What gives with American Catholics?

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What is happening to the spirituality of the American Catholic lay person? As I travel through these threads I have found that there is not only anger, but also hostility. People go around attacking each other, attacking the Church, attacking religious and clergy. It’s incredible and it’s very sad. What is worse is that the average person involved in this either does not realize that he is trapped in this vicious cycle of hate and mistrust or justifies it. If I had a dollar for every person who claims that it is charitable to admonish the sinner and then proceed to clobber the sinner, I’d be rich. Ok, maybe not rich. I know what I would do with that dollar. I’ve always wanted to build a house for unwanted fathers. Yes, you heard me right, unwanted fathers. Have you not noticed that most homeless persons are men?

But homeless men are another topic. Let’s go back to this anger and hostility. We have to become aware of this trend in American Catholicism and try to avoid it. I was on a thread where someone disagree with my understanding of a writing by Pope John Paul II and proceeded to tell me that I could go forward and continue to sow error. I was astonished. There is such a thing as two people understanding something from different perspectives or have we lost that ability? I thought that this was part of the intellectual process. Two people look at something, see it differently and proceed to figure out which is correct. Both could be correct. Both could be wrong or one could be correct and the other wrong. But until you explore it further and maybe bring in a third party who is not vested in either of the two sides, you continue to dialogue with respect. You don’t become hostile and tell another person to continue sowing error. That’s just plain hostile.

The worst part is that the person knows that I’m a religious. Whatever happened to respect for clergy and religious? I grew up Jewish. I became a Catholic when I was 20. But one thing I learned from Judaism. You never disrespect a Rabbi. You don’t have to agree with him, but you had better show him proper respect, even to this day. No Jew ever shoots hostility toward a Rabbi. That’s considered a major violation in Judaism. The same applies in Islam and other faiths. Suddenly we have these Catholics who feel it’s OK to be angry and to hostile toward their fellow Catholics and toward clergy and religious too.

I see it this way. My parents were not always right; but they were my parents. I showed them respect, even when I thought that they were wrong. They did not stop being my parents, just because I believe them to be wrong. Often they were wrong. But that did not change the fact that they were parents. The same went for my grandparents, uncles and aunts.

It’s little wonder that our kids are rude to teachers in school, parents at home, police officers on the street and other persons of authority. We the adults are worse than the kids. We model this lack of respect for others, especially people who have traditionally been respected in the community and the Church. Then adults have the nerve to suggest that the young do not attend mass or go to Church because the Ordinary Form of the mass turns them off or because of poor catechesis. Hogwash! The young do not go to mass because the adult Catholics are modeling for them that the Church, religious, clergy and other Catholics can and should be attacked every time you disagree with something. If you send that message to the young, then why should they listen to the Church when she says that they have to go to mass, communion and confession?

We the Catholic adults are killing our spiritual lives with our anger and our hostility and we’re spreading it to the young. This is frightening. Where do we stop these folks? Why do we allow these folks to do this? Don’t anyone tell me that this is a democratic society and that anyone can do and say what they please. I dare you to go into a court room and try to do and say what you please. I have seen judges throw people out of court and others throw people I jail for doing and saying what they please in an alleged free country. It’s called contempt and it’s illegal in a court, but perfectly permissible in a Catholic setting. What gives?

Fraternally,

Br. JR, OSF 🙂
 
JReducation said:
It’s little wonder that our kids are rude to teachers in school, parents at home, police officers on the street and other persons of authority. We the adults are worse than the kids. We model this lack of respect for others, especially people who have traditionally been respected in the community and the Church. Then adults have the nerve to suggest that the young do not attend mass or go to Church because the Ordinary Form of the mass turns them off or because of poor catechesis. Hogwash! The young do not go to mass because the adult Catholics are modeling for them that the Church, religious, clergy and other Catholics can and should be attacked every time you disagree with something. If you send that message to the young, then why should they listen to the Church when she says that they have to go to mass, communion and confession?
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Brother JR, your posts are always extremely insightful; you are definitely one of my favorite posters here. I picked out this particular passage because it struck me how true it is.

I almost left the Catholic Church and became Presbyterian. The reason I gave was because I thought the Catholic Mass was boring (I still think that but recognize the tremendous and sacred importance and significance of the Mass and no longer think it expendable).

