Class Notes TH151 2013

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Class Notes TH 151 Synthesis 2nd sem. 2012-13 Dr. Udo Goebel
TH151: THE CATHOLIC COMMITMENT OF TODAYS FILIPINO, A SYNTHESIS

The World of Youth Today: Who are They and What Do They Seek?
By Fr. Tony Anatrella
I. Introduction

a. Interesting to see a snapshot of how people, in this case Fr. Anatrella,
view the current situation of young people
b. Do we agree with this particular assessment, where do we find consent,
disagreement?
c. It is obviously a daunting, if not impossible task, for Father Tony to tell us,
in a rather short paper, who the youth are and what they seek, especially
due the vast cultural diversities, but also the ages of 18-30 seem to
indicate extreme differences
d. However, in a attempt to paint a picture of todays youth, Fr. Tony
Anatrella says, that young people seek authentic relationships, while
having weak point. They are in search for truth, however, when they dont
find it in reality, they tend to search for it within themselves.

II. Who are they?

a. 18 30 years old
b. Search for reasons for once existence seems to be predominatly on the
mind of todays youth
c. Relatively detached from religious concerns
d. Capable of generosity, solidarity, and loyalty
e. Emotional lives display doubts, regarding their sexual identity. Co-
educational system as well as increasing number of divorce complicates
development of healthy relationships
f. Feelings are often more highlighted than reason (knowledge, memory,
reflection)

III. Social context fosters dependence

a. A society that infantilises
i. Young people today are increasingly depended and attached to
persons and things
ii. Desires and expectations are emphasized at the expense of
developing a healthy sense of objective needs
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b. Longer life expectancy
i. Moratorium condition: suspends obligation and responsibility for
young adults
ii. Delay of ending adolescence
iii. Young adult seem to struggle longer to gain independence

c. Shorter childhood longer adolescence
i. Teen couples, earlier cases for sexual intimacy
ii. Young girls, for example, act like earlier like teenagers, i.e. start
wearing make-up earlier

IV. Psychic tasks to be attained

a. Self-confidence
i. Difficult to develop healthy sense of self-confidence
ii. Anxieties and sense of powerlessness in light of their environment
iii. Sense of anti-institutionalism or anti-social attitude may develop
iv. Young person may be very self-centered while external reality is
avoided

b. Relationship to time
i. Rather than seeing themselves connected to the past and future,
they live in the here and now
ii. Going from instant to instant
iii. Temporal immaturity does not allow one the ability to project into
the future
iv. Ordinary time is seen as waiting for special experiences rather than
engaging in life

c. Filling the interior space
i. Hard time filling interior space
ii. Instead looking searching for activities, relationships and noises
(music, TV) to fill the interior space
iii. Lack of concentration and reflection is disturbing
iv. Catechism and objective truths is in danger to be filled with
subjectivism, especially in light of the fact that there exists an
increasing scepticism towards objective revelation of the word of
God
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V. The emotional life of young people

a. The general state of emotions
b. From coeducation to unisex relations
c. Fear of commitment
d. Psychological bisexuality

VI. Youth and new ideological influences

a. Introduction:
i. Decreased trust in political systems and the democratic process
ii. However, growing respect for families, ecological environment,
interest in justice and peace

b. Gender issues
i. Associations with bisexuality, homosexuality, heterosexuality have
changed
ii. Homosexuality is based on individual choice, therefore not subject
to societal expectations and norms, according to the general
perception of young people

c. Subject to market society, i.e. strong influence of marketing, advertising,
etc.

d. Secularism and exclusion of the religious, religion: no, spirituality: yes

e. Youth and Church
i. Confusion between religious and paranormal
ii. Hunger for the spiritual aspects of life, yet no grounding in religious
truths
iii. Attraction to the Pope (John Paul II), in spite of demanding
message. Reason seems to be that Pope John Paul II took young
people serious, he confided in young people

VII. Conclusion

a. Post-adolescents want to enter into life. In spite of a certain cultural,
religious and moral uprooting, they try to find ways of passage because
they have often worked things out for themselves with invasive narcissism
and capriciousness.
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b. The fragility of the self, a temporal vision reduced to the desires of the
moment, to circumstances and to an inwardness limited to psychological
vibes, confines them to individualism. That is why some of them are
anxious about engagement and institutional relations in spite of wishing to
marry and start a family.
c. Young people of the present generation are conducting a silent but
determined religious revolution. They question Christians and are not
afraid to declare themselves as such. They do not want to allow
themselves to be intimidated or obliged to be silent, and even less to be
insulted.

d. In his message on the occasion of the 18
th
World Youth Day in 2003, the
Holy Father reminds us of the role that young people can have: "Humanity
is in urgent need of the witness of free and courageous young people who
dare to go against the tide and proclaim with vigour and enthusiasm their
personal faith in God, Lord and Saviour".

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Who are we as a Church?
Ten Mega-Trends Shaping the Catholic Church
By John Allen, Jr.
(This is only summary of Allens article, no claim to originality)
I. One: The North/South Shift

a. In 1900, there were 459 million Catholics in the world, 392 million of whom
lived in Europe and North America. Christianity 100 years ago remained
an overwhelmingly white, first world phenomenon.
b. By 2000, there were 1.1 billion Catholics, with just 380 million in Europe
and North America, and the rest, 720 million, in the global South. Africa
alone went from 1.9 million Catholics in 1900 to 130 million in 2000, a
growth rate of almost 7,000 percent.

II. Two: Quest for Catholic Identity

a. Then-Cardinal Joseph Ratzinger laid out what he saw as the central
challenge facing the church: a "dictatorship of relativism," meaning the
rejection of objective truth.
b. Like John Paul II before him, Benedict is keenly concerned that Catholics
do not assimilate to this broader secular mentality.

III. Three: The Rise of Islam

a. I was tempted to simply write "Regensburg," and leave it at that. If the
importance of Islam to the church wasn't already clear, the aftermath of
Benedict XVI's Sept. 12 lecture at the University of Regensburg dispelled
any doubt.
b. In the same way that the terrorist attacks of 9/11 put Islam, especially its
radical currents, at the center of global consciousness, the "9/12" of
Regensburg did it for the Catholic Church.
c. As with Communism, attitudes towards Islam are often markers for deeper
options on issues such as the Christian identity of Europe, the limits of
inter-faith dialogue, the nature of missionary efforts, and the fate of
Christians in the Arab world.

IV. Four: The Movements

a. The term "movement" is used loosely (and, in some cases,
imprecisely) to refer to a wide variety of new groups in the 20th
century, primarily composed of laity: Sant'Egidio, the Communion and
Liberation, Opus Dei, L'Arche, Schnstatt, Regnum Christi, and others.
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b. Though they remain niche phenomena, the movements nevertheless
have a high profile due to their passion, their commitment, and the
strong patronage they enjoyed under John Paul II. With their visibility
and reach expanding, they will increasingly set a tone in terms of the
lay apostolate.
c. While communities are good in providing people with a sense of
belonging, there is always the danger of a sense of tribalism

V. Five: The Biotech Revolution

a. Given the dizzying pace of scientific change, Catholicism faces a whole
new series of ethical headaches.
b. What are the limits, for example, to genetic manipulation of human
beings?
c. Which breakthroughs in stem cell research pass doctrinal muster, such as
"altered nuclear transfer"?
d. What about calls for "embryo adoption," meaning allowing women (even
unwed women, or women in same-sex relationships) to bring embryos to
term which would otherwise be destroyed?
e. As science expands its capacity to preserve life, where does the
distinction lie between "ordinary" and "extraordinary" measures, between a
necessary defence of the right to life and a needless prolongation of
suffering?

VI. Six: The Wireless World

a. Once upon a time, the clerical caste held a near-monopoly on catechesis,
faith formation, education essentially, on shaping the Catholic
imagination.
b. That monopoly has been eroded over the centuries by the invention of the
printing press, the rise of a free press in the West.
c. The emergence of internet age has significantly advanced the concept of
this so-called information age
d. This is a significant source of information in relation to the traditional
source and competing for significance

VII. Seven: The Wojtyla Revolution

a. Pope John Paul II was an ad extra pope, more concerned with the
struggle with the outside world
b. Rather than the strong sense of internal unity that had developed after
Vatican II
c. For our purposes, his legacy can be boiled down to a simple formula: end
the navel-gazing, stop tinkering with church teachings and structures, and
get on with evangelizing the world.
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d. Critics would argue that this formula led John Paul to neglect festering
internal problems, and that the sexual abuse crisis, to take one example,
was the legacy of that neglect.

