Posted on 11/02/2017 8:03:59 AM PDT by Salvation
On the Feast of All Saints we celebrate men and women of every place and time who lived with great sanctity. Many of them are known to us and are among our great heroes of the Faith; even more are unknown to us.
The most common hymn for this feast day is “For All the Saints.” It is interesting that the name of the tune to which the lyrics are set is “Sine Nomine” (without name). In other words, this feast celebrates those who, although they attained great sanctity, are largely unknown to us. They lived in ordinary circumstances and were fairly hidden from the world at large, but God knows them and has awarded them the crown of righteousness. They, too, are part of the rich tapestry of this feast and the glory of the Communion of Saints.
It is fitting, then, that on the Feast of All Saints, Donald Cardinal Wuerl of the Archdiocese of Washington released a pastoral letter on racism entitled, “The Challenge of Racism Today.” We are all well aware of recent racial tensions in our country and the Cardinal would have us reflect on this problem as Catholics. This reflection should come from the perspective of our faith more so than from politics and worldly culture.
I’d like to review a number of the Cardinal’s teachings under three headings.
I. God’s Vision – Cardinal Wuerl begins by noting our daily experience here in the Archdiocese of Washington:
The sight from the sanctuary of many a church in our archdiocese offers a glimpse of the face of the world.
Indeed, our parishes are ethnically and racially diverse. The rich beauty of diversity in the unity of our faith is manifest everywhere.
“Catholic” means universal and it could not be more obvious in Washington, D.C. as it is in many other regions. Catholics come from everywhere!
This diversity is from God Himself, who has not only created the rich tapestry of humankind but also delights in uniting us all in His Church.
Babylon and Egypt I will count among those who know me; Philistia, Tyre, Ethiopia, these will be her children and Zion shall be called “Mother” for all shall be her children.” It is he, the Lord Most High, who gives each his place. In his register of peoples he writes: “These are her children,” and while they dance they will sing: “In you all find their home.” (Psalm 87:1-7)
It was always God’s plan that people from every nation would find their home in His family. St. Paul spoke eloquently of this plan:
The mystery was made known to me by revelation;…. the mystery of Christ, which was not made known to the people of other generations as it has now been revealed to his holy apostles and prophets by the Spirit. And the mystery is this: that the Gentiles are fellow heirs, members of the same body, and partakers of the promise in Christ Jesus through the gospel. (Ephesians 3:3-6)
By God’s grace, by His plan and vision, we are called to be members of the One Body, the Church, through the grace of shared faith.
Jesus sets forth the realization of God’s desire in his great commission: Therefore, go and make disciples of all nations, baptizing them in the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit, and teaching them to obey everything I have commanded you (Matthew 28:19-20).
This is order number one from Jesus: Go everywhere; call everyone; make them disciples by teaching them what I have taught and baptizing them into the one Body of Christ, the Church.
This is God’s vision, His plan, and His command.
II. Sinful Revisions – We human beings are often slow to hear and even slower to do what God commands. When it comes to reaching across racial and ethnic boundaries to make disciples, we often give in to fear and the hostilities that result. We also give in to pride and notions of racial superiority. This has been an ugly tendency throughout human history.
As people of faith, we cannot ignore God’s command to include all in His Kingdom. The Cardinal tells us that we must confront and overcome racism. This challenge is not optional.
Jesus warns us against wrathful disparagement of others: Anyone who says to his brother, “Raca,” will be subject to the Sanhedrin. And anyone who says, “You fool!” will be subject to the fire of hell (Matt 5:22). He counsels us, So if you are offering your gift at the altar and there remember that your brother has something against you, leave your gift there before the altar and go. First be reconciled to your brother, and then come and offer your gift (Matt 5:23-24).
The Cardinal cites the Catechism and bids us to remember this:
This teaching is applied to our day with clarity in the Catechism of the Catholic Church. “Being in the image of God the human individual possesses the dignity of a person, who is not just something, but someone …” (CCC # 357). … There is no basis to sustain that some are made more in the image of God than others.
Cardinal Wuerl cites the pastoral letter, “Brothers and Sisters to Us,” published by the United States bishops in 1979:
Racism is a sin. … [I]t divides the human family, blots out the image of God among specific members of that family and violates the fundamental human dignity of those called to be children of the same Father.
We have no right or capacity to overrule God or reject the dignity He Himself has established. The Cardinal describes racism as a denial of the goodness of creation.