Imagine! I lmost left the True Church for something as silly as boring Mass! But your quote has made me realize that the problem is really much deeper than that. The REAL reason I almost left the Church is that my parents always taught me that it was okay to disagree with the Church, and that being Catholic was not that important; being Christian was far MOR important.

If not for Matthew Warner and his website fallible blogma as well as a great theology teacher I never would’ve stayed in the True Church. The Holy Spirit truly works wonders.
 
I hear you and I must admit that I am one of the angry ones, although I hope that I have not been disrespectful to anyone on CAF. I have been on these forums for a few years now and I actually have to take breaks from it now and again because I become hopeless about things. Not becuase of the heated arguments, but in fact because of the lukewarm attitude of so many. Sometimes I walk away thinking that the majority of those in my faith could care less about the truth and only have a false sense of compassion toward the rampent “in your face” immorality today.

I find it increasingly difficult to remain calm and charitable toward those who continue to thumb their noses at church teaching. Although I am not one to lash out toward them in words or deeds, I find myself becoming increasingly dispondant toward the church.

I am in a real struggle right now with my faith. I HATE to print the words I am about to write, but I really don’t like my church. And, more than anything, I wish I could leave. I believe that the US Bishops are nothing more than politicians who make decisions based upon PC opinion and money, not the spiritual care of their flocks.

The Pedophile scandal has been another slap in the face and because of it I would never allow my son to be an alter boy. What’s even worse then the scandal, however, was the way that the victims were dealt with by church leaders after the fact.

These issues along with a few others, have erroded any trust that I had in the church leadership. I wonder sometimes if the majority of them even believe in God. I am in a real crisis. My distrust of the leadership in the church has caused me to question the authority of the church Herself, which has then led me to question whether it’s all just a big hoax.

I once said that if I ever left the church, I would probably choose atheism over another religion because if the catholic church doesn’t contain the truth, then no faith does and the whole idea of God is just man’s way of dealing with the fear that comes with the realization that he is mortal and will eventually die.

Right now, I go through the motions of adhearence because I have four children that I am raising catholic. I would never even give them a hit that I struggle with belief, but I must admit that I feel as though I am “spiritually dead”, I never thought I would feel this way. Even as a young HS and college student I defended the church to anti-catholic and atheist friends and classmates, but now not only do I doubt that the church is the one true faith, I find myself doubting even the existence of God.

I understand where you are coming from on the “respect” thing, but in my experience with parish priests where I have attended mass, there is only one which I would want my son to emulate. The rest at best have been very nice but week men who don’t want to rock the boat and the worst show blatent disreguard for basic morality.

I guess where you are concerned about incivility and uncharitable behavior by some on the forums (which I have also seen) I am more concerned about the “ostrich” appoarch of so many others. I always think about what Jesus said about being “lukewarm” and I guess that’s how I see alot of the posts on CAF.
 
Americans are a fiesty bunch indeed, but the anger and deminishing spirituality you see in some happens all over the Western world.
 
I saw that post Brother JR.

I don’t know if I have been reading a little more widely in CAF forums lately but the pomposity taken by many when they are ‘correcting’ someone is shocking. Sometimes there is a tone of contempt toward an individual taking a different view. There is often an implication that if you don’t take their rigid interpretation of Church doctrine or the Scriptures, then you are condemned by God. There is very little concerning the love of Christ in such posts.

The rudeness sometimes shown and the disrespect against individuals, clergy and religious… sometimes even the Pope… is not just confined the American Catholics, as the above writer also suggested, but is spread across the Western World. I wish we could show the respect and enthusiasm shown by the African and Asian Catholic churches - those churches have somehting in common, they (happily) struggle in abject poverty compared to us Westerners.

I still love CAF and pray for us members every day because it is a vaste cross-section of Western Catholicism and Catholics and I feel part of it.
 
I agree with you Brother JR. I am a young adult that was raised in a culture who had tremendously poor role models (unfortunately their parents or a substitute) that didn’t value morals and respects for others. Hence, when you do not respect others, you do not respect yourself. Even the most respectable people slip up (myself included), but I strive to be a decent person and a devout Catholic.

I believe that each individuals’ outward conduct, at least to a degree reflects the state of that person’s soul. If we, Catholics and Christians seriously wanted to imitate Jesus, then we would know to be slow to anger, and be loving to one another, even if one or the other is in serious error.