VIII. Eight: Globalization

a. Growing integration of global finance, politics, and culture marks the single
most defining characteristic of our era, creating unparalleled wealth and
opportunity for some, while making the misery of others a permanent
source of outrage and instability.
b. While one billion people enjoy standards of living never before achieved,
another billion people get by on less than $1 a day and some 10 million
children each year die from avoidable, poverty-related illnesses.
c. Those inequities are generating deep concern both for moral and security
reasons, and they tend to engage leaders in the global South in a special
way, given that the losers in the new global game tend to be
predominantly in developing nations.

IX. Nine: Polarization and its Discontents
a. One of the defining features of the post-conciliar era in Roman
Catholicism has been a kind of Catholic tribalism, pitting left against right,
liturgically oriented Catholics against social activists, local churches
against Rome, and so on down the familiar litany of internal fractures.
b. Today's Catholic tribes attend their own conferences, read their own
journals, applaud their own heroes, and have developed their own
languages, so that on the rare occasions when they encounter Catholics
of other perspectives it can actually be difficult to communicate.
c. Yet these divisions are also puzzling and disheartening to many Catholics,
especially those under 40 who were born after Vatican II, and there are
indications of a growing desire for a different way of managing
relationships in the church.

X. Ten: The Sexual Abuse Crisis
a. Though the epicenter of the sexual abuse crisis remains the English-
speaking world, the phenomenon is global.
b. Its toll has been enormous, above all in the United States. It includes
settlements of more than $1 billion and the bankruptcy of, to date, four
American dioceses (Portland, Davenport, Spokane, and Tucson).
c. More deeply, the crisis has badly damaged the church's public image,
caused a loss of confidence in the leadership of the church, injured
relationships between bishops and priests, and made it much more
difficult for good priests to carry out their ministry.

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Timothy Radcliffe, What is the Point of being a Christian?
Introduction:
I. Why be a Christian?

a. Because it is true?
b. Because there are benefits?
c. Do I get something out of it?
d. Does it make a difference?

II. Spiritual Hunger

a. The author notes that there is a growing spiritual hunger especially among
young people today
b. 1999 European Values Study finds growing number of young people
consider themselves religious
c. However, they are more interested in spirituality than doctrine
d. They believe without belonging (Grace Davie)

III. Faith in the Gospel

a. Literal meaning of the gospel: the good news
b. What is the news, and what is good about it?
c. We talk about freedom, love, happiness, but these concepts really
meaningless unless people actually free and courageous
d. Summary of the gospel: 1. Cor. 15:1ff

IV. Purpose of the book

a. Not: trace the special ingredient
b. But: trace aspects of the Christian faith that produces hope
c. To sit askew, as Radcliffe points out on page 4, to be out of line with
culture, to be counter-cultural
d. To not only speak of Gods love, but also to live out Gods love

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V. Chapter Outline

a. Chapter 1: What it means to hope
b. Chapter 2: Christianity invites us to freedom
c. Chapter 3: Christianity invites us to happiness
d. Chapter 4: We require courage and virtue to liberate us and fill us with joy
e. Chapter 5: What does it mean to be bodily
f. Chapter 6: Understanding truthfulness
g. Chapter 7: Believe in the ultimate unity of humanity
h. Chapter 8: How that believe in unity might affect how Christians live
i. Chapter 9: How to heal disunity and polarization
j. Chapter 10: What it means to rest, the Sabbath

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Chapter 1: I will awake the dawn?
I. Intro:

a. Is there a point of being a Christian?
b. Is our life heading in a certain direction?
c. Is our life heading towards an ultimate goal?

II. Pilgrimage

a. Story of the boy and the knight
b. Are we on a pilgrimage?
c. What is our fuel for our pilgrimage?

III. Hope

a. Thomas Aquinas: Hope is for difficult but possible future good
b. Radcliff: We must cherish the pilgrim itch that is in every human being.
c. This natural instinct to go and explore, discover, experience, and live
d. We must go on this journey like the two disciple to Emmaus, even if we at
times start off in wrong direction, or cant recognize the things that ought
to be so clear

IV. Who are we?

a. Discussed earlier
b. Also discuss later with help of the article by Rolheiser

V. Loss of confidence

a. Cultural Pessimism
b. Aids, drugs
c. Loss of meta-narrative
d. Global warming
e. Urban decline
f. Pollution
g. Terrorism
h. Poverty
i. Economic crisis
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VI. Loss of hope

a. Many aspects in society have caused us to a loss of hope
b. I.e. by focusing on naturalism, we have lost focus of the significance of
God
c. Humanism has place the human being, education was seen as the
solution to the human problem, thinking that by eradicating ignorance, evil
could be eliminated from the world: in other words, if we just educate
people properly, bad things would not happen
d. However, the twentieth century has turned out to be completely different
than anticipated
e. It became to be called the century of war

VII. Renew the Christian hope

a. Radcliffe: As Christians we should refuse fatalism and try to achieve the
end of poverty
b. God liberates us from small ambitions so that we may learn to hope more
extravagantly (p. 24)
c. Hope in the young (p. 25): Augustine: God is younger than all else
d. Sign of the Eucharist as a sign of hope
e. Beauty brings hope in the face of death

VIII. Conclusion:
Hope is the thing with feathers
That perches in the soul
And sings the tune without words.
And never stops at all. (Emily Dickinson)

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Narcissism, Pragmatism, Unbridled Restlessness,
and the Non-Contemplative Personality
By Ronald Rolheiser, OMI in The Shattered Lantern (pp. 27-51)
I. Introduction:

a. Jesus said in Matthew 5:8 Blessed are the pure in heart, for they will see
God
b. What keeps us from seeing Jesus?
c. What keeps us from having a pure heart?

II. Narcissism

a. Definition:
i. Narcissus was obsessed with his own beauty
ii. So much so that he turned inward and became paralyzed
iii. Therefore, in psychoanalysis it is called excessive self-
preoccupation

b. Four aspects:

i. The Incapacity to Recognize the Reality of Others

ii. The Yuppie Instinct for the Quality of Life
1. Quality of Life
2. Upward Mobility
3. Pursuit of Excellence
4. Material Comfort
5. Aspects of this have always been true; however, what needs
challenge is the fact that it is tied to an explicit philosophy of
life in which unbridled individualism, selfishness, and
idiosyncratic development are unabashedly held up as
virtues. (Rolheisser, 31)
6. Example: Honorary doctorate for Mother Theresa and Meryl
Streep

iii. The Movement towards Excessive Privacy
1. There is nothing wrong with privacy
2. The problem is the excessiveness

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iv. The Inability to Act Out of a Purpose Beyond the Idiosyncratic
Preference
1. Example of Brian, the businessman who devotes his life to
his career only to come home to an empty home
2. Brian is the norm rather than the exception
3. Many people are preoccupied with their own happiness,
fulfilment, and goals

III. Pragmatism

a. Definition:
i. Pragma: Business
ii. Efficiency, sensibleness, practicality
iii. Truth lies within the practical efficacy
iv. The test of truth is not whether an idea corresponds to the way
things are, but whether an idea has some concrete utility, practical
consequence, or can be used to manipulate the world beneficially

b. Aspects

i. Taking our sense of worth from what we do rather than from who
we are
1. Doing counts for everything, whereas being counts for
nothing
2. The unemployed, the retired, the homemakers are seen with
little value
3. The result is that those who seem unproductive, i.e. the
unborn, handicapped, or elderly have little or no value
4. Abortion, Euthanasia is the result

ii. Having little patience for impractical ideas
1. Education becomes more about learning skills than wisdom
2. Society spends more money researching better material for
tires than to prevent teenage suicide
3. Technology is developing at a staggering rate, whereas the
social fabric of culture is falling apart

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iii. Trusting only the Scientific Method
1. Science alone is given the right to establish facts
2. Personal faith is deemed as purely subjective, personal
preference
3. Thomas Merton when asked what the leading cause for
spiritual disease of our time is, answered that it is efficiency,
pointing to the fact that every ounce of energy is spend on
running everything as efficiently as possible, leaving no
energy for the contemplative aspects of life

