I Don't Like Youth "Ministry"

I don't like youth ministry. Maybe its due to my non-conformist tendencies (a weakness). Maybe I'm playing a semantics game. Or maybe I'm crafting a straw man. But I don't have much written for this Tuesday, so allow me to just rant and externally process.

I think inherent in the culture of youth ministry over the past decade or two is a noble sense that our kids are lost and the Church needs to work harder to save them. Some very effective and dynamic approaches have developed and I believe they have done a lot of good.

But now a generation of home-grown youth from Lifeteen-esque programs are going to college and growing up. As youth ministers and lay evangelists in the Church, we are all struggling with this sneaking suspicion that our youth aren't staying Catholic. I don't know the statistics. I'm not critiquing Lifeteen or  any method or approach per se.

But I think if I were honest with myself (a youth minister) and everyone else, I would say that I don't really like youth ministry. I don't think it should exist. At least not as a "ministry".

When most Catholics use the word "ministry" they mean a service of help provided by the Church to a particular group of people. Divorced ministry. Homeless ministry. Campus ministry. Young Adult ministry. Youth ministry. Pastoral ministry.

I've been starting to feel that our Churches don't need that much youth ministry. If youth ministry is a means by which the Church tries to evangelize and serve her youth, then it makes sense to have a youth ministry. But what happens once a teen is evangelized? Where does a teen go? Back to the youth ministry?

I don't think Churches need youth ministry. I think our Church needs youth. And therefore we don't need a youth ministry as an end to itself, we need a youthful Church.

The youth have a Church. Its their parent's Church. And its their grandparent's Church. And its your Church. Youth Ministry is what reaches outside the Church to youth, but it should be more like a bus station than a home.

Three years ago I started calling our youth ministry in Toledo the "St. Patricks Young Church Movement". Or just "St. Pat's Young Church". I moved to Texas where the youth ministry took on the same name. St. Francis Young Church. Youth Minister friends started calling asking if they could use the name too. Our goal is to lead teens closer to Christ and his Church through community, worship, and discipleship. It's all based on Acts 2. Preach the Gospel, ask youth to repent and join Jesus and His Church, and then BE Church - community (the Christian life), worship (the sacraments) and discipleship (the creed and prayer of a Christian). When youth show up to our "events" I want them to fall in love with a different way of life offered by the Church, not a ministry.

It might seem trite and like straining gnats, but for me it represented a shift in my focus, purpose, and "ministry".

The goal of "youth ministry" is not to get kids to be involved in youth ministry. The goal of youth ministry is to get kids to fall in love with Christ and become part of His Church.

No one wants to live in a hospital. No one wants to just perpetually fix themselves.

To me it seemed like I was inviting kids to come get fixed, and become a part of a group of people who are all about fixing people.

"Hey, you! You should come to my "fixing kids" night. It's every Sunday night. It's a group and community all focused on fixing kids and bringing them to Christ. Once you've found Jesus, you can then keep coming back to a group trying to get kids to find Jesus."

I started feeling like the end goal of everything was ministering to youth. But perpetually ministering is not the goal. The goal is connecting young people to the Church, not to a ministry of the Church. The goal is for the young people of our Church to BE Church.

Maybe this is why we are all struggling with the kid who graduated from high school three years ago and still only feels fed and close to God in the youth ministry. They are the lifelong core members.

The first converts to Catholicism in Acts 2 devoted themselves to the teaching of the Apostles, the breaking of bread, the community of disciples, and prayer. Is our ministry reaching out and helping youth devote themselves to our Church's life of creed, sacraments, morality, and prayer? The early Church evangelized very powerfully through their daily witness of living as Church.

Should't every Church have a ministry that is focused first on "ministering" and then on mobilizing the young people to be part of their Church? Shouldn't I as a youth minister be a little more concerned with carving out a place for youth to BE Church at our Parish? A Church does youth ministry when a kid goes to Mass. A Church does youth ministry when a kid goes to Confession. A Church does youth ministry when a kid serves as a Eucharistic minister, or altar server, or in the food pantry, or as a Lector.

Youth ministry in its current form is a bandaid because parents don't know how to evangelize their kids. Most parents don't know the faith. Most parents don't know Jesus. But parents are the primary catechists and the first heralds of the Gospel in a child's life. The more we help youth be the young Church, the more our Church will evangelize without the help of our youth "ministry". And the more our youth will grow up and do the same to their kids - connect them to Jesus and His Church.

The more we make youth "ministry" obsolete and unnecessary the more we do our job as youth ministers. The more we empower people to be Church, the more families will evangelize their kids, and the more kids will become part of the Church, and not ministry.

