Tag: Catholicism

8 min read

Faith

A Personal Relationship with Christ?

Karen Edmisten

March 17, 2023 8:36 pm March 17, 2023

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8 min read

One can’t be a Christian in America without encountering the expression “personal relationship with Jesus Christ.” For many Catholics, this phrase is not a particularly accurate description of their faith. It conjures images of evangelical Protestants surrounded by the drumbeat of contemporary Christian music, or inspires visions of a lively service in a megachurch, with faith potentially reduced to an emotional response that’s been whipped up in the moment.

But is that an accurate description? Are Catholicism and “a personal relationship with Jesus Christ” mutually exclusive? When we set aside preconceived notions of what a “personal relationship” is, or what we think it is, we may be surprised to find there’s no need for opposing camps when discussing the truth about a relationship with Jesus Christ.

A common argument against the assertion that Catholics need a personal relationship with Christ is that such a thing is unnecessary or redundant. For some it would seem that so long as Catholics follow all the precepts of the Church, then we are already doing the personal work that is required of us.

Five Precepts

The five precepts of the Church require Catholics to attend Mass on Sundays and holy days of obligation, to confess sins at least once a year, to receive holy Communion at least once (during the Easter season), to observe days of prescribed fasting and abstinence, and to provide for the material needs of the Church according to one’s abilities. These precepts are minimum requirements for life as a Catholic. The Church, a wise mother, gives us these precepts, which can sanctify us and draw us closer to Christ, much as an earthly mother tells her children to eat their vegetables in order to stay healthy and strong.

For Catholics, participation in the Church’s life reaches its culmination in the Eucharist, the most intimate gift the Lord can offer us on earth: His body, blood, soul and divinity. So, the notion that keeping the precepts places us in a personal relationship with God is correct. But does it stop there?

Pope Benedict XVI put it well at a 2008 audience: “We are only Christians if we encounter Christ. Of course, he does not show himself to us in this overwhelming, luminous way, as he did to Paul to make him the apostle to all peoples. But we too can encounter Christ in reading sacred Scripture, in prayer, in the liturgical life of the Church. We can touch Christ’s heart and feel Him touching ours. Only in this personal relationship with Christ, only in this encounter with the Risen One do we truly become Christians.”

All Christians are called to the authentic encounter — the relationship — of which Pope Benedict spoke. The Church’s precepts do not mention reading Scripture or developing one’s prayer life, but Pope Benedict and pontiffs before and after him have exhorted us to do these things. It seems as if the precepts presume the components of a relationship with Jesus.

The concept of a personal relationship with the Lord is an ancient one. In Deutoronmy 6:5, we are told to “love the Lord, your God, with your whole heart, and with your whole being, and with your whole strength.” Jesus repeats this command often throughout the New Testament, as can be found in Matthew 22:37, Mark 12:30,33 and Luke 10:27. The prologue of the Catechism of the Catholic Church tells us: “At every time and in every place, God draws close to man. He calls man to seek him, to know him, to love him with all his strength” (No. 1).

The Judeo-Christian tradition is filled with the intimate relations of nuptial imagery, such as in the Song of Songs, likening our relationship with the Lord to the personal nature of the marriage relationship. Likely, we won’t dispute that marriage demands more than a bare-minimum fulfillment of marriage precepts, so why might some scoff at the idea that more is needed in our relationship with God? What spouse wouldn’t be appalled to hear, “We went through the ceremony, we’re legally bound — what more do you want?” Foundational aspects of true intimacy would clearly be missing: shared feelings, sufferings, joys and the depth of communication that reaches beyond casual friendship.

A marriage is grounded in commitment, regardless of feelings, as feelings will inevitably ebb and flow, and a relationship with the Lord calls for the same commitment, diligent attention and self-donation. And just as a marriage matures with every encounter, our relationship with Christ deepens as we encounter Him in Scripture, prayer and the sacraments, all of which serve to both nurture the relationship and anchor us when feelings fluctuate.