I strongly agree that it is us adults that are the blame for the poor catechisation of the newest generations. Many children range from lukewarm to avoiding the Church like the plague because the parents are not displaying due reverence to the Church and its teachings. The mindset of some of these families is that attending Mass has become a hassle and then is demeaned as a waste of time, when they could all just load up the minivan and see Toy Story 3 followed by a meal at Applebee’s instead.

In short, the vibe I get from the many walks of life that I frequently come across is that decency and mutual respect is near obsolete. Their ‘Sign of the times’ is do what their primal urges prompts them to do, and so it must be right.

They know its wrong. I know its wrong. Why? Because God supplied everyone a conscience. When we actually listen to it and follow it is the difference between the sinner that wants to amend their ways, and the sinner who wants to harden their foundation in vice.

I hope that the people who read your thread seriously evaluate how they treat others, and most importantly, how they treat God.
 
I have noticed that many threads concern the problems some people have. This means for example a spirituality forum on which people seek advice on their own problems rather than threads which bring out the richness of Catholic spirituality. However, I realize that these people simply need good advice, and this can serve a good purpose.
Unfortunately, this means that there aren’t many threads that serve to build up faith, with a more positive message. However, this should simply make us want to start such thread ourselves, unless it seems better then to move onto something else.
 
Our society has lost all sense of respect in general. I’m from the younger generation (in college) and I don’t remember anyone ever teaching me that I should be respectful to anyone in authority - teachers, parents, grandparents, anyone. That is, I basically picked up the idea that one should be respectful enough to not get in serious trouble. It wasn’t until I converted to the Catholic Church that I really encountered the idea of honoring one’s parents, and being respectful to those in authority, so I can at least say that the Catholic Church is doing a little better than secular America.

The Bible tells us again and again that we are to respect those in authority because their authority comes from God (yes, even if they are wrong and they do things that are wrong), we are to honor our father and mother not only because they gave us life, but in obedience to God (even if they are terrible parents). Obviously we should honor the clergy and religious because they are dedicated to serving God. Showing respect to human beings should be a way in which we show respect to God - and if we have no respect for anyone, than it is probable we don’t really respect God either.

Just my two cents.
 
We’ve been wandering in the desert for at least 40 years. Societal upheaval and change has been incredible. I know, I’ve lived it.

And I agree, there is often a very angry and hostile tone rather than a kind and charitable one. I’d like to think I was ‘always’ charitable but I know deep down that even if I never went as far as being overtly uncharitable that some of my posts were carefully crafted to express a pseudocharity with an easily read undertone of "your poor soul if you don’t agree with me. " Mea culpa.

That being said, though, there is another problem and that is that ‘perception’ rather than reality now colors almost everything a person ‘says’ here.

IOW, I could post on here using the tongues of men and angels, in perfect charity. . .but a poster could FEEL that I was being rude and hateful. The ‘feeling’ of that poster would then be considered to count more than the actual words or even my own intentions! How often do we see people ‘wailing’ because they don’t want to hear the truth, it is ‘too hard’ to accept? Of course we need to be loving in our intent but it would be false love, for example, to stop telling the truth to a person who was hell-bent (literally and figuratively) on comitting mortal sin, about that sin. Sure, he would feel so much ‘better’ if he didn’t hear the truth about the sin. . .but in feeling better, he would go on to comitt the sin! Whereas, he might feel ‘awful’, unhappy, hurt if hearing the truth. . .but he might stop if he knew the truth, thereby saving his soul.

What does it profit the soul to gain a ‘happy feeling’ on this earth if he loses his soul thereby?

But we must still try to be loving especially in these 'hard truths."
 
Tantum_ergo said:
We’ve been wandering in the desert for at least 40 years. Societal upheaval and change has been incredible. I know, I’ve lived it.

And I agree, there is often a very angry and hostile tone rather than a kind and charitable one. I’d like to think I was ‘always’ charitable but I know deep down that even if I never went as far as being overtly uncharitable that some of my posts were carefully crafted to express a pseudocharity with an easily read undertone of "your poor soul if you don’t agree with me. " Mea culpa.

That being said, though, there is another problem and that is that ‘perception’ rather than reality now colors almost everything a person ‘says’ here.