While some dispute the particulars of racism in this or that specific situation, we cannot simply brush aside the consistent experience of so many of our brothers and sisters. The Cardinal reminds us:
To address racism, we need to recognize two things: that it exists in a variety of forms, some more subtle and others more obvious; and that there is something we can do about it… even if we realize that what we say and the steps we take will not result in an immediate solution to a problem that spans generations.
As we are reminded by St. Paul, There should be no division in the body, but that its members should have mutual concern for one another. If one member suffers, every member suffers with him (1 Cor 12:25-26).
As a Church we have not always lived up to the call that God has given us. The Cardinal writes:
Saint John Paul II in the Great Jubilee Year asked for the recognition of sins committed by members of the Church during its history. He called for a reconciliation through recalling the faults of the past in a spirit of prayerful repentance that leads to healing of the wounds of sin. So acknowledging our sins and seeking to remedy what we can, we turn with sorrow to those we have offended, individually and collectively and also express gratitude for the tenacity of their faith…. We also recognize the enduring faith of immigrants who have not always felt welcome in the communities they now call home.
It is a remarkable testimony that so many who have felt spurned by fellow Christians and Catholics did not reject the faith, but tenaciously held on to it. Even in the midst of great pain, so many stayed in the faith; through forgiveness and great patience they have helped to purify fellow Christians and work for ongoing reform within the Church.
III. Overcoming Divisions – The Cardinal also writes:
Because God has reconciled us to himself through Christ, we have received the ministry of reconciliation. Saint Paul tells us, “God has reconciled the world to himself in Christ … entrusting to us the message of reconciliation” (2 Corinthians 5:18-19).
Thus the Cardinal invokes a key dimension of the apostolic office: reconciling us to one another and to God. As a bishop, Cardinal Wuerl urges us to seek reconciliation where it is needed.
Reconciliation requires first that we acknowledge our sins. As Jesus says, we must go and be reconciled to our brother or sister. If we have in any way fostered division, if we have scorned, mocked, excluded, or derided others, we should admit the sin and seek to be reconciled.
While there are often grievances on all sides when it comes to race, this need not stop us from hearing and pondering the consistent and widespread experience of those who feel excluded or scorned. Sometimes it just starts with listening, before rushing to judge whether the experience of others is valid.
There are wounds that go back decades and even centuries. Reconciliation takes time. Recognizing another’s pain and experience is an act of respect. Listening is a very great gift.
Please consider making a careful, spiritual reading of the Cardinal’s pastoral letter. See it as an honest assessment of our need to recognize racism and repent for any cooperation we have had in it, past or present. Consider, too, his call for us to entrust our hearts to the Lord, so that we can, as the Cardinal says, envision the new city of God, not built by human hands, but by the love of God poured out in Jesus Christ.
In the weeks ahead, other initiatives and gatherings will be announced in the diocese. Among them is a recognition of the many African-Americans who were enslaved and who were buried in our Catholic cemeteries without any headstones or markers. You might say that they were buried sine nomine, without any recognition of their names.
It is fitting, then, that on this Feast of All Saints, when we acknowledge the many saints whose names we do not know, that we also remember those buried in our cemeteries whose names are known only to God. They were called slaves but were in fact God’s children, possessed of the freedom of Children of God. May they rest now with God in the peace and unity of the Communion of Saints.
Monsignor Pope Ping!
Thank-you for excellent posting. God Bless.
I believe parishes are becoming more mixed as far as race is concerned.
Too bad the bishops can’t just say that we’re all descended from Adam and Eve. After all, to them Adam and Eve are just “myths.”
Yes, and in a special way, in the northeast, with parish closures and mergers, that will happen more.
Got to remember that anything taken in the literally is taken as. “Bible-believing Protestant”
Interestingly, the noted atheist Ayn Rand had virtually the same opinion on Racism:
Racism...is the notion of ascribing moral, social or political significance to a man’s genetic lineage—the notion that a man’s intellectual and characterological traits are produced and transmitted by his internal body chemistry.
Racism is a doctrine of, by and for brutes. It is a barnyard or stock-farm version of collectivism, appropriate to a mentality that differentiates between various breeds of animals, but not between animals and men.
And yet, God-fearing men and women of (seemingly) good character and atheists of Antifa-stock devolve into name-calling. In the process, they become two sides of the same sinful coin.
I don't want to make this a political thread, but one of the key and many times unsung elements of Trump and Deplorables, is that the coalition he put together has the potential to unite heretofore un-united individuals. Minorities of all stripes (blacks, hispanics, gays), union guys, and others used by the statists for decades suddenly seem willing to jump on the Trump Train.
