5 Sayings from the Desert Fathers that challenge us to be better Christians

Philip Kosloski

The Desert Fathers were spiritual pillars of the ancient world and their sayings were first compiled into a volume called the Sayings of the Fathers in the 5th century. The Sayings provide countless little lessons that are extremely profound and challenging.

Here is another brief selection of five sayings from the Desert Fathers that challenge us to be better Christians.

When the same Abba Anthony thought about the depth of the judgments of God, he asked, “Lord, how is it that some die when they are young, while others drag on to extreme old age? Why are there those who are poor and those who are rich? Why do wicked men prosper and why are the just in need?” He heard a voice answering him, “Anthony, keep your attention on yourself; these things are according to the judgment of God, and it is not to your advantage to know anything about them.”

Someone asked Abba Anthony, “What must one do in order to please God?” The old man replied, “Pay attention to what I tell you: whoever you may be, always have God before your eyes; whatever you do, do it according to the testimony of the holy Scriptures; in whatever place you live, do not easily leave it. Keep these three precepts and you will be saved.”

 Abba Pambo asked Abba Anthony, “What ought I to do?” and the old man said to him, “Do not trust in your own righteousness, do not worry about the past, but control your tongue and your stomach.”

 Abba Agathon said, “Unless he keeps the commandments of God, a man cannot make progress, not even in a single virtue.”

 Abba Copres said, “Blessed is he who bears affliction with thankfulness.”

https://aleteia.org/2018/01/15/5-sayings-from-the-desert-fathers-that-challenge-us-to-be-better-christians/

German bishops raked in $7.1 billion last year from taxpayers

Dorothy Cummings McLean

German Cardinals Walter Kasper and Reinhard Marx 

GERMANY, January 4, 2018 (LifeSiteNews) — The German Bishops’ Conference received the equivalent of $7.1 billion US from German Catholic taxpayers in 2017.

This is the highest amount of tax revenue the German Catholic Church has received since the church tax was introduced to the constitution of the Weimar Republic in 1919. The clause concerning the tax was included in the new German Constitution after the Second World War.

The church tax, or Kirchensteuer, is levied upon Roman Catholics, “Old Catholics,” Lutherans, two other Protestant communions, and Jews. The revenue was once kept by the German government for the upkeep of religious buildings and payment of ministers’ salaries, but it is now given directly to the governing bodies of these religious communities. Muslim places of worship are self-supporting or receive funds from abroad.

The Kirchensteuer represents 8 percent-9 percent of an individual’s annual income, depending on where in Germany they live. The monthly deduction appears as “KS” on payslips, much to the consternation of foreign employees who do not consider themselves members of these   religious communities but are taxed all the same. According to Handelsblatt, the German business magazine that broke the story of the German Church’s record haul, officials will go so far as to request the baptismal records of foreign nationals.

Germans and foreign residents can opt out of the church tax by going to a government office or courthouse, signing documents stating that they are no longer members of their religion, and paying a fee. German Christians began doing this in large numbers in the 1990s when taxes were significantly increased to rebuild post-reunification East Germany. In some cases, Christians signed the forms and continued participating in their faith communities.

However, the German Catholic bishops shut the door on this option for Catholics in 2012 when they decreed that Catholics who opted out of the Church tax would be socially and spiritually penalized.

Catholics who opt out of the church tax will not be employed by the German Catholic Church or its establishments, including schools and hospitals. They are not allowed to join such Catholic groups as church choirs. They may not be godparents. They are denied the sacraments and a Catholic funeral.

While devout Catholics may be frightened by the thought of being cut off from the sacraments, even the most reluctant of cultural Catholics may think twice before opting out of the church tax: the German Catholic Bishops Conference is the second biggest employer in Germany.

This may be one reason why the 89.8 percent of Catholic Germans who do not go to Sunday Mass continue to pay the tax. However, more and more of the less committed do opt out every year. In 2016, 160,000 Catholics declared that they no longer belonged to the Church.

As only 10.2 percent of Germany’s Catholics go to Mass on Sunday, one may be forgiven for asking exactly what the German Catholic Bishops are doing with the billions of euros they receive every year.

Well, there are salaries, of course. German bishops make more than $12,000 US a month, and then there are all the people working for them, including those who work for Germany’s Catholic charity Caritas, and all the other services run by the Church: museums, hospitals, kindergartens, schools, colleges, and retirement homes.