IOW, I could post on here using the tongues of men and angels, in perfect charity. . .but a poster could FEEL that I was being rude and hateful. The ‘feeling’ of that poster would then be considered to count more than the actual words or even my own intentions! How often do we see people ‘wailing’ because they don’t want to hear the truth, it is ‘too hard’ to accept? Of course we need to be loving in our intent but it would be false love, for example, to stop telling the truth to a person who was hell-bent (literally and figuratively) on comitting mortal sin, about that sin. Sure, he would feel so much ‘better’ if he didn’t hear the truth about the sin. . .but in feeling better, he would go on to comitt the sin! Whereas, he might feel ‘awful’, unhappy, hurt if hearing the truth. . .but he might stop if he knew the truth, thereby saving his soul.

What does it profit the soul to gain a ‘happy feeling’ on this earth if he loses his soul thereby?

But we must still try to be loving especially in these 'hard truths."
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I agree with what you say here. In many cases, I think people, especially people of faith are less apt to be polite because of all the times we’ve been pushed around and put down in secular society. We’re made to feel like our opinions don’t matter and so when we have the chance to finally speak, the hidden anger boils over.
Anger at what’s happening in the world though doesn’t excuse making rude remarks to other people on this forum. But sometimes telling the simple truth can come across as being unkind. The truth can hurt, but it’s still the truth.
 
marci said:
I hear you and I must admit that I am one of the angry ones, although I hope that I have not been disrespectful to anyone on CAF. Sometimes I walk away thinking that the majority of those in my faith could care less about the truth and only have a false sense of compassion toward the rampent “in your face” immorality today.
These issues along with a few others, have erroded any trust that I had in the church leadership. I find myself doubting even the existence of God.

I understand where you are coming from on the “respect” thing, but in my experience with parish priests where I have attended mass, there is only one which I would want my son to emulate. The rest at best have been very nice but week men who don’t want to rock the boat and the worst show blatent disreguard for basic morality.
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Marci, I hear what you’re saying. There are many problems in our Catholic community and I’ve felt discouraged by various things as well. But what I try to remember is that our church is full of people and people make many mistakes and are definitely not perfect. With all its faults, it is the Church that Jesus established and while it gets hits from within and without, in the end it will stand above everything else. The gates of Hell will not prevail against it. Jesus promised this to all of us. So what I’m saying is, don’t put your faith in what people do, keep faith with the Church as Jesus created it. It’s still there, underneath all the things you mentioned.
 
JReducation said:
What is happening to the spirituality of the American Catholic lay person? As I travel through these threads I have found that there is not only anger, but also hostility. People go around attacking each other, attacking the Church, attacking religious and clergy. It’s incredible and it’s very sad. What is worse is that the average person involved in this either does not realize that he is trapped in this vicious cycle of hate and mistrust or justifies it.
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I don’t think the anger and hostility are root issues. There is a great deal of frustration in our society, when people expect to escape in the Church they are more likely to react. Note to that the internet is an anonymous forum, tacitly giving a place to express those frustrations that we cannot give vent to in real life without leading to direct confrontation.
JReducation said:
It’s little wonder that our kids are rude to teachers in school, parents at home, police officers on the street and other persons of authority. We the adults are worse than the kids. We model this lack of respect for others, especially people who have traditionally been respected in the community and the Church. Then adults have the nerve to suggest that the young do not attend mass or go to Church because the Ordinary Form of the mass turns them off or because of poor catechesis. Hogwash! The young do not go to mass because the adult Catholics are modeling for them that the Church, religious, clergy and other Catholics can and should be attacked every time you disagree with something. If you send that message to the young, then why should they listen to the Church when she says that they have to go to mass, communion and confession?
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I really doubt that the young are straying because of the anger expressed online. I do think lack of catechesis over the past 60+ years is a major factor, and I would point to the decline in belief in certain dogma that seems to lead the decline in practice. Apathy, too, plays a role, a flight reflex from the same frustration (I can attest to this as having an influence on vocations, at the very least).

There has also been a crisis of leadership in our society for years now, and the leadership in parishes and even dioceses has not been spared. Poorly handled disputes with pastors over legitimate concerns, authoritarian action taken against those genuinely trying to hold on to the faith, combined with the instant access to an increasingly aware and disgruntled population has been a proven recipe for a demoralized Church. Even religious (as a whole) lost the respect that they had been given when they seemed to suddenly “give up” and disappear from the public eye (who would have thought that they were more visible behind the wall than living in the world!?).

