Defining boundaries certainly does not mean, especially in this case, creating rigid limits, but rather recognising a gift that surpasses all intelligence and, at the same time, helping ourselves to understand how and where we are walking towards.
A Catholic, to be such, must first of all be a Christian, a baptised. And here we already say a lot, indeed all. Baptism is in fact not a static reality but a given reality that enters into a dynamism (Rom. 8,1ff). A theandric dynamism in which Grace calls, empowers and stimulates the faithful to respond according to the gift received, from Grace to Grace. Unfortunately, there can be a sacrament of Baptism that is correctly administered but remains chained, unvitalised, shrunken. For many reasons. We list just a few of them.
The Catholic does not live a defective experience of the Church.
Baptism is a gift of Christ; indeed it is Christ himself who baptises and does so for the Church and in the Church. Now, even if a ‘definition’ of ‘Catholic’ seems to circumscribe it to a particular Christian denomination, in reality by saying Catholic we mean Universal, that is, a place truly open to all, indeed to each of us. In the sense that Christ, for the Church, awaits each one, loves each one, knocks on each one's door, cares for each one, values each one. And this is a gift and commitment that Christ gives, through Baptism, to all the faithful, both the faithful of the divinely instituted hierarchy and the lay faithful. The Church is not the property of the clergy but, precisely because it belongs to Christ, it belongs to every believer and each one is responsible for each one, with the belonging that Christ generates precisely in Baptism. There is no such thing as do-it-yourself, nor I-think-about-my-business. Therefore, not maturing this belonging with pockets of solipsism indicates that there is something a-Catholic in us that is waiting to convert, to reorient itself. This opens up the extended meaning of “Catholic”: not only universal but open to mission, continuously, ad-intra and ad-extra. The first mission then is care for the Other, the unescapable Other. That's right, unescapable. It is the Other that confirms us in a Personal ontology (as Persons) and confirms us in a filial ontology, as brothers and sisters.
Love and respect for the hierarchical Church is the visible sign of Catholic unity in the threefold meaning we mentioned, of Christ and His property, universal and missionary.
Remember the CCC at 882:
"The Pope, Bishop of Rome and Peter's successor, «is the perpetual and visible source and foundation of the unity both of the bishops and of the whole company of the faithful». «For the Roman Pontiff, by reason of his office as Vicar of Christ, and as pastor of the entire Church has full, supreme, and universal power over the whole Church, a power which he can always exercise unhindered. »
It is therefore inconceivable to be Catholic without the visible sign of the papacy. It is not an “affective” but an “effective” bond in all that the Pope is guardian of. Pockets of solipsism that can touch, at times, both the contents of Faith and also the anthropology that precedes and follows these contents are therefore highly dissonant and actually break the communion in itself of the faithful, in a more or less conscious manner.
To understand this, for example, believing that there is a sexual third pole is not only an error of the human mind, an anthropological tara, but also involves the marrow of faith. Those who assert this, i.e., for example, a sexualised third pole, are not, in this, Catholics, even though they do not explicitly touch any of the cornerstones of the re-established and defined dogmas of Faith.
And, it must be clear, in the Creed that we proclaim every Sunday there is everything, including the anthropological issues that are the cultural challenge of our times, even if they are not made explicit directly in the Professio Fidei itself.
Similarly, we live imperfectly or seriously imperfectly as Catholics whenever we advocate practices contrary to the Good of Life, such as abortion, trafficking, usury, and failure to help every person in need. This is because one considers the conceived human being, or the sick person, or the elderly person, or the person with disabilities, or the person in distress or poverty, to be less of a Person than they are. The Principle of Person (because it is indeed a Principle) comes to us from Christianity, sapiential and speculative, and it is here, in Christianity, that the Principle of Person takes light, is revealed and is understood. Elsewhere it is compartmentalised and distorted. This evidence of thought should be crystal clear to Catholics, especially those of them who work in public affairs.
The Incarnation of the Proclaimed Creed means just that: absolute respect for the Person, seeking Good for the Person in the Light of the Gospel.
Every time we bow our heads in this part of the Creed, we proclaim the Kerygma of the Incarnation and, at the same time, our clear adherence to the Principle of Person that here takes ontological, spiritual and normative light.
Principles and Values
in an interview with Corriere della Sera in 2014, Pope Francis, somewhat confusingly but effectively, once reiterated that he did not fully understand the concept of Non-Negotiable Values, as if it implied the existence of Negotiable Values.
“Values are values and that's all, I can't say that among the fingers of one hand there is one less useful than another. That is why I do not understand in what sense there can be negotiable values.”
