ON PROPER FORM AND FOLLOW THROUGH

I have been a life-long bowler.  I love the game.

I was not ever very much of an athlete, but I always qualified for the varsity bowling teams both in minor and major seminary.  I confess that I spent perhaps more hours than I should have on the lanes donated to the North American College in Rome by Pope John XXIII (who never quite understood the game).

Of course, the key to bowling and many other sports is consistency.  And that consistency depends exclusively on proper form and follow through!  

When my bowling score suffered, it was because I wasn’t concentrating on these two fundamentals:  form and follow through.

Well, though there will be those who deny the obvious: the Church is suffering right now.  In numerous preceding posts, I have chronicled the surveys and reports of the decline in the number of Catholics who actively embrace and practice the Faith.

It appears that, in response to this reality,  the Bishops have seen fit to abandon the proclamation of the Gospel with its focus upon the generous dispensation of God’s forgiveness and Grace and replace it with a new creed, the tenets of which proclaim that human beings, if they apply themselves to introspection and hard work, can accomplish anything, for good or ill.

According to this creed:  there is no problem in a person’s life for which there is not an individual solution.  

Extending the implications of this belief beyond the individual, the new creed suggests that, in terms of society in general, there is no problem for which there in not a solution, if enough personal and financial resources are brought to bear.

The Bride of Christ has been sacrificed upon the altar of self-help programs and social-engineering schemes.

Just go to the USCCB website and read the various statements and proclamations of the American Bishops.  Their documents sounds eerily like the political platform of the Democratic Party:  all of societies ills can be treated by government programs which are generously funded by tax revenues.  

What about man’s sinful condition?  What about the need for personal conversion and that very little concept articulated in Catholic circles nowadays: personal responsibility?  What about the need to humble oneself before the Divine Creator and ask forgiveness?  What about developing a virtuous practice of prayer, both personal and communal? What about pursuing personal sanctity based upon an ongoing study of the Scriptures and the teachings of the Church?

When Bishops speak these days, they are either apologizing (through spokespersons) for yet another scandal or offering opinions which sound more like political stump speeches than calls to Faith.

We have indeed lost a sense of the sacred in our Church.  And the more we continue to advocate the gospel of social reform, the more the Church will continue to suffer losses among those once faithfully committed to the Faith.

True, there is both a vertical and horizontal dimension to living the Christian Faith.  We are reminded of that vividly and often by Saint Paul who admonishes believers to not just be hearers of the Word but to give life to that Word in the care of those most in need of its message.

We cannot love God Whom we do not see, Jesus tells us, if we do not love our neighbor whom we do see.

The trouble in today’s Church is that the Bishops have somehow collectively forgotten that both dimensions are necessary in living the Christian Faith.  And perhaps, the most important is the vertical dimension which inspires and sustains the horizontal.

Sadly, the Bishops stop way too short in the leadership of Christ’s faithful.  They lack proper form and follow through!

In the end, the Church is suffering greatly.