I know this is merely a rant, but the frustration that led to you writing is not foreign to people who write the other angry rants. Then again this amount of dispute in the Church is hardly new, the early disputes were settled often by the force of secular arms, even Councils could be dominated by staff wielding monks. Truth be told I would rather see us fight the issues out (as GKChesterson said, this is the stuff worth fighting over) rather than
letting side go silently cursing each other, or worse “agreeing to disagree”.
 
At least we’re having some sort of fight over here. Fighting is not good, but at least it demonstrates that there are people who care about where we’re headed as a Church, as a people, as a society; Christianity and frankly Western culture is going quietly into the night in Europe as Islam rises and the secularists shrug.
 
I just realized a left off a major point: Spirituality.

This is, IMO, an old problem that is finally coming to the forefront. Prior to Trent there seems to have been a broader access to various forms of spirituality, aided by a diversity of liturgical practice. Trent in many ways frustrated this, abrogating a number of rights and establishing the Roman Rite as the Ordinary Form (;)). Still, the laity who did not have the liturgical spirituality of the RR could easily focus on a rich and varied devotional spirituality, perhaps the austere monastic spirituality, or the intellectual spirituality of some of the Mendicant orders, or the affective/volitional spiritualities of the Franciscans or Carmelites. Over time however, it seems that people became less aware of the rich choices in Catholic Spirituality that existed. As a result, the shock of post Vatican II changes lead to the ultimately disappointing search for “authentic spiritualities” from virtually any non-Catholic source. Truly authentic spiritualities, particularly liturgical and devotional were plowed under amidst (probably justified) criticism of insufficient depth in practice.

Being born into this situation (as young Catholics have been) it is rather confusing and frustrating to see Trappists flirting with Eastern religions, nuns embracing nature-based paganism, and the secular priesthood never so aptly called. On top of that attempts to revive even the shallow practices that were so recently abandoned are met with hostility.
 
So many of you have posted so many wonderful comments and it’s very hard to respond to each. I’ll simply continue to share where I’m coming from and hope that it will help someone. As many of you know, I’m a Franciscan Brother of Life. Our life is to live the Gospel in the manner that our Holy Father Francis lived it and to proclaim to proclaim the dignity of life, from conception to natural death.

Many people narrow this ministry down to abortion, euthanasia, embryonic stem cell research, infanticide, capital punishment, war and peace (not the novel), and end of life issues. These certainly are prominent concerns that we address every day. But more importantly, our life and mission is to come into environments such as this and bring life back to Catholics. When we were founded the Church gave us a very simple mission, which has proven to be very challenging. I remember the letter from the Vatican. It said that the Brothers of Life were being given the task of converting Catholics to the Gospel Life as it was lived and taught by our Holy Father Francis.

The last part of this statement has two meanings. We are to use the same means that our Holy Father Francis used to convert the Catholics of his time. But it also means that we are to teach the manner of living the Gospel that our Father Francis used. The hope of the Church is that we will persuade others to embrace Francis’ way of living the Gospel. I believe that both of these are very necessary today. We must proclaim the Gospel using the means that Francis used and we must teach others to live the Gospel as Francis lived it.

Throughout history the Church has been very generous with Francis of Assisi. I found out something very interesting. No other saint has had as many papal encyclicals written about him as Francis of Assisi. No other saint has been promoted with such authority as Francis of Assisi. Before we get into spiritual trouble, we must clarify something. The Church’s fascination with Francis of Assisi must never be interpreted as minimizing the life and heroic virtue of other saints or their contributions to the faith. That would be a sin against the Holy Spirit who has given us so many wonderful saints and blessed.

What this means is that Francis of Assisi occupies a very special place in the heart and history of the Church for a number of reasons. Those reasons have been best expressed by popes themselves, including Pope Benedict who achieved one of his doctorates in Franciscan Theology. He is a great student of Bonaventure, as well as Augustine. Those who have read Bonaventure know that he was madly in love with Francis of Assisi. He was so in love with him, that his entire collection of theological works is Bonaventure’s attempt to explain the Catholic faith using Francis’ perspective. Aside from the fact that they did not know each other, they had a very interesting relationship. Francis was the master and Bonaventure the disciple. Bonaventure goes on to become a Doctor of the Church by putting into writing the vision that Francis had of Christ, the Church and her teachings. Obviously, Francis was not as simple as many think. Bonaventure found him to be very intense and theologically very profound.