The Marriage of the Head and the Heart

We sat every Sunday morning in that hot master-bedroom-turned-classroom of an old cinderblock house on Church property. It seemed to flow in and out of the dead leaves and sticks and palmettos and low hanging spanish moss like a stereotypical Florida home built in the 70’s. Brown and tan and empty and rotting and weirdly nostalgic and safe. Like visiting your friend’s granny. Regardless, we definitely dragged our feet in the rocks after Mass as we walked from the Church to the house where CCD took place. The room always smelled like granny was hiding in a closet sniffing pinesol. All the metal chairs in the hot but otherwise empty room faced the front and therefore so did all 18 of us sweaty 9th graders. This is catechesis in 2003 in Valrico, Florida. It was my freshman year of high school. If you’re reading this, chances are you too can harken back to that classroom where you stared at the back of Melissa’s head wondering what a Mexican wedding would look like. You might still remember the strange endearing sympathy you felt as your volunteer catechists stood at a half-broken formica table and tried to hold the attention of a room full of your hormonal freshman peers raised on Pokemon, Adult Swim, and iPods.

Let’s be honest: those Sadlier religious-ed books were out-gunned from the beginning.

To this day I still wonder how I ended up willing to (or at least praying that I would be willing to) die for the things those volunteers spoke about in that room. I remember telling my friend Darryl to say “transubstantiation” to throw the teacher off. The Catholic faith was another chunk of information I could wield to stroke my ego just like the (little) philosophy, martial arts, and LOTR information I possessed.

Somewhere during senior year of high school or freshman year of college I bumped directly into Jesus for the first time, andthen quickly tried to ignore Him by burying myself in self-aggrandizing information gluttony. Its a lot more comfortable to follow Jesus if you feel like you’re an expert in Jesus-knowledge. I learned about typology and colored salvation history timelines. I could recite - from memory - Jeff Cavin’s hour long talk from the audio CD “I’m Not Being Fed”. But I made sure to never look up from the information directly into the eyes of Christ. It was like a relationship that only existed on Facebook.

I find it sad that to this day too many people believe there is a strong dichotomy between Catholic doctrine and a transformational relationship with a personal God. I’ve been guilty of this most of my life. Many times I’ve been running from one extreme to the other. I’ve either hidden in my head from my heart’s need for Jesus, or headlessly chased Jesus around with my heart.

“The principal task entrusted to the Council by Pope John XXIII was to guard and present better the precious deposit of Christian doctrine in order to make it more accessible to the Christian faithful and to all people of good will.”

Do you know what Pope St. John XXIII believed the principle task of Vatican II was? What he really wanted to accomplish with all that Church window opening? “To guard and present better the precious deposit of faith”. Catholics who are deep in the evangelization frenzy, steeped in Catholic meditations on beauty, or armed to the teeth with apologetics tracts might hear this as a sad trombone.

And maybe that’s because deep down we aren’t sure if there can exist a marriage between our heads and our hearts.

Maybe we really believe that when we are 19 and reckless we can have a religion like a love-affair but when we are finally 35 and mortgaged we need to grow up and learn some facts and let the naive passion of our youth fade into the past like First Communion.

I, however, choose to believe that the panting of our hearts can be quickened by the slow and seductive revelation of God in the form of doctrine, tradition, and dogma. Maybe that’s really what all the doctrine should be viewed as: a lover writing from a foreign land revealing who He is.

For too long the distance between the head and the heart has forced me into a false dichotomy. I should either be a frenetic charismatic or a staunch Thomist. The spirit and the letter. I think its normal for this tension to exist. Its part of how we are made. But what would it look like if the two were married?

It looks like Divine Revelation.

I believe it looks like the Catechism of the Catholic Church.

Fr. Raniero Cantalamessa, preacher to the Papal Household, seems to agree.

“…we need to discover the CCC’s pulsating heart. And what is this heart? It is not a dogma or a truth, a doctrine or an ethical principle. It is a Person: Jesus Christ! “On page after page,” – the Holy Father writes regarding the CCC in the same Apostolic Letter – “we find that what is presented here is no theory, but an encounter with a Person who lives within the Church”

We can get our heart into the heart of Christ by walking over the bridge of revelation.

The more Revelation becomes our bridge to the heart of God, the more we unite our head and our hearts. Then we can begin to transform the catechism from “a silent instrument, like a valuable violin resting on a velvet cloth, into an instrument that sounds and rouses hearts.”

[photo: rocket-fueled]

Evangelization Porn

If you were enjoying a great weekend with friends and told them you were thinking about building a nuclear fusion reactor in your backyard, like this kid did, chances are most of your friends wouldn’t have much advice to give you. “Um, be careful…” But if you told them you were thinking about building a shed in your backyard, if you have friends like mine, most of them would give you some advice. It probably wouldn’t all be good advice. Some of your friends might argue about trivial things like the materials you should use, or the location in your backyard, or the color you should paint the shed, for example.

