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LIVING THE YEAR OF FAITH
Some thoughts on the Christian vocation
+Charles J. Chaput, O.F.M. Cap.
Los Angeles Prayer Breakfast, 9.18.12
Writing in about the year 116, the pagan historian Tacitus described a fringe group of
religious blasphemers who lived in Rome under the emperor Nero. They refused to
honor the gods. They engaged in “superstitious abominations” and worshipped a
crucified criminal. They were blamed for Rome’s great fire in A.D. 64, and as a result,
they were hunted down and put to death.
Three hundred years later, they were the official religion of the Roman state.
Numbers can be misleading. They’re never the best way to measure the health of the
Christian faith. The Church in Rome’s catacombs was small. But she was stronger than
any of her critics or persecutors. And that’s as true today as it was in the time of Tacitus.
A century ago, sub-Saharan Africa had fewer than 2 million Christians. Today it has
more than 130 million. That’s a growth rate of nearly 7,000 percent.i We live in a
supposedly “post-Christian” age, a time when 70 percent of the people across the globe
live in countries with restrictions on religious freedom. But Christianity is alive,
vigorous and growing rapidly across the entire Southern Hemisphere – arguably faster
than any other religion in the world, including Islam.
That’s the good news. Of course, there’s another side to history.
In A.D. 600, the Mediterranean world had hundreds of thriving Christian communities.
Around that time, two Greek monks, John Moschos and Sophronius, began a pilgrimage.
They went to Egypt, Jerusalem and around the great Middle East heartland of
Christianity. They wrote a journal called The Spiritual Meadow. A best seller in its day,
and still a Christian classic, it was a kind of spiritual travelogue -- a record of the
wisdom, visions and stories from the historic center of the Christian faith.ii
John Moschos died in the year 619, unaware of an obscure Arab holy man named
Mohammed. Within a hundred years, Muslim armies had overrun and conquered all of
the Middle East, North Africa and most of Spain. Today, the ancient Christian
communities in Afghanistan are dead and forgotten. St Augustine’s diocese of Hippo is
now a Muslim town in Algeria. In Iraq, Saddam Hussein’s hometown of Tikrit was once
a center of Christian scholarship.iii In the birthplace of Christianity, after centuries under
Islam, Christian minorities face discrimination and often violence, and they barely
manage to survive.
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Here’s my point. Jesus said the gates of hell would never prevail against his Church, and
his word is good. But he didn’t promise anything about our local real estate and
institutions. The Canadian scholar Douglas Farrow once wrote that “St. Peter will have
his successors until the Lord comes, but his successors may not always have St.
Peter’s.”iv In other words, God is faithful -- but he makes no guarantees about
infrastructure or the status quo or even our next breath. The task of preaching, teaching,
growing and living the Catholic faith in our time, in this country, belongs to you and me.
No one else can do it.
I’ve thought a lot about these things over the past year. The Church in Philadelphia is
one of the great icons of the American Catholic experience. We have two saints, a huge
array of charitable outreach efforts and a very rich legacy of shaping leaders not just for
the Church but also for the nation.
On the surface, many of our vital signs seem impressive. As bishop, I serve about 1.5
million Pennsylvania Catholics. We have 267 parishes; more than 600 diocesan priests
and deacons; and some 3,000 religious sisters, priests and brothers. We have a beautiful
cathedral and seminary. We have 17 high schools, more than 120 elementary schools, 13
colleges or universities, six shrines, and a variety of hospitals, hospices and nursing
homes. Like the Church here in Los Angeles, the Church in Philadelphia is big, complex
and historic -- and also troubled.
Some of our problems are obvious: a clergy abuse crisis; demographic changes; years of
deficit spending and unrealistic financial management; a decline in priestly vocations;
and schools and parishes that are struggling.
Fewer than 20 percent of Philadelphia Catholics attend Mass on any given Sunday. Even
fewer seek out confession. Infant baptisms have dropped 13 percent over the last five
years. Marriages in Church are down 20 percent over that same period.
These data will vary from diocese to diocese. The Church in America is much healthier
in some areas than in others. I could give a different and much happier talk about new
apostolic movements that are happening all over the country. Catholics in Philadelphia
feel especially wounded because of the long and very bitter nature of our local abuse
issues. But the fact remains that roughly 10 percent of Americans describe themselves as
ex-Catholics.v If they all joined together in a new “Church of the Formerly Catholic,”
they’d be the second largest denomination in the country.vi
That’s our reality as disciples. That’s the debris of failure we need to deal with if we
want to repair God’s house.
Again and again in Scripture, Israel’s revival inevitably begins with repentance, grief
over sins, and praise for God’s faithfulness. This repentance is “an act of hope,”vii
because it insists that a return to flourishing life is possible. But there are no shortcuts –
the road to renewal, from Egypt through the Red Sea, from Babylon back to Jerusalem,
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whether then or now, passes through humility and confession for ancient Israel, and for
us.
Pope Benedict gave us a roadmap for the kind of renewal we need in his 2011 apostolic
letter, Porta Dei. And now -- in just a few weeks, on October 11 -- Benedict will help us
embark on what he’s called “the year of faith.”
