Schmitz_08_29

READINGS, SCREENINGS AND MEANINGS

By Gerald Schmitz

Barron presents Catholicism to embrace with enthusiasm

My younger brother Roger turns 57 tomorrow. For many years he worked with street people and the homeless in Calgary; more recently with disabled adults in Saskatoon. A deeply thoughtful person, he also takes his Catholic faith very seriously. Indeed he lives it every day.
That should be a joyful experience. For too many, the church is not an invitation to joy. Back in February I contrasted Michael Coren’s narrowly dogmatic Why Catholics are Right with Chicago priest Rev. Robert Barron’s magnificent and exuberant Catholicism: A Journey to the Heart of the Faith. It’s my birthday gift to Roger. Anyone can discover in it the joys of being Catholic, without the burden of having always to be right.

Catholicism, which grew out of the documentary scripts for an equally excellent 10-part television series (now available on DVD through the website), locates the essence of “the Catholic thing” in the Incarnation, the “Word became flesh” that, as Barron puts it, “entered into this ordinary world of bodies, this grubby arena of history, this compromised and tear-stained human condition of ours.” Catholicism, which unites the human and the divine in the real flesh-and-blood personhood of Jesus, is a fully alive faith in all senses, not some rigid theoretical or philosophical system or abstract set of convictions. The “catholicity” of the Catholic Church lies in its capacious nature that throughout space and time embraces all the myriad dimensions of the Incarnation — including, of course, the ecclesial, liturgical and sacramental, but also those of theological inquiry, saintly example and artistic expression among others. This Catholicism is truly an ocean of riches.

It is quite astounding that the God-man would be born in a stable, a poor carpenter’s son who began preaching at age 30 with no religious training or authority. The Jesus of the gospels broke all the rules of the righteous co-religionist Jews of his day who were scandalized and threatened by his prophetic voice calling for repentance and the coming of a kingdom “not of this world.” No wonder many who heard him were “amazed and afraid.” The “good news” of salvation from completing his redemptive mission through the cross and resurrection is every bit as provocative and challenging today as it was then.

As Barron observes, “wherever they’ve been heard, the words of Jesus have proved fascinating, disorienting, sometimes confounding, deeply transformative and always unforgettable.” The happiness from taking up our cross and following him is that promised by the Beatitudes of the Sermon on the Mount. The Christian way is one of non-violent action for love of God and neighbour. (Barron gives the example of the Catholic Worker Movement founded by Dorothy Day and Peter Maurin.) The Christian God, as ultimate “ground of the world’s existence and intelligibility” — in that sense a foundation for science rather than its foe — is “both radically immanent and radically transcendent.”

Barron embeds the story of the Holy Family and the role of Mary in art and architecture. He sees the doctrines of the Immaculate Conception and the Assumption, although only proclaimed in 1854 and 1950, as confirming Catholicism’s long-held emphasis on the physicality of the Incarnation alongside the transfiguration of human existence through Christ. Moreover, in the Marian apparitions, notably of Guadalupe, Fatima and Lourdes, she appears to the humblest persons, reflecting the Magnificat’s praise of God who “has thrown down the rulers from their thrones and lifted up the lowly.”

Moving on to the “indispensable” apostles Saints Peter and Paul and the irresistible summons of Jesus, Barron has a gift for retelling familiar narratives in a compelling, enlightening way that speaks to us in fresh, bracingly contemporary terms. The Petrine foundations of the church (by one who once denied Jesus) and the Pauline ministry of evangelization to the world (by a convert who once persecuted Christians) are given dramatic force. There’s nothing lukewarm about this gospel of faith, hope and, above all, love: “authentic Christian proclamation is as subversive and explosive as the earthquake that shook the prison walls in Philippi.” This witness to the risen Christ is what sustains the communion of a “holy Catholic and apostolic church” throughout the ages. As history shows, it hardly means a church without human error.

Rather, “the holiness of the church comes from Christ and therefore endures despite the weakness of those who are charged with bearing it to the world.”

Non-Catholic Christian churches are not criticized for being wrong; indeed they have their own strengths. However, Barron argues that they are less “catholic” in a holistic sense, less complete. As for non-Christian faiths, they are not excluded from participating in the universality of Christ’s salvation. Many, to varying degrees, have points of contact with Christian belief that “are not only semina verbi (seeds of the word) but also semina catholicitatis (seeds of catholicicity).” Barron doesn’t shy away from the controversial doctrine of papal infallibility, so often a stumbling block because misunderstood. Popes are certainly not above sin or criticism. But to successors of Peter are given Jesus’ guarantee to be guided by the Holy Spirit on the most essential matters of faith and morals.

As with the eucharistic mystery of changing bread and wine into the body and blood of Christ, these can be hard teachings to accept.

Thankfully Barron avoids the aggressively righteous tone of the Coren book. Instead his commentary is joyous and life-affirming. I have never read a more brilliant elucidation of the mass as communal celebration, with the real, true, substantial presence of Christ in the bread and wine as a “sacramental extension of the Incarnation across space and time.”

Using easily understood analogies to point to a deeper reality beyond appearance, Barron shows how in receiving the Word of God made flesh and blood — what has been transformed into the divine presence — we are transformed in order to go forth to transform the world through acts of love.

The later chapters contain wonderful reflections on the lives of the saints whom Barron calls a “vast company of witnesses.” He focuses on four exceptional women: Thérèse of Lisieux, Mother Teresa of Calcutta, and two lesser known figures — American Katharine Drexel who founded the Sisters of the Blessed Sacrament, and Edith Stein, a Carmelite who perished in Auschwitz. (Canadians might want to look to Marguerite Bourgeoys, our first female saint who established the Congregation of Notre Dame, or Kateri Tekakwitha, who will be our first Aboriginal saint when canonized this October.) Barron also relates the remarkable story of Thomas Merton, an atheist libertine intellectual before he became a Trappist monk and spiritual mentor to many, renowned for his profound prayer life and contemplation of the divine centre of all things.

In chapter 10 on the last things of a “world without end,” Barron again employs helpful analogies to describe hell as a metaphor for refusing God’s love (though the gift of salvation, “God’s amazing grace,” is always and everywhere available); purgatory as a purifying, “necessarily painful training in the way of love”; finally, heaven as “love in the fullest sense, love completed (. . .) where everything that is not love has been burned away and hence heaven is the fulfilment of the deepest longing of the human heart.”

Some may take Barron to task for not devoting sufficient attention to the current sexual abuse scandal and other church failings, for centring on Roman Catholicism rather than the Eastern rites, or for not addressing this or that specific issue from a faith perspective (abortion, capital punishment, global poverty, you name it). But that misses its purpose, which is to provide an inspirational presentation of “how God uses Catholicism to utter his Word,” one not intended to be an apology, a political agenda or a manifesto presuming to have all the right answers. In that it is an extraordinary achievement.

Be sure to check out its multimedia invitation to a living and loving faith — through print, television, radio, the moving image, music, blogs, online forums, even twitter at www.catholicismseries.com as well as www.wordonfire.org (where the full DVD series and soundtrack is available for US$99 through Sept. 5).

Schmitz is an ambassador member of the Canadian Film Institute.