In comparing faith to a marriage, however, objections arise: “Isn’t there a danger that we will focus too much on feelings? Doesn’t all this talk of ‘relationship’ diminish the nature of God and elevate us to an undeserved level?”

Those are valid questions. It is prudent to acknowledge that our faith is not based on how we feel about the Lord. Objectively, God is God; we are His creatures and there is a gap between us that cannot be closed while still pilgrims on this earth. But the God who, out of pure love, brought us into being makes it clear — in Scripture, and through the teaching of His Church — that He desires great breadth and depth of love from His creatures.

“Love Affair”

In his book “St. Francis of Assisi,” G.K. Chesterton said, “To this great mystic [Francis] his religion was not a thing like a theory but a thing like a love affair.” That kind of language makes some Catholics nervous about “personal relationship.” But a love affair doesn’t mean losing ourselves in emotion or acting like a giddy newlywed. Authentic love is far more than initial infatuation. Real love is sustained through repeated acts of the will. We fall in love, we commit, and we promise to live out that commitment for the rest of our lives. Love is the anchor — in marriage and faith — that holds us in place when dryness, boredom and suffering set in. The initial consolations of both earthly and divine love fortify us for the future and ripen our souls for the richness that is to come.

Conversion, and a relationship with Christ, may begin with intellectual assent and obedience to precepts, but it needn’t stop there. Mature faith — like mature friendship, love and marriage — is a complex, organic entity, always growing. And just as human relationships vary in character, so will relationships with the Divine. They are neither “all about feelings” or “only about” keeping the precepts and receiving the sacraments. A faith life is not an either/or situation, but a both/and proposition.

Catholicism is a universal faith, lived and expressed in numerous ways. Witness the varying forms of spirituality, whether Benedictine, Dominican or Franciscan, among others. The Church approves them all. A personal relationship with Jesus Christ can look very different from one individual to the next. It’s not about choosing the camp of emotion versus the camp of solemn behavior. It’s about, as Pope Francis said: “Our own constantly renewed experience of savoring Christ’s friendship and his message. It is impossible to persevere in a fervent evangelization unless we are convinced from personal experience that it is not the same thing to have known Jesus as not to have known him, not the same thing to walk with him as to walk blindly, not the same thing to hear his word as not to know it, and not the same thing to contemplate him, to worship him, to find our peace in him, as not to” (Evangelii Gaudium, “The Joy of the Gospel,” No. 266).

Do Catholics need a personal relationship with Jesus Christ? If we can believe Scripture, the catechism, popes, the Fathers of the Church and the saints, the answer is “yes.” These have taught us that seeking an ever-deepening relationship with Jesus Christ is at the core of our faith. But we needn’t get bogged down in the semantics surrounding the issue. We can agree that a personal relationship is necessary without worrying about rigid illustrations of what that relationship looks like. From the charismatic college student to the elderly woman steadfastly praying the Rosary, from the hipster who loves chant or the middle-aged Knight of Columbus, personal relationships with Christ are unique, varied and impossible to label from the outside. The important point is that there’s nothing un-Catholic about pursuing the intimate bond that the Lord wants to have with each and every one of us. At its foundation, our connection to Jesus Christ is one of love. As Pope Benedict said in a General Audience in 2009: “Faith is above all a personal, intimate encounter with Jesus, and to experience his closeness, his friendship, his love; only in this way does one learn to know him ever more, and to love and follow him ever more. May this happen to each one of us.”

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5 min read

Culture

Cultures Matter In Catholicism

Bishop Felipe J. Estevez

April 3, 2022 7:59 am April 3, 2022

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5 min read

In the Acts of the Apostles, St. Luke describes the day of Pentecost as an event of universal significance. When the Holy Spirit descended upon the apostles, the variety of…

In the Acts of the Apostles, St. Luke describes the day of Pentecost as an event of universal significance. When the Holy Spirit descended upon the apostles, the variety of nations and cultures that heard them speak represented the seeds of the Catholic Church. “We are Parthians, Medes, and Elamites, inhabitants of Mesopotamia, Judea and Cappadocia, Pontus and Asia, Phrygia and Pamphylia, Egypt and the districts of Libya near Cyrene, as well as travelers from Rome, both Jews and converts to Judaism, Cretans and Arabs” (Acts 2:9-11).

