The Price Of My Soul’s Salvation
Through the open door could be heard the tinkling of the sacring bell; Jesus in the Blessed Sacrament was being brought to the cell, and from his deathbed Thomas Aquinas called out joyfully, "I receive thee, Price of my soul’s salvation! All my prayer, my study, my work hath been in service of thee!"
After the feast day Mass they apologized to the holy Cure d’Ars, St John Vianney; a choir anthem had been unexpectedly long, and had delayed him so that he was left standing at the altar, holding the sacred Host over the chalice, waiting to complete the Canon of the Mass. But he "did not find the time long. A foolish thought came to me, and I looked at Him, and I said, ‘If I knew that I would have the misfortune to lose you for all eternity, then now, while I hold you in my hand, I should never let you go’."
It was the day after her First Holy Communion, and the little girl had gone to Holy Mass and Communion with her godmother, who could not resist prying, and asked her little protégé what she had said to Jesus in her lengthy, obviously fervent thanksgiving after Communion. "I thanked Him for coming; I asked Him to come again. I asked Him to keep me good, so that I can receive Him again. Then, I recited my ABC’s for Him, counted from one to ten for Him, and I told Him a ghost story!"
Three little vignettes of faith: from the 13th, the 19th, and the early 20th century (the last story, a true one, is from Fr. Dan Lord, SJ). Three very different souls, in different ages and places, united in wondrous contemplation of the Mysterium Fidei, the "Mystery of Faith," that Jesus, their "best and wisest Friend," as Aquinas said, should come to them in Holy Communion, their closest union with Him this side of Heaven. In each vignette, in its own way, we glimpse the joyous awe we should be able to expect of a Catholic in any age, who, although unworthy, hears the invitation, "Behold the Lamb of God," and approaches.
Now, for a moment, we must leave Reality — and those vignettes are indeed a glimpse of Reality, make no mistake; the wise man understands that Reality is best seen in a darkened chapel, discerned by the flickering red lamp which announces the Presence of the Lover of mankind. But let us, reluctantly, leave Reality for a few moments, and turn our gaze on the Disneyland of the Catholic Church in America.
I have been a parish priest for 18 years and, I must say, it gets more and more interesting by the day. Currently, I’m watching, with a kind of appalled fascination, the "Should John Kerry receive Holy Communion" debate, now broadened to include all pro-abortion politicians and that tedious question, "And What Are the Bishops Going To Do About It?" (The latter question is tedious because as often as it comes up, in whatever context, the answer always turns out the same.)
If we were standing on your front lawn awaiting the firefighters as your house burned down, and, as the dining room wing collapsed, you turned to me and mused about whether you need a larger or smaller dining room table for that room, I’d sit you down gently somewhere safe, get you a cup of cold water, and assume the stress had left you unhinged. Yet today, amid the shambles of Catholic life in this country, we’re all supposed to jump up and down and jabber in unison about John Kerry, pro-abort politician, supporter of even partial-birth abortion, receiving the Eucharist.
For what it is worth, this is the view from where I am sitting.
The sacramental discipline of the Church in this country has largely broken down. Mass attendance in our Diocese of Brooklyn is 18%; in New York, 19%; in Chicago, 16% (those are pre-scandal figures). The Most Blessed Sacrament is so little valued among Catholics that the overwhelming majority of them are not faithful to Sunday Mass. I am sure, though, that most of those who only pop in occasionally have no hesitation about approaching for Communion.
The Church’s catechetical program — a systematic, consistent method of passing on the faith that was Church-wide — was deliberately dismantled 40 years ago. Recently, a noted archbishop garnered attention because he told his peers that virtually all of the high school catechetical texts being used in our country are unsalvageable junk. There was much applause for his courage and insight; I choked over my coffee. Every one of the bishops knew this at least 30 years ago; dioceses were routinely marginalizing as kooks faithful Catholics who wrote letters protesting these developments.
The Eucharist has become the equivalent of a birthday cake. Even if someone has been very naughty, it is really, really mean to say that he cannot have a piece of the birthday cake. Birthday cake is an inclusion ritual, like a party favor or an ice-breaking in-group exercise. It says nothing more than, "You’re here. Welcome."
Catholics routinely stream up to Holy Communion who have not approached the confessional in years. The concept of being in a "state of grace," or of "mortal sin," even of "reverent awe" is so abstract as to be meaningless to most of our people (if that seems harsh to you, please remember that 82% of us aren’t even at Sunday Mass). "Father," I’ve heard more times than I can count, "I don’t come to Mass every Sunday, but I go to Communion because I consider myself to be a good person." Apparently, from the pulpits of many of our churches, there is continually preached an "I’m okay, you’re okay" religion of perpetual affirmation, summed up by one wag with this collect: "Lord, help us by your grace to continue to be the good people we really are."
Now, having mentioned pulpits, I would make an observation regarding those who complain that if priests would preach and teach the faith, the renewal might start. I, too, wish that parish priests consistently, forcefully, and faithfully taught the whole faith.