I’ve been in situations where a group (staff meeting, team, ministry, friend group, family, etc) is discussing how best to do something. Interestingly, there are always far more people speaking who have never built a shed, than people who have. Most times the small trivial details become the focus of the hot debating in a room full of people who have never built a shed or at least don't build sheds very often.

Why won't anyone speak up when you talk about the difference between a slow carb, low carb, and paleo diet, but everyone, even the physically and obviously hypocrite, are willing to give you exercise and nutrition advice in general?

Its because things that are easy for us to get our minds around and visualize we take for granted we know how to do. Things that seem hard and complex that we obviously have no idea about, we just assume we wouldn’t know the first thing to comment on. If we think something is simple, (Calories in = calories out. Exercise more. Eat less crap.) it is easier to criticize and critique it. If something is difficult and complex, its much harder to constructively critique it as a whole, so we focus on the easy and trivial parts.  And plus we've seen a lot more people try to build a shed than build a nuclear fusion reactor. (See Parkinson's Law of Triviality.)

Is evangelization turning into the shed of the Catholic world? Maybe. Maybe we've seen so many different attempts at evangelization we're tempted to think its not really that hard in practice. Maybe we feel like we know how it should be done, because we know how WE came to have whatever faith-life we currently have. Maybe its just in the circles of Church ministers I run in. Or maybe its just me.

Or maybe it is such a difficult and complex topic that we get caught up talking and arguing about the easy and trivial aspects we can easily get our minds around. Its way easier to debate the color of a shed than focus on the difficult endeavor of building a nuclear fusion reactor.

There is a type of Evangelization Porn that is being consumed in large quantities by people in the Church. Sometimes even good quality stuff can turn into Evangelization Porn. It really has more to do with the consumer than with the producer. You don’t know you’re making Evangelization Porn as you make it. But you know you’re making Evangelization Porn if the majority of the people who participate and listen and read and attend and watch and participate never go out and actually do it. They never go evangelize.

It feels good to consume Evangelization Porn. You feel like you’re doing your part and you get the adrenaline-pump that comes with thinking about doing anything really worth doing. But the truth is its way easier to attend a conference, or listen to a talk, or write a tweet, or read a book, or write an article, or share a picture on Facebook, than it is to evangelize. That's the lure of Evangelization Porn. It only involves you. Its safe. There is no other person involved.

Dealing with a person who desperately needs Jesus in their life is hard. Its draining. It often requires loving someone for a long time. It often requires hearing things that don’t make sense to you and that you don’t agree with. It is seldom easy or not messy. It always requires lots of prayer. It is always draining. It frequently is as un-glorious as changing diapers, or going to lunch with your sister, or being charitable to a stranger.

The tempting thing in arguing passionately about the methods and modes of evangelization is it feels rewarding. You feel like you are really working. Like you are really evangelizing.  When really all you’re doing is getting caught up in butt-slapping and hanging out with the choir you’re preaching to. (Never, ever, using those two phrases in conjunction again.)

Evangelization porn doesn't bear fruit. Nothing gets accomplished. No one is being loved. No other person is involved. It is self-amusement. It is fantasizing about evangelization.

Evangelization always requires another person. You can tell you’re starting to make Evangelization Porn when you start talking about “people” instead of a person. You can tell you are starting to get addicted to Evangelization Porn when you are consuming more than you are doing.

Here’s some quick math to help diagnose Evangelization Porn Addiciton:

#1 How many pro-life articles have you read this month: #2 How many times did you do something about it this month:

#1 How many times this year did you consume news or media in general and get mad about the “gay agenda", or consume media arguing against same-sex marriage, homosexual relationships, etc?: #2 How many times this year did you talk to someone struggling with same sex attraction issues or living a gay lifestyle?:

#1 How many books this year did you read on the subject of evangelization? #2 How many times this year did you pray with someone you know?

#1 How many times this week did you use phrases or words like the culture, culture war, culture of death, relativism, feminism, intolerance, agenda, liberal, conservative, orthodoxy, or heresy? #2 How many minutes this week did you expose yourself to ideas you disagree with NOT being explained by people you agree with?

#1 How many times did you read apologetic materials? #2 How many people who don’t already attend a Catholic Church did you talk to this year about the way your faith has impacted your life?

#1 How many talks about Jesus did you give this month to a crowd? #2 How many hours did you intentionally spend with a person who really needs Jesus?

Instructions: Divide the first number by the second number: If the number is less than 3 than you are probably doing a pretty good job staying away from evangelization p0rn. If the number is 1 or less than you’re a hero. Or you don’t have internet. If the number is greater than 3 than you are probably addicted to Evangelization P0rn.

Full Disclosure: My numbers suck. I'm mildly addicted to evangelization porn. The first step is admitting you have a problem. The second step is prayer. The third step is to stop consuming and get out there and do something.

"Love in action is a harsh and dreadful thing compared to love in dreams..."