Porta Dei translates in English as “Door of Faith,” and Benedict’s year of faith is tied
very closely to the 50th anniversary of the opening of Vatican II and the 20th anniversary
of the Catechism of the Catholic Church. The year of faith will mark these anniversaries
with a worldwide program of worship, catechesis and evangelization lasting until
November 24, 2013, the Solemnity of Christ the King.
In his letter, Benedict notes that in the past, Western Christians lived in a more or less
unified culture, a culture that broadly accepted the values of Christian belief. But today,
due to a “profound crisis of faith” impacting millions of peopleviii the unity of the past has
collapsed. Morally, we live in chaotic times. In such a climate, it’s very easy for people to
develop habits that undermine virtue, character and moral judgment. It’s hard to reach a
moral consensus when a culture can’t agree on even the most basic standards of right and
wrong. As a result, for individuals, today’s conditions of daily life are often isolating and
even frightening.
The Pope’s answer to this crisis doesn’t scold the culture. Instead he turns to us, to the
Church. The Church in the modern era may seem “like a stranger in a foreign land,”ix
alienated from and often scorned by contemporary society. But for Benedict, the burden
of action falls on each of us as believers to “rediscover [God’s] joy,” to “radiate [God’s]
word,” and to make our Christian witness “frank and contagious.”x
Now those are wonderful words, but how do we actually live them? We need to begin
by realizing that we’re not being asked to do the impossible – only the uncomfortable and
inconvenient.
Benedict is asking us to prepare ourselves to receive a blessing -- the simplest and the
hardest thing in the world. He’s asking us to examine our hearts and our habits of life
without excuses or alibis. He’s asking us to tear down the cathedral we build to
ourselves, the whole interior architecture of our vanities, our resentments and our endless
appetites, and to channel all the restless fears and longings of modern life into a hunger
for the Holy Spirit. If you think that sounds easy or pious, try it for a week.
In every generation, so many Christians wish we could get back to the “purity of the early
Church,” and of course that seems like an admirable goal. But the Church has never been
pristine. She’s never been without scandals and sinners, apostates and critics and
persecutors. St. Paul was run out of town more than once; he was rejected by his brothers
more than once; and when he writes his Epistle to the Ephesians, he’s writing from a jail
cell.xi
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We need to discipline ourselves to be ready for God’s grace. If our hearts are cold, if our
minds are closed, if our spirits are fat and acquisitive, curled up on a pile of our
possessions, then the Church in this country will die. It’s happened before in other times
and places, and it can happen here. We can’t change the world by ourselves. And we
can’t reinvent the Church. But we can help God change us. We can live our faith with
zeal and conviction – and then God will take care of the rest.
Benedict’s letter has some concrete suggestions for the year of faith that deserve our
close attention. Three of them stand out:xii
First, the Holy Father urges parishes and other church groups to study the Creed and the
Catechism. The Creed is the definition of who we are. It’s a fundamental declaration of
Catholic faith, identity and belonging. Sound doctrine matters. It’s vitally important
because what Christians believe is the glue to our unity. Right doctrine reorients our
lives away from the idolatries of individualism and greed, and points us toward Jesus
Christ.
Second, the Pope asks us “to intensify [our] witness of charity.”xiii Using the same
passage in James that we heard at Sunday Mass just two days ago,xiv the Pope stresses
that faith and charity depend on one another, and that faith without charity “bears no
fruit.”xv Faith gives us new eyes. In faith, we not only see Jesus in the least of those
among us – the poor and so many others who need our help and our love -- but we also
understand ourselves in a new light.
Modern life catechizes us in selfishness. Real faith subverts that lie. It makes us fully
human by helping us see others through God’s eyes. It makes a communion of unique
and unrepeatable persons possible. Charity seals that living communion in love and
service to others. Acts of charity and hospitality not only help our neighbor in a material
way; they’re also a type of self-catechesis, imprinting on our souls the things we claim to
believe with our words.
Third and finally, Benedict urges us to do something that should resonate very deeply
with the Church in the United States. During the year of faith, he says, it’s of “decisive
importance,” that we study the history of our faith and see the way in which “holiness
and sin” are so often woven together.xvi
The clergy scandal of the past decade has wounded victims and their families, damaged
the faith of our laypeople, hurt many good priests and found too many American bishops
guilty of failures in leadership that resulted in bitter suffering for innocent persons. As a
bishop I repent and apologize for that failure – and I commit myself as zealously as I can
to do the work a good bishop must do, which is shepherding and protecting his people.
But if the truth makes us free, and Jesus promises that it does, then we need to be honest
with each other about a lot more than the clergy scandal. Henri de Lubac, the great Jesuit
theologian, once said that when the world insinuates itself into the heart of the Church,
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the Church becomes worse than the world -- not just a caricature of the world, but the
world in greater mediocrity and even greater ugliness.xvii
Catholics have spent the last hundred years pushing our way into the American
mainstream. And at the end of it, the world has pushed its way into the Church. We’re
just like everyone else -- and at a very high cost. America in some ways seems no
different and no better than if the Catholic Church had a tenth of her official numbers.