IV. Unbridled Restlessness

a. Growing pressures of life

i. Fast paced, fleeting images cause fatigue and burn-out
ii. People cannot enjoy the simple pleasures of life
iii. Rolheisser: restlessness is pushing us beyond what is healthy (p.
43)

b. Four aspects

i. Greed for experience
1. Maybe the rise of extreme sports is an indication for this
growing sense of greed for experience
2. We need to travel everywhere, see everything, we get easily
impatient with the familiar

ii. Impatience and Lack of Chastity
1. What happens if we are stranded at the airport
2. Example: the volcano that shut down most of Europe, people
found all sorts of ways to get home, even if they made it
home only a few hours before schedule
3. Chastity: To experience all things respectfully, and to
experience it when we are ready
4. Example: Today 16 years olds attempt to sail around the
world
5. Children are allowed to watch every sort of movie although
they are not old enough
6. In the US, it is normal for teenagers to get abuse alcohol
7. Premarital sex is only one indication of that
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iii. The Loss of Interiority
1. Socrates: The unexamined life is not worth living
2. We are living such hectic lives that we have no time to rest
3. We are constantly surrounded by noise, always have the
earplugs in our ears, that we have no sense of silence in
order to contemplate and think
4. We are constantly distracted, always multi-tasking, not being
able to concentrate on one thing
5. We drive and text, watch TV and surf the internet, eat and
watch TV (in the US, a person caused a major accident
because he was using two cell phones at the same time
6. People are fulfilling more and more role all at once
7. Example: In the US, the phenomenon of the soccer mom is

V. Conclusion

a. Blessed is the pure at heart, for they shall see God (Matthew 5:8)
b. With a pure heart, we will not only see God, but we will be able to stand
askew the culture trends of narcissism, pragmatism, and this increasing
sense of unbridled restlessness
c. It is only in God that one may find true peace

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Freedom for Excellence
By Servais Pinckaers

I. Introduction
a. What is our concept of freedom?
b. Often we think that freedom is the choice among various options
c. We need to overcome the notion of freedom of indifference
d. Freedom is the ability to choose

II. Examples

a. Learning an instrument
i. First one learn certain rules by performing menial tasks
ii. The rules seem to constrain our freedom
iii. Practice seems to be tedious
iv. Until progress in learning is made until the student is able play not
only with precision but also with originality

b. Learning a language
i. The same is true for learning a language
ii. First, the student performs repetitious task like learning grammar
and memorizing vocabulary
iii. Upon perseverance, the student will slowly be able to articulate
him-, or herself accurately and creatively

c. The example of courage
i. The development of courage is progressive
ii. It is acquired by small victories of self-conquest, repeated day after
day (Pinckaers, 60)
iii. We learn from other peoples examples by wise discipline,
encouragement for personal efforts
iv. It enables us to overcome internal and external obstacles

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III. The Root of Freedom

a. The natural root of freedom develops in us principally through the sense of
the true and the good, of uprightness and love, and through a desire for
knowledge and freedom. (Pinckaers, 61)
b. Freedom is found in the seeds of virtue (semina virtutum) which become
evident in ones sense of justice, courage, truth, friendship, and generosity
c. Rather than limiting our freedom, the virtues are the foundation for
freedom, in essence being able to follow nature (sequi naturam)
d. Therefore, there is a need for education and formation of these moral
values
e. Similar to the previous examples of the person who learns an instrument
or a language

IV. Discipline

a. 3 Stages of education

i. Childhood: stage of discipline, communication of knowledge and
the formation of mind and will within the context of a growing
harmony between discipline and excellence
ii. Adolescence: stage of progress, virtues are formed together with
consistent personal intention to act in accord with excellence
iii. Adulthood: stage of maturity of the perfection of freedom, mastery
of excellent actions and creative fruitfulness

b. 3 Stages of the spiritual life

i. Purgative- soul undergoes purification needed in order that God
may act in it and reveal himself to it
ii. Illuminative- souls ongoing journey in the contemplative life and the
practice of virtues through the Holy Spirits enlightenment and
attraction
iii. Unitive- search for union with Christ expressed in the theme of
spiritual marriage

c. Discipline

i. What is the nature of this discipline
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ii. Originally, discipline refers to the relationship of the student to the
teacher who attempts to impart to the students principles and rules
of science, the arts, morality, and wisdom
iii. Discipline refers to the communication of knowledge in order to
bring about a harmony between the teacher and the student
iv. At first the student may feel limited in his or her freedom
v. However, the goal is not to destroy the students freedom, but
rather to guard him or her against errors

d. The Decalogue

i. The ten commandments express rules and limitations
ii. However, it is also important to stress the they also show the love
of God the resulting love for others
iii. Mark 12:28: One of the teachers of the law came and heard them
debating. Noticing that Jesus had given them a good answer, he
asked him, "Of all the commandments, which is the most
important?" 29 "The most important one," answered Jesus, "is this:
'Hear, O Israel, the Lord our God, the Lord is one. 30 Love the
Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all
our mind and with all your strength.' 31 The second is this: 'Love
your neighbour as yourself.' There is no commandment greater
than these."

e. Beginners in the order of Charity

i. Charity is formed at the beginning stage
ii. The seed of love of God and for other is implanted in our hearts
(Pinckaers, 63)
iii. This needs protection as found in the guidance of the ten
commandments
iv. This may appear to be restricting our freedom
v. This is the first stage described by the mystics as the purgative
stage

V. The Second Stage of Moral Education: Personal Progress and the
Development of Virtue

a. This second stage is comparable to the development to adolescence
b. The basic concepts of right and wrong have been internalized
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c. The rules are understood and the stage is set to embark on developing
responsibility, understanding, and even creativity
d. A habitus, a predisposition is formed
e. The Sermon on the Mount illustrates this stage of persons moral freedom
f. The mystics have described this stage as the illuminative way
g. The souls ongoing journey in the contemplative life and the practice of
virtues through the Holy Spirits enlightenment and attraction. (Pinckaers,
65)

VI. The Third Stage of Moral Education: Maturity of Age and Freedom

a. This last stage is the stage of freedom to maturity, or maturity in freedom
b. It is the stage of adulthood at the moral and spiritual level
c. This stage is described by the mystics as the unitive way
d. The unitive way in being united with God

e. But at the same time finding a unity between two dimensions of live:
i. the desires for oneself
ii. and the openness for others

f. Freedom is developed that allows us to become open to others
i. Fruitfulness: doing good to others
ii. Justice: giving others their due
iii. Friendship: develop relationships
iv. Generosity: giving of oneself for the benefit of others

g. The New Law:
i. Thomistic definition of the New Law
ii. Whose chief element is the grace of the Holy Spirit working within
us through faith and charity, and also to the teaching about the
action of the Holy Spirit through his gifts

VII. Conclusion: The problem of education

a. The process of education should be conjunctive not disjunctive
i. It is not a question of choosing the authoritarian or liberal education
ii. Rather, it should be a harmonizing of freedom and authority

b. It should be a collaboration of
i. Voluntarism and intellectualism
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ii. Reason and will
iii. Freedom and nature
iv. Freedom and grace
v. The Individual and society
vi. The person and the community

Chapter 2: Learning Spontaneity:
I. Introduction

a. The first chapter asked what the point of being a Christian is
b. Radcliffe suggested that being a Christian should make a difference in
ones life
c. Our life should point to Jesus Christ and be focused on God
d. God is the ultimate purpose of our life, the one who gives us meaning
e. At the same time we should hope even in the midst of hopelessness, , or
hope, one should

II. Betrayal

a. Example: Jesus was betrayed by one of his disciples
b. This was the ultimate form of ones loss of freedom
c. Why did Judas betray Jesus?
i. He did not realize the truth of Christs mission
ii. Judas expected Jesus to set up a new government, a new kingdom
iii. Judas was disappointed when Jesus did not seize the opportunity
to overturn the government to set up his own kingdom on earth
iv. The creeping sense of betrayal comes when Judas is unable to say
Jesus name when he talks to the chief priests (What will you give
me if I deliver him to you?)
v. Shows a sense of distance, Jesus becomes a stranger to Judas
vi. Example: Jews in the concentration camps are assigned numbers
instead of names
vii. Judas did not really grasp what he was doing, when he betrays
Jesus, Judas kisses Jesus warmly
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viii. Judas, according to the gospel of Matthew still greets Jesus as a
friend
ix. Judas, who longed for freedom shows by his action the deepest
lack of freedom
x. Part of this slippery slope into betrayal by Judas was his increasing
sense of solitude, but not solitude in a good sense, but rather in the
sense of distance, loneliness, and separateness
xi. Therefore, we need to hold up the mirror of truth, which we can find
in the feedback of the scriptures, friends, etc
xii. This might be painful, but preserves our freedom
III. Choices

a. Jesus is the victim
b. The victim of fear and hatred
c. He puts his live into the hands of others
d. According to Radcliffe, the western world, maybe even the world in
general is a world of an increased sense of victimization
e. People are beginning to feel victimized because of the sense that freedom
has not provided the sense of happiness that they expected
f. However, even in the midst of the perceived or real sense of lack of
freedom, we have choices, choices that expose our perception of our state
of mind, i.e. our perception of being free or not
g. Example:
i. Jew in the concentration camp who stopped washing himself
because the water was dirty
ii. However, another prisoner urged him to continue to wash because
otherwise we are in danger of losing our pride and dignity
h. Although Jesus is betrayed and loses his freedom, in actuality his
practices true freedom on the basis that he himself made the choice
i. Therefore:
i. True freedom is when we do something, like going to Church, living
the Christian life not because we have to or because people make
us feel guilty, but rather because we choose to
ii. We need to remind ourselves that we have, being created in the
image of God, the capacity for the infinite
iii. Although some of our choices are limited, we all have hover among
at least two alternatives

