Living the Faith in the 21st Century

Dear CIOT Participants,

After a summer hiatus-and a one-week delay owing to Labor Day-I am delighted that we'll begin our monthly meetings again soon. As usual, I've cobbled together some items that I've found useful on the internet, and included some other documents that you may download and read as well. Also, as usual, I've been given some help from Sister Pat Hall, for which I should express my thanks here and now.

Last December we came up with a list of topics which, in hindsight, now seems to reflect that fact that another important election day is upon us. The next three months all include topics vital to the question of being a Catholic in today's towns, countries, and world. For September we have chosen "Living the Faith in the 21st Century," a loose title that threatens to take in any and all issues confronting Catholic voters this November. Next month we'll handle questions of science and the faith (e.g., stem cell research, evolution), and in November the topic will be "Theology and Public Policy." For this reason, I've avoided anything smacking of "science" this month, with the exception of environmental issues. And I've put off anything relating to specific, hot-button ballot issues until November.

What I have selected is, rather, some general themes that confront American Catholics when they ask, "What does it mean to be a Catholic in today's world, and how can I live my faith in this world?" First and foremost, there has been a transition in Catholicism. We are no longer a religion that solely emphasizes the kind of personal and collective piety often content to keep its eye fixed inward. For over a century popes, conferences of bishops, and lay leaders have insisted that the world itself is sacred and holy, that the Gospel needs to permeate our lives and our relations with and in the world. Put another way: We are taught that our faith should not lead us to reject the world, but to immerse ourselves in it and the issues that confront it. As such, living the faith in the 21st century requires that we ask hard questions about social justice, consumerism, the environment, economics, politics, and science just to name a few. I hope some of the readings below are a useful basis for our discussion.

Looking forward to seeing you on Monday evening!

Yours in Christ,
John

Living as a Catholic Today: Some Brief Overviews

Ex cathedra as Archbishop of Milwaukee, in 1999 Rembert G. Weakland, O.S.B. wrote an short but informative piece for Catholic Update, Being Truly Catholic Today, in which he urges us to adopt a universal mentality and answer the Gospel's call to holiness and healing.

There is another piece from Catholic Update, Many Styles One Spirit, that provides a brief and historical approach to the idea of Catholicism as a religion of one faith and yet many forms or styles ranging from traditional piety and contemplation to the social gospel. Its author, Michael D. Guinan, O.F.M., argues that just as people are unique, so their calls to spirituality are unique as well.

Catholic Social Teaching

To suggest that this is only a recent topic on the Catholic agenda would ignore 1900 years of history. But with the industrial revolution and modernization, not to mention the rise of nation-states and capitalism, new problems arose that have continued to influence discussions of Catholic social ethics since the 1850s. From this perspective, modern Catholic social teaching begin with Leo XIII (1891): Novarum Rerum (On the Condition of the Working Classes).

With Novarum Rerum Leo XIII became the first pope to issue a comprehensive decree on Catholic teaching as it pertains to the relations between capitalism and social justice, employers and their workers, industrialization, the distribution of wealth, and labor unions. Like many papal pronouncements, it is not a brief document. Nevertheless its main tenants have been repeated ever since, from the Second Vatican Council through the tenure of John Paul II and now, with his successor, Benedict XVI.

Here are two convenient presentations of modern Catholic social teachings in summary form:

• Catholic Update's piece on Catholic Social Teachings by Kenneth R. Overberg, S.J., from 1990 (anticipating the 100-year anniversary of Novarum Rerum):
• There is a very useful and brief summary on the website of U.S. Catholic magazine called The Busy Christian's Guide to Catholic Social Teaching. It gives the highlights and contexts for each of the major papal or conciliar pronouncements beginning with Leo XIII's Novarum Rerum. To the left of the summaries one will also find a useful timeline that follows the chronology of these pronouncements and lists important historical contexts like the invention of the steam engine etc.

The Christian and Issues of the Environment

U.S. Catholic interviewed prominent scientist and philosopher Kristin Schrader-Frechette this summer over the issues of Christianity and the environment, or more specifically, over how issues impacting the environmental debate extend into discussions of social justice, economics, etc. in The Sky is Falling. No, really, U.S. Catholic 71,4 (April 2006), 18-23.

The retired Harvard biologist Edward O. Wilson, winner of the National Medal of Science and two Pulitzer Prizes, has written a letter to an imagined Southern Baptist pastor - by which he means the larger Christian (or at least evangelical) community in America. In it he confronts the issues facing the caretakers of the world, i.e., those who feel appointed to do so by God just as much as those who feel left to do so by natural selection or luck. (The New Republic online release 8-28-06; TNR hardcopy issue date 9-4-06).