-Dostoevsky

 "The devil frequently fills our thoughts with great schemes, so that instead of putting our hands to what work we can do to serve our Lord, we may rest satisfied with wishing to perform impossibilities.” 

-St. Teresa of Avila

This Story about Pope John Paul II is Changing My Life

I recently heard a remarkable and supposedly true story involving Blessed Pope John Paul II and his driver, and this story has been haunting me for the past few weeks.

The story goes that Pope John Paul II was getting out of a car and his driver accidentally slammed the Pope's fingers in the car door. What a great opportunity to see what someone is really made of. My Dad slammed my fingers in the trunk of a car one time, that was the first and last time I ever swore in front of my Dad. I'm still afraid of trunk space.

Legend has it that the first whispered words out of Pope John Paul II's mouth were: "Thank you, Lord, for loving me this way."

I don't know about you, but this story rocked my face off. In a situation where you are suddenly slammed into abrupt pain - stub your toe on a chair, poke yourself in the eye with your toothbrush, or reach down to pick up your shoe and slam your eyebrow on the kitchen counter - what comes out of your mouth comes straight from your heart. It is more a knee-jerk reaction than well thought out intellectual response. A lot of my reactions to situations like these seem to be four letter words...

This story reminds me of Jesus' words:

"The good man out of the treasure of his heart produces good, and the evil man out of his evil treasure produces evil; for out of the abundance of the heart his mouth speaks." Luke 6:45

Situations like these are opportunities to see what you are really made of, and to see what is really in your heart. If you live a life like Pope John Paul II, you are constantly aware that every moment of your life is a gift from God. Your heart is overflowing with love for God, and a constant awareness of His love for you. Everything God allows to happen to you is for your good.

Suffering, pain, disappointment; these things are given to us to bear because these things will make us Saints. Becoming who we are created to be hurts, because we are weak and would rather seek pleasure than love. Even the small moments of life give us opportunity to grow closer to Christ, to love God more, and to overcome our little sufferings and crosses with the grace and love of Jesus Christ working in us.

The past few weeks I have been trying to respond to the little difficulties and sufferings in my life by quietly saying "Thank you, Lord, for loving me this way."

"The way of perfection passes by way of the cross. There is no holiness without renunciation and spiritual battle. Spiritual progress entails the ascesis and mortification that gradually lead to living in the peace and joy of the Beatitudes." Catechism of the Catholic Church 2015

Strange Notions: Atheist and Catholic Conversations

 You need to know about the launching of a new website, Strange Notions, spearheaded by Brandon Vogt who knows a thing or two about "new" media and the new evangelization. (Check out his book here: The Church and New Media: Blogging Converts, Online Activists, and Bishops Who Tweet)

After St. Paul preaches in the Areopagus in Athens to the intellectual elite, they respond saying "May we learn what this new teaching is that you speak of? You bring some strange notions to our ears, we should like to know what these things mean." (Acts 17:19-20)

[youtube=http://youtu.be/ieDRMoxhySo]

With a website trailer like that, the adrenaline is already flowing just at the idea of a site that sets out to bring intellectual conversations between atheists and Catholics to an internet in dire need of it.

StrangeNotions.com is designed to be the central place of dialogue online between Catholics and atheists.

Its implicit goal is to bring non-Catholics to faith--especially followers of the so-called New Atheism. As a 'digital Areopagus', the site will include intelligent articles, compelling video, and rich discussion through its comment boxes.

The site is laid out in blog post format, with by-topic articles from a team of contributors presumably written with an atheist audience in mind.

The list of main contributors for the site is world class, with some of the best of the best as far as Catholic writers and thinkers go. In my humble opinion, this is one of the best lineups I've ever seen for a Catholic website of this nature.

I also like the extensive recommended books list that doesn't pull punches and is intellectually demanding.

I'm very interested to be watching this site unfold and participating in the conversations.

I do wonder, however, what will draw intelligent atheists to this site and the conversations and not just your normal trolls that lurk on Catholic websites. It would be great to see this website reach out to atheist bloggers and speakers to engage them in open dialogue in a way that goes beyond just the comment box. To have a thinking atheist write a response or article defending his position would add to the website's claim to be an open forum of reason and dialogue. Maybe even a HuffPoLive-esque Google Hangout would work well.

This is a site to watch and get involved with, learn a thing or two, and even send to your skeptical atheist friends challenging them to engage in dialogue with the authors and thinkers. Pray for this "digital areopagus", because it is a much needed space in the mission territory of the internet.

The Brains Behind It All:

Brandon Vogt is an award-winning author, blogger, in speaker. In 2011 he released his first book titled The Church and New Media: Blogging Converts, Online Activists, and Bishops Who Tweet (Our Sunday Visitor). The book includes a Foreword by Cardinal Sean O'Malley, an Afterword by Cardinal Timothy Dolan, and was endorsed by a several other cardinals, bishops, and leading Catholic thinkers.