IV. Spontaneity

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a. However, life is not just an endless list of choices
b. As Henry Ford said: just one damn thing after another
c. Morality, and therefore true freedom is about submitting to rules
d. Virtue literally means strength, strength for the journey
e. Becoming virtuous, then, is not about submitting to external constraints. It
is about acting from the very core of ones being (Radcliffe, 42)
f. The virtues are roads to freedom, and our deepest freedom is
spontaneously to do what is good, because it is what we most desire.
(Radcliffe, 43)

g. Therefore
i. Spontaneity is not doing what first comes to our mind
ii. In order to act out true freedom is to be liberated from the wrong
idea of God
iii. We are freed from the idea that God, and the Church exist to make
us feel guilty by always breathing down our neck on what to do and
mostly what not to do
iv. But we choice to live within the constraints because of the choice
that we make
v. This is a choice that we made freely and a choice that is made in
response to the love that God has shown us, and because of the
example that Jesus Christ himself us lived out before our eyes

V. Freedom to give away ones life

a. What is true freedom?
i. Freedom of choice is the most obvious choice of freedom
(Radcliffe, 46)
ii. Spontaneity looks like a loss of choice
iii. But in actuality, authentic spontaneity is true freedom because it
reveals our inner core, our inner desire, as well as our inner
disposition
b. Jesus gives his body, his life in the hands of the disciples
c. At the last supper, he breaks the bread and says:This is my body, broken
for you...
d. Jesus gives away his life so that we may have freedom
e. Examples:
i. Nelson Mandela
ii. Dietrich Bonhoeffer

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Chapter 5: The Body Electric

I. Introduction

a. What is the link between the physical and the spiritual dimensions within
our being?
b. Christianity stresses the fact that we are worshipping God through the
body that God has given us, both body and soul
c. It is through the body that we experience/encounter God
d. Therefore, we need to understand the physical dimension in our lives
e. This will help us to understand spiritual dimensions that result from the
physical or bodily dimensions

II. Links between the Eucharist and sex

a. In the Eucharistic act, Jesus says: Here is my body for you
b. Similarly, in sex, we give our body to the other
c. 2 reasons to understand sex as Eucharistic
i. Society trivializes the body, therefore sex becomes a mere
recreational activity
ii. We see bodies as objects we own, therefore, never really giving it
up to the other

III. The Churchs teaching and sex

24

a. How is the Church to overcome the abyss between her teaching and the
way members of the Church lives?
b. According to the author, when it comes to sex, Catholics do not live
different than other members of society
c. According to Radcliffe, best starting point for understanding our sexuality
is the Lords supper
i. Moment of crisis is also moment to bear fruit
ii. Instead of running away from crisis, we should embrace it

d. Chastity
i. Although chastity is not a fashionable word, it heals our love from
fantasy
ii. Chastity shapes ones life into a coherent story
iii. It helps us to live according to the ordo rationis, according to St.
Thomas Aquinas, the order of reason
iv. What he meant was, the living in accordance with the truth of real
things
v. In other words, living in the reality of who I am and who are the
people that I love.

IV. Living with the power of our sexuality

a. The challenge to live with the power of eros exists
b. This is true for the married, the single, or the celibate
c. Unhealthy forms of fantasy: infatuation and lust
d. However, virtue lies in the middle
e. Reminders:
i. The energy of our eros may find release in our mission
ii. Husband and wifes love may be mutually liberating
iii. Ask yourself, is my love making the other person stronger, or is it
self-seeking

V. How can Christians persevere in a Eucharistic understanding of sexuality?

a. Learning to see peoples faces.
i. The Eucharist and chastity teaches us who are people really
25

ii. It teaches us to see the beauty and pain of people

b. One must learn to be alone
i. I cannot be happy without learning to be content with oneself
ii. Unless I rejoice in who I am, I cannot rejoice with other people

c. Every love may open the space for God to inhabit, rather than competing
for love, we should share it with others and God

d. We live by stories, our hearts need to be feed by alternative stories, i.e.
the stories of the saints

e. We need to pray in ways to remind our bodies who we are
Spirituality of Sexuality
Ronald Rolheiser, OMI, in The Holy Longing (pp. 192- 212)
I. Introduction

a. The energy of sexuality is like a strong fire
b. It can create the greatest of emotions, both positive emotions like love,
joy, spirituality; however, it can also produce strong feelings of hate,
despair, loneliness, etc.
c. Sexuality is such a strong fire, that is at times difficult to channel it into
positive, life-giving forces

II. Toward a Christian Understanding of Sexuality

a. Sexuality as an awareness of having been cut off

i. Secare: Literally to be cut off
ii. This strong feeling is how we wake up to the world
iii. We ache towards relationships, always aware of a certain
incompleteness
iv. This madness is also the catalysts for power energy

b. Sexuality vs. Genitality

i. Often times sexuality is confused with Genitality
ii. Whereas sexuality is the drive for love, communion, community,
friendship, family, affection, wholeness, etc
26

iii. Genitality is the act of having sex, the physical consummation

c. A Christian definition of sexuality

i. It is a sacred energy given to us by God
ii. It is the urge to overcome the incompleteness
iii. Ultimately, it is the desire to find our way back into Eden to become
co-creator with God

d. Non-negotiable Christian Principles

i. For Christians, sex is something sacred
1. It builds the soul as a sacrament
2. At the same time, not used properly, it may disintegrate the
soul
3. Sex is sacramental
4. It is Gods physical touch to us

ii. For Christians, sex must be linked to marriage
1. Sex speaks of total giving, total trust, and total commitment
2. This can only be experienced in a permanent relationship

iii. Sex has a dynamic that will lead its partners to sanctity
1. Since sex is Gods energy within us,
2. It should lead one to a closer relationship to the one we love,
3. But ultimately it should also lead us to a greater love towards
God

iv. Sex needs chastity as a healthy protection
1. Chastity is respect, self-control, purity, patience, reverence
2. All these dimensions are needed in order to enjoy healthy
sexuality within marriage
3. Our culture has lost the sense, and importance, of chastity

III. Living in Inconsummation some Christian perspectives

27

a. The frustration of a livelong unfinished symphony

i. This is true for live
ii. As well as true for ones sexuality
iii. How can live in a incomplete world without allowing this
incompleteness frustrate other or even all aspects of our lives?

b. Some Christian perspectives What do we do until the Messiah returns

i. Understand the time we are living in

1. Realizing that we live in an interim time
2. That the final consummation of our lives and history still lies
ahead of us
3. While the frustration is real, it will one day be overcome

ii. Understand how wide is sexualitys hunger

1. Sexual hunger is not only to be united with another person
2. It is also the frustration of the unfulfilled tension, that we
cannot be completely united with everyone and everything
3. In monogamous relationships we are on the road to embrace
everyone, while in promiscuity, we are on the road to
embrace no one.

iii. Turn our inconsummation into solitude

1. This frustration drives us outward and may make us restless
2. This restlessness needs to be channelled into healthy
dimensions, among them solitude

iv. Sexual Incompleteness as solidarity with the poor

1. Incompleteness may teach us certain limitations
28

2. These limitations may help us to identify with those whose
circumstance is life to not allow them certain privileges
3. Like the poor, the disabled, etc

v. Accept the inadequacy of our love so that its real power can show
through
1. Realizing that one is not complete and will never fully satisfy
the opposite is important
2. Realizing the false romanticism, the unrealistic and
imperialistic that we can have full symphony is mistaken