But remember the saga of Fr. Charlie Murr, recently reported in these pages. He accepted the pastorate of a faded city parish, St. Francis de Sales in New York City, and set about its renewal. He found the parish school in a fiscal and spiritual morass, with 66% of the students having failed the archdiocesan standardized religion test. And he had the legs cut out from under him by the cardinal, who ordered him to renew the contracts of five teachers, a principal and assistant principal whom he had not invited back for the following year. And Fr. Murr felt compelled to resign his pastorate. His parish council, all top-drawer New York professionals, likewise resigned in protest.
It’s a fact of life in our Church, as far as I can see, that my job as a parish priest is to keep most people, if not everyone, happy. Doctrinally faithful sermons will not do that. It is not that most Catholics want to be heretics; it is that they have never been formed in the Catholic faith. They have been fed a steady diet of this mutually affirming mommy religion for so long that to suggest that they might be sinners, or even that some sin they have embraced as a lifestyle is wrong, is to "attack" them. It is to be "mean," and Jesus was not mean. I am a good priest if I leave you smiling and feeling good; a bad priest otherwise.
So, back to the Kerry Communion War. This controversy is being publicly waged as though everyone understands what we believe is at stake: as though the Catholic Church in this country has, in the clearest, plainest, most affecting and majestic manner proclaimed and upheld the teaching on the Eucharist. But we have not even done that by example (as anyone familiar with the state of our liturgy knows), let alone by our words. Two-thirds of the Mass-going, active Catholics in this country can’t recognize our teaching on the Eucharist when it is set before them, as Gallup demonstrated.
And we have done an equally lousy job of teaching other areas of morality.
Catholics routinely approach for Communion who are engaged in premarital sex, extramarital sex, masturbation, contraception, homosexuality. Public, nonchalant dissent from Church teaching in these areas is easy to find among Catholics — not just those in public positions, but among those on religious education staffs in parishes and schools. While mountains of postconciliar documents have been churned out on various crucial issues, they have minimal impact in parish ministry and family life. Indeed, we’re at the stage where cafeteria Catholicism, picking and choosing from among the teachings of our and other religious traditions, is regarded as a virtue.
If we’re really, brutally honest, we’ll admit that most Catholics only know what the Church teaches about the crucial moral issues of our day because of the secular media. This is literally true. From the pulpit, they hear the Mutually Affirming Mommy Religion; the homily is a bright, cheery anecdote, a bit of application connected with the readings, a quote, a bit more reflection, and an affirming, warm conclusion.
It’s Time, Newsweek, The New York Times, and the evening news which will pass along to the public that the Catholic Church opposes active homosexuality, contraception, abortion, sterilization, remarriage after divorce. And, of course, those news outlets understandably present the "bottom line," as it were. "Thou Shalt Not." They don’t get into the rationale for the teaching. And our people almost never hear anything on these matters from the pulpit.
Which means that they are never formed in the Catholic faith. They may come to Mass, but they are, sadly, never really fed, never formed in the Catholic faith. And their attitudes and values morph into what we would expect of amiable pagans. We are, quite literally, at the point where most Catholics nod agreeably when it is suggested that "all religions lead to God," and accept the common dictum that truth is relative, that what is Truth for me may be different from your truth.
What should happen, you ask? The clarion call needs to be sounded. One of our shepherds needs to stand up and challenge his brethren and all of us, needs to say, honestly, "Enough, dear God! We have been in a state of crisis for 40 years, and it gets worse by the day!" We need an Elijah. We need another Hilkiah, who found the forgotten Book of the Law in the Temple; another Josiah, the king who wept as he heard it read to him, and ordered a bright, fierce renewal (2 Chron. 34:19).
We need to admit that we have strayed dangerously far from the path, as we look at our liturgy, catechesis, parish and rectory life, religious communities, seminaries, health care institutions, family life, moral theology. We’ve got to admit that there is something deeply wrong. We have to stop this silliness of jumping up to chase the occasional incident like John Kerry with an ecclesiastical Band-Aid, as though that’s the answer, while ignoring the fact that the Gospel and the Catholic faith are being brazenly undermined in this country by many, many priests, religious, diocesan bureaucracies, religious orders, "Catholic" publications such as The National Catholic Reporter, "Catholic" journalists and public figures, and on and on and on. The one recognizable virtue to many Catholics today is "broad-mindedness;" their notion of Truth is completely relative. And, as a Church, we have done this to ourselves.
But I do not think we will hear this clarion call, or see our Hilkiah or Josiah any time soon. I watched Bishop Wilton Gregory catechizing that press conference about the National Review Board’s sexual abuse report and how it’s about "the children, the children, the children," whereas it is really about the bishops, the bishops, the bishops. This episcopate will never do anything but spin the problems; won’t ever settle down to address the hard work of renewal.
Watching the bishops’ conference in action is like viewing the film of a train wreck over and over again. With bright-colored clowns hanging out the train windows, waving and blowing kisses. One only wishes one had a tomato.
In the midst of it all, there’s one deep consolation, the one thing needful that they have not yet taken away: that still I can come forward and say with confidence, "I receive thee, Price of my soul’s salvation." And that is no small thing, at all, at all. But how long, O Lord?
FR. JOSEPH WILSON is a priest of the Diocese of Brooklyn. He writes from Queens, NY.
This item 5964 digitally provided courtesy of CatholicCulture.org
