donderdag 25 augustus 2011
Pope Benedict commissions millions of Young Missionaries in Madrid
BY MIKE JAMES
“Young people readily respond when in sincerity and truth, they are invited to an encounter with Jesus Christ”, declared Pope Benedict XVI as he bade farewell to World Youth Day (WYD) at Madrid airport last Sunday. Referring specifically to the two million young people whom the Vatican estimates participated in WYD he declared. “Now those young people are returning home as missionaries of the Gospel”…and – he added, speaking to the 800 bishops and 14,000 of priests and 20,000 women religious who had accompanied the young people on this pilgrimage – “they will need to be helped on their way”.
The Pope hailed as “Apostles of the 21st century” the young people from 195 nations around the world, who prayed and meditated, who sang God’s praises and celebrated undeterred even as they were buffeted first by heavy winds and dust and then drenched by a powerful thunderstorm at the Cuatro Vientos aerodrome where the final vigil and Mass took place.
The final week of WYD 2011 began on August 15 with thousands of them beginning to arrive in Madrid by bus, train, air and even hitch hiking from their Days in the Dioceses (DiD), enthusiastic but cautious, well aware that in Spain facing serious economic crisis, 21% unemployment rising to 35% among young adults, there were some vocal critics against any special treatment for the visitors at the public expense. But following a massive opening Mass in the Madrid city centre in which some 70 young Spaniards gave the warmest of welcomes to the hundreds of thousands of pilgrims, caution about public expression of their faith disappeared. Packed metro stations became spontaneous chapels of prayer and hymns of praise.
At one huge parish church of the Santa Trinidad that served as one of the many catechetical centres for English, standing-room only groups of young people from South Africa, the English-speaking Caribbean, India and Australia heard Archbishop Robert Rivas of Castries, Chairman of the AEC Youth Commission preach what he told pilgrims was his first sermon on the “Name of Jesus” as he invited them to deepen their personal commitment to Christ.
The next day Cardinal Wilfred Napier of Durban South Africa reminded them that they can be absolutely sure that “God will never let you waste your life if you commit yourself completely to him.” Jesus says to you,“Follow me and I will be right behind you.” He added that in an interesting initiative, the Vatican Pontifical Council for Evangelization is encouraging young people to devote a year of their lives to missionary work with 3 months of intensive training followed by the rest of the year in intensive service.
South Africans of all races joined together to lead powerful hymns and liturgical dance which symbolised the spirit of unity and fellowship transcending all differences of language, race and class that characterised WYD.
The traditional processions of statues and composite scenarios of scenes from Holy Week were combined with the Stations of the Cross on Friday 19, attended by more than a million pilgrims. Among groups who carried the cross from station to station were groups of disabled young people, groups working with victims of HIV/AIDS, and a group composed jointly of young pilgrims from Haiti and Japan, countries that have recently faced national disasters. The prayers invited all to solidarity and service of Jesus, suffering in all these and other groups around the world.
As part of his packed schedule Pope Benedict visited a home for disabled run by young religious at which an 18 year old young man, deaf from birth, gave the welcoming speech in which he testified that his faith gave him great courage in long periods of silence and solitude. His words brought tears to the Pope’s eyes.
The Pope’s schedule ran late when he spent half an hour listening and talking to a religious sister, 103 years old who entered the convent on the same day that Pope Benedict was born 83 years ago, and who had for the first time in those 83 years come out of her contemplative cloistered convent in order to meet with him.
Not all went perfectly well in WYD 2011. Central organisation was overwhelmed with the huge number of pilgrims who descended on Madrid. While security took the decision to close the main entrance to the vast aerodrome long before the scheduled beginning of the final mass as space was completely oversubscribed. This resulted in many tens of thousands of registered pilgrims having to trek many additional kilometres to reach other general public access areas. On the other hand well-stocked picnic packages containing 4 meals for the same tens of thousands could not be distributed. Limited access to public sports and other facilities (strictly only from 9 p.m to 9 a.m. and not at all from the morning after WYD ended) meant that groups found it difficult to find enough opportunities for planning and praying together outside the official programme. The massive thunderstorm and winds during the vigil caused the collapse of 2 of the tents where hosts were being stored for consecration the next day with the result that many pilgrims were unable to receive Communion at the final mass.