The Church has found the same thing. Some popes have referred to him as: Mirror of Perfection, the Perfect Christian, the Alter Christos, the Seraphic Father and other such titles. Pope Benedict XVI prefers the Seraphic Father. He uses it every time he refers to Francis of Assisi.

Let’s examine what this means for us today in the context of this thread. What is a seraph? What is a father? Why would Francis be viewed as a seraphic father? I believe that if we look at this title it gives us a hint of how we are to live the Gospel. Seraphs are angels. They are very high ranking angels. Tradition and scripture tell us that they are very close to God. Some popular legends tell us that seraphs are very gentle angels, but with great power, not easily ignored.
 
Conclusion

This was the way that Francis lived his faith. He tried to remain very close to God in all things: words, thoughts, deeds, and relationships. The early writings about Francis were written by eye-witnesses who knew him well. They all have one common thread. They may disagree on details and sequence of events. But there is one point which comes across in all of the early writings, from Celano to Bonaventure. Francis was Arthurian. He was very much in love with gallantry, gentle manners, just treatment of others. In other words, the early biographers describe to us a life that was very genteel. In today’s language we would say that he was the perfect gentleman. He was so polite to others, no matter what their sins were, that to this day, his sons adore him. He is one of those charismatic founders who still governs his spiritual family, even though he has been dead for 800 years. When you walk into a Franciscan house, you will hear the brothers speaking about him and his wishes and ideas as if he were in the next room.

Our gentleness and good manners toward others should be like this. No matter where we are, whether we are dead or alive, others should always remember us. They should enjoy thinking about us and wish to keep us close at hand. But people will only keep us close at hand, will imitate our virtue and listen to our words when they feel loved by us. This was Francis’ seraphic nature. Whether he was correcting someone, preaching a sermon or just chatting, no one ever felt that Francis was angry at them. No one ever felt that he was dismissive of their feelings and their experiences. The greatest sinners felt that he was the epitome of understanding. He never walked away from a sinful person. Not only that, he never scolded or spoke with condescension toward someone who sinned.

He wrote in our rule that the superiors must never get angry when a brother sins. Any superior who denounces a sinner must be deposed immediately, because he is not worthy of the name Christian. That’s how seriously Francis took the importance of kindness toward all, especially sinners. He would depose superiors when they denounced the sin of any brother. They were to help, not denounce. Francis’ idea was that the way to conversion was not through scolding, complaining, pointing fingers or denouncing anyone or anything. He knew that all of this had been tried and did not work.

When he looked at the Gospel he found that what worked were two things: the proclamation of the virtues that everyone must practice and the practice of great mercy toward those who struggle or sin. There is a famous story of him and a very sinful priest. Francis would always go to that priest for confession. When he was asked why he did so, his response was very simple. “I want him to know that he’s not alone in his sin.” Francis came at people from the bottom up. He did not proclaim to have the truth. He proclaimed to be the beneficiary of truth. In other words, he was a sinner and God was the savior. He taught this great truth to everyone.

I remember reading something when I was a novice. It was a very short passage from one of his sermons. In it he said, “Love is not loved.” I was struck by this. It was kind of Dantian, as in Dante. God, who is love, is not loved as he should be. Francis set out to love God and by consequence, he taught anyone who asked him what he was up to. His approach was one of presence, very much like an angel. Angels do not push and nudge us in this direction or the other. They do not disturb our consciences by making us feel guilty. Nor do they trigger anger in us by pointing to our faults. Angels are smarter than human beings. They know that this does not always work. Most human being react to this type of preaching, rather than respond. We want people to respond not react. This was Francis style. He wanted people to respond to the call of Love. What did he do? He acted like an angel. Angels make their presence felt in our lives by guiding us, but always very subtly and gently. Our guardian angels do not bully us or coerce us into accepting truth and turning away from sin. They guide. They present situations and opportunities for us to practice virtue.

