LIVING THE YEAR OF FAITH Some thoughts on the Christian vocation

+Charles J. Chaput, O.F.M. Cap. Archbishop of Philadelphia Los Angeles Prayer Breakfast; September 18, 2012

Writing in about the year 116, the pagan historian Tacitus described a fringe group of religious blasphemers who lived in Rome under the emperor Nero. They refused to honor the gods. They engaged in superstitious abominations and worshipped a crucified criminal. They were blamed for Romes great fire in A.D. 64, and as a result, they were hunted down and put to death.

Three hundred years later, they were the official religion of the Roman state. Numbers can be misleading. Theyre never the best way to measure the health of the Christian faith. The Church in Romes catacombs was small. But she was stronger than any of her critics or persecutors. And thats as true today as it was in the time of Tacitus. A century ago, subSaharan Africa had fewer than 2 million Christians. Today it has more than 130 million. Thats a growth rate of nearly 7,000 percent. We live in a supposedly post-Christian age, a time when 70 percent of the people across the globe live in countries with restrictions on religious freedom. But Christianity is alive, vigorous and growing rapidly across the entire Southern Hemisphere arguably faster than any other religion in the world, including Islam.

Thats the good news. Of course, theres another side to history. In A.D. 600, the Mediterranean world had hundreds of thriving Christian communities. Around that time, two Greek monks, John Moschos and Sophronius, began a pilgrimage. They went to Egypt, Jerusalem and around the great Middle East heartland of Christianity. They wrote a journal called The Spiritual Meadow. A best seller in its day, and still a Christian classic, it was a kind of spiritual travelogue -- a record of the wisdom, visions and stories from the historic center of the Christian faith. John Moschos died in the year 619, unaware of an obscure Arab holy man named Mohammed. Within a hundred years, Muslim armies had overrun and conquered all of the Middle East, North Africa and most of Spain. Today, the an-

cient Christian communities in Afghanistan are dead and forgotten. St Augustines diocese of Hippo is now a Muslim town in Algeria. In Iraq, Saddam Husseins hometown of Tikrit was once a center of Christian scholarship. In the birthplace of Christianity, after centuries under Islam, Christian minorities face discrimination and often violence, and they barely manage to survive. Heres my point. Jesus said the gates of hell would never prevail against his Church, and his word is good. But he didnt promise anything about our local real estate and institutions. The Canadian scholar Douglas Farrow once wrote that St. Peter will have his successors until the Lord comes, but his successors may not always have St. Peters. In other words, God is faithful -- but he makes no guarantees about infrastructure or the status quo or even our next breath.

The task of preaching, teaching, growing and living the Catholic faith in our time, in this country, belongs to you and me. No one else can do it. Ive thought a lot about these things over the past year. The Church in Philadelphia is one of the great icons of the American Catholic experience. We have two saints, a huge array of charitable outreach efforts and a very rich legacy of shaping leaders not just for the Church but also for the nation. On the surface, many of our vital signs seem impressive. As bishop, I serve about 1.5 million Pennsylvania Catholics. We have 267 parishes; more than 600 diocesan priests and deacons; and some 3,000 religious sisters, priests and brothers. We have a beautiful cathedral and seminary. We have 17 high schools, more than

120 elementary schools, 13 colleges or universities, six shrines, and a variety of hospitals, hospices and nursing homes. Like the Church here in Los Angeles, the Church in Philadelphia is big, complex and historic -- and also troubled. Some of our problems are obvious: a clergy abuse crisis; demographic changes; years of deficit spending and unrealistic financial management; a decline in priestly vocations; and schools and parishes that are struggling. Fewer than 20 percent of Philadelphia Catholics attend Mass on any given Sunday. Even fewer seek out confession. Infant baptisms have dropped 13 percent over the last five years. Marriages in Church are down 20 percent over that same period. These data will vary from diocese to diocese. The Church in America is much healthier in

