Fathers For Good

Days of Our Lady of Guadalupe

Historic days will be taking place this week in Phoenix. Arizona’s capital is known for its 100-degree temperatures in the summer, but for the opening days of August this year, it will also be the site for the 127th annual Knights of Columbus Convention. In addition, the Convention will be followed by the first-ever Marian Congress devoted to Our Lady of Guadalupe and a lively Guadalupe Festival.

Some of the proceedings will be broadcast live on EWTN, Boston's Catholic TV and Canada’s Salt and Light Television Network.

At the Convention, Supreme Knight Carl Anderson will deliver his annual report, an overview of the operations of the Knights of Columbus, which once again set records in charitable activity. In 2008, the Catholic fraternal Order, which has 1.78 million members, donated more than $150 million to charitable causes, and members volunteered more than 68 million hours of their time to help those in need. Impressive numbers that underscore the Gospel words, “Do unto others as you would have them do unto you.”

At the close of the convention on August 6 (Thursday), the Marian Congress will begin three days of spiritual and scholarly study of the greatest religious event ever to occur on American soil – the appearance of Our Lady of Guadalupe to Juan Diego in 1531. The event occurred in what is now Mexico City, and was the catalyst for the conversion of millions of people throughout the New World to Christianity. You will not want to miss the coverage of this event, which you will be able to find on the Knights of Columbus website (www.kofc.org).

The Marian Congress will close on Saturday (August 8) with the Guadalupe Festival, a multicultural afternoon of song, prayer, dancing and witness talks.

The message of these days is that the Blessed Mother, under the title of Our Lady of Guadalupe, wishes to bring all people of America (and the world) under the mantle of her motherly protection, as she leads them to her Son, Jesus Christ, true God and true man.

Visit www.kofc.org often throughout the week for daily updates on the proceedings of these historic days.

Wedding Bells - and Vows

Luke and Elizabeth were married yesterday.

The young couple who met at Franciscan University (Steubenville) and were featured recently by Fathers for Good, entered the sanctuary together, faced one another, hand in hand, and professed the sacramental vows of matrimony before Jesus in the Blessed Sacrament, a priest of the Catholic Church and the people of God.

What God has joined, let no one separate, the priest said, echoing the words of Jesus about marriage.

I attended the wedding – held at St. Mary’s Church in New Haven – with my two young boys, and my 8-year-old was asking questions. We got to the church a bit late, and Father John Peter Cameron – the Dominican who edits the monthly prayer guide Magnificat – was already into his homily. Luke and Elizabeth were sitting side by side near the altar.

"Are they married yet?" my son whispered.

Thinking back to my own wedding 11 years ago, I couldn’t remember whether the homily comes before or after the exchange of vows. "I’m not sure," I said, "we’ll have to wait and see."

My response didn’t satisfy my impatient son, but I realized that it fit pretty well the state of marriage today. Oh, I have no doubt that my friends Luke and Elizabeth were truly married when they exchanged vows after Father Cameron finished the homily. Though young by modern standards, they were well-prepared and fully aware of the obligations they were taking on toward one another, the Church and society. The same cannot be said, sadly, of so many men and women marrying today, even within the Catholic Church. The high divorce and annulment numbers attest to this fact.

I used to think that the great number of Church annulments was due to liberal clergy and incompetent diocesan chanceries that simply rubber-stamped society’s trend toward divorce and separation. But after a couple of years as a seminarian (way back when) and 10 years working as a reporter for an archdiocesan newspaper, I got to see first hand how poorly formed and confused so many couples are when they come to the altar for marriage.

The Church requires that they come freely and with sufficient knowledge and intent of the will to assent to the vows that they exchange. So many couples today – living together or having multiple sexual partners in their past, and with a woefully deficient Catholic formation and understanding of the sacraments – simply do not meet the requirements of "informed consent" when they stand together before the priest.

At the wedding yesterday, my son asked me why Luke and Elizabeth were standing so near the altar, instead of in the pews. I told him that they were standing within the sanctuary because they were actually administering the sacrament of marriage to one another. The priest was a witness for the Church, but Luke and Elizabeth – exercising the priesthood of the laity that was conferred on them at Baptism – were actually the sacramental ministers.

This is an important fact. Marriage is not like the Mass, in which Jesus becomes present in the Blessed Sacrament ex opera operato, by the work of the one performing the eucharistic liturgy, i.e., the priest. The priest could be in the state of multiple mortal sins, he could be drunk, he could give no thought to the words of consecration, he could not even believe that Jesus becomes present in the Blessed Sacrament, but as long as he generally intends to do what the Church does and says correctly the words of consecration, he will "confect" the sacrament and Jesus will truly become present under the appearances of bread and wine.

