How can they do that?

The woman in the above image personifies the reaction we’re intended to have when reading, or listening, and then discussing the news.

“How can they do that?”

The “that” being any of the dismally long list of politicians’ alleged conspiracies and criminal acts. Add to that the wealth amassed by certain American legislators above and beyond their salaries, eliciting our judgment along with jealousy and envy. Or maybe it’s a “newsworthy” story: a gruesome murder of an infant or family. If we cannot resist discussing all this, we commit sins of detraction and calumny.

A couple of years ago, probably during Lent, I resolved to “speak only of what is good, true, and noble. Of things that can help people.” It’s Saint Paul’s parting advice to the Philippians:

Rejoice in the Lord always. I shall say it again: rejoice!

Your kindness should be known to all. The Lord is near.

Have no anxiety at all, but in everything, by prayer and petition, with thanksgiving, make your requests known to God.

Then the peace of God that surpasses all understanding will guard your hearts and minds in Christ Jesus.

Finally, brothers, whatever is true, whatever is honorable, whatever is just, whatever is pure, whatever is lovely, whatever is gracious, if there is any excellence and if there is anything worthy of praise, think about these things.

Keep on doing what you have learned and received and heard and seen in me. Then the God of peace will be with you.

Letter to the Phillipians

I fail at this vow frequently. But each morning, I plan to speak only of that which can help people. Eventually, I trust, it will be habitual.

Saint Padre Pio

called the news, “The Gospel of the devil.” Before he died in 1968, Saint Padre Pio perceived the subtle goal of “breaking news”: To destroy our peace. Decades ago, the saint could see the fingerprints of the enemy: division, enmity, hatred, violence. Today, the subtlety has been erased, revealing the real motive-fear.

“I study the ecology of thought,” Hoffman said. “And how it has led to a State of Fear.” Professor Hoffman is a fictional character in Michael Crichton’s State of Fear. The book is far more than a fun read. No state of mind is more welcome to our ancient enemy, Satan, than fear. Doubt is not the opposite of faith; fear is.

Shortly after my conversion, while living on the East Coast, I did a series of talks about what it was like converting from atheism to Catholic Christianity. In an attempt to explain what atheism felt like, I would stomp my foot as hard as I could, raise my voice, and declare, “There’s no ground! Everything is possible!” If nothing else, my device woke people up.

This year, 2025, is the 1700th anniversary of the Nicene Creed.

Should that matter to us?

We believe in one God the Father Almighty, creator of heaven and earth,
of all things visible and invisible,
And in one Lord Jesus Christ, the Son of God, the only-begotten,
who was begotten of the Father before all ages, light from light,
true God from true God, begotten not created, consubstantial with the Father,
by whom all things were made; […]
And in the Holy Spirit, who is the Lord and giver of life, who proceeds from the Father,
who with the Father and the Son is co-adored and co-glorified,
who has spoken through the prophets […].[10]

International Theological Commission

Let’s make dogma great again!

The phrase isn’t mine, but that of Father Benedict Kiely’s podcast in early January of this year. Father Kiely asks rhetorically why we should care about “fusty seventeen-hundred-year-old words” of the Nicene Creed. Quoting G.K. Cheaterton, Father Keily quips, “There are two kinds of people, the conscious dogmatists and the unconscious. I’ve always found the unconscious to be the most dogmatic.”

It’s no happenstance that John Henry Cardinal Newman is now a Doctor of the Church. The Oxford intellectual risked his entire career when he converted from the Anglican to the Roman Catholic Church in 1845. Newman spent his life at Oxford and witnessed the decline into liberalism by faculty who considered themselves superior. Beginning with honest zeal, these men “reformed” Oxford while falling victim to the “pride of reason.”

Father Kiely writes in a recent article that “Newman stated, as the most important point of his speech and apologia, that there was “one great mischief,” which he had from the “first opposed – the spirit of liberalism in religion….Sadly, and prophetically, he feared that, in his native land, it would have “formidable success.” Fast forward to a country where the monarch is still the head of the National Church, a theatre prop or stage-set with a vacuum behind it, passing legislation to kill the elderly and the sick, and murder the unborn up to the moment of birth. Truly, the great apostasia has been formidably successful in a post-Christian, or anti-Christian, England.”

