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Our Catholic faith gives hope to the world!
“Faith is the realization of what is hoped for and evidence of things not seen,” states the Letter to the Hebrews (11:1). Obviously, faith is more than intellectual. It involves entrusting your life to God, obedience to God’s will. This side of faith is probably more important than intellectual assent, but unfortunately, we see a woeful inadequacy of intellectual aspect of faith among average Catholics.
Faith Formation teachers and Catholic university professors often bemoan the fact that their students lack the basic knowledge of their Catholic faith. What is a sacrament? What is the Immaculate Conception? What is the Second Vatican Council about? What are the positive effects of the liturgical renewal? What is ecumenism? The list goes on.
G. K. Chesterton said over 100 years ago, which may sadly hold true today: “A man was meant to be doubtful about himself, but undoubting about the truth; this has been exactly reversed. Nowadays the part of a man that a man does assert is exactly the part he ought not to assert—himself. The part he doubts is exactly the part he ought not to doubt—the Divine Reason” (Orthodoxy, Ch. 3).
His observation is keen. We should be less confident in our -isms, our politics, and our judgments on people’s motives. In other words, we should be doubtful of our own opinions. The essential tenets of our precious Catholic faith have been most carefully discerned, professed, and handed down to us with so much sweat and blood. The struggle to preserve authentic faith and to protect it from various destructive attempts has cost so much sacrifice, even martyrdom.
In this age of post-modernity, there is a false generosity, insisting and even forcing everyone to respect any and every assertion without any serious effort to discern the truth. The galaxies we recently found are billions of light years away. This simple reality of incredible span of time and space cannot be arbitrarily altered by random people because it does not fit their fixed worldview, which sometimes comes with anachronic biblical quotes with no consideration of the context and intent of the scriptural author. What matters is truth, which in this case is presented to us though solid scientific discovery, not the opinion of those random people.
Today we as Catholics need to be reasonably knowledgeable about three books at least: The Bible, The Catechism of the Catholic Church, and The Compendium of the Social Doctrine of the Church. St. Jerome said ignorance of the Scripture is ignorance of Christ. Without knowing Christ, there is no point of arguing. With Christ, a new world of hope and beauty opens up. The Catechism is a wonderful synopsis of what we believe, how we celebrate life-giving mysteries, then how we live accordingly, and how we pray. It is certainly a fascinating treasure trove of God’s saving revelation. The Catholic social doctrine is a precious gift of the Church to the world today. Based on the utmost respect for dignity of every human person, the Compendium presents us with fundamental principles of the common good, the universal destination of goods, subsidiarity, participation, solidarity, the fundamental values of social life, and the way of love.
Instead of being stuck in our own opinions, we are invited to be familiar with our solid Catholic principles so that we may ably engage in a meaningful interaction with the world, because we are the chosen agents of Christ, the very beacon of hope to the whole world.
Fr. Paul D.