Luke’s incredible list of peoples encompassed the entire known world at the time. From the very beginning of its existence, then, the Church has embraced every human culture with the understanding that all people have souls to save, no matter what race they come from or language they speak. The Gospel message didn’t annihilate those cultures but purified and transformed them into civilizations that reflect the life and love of God more profoundly.

The Second Vatican Council noted, “In virtue of this catholicity [that is, universality] each individual part contributes through its special gifts to the good of the other parts and of the whole Church. Through the common sharing of gifts and through the common effort to attain fullness in unity, the whole and each of the parts receive increase” (Lumen Gentium, No. 13).

In other words, whenever the Church offers the Gospel message to the people of different cultures, both benefit: The Church is enriched as much as the culture that receives the message of salvation. In Catholic terminology we call this process “enculturation,” where the diversity of cultures is incorporated into the Church and the Good News of Jesus Christ is spread more broadly and deeply into human society. This was a theme that both Pope John Paul II and Pope Benedict XVI emphasized continually in their writings and travels.

I often think of the Pentecost narrative as we debate issues of national significance in our political and social life. If any nation can lay claim to the title of “universal” it is the United States of America. The history and diversity of ethnic groups that form our one nation is simply astounding. Our national motto is “E pluribus unum” (out of many [peoples], one), further underlying the truth that America has in some way always reflected the universality of God’s love for the human race. We are many cultures coming together as one nation united under one constitution.

Americans are accustomed to the venerable analogy of our society as a “melting pot,” which symbolizes a diversity of things being thrown into a container on a fire, melting into one amorphous whole. It is certainly very descriptive, but that analogy seems to entail the loss of the uniqueness of the parts that come together. I have always preferred the image of the “mixed salad” (or perhaps the “patchwork quilt” or “tapestry”) where the individuality of each piece is maintained but brought together to form one beautiful new thing. Nothing is destroyed; rather, the whole is enriched by the diversity of the parts.

If you think that America has not benefitted by the influx of different cultures, just recall the last time you ate pizza, watched Irish dancing or traveled to American cities with foreign names and institutions. So many immigrants have come to America for the freedoms and opportunities we enjoy, and, in return, those different cultures have made many unique contributions to America through which everyone benefits.

I believe that the Catholic Church has had a broad and fruitful mission field in the United States from the beginning precisely because Catholicism finds a natural home in a nation that embraces such cultural diversity. Catholics comprise almost a quarter of the U.S. population today; in our Church every possible ethnic group is represented as a sort of microcosm of the universal Church. In the Diocese of Brooklyn, for example, Mass is celebrated in 33 different languages every Sunday!

There is, however, a tendency in political life — and this is surely evident in American history — for the established society to be threatened by the influx of people from other cultures who bring their differences with them. Yet as Catholics we must keep in mind that our whole national narrative is rooted in this tremendous wealth of people coming together to form one nation under God. We must see and embrace the different cultures like the apostles did on the Day of Pentecost: as a blessing, an opportunity for salvation and mutual enrichment. America provides a unique environment for that blessing to flourish.

We must realize that we are all part of the tapestry of this great culture which reflects, in some mysterious way, the universal mission of the Church. We should not be afraid to offer the gift of the Gospel message to others. It is Christ himself we offer, but, as the principles of enculturation show, we also receive so much in return.

Most Rev. Felipe J. Estevez is Bishop of St. Augustine, Florida.