This is why Francis is often referred to as seraphic. He understood this concept and this method of living the Gospel and teaching the Gospel. He came at people from below. He first pointed the finger to himself as the worse sinner. Then he would announce to the world how much he needed the life of Christ. From there he proceeded to find that life through the sacraments, prayer, the Church, his brothers, the practice of charity, silence and detachment from his own opinions. That’s why we never see him get into confrontations with the clergy of his day, which we know was very corrupt. He did not pay attention to that. He knew that they were corrupt. He was not an ostrich. But he also knew that he was far more sinful than all of them put together. When he was around them, he behaved toward them like our guardian angels act toward us. He was everything that is polite, kind, respectful, gentlemanly and always the best example of Christian perfection. There was no need for him to tell them their sins.

In the Purgatorio we see Dante at the gate between heaven and purgatory. He has to look on Beatrice, to whom he has been unfaithful. He states that this was worse than being in hell. There is no greater shame and pain than to love into the eyes of unrequited love. Those who met Francis of Assisi were converted to the Gospel by his eyes. They looked at him as insignificant. He looked at them as giants whom he loved and respected. When they realized this, they felt shame and sorrow for their sins. Later I’ll share why he’s called Father.

Fraternally,

Br. JR, OSF 🙂
 
I can answer that question, as for me I have returned to the church after being gone for forty years. I can only attribute it to the Holy Spirit. Actually I was moved to tears at the grave of Saint Francis of Assisi.

Now I visit the Catholic sick and dying as the Lord showed me this is what I am to do.

We must all remember that priests while we expect allot from them are sinners like the rest of us. We all need Christ’s forgiveness. As for the pedophile priests God will judge them, but I tell you this for every one of them there are 20 that didn’t and faithfully served our Lord and Savior. We must also remember that Jesus told us “the gates of hell would not prevail against her”. The church is made up of the Saints — that is us and as for me and my house “we shall serve the Lord”. Also the perfect part of the church is still in it and that is the Lord himself !

Be not Afraid
 
Stuart5 said:
I can answer that question, as for me I have returned to the church after being gone for forty years. I can only attribute it to the Holy Spirit. Actually I was moved to tears at the grave of Saint Francis of Assisi.

Now I visit the Catholic sick and dying as the Lord showed me this is what I am to do.

We must all remember that priests while we expect allot from them are sinners like the rest of us. We all need Christ’s forgiveness. As for the pedophile priests God will judge them, but I tell you this for every one of them there are 20 that didn’t and faithfully served our Lord and Savior. We must also remember that Jesus told us “the gates of hell would not prevail against her”. The church is made up of the Saints — that is us and as for me and my house “we shall serve the Lord”. Also the perfect part of the church is still in it and that is the Lord himself !

Be not Afraid
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You sound like a Brother of Life. I do not underestimate the gravity of the sex-abuse. However, we must also be humble in another kind of way. It is very tempting to feel sorry for ourselves because we have to see and hear this. This is not a good kind of response. It is not based on virtue, but on self-pity.

I’m glad that you mentioned St. Francis as well. Child sexual abuse is minimal compared to the time and situation in which Francis lived. It was very common among secular and clergy men. Some people say that it went on from the Middle Ages to the Renaissance… I have not data to prove it or disprove it. But I know that it did happen. There are diaries by our early brothers that speak about this.

What is most interesting is how Francis dealt with this sin and all sins. For that, just read above what I posted. Francis never felt sorry for himself or the Church, because of the sins of the clergy. He sincerely believed that he was a greater sinner than any sex-abuser, heretic, thief, adulterer and so on. You get the picture.

His goal was to overcome sin in his life and help others overcome it in their own lives. There was always this dynamic play between my sins and the sins of the other. It was never a case of the sins of those horrible priests who moleted little boys.

The Gospel way is to say, my sins trump those of the men who have molested little boys and we are all in need of conversion, penance and mercy. I must do penance for me and for those who do not do penance for themselves. As far as punishment and retribution, Francis writes at great length about this in the rule and in other writings. It’s too much to detail it here. But in essence what he has to say is that those who sin are to be reported to the proper authorities and they should take over from there. Once we have turned the sinner over to the proper authority, we must continue along our journey of conversion, not dwelling on the other person’s sin. That’s for the authority to deal with. Otherwise, there is never closure and never any progress if we get stuck on someone else’s sin.

We must alwasy focus on the collective. “He has sinned, but I’m sure that I have done worse. I probably can’t recall, but it must be there. None of us are exempt from sin.”

Fraternally,

Br. JR, OSF 🙂
 
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