Chapter 3: The Peaceful Sea:

I. Introduction

a. Joy/happiness, how can one attain both
b. Is it true that it is a betrayal to religion if we exist for our own sake?
c. Is it true that we are not here to enjoy ourselves?
d. Should we live a lifestyle of Puritanism?
e. Happiness not an end itself, but rather with a goal/purpose
f. Happiness should transform us, it should lead us to love God and others
g. Christianity is the good news that God created for us happiness, and
ultimately for the happiness that is God being God

II. How can the Church be the cradle of joy?

a. Because our life is reflected in the celebration of the Christian calendar
b. Advent, Birth of Jesus Christ, Maundy Thursday, Good Friday to
Resurrection Sunday

III. Baptism

a. Mark 1: 9-11 At that time Jesus came from Nazareth in Galilee and was
baptized by John in the Jordan. 10 As Jesus was coming up out of the
water, he saw heaven being torn open and the Spirit descending on him
29

like a dove. 11 And a voice came from heaven: "You are my Son, whom I
love; with you I am well pleased."
b. Delight in Gods love for you: just like God the Father delights in his son,
just the same does God delights/loves us
c. John 3:16 "For God so loved the world that he gave his one and only Son,
that whoever believes in him shall not perish but have eternal life
d. St. Catherine of Siena: Image of God as a bed in which we rest, a
peaceful sea, a divine Jacuzzi
e. How can we find this joy?
f. Note: it seems the author does not really get into this discussion
g. If we have actually found this joy, how do we express this joy? (Dance or
slight twitch of upper lip?)

IV. Celebration

a. Jesus is accused of being a glutton and a drunkard (Matthew 11:19 The
Son of Man came eating and drinking, and they say, 'Here is a glutton and
a drunkard, a friend of tax collectors and "sinners." 'But wisdom is proved
right by her actions.")
b. The first miracle of Jesus in Johns gospel is turning water into wine
c. How does our celebration look like?
d. Do we have reasons to celebrate?
e. Are we truly able to celebrate in light of suffering, sorrow in our own lifes
and in the world around us?

V. The journey to Jerusalem and to the crucifixion

a. Mark 8:31 He then began to teach them that the Son of Man must suffer
many things and be rejected by the elders, chief priests and teachers of
the law, and that he must be killed and after three days rise again.
b. This journey of Jesus points towards the end
c. It marks the beginning of Jesus suffering, ultimately death
d. Jesus goes to Jerusalem to share in our pain and mortality (Radcliffe,
64)
e. Suffering in the world leprosy in Nigeria
f. Numbness of the heart factory work
g. However, sorrow can turn our hearts joyful
h. Romans 5:3 - 4: Not only so, but we also rejoice in our sufferings, because
we know that suffering produces perseverance; perseverance, character;
and character, hope.

30

VI. Death

a. 37 With a loud cry, Jesus breathed his last. 38 The curtain of the temple
was torn in two from top to bottom. 39 And when the centurion, who stood
there in front of Jesus, heard his cry and saw how he died, he said,
"Surely this man was the Son of God!"
b. The sight of Jesus dead face
c. The statue of Ecce Homo in Trafalgar Square
d. The death of Jesus Christ is a scandal in the mind of people; can it really
be true that salvation can be found in that?

VII. Resurrection

a. Mark 16:5-8: "Don't be alarmed," he said. "You are looking for Jesus the
Nazarene, who was crucified. He has risen! He is not here. See the place
where they laid him. 7 But go, tell his disciples and Peter, 'He is going
ahead of you into Galilee. There you will see him, just as he told you.'" 8
Trembling and bewildered, the women went out and fled from the tomb.
They said nothing to anyone, because they were afraid.
b. Note: In most reliable sources the gospel of Mark ends with verse 8
c. Some manuscripts add verses 9 20, however, it seems that these
verses were later added
d. This ending as assumed to be give by Mark is brilliant (according to
Radcliffe, 67)
e. As the ending leaves the reader in suspense
f. It provokes the reader to ask the question
i. Why are they not rejoicing?
ii. Did they not get the message?
iii. Do they have any idea what truly happened?
g. The whole Gospel of Mark leads you toward the joy of the resurrection,
but does not describe it (Radcliffe, 67)

31


A Spirituality of the Paschal Mystery, in The Holy Longing
By Ronald Rolheiser, OMI,
I. Introduction: The timeless issue of suffering and death

a. Is it true that Christianity concerns itself too much with suffering and
death?
b. Freud: Christianity is to blame for the neurotic anxiety of the western soul
c. Does the church really focus on suffering and death in order then to treat
it, to keep busy so to speak
d. In Christian spirituality, Christ is central and, central to Christ, is his death
and rising to new life so as to send us a new Spirit

II. Pattern of the Paschal Mystery

a. Paschal Stories
i. Story of Judith Hearne
1. Wants children and does what is necessary to have them
2. However, she is rejected by a friend
3. As a result she is depressed, goes on a drinking binge
4. Finds rescue in a religious house and finds peace
5. Friend wants to reconcile and get married
6. However, the woman is already content with what she has

ii. Story by John Shea, Stories of Faith
1. Shea tells the story of the boy who cares for his dying father
2. The son tells his father that it is ok to let go and die
32

3. A short time later, the father passes away

b. The paschal Mystery
i. 2 kinds of death: terminal death and paschal death
ii. 2 kinds of life: resuscitated life and the resurrected life
iii. The paschal mystery can be summed up in the following cycle

c. Paschal Mystery cycle
i. Suffering and death
ii. Reception of new life
iii. Time grieving the old while adjusting to the new
iv. Letting go of the old life
v. Receiving new spirit for new life
III. Undergoing various deaths within our fives

a. The Death of our Youth

b. The Death of our Wholeness

c. The Death of our Dreams

d. The Death of our Honeymoon

e. The Death of certain conceptions of God and the Church

IV. Conclusion

a. Let yourself be blessed by your past

b. Let your roots become a blessing rather than a curse

c. Dont find yourself be clinging, because if we cling,
i. We cannot ascend
ii. We will be found clinging to our former self

33


Chapter 6: The Community of Truth
What is the Point of Being a Christian?
By Timothy Radcliffe, OP
I. Introduction

a. Truthfulness is of the essence
b. It is valuable in itself
c. It is not optional
d. It is not circumstantial
e. It is not situational

II. Some statistics
a. 16% of U.S. report that whatever works in their life is the only truth that
they know. (1997)
b. 7% of Americans report that lying is sometimes necessary. (1997)
c. 6% of Americans report that if a cashier gave them too much change by
mistake, they would just let it go. (1997)
d. 35% of Christians vs. 57% non-Christians said that to get by in life these
days, sometimes you have to bend the rules for your own benefit. (1997)
e. 50% of Christians vs. 25% of non-Christians said that there are moral
truths which are unchanging, that truth is not relative to the circumstances.
(1997)
f. All taken from the following website: Barna Research Online,
www.barna.org)

III. Quotes on Truth
34


Tell the truth and then run. Proverb

Rather than love, than money, than fame, give me truth. Henry David
Thoreau (1817-1862) American naturalist, poet and philosopher.

It is easier to perceive error than to find truth, for the former lies on the
surface and is easily seen, while the latter lies in the depth, where few are
willing to search for it. Johann Wolfgang Von Goethe (1749-1832) German
poet, novelist and dramatist.
The TRUTH: It may not lead you to where you thought you were going, but it
will always lead you somewhere better. When ignored, it will eventually show
itself. The closeness of your relationships is directly proportional to the degree
to which you have revealed the truth about yourself. It can be painful.
Unknown Source

If you tell the truth, you don't have to remember anything. Mark Twain (1835-
1910) U.S. humorist, writer, and lecturer.

If you shut up truth and bury it under the ground, it will but grow, and gather to
itself such explosive power that the day it bursts through it will blow up
everything in its way. mile Zola (1840-1902) French novelist, the most
important example of the

Time is precious, but truth is more precious than time. Benjamin Disraeli
(1804-1881) British politician and author.

For here we are not afraid to follow truth wherever it may lead... Thomas
Jefferson (1743-1826) Third president of the United States.

Ye shall know the truth, and the truth shall make you mad. Aldous Huxley
(1894-1963) British author.