Roughly 80 percent of Americans claim to be Christians. More than 60 million of them
claim to be Catholics. The Gospel we all claim to believe warns us that we can’t serve
two masters. We can’t love both God and Mammon. And yet the entire fabric of
American advertising and consumer life argues exactly the opposite -- that yes, we can
serve two masters, and yes, we’re already doing it.
Real faith – the kind our Holy Father calls us to -- demands that we seek out who Jesus
Christ really is, and what he asks from each of us as disciples. And that always involves
the cross.
Father John Hugo, a friend and counselor to Dorothy Day, once wrote that the real Jesus
“did not hesitate to condemn the rich, to warn the powerful, to denounce in vehement
language the very leaders of the people. [Christ’s] love and goodness were chiefly for the
poor, the simple, the needy. And his love for them was not a limp, indulgent love, like
that of a silly, frivolous mother. To his friends he preached poverty of spirit, detachment,
the carrying the cross. No more did the kindness of Jesus spare his followers, than the
kindness of God the father spared his son. [And] we are to drink of the same chalice that
he drank of.”xviii
Does that sound anything like the actual tone of Catholic life in our country today? I
suspect not. Yet that’s the life of honesty, holiness, heroism and sacrifice that God asks
from all of us as a Church and each of us as individual believers in the coming year of
faith.
In our eagerness to escape the Christian vocation of radical love, to tame it and reshape it
in the mold of our own comfort and willful ideas, we’ve failed not only to convert our
culture, but also to pass along the faith to many of our own children. And that should
make us very uneasy, because each of us – every bishop and every layperson at every
level of the Church, including all of us here today – will need to make an accounting to
God for the life we’ve been given, and how much of it we’ve used in service to the poor
and suffering among us.
But we can begin again. Human beings make history, not the other way around. God is
love; a God of life and deliverance and joy. His mercy endures forever. He made us to
be happy with him; to be loved by him; and to bring others to know his love. That’s the
glory of being alive. That’s the grandeur of being a disciple of Jesus Christ.
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The task of preaching and teaching, growing and living the Catholic faith in our time, in
this country, belongs to you and me. No one else can do it. The future depends on God,
but he builds it with the living stones we give him by the example of our lives.
So today, tomorrow, and in the coming year of faith, we need to remember the words of
the Epistle of James: “Be doers of [God’s] word and not hearers only, deceiving
yourselves” (Jas 1:22).
We live for the glory of God, and we prove it in the love we show to each other.
See John Allen, http://ncronline.org/blogs/all-things-catholic/three-myths-about-church-give-lent
William Dalrymple, From the Holy Mountain (London, HarperCollins, 1997), pp. 10-11.
iii Ibid., p. 23.
iv Douglas Farrow, Ascension Theology, London and New York, T&T Clark, 2011, p. 154. Farrow appears to have been
somewhat inspired by Robert Hugh Benson apocalyptic novel Lord of the World. Note that Archbishop Chaput blurbed
Farrow’s book.
v The Pew Forum on Religion and Public Life, http://religions.pewforum.org/reports, “U.S. Religious Landscape
Survey,” 2008. See “Summary of Key Findings,” p. 7
vi This observation comes from John Allen, http://ncronline.org/blogs/all-things-catholic/three-myths-about-churchgive-lent
vii This quote is from a wider discussion of Israel, Yahweh, and repentance in the Old Testament. Page 436 in Walter
Brueggemann, Theology of the Old Testament, Minneapolis , Fortress Press, 1997, pp. 436-440.
viii Porta Fidei, ¶2.
ix Porta Fidei, ¶6, quoting Lumen Gentium ¶8.
x “Rediscover the joy” and rediscover love - Porta Fidei, ¶7. “Radiate the word” - Porta Fidei, ¶6. “Frank and
contagious,” Porta Fidei, ¶10.
xi This paragraph is indebted to Eugene Peterson, Practice Resurrection: a conversation on growing up in Christ,
Grand Rapids, Michigan, Eerdmans, 2010, p. 16.
xii In addition, the CDF has a parallel document with ideas for how to observe the year of faith. See
http://www.vatican.va/roman_curia/congregations/cfaith/documents/rc_con_cfaith_doc_20120106_nota-annofede_en.html Pope Benedict mentions this CDF document or “note” in Porta Fidei, ¶12.
xiii Porta Fidei, ¶14.
xiv The second reading for September 16, 2012 (the 24th Sunday in ordinary time) is James 2:14-18.
xv Porta Fidei, ¶14.
xvi Porta Fidei, ¶13.
xvii Henri de Lubac, S.J., Paradoxes of Faith, San Francisco, Ignatius Press, 1987, p. 225
xviii David Scott and Mike Aquila, editors, Weapons of the Spirit: Living a Holy Life in Unholy Times; Selected Writings
of Father John Hugo, Our Sunday Visitor, Huntington, IN, 1997, p. 108-109
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