The following comes from The Cardinal’s Column in the Chicago archdiocese paper of March 31.
It’s somewhat fashionable these days to describe oneself as “spiritual but not religious.” This is supposed to mean that one is open to an experience beyond the commercial or the political but not tied to “institutional” religion. One claims an experience of transcendence that is bound by no one else’s rules.
People can always make claims to any kind of experience. The question is always: Who cares? Why should anyone care where someone else gets a spiritual high? Because no one really cares, the claim to be spiritual but not religious is always safe. It’s never a threat and can be dismissed quite easily. The claim to be religious is different. It is a claim that God himself has taken the initiative to reveal himself to us and tell us who he is and who we are. Religion binds us to God according to his will, not ours, in a community of faith that he has brought into existence. Being religious can therefore be threatening.
Being religious as a Christian starts with the belief that Jesus Christ is risen from the dead. Faith in Christ’s resurrection is central to Christian religion. Jesus is not just someone’s personal idea. He really exists in a real body, now transformed by conquering death itself. Those who are “spiritual” often deny Christ’s resurrection as a physical event, something that makes its own demands when you bump into it. They prefer a Christ who is safely an idea in their minds, made in their image and likeness. By contrast, the risen Christ, the real Christ, breaks into our experience and personally seeks those he calls to be religious, to believe what God has done for us, much to our surprise.
Meeting the risen Christ spiritually therefore depends upon believing in him religiously. We are given the gift of faith in the sacrament of Baptism, in which we are configured to the risen Christ. Faith perdures, even when there’s not a lot of spiritual tingle in our lives! “Lord, I believe; help my unbelief,” is the cry of a religious person who asks Christ to take him beyond his own spiritual experience into a new world where bodies as well as minds share in God’s grace. Faith takes seriously everything that comes from God. The faith-filled person is sure of God and distrustful of himself. Unlike faith in God, experience is often wrong in religious matters.
Our personal faith needs communitarian buttressing, lest it degenerate into an individual spirituality. One solid and sure means of corroborating our personal faith is to check it against the faith of the church, the community founded by Christ upon the apostles. One way to make that check is to go to Peter, the apostle Jesus called to be a rock. Peter and his successors confirm our faith and keep us on the path of true religion.
The church has a new successor of Peter, a recently elected Bishop of Rome who has chosen to call himself “Francis.” St. Francis was called by Christ to renew and rebuild the church, and he checked every move he made with the pope and his advisors. Pope Francis now takes up Peter’s ministry in the universal church. He will confirm our faith and keep us tied to God’s loving plan for our salvation.
As we celebrate Christ’s resurrection from the dead and renew the faith professed for us at our baptism, let us also say a prayer for Pope Francis. His is the faith of the apostles and of the saints of all the ages, the faith that conforms our minds and hearts to the mind and heart of Jesus Christ, who is “the same yesterday, today and forever.” May the risen Christ bless you with a happy Easter!
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Thank you CCD for carrying this beautiful expression of faith and love. Whenever I read something Cardinal George has written, I find his words restorative and a source of peace. May God bless this gifted man with renewed strength and vigor that he may continue for many years more. God’s Will be done.
This is truly a well written and conveyed well message. I enjoyed this great message. God bless Cardinal George. I felt comfort and joy. We are always growing in our faith…and this message, although heard before in a different tone, but it’s still a message of faith,hope and love. This Cardinal has a gift and he also has a a great love for Christ and His church….it shows and I am grateful for his faithfulness to Christ….he really cares about our salvation….he just conveyed a touch of heaven to us! Praise God!
Keep them coming…more inspiring articles like these…to show the world the wholeness about our faith. To inspire and to give hope. Praise Be Jesus Christ! You fed us, gave us drink for our thirst etc….it’s not just the fleshly necessities that ones relies to live on but it is the religious and spiritual ones that we need to increase our faith…thanks CCD for doing this with this article.
“For I was hungry, and you gave me to eat; I was thirsty, and you gave me to drink; I was a stranger, and you took me in” Matthew 25:35
Maybe I am misunderstanding Cardinal George’s use of the word communitarian , but it sends a small shiver up my spine. The word does not start with a capital C so that ‘s good. But I can’t get to heaven based on the good acts of the community anymore than we can save the human community by being responsible to the community first. Lets just hope that he was not using that word in its political sense.