Yet in the Sacrament of Marriage, the man and woman must meet a higher standard, in a sense. They must know what they are doing, be conscious and aware of the meaning of the words they exchange, believe that what they are saying is true, and fully intend to be bound by the sacrament. If one spouse, for example, is drunk at the wedding, there are strong grounds for annulment. If one does not intend to have children, despite saying that he will accept children from God, an annulment can easily be obtained later.

Many people do not know what a Church annulment really is. It is not a "Catholic divorce" or a concession by the Church that sometimes marriages go sour and spouses are better off starting over. An annulment (or declaration of nullity) is a recognition by Church authorities that at the time the marriage vows were exchanged (that is, at the time of the wedding itself) all the conditions of a valid marriage in the Catholic Church were not present. In other words, although the couple went through a marriage ceremony, and by all appearances were wedded for life, a true Catholic wedding did not take place. They were not, in fact, married.

But, again, let us not dwell too long on what can go wrong with marriage. Let us acknowledge what is undeniably right about marriage, especially when two young people like Luke and Elizabeth embrace the Catholic faith with fervor and desire with all their hearts to live this sacramental bond in love and truth.

Many blessings upon them!

Love in Truth

Today, in the media and the political arena, so many prominent persons echo, unwittingly, the words of Pilate, "What is truth?" With the release of his highly anticipated social encyclical, Caritas in Veritate (Love in Truth), Pope Benedict XVI addresses the issue head on. He says that if we don’t have objective truth, rooted ultimately in God, then we can only make a pretense to love.

There can be no love without truth.

Of course, there is much more in the encyclical that the commentators are highlighting, picking apart, or using for their own agendas. But this is the message I have gotten. In a society in which "you have your truth and I have my truth," love will wind up looking pretty strange.

You will have, for example, abortion on demand of "unwanted" babies in one wing of a hospital, and in vitro fertilization in another wing for couples who want desperately to have a child. You will have "mercy killing" for old people and euthanasia for even the young who are suffering.

Love can be clouded, bent to subjective needs, tossed by emotion and passing sentiment, and turned into more of a "me" thing than a "we" thing. Thus, love must be anchored to the truth, the truth that comes ultimately from God, who is Truth itself.

As Pope Benedict says, "Only in truth does charity shine forth, only in truth can charity be authentically lived. Truth is the light that gives meaning and value to charity. That light is both the light of reason and the light of faith …" (#3).

Clearly, the Holy Father is taking up the theme he has raised before: "the dictatorship of relativism." We cannot live in a world where there is no objective truth.

Pope Benedict seems to be saying that objective truth is vital to the most basic human needs to love and to be loved. Love must be based on the truth about the human person created by God, otherwise love turns to selfishness, and then all human relationships -- from the family to society – break down.

There can be no love without truth.

Ye Old Sod

Do you love nature?

 

I am trying my best, as one who spent most of his life in New York City. I live now in what I call “the country,” which is actually a suburban Connecticut subdivision with houses a few arm-spans apart from one another. Yet there is grass to mow, weeds to pull and trees to grow – the country.

 

I mention this because over the Fourth of July weekend, my wife and I – assisted by our two boys (ages 8 and 4) – pulled up our front lawn, which had become overgrown with clover – and laid down fresh sod. If we had known, before we started, the amount of back-breaking work involved, we probably would have decided against the project, or hired someone to do it. But we got it done, without major injury, and now are in the fretful period of watering and waiting, to see if the grass will really “take” and become rooted in the soil.

 

Perhaps this is the time to reflect on the Parable of the Sower, which Jesus told to his very land-based audience who knew all about the importance of planting seeds in good ground. Our spiritual and moral life must be rich and fertile so that when Jesus casts the seeds of faith and grace into our hearts, the plants of virtue will take root and grow to be strong and fruitful.

 

The good soil consists in a willingness, an openness to God’s promptings – a disposition to say “yes” to the Spirit, wherever he leads.

 

Just as I struggle to keep our lawn lush despite my lack of experience and patience, so I continue to struggle to keep the soil of my heart and mind open and receptive to the seeds that Jesus plants within me.

 

As the great Jesuit poet Gerard Manley Hopkins wrote,

 

Mine, O thou lord of life, send my roots rain.

