consequences in our eternal lives. You can’t say “merely temporal acts”, because temporal acts have a religious and moral component to them. This is why I mentioned the prayer at the Preparation of the Gifts during the Mass and how it draws our attention to “the work of human hands”.
I did mention fear and freedom. It’s human freedom I am referring to. That human freedom, which is a gift of God to us, is a precondition to the full reception of grace in our lives.
My point is that the change that happens in people’s hearts and minds is a change that orients the person toward living how Jesus calls us to live. They don’t do this because they fear hell; they do it because they have had an opportunity to experience the salvific love of Jesus Christ in their brothers and sisters.
I agree with you, we are called to be in relationship with all people, rich, poor…just as you have said. Some people are called to work with the poor and some with the rich and so on. Some people work with the poor for a while and then they take what they have learned about God as the result of their Christian service to the poor, and then they start working with the aged or RCIA in the parish or communion ministers and so on. There are many ways to answer God’s call. It’s about how we answer. Are we looking for deeper meaning in our apostolic work? My experience is that whenever I take on a new kind of ministry or apostolic work, I come to have a better understanding and new insights of the Scriptures and the Sacraments. They take on a richer and fuller meaning. The more I understand the Scriptures and the Sacraments the more I can share the passion I have for them with non-Christians and thus make more converts.
I think I am going to have to disagree with you on your assertion that “But this is not Catholic! We are good, but harmed by original sin or concupiscence. This must be taken into account, and I see that this is another area of difference.”
It seems that every church document I have read and studied makes it very clear that we are first and foremost good and that the quintessential human struggle is to orient our love (which has been disordered by the fall) toward God instead of sin. But we start, and always remain good in the eyes of God. Every action or thought I have that draws me closer to God is the result of grace. That is to say that my ability to do and think good things finds its beginning in God and every impulse toward sin comes from my blindness of the goodness in which God has created me. That is not to say that evil is only the absence of good. Rather it is to say that evil cannot exist apart from the good that God has created. An analogy is that cancer cannot exist if there is no body for it to exist in. Cancer does exist, that is for sure, but it needs the good creation of God for it to exist in and corrupt. Evil exist, but good exists first and Gods good creation is the air that we breathe and what we ontologically or metaphysically are.