The logical error, wanting however to preserve a good intuition of Pope Francis (and its pedagogical character) is to understand that there are firstly Principles, and then Values that derive from them. There are Principles and there are Values which are closely linked (and in this Pope Francis is absolutely right), but are two distinct planes. It is unfortunate that no one, not even those close to him (e.g. his Jesuit brethren) ever had the charity and (true) respect to help Peter understand this necessary etymological and logical distinction. The principle upholds a Value and, as such, cannot be negotiated. In turn, a value that is negotiated is simply not a value, and moving the stele of the Principle does not help the Value to be a Value. The principle of absolute respect for human life implies that this firm (= non-negotiable) Principle must be applied and be valid (= Value) at all times, in all circumstances, whenever this Principle is undermined by opportunistic negotiation. Even by human law which, as such, is imperfect and sometimes terribly erroneous. And sometimes it is erroneous because it wants to combine the respect for human life and the denial of the same respect. This is the case, for example, with law 194, which is a legal opprobrium as it confuses planes that cannot be mixed. The Church has a duty to reaffirm this precisely because believing, as Catholic, every Sunday, announces this very Principle and all that is of Value derives from it.
And here, on this ground of poisoning and deadly dystonia, we venture into what is saddest of all: a Catholic (who is truly such as a baptised), who betrays the Principles and Values that precede and prepare the Gospel and are enlightened by it. Such a Christian, therefore, experiences in a more or less serious and more or less praxis-like form a dystonia that can make him Catholic in the manner of a non-Catholic, to use a happy Ratzingerian paraphrase. It is the mystery of evil, of disorder, more or less serious and structured, that creates scandal (stumbling block) in oneself and one's brothers and sisters. And, it must be dramatically pointed out, that sometimes such a Catholic in the manner of an a-Catholic is far more damaging than a Catholic who has chosen to no longer be a Catholic, such is the damage it generates in the community and in society, truly giving scandal. The scandal is not the gossip itch, the hindrance to consent, but rather the very serious abuse of the little ones. And it certainly has nothing to do with age, but with the faith of every believer who is still small or weak. And it is, such abuse, very serious; often carried out out of vanity and political correctness.
Blessed is he who, on the path of a-Catholicity, encounters a brother or sister who calls him or her back to truth, to sense, to inner harmony. So that he can re-centre himself in the Catholicity he proclaims every Sunday. Herein lies the true service of apologetics, to be done firmly on one's knees.
Recalls the Apostle Paul in the Epistle to the Galatians chapter 6,1-10
"Brothers, even if one of you is caught doing something wrong, those of you who are spiritual should set that person right in a spirit of gentleness. And watch yourselves that you are not put to the test in the same way. Carry each other's burdens; that is how to keep the law of Christ. Someone who thinks himself important, when he is not, only deceives himself. But everyone is to examine his own achievements, and then he will confine his boasting to his own achievements, not comparing them with anybody else's: each one has his own load to carry. When someone is under instruction in doctrine, he should give his teacher a share in all his possessions. Don't delude yourself: God is not to be fooled. Whatever someone sows, that is what he will reap. He who sows in the flesh, from the flesh shall reap corruption; he who sows in the Spirit, from the Spirit shall reap eternal life. And let us not grow weary in doing good; for if we do not desist, in due time we shall reap. Therefore, since we have the opportunity, let us do good to all, especially to our brothers and sisters in the faith”
Fraternal correction
When the community experiences the welcoming without the service of fraternal correction it ceases to be Catholic and becomes one lobby among many, a circle of death. A welcoming without love, without the Gospel, without Good, manipulating the gift received accomplishes the most terrible of harms, the deicide, within oneself and in the heart of one's brother and sister, patinely welcomed to justify one's own vanity and thievery. Feeling in goodness, feeling righteous as being welcoming, is as twisted, vain and a-catholic as it can be, because it feeds on deception and nourishes it, with very serious pastoral damage.
One stops being a missionary and takes out into the world, coming out of the sacristies, one's own hysteries and contradictions, perhaps serious ones. All human conditioning (and abuses) that bring inhumanity and not the freshness of the Holy Gospel capable of renewing the human. A disorder is projected out of us in the image and likeness of our inner sicknesses. We deceive by deceiving ourselves; we think we are serving, but in reality we are phagocytizing.
We are not speaking here of issues that are the subject of pastoral debate, of ways and perspectives that could (albeit with pain) dialectically integrate, grow, but of choices of thought and life that make one, in fact, cease to be a Christian and therefore a Catholic. He builds himself a god to guarantee him, to reassure him, to confirm him in his own petty histrionics, in his hysterics, in his turmoil and in his errors, becoming an idolater in the round: a Catholic idolater. Idolater of self, of avarice, of ego-reference. And this affects all of us who seek to follow Jesus, faithful clerics and lay faithful alike.
And the pursuit of the 'power' of spaces, of roles, of political meanderings, is a poison that expands this contradiction of a-catholicity to superficial levels, from the sanctuary to the parish, from the small prayer group to the church movement. All to guarantee themselves a place of abuse of the Good received, becoming sterile. A sort of repeated fart and those who live by the same evil-smell sniff the stench and say: "what a good perfume!", because the congregation of the sick tends to justify itself and flee (by all means) its conversion to Christ.
ET-ET, and not AUT-AUT
Another characteristic of the Catholic is the orchestration of differences according to the Pauline metaphor of the Body (1 Cor. 12) and linked to the Principle of the Incarnation. The Principle of the Incarnation, born in the modesty of the Annunciation in Nazareth (Lk. 1.26-38) is the historical and cognitive threshold at which Grace enters history and introduces the necessary movement of descent and ascent, of kenosis and transfiguration at the same time.