Since then he’s established himself as an expert on Catholic new media and in May 2011, Vatican officials invited him to Rome to discuss social media. At the meeting, Archbishop Claudio Celli explained that the Church's mission today is to "open a conversation with the world." That's precisely what StrangeNotions.com is designed to do.

How to Proclaim and Defend the Entire Catholic Faith

"...this book can be transformed from a silent instrument, like a valuable violin resting on a velvet cloth, into an instrument that sounds and rouses hearts." Fr. Raniero Cantalamessa 1st Advent Sermon to the Papal Household

So maybe you're one of those Catholics hipsters - hip young adult devoutly committed to Orthodoxy, sworn ally to the Pope, defender of Mother Church, reader of Chesterton and Percy, drinker of beer and wielder of apologetics.

Maybe you're not.

Either way, if you want to help spread the love of Christ, and fulfill Christ's not-so-optional Great Commission for all disciples (yes you too) then you have to spread the faith.

What faith?

          What parts of the faith?

                    THE ENTIRE CATHOLIC FAITH.

Yes that's right. And I mean Catholic as in the deposit of faith as guarded and upheld by the Catholic Church in Sacred Scripture, Sacred Tradition, and the Magisterium.Right now there is a vast misunderstanding in our society, and even among some well-intentioned or self-professed Catholics, about what the Church actually teaches.

"Someone, somewhere in the Church founded by Christ must be in a position to tell the faithful, "this is true, and that is false;" or "this is morally good, and that is morally bad." Otherwise, the very existence of Christianity is in danger and the survival of the Catholic Church in any given country or locality is in jeopardy.

In many dioceses of America, attendance at Sunday Mass is down to some twenty-five percent of the professed Catholics in a diocese. Some Church officials are scrambling for a solution and recommending the most bizarre solutions. It never seems to dawn on these "experts" that the heart of the problem is the massive uncertainty in millions of Catholic minds about what is unchangeable doctrine in faith and moral principles." Fr. John Hardon

If you are striving to be a Catholic and defend the faith, then you must speak from the heart of the Church. You must be in a confident ability to charitably inform, or even sometimes correct, misunderstandings about the Catholic faith.

I mean the entire faith because the Catholic faith is not one long dainty necklace with doctrines and dogmas and pretty beliefs hanging separately and disjointed from one another.No, the faith is always entire and whole because the faith is unified and organic.

Our faith is more like a wheel. The center of the wheel being Christ, and the doctrines and beliefs being the spokes all in relation and connected to Christ - "the love that never ends".

The whole concern of doctrine and its teaching must be directed to the love that never ends. Whether something is proposed for belief, for hope or for action, the love of our Lord must always be made accessible, so that anyone can see that all the works of perfect Christian virtue spring from love and have no other objective than to arrive at love. Catechism Paragraph 25

Hold the whining. Its not as hard as you would imagine.

"We now have a one-volume reservoir of Catholic truth and practice for everyone who wants to bring others to Christ, if they are not yet Christians; to solidify the faith of those who have been baptized; to defend Roman Catholicism in a world in which the Church has been abandoned by so many once-believing Catholics and is being betrayed even by some of her ecclesiastical leaders." Fr. John Hardon

That's right my beloved Papists, the Catechism of the Catholic Church. The Catechism is our one-stop shop for evangelization.

The Catechism might sound like a less-than-spectacular remedy for the slings and arrows of our time, but that's because of our preconceived notions, not because the Catechism is anything less than a powerhouse for evangelization.

"This Catechism is of historic importance. Depending on how seriously we take it, the future of the Catholic Church will be shaped accordingly." says Fr. Hardon. He explains that the course of the Catholic Church will depend on whether or not we see the Catechism as an act of God. "He is providing us with the opportunity of helping to make the twenty-first century the most glorious since the coming of Christ, but on one condition: that we capitalize on the gift He is giving us in the Catechism of the Catholic Church."

Fr. John Hardon, in his article "Understanding the Catechism of the Catholic Church", proposed five ways to use the catechism to help Christ evangelize the masses and spread the liberating and life giving faith who is Jesus Christ.

Here are Fr. John Hardon's five suggestions for using the Catechism:

KNOW TRUST ADAPT LIVE SHARE

Below each are explained in Fr. John Hardon's own words...

Know the Catechism.

Our most fundamental duty is to know the Catechism. How do you come to know anything? By reading, by discussing, by hearing it explained by competent persons.

Speed reading of the Catechism would be self-defeating. If anything, the Catechism should be not only read but prayerfully meditated. Spend some time set aside for reflecting, in God's presence, what the Catechism teaches through more than 500 pages of print.

How much time people waste in reading fiction, or worse. Is it too much for Christ to expect us to spend a few hours a week in reading, alone or with others, what promises to be the food that feeds the soul on revealed truth?