some areas than in others. I could give a different and much happier talk about new apostolic movements that are happening all over the country. Catholics in Philadelphia feel especially wounded because of the long and very bitter nature of our local abuse issues. But the fact remains that roughly 10 percent of Americans describe themselves as ex-Catholics. If they all joined together in a new Church of the Formerly Catholic, theyd be the second largest denomination in the country. Thats our reality as disciples. Thats the debris of failure we need to deal with if we want to repair Gods house. Again and again in Scripture, Israels revival inevitably begins with repentance, grief over sins, and praise for Gods faithfulness. This repentance is an act of hope, because it insists that a

return to flourishing life is possible. But there are no shortcuts the road to renewal, from Egypt through the Red Sea, from Babylon back to Jerusalem, whether then or now, passes through humility and confession for ancient Israel, and for us. Pope Benedict gave us a roadmap for the kind of renewal we need in his 2011 apostolic letter, Porta Fidei. And now -- in just a few weeks, on October 11 -- Benedict will help us embark on what hes called the year of faith. Porta Fidei translates in English as Door of Faith, and Benedicts year of faith is tied very closely to the 50th anniversary of the opening of Vatican II and the 20th anniversary of the Catechism of the Catholic Church. The year of faith will mark these anniversaries with a worldwide program of worship, catechesis and evangeliza-

tion lasting until November 24, 2013, the Solemnity of Christ the King. In his letter, Benedict notes that in the past, Western Christians lived in a more or less unified culture, a culture that broadly accepted the values of Christian belief. But today, due to a profound crisis of faith impacting millions of people, the unity of the past has collapsed. Morally, we live in chaotic times. In such a climate, its very easy for people to develop habits that undermine virtue, character and moral judgment. Its hard to reach a moral consensus when a culture cant agree on even the most basic standards of right and wrong. As a result, for individuals, todays conditions of daily life are often isolating and even frightening. The Popes answer to this crisis doesnt scold the culture. Instead he turns to us, to the Church.

The Church in the modern era may seem like a stranger in a foreign land, alienated from and often scorned by contemporary society. But for Benedict, the burden of action falls on each of us as believers to rediscover [Gods] joy, to radiate [Gods] word, and to make our Christian witness frank and contagious.x Now those are wonderful words, but how do we actually live them? We need to begin by realizing that were not being asked to do the impossible only the uncomfortable and inconvenient. Benedict is asking us to prepare ourselves to receive a blessing -- the simplest and the hardest thing in the world. Hes asking us to examine our hearts and our habits of life without excuses or alibis. Hes asking us to tear down the cathedral we build to ourselves, the whole interior architecture of our vanities, our resentments and

our endless appetites, and to channel all the restless fears and longings of modern life into a hunger for the Holy Spirit. If you think that sounds easy or pious, try it for a week. In every generation, so many Christians wish we could get back to the purity of the early Church, and of course that seems like an admirable goal. But the Church has never been pristine. Shes never been without scandals and sinners, apostates and critics and persecutors. St. Paul was run out of town more than once; he was rejected by his brothers more than once; and when he writes his Epistle to the Ephesians, hes writing from a jail cell. We need to discipline ourselves to be ready for Gods grace. If our hearts are cold, if our minds are closed, if our spirits are fat and acquisitive, curled up on a pile of our possessions, then the

Church in this country will die. Its happened before in other times and places, and it can happen here. We cant change the world by ourselves. And we cant reinvent the Church. But we can help God change us. We can live our faith with zeal and conviction and then God will take care of the rest. Benedicts letter has some concrete suggestions for the year of faith that deserve our close attention. Three of them stand out: First, the Holy Father urges parishes and other church groups to study the Creed and the Catechism. The Creed is the definition of who we are. Its a fundamental declaration of Catholic faith, identity and belonging. Sound doctrine matters. Its vitally important because what Christians believe is the glue to our unity. Right doctrine reorients our lives away from the idola-