There are also German Church charities that minister to the poor overseas. According to the UK’s Catholic Herald,  projects in Africa, Asia, Latin America and Eastern Europe received more than €451 million in funding from German Catholic aid organizations in 2015.

Then there is the German Church’s rich architectural patrimony to keep in good repair. The German bishops may not have many priests or Sunday Mass-goers, but they need never close a church, let alone sell it, due to budgetary constraints.

But one thing the German bishops are not doing with their billions of euros: They are not making a dent on the growing secularization of Germany. With all their money, they cannot convince the vast majority of German Catholics -- let alone anyone else -- to embrace the Gospel and worship God on Sundays.

Meanwhile, the attempts of certain German Cardinals to widen the straight and narrow path of the Catholic faith for the greater comfort of unrepentant sexual sinners rankle orthodox Catholics who also pay the Church tax. Cardinal Walter Kasper has advocated for years that  divorced-and-remarried Catholics be permitted the sacraments, and yet any Catholic in Germany who balks at paying 8 percent to 9 percent of his or her income to the German bishops is de facto excommunicated.

“I think it’s scandalous that German bishops deny access to the sacraments to those Catholics in Germany who, for whatever reasons, do not wish to pay into a rather opaque fund,” a church taxpayer told LifeSiteNews.

John Goodall, 28, has been working in Germany for two years. The bishops’ attitude bothers him very much because, he says, they are simultaneously encouraging those who live an objectively immoral lifestyle to receive the sacraments. “It seems like a form of simony,”  said Goodall.

When Goodall first arrived in Germany, he registered at his town hall. There he was asked his religion, and Goodall said he was a Catholic. “Ever since, I’ve had the Kirchensteuer automatically deducted from my salary,” he told LifeSiteNews.

Goodall wonders if it might actually be immoral to pay the tax.

“I have spent ages looking through opinions on the matter because it feels slightly immoral paying (9 percent) to them,” he continued.

“As a traditional Catholic, I ... see traditional and authentic expressions of the faith being undermined by these same bishops. There are also the extravagant salaries of the bishops themselves. I’d much rather pay the money directly to the Old Rite parish I attend. I’d even be happy to pay (the parish) 9 percent directly.”  

He says the only advantage to the church tax that he can think of is that the church buildings are well maintained. “But I’d rather have proper doctrine and discipline than beautiful but empty churches.”

As for the vast network of German Church charities, Goodall has a question:

“Shouldn’t charitable giving be voluntary?”

“Decree Regarding Same-sex ‘Marriage’ and Related Pastoral Issues.”--THE LAW OF THE HEART IS LOVE.

Lex Cordis Caritas - The law of the heart is Love     by Bishop Thomas John Paprocki

My dear brothers and sisters in Christ,

There has been quite a bit of consternation since I sent an internal communication to my clergy and staff last month that was unfortunately leaked to the public concerning my “Decree Regarding Same-sex ‘Marriage’ and Related Pastoral Issues.” While the underlying doctrinal issues are not new, these norms were necessary to address situations in the pastoral context arising from the new reality in the law and in our culture, given that same-sex marriage is now recognized by legislative action and judicial decision as legal throughout the United States. This decree prohibits same-sex weddings to be performed by our diocesan personnel or to take place in Catholic facilities, restricts persons in such unions from receiving the sacraments or serving in a public liturgical role unless they have repented, and says that deceased persons who had lived openly in a same-sex marriage giving public scandal to the faithful are to be deprived of ecclesiastical funeral rites unless they have given some signs of repentance before their death.

At the same time, the decree says that a child with a Catholic parent or parents living in a same-sex marriage may be baptized if there is a well-founded hope that he or she will be brought up in the Catholic faith and that such a child who is otherwise qualified and properly disposed may receive first Eucharist and the sacrament of confirmation. Moreover, the decree states that children living with persons in a same-sex marriage are not to be denied admission to Catholic schools and catechetical and formational programs on those grounds alone. However, parents and those who legally take the place of parents are to be advised that their children will be instructed according to the church’s teachings on marriage and sexuality in their fullness and they must agree to abide by the Family School Agreement.