None of this, however, dampened the spirits and the tremendous witness of the millions of young people, challenging the conventional wisdom in Europe that young people have no time for Christ or serious commitment to eternal values. The day after the final Mass, three young women from Trinidad were at the entrance of a metro station looking for a homeless person they had befriended earlier to share their breakfast with him. And as Vatican radio reported of the enthusiasm and commitment of the young people at WYD, “This is the BXVI generation, they came, they heard and they understood, the apostles of the 21st century.” They return home to Syria and Sri Lanka, to China and the Caribbean, determined to witness fearlessly and to seek the help to do so that Pope Benedict has called Bishops, Priests, Religious and other church leaders to provide.
woensdag 17 augustus 2011
dinsdag 16 augustus 2011
vrijdag 12 augustus 2011
The acts we perform; the people we become
By father Robert Barron
From the 1950’s through the late 1970’s Karol Wojtyla (Pope John Paul II) was a professor of moral philosophy at the Catholic University of Lublin in Poland, specializing in sexual ethics and what we call today “marriage and family life.” He produced two important books touching on these matters, The Acting Person, a rigorously philosophical exploration of Christian anthropology, and Love and Responsibility, a much more accessible analysis of love, sex, and marriage. These texts provided the foundation for the richly textured teaching of Pope John Paul II that now goes by the name “theology of the body.” As was evident throughout his papacy, John Paul had a deep devotion to young people, and he wanted them to see the teaching of the church in regard to sex, not as a burden, but as an invitation to fuller life. In the context of this brief article, I would like to develop just one insight from John Paul’s rich magisterium on sex and marriage, for I share the perennial concern of older people that too many young people are treating sex in a morally casual way.
Karol Wojtyla taught that in making an ethical decision, a moral agent does not only give rise to a particular act, but he also contributes to the person he is becoming. Every time I perform a moral act, I am building up my character, and every time I perform an unethical act, I am compromising my character. A sufficient number of virtuous acts, in time, shapes me in such a way that I can predictably and reliably perform virtuously in the future, and a sufficient number of vicious acts can misshape me in such a way that I am typically incapable of choosing rightly in the future. This is not judgmentalism; it is a kind of spiritual/moral physics, an articulation of a basic law. We see the same principle at work in sports. If you swing the golf club the wrong way enough times, you become a bad golfer, that is to say, someone habitually incapable of hitting the ball straight and far. And if you swing the club correctly enough times, you become a good golfer, someone habitually given to hitting the ball straight and far.
John Paul put his finger on a problem typical of our time, namely, that people think that they can do lots of bad things while still remaining, deep down, “good persons,” as though their characters are separable from the particular things that they do. In point of fact, a person who habitually engages in self-absorbed, self-destructive, and manipulative behavior is slowly but surely warping her character, turning herself into a self-absorbed, self-destructive, and manipulative person. Viewed from a slightly different angle, this is the problem of separating “self” from the body, as though the “real person” hides under or behind the concrete moves of the body. Catholic philosophy and theology have battled this kind of dualism for centuries, insisting that the self is a composite of spirit and matter. In fact, it is fascinating to note how often this gnostic conception of the person (to give it its proper name) asserts itself and how often the Church has risen up to oppose it.
Now apply this principle to sexual behavior. Study after study has shown that teen-agers and college students are participating more and more in a “hook-up” culture, an environment in which the most casual and impersonal forms of sexual behavior are accepted as a matter of course. As recently as 25 or 30 years ago, there was still, even among teen-agers, a sense that sexual contact belonged at least in the context of a “loving” or “committed” relationship, but today it appears as though even this modicum of moral responsibility has disappeared. And this is doing terrible damage to young people. Dr. Leonard Sax, a physician and psychiatrist, explored the phenomenon of the hook-up culture in his book Why Gender Matters, a text I would warmly recommend to teen-agers and their parents. He described that tawdry moral universe in some detail, and then he remarked that his psychiatrist’s office is filled with young people—especially young women—who have fallen into debilitating depression, anxiety and low self-esteem. Dr. Sax theorized that these psychological symptoms are a function of a kind of cognitive dissonance. The wider society is telling teen-agers that they can behave in any way they like and still be “good people,” but the consciences of these young people are telling a different story. Deep down, they know that selfish and irresponsible behavior is turning them into selfish and irresponsible people—and their souls are crying out. Their presence, in Dr. Sax’s waiting room, witnesses to the truth of John Paul’s understanding of the moral act.
I might sum up John Paul’s insight by saying that moral acts matter, both in the short run and in the long run. For weal or for woe, they produce immediate consequences, and they form characters. And so I might venture to say to a young person, tempted to engage in irresponsible sexual behavior: please realize that, though you may not immediately appreciate it, the particular things you choose to do are inevitably shaping the person you are becoming.
* Father Robert Barron is the founder of the global ministry, Word on Fire, and the Francis Cardinal George Professor of Faith and Culture at University of St. Mary of the Lake in Mundelein. He is the creator and host of a new 10 episode documentary series called "Catholicism" and also hosts programs on Relevant Radio, EWTN and at www.WordOnFire.org.