This First Father's Day

What do fathers want? This is the topic chosen for June by visitors to the Fathers for Good website.

 

Of course, there is not just one answer to the question. Fathers want a number of things, and different fathers may want the same thing in different ways. Yet I think the question is important because it directs attention on the heart of a father. The question is important not so that fathers can get things, but rather that they can know themselves better.

 

What’s inside a father’s heart? What is his deepest desire?

 

Now, I think, the answers become fewer and more focused. A father wants to know his children, in a personal way that only the man who helped to generate their lives can know them. A father wants to know his wife, also in a personal way that only a man who has “forsaken all others” for this one woman can know her, including in “the biblical sense.”

 

Now we are talking about big issues, because we are talking about the one truly important issue. We are talking about love.

 

If your mind goes kind of fuzzy and your heart bounces in all directions and your emotions run in contrasting colors and contradictory directions at the thought of love – in other words, if love means to you a bunch of competing and contrasting things that never seem to fit, don’t worry. Love is like that. It is like that because love is the one thing that can truly hurt us, and the one thing that can truly heal us. (See the article on this site, “Love – It’s a Guy Thing.”)

 

Yes, there are a million things that can go wrong in a father’s life. So many today are divorced, sometimes against their own will. So many are separated from their children. Some fathers just don’t know how to be good fathers. All of us, I think, are anxious about our own inadequacies and concerned about the future. We live in stormy times and amid economic upheavals, when the certainty and security we had planned seem to be blowing away.

 

Yet fatherhood can at times be very simple. Sometimes when I am most anxious and wondering what the future holds, or filled with anger over some incident at home or in the world, one of my young boys will sit in my lap with a book or pull my hand to go outside and play. The problems and challenges don’t disappear, but they appear in a different light.

 

Fathers for Good was launched last August, and this is our first Father’s Day as an online community, through the sponsorship of the Knights of Columbus. As editor, I wish you all a happy Father’s Day, and thank you for being a part of Fathers for Good.

 

Let’s meet together often.

Year for Priests

In the next few days we Catholics will receive a great gift, and a teaching moment. That is, the proximity of the opening of the Year for Priests (June 19) to Father’s Day (June 21).

 

Of course, Pope Benedict XVI did not have this convergence in mind when he declared the Year for Priests. He was tying the celebration to the feast of the Sacred Heart, which this year is June 19. Yet so often what the Church does has unforeseen effects, like when the Scripture reading cycles for Mass bring together two passages that just speak to the heart on one particular day.

 

So this weekend, as we inaugurate the Year for Priests, we are offered the chance to ponder why we call priests “Father.” They do not generate offspring like the fathers we will celebrate on Father’s Day – yet they have every right to the title “Father” because they generate (or regenerate) souls for heaven.

 

Through the sacrament of confession only priests can administer, they loose the bonds of sin and prepare us for heaven. Through the celebration of Mass and confection of the Holy Eucharist – which only priests can do – they bring heaven to earth and give eternal life into the hands (and mouths) of the faithful.

 

St. Paul writes that all fatherhood gets its name and identity from God the Father. Our Father in heaven created us “to love and obey him in this life and to live eternally with him in the next life,” as the Baltimore Catechism begins. The priest is most like God the Father in his ability, through the sacraments, to bring the people of God the gifts of God that will prepare them for life with the Father in heaven.

 

For this reason, we should hold priests in high esteem and offer them our love as children of God. Let’s remember our priests in this providential Year for Priests.

Stronger Than Porn

The power of porn to corrupt and destroy is great. But as the Fathers for Good special section on pornography declares, “Men Are Stronger than Porn.”

 

There are many resources on this site to help men, women and families combat this evil that has burst out of the “unmarked brown wrapper” of magazines and spread like a virus on the internet. We have a story about how porn can ruin marriages and lives, and a podcast with a Catholic deacon who overcame his porn addiction.

 

Please become informed about porn and do all you can to resist this insidious evil – and most of all keep it away from children, who can access it so easily – even by chance – on the computer.

 

For us men, the temptation is great – right there with computer screen pop-ups and ads that show pretty women with intriguing smiles and the promise of chat or dates. Whenever I see these enticements on my screen, I think of the deception and lies behind it all, and the corruption the porn industry breeds. I think of the harm to the women who are involved in it, the sad lives of those who engage in it, and the power and money I would hand over to this evil industry if I were to click just once.