In the decree I also remind all who exercise a ministry within the church that, while being clear and direct about what the church teaches, our pastoral ministry must always be respectful, compassionate and sensitive to all our brothers and sisters in faith, as was the ministry of Christ Jesus, the Good Shepherd and our everlasting model for ministry. People with same-sex attraction are welcome in our parishes in the Catholic Diocese of Springfield in Illinois as we repent our sins and pray for God to keep us in his grace.

All of this is totally consistent with Catholic teaching about the sacraments and the understanding of marriage as between one man and one woman that has prevailed for millennia in all of society, not just in the church. The fact that there would be such an outcry against this decree is quite astounding and shows how strong the LGBT lobby is both in the secular world as well as within the church. People have been quick to quote the famous in-flight statement of Pope Francis in 2013 when he said, “If someone is gay and is searching for the Lord and has good will, then who am I to judge him?” But the pope quickly added, “The problem is not having this [homosexual] tendency, no, we must be brothers and sisters to one another, and there is this one and there is that one. The problem is in making a lobby of this tendency: a lobby of misers, a lobby of politicians, a lobby of masons, so many lobbies. For me, this is the greater problem.” So while we certainly leave the eternal judgment of one’s soul to God, we still must deal with objective realities here on earth and even Pope Francis recognized that the gay lobby is a great problem.

Critics have been urging me to rescind my “Decree Regarding Same-sex ‘Marriage’ and Related Pastoral Issues.” However, this decree is a rather straightforward application of existing Catholic doctrine and canon law to the new situation of legal marital status being granted in civil law to same-sex couples, which is contrary to the teaching of the Catholic Church. All clergy before they are ordained take an Oath of Fidelity which includes the statement, “In fulfilling the charge entrusted to me in the name of the Church, I shall hold fast to the deposit of faith in its entirety; I shall faithfully hand it on and explain it, and I shall avoid any teachings contrary to it. I shall follow and foster the common discipline of the entire Church and I shall maintain the observance of all ecclesiastical laws, especially those contained in the Code of Canon Law.” Pastors and bishops repeat this oath upon assuming their office to be exercised in the name of the church. Thus, deacons, priests and bishops cannot contradict church teachings or refuse to observe ecclesiastical laws without violating their oath, which is a promise made to God.

Father James Martin, a Jesuit priest who lives in New York, posted my decree on Twitter and said in a series of tweets, “If bishops ban members of same-sex couples from funeral rites, they must also ban divorced and remarried Catholics without annulments ... women who have children out of wedlock, members of straight couples living together before marriage, anyone using birth control ... To focus only on LGBT people, even those in same-sex marriages, without a similar focus on the sexual or moral behavior of straight people is in the words of the Catechism a ‘sign of unjust discrimination.’” Father Martin gets a lot wrong in those tweets, since canon law prohibits ecclesiastical funeral rites only in cases of “manifest sinners” which gives “public scandal,” and something such as using birth control is a private matter that is usually not manifest or made public. Moreover, my decree does not focus on “LGBT people,” but on so-called same-sex marriage, which is a public legal status. No one is ever denied the sacraments or Christian burial for simply having a homosexual orientation. Even someone who had entered into a same-sex “marriage” can receive the sacraments and be given ecclesiastical funeral rites if they repent and renounce their “marriage.”

Father Martin also misses the key phrase in the decree that ecclesiastical funeral rites are to be denied to persons in same-sex marriages “unless they have given some signs of repentance before their death.” This is a direct quote from canon 1184 of the Code of Canon Law, which is intended as a call to repentance. Jesus began his public ministry proclaiming the Gospel of God with these words: “This is the time of fulfillment. The kingdom of God is at hand. Repent, and believe in the gospel” (Mark 1:15). In other words, those living openly in same-sex marriage, like other manifest sinners who give public scandal, can receive ecclesiastical funeral rites if they gave some sign of repentance. This does not mean that unrepentant manifest sinners will simply be refused or turned away. Even in those cases where a public Mass of Christian Burial in church cannot be celebrated because the deceased person was unrepentant and there would be public scandal, the priest or deacon may conduct a private funeral service, for example, at the funeral home.