But,to be Catholic is to live in community with other Catholics. That is why the central act of worship is a community event. That is why we are called to support and lift up the community of worshipers with whom we come in contact each day. That is why we are urged at the end of Mass to go forth and spread the word of God to the rest of the community. You can’t be a good Catholic and not be communal. If we were not a community, you could simply pray at home or wherever and that would be enough. Instead, we are called to worhip in community. And, don’t forget that Jesus was the ultimate community organizer. Don’t be affraid of community either in Church or in the political world. It is a good thing!
Excellent, Bob One; now work with your ideas for a while and you might conclude that the best liturgy and maybe the only liturgy that can actually accomplish it is the EF, ie the traditional Latin Mass.
Wrong again Bob One, as always… Christ as community organizer, what utter garbage.
Doesn’t it work two ways, both for laity and also for clergy? What about being religious enough to enforce Canon 915? What about being religious enough to live out Catholicism in one’s actions such as not giving into the abortion and sodomy influential people?
Also, what about being religious enough to stop taking government money. Jesus said “Give to Caesar”, not “take from Caesar”.
Hey Skai good point! I like how you get people thinking, well at least you do get me thinking……God bless you.
Nicely stated, but…..
Cardinal George neglects to sya why Christ died. It is my understanding that He died to save oursouls from sin. He is our salvation.
It is near impossible to find a priest, let alone a Cardinal, who will publicly talk about what is a sin.
It is “fashionable” if you are devoted to popular cutlure to speak of transgressions against the environment or our failure to admire homosex, The popular cutlure insists that it is sinful bigotry to promote marriage between and man and a woman or to promote chastity or to insist that human life is sacred.
Our clergy have failed to teach the core values of our Faith and as a result, young people succumb to the secular classroom lectures promoting the “right” to fornicate, the “right” to homosex, and the “right” to kill an unborn baby. Eventually, the young peole leave the Church, older Catholics die and the once important churches are closed—-yes, even in Cardinal George’s Chicago.
If I were in charge (please keep the cheering and clapping down, thanks), I’d set up “sin evaluation panels” in each parish, so that the faithful could come in and have thorough inspections and overhauls. Oh wait, that would be the inquisition … ooops.
The question, Skai, is which side of the panel do you see yourself on? Are you desiring an “evaluation panel” to help you stay on the path? Or do you see yourself evaluating everyone else? A very big clue to your thinking is likely revealed by “If I were in charge…”
I also find it interesting that you contend such a thing could not be done because it would be “the Inquisition”. Now, one would only view such a thing as “the Inquisition” if such a board had the power to strip the people they suspect to be heretics of all their worldly possessions (as was done in Spain during the real Inquisition), could torture others in order to elicit confessions from said suspects, and—ultimately—could execute those they found unworthy. What kind of person would desire such power and would revel in such acts being carried out against others?
I also find the need for “sin evaluation panels” to be rather unecessary when we have confession. What else is confession but a “sin evaluation” by a priest and in harmony with God? So what is it that your sin evaluation panel will do that cannot be accomplished by the confessional?
Is what you find lacking about the confessional the inability to go to your neighbor and tell him what he or she is doing wrong. I would then presume you would, ultimately, threaten exclusion from the faith group if said individual did not conform.
Are you trying to help others—or getting vicarious pleasure in thinking about possessing the authority to compel your fellow man to order their lives as you think God wants?
You’ve got some great questions there, JonJ. Glad I was able to entertain you for a moment.
Jon, perhaps I’m wrong, but I thought Skai’s remarks were meant to be amusing. Maybe we’re all just getting too cranky anymore?
JOHN I like what you posted, it really does speak about our modern reality. I hate it when people are in denial of this and you conveyed well too. God bless you!
I also agree with Cardinal George about spiritual vs religious. Anyone can be “spiritual”, including Satanists. It takes both spirituality and adherence to what one considers God’s Commandments to be religious. That requires a discipline that the other does not.
Anne T good explanation, you did a good job at conveying.
Cardinal George gave a lifetime achievement award to the openly defiant heretic, marxist, liberation theology spouting, ghetto-rant sermonizer Fr. Michael Pfleger.
Well, Hymie, as Jesus said, do as they (the Pharisaic priests) say and not as they do… why do you suppose he honored that priest in such a manner?
Exactly.