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4 min read

Science

Catholicism and Science

Carl Olson

December 10, 2018 1:53 pm December 10, 2018

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4 min read

I recently perused a book with an eye-catching title: “God Revised: How Religion Must Evolve in a Scientific Age” (Palgrave Macmillan, 2013). The author, Galen Guengerich, is a Unitarian pastor…

I recently perused a book with an eye-catching title: “God Revised: How Religion Must Evolve in a Scientific Age” (Palgrave Macmillan, 2013).

The author, Galen Guengerich, is a Unitarian pastor who claims to have found a balanced, middle ground between atheism and fundamentalism. However, the theological musings in the book are about as deep as a mud puddle in Death Valley, and the history isn’t much better. At one point, Guengerich asserts, “It took five hundred years for the Roman Catholic Church to forgive Nicolaus Copernicus for looking into the night sky and reporting what he saw.”

Since Copernicus died in 1543 — less than 500 years ago — that’s quite a claim. At least Guengerich exhibited more restraint than Dan Brown did in his novel “Angels & Demons” (Pocket Books, 2000), in which one of the good guys observes: “Outspoken scientists like Copernicus … [were] murdered by the church for revealing scientific truths. Religion has always persecuted science.” However, Guengerich does insist that Galileo was “tortured,” which is only accurate if he means Galileo endured having some of his theories rejected because he could not muster the necessary proofs for them. Copernicus, by the way, died an old man, in the good graces of the Church, in which he served as a canon lawyer.

Science, it turns out, is a convenient stick for many of those who dislike and wish to dismiss the Church. The famous, misunderstood case of Galileo has long been the centerpiece exhibit for those claiming, as Brown’s character does, that religion hates science. Yet Galileo was a devout (if rather arrogant) Catholic who enjoyed support by many in the Vatican, and his essential problems were hubris and impatience.

The atheist Neil deGrasse Tyson, host of the new version of the television series “Cosmos,” relies less on Galileo and more on another supposed scientific hero, Giordano Bruno (1548-1600), a Dominican friar and mathematician who was executed by the Roman Inquisition. It sounds like a slam dunk, and deGrasse Tyson spends a good chunk of time working the apparently fallow ground. But, as the Jesuit philosopher and educator Father Robert Spitzer has noted, the Dominican’s trial “had very little to do with Bruno’s beliefs about heliocentrism or scientific method; he was, after all, following Copernicus.” In fact, Bruno’s trial “centered on five theological heresies: his pantheism, denial of the Trinity, denial of the divinity of Christ, denial of transubstantiation, and denial of the Virgin Birth.” We may understandably lament execution for heresy, but we must keep in mind there were many actions punishable by execution in the 1600s.

More to the point, Bruno was not a martyr for science. Yet the myth of the “scientific revolution” eventually overcoming the Dark Ages is a popular and dramatic one, with roots in both Enlightenment-era works intent on undermining the Church, and Protestant “histories” devoted to portraying Catholicism as a crude, superstitious religion with no connection to true, pure Christianity.

In his new book, “How the West Won: The Neglected Story of the Triumph of Modernity” (ISI Books, 2014), sociologist and historian Rodney Stark (who is Lutheran), debunks this nonsense. “Just as there was no ‘Dark Ages,’” he writes, “there was no ‘Scientific Revolution.’ Rather, the notion of a Scientific Revolution was invented to discredit the medieval Church by claiming that science burst forth in full bloom (thus owing no debts to prior Scholastic scholars) only when a weakened Christianity no longer could suppress it.”

Stark focuses on 14 philosophers and scientists (there are more, of course), beginning with Robert Grosseteste (c. 1168-1253), an English bishop described by one historian as “the real founder of the tradition of scientific thought in medieval Oxford,” and concluding with Copernicus. None, he notes, were “rebel secularists” — all were devout Christians and “they all were priests or monks — even bishops and cardinals.” And all of them were educated in Scholastic universities.

Carl E. Olson is the editor of Ignatius Insight (www.ignatiusinsight.com). He and his family live in Eugene, Ore.

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