Father Martin’s tweets do raise an important point with regard to other situations of grave sin and the reception of Holy Communion. He is right that the Church’s teaching does not apply only to people in same-sex marriages. According to canon 916, all those who are “conscious of grave sin” are not to receive Holy Communion without previous sacramental confession. This is normally not a question of denying Holy Communion, but of people themselves refraining from Holy Communion if they are “conscious of grave sin.” While no one can know one’s subjective sinfulness before God, the Church can and must teach about the objective realities of grave sin. Speaking objectively, then, one can say the following:

Those who have sexual relations outside of a valid marriage, whether they are heterosexual or homosexual, should not receive Holy Communion unless they repent, go to confession and amend their lives. This includes the divorced and remarried without an annulment. An exception would be where the couple agrees to live as brother and sister, as long as there is no public scandal. Similarly, if there is no public scandal, two men who live chastely with each other as friends or as brother and brother, or two women who live chastely with each other as friends or as sister and sister, may receive Holy Communion if there is no public scandal.

Those who have had an abortion or have assisted in performing or procuring an abortion should not receive Holy Communion unless they repent, go to confession and amend their lives.

Those politicians and judges who helped to make same-sex marriage legal and who aid and abet abortion, for example, by voting for taxpayer funding for abortion, should not receive Holy Communion unless they repent, go to confession and amend their lives.

Those who use artificial contraception should not receive Holy Communion unless they repent, go to confession and amend their lives.

Those who miss Mass on Sundays and Holy Days of Obligation, unless it would be impossible due to a grave cause such as serious illness, should not receive Holy Communion unless they repent, go to confession and amend their lives.

These are just a few examples, but in fact all those who are conscious of any grave sin should not receive Holy Communion unless they repent, go to confession and amend their lives. Those who do receive Holy Communion while conscious of grave sin compound the moral offense by committing the sin of sacrilege.

My recent decree did not address all these various other situations because they have long been part of Church teaching. The decree was needed to add the novel concept of same-sex “marriage” to those instances considered to be objectively grave sins.

The truths of the faith revealed by our Lord in Scripture and Tradition are not always easy to accept, especially in a world that seeks to make all truth subjective. The fact is that some truths are objective and unalterable. Jesus said, “Blessed are the pure of heart, for they shall see God” (Matthew 5:8). There is no greater happiness than to see God. Saint Paul reminds us that we are all in need of daily conversion in that “all have sinned and fallen short of the glory of God (Romans 3:23).” Let us pray for each other, that each of us may come to an ever deeper understanding of God’s call to discipleship in our lives, the same God who “wills everyone to be saved and come to knowledge of the truth” (1 Tim. 2: 4).

May God give us this grace. Amen.

http://ct.dio.org/bishops-column/message/my-decree-explained-to-answer-misunderstandings/read.html

https://abyssum.org/2018/01/09/bravo-bishop-thomas-john-paprocki-the-man-who-should-have-been-appointed-archbishop-of-chicago/

Dr. Espin..heretic of the Catholic church--

The Triumph of the People’s Church

Anne Hendershott

Continuing his commitment to a doctrinal vision that prioritizes the lived experiences and insights of ordinary Catholics over the authoritative teachings of the Church, Pope Francis recently affirmed the importance of what he called a “free and responsible” form of Catholic theology—a “creative fidelity”—in the life of the Church. Speaking before a Vatican gathering of 100 members of the Italian Theological Association last month, Pope Francis advised the theologians to remain “anchored” to the teachings of Vatican II, by “proclaiming the Gospel in a new way” to a rapidly changing world.

This is not the first time that Pope Francis has called on theologians to embrace the spirit of Vatican II by announcing the Gospel in a new way, “more consonant with a profoundly different culture and world.” From the first days of his pontificate, Pope Francis has privileged a form of “Popular Catholicism” that prioritizes the insights, the beliefs, and the practices that emerge from the people themselves. The word “popular” does not refer to “prevalent,” rather, it refers to the religious practices and beliefs that emerge from the people themselves—not the priests. Emphasizing the contextual nature of all theological reflection, “Popular Catholicism” maintains that theology must always be cultural and historical. From this perspective, any attempt to de-culturize the theological and religious expressions of a community is dehumanizing because it rejects the authentic experience of the people.