Trust the Catechism.

Already, critics have appeared who discredit the Catechism on both sides of the spectrum.

• Some criticize it for being outmoded and out of touch with the times.

• Others criticize it for giving in to Modernism and therefore discredit what the Vicar of Christ is offering the believing faithful for their spiritual sustenance in a world that is dying out of hunger for the truth.

Pay no attention to these critics. To distrust the Catechism is to play into the hand of the devil, who fears nothing more than security of doctrine among the followers of Christ.

Adapt the Catechism.

The Catechism is not simple reading. But neither is it sophisticated and out-of-touch with the vocabulary of the people. In any case, the Catechism contains all the essentials for Catholic faith, morality, and divine worship.

In using the Catechism to teach others, adjust the language to the mentality of those you are teaching. Adapt the ideas, without watering them down. Accommodate what the Catechism says, to the mental and spiritual level of those with whom you are sharing God's truth.

Live the Catechism.

This is no pious platitude. Teaching the true faith is unlike any other form of pedagogy.

The purpose of teaching the Catholic faith is to enable those you are teaching to practice the virtues which Christ expects of His followers. Very well, but how do you enable those you teach to practice what they have learned? You don't! Only Christ can give them the grace they need to practice what they believe. So how do they get the grace they need? From Christ, of course. But through you, their teachers.

What are we saying? We are saying that God uses holy people as channels of His grace to others. In the measure of our own union with Him, He will communicate to those we teach the light and strength they need to live the Christian faith. God uses humble people to give others the gift of humility. He uses chaste people as conduits of His grace of chastity; patient people to inspire patience; prayerful people to make others prayerful.

In a word, if we live the Catechism, we become instruments of divine faith to everyone whose life we touch. This, we may say, is the law of spiritual generation. Sanctity is reproductive; holiness is procreative.

Share the Catechism.

One final point should be made: On the last day we shall be judged on our practice of charity. How we hope that when Christ appears, He will say to us, "Come, blessed of my Father, and possess the Kingdom prepared for you from the foundation of the world. I was hungry, and you gave me to eat; thirsty and you gave me to drink; naked and you clothed me, sick and in prison and you visited me."

What does this have to do with the Catechism of the Catholic Church? Everything! This masterpiece of sacred wisdom provides us with all the resources we need to meet the spiritual needs of America. But we must be convinced that these needs are desperate, and that we have at hand the means of saving the soul of our society.

PRAYER

"Lord Jesus, you have given us the Catechism of the Catholic Church to bring light to those who are walking in darkness and supernatural life to those who are sitting in the shadow of death. "Enlighten our minds with your revealed truth and inspire our hearts with your divine love — so that by our courageous witness to your Name here on earth we may bring countless souls with us to that heavenly Kingdom for which we were made. Amen."

**This is an exerpt from Fr. John Hardon's excellent article "Understanding the Catechism of the Catholic Church"

Interview with "By Way of Beauty" Creator Matthew

If there is one Catholic website out there that, in my opinion, more people should be following and reading, it is By Way of Beauty. Matthew generously agreed to allow me to pick his brain, and he provided some great insights on culture, beauty, and evangelization.

I've been growing increasingly interested in culture and its ability to evangelize and engage our society, and By Way of Beauty is a great example of engaging the already existing culture in a profound way.

The greatest part is that it is evangelistic by its very nature and not preachy or contrived. Matthew and Wes sit by the streams of art and entertainment pointing out the underlying big questions and truths just below the surface. The resulting articles are hard to stop reading.

[I'm in bold, Matt's words are not bolded.]

Matt, can you tell us how By Way of Beauty was born into the internet world?

My brother Wes and I started the site in the summer of 2011 using Blogger. We didn’t know much about the blog world or read any blogs. What we did do, though, was talk a lot about art. Whenever we watched a movie together, we had a little tradition of talking about philosophical and theological ideas we found in it afterward over drinks. It was a sort of natural progression into writing articles. Eventually we decided to get on the Internet and share our jabbering with whoever wanted to read it, which was great because we could use video, pictures, and links. The response has been really spirited.

You write about all sorts of scandalous things: Rapper Kendrick Lamar, books like "A Wild Surge of Guilty Passion", and "The Mysognist", Television like Breaking Bad and Mad Men, movies like The Rum Diary and The Cabin in the Woods, yet you claim to be a man of faith. Defend yourself!

We’re both Catholic men, and we’re proud of our faith. I hope it shows through the writing. But we were raised to believe that Catholics shouldn’t be prudish and standoffish; that reflects a sort of Manichean temperament that the Church has always fought against.

Catholicism is earthy, without being worldly; and our sacramental view of the universe should make us more engaged and conversant with the world – and that includes the art world. Fr. Barron has been a great exemplar of this, in reviewing films by the Coen Brothers and Scorsese.

