Message: 1
Date: Sun, 08 Aug 2004 18:41:47 -0600
From: "xxx"
Subject: Re: Fuller response

Chris:
I have posted in the past, tho' not often nor well. I am a forty-mumble
year-old graduate/catechist of RCIA. I annoy many people in my various
capacities in the parish, but I wield the most power as 4th Sunday Coffee
Lady at my parish. Ignore HH John Paul II's axiom - be very afraid of my
coffee. Hi!

>While I take your point that part of the point
>of definitions of the Church, punctuated with anathemas, is to define
>what is inside partly by defining what is outside, we can not define the
>faith purely in negative terms, even if someone believes nothing we do.
I see that various doctrines were honed through heresy, but I wasn't
thinking in such high terms. Our personal faith grows through questioning
(rather read: inquiring) and reflecting - and thereby also grows our
ability to speak for it. The "unexamined life" phrase applies to Catholics
too. What I meant was that if we're out of questions to energize our
search, the world will certainly provide them. But we must, for Jesus'
sake, "read their errors"; we must engage this world or we will not save
it - nor, through sin of omission, ourselves.

>My point about Cardinal Wright was apparently lost on you. Let me try
>again. Each and every one of us has an obligation to know good and truth
> and adhere to it, and to identify evil and falsehood and flee from it.

There's the rub: Christians shouldn't be in flee-mode. Evil and sin have
to be recognized, understood and faced down. I understood your reference,
but many people have this we/they/I'm-not-his-keeper tone that drives me
batty.

To repeat what I've said here before, I was a very young atheist when
Humanae Vitae came out and yet a believer in HV instantly, because it was
rational. I therefore, in spite of my parents' encouragement to the
contrary, personally fled from both recreational ahem and pharmaceuticals.
Yay for me. Could I have saved another, or given them strength or at least
pause for thought by standing my ground loudly? Very possibly. Oddly, now
that I am Catholic my previously acceptable "personal opinion" has now
become "mindless Christian rhetoric". Which is why I usually weigh into
office debates with "as an atheist of 45 years good standing..." and end
by crediting the catechism. So I've been a fan of the RCC since Summer
1968, but a disciple since Pentecost 2002.

RCIA's job in the precatechumenate is to welcome everyone on their terms,
and to assure them that our God loves them regardless of whether or not
they come next week. Then for six weeks we don our fetching shirts with
the red concentric circles and let them pepper us with accusations and
questions. If they've been reading Kung (more likely Kerry), we have to
validate, with CHARITY and respect to Kung, our actual teaching. They are
indeed looking for that first witness of how we in community deal with our
own in error, and with those outside the Church in error. Charitably,
knowledgeably, but firmly. Christ did not in love allow the sin of
adultery; He forgave in love the sin. Gradually they come to see the
dignity and place of humanity, the glory and place of divinity and how
they come together to the secular eye as "authoritative, coherent and
humane thought" in the magisterium. Cardinal Montini's phrase (1963), not
mine.

Then, by golly, we hit them with the collection envelopes.

My comment about life-long Catholics was to point out that some who
received the faith as children can't imagine how anyone could doubt any of
the teachings. The genius of the Church's social/moral teachings is that
none of it need come down to "because God said so." If it did, we couldn't
speak in RCIA to this shared frame of reference. What the Church teaches
is naturally good. What God has commanded in the past and asks for today
is naturally good. Even on the secular level we have the "good news".
That, and not Augustine or Aquinas, was what convinced me that God exists.
The Church I love and trust tells me so. But that's me.

I don't think any of us should "expect" a "welcome home", Chris. The
Satanist may be running on only three cylinders, whereas we've been given
eight... Have you read Eric Hoffer's "True Believer"?

The Queen of Canada, bless her socks. From her idiotic Canadian
Government.


God bless... rew