Never apologize for showing feeling. When you do so you apologize for truth.
Benjamin Disraeli (1804-1881) British politician and author

IV. Crisis of suspicion

a. General distrust
i. Nowadays, the author argues that we are suspicious of everyone
35

ii. We do not trust politicians
iii. We mistrust doctors
iv. We do not trust the media
v. Even clergy are mistrusted

b. Universal transparency?
i. Some argue that transparency is the answer
ii. It breeds hypocrisy
iii. It breeds evasion and deception
iv. It further undermines the need for truthfulness
c. What is the answer that the Church has to offer?
i. 13 % say that they would lie in order to get a job
ii. 15 % claim that they would not
V. Faith in reason

a. Believe and stand up for reason
i. The author points out that it is kind of paradoxical to point out that
Christians should stand up for reason
ii. According to the author, contemporary society has lost confidence
in reason
iii. Whereas society and academia as a result of the enlightenment
preached reason and abandoned faith
iv. It seems that that society has rejected reason, as Radcliffe argues,
modern Europeans have abandoned questions like:
1. Why is there anything rather than nothing?
2. For what am I made?
3. In what may I find happiness?

b. The case of Pope John Paul II
i. Serve humanity with the truth
ii. Life cannot be build on doubt
iii. Definition of a human being: One who seeks the truth (Radcliffe,
115)

c. The case for reason
i. Society today believes in all sorts of things that are not necessarily
true
1. UFOs
2. Astrology
3. Horoscope
36

4. Tarot

ii. On the other hand, the Church should stand up for what is true
1. The Church be known for standing for the truth
2. As Christians we must teach the truth
3. We must be known as people who stand up for the truth

iii. However, people get nervous
1. When people claim to know the truth, others get suspicious
2. Especially when religious people start talking about truth,
Radcliffe argues, people get nervous
3. Wars of Religion
4. Past untruthfulness
d. The case for truth

i. Camus: Dialogue is only possible between people who remain what
they are, and who speak the truth
ii. Dantes inferno: ice heart of hell reserved for liars, the fraudulent,
the flatterers, the forgers, and the traitors
iii. Salmon Rusdie, Nothing Sacred
1. Grew up kissing bread and books that fell on the floor
2. Developed a healthy respect for both
3. Bread and books: food for the body and food for the soul
what could be more worthy of our respect, and even love
(as quoted by Radcliffe, p. 119)

VI. Beyond suspicion

a. What is truthfulness?
i. Truthfulness is not just the reporting of facts
ii. According to Alasdair MacIntryre argues that facts were invented in
the 17
th
century
iii. Alasdair MacIntryre: From the seventeenth century onwards it was
a commonplace that whereas the scholastics had allowed
themselves to be deceived about the character of the facts by the
natural and social world by imposing an Aristotelian interpretation
between themselves and experience reality, we moderns, that is we
seventeenth- and eighteenth-century moderns had stripped away
interpretation and theory and confronted fact and experience just as
they are. It was precisely in virtue of this that those moderns
37

proclaimed themselves the Enlightenment, and understood the
medieval past by contrast as the Dark Ages. What Aristotle
obscured, they see (After Virtue, London 1981, p.78)
iv. In other words, truth is also about interpreting the facts
v. What are the facts?

b. The doctrine of creation
i. It helps us ground our confidence that we do not live in illusion
ii. Looking a t something as created is not just to see what it is before
your eyes. It is to see what it is made to be (Radcliffe, 127)

A Spirituality of Ecclesiology
By Ronald Rolheiser, OMI in The Holy Longing, (111-140)
I. Introduction
a. What does the Church mean for us today?
b. How can the Church motivate its people to attend Church services?
c. How can we recover a healthy sense of ecclesiology?

II. Present situation
a. The fact is that Church attendance has dropped dramatically over the last
century
b. That is in spite of the so called modernisations that have been done
(vernacular mass)
c. People still identify with the kingdom of God, however, they simply do not
want to go to church
d. They want the Church to be there when they need her, but do not want to
attend
e. They rather play tennis, go jogging, go shopping, etc.

III. Sample statistics on Church attendance
a. Poland 50% (Streich, 2009), Philippines 68%
b. Italy, Germany, Ireland, and France below 20%
c. Paris single digits
d. Sweden membership dropped from 82.9 % in 2000 to 72.9 in 2008,
however, only 23 % believe in a personal God

38

IV. Ways that the Church could be understood

a. How can we explain what the Church is?
i. What actually is this apostolic community that was formed by Jesus
Christ?
ii. By way of via negative, explain what the church is, by describing
what it is not

b. What the Church is not
i. Like-minded individuals
ii. People huddling in fear and loneliness
iii. Family in the psychological sense
iv. One roof, one ethnicity, one denomination, one rule book
v. Shared task, common mission
c. What is the Church
i. Apostolic community
ii. Church as source of consecration
iii. Church as exzemed body of Christ
iv. The Church as the House of many rooms
v. Church as the banquet table

V. Why go to Church
a. It is not good to be alone
b. We may take our rightful place
c. Gods call to the Church
d. To gain realistic picture of oneself
e. Saints before us led by example
f. To carry the burden of others
g. To dream with others
h. To practice for heaven
i. Because we enjoy it, it is heaven on earth

39


Chapter 7: I Am Because We Are
What is the Point of Being a Christian?

I. Introduction
a. We are citizens of the kindgom of God
b. What does it mean?
c. Do we feel like being part of a greater community, the community of God?

II. Examples:
a. The Journey of the Magi by T.S. Eliot
i. Having seen the child, but yet are no longer at ease:
ii. We returned to our places, these kingdoms, but no longer at ease
here, in the old dispensation, With an alien people clutching their
gods. I should be glad of another death.

b. Startrek
i.

III. Narrative of scripture
a. My story: the story of my life
b. Our story: the story of our community, our tribe, our nation, etc.
c. The story: the story of God from Creation to the Kingdom
IV. Learning to say We
a. Thomas Merton on page 141:

40


Images of the Church as Communion

1. The Church as the Body of Christ

I. Corinthians 12: 12-27

12 The body is a unit, though it is made up of many parts; and though all its parts are
many, they form one body. So it is with Christ.
13 For we were all baptized by one Spirit into one body-- whether Jews or Greeks,
slave or free-- and we were all given the one Spirit to drink.
14 Now the body is not made up of one part but of many.
15 If the foot should say, "Because I am not a hand, I do not belong to the body," it
would not for that reason cease to be part of the body.
16 And if the ear should say, "Because I am not an eye, I do not belong to the body," it
would not for that reason cease to be part of the body.
17 If the whole body were an eye, where would the sense of hearing be? If the whole
body were an ear, where would the sense of smell be?
18 But in fact God has arranged the parts in the body, every one of them, just as he
wanted them to be.
19 If they were all one part, where would the body be?
20 As it is, there are many parts, but one body.
21 The eye cannot say to the hand, "I don't need you!" And the head cannot say to the
feet, "I don't need you!"
22 On the contrary, those parts of the body that seem to be weaker are indispensable,
23 and the parts that we think are less honorable we treat with special honor. And the
parts that are unpresentable are treated with special modesty,
24 while our presentable parts need no special treatment. But God has combined the
members of the body and has given greater honor to the parts that lacked it,
25 so that there should be no division in the body, but that its parts should have equal
concern for each other.
26 If one part suffers, every part suffers with it; if one part is honored, every part
rejoices with it.
27 Now you are the body of Christ, and each one of you is a part of it.
Colossians 1:1-29
41