It doesn’t mean you have to endorse every idea you come across; just that you see things analogically, and put your ideas on the table in a more compelling, relatable way. If you can’t relate to everyday people and speak their language, how are you going to have a conversation? If you can’t have a conversation, how are you going to explain what the faith means? I think a real danger - online as much as offline - becomes insularity. The culture will just go on spinning around your comfort zone, your circuit of like minds, and you can't really reach it because you’ve talked about nothing it appreciates, relates to, or even understands. It tuned you out, a priori.

Pope Francis has really underscored that in his first weeks, I think. He's reminding us of the importance of breaking out, going where the people are, and making contact. Your presence alone can speak volumes.

The mission stated on the site references a secret novelist and the existential pursuit of truth. Could you explain the mission of the site and why you feel it is important?

Our mission is really just to talk about art and entertainment in a way that asks essential questions: Who am I? Why am I here? Why is life worth living? Does God exist? Who is He? Walker Percy emphasized the notion of “the search” in his work – that’s exactly what we’d like to emphasize. He’s a sort of patron saint for us.

Artists that we talk about regularly – Josh Garrels, Terrence Malick, Ron Hansen – draw these questions out, so we want to promote their work. But the real task is digging into the Kendrick Lamars and Breaking Bads, and finding jewels that people might take away from them.

So “By Way of Beauty” is kind of a misnomer, in retrospect. Benedict XVI’s writing on "via pulchritudinis" was a big motivation. But I think a lot of people come expecting the “finer things club” – Rembrandt, Vivaldi, Shakespeare. But it’s obviously not like that;we’re digging into both the highbrow and lowbrow stuff.

Is there a tension between a more Thomist approach to evangelization ("Here is an objective, deductive, and principled account of the truth.") and a inductive, subjective, and experiential approach more like that of hippie catechists of the 70's ("What do you think love is?")?

I think this reflects a long-standing tension: Platonic vs. Aristotlean, Augustinian vs. Thomistic, the dynamic “feeling” Church and the systematic “thinking” Church. I think the Church needs both modes to evangelize. It’s like John Paul II’s image of faith and reason: two wings of a dove that ascend to the contemplation of truth. Head and heart, intellect and passion, are the same way; they should go hand in hand.

Pope John Paul II seemed to have a balanced approach to evangelization ("Let me guide you to the truth and point it out by way of the subjective, inductive and experiential...") and By Way of Beauty seems similar in this regard. Do you think of your site as an evangelizing ministry or is that just a natural byproduct of what the site's main mission is?

I hope we can strike that balance, but I don’t think of By Way of Beauty at all in those terms. We don’t break the Bible or Catechism out, which has to be part of that. It’s important, of course, and there are some great people using the new media to do that: Brandon Vogt, Bad Catholic, and Catholic Memes are all doing great work. We’re coming from a Catholic perspective too, but our content is more neutral territory. If there is an evangelizing aspect, it’s our hope that non-believers become aware of these points of contact with Catholic thought, and are curious to look into things on their own they might not have otherwise.

The Catechism says the human person, "with his openness to truth and beauty", is a way we can come to know God. Truth and goodness seem to be lost on our culture. In an increasingly technological culture is it possible we are losing our openness to beauty as well? What do we do about it?

Von Balthasar had a great line, that if beauty is separated from her two sisters, she’ll take them with her in a mysterious act of vengeance. That's powerful. When we compartmentalize these things, we lose all of them. Art without truth and goodness stops being beautiful; and truth and goodness without beauty stops being compelling. That connection has been lost, and the first thing we should do is try to build it up again.

I think one of the best things we can do is do a better job of supporting artists and the arts in our private and professional lives, in our families and our communities. Film is an especially powerful and universal medium – look at what Peter Jackson did with Tolkien.

Peter Kreeft asked once: where’s our Dante? That’s a great question. Personally I hope that our Dante is a filmmaker, because the potential for film to impress ideas on us is tremendous.

How can people practically get in on this beauty/God action in their everyday lives? Whether it is for evangelization or for self-sanctification?

God is the supreme artist. There's a great line in a hip-hop song: God is a painter and the sky is his canvas, God is a poet and our lives are his stanzas. I love that. The world is charged with His presence and glory – we just need to open our eyes and receive it.

What is the first Walker Percy book I should read?

If you’re into fiction, go with The Moviegoer; if you’re more of a non-fiction reader, Lost in the Cosmos. But they’re all fantastic.

You can find Matt and his brother Wes talking to you about art and entertainment over a few drinks at ByWayofBeauty.com. I highly recommend keeping up with their site and sending some of their articles to your friends.

Check out some of these superb articles from By Way of Beauty: Fourteen Philosophical Films (That the Lists Missed) To Love Another Person - The Story of "Les Miserables" Good Kid, M.A.A.D. City - The Thirst of Kendrick Lamar Pascal in "The Rum Diary" Un-friending Silence A Good Man is Hard to Find

Happy Palm Sunday, #CaptureEaster Begins!