 

A man at the screen with his hand on the mouse is involved in the great drama of our age – the type of drama that inspired the “psychomachia” plays of medieval days, with an angel on one shoulder whispering “don’t do it!” and the devil on the other saying “C’mon, no one gets hurt.”

 

Just one click and your life can change for the worse! Tread carefully.

 

We will have more in coming days on the theme “Men Are Stronger than Porn!”

 

Stay tuned.

 

 

The Curious Case of Father Cutié

The story of Father Alberto Cutié, the Florida media priest who was caught in tabloid photos cavorting on the beach with a young lady, presents a number of lessons that have been given scant attention in the widespread coverage of the case. Like a highway collision, many wrong turns have been made and Father Cutié, unwittingly or not, has involved many innocent bystanders in his personal crack-up.

Indeed, weeks after the affair was made public, Father Cutié careened further from the road and renounced his priesthood and the Catholic Church, entering the Episcopal Church in Florida with the woman who is now his fiancée.

Thus, sexual scandal has led to schism, and it is no secret that men have trod this path before. In fact – I hope I am not indelicate to point this out – the whole Episcopal (Anglican) Church was founded on the lust of a powerful man who wished to break his (marriage) vows. Call it “The Way of Henry VIII": A man cannot keep his sexual promise and ends up blaming the Church and her authorities for the stringent rules.

Call It Infidelity

At the heart of the case is infidelity, plain and simple, though the term is rarely heard in connection with Father Cutié. Rather, somehow the fact that a priest was unable to keep his promise of sexual continence has resulted in a renewed round of criticism of the discipline of celibacy, proving once again that celibacy is a sign of contradiction, unacceptable to our hyper-sexualized age.

In following the case in the media, I have had a few recurring thoughts:

1. What about the woman? Has anyone thought about the plight of the young lady who apparently has fallen in love with a priest and gained his love in return? Has anyone suggested to her that a man who would break a sacred, sacramental vow before God related to his priesthood might be prone to break a sacred though non-sacramental vow related to his marriage? (Marriage is not a sacrament in the Anglican tradition).
2. Whither the Episcopal Church? It seems beyond strange that the Episcopal bishop in Florida who received Father Cutié and his fiancée into the Anglican communion would give him immediate faculties to preach, with an eye toward ministerial ordination. Is there no thought that Father Cutié has acted hastily and is fresh from breaking promise after promise to his Catholic bishop and the Catholic Church? The bishop’s stance seems to be that any behavior that rejects sexual restraint and glorifies the self is to be praised and accepted. But I guess that has been the direction of the Episcopal Church for years.
3. Both Father Cutié and the Episcopal bishop acted irresponsibly in relation to the Catholic Bishop of Miami, John Favalora, who was kind enough to grant Father Cutié a leave of his duties and time to reflect after the beach photos were published. According to Bishop Favalora, Father Cutié never informed him of his decision to abandon his priesthood and the Catholic Church, though the priest had promised loyalty and obedience to his bishop at ordination. Likewise with the Episcopal bishop – he never consulted Bishop Favalora about receiving this high-profile Catholic priest into the Episcopal fold.

The big loser in all this, of course, is Father Cutié. He remains a priest of Jesus Christ, with the indelible mark on his soul from his Catholic ordination, yet he is giving up the privilege of consecrating bread and wine into the true Body and Blood of Jesus, for in the Anglican tradition he will no longer intend to do this.  

My hope and prayer is that Father Cutié will come to his senses, if nowhere else, at least on his deathbed. As he faces his final moments, may he call for the anointing of a Catholic priest.

Happy Birthday, Dear Church

Up until this point in our liturgical celebrations, it has been all about Jesus. His death, burial, Resurrection and Ascension into heaven. Now with the rushing of a strong wind -- whoosh! -- the focus shifts for Pentecost.

Fifty days after the Resurrection; ten days after the Ascension. The Holy Spirit comes with power upon the Apostles and Mary. It is the birthday of the Catholic Church. The time after and the time before -- between the Ascension and the Second Coming. This is the time we live in, when the Holy Spirit leads the Church into all truth.

It is a time most hopeful (our great Love will return!) and a time most painful (we live amid weakness and sin). For many, hope has given way to despair, and despair to disbelief, or vice versa. How can we hope so much as to believe that God in the flesh rose from the dead and will return? Why should we rejoice in Him who comes to judge the living and the dead? Not as a helpless babe who warms the hearts of all, but next time as an Omnipotent Judge to cull the wheat and burn the weeds.

