Dearest Church,<\/p>\n
The Year of Faith is almost right on top of us. Don\u2019t you just love these goofy \u201cyears\u201d we celebrate and observe together, on the somewhat arbitrary\u00a0declarations of our popes? I sure do. There is nothing more serious than doing something arbitrarily, which begins to unlock the mad, Augustinian genius of faith: we know because<\/em> we believe, not the other way around. In the days and months to come, expect lots from me on this Year of Faith stuff.<\/p>\n But first, nostalgia<\/em>:<\/p>\n I recall John Paul II\u2019s Year of the Family. It was the mid nineties. I was twelve or thirteen at the time, living in Reynosa, Mexico. (I grew up in a self-appointed, lay Catholic missionary family, rooted in the charismatic renewal movement of the Catholic Church. Remember the crazy charismatics? Yep. That was us; that\u2019s me. I have lots to say about this too, but not here. I\u2019ll save that for later.)<\/p>\n One of the more common refrains back then was a call to \u201cevangelize the baptized.\u201d \u00a0The idea was timely: evangelization was no longer just for people \u201cout there.\u201d The Gospel was desperately needed \u201cin here,\u201d at the local, parochial level and at all internals levels of the\u00a0Catholic Church. The movements and ministries that grew and separated and coalesced is a complicated \u00a0knot to untie, but this call to \u201cevangelize the baptized\u201d was consistently present throughout, so I claim.<\/p>\n I never questioned the truth of that dictum, and for good reason. But it also got political and sometimes became divisive: dividing the Church between the truly<\/em> evangelized (the Enlightened spirit-filled) and the one\u2019s in need of remedial evangelization. Don\u2019t get me wrong: there\u2019s lots of remediation needed, then and now. But this evangelical focus created more than a healthy, Catholic sense of hierarchy: it grew from a simple, intuitive apostolate into an artificial hierarchy of ministry based upon a false, Protestant theology. (\u201cOnce saved\/baptized in the Holy Spirit\/whatever, always\u2026\u201d)<\/p>\n You can see it today. Especially in the remnants of the charismatic movement<\/a>, alive and (mostly) well in youth ministry and other popular forms of ministry and catechesis. (Read: Life Teen<\/a>.)<\/p>\n More alarmingly, this artificial sense of hierarchy is at work in the sick, sycophantic phenomenon of \u201cCatholic celebrities.\u201d \u00a0The slow, poisonous inculuration of the American cult of celebrity into the American Catholic Church. You know what I mean. And no, I won\u2019t name names. I\u2019m not trying to humiliate people, I\u2019m simply naming a circumstance we should all be quite familiar with.<\/p>\n There\u2019s nothing wrong with Saints, precisely because we celebrate their holiness through their brokenness. Take St. Francis: the guy was a total lunatic! A person to be celebrated indeed. I like to think that madness is an unspoken criteria for canonization. Never a sane Saint, methinks.<\/p>\n I feel bad for today\u2019s Catholic celebrities. Some of them are my friends. (Itself a reason to feel bad for someone.) Many of them have real, special gifts and never imagined their present popularity. For others, I cannot say as much: there are some bonafide, giant Catholic assholes out there. Some venture capitalists too. But we\u2019re the exception to the rule, I hope. (Oh, and by the way: the whole \u201cI\u2019m a sinner too, I struggle everyday just like you, pray for me and Ill pray for you\u201d bit is a tired-out line that often belies a darker reality. At least when I use it.)<\/p>\n The result then and now \u2014 of evangelizing the baptized \u2014 has been the development of a blind spot to a complimentary and deeper evangelical truth: the need to evangelize the evangelized, t<\/em>he need for constant conversion for those who preach the Gospel. For everyone. The Church, of course, has always understood this well. Clergy and religious are, ideally, guarded by structural ecclesial authority to protect against inner blindness. When they are not, we\u2019ve all seen the disastrous The Year of Faith is surely a call to evangelization, in all its manifestations. But we cannot settle for evangelizing the baptized this time; we also need to evangelize the evangelized. Even if it is at the hands of the \u201cunevangelized.\u201d One of the major blindnesses of \u201cevangelizing the baptized\u201d was that the unevangelized baptized many times had things to teach the Enlightened ones. They often had folklore and simplicity and love \u00a0and joy we lacked. Especially joy. Real, Catholic joy. Dancing.<\/p>\n We all need evangelization. In every direction and combination. I think the New Evangelization is all about this comprehensive, joyful turn, recognizing the comprehensive need for re-formation and conversion and critique.<\/p>\n Especially critique. The Early Church, for instance, was not what we would call a \u201cconsensus.\u201d There were wide and serious and well-known disagreements. There was dissensus. But it was still faithful, radically so. The scandal of 1054, the great Catholic wound between East and West, was a failure to remain faithful through dissent. A sin against hope.<\/p>\n As a boy who grew up surrounded by evangelists of all stripes, it was jarring to realize my own blindness to what had always been abundant: sin, vice, humanity, beauty, hypocrisy, love. Our sense of being spiritually rich had made us poor. My inherited place in the artificial hierarchy of evangelization became even more questionable as I looked beyond them \u201cout there\u201d and saw myself \u201cin here\u201d: when I faced the abyss of my own heart.<\/p>\n Strangely enough, I found God there. A God more real and less defensive that the images and idols I had created and followed before. This was an iconic, excessive, surprising\u2014and\u00a0arbitrary!\u2014God to whom I could show fidelity, even throughout my constant infidelity. Even in the ugliest sins and the honest grips of serious doubt. Even as an asshole who writes for money.<\/p>\n That jarring realization was a menacing blessing. It helped me grow from one truth of evangelization to a more full manifestation of that truth in beauty. It revealed the heart of the Gospel: the good news of the\u00a0kerygma<\/em>\u00a0is love. As John taught us: the gift who is God is love. And love\u2013which to say God<\/em>\u2014is beyond goodness and even truth. Love reveals itself through the radical presence of the Incarnation, revealed first to the human heart, to the cor<\/em> of the person, as an aesthetic gift, a gift whose giveness is universally recognized as beautiful. The tragic beauty of the Incarnation. What the shepherds saw and sang about. What the Magi adored. To that<\/em>\u00a0mystery we must always be faithful. The rest is worth arguing about, sometimes.<\/p>\n Today\u2019s Gospel taught about the family through the fidelity of marriage. In a way, it sews a seamless seam between John Paul II\u2019s Year of the Family and Benedict XVI\u2019s upcoming Year of Faith. The thread of love does not bind without cutting: it cannot hide the fact that, in our homes and families, faith is not as shiny and sterile as it looks in the pews or at the pulpit. May we see these bruised fruits of faith as reasons to take a rich and deep inward turn and begin to evangelize ourselves and, doing so, the world. Even when it means allowing the world to evangelize us, accepting the embrace of Christ the leper.<\/p>\n Love,<\/p>\n Sam<\/p>\n \u00a0<\/p>\n<\/body><\/html>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" Dearest Church, The Year of Faith is almost right on top of us. Don\u2019t you just love these goofy \u201cyears\u201d we celebrate and observe together, on the somewhat arbitrary\u00a0declarations of our popes? I sure do. There is nothing more serious than doing something arbitrarily, which begins to unlock the mad, Augustinian genius of faith: we […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1216,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[51],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-32745743964","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-pastoral-philosophy"],"yoast_head":"\nBlack Sheep Dog<\/del> results.<\/p>\n