“Liberalism in religion is the doctrine that there is no positive truth in religion, but that one creed is as good as another, and this is the teaching which is gaining substance and force daily. It is inconsistent with any recognition of any religion, as true. It teaches that all are to be tolerated, for all are matters of opinion.

Revealed religion is not a truth, but a sentiment and a taste; not an objective fact, not miraculous; and it is the right of each individual to make it say just what strikes his fancy. Devotion is not necessarily founded on faith…it must be borne in mind, that there is much in the liberalistic theory which is good and true; for example, not to say more, the precepts of justice, truthfulness, sobriety, self-command, benevolence, which, as I have already noted, are among its avowed principles, and the natural laws of society.

It is not till we find that this array of principles is intended to supersede, to block out, religion, that we pronounce it to be evil. There never was a device of the Enemy so cleverly framed and with such promise of success.”

Newman Centers: Lighthouses of Grace

And so, what?

Right.

Father Dino Vanin’s recent piece in the Catholic Journal warrants our attention.

By the time his gospel was available, Luke was writing to the grandchildren of those who physically saw Jesus. The enthusiasm and the expectation of their grandfathers and fathers must have faded away, replaced by lukewarm piety, resignation, aloofness… Luke pointed out repeatedly that Jesus came to serve and to give his life in ransom for all people. He was among his disciple as the most insignificant slave. He had washed his disciples’ feet, therefore, as he said in Luke 22:27: “I am among you as the one who serves. He had served his disciples with his teachings, his example, his healing touch and, most importantly, by showing them how to live with unfading hope and how “to die” for one’s friends.  But Luke’s congregation had already forgotten most of it… They had also forgotten how patiently, as the Book of Wisdom (18:6-9) indicates, their ancestors waited for the salvation of the just and the destruction of their foes. (Wisdom 18:7) Jesus waited 30 years in silence and obscurity before his service began. His teaching about being vigilant, attentive servants are placed by Luke (12:32-48) just after the stories of Martha, who was anxious about many things, instead of being anxious about the gifts that God had in store for her as Mary had done. They are found also after the story of the foolish rich man who was anxious about piling up more earthly goods instead of piling up treasures of loving concern and care for his eternal life. Today, Jesus is saying to us all: If you want to be anxious, be anxious about God’s judgement on your performance as a servant; be anxious about vigilance, attentiveness and the availability of your service. Thus, we have reasons to be concerned here. Unlike our ancestors, unlike Abraham, Sarah, Isaac, Jacob, we have sudden bursts of enthusiasm followed by at least partial disengagement. We have times of intense caring, followed by quasi-indifference. We dream of a much brighter future for us and for the people around us, then we turn cynical and distant. The trouble lies with the length of time. Apparently, we cannot keep up our hope, our attentiveness, our caring, our vigilance, and our dedication until the Lord comes again.   The proclamation of the mystery of faith after the consecration of the bread and wine: We proclaim your Death, O Lord, and profess your resurrection Until the Lord comes again, means until the TOTAL CHRIST, Head and members, is served with constant, tender, loving care; until everyone is free from anguish, pain and sorrow; until love has conquered the last traces of selfishness and indifference; until God’s Kingdom is perfected. (Emphasis mine.) Whenever need arises, we ought to be ready to pull up “our long tunics of piety and spirituality” to be svelte and prompt in the service of our neighbor. The lamp of our faith and trust in the Lord must be always bright enough for us to be directed to wherever someone needs our loving concern. They must also be burning ready because it is faith that enables us to see the Lord in the less fortunate, the lowly, the sorrowing, the needy, the least of his suffering members.  The Lord is about to give us a stirring example of his disposition as servant; he will feed us his own flesh to eat; he will do it for a twofold purpose: as the key to prompt, loving and joyous service of each other, and as the key to entering his eternal Kingdom. Hence, since our Heavenly Father wants all of us to be reunited around the wedding table at the Supper of the Lamb, we shall pray for each other in earnest so that no one may be left out. And we shall approach this eucharistic table with eagerness to acquire the Lord’s inner disposition to prompt, loving and joyous service and to fill our hearts with unwavering hope of what awaits all faithful servants in heaven.