While some may chafe at the thought of working alongside some of these masses, commentary like that from Msg. Pope raise my hopes that we see deeper integration, more communion, and less reactionary hostility.
I was a roman catholic as a child. I got some sacrament or other. With it came a copy of the new testament, but no Five Books of Moses. I wonder why.
I believe that the Catholic Church embraced Protestant-created higher criticism (and evolution) because they undermined the truth of the Bible and thus undercut the Protestant claim of Biblical sufficiency (which claim is false, btw, as the Written Torah cannot be understood apart from the Oral Torah.) Now in order to be Catholic one simply must be a higher critic and evolutionist, or else face charges of being crypto-Protestant. On top of this is the lie that the Catholic (and Orthodox, and other ancient) churches in fact never accepted the truth of Genesis at all, and that the historical accuracy of Genesis 1-11 is a creation of nineteenth century evangelicals.
The hardest to take of Catholic (and other) hypocrisy is the fact that while they subject Genesis to uniformitarian scientific critique, they exempt the "new testament" with its equally impossible, unscientific claims such as "real presence," resurrection from the dead, multiplication of loaves and fishes, and magical virgins who give birth to babies without the participation of a human father and whose child magically passes through the mother's side to be born so her hymen would remain intact. All this is approved by their "scientists" and "intellectuals" but only inborn trailer trash could possibly believe in the Six Days of Creation, the Flood, or the Tower of Babel.
They disgust me.
Got to remember that anything taken in the literally is taken as. “Bible-believing Protestant CHRISTIAN”
"Wherever there is injustice, you will find us.
Wherever there is suffering, we'll be there!
Where there are corrections needed, we'll be there.Wherever liberty is threatened, you will find... The Three Amigos!
A perception of the bishops.
Please see post number 7. Thank-you!
Why did you cross that out?
All Christians take God at His Word.
He does not distinguish among denominations.
He only sees those that have come to saving faith and those who have not.
This is a too-common misconception. The Catholic Church teaches that the entire human race is descended from that one original couple: this dogma is called Monogenism.
Pope Pius XII addressed this in the 1950 encyclical Humani Generis. He said that it was “in no way apparent” how to reconcile polygenism (multiple original ancestors as in evolution) with divine revelation. Here is the full quote:
When, however, there is question of another conjectural opinion, namely polygenism, the children of the Church by no means enjoy such liberty. For the faithful cannot embrace that opinion which maintains that either after Adam there existed on this earth true men who did not take their origin through natural generation from him as from the first parent of all, or that Adam represents a certain number of first parents.Now it is in no way apparent how such an opinion can be reconciled with that which the sources of revealed truth and the documents of the Teaching Authority of the Church propose with regard to original sin, which proceeds from a sin actually committed by an individual Adam and which, through generation, is passed on to all and is in everyone as his own.
The Catholic Church teaches the literal existence of a literal couple, Adm and Eve, as the first parents of the human race.
And by the way, 50+ years ago my entire Catholic Confirmation class was required to each own a copy of the whole Bible, all 73 books. Do you have that?
This can be remedied. Oh, how welcome you would be in my RCIA class! Come on in!
Yes, I DO HAVE many Catholic Bibles, both the older versions and the newest versions. I collect Bibles and rosaries. Not only do I have the Catholic 73 books Bibles, but have 3 Protestant Bibles, one NIV, one NKJV, and one large size Living Bible. Have one Orthodox Bible which has 81 books.
Haven't you heard? Doctrine has "developed." Just as with the historical truth of Genesis 1-11, "we now know" that Pius' views as expressed in HG were naive and pre-scientific.
Besides, whatever HG may say, the fact remains that 99.99999% of all Catholic/Orthodox bishops regard them as myths. An "official belief" that isn't actually believed is a poor argument.
Also, I notice that you don't argue for the total historicity of all of Genesis 1-11. So you then regard the Flood and Dispersal of Nations as a primitive myth, just as your bishops do with Adam and Eve? How do you know the "miracles" of the NT actually happened? Maybe they're hooey as well.
This can be remedied. Oh, how welcome you would be in my RCIA class! Come on in!
Yeah, Croatian! You'd learn that the Hebrew Bible was written by primitive savages who didn't understand how the world operates and that the Holy Torah is a splice of a collection of Babylonian and Canaanite myths!
Then they'd tell you that every alleged science-contradicting miracle in the "new testament" actually happened, because they aren't "stupid" like the miracles of the "old testament!"
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