Pastor's Desk Archive (August 2007)

Looking for Some Good Ideas? (8/5/2007)
Say "Yes" to Christ (8/12/2007)
Faith & Reason: Complimentary or Contradictory (8/26/2007)

Looking for Some Good Ideas? (8/5/2007)

If you are retired or otherwise free during the day, why not come and participate in one of our weekday morning Masses at 9am on Monday, Tuesday, and Thursday. We have a wonderful small community of two to three dozen people who keep coming back to be nourished by God’s Word and Sacrament. You don’t have to come every day, but why not come and see. If you’ve been giving some thought to growing in your practice of the faith this could be just the thing to get the ball rolling.

Our Wednesday evening Mass at 6:30 consistently draws fifty to sixty people who make this a truly spirit-filled celebration. Because everyone chooses to be there, the singing and praying is robust. This could be the perfect way to make the transition from being just a "Sunday Catholic" to a more involved one. Come next Wednesday and give it a try. You will be given a warm welcome.

We’re about to launch our second "semester" of Dave Ramsey’s Financial Peace University. This is a life changing opportunity for folks who are ready to get their financial house in better order. Are you aware that conflicts over finances is the number one contributor to big-time marriage problems and divorce. Our parish, like most other churches, has a large number of people who contribute little or nothing because they have little or nothing to give. As a result they feel guilty, angry, and ashamed. FPU can turn that around. There’s a column in "More Information" about this biblically supported approach to sound fiscal management. The investment is small considering the potential benefits.

We need more catechists and helpers for our CCD programs and we need them now. We may not be able to have some classes if we don’t get enough people to volunteer. If you can’t do it, please pray earnestly that those who can will step forward and do so now. You can do it!

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Say "Yes" to Christ (8/12/2007)

Cardinal Silvio Bertone, the Pope’s Secretary of State, was in the US this week to address the Knights of Columbus convention in Nashville. In the course of his presentation, he quoted some striking remarks made by Pope Benedict at the World Youth Day. I found them particularly inspiring and hope you will be as edified as I was.

“I want [everyone] to understand that it is beautiful to be a Christian! The generally prevailing idea is that Christians have to observe an immense number of commandments, prohibitions, precepts, and other such restrictions, so that Christianity is a heavy and oppressive way of living, and it would therefore be more liberating to live without all these burdens. But I would like to make it clear that to be sustained by this great Love and God’s sublime revelation is not a burden, but rather a set of wings – that it is truly beautiful to be a Christian. It is an experience that gives us room to breathe and move, but most of all, it places us within a community since, as Christians, we are never alone: first of all, there is God, who is always with us; secondly, we are always forming a great community among ourselves: a community of people together on a journey, a community with a project for the future. All of this means that we are empowered to live a life worth living. This is the joy of being a Christian; that it is so beautiful and right to believe!”

After citing these words of the Pope, Cardinal Bertone added: “Indeed, how beautiful it is to believe, for to believe is to say “Yes” to Christ; and to say “Yes” to Christ is to bear witness to our faith in action. May you always remain men firmly committed to this “Yes” – “Yes” to your families, to your Church, and to your communities – but most importantly, to Christ who is the “Yes” to all our hopes and desires.”

This is why that great big Yes is up there on the green banner. All of us say Yes to Christ whenever we gather in this place to praise God, to listen to His Word, to offer Him thanks & praise, and to be nourished by His body & blood. We need to become more public about the way we live our faith. We cannot simply be Christians when we are in church, while living as if Christ doesn’t make a difference when we’re at home, at work, at school, or at play.

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Faith & Reason: Complimentary or Contradictory (8/26/2007)

Surely you’ve been following controversies such as creationism or intelligent design vs. evolutionism. And have you noticed the spate of books written by avowed atheists? Scientist Richard Dawkins has a best seller called The God Delusion; and columnist Christopher Hitchens’ God is Not Great is also selling briskly. Ironically, bookstores are placing these books in the religion & spirituality department!

People of faith are being assailed as superstitious, ignorant, and worst of all, devoid of reason. The attackers are angry that so many Americans still believe in God and have penned these books in an effort to undermine that belief. They claim to base their arguments on science when the truth is that these people have a faith of their own. It could be called scientism, but it may more accurately be called materialism. They contend that matter—that which we can perceive with our senses—is the only reality. They will admit that they don’t know the origin of matter or how the universe (actually they believe in many universes) actually began, but what they do profess to know with certainty is that no GOD had anything to do with it. They want to convince the most vulnerable among us—the young—that if they will only cast aside mere religious beliefs that they and the world will be better off.

Relatively few people will actually read these books, but they really don’t have to in order for atheists to achieve their goal. All they have to do is rely on the help of parents and other adults who claim to believe in God while living most of the time as if he doesn’t really exist. Not long ago, the head of the religion department at Boston University wrote a book in which he demonstrated how little people who claim to be “religious” actually know about the teachings of Christ or other great figures in the Bible.

The teachings of our Catholic faith are built both on revelation and reason. We are completely free to believe in some kind of evolutionary process; and we can have the highest respect for the scientific method. But unlike the atheists, we see no contradiction between these things and the firm belief that all things owe their origin to God’s Providence. When parents are in a position to provide spiritual leadership in the home, children will grow up knowing that faith and reason are complementary not contradictory.

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