The polar oppositions of Romano Guardini take their cue from here not because of a mere dialectic but because of a polysemantic of the Spirit's action. It is a mistake, a serious mistake, to monothematically emphasise only one aspect in pastoral work when they are truly all important and one to the other, recalling among other things the example on 'values' given by Pope Francis in his cited interview. It is dreadful to disconnect Charity, Catechesis and Liturgy. The accents, sometimes necessary or transient or due to a specific charisma must always be harmonised in this triple dimension of Liturgy, Catechesis and Charity.
Because we focus everything on Catechesis, we forget the care of the Sacred Liturgy and its connection to the Work of God that is mystery, that is, the inaccessible that is made accessible, albeit gradually and on a journey.
Or perhaps we consider Apologetics to be null and void, thinking that what counts is the operational Service of Charity. These are all splits, constant forms of Aut-Aut that do not make the Catholic Et-Et harmonious and propaedeutic. And, unfortunately, so many pastors in parishes, and sometimes bishops in dioceses, are complicit in this a-Catholic Aut-Aut mentality instead of cultivating the Good where it rises with the Et-Et.
Not least because the Et-Et is effort, is incarnation, is a lifelong learning, and avoids going down the easy path of slogans, of trenchant, of pastoral superficiality. It does not seek the pleasure in pleasing (a refined form of spiritual worldliness and a renewed path to clericalism) but the pleasure, sometimes without any satisfaction, that comes from serving God and, in Him, brothers and sisters. It is going out of one’s mind and not coming out of oneself; it is not seeking the self but the Thou and here, by the paradox of Charity, it truly finds everything, all Good, the Good and finally finds the self.
Pope Francis recalled at the Pentecost vigil in 2013:
"When the church becomes closed, she becomes sick. Think of a room closed for a year: a closed Church is sick, the Church must go out to the existential peripheries, whatever they may be. I would much rather have a crashed church than a closed and sick one".
Provided, no doubt, that it is precisely a 'coming out of oneself' and not’ “coming out of one’s mind”. He who comes out of himself is moved by the Joy he has received; he who comes out of his mind is moved by the narcissism that seeks confirmation and replication of the maladies he carries within, creating, in the guise of mission, real sectarian, lobbying, worldly circuits, places where reigns the contemplation of one's own navel. It breaks the Et-Et and supports the Aut-Aut of self-referentiality.
"Coming out of one’s mind always preserves the sick self, but coming out of oneself, thanks to God, heals the deeper self because it signifies it in the We of God and in the We of the Church" (vd COMING OUT OF SELF BECAUSE OF JOY)
The charism of renouncing any charisma
Than the action of the Spirit, truly catholic, is also expressed in another paradox, all existential, which is far beyond the paradox given by the semantic.
The Spirit leads the Catholic believer to a charism and then perhaps asks for its renunciation.
It is the peregrinatio fidei and it is here that the obedience of the Faith is measured. And it is here that the goodness of the Gift received is measured. The Catholic so profoundly recognises the action of the Spirit that he does not seek to distinguish himself, but to give himself, this because he walks in restitution and self-expropriation. It does not need to affirm itself, to bind itself to an intuition but to root itself in Christ, as a minor (Regola non bollata, ch. VI-VII, Fonti Francescane, 23-24), dynamically, and this is the highest form of poverty, chastity and obedience. And, it must be reiterated, it is not just for someone but, in a unique and prismatic form, for every baptised person. And it is amazement for the angels and for the hearts that seek Christ. Here, in this paradox of the Holy Spirit, one experiences the widest possible freedom for man who, if he accepts it, becomes structured in Awe and, only in this, becomes truly fruitful. And this is because one radicalises the gift received in Baptism by finally belonging to Christ and immersed, as far as possible, as of now, in the Divine Trinitarian Life.
"Μακάριοι οἱ πτωχοὶ τῷ πνεύματι, ὅτι αὐτῶν ἐστιν ἡ βασιλεία τῶν οὐρανῶν
Blessed are the poor in spirit,
for theirs is the kingdom of heaven." (Mt. 5,3)
And here the gift of the Spirit precedes us, impels us, sustains us to be truly of Christ, truly Catholic.
"Ἄρα οὖν, ἀδελφοί, ὀφειλέται ἐσμέν, οὐ τῇ σαρκὶ τοῦ κατὰ σάρκα ζῆν,
So then, brothers, we are indebted, but not to the flesh to live according to the flesh.
εἰ γὰρ κατὰ σάρκα ζῆτε μέλλετε ἀποθνῄσκειν, εἰ δὲ πνεύματι τὰς πράξεις τοῦ σώματος θανατοῦτε, ζήσεσθε.
for if ye live according to the flesh, ye shall die; but if by the help of the Spirit ye put to death the works of the body, ye shall live.
ὅσοι γὰρ πνεύματι θεοῦ ἄγονται, οὗτοι ⸂υἱοί εἰσιν θεοῦ⸃.
All who are guided by the Spirit of God are sons of God." (Rom. 8,12-14)
Paul Freeman