1 Paul, an apostle of Christ Jesus by the will of God, and Timothy our brother,
2 To the holy and faithful brothers in Christ at Colosse: Grace and peace to you from
God our Father.
3 We always thank God, the Father of our Lord Jesus Christ, when we pray for you,
4 because we have heard of your faith in Christ Jesus and of the love you have for all
the saints--
5 the faith and love that spring from the hope that is stored up for you in heaven and
that you have already heard about in the word of truth, the gospel
6 that has come to you. All over the world this gospel is bearing fruit and growing, just
as it has been doing among you since the day you heard it and understood God's grace
in all its truth.
7 You learned it from Epaphras, our dear fellow servant, who is a faithful minister of
Christ on our behalf,
8 and who also told us of your love in the Spirit.
9 For this reason, since the day we heard about you, we have not stopped praying for
you and asking God to fill you with the knowledge of his will through all spiritual wisdom
and understanding.
10 And we pray this in order that you may live a life worthy of the Lord and may please
him in every way: bearing fruit in every good work, growing in the knowledge of God,
11 being strengthened with all power according to his glorious might so that you may
have great endurance and patience, and joyfully
12 giving thanks to the Father, who has qualified you to share in the inheritance of the
saints in the kingdom of light.
13 For he has rescued us from the dominion of darkness and brought us into the
kingdom of the Son he loves,
14 in whom we have redemption, the forgiveness of sins.
15 He is the image of the invisible God, the firstborn over all creation.
16 For by him all things were created: things in heaven and on earth, visible and
invisible, whether thrones or powers or rulers or authorities; all things were created by
him and for him.
17 He is before all things, and in him all things hold together.
18 And he is the head of the body, the church; he is the beginning and the firstborn
from among the dead, so that in everything he might have the supremacy.
19 For God was pleased to have all his fullness dwell in him,
20 and through him to reconcile to himself all things, whether things on earth or things
in heaven, by making peace through his blood, shed on the cross.
21 Once you were alienated from God and were enemies in your minds because of
your evil behavior.
22 But now he has reconciled you by Christ's physical body through death to present
you holy in his sight, without blemish and free from accusation--
23 if you continue in your faith, established and firm, not moved from the hope held out
in the gospel. This is the gospel that you heard and that has been proclaimed to every
creature under heaven, and of which I, Paul, have become a servant.
24 Now I rejoice in what was suffered for you, and I fill up in my flesh what is still
lacking in regard to Christ's afflictions, for the sake of his body, which is the church.
42

25 I have become its servant by the commission God gave me to present to you the
word of God in its fullness--
26 the mystery that has been kept hidden for ages and generations, but is now
disclosed to the saints.
27 To them God has chosen to make known among the Gentiles the glorious riches of
this mystery, which is Christ in you, the hope of glory.
28 We proclaim him, admonishing and teaching everyone with all wisdom, so that we
may present everyone perfect in Christ.
29 To this end I labor, struggling with all his energy, which so powerfully works in me.
Matthew 25:31-46
31 "When the Son of Man comes in his glory, and all the angels with him, he will sit on
his throne in heavenly glory.
32 All the nations will be gathered before him, and he will separate the people one from
another as a shepherd separates the sheep from the goats.
33 He will put the sheep on his right and the goats on his left.
34 "Then the King will say to those on his right, 'Come, you who are blessed by my
Father; take your inheritance, the kingdom prepared for you since the creation of the
world.
35 For I was hungry and you gave me something to eat, I was thirsty and you gave me
something to drink, I was a stranger and you invited me in,
36 I needed clothes and you clothed me, I was sick and you looked after me, I was in
prison and you came to visit me.'
37 "Then the righteous will answer him, 'Lord, when did we see you hungry and feed
you, or thirsty and give you something to drink?
38 When did we see you a stranger and invite you in, or needing clothes and clothe
you?
39 When did we see you sick or in prison and go to visit you?'
40 "The King will reply, 'I tell you the truth, whatever you did for one of the least of
these brothers of mine, you did for me.'
41 "Then he will say to those on his left, 'Depart from me, you who are cursed, into the
eternal fire prepared for the devil and his angels.
42 For I was hungry and you gave me nothing to eat, I was thirsty and you gave me
nothing to drink,
43 I was a stranger and you did not invite me in, I needed clothes and you did not
clothe me, I was sick and in prison and you did not look after me.'
44 "They also will answer, 'Lord, when did we see you hungry or thirsty or a stranger or
needing clothes or sick or in prison, and did not help you?'
45 "He will reply, 'I tell you the truth, whatever you did not do for one of the least of
these, you did not do for me.'
46 "Then they will go away to eternal punishment, but the righteous to eternal life."

43


Acts 3:3-9

3 As he neared Damascus on his journey, suddenly a light from heaven flashed around
him.
4 He fell to the ground and heard a voice say to him, "Saul, Saul, why do you persecute
me?"
5 "Who are you, Lord?" Saul asked. "I am Jesus, whom you are persecuting," he
replied.
6 "Now get up and go into the city, and you will be told what you must do."
7 The men travelling with Saul stood there speechless; they heard the sound but did
not see anyone.
8 Saul got up from the ground, but when he opened his eyes he could see nothing. So
they led him by the hand into Damascus.
9 For three days he was blind, and did not eat or drink anything.

2. The Church as the Bride of Christ

Ephesians 5: 21-33

21 Submit to one another out of reverence for Christ.
22 Wives, submit to your husbands as to the Lord.
23 For the husband is the head of the wife as Christ is the head of the church, his body,
of which he is the Savior.
24 Now as the church submits to Christ, so also wives should submit to their husbands
in everything.
25 Husbands, love your wives, just as Christ loved the church and gave himself up for
her
26 to make her holy, cleansing her by the washing with water through the word,
27 and to present her to himself as a radiant church, without stain or wrinkle or any
other blemish, but holy and blameless.
28 In this same way, husbands ought to love their wives as their own bodies. He who
loves his wife loves himself.
44

29 After all, no one ever hated his own body, but he feeds and cares for it, just as
Christ does the church--
30 for we are members of his body.
31 "For this reason a man will leave his father and mother and be united to his wife,
and the two will become one flesh."
32 This is a profound mystery-- but I am talking about Christ and the church.
33 However, each one of you also must love his wife as he loves himself, and the wife
must respect her husband.

Genesis 2:22

22 Then the LORD God made a woman from the rib he had taken out of the man, and
he brought her to the man

Genesis 1:27

27 So God created man in his own image, in the image of God he created him; male
and female he created them.

John 19:30

30 When he had received the drink, Jesus said, "It is finished." With that, he bowed his
head and gave up his spirit.

Revelations 21:2-3, 9-10

2 I saw the Holy City, the new Jerusalem, coming down out of heaven from God,
prepared as a bride beautifully dressed for her husband.
3 And I heard a loud voice from the throne saying, "Now the dwelling of God is with
men, and he will live with them. They will be his people, and God himself will be with
them and be their God.

9 One of the seven angels who had the seven bowls full of the seven last plagues came
and said to me, "Come, I will show you the bride, the wife of the Lamb."
10 And he carried me away in the Spirit to a mountain great and high, and showed me
the Holy City, Jerusalem, coming down out of heaven from God.

45

Revelations 22:17

17 The Spirit and the bride say, "Come!" And let him who hears say, "Come!" Whoever
is thirsty, let him come; and whoever wishes, let him take the free gift of the water of life.

3. Communion and Mission in the Church

a. Communion

Acts 2:41-47

41 Those who accepted his message were baptized, and about three thousand were
added to their number that day.
42 They devoted themselves to the apostles' teaching and to the fellowship, to the
breaking of bread and to prayer.
43 Everyone was filled with awe, and many wonders and miraculous signs were done
by the apostles.
44 All the believers were together and had everything in common.
45 Selling their possessions and goods, they gave to anyone as he had need.
46 Every day they continued to meet together in the temple courts. They broke bread in
their homes and ate together with glad and sincere hearts,
47 praising God and enjoying the favor of all the people. And the Lord added to their
number daily those who were being saved.

b. Mission

Matthew 28:19-20 (The Great Commission)

19 Therefore go and make disciples of all nations, baptizing them in the name of the
Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit,
20 and teaching them to obey everything I have commanded you. And surely I am with
you always, to the very end of the age."

Romans 14:17-19

17 For the kingdom of God is not a matter of eating and drinking, but of righteousness,
peace and joy in the Holy Spirit,
46

18 because anyone who serves Christ in this way is pleasing to God and approved by
men.
19 Let us therefore make every effort to do what leads to peace and to mutual
edification.

James 1:27

27 Religion that God our Father accepts as pure and faultless is this: to look after
orphans and widows in their distress and to keep oneself from being polluted by the
world.
A Spirituality of Justice and Peacemaking
By Ronald Rolheiser, OMI in The Holy Longing
I. Introduction
a. Act Justly the great imperative
b. What does it mean to act justly?
c. How does justice differ from private charity?