tries of individualism and greed, and points us toward Jesus Christ. Second, the Pope asks us to intensify [our] witness of charity. Using the same passage in James that we heard at Sunday Mass just two days ago, the Pope stresses that faith and charity depend on one another, and that faith without charity bears no fruit. Faith gives us new eyes. In faith, we not only see Jesus in the least of those among us the poor and so many others who need our help and our love -- but we also understand ourselves in a new light. Modern life catechizes us in selfishness. Real faith subverts that lie. It makes us fully human by helping us see others through Gods eyes. It makes a communion of unique and unrepeatable persons possible. Charity seals that living communion in love and service to others. Acts of

charity and hospitality not only help our neighbor in a material way; theyre also a type of selfcatechesis, imprinting on our souls the things we claim to believe with our words. Third and finally, Benedict urges us to do something that should resonate very deeply with the Church in the United States. During the year of faith, he says, its of decisive importance, that we study the history of our faith and see the way in which holiness and sin are so often woven together. The clergy scandal of the past decade has wounded victims and their families, damaged the faith of our laypeople, hurt many good priests and found too many American bishops guilty of failures in leadership that resulted in bitter suffering for innocent persons. As a bishop I repent and apologize for that failure and I

commit myself as zealously as I can to do the work a good bishop must do, which is shepherding and protecting his people. But if the truth makes us free, and Jesus promises that it does, then we need to be honest with each other about a lot more than the clergy scandal. Henri de Lubac, the great Jesuit theologian, once said that when the world insinuates itself into the heart of the Church, the Church becomes worse than the world -- not just a caricature of the world, but the world in greater mediocrity and even greater ugliness. Catholics have spent the last hundred years pushing our way into the American mainstream. And at the end of it, the world has pushed its way into the Church. Were just like everyone else -- and at a very high cost. America in some ways seems no different and no better than if the

Catholic Church had a tenth of her official numbers. Roughly 80 percent of Americans claim to be Christians. More than 60 million of them claim to be Catholics. The Gospel we all claim to believe warns us that we cant serve two masters. We cant love both God and Mammon. And yet the entire fabric of American advertising and consumer life argues exactly the opposite -- that yes, we can serve two masters, and yes, were already doing it. Real faith the kind our Holy Father calls us to -- demands that we seek out who Jesus Christ really is, and what he asks from each of us as disciples. And that always involves the cross. Father John Hugo, a friend and counselor to Dorothy Day, once wrote that the real Jesus did not hesitate to condemn the rich, to warn the powerful, to denounce in vehement language the

very leaders of the people. [Christs] love and goodness were chiefly for the poor, the simple, the needy. And his love for them was not a limp, indulgent love, like that of a silly, frivolous mother. To his friends he preached poverty of spirit, detachment, the carrying the cross. No more did the kindness of Jesus spare his followers, than the kindness of God the father spared his son. [And] we are to drink of the same chalice that he drank of. Does that sound anything like the actual tone of Catholic life in our country today? I suspect not. Yet thats the life of honesty, holiness, heroism and sacrifice that God asks from all of us as a Church and each of us as individual believers in the coming year of faith. In our eagerness to escape the Christian vocation of radical love, to tame it and reshape it in

the mold of our own comfort and willful ideas, weve failed not only to convert our culture, but also to pass along the faith to many of our own children. And that should make us very uneasy, because each of us every bishop and every layperson at every level of the Church, including all of us here today will need to make an accounting to God for the life weve been given, and how much of it weve used in service to the poor and suffering among us. But we can begin again. Human beings make history, not the other way around. God is love; a God of life and deliverance and joy. His mercy endures forever. He made us to be happy with him; to be loved by him; and to bring others to know his love. Thats the glory of being alive. Thats the grandeur of being a disciple of Jesus Christ.

The task of preaching and teaching, growing and living the Catholic faith in our time, in this country, belongs to you and me. No one else can do it. The future depends on God, but he builds it with the living stones we give him by the example of our lives. So today, tomorrow, and in the coming year of faith, we need to remember the words of the Epistle of James: Be doers of [Gods] word and not hearers only, deceiving yourselves (Jas 1:22). We live for the glory of God, and we prove it in the love we show to each other.