Emerging in Latin America, as a way for Latino Catholics to differentiate themselves from the ways in which Catholicism was practiced in Spain, Popular Catholicism was originally a symbol of freedom—a rejection of the colonial dominance of the Roman Catholic Church in Spain. A leader of this movement has been theologian Orlando Espin, a professor of religious studies at the University of San Diego and director of the Center for the Study of Latino/a Catholicism at the university. In his 1999 edited collection of essays (published by Orbis Books) entitled From the Heart of Our People, Espin emphasizes the “contextual nature” of all theological reflection and maintains that theology is always cultural and historical. Espin maintains that the consequence of this cultural emergence is that elites—or those Espin calls the “hegemonic group and their allies,” have been successful in using the symbols and ideologies of religion to “oppress the marginalized.” Especially critical of those theologians who privilege the ecclesiastical institution as the witness to “true Catholicism,” Espin maintains that “the real daily life religion of most Catholics is regarded as an adulterated version of the institutional norm.”

Hardly a marginal figure in the Popular Catholicism movement, Espin has been a longtime leader of this movement to reject the religious authority of the hierarchy in favor of the more authentic lived experience of the people. Such a turn requires theologians to use what Pope Francis calls “creative fidelity” to allow the Church to be “rejuvenated by the perennial novelty of the Gospel of Christ.”

Highly respected by left-leaning national and international theologians, Espin was awarded the highest honor last year from the Catholic Theological Society of America—the world’s largest professional society of Catholic theologians. Receiving the John Courtney Murray Award for his “lifetime of distinguished theological achievement,” Espin, a priest of the Orlando diocese who no longer appears to function as a priest, and is currently married to his same-sex partner, thanked his “husband,” Ricardo Gallego, during his acceptance speech.

It is clear that after decades in the shadows, Popular Catholicism is now ascendant under the papacy of Pope Francis. This is in contrast to his predecessors. Both Pope St. John Paul II and Pope Benedict had spoken harshly about the dangers of a Church that was “born of the people.” Pope St. John Paul II gave a stern rebuke to the Latino theologians in 1983—publishing a letter to the Nicaraguan bishops denouncing the “people’s church” in especially harsh terms. In a speech that was reported on the pages of The New York Times on March 5, 1983, the pontiff predicted that “The Church born of the people is a new invention that is both absurd and of perilous character … only with difficulty, could it avoid being infiltrated by strangely ideological connotations.”

In 1984, Joseph Cardinal Ratzinger offered An Instruction On Certain Aspects of the Theology of Liberation in which he warned about the dangers of the “diverse theological positions,” and the “badly defined doctrinal frontiers” of this movement. Continuing the concerns of his predecessor in 2007 at a private Mass with his former doctoral students, Pope Benedict delivered a talk against theological arrogance by warning against theologians who “only talk in the end about ourselves [and] don’t go beyond ourselves and beyond people.”

As Pope St. John Paul II predicted, Popular Catholicism appears to have already been infiltrated by “strangely ideological connotations.” Many of today’s most highly regarded theologians—like Orlando Espin—draw from the same ideology, and implement the same language and methods of the liberation theologians of the past. In some ways, they are even more radical in their agenda than those of the past because they are now provided with theological cover from Pope Francis himself.

In contrast, many orthodox theologians in the Vatican have been publicly humiliated or removed from their positions. Cardinal Robert Sarah, the prefect of the Congregation for Divine Worship, saw Pope Francis replace sympathetic congregation members with critics who oppose his liturgical reforms and publicly rebuked the cardinal for promoting traditional liturgical practices. Pope Francis also refused to allow Cardinal Gerhard Muller serve a second term as prefect of the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith. Pope Emeritus Benedict has praised bothof them following these actions by Pope Francis. It is clear that Pope Emeritus Benedict continues to support faithful Catholic theologians. In an interview with Cardinal Muller that was excerpted in the Catholic Herald, the cardinal said that Benedict was “disappointed” with the decision by Pope Francis to remove the cardinal from the head of the CDF. Stating that he had “defended the clear traditions of the faith” while in office, Cardinal Muller told the reporter that Pope Francis had dismissed him without explanation: “He did not give a reason, just as he gave no reason for dismissing three highly competent members of the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith a few months earlier.”

These are perilous times for the Church as Popular Catholicism continues to gain ascendancy. It is difficult to predict where all of this will take us. In his recently published book, The Power of Silence, Cardinal Robert Sarah suggests that the Church is in danger of sliding into the same kinds of worldly preoccupations that the Church in Latin America concerned itself with in the 1980s. Cardinal Sarah suggests that we are in danger of moving away from our concern for the salvific mission of the Church. It may be up to the laity to continue that work—along with the remnant of faithful theologians who courageously continue to guide us.

http://www.crisismagazine.com/2018/triumph-peoples-church