II. What is Christian Social Justice?

a. The parable
i. Everyday a sick person, a dead person, as well as a healthy person
came floating down a river
ii. The local community, beginning to expect this daily routine, began
build an elaborate system to take care of the sick, dead, and
healthy person
iii. However, nobody ever bothered to check examine the cause for
this phenomenon, namely why those bodies came floating down
the river on a daily basis

b. Justice as demanding the transformation of systems
i. To attain justice requires a fundamental transformation of the
system, we need a new world order
ii. Simply put, to change the world in such a way that people want
justice and are willingly willing to live in a way that makes justice
possible requires an appeal to the heart that is so deep, so
universal, and so moral that no person of good conscience can
walk away from it (Radcliffe, p. 174)

III. A biblical foundation for social justice

47

a. The story of creation gives us the foundation of social justice
i. It affirms that all people are created with dignity and equality
ii. The earth and everything in it is created for all people and belongs
to all people equally
iii. All people are co-responsible in helping to protect the dignity of
everybody and everything
iv. The physical earth has rights and needs to be protected

b. Mission for social justice
i. Equality of all people: Gal 3:28: There is neither Jew nor Greek,
slave nor free, male nor female, for you are all one in Christ Jesus.
ii. Live for justice, peace, and joy: Romans 14:17 For the kingdom of
God is not a matter of eating and drinking, but of righteousness,
peace and joy in the Holy Spirit,

IV. Social Justice and the Churches

a. Prior to the Industrial revolution, the Church was more concerned with
private moral justice, focusing on (Radcliffe, p. 177)
i. Monogamy
ii. Sex as linked to marriage and procreation
iii. Mutual respect
iv. Duties of parents and children

b. Since the Industrial revolution, the Church began to focus on such issues
as (Radcliffe, p. 177-78)
i. Exploitation of workers
ii. Urban poverty
iii. Anonymous urban living
iv. Poor living conditions

c. Since then, following issue have been included (Radcliffe, p. 178)
i. Community
ii. Gender
iii. Race
iv. Class
v. Overpopulation
vi. Ecology
vii. Abortion
48

viii. Feminism

V. Nonviolent Peacemaking

a. Our naivet
i. Fighting against the injustices of the world is not easy
ii. Lack of progress is no indication for lack of effort
iii. At times we might be naive toward the challenges one faces

b. The painful truth
i. Our actions for justice themselves often mimic the very violence,
injustice, hardness, and egoism they are trying to challenge
(Radcliffe, p. 180)
ii. Our moral indignation very often leads to the replication of the
behavior that aroused the indignation (Radcliffe, p. 180)

c. A prescription for nonviolence
i. Jesus gives one an example of non-violence
ii. Nonviolent efforts for justice and peace ... do not turn the crowd
against anyone, innocent or guilty. Rather they gently touch that
part of the conscience that is still soft and inviolate, where truth still
rings true and where peace is still a tender longing (Radcliffe, p.
184)

d. A nonviolent God who underwrites justice and peace

VI. Sustaining ourselves for the long haul
a. The struggle for justice can only be won by long term fidelity
b. The struggle against injustice is ultimately not about winning or losing, but
about keeping our fidelity to personal conscience, personal faith, and
personal charity
49

c. In the struggle for justice and peace our true weapons, as Christians, are
not ideology and guns, but lit candles, hope, personal integrity, charity,
and prayer (Radcliffe, p. 189)

VII. A Lords prayer for justice
a. The world lives by the principle of the survival of the fittest
b. However, Gods standard is the survival of the weakest
c. Luke 9:48 Then he (Jesus) said to them, "Whoever welcomes this little
child in my name welcomes me; and whoever welcomes me welcomes the
one who sent me. For he who is least among you all-- he is the greatest."

Chapter 8: Citizens of the Kingdom
Whats the Point of being a Christian?
I. Introduction

a. As Radcliffe says, to be a Catholic is to be citizen of the kingdom
b. Catholic: Kath holon: according to the whole
c. We are part, as Christians, of the universal communion of the kingdom
d. What does it mean to form solidarity, which was a term used in a speech
by Pope John Paul II
e. The essential question is how can we form solidarity without excluding
others?
f. Radcliffe suggests 3 ways to form a sense of belonging
i. Opposition to whatever deforms humanity
ii. Identify false idols in our society
iii. Become open to Gods Word

II. Opposition to whatever deforms humanity

a. Radcliffe names several aspects that deform humanity
b. Ex.: Treatment of indigenous people at the hands of conquistadors
c. The abuses in terms of human rights not only during the holocaust but
also in various parts of the world today
d. Maria Full of Grace: A movie about how women are used as mules to
smuggle drugs
e. The fight against poverty in the world, where approximately 1/6
th
of the
world population lives in extreme poverty
50


III. Identify false idols in our society

a. Limitless desire:
i. We need to develop a healthy sense of temperance as one of the
four cardinal virtues (Thomas Aquinas)
ii. We must develop chastity
iii. In relation to food, drink, sex, clothes, etc.

b. Absolutization of private property
i. Absolute right to property
ii. The unequal distribution of wealth (400 people make more money
than 161 million)
iii. Intellectual property: patents to treat HIV patients
iv. As Christians we must rethink the value and use of property and
wealth

c. Deification of money
i. Money has become the ultimate goal of human striving (Radcliffe,
155)
ii. Money is the means not the end.
iii. How much money is enough? Just a little be more

IV. Become open to Gods Word

a. Nicholas Lash: If I had to find some single phrase by means of which to
indicate the heart and center of the relationship between the world and
God, according to the Christian story, I might well settle for the statement
that we have been made capable of friendship. Capable, that is to say, of
effectively resisting the degradation of relationship into bonds of
ownership and exploitation, dominance and violence and unconcern. (as
quoted by Radcliffe, 158)
b. Therefore, according to Radcliffe, human solidarity is the realization of
our capacity for friendship that crosses all boundaries. ... Christ, the Word
51

made flesh, is the language of Gods friendship that we must learn to
speak (Radcliffe, 158)

Chapter 9: Root Shock
I. Introduction

a. The Churchs difficulty to further unity of humanity because of her own
divisions internally as well as within the Churches
b. Polarization a central problem of the Church
c. What is the root cause for this polarization\

II. Causes for this polarization
a. The enlightenment as one cause
b. Within culture people identify themselves as left and right
c. The same is true in the Church, where people identify themselves
between liberal/progressive and conservative/traditional

III. Various kinds of polarization

a. Political
i. Left vs. right
ii. Liberal vs. conservative
iii. Socialist vs. capitalist

b. Religious
52

i. Augustinian vs. Thomist
ii. Progressive vs. traditionalist
iii. Liberal vs. conservative

c. Radcliffe

i. Kingdom Catholics
1. Represented by periodical Concilium
2. See the Church as advancing the kingdom of God
3. Where can the Church overthrow boundaries between
human beings in society (Radcliffe, 167)
4. Social activism: protest against war, against racism, against
poverty, for ecological concerns, illegal immigrants, etc

ii. Communion Catholics
1. Represented by periodical Communio
2. See the Church as the communion of believers
3. Believe that Church must stand firm in the proclamation of
our faith (Radcliffe, 167)
4. Further the Churchs life of adoration and doxology
(Radcliffe, 168)

IV. Root Shock

a. Introduction
i. Radcliffe that all parties within the Church have experience root
shock
ii. Similar to the urban planning of recent times, people have lost their
roots
iii. They have lost their home, feel dispersed and alienated

b. What is root shock?
i. http://www.rootshock.org/ (Check out the video)
ii. Quote on by page 169 by Thompson Fullilove: Root shock is a
traumatic stress reaction to the destruction of all or part of ones
emotional ecosystem.undermines trust, increases
anxietydestabilizes relationships, destroys social, emotional, and
financial resources, and increases the risk for every kind of stress-
related disease, from depression to heart attack. Root shock leaves
53

people chronically cranky, barking distinctive croaky complaints that
their world was abruptly taken away. Home is where you feel safe
in the dark. (as quoted by Radcliffe, 169)
iii. It has dispersed people away from their home, without the ability to
find their way home
iv. This is true not only in a geographical, societal sense, but also in an
psychological and emotional sense
v. Along with, what Radcliffe calls, the sapping of civil society of the
60s and 70s, in the form of the breakdown of the family, the rise
in teenage pregnancies, the spread of drugs, growing poverty in the
inner city, and secularization (Radcliffe, 171)

V. The symbol of the Lords supper
a. The bread is given to the disciples
b. The cup is also given to them, but is poured out for the many (Radcliffe,
174)
c. John 17:20: Not only for these, but also for those who believe in me
through their word, that they may be one; even as thou, Father, art in me,
and I in thee

VI. Conclusion
a. This polarization should not be seen as division or alienation
b. Rather it should be seen as a healthy sense of dynamism
c. This is a dynamic which is at the heart of being a Roman Catholic
(Radcliffe, 177)
d. But we are also Roman Catholic, which means that we reach out to
universality, eager to be open to the unimaginable diversity of human
cultures and wisdom (Radcliffe, 177)

54


Chapter 10: Breeding Pandas

55


Conclusion
I. Introduction

a.

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