[youtube=http://youtu.be/Qqhe4yRCGIE] And Holy Week begins! Help Catholics everywhere #CaptureEaster in order to share the beauty of God during Holy Week with the world! We've even thrown in some sweet Catholic books you could win.

Step 1) Take a sweet picture of your experience of God during Holy Week. Step 2) Upload it to instagram or Twitter with the hashtag #CaptureEaster Step 3) Checkout the site CaptureEaster.com to see other pictures of the world expereincing Holy Week, as its happening. Step 4) Get your friends in on the action! Step 5) Photo with the most (legitimate) comments gets 4 free Catholic books delivered to their door!

Let's #CaptureEaster !!!

[youtube=http://youtu.be/Qqhe4yRCGIE] My friend Jon and I came up with a crazy idea: what if everyone around the world took pictures of Holy Week and the beauty of God, made a #hashtag (#CaptureEaster) and posted them all up on one website?

Starting this Palm Sunday, join us in our attempt to flood the internet with pics of the beauty and goodness of God and Holy Week.

Step 1) Take sweet pictures of your experience of God during Holy Week. Step 2) Upload them to instagram or Twitter with the hashtag #CaptureEaster Step 3) Checkout the site CaptureEaster.com to see other pictures of the world expereincing Holy Week, as its happening. We'll get your photo up as soon as possible. Step 4) Get your friends in on the action!

We will be posting the images to CaptureEaster.com and are giving away some sweet books to whatever photo gets the most (legitimate) comments.

Get pumped for Holy Week!!!!!

The Catechism on the Pope

Some relevant reading from the Catechism of the Catholic Church about the Pope (from the Latin papa meaning Father), also know as the Supreme Pontiff, also known as Papa.  I've bolded some of the awesome.

869  The Church is apostolic. She is built on a lasting foundation: "the twelve apostles of the Lamb" (Rev 21:14). She is indestructible (cf. Mt 16:18). She is upheld infallibly in the truth: Christ governs her through Peter and the other apostles, who are present in their successors, the Pope and the college of bishops.

880 When Christ instituted the Twelve, "he constituted [them] in the form of a college or permanent assembly, at the head of which he placed Peter, chosen from among them."³⁹⁸ Just as "by the Lord's institution, St. Peter and the rest of the apostles constitute a single apostolic college, so in like fashion the Roman Pontiff, Peter's successor, and the bishops, the successors of the apostles, are related with and united to one another."³⁹⁹ 398. LG 19; cf. Lk 6:13; Jn 21:15-17. 399. LG 22; cf. CIC, can. 330.

881  The Lord made Simon alone, whom he named Peter, the "rock" of his Church. He gave him the keys of his Church and instituted him shepherd of the whole flock.⁴⁰⁰ "The office of binding and loosing which was given to Peter was also assigned to the college of apostles united to its head."⁴⁰¹ This pastoral office of Peter and the other apostles belongs to the Church's very foundation and is continued by the bishops under the primacy of the Pope. 400.Cf. Mt 16:18-19; Jn 21:15-17. 401.LG 22 § 2.

882  The Pope, Bishop of Rome and Peter's successor, "is the perpetual and visible source and foundation of the unity both of the bishops and of the whole company of the faithful."⁴⁰² "For the Roman Pontiff, by reason of his office as Vicar of Christ, and as pastor of the entire Church has full, supreme, and universal power over the whole Church, a power which he can always exercise unhindered."⁴⁰³ 402. LG 23. 403. LG 22; cf. CD 2,9.

1369  The whole Church is united with the offering and intercession of Christ. Since he has the ministry of Peter in the Church, the Pope is associated with every celebration of the Eucharist, wherein he is named as the sign and servant of the unity of the universal Church. The bishop of the place is always responsible for the Eucharist, even when a priest presides; the bishop's name is mentioned to signify his presidency over the particular Church, in the midst of his presbyterium and with the assistance of deacons. The community intercedes also for all ministers who, for it and with it, offer the Eucharistic sacrifice: Let only that Eucharist be regarded as legitimate, which is celebrated under [the presidency of] the bishop or him to whom he has entrusted it.¹⁹¹Through the ministry of priests the spiritual sacrifice of the faithful is completed in union with the sacrifice of Christ the only Mediator, which in the Eucharist is offered through the priests' hands in the name of the whole Church in an unbloody and sacramental manner until the Lord himself comes.¹⁹² 191. St. Ignatius of Antioch, Ad Smyrn. 8:1;SCh 10,138. 192. PO 2 § 4.

Let's pray for the Conclave and the prayerful election of a new Pope! Veni Sacti Spiritus!

AND check out what the Catholic Encyclopedia has to say about the Pope.