Our lack of hope spurred Pope Benedict XVI to write a whole encyclical on the subject, Spe Salvi (In Hope We Are Saved). In brief, he says that much of mankind has lost hope because it does not expect good things to come from Jesus. They have lost true faith.

Let us look at the first Pentecost to recover some of the faith and hope that can make all the difference in life. St. Luke, author of the Acts of the Apostles, describes a dramatic scene. The Apostles and disciples gathered in one place and "a strong driving wind" filling the room, with "tongues as of fire" settling above each one, and the Holy Spirit coming upon them all (Acts 2:1-4).

The first effect is that they all begin speaking in different tongues, different languages. The obvious reason for this miraculous occurence is that the Apostles must preach the Gospel to the whole world, and need to be understood in all languages. The first effect of Pentecost is the preaching of the Word of God.

Peter, the chief Apostle, explains the happenings to the strangers. Jesus Christ is the Savior promised to Israel; though crucified, He rose from the dead and is exalted at the right hand of the Father. And now the Holy Spirit is poured forth on all who believe and are baptized.

About 3,000 persons were baptized that day!

Peter preached faith and hope at a time when there was little of either in an aging classical culture. Today, we face what some call a Post-Modern, Post-Christian, post-something world that -- even amid the wonders of new technology and prosperity -- seems lonely, lost and cynical. 

There is a solution, the answer of Pentecost: do not despair; preach the breathtaking newness of the Holy Spirit! Make this Pentecost the new day of your faith -- as fresh and inspiring as when the Spirit first descended. You may not have the eloquence of Peter to convert 3,000 listeners on the spot. But share your joy, and give an account of the hope that you hold. Dare to tell a friend or neighbor: He is Risen!

  

Come, Holy Ghost

The Catholic school gym sported shiny yellow floors, cinder-block walls smoothed with dull, industrial paint, grey folding chairs that clanged and screeched, and a stage at the far end for school plays and assemblies. The pastor blew a whistle: girls on one side, boys on the other, find your partner, size order.

 

It could have been my own Confirmation 40 years ago, so many things looked and sounded the same, right down to red robes and nervous banter of the students waiting for the bishop to arrive. But this scene occurred only yesterday, at St. Eugene’s Parish in Yonkers, New York, where I served as Confirmation sponsor for my good friend’s daughter, Marie-Therese.

 

Yes, there were some differences from my day. For one, we did not have sponsors back then, when each boy and girl stepped up alone to face the golden-robed bishop, holding out a card with his or her Confirmation name. We joked about getting “slapped” by the bishop, referring to the “tap” on the cheek that had been a part of the Confirmation rite for so many generations but was removed years ago.

 

Another more noticeable difference were the kids and adults checking cell phones and sending text messages, and the girls wearing more make-up than I ever remember adorning the faces of grade school kids.

 

Yet it was inspiring to see the bright, freshly scrubbed seventh-grade faces of the boys and girls, full of hope and ready for life. Tall, short, shy, outgoing, of many different ethnic backgrounds and nationalities – they are the people of tomorrow, and this day they were to become young adults in the Catholic faith.

 

Trying to bring a theological truth down to earth, I told a bright-faced Marie-Therese that there was nothing to worry about. “The great part about the sacraments is that God does all the work and all we have to do is say yes.” I am also her godfather, having stood at the baptismal font with her parents 12 years ago when the waters of salvation were poured upon her head.

 

“I am so proud of you,” I told her. “Now I must pray for you twice, once as my goddaughter and once again as a Confirmation young lady.”

 

At last, the altar boys appeared to light the incense as the pastor, in his monsignor’s cassock with royal purple piping, led the way up the stairs to the church. Cameras flashed, proud parents beamed and waved. The bishop processed, with miter and staff, as the choir sang a Holy Spirit hymn.

 

When the time came, I placed my right hand on Marie-Therese’s shoulder, as the bishop marked her forehead with holy oil, saying, “Be sealed with the Holy Spirit.” The bishop had told the candidates that the true effect of the sacrament will be found in the days to come, in virtuous acts performed and moral choices made, in temptations avoided and resisted, and in a long life walking in the Spirit, close to Jesus and on behalf of others.

 

As we processed out, I thought of the continuity of the Church, the passing on of this great faith from generation to generation and the never-extinguished hope of the Holy Ghost.

 

The great Jesuit poet Gerard Manley Hopkins wrote:

 

Because the Holy Ghost over the bent

World broods with warm breast and with ah! bright wings.