“Dispensation”, may be why so many have ‘dispensed’ with their Faith. Trying to evangelize by ‘making it easier’ to live our Faith has done just the opposite. Once upon a time there was a discipline of meatless Fridays. Made non-Catholics curious, and many followed that curiosity into the Faith. It also served to remind us cradle Catholi…
“Dispensation”, may be why so many have ‘dispensed’ with their Faith. Trying to evangelize by ‘making it easier’ to live our Faith has done just the opposite. Once upon a time there was a discipline of meatless Fridays. Made non-Catholics curious, and many followed that curiosity into the Faith. It also served to remind us cradle Catholics that we were, well, Catholic. Cardinal Jacques Maritain once wrote that the priest shortage would not be fixed by lowering standards, and maintained that toughening up the standards would resolve it. He used the example of military recruitment to make his point. The Marines for years met recruiting goals by saying they were looking for a few good men. As our current recruiting crisis demonstrates, lowering military recruitment standards to “sissy drag queens welcome” fails miserably. Same with our Faith and the priests we need. If it’s ‘easy’ to be Catholic, so easy one doesn’t need to actually change, then …. Well, we see the results. Telling the Faithful that we have Holy Days of Obligation challenges one to publicly live the Faith we claim. And is a healthy invitation to others.
A demonic demonstration of the validity of this is the fact that Islam gains a lot of converts by just that way: rigorous renunciation of the non-moslem world view and equally rigorous acceptance of mandatory religious behavior.
Today is All Saints Day, and the Church should remind us that martyrdom is not for limp wristed cowards. We should be exhorted to live our Faith in a way that would get us arrested in:
ChinaCubaNicazuelaNigeria, etc.
As one of our hymns says, let our shout be heard above the pagan horde:
As for me and my house, we will serve the LORD !!!
Now there's still a recommendation for some sort of penance on Friday. I'm still wondering what, if anything, people do for that. I racked my brain for a while and came to the conclusion that as far as a regular practice of penance is concerned, fasting and abstinence is about the easiest thing to integrate into your life that there is.
The official position of the Usccb is that the meat penance is still supposed to be the normal practice. They say that they "the Catholic community will ordinarily continue to abstain from meat by free choice as formerly we did in obedience to Church law"
Sure. But they allow the substitution of any other penance, and I haven't ever had a conversation with anyone who does any other penance (save those who occasionally substitute a rosary when they forget and eat meat). So I'm still wondering.
“Dispensation”, may be why so many have ‘dispensed’ with their Faith. Trying to evangelize by ‘making it easier’ to live our Faith has done just the opposite. Once upon a time there was a discipline of meatless Fridays. Made non-Catholics curious, and many followed that curiosity into the Faith. It also served to remind us cradle Catholics that we were, well, Catholic. Cardinal Jacques Maritain once wrote that the priest shortage would not be fixed by lowering standards, and maintained that toughening up the standards would resolve it. He used the example of military recruitment to make his point. The Marines for years met recruiting goals by saying they were looking for a few good men. As our current recruiting crisis demonstrates, lowering military recruitment standards to “sissy drag queens welcome” fails miserably. Same with our Faith and the priests we need. If it’s ‘easy’ to be Catholic, so easy one doesn’t need to actually change, then …. Well, we see the results. Telling the Faithful that we have Holy Days of Obligation challenges one to publicly live the Faith we claim. And is a healthy invitation to others.
A demonic demonstration of the validity of this is the fact that Islam gains a lot of converts by just that way: rigorous renunciation of the non-moslem world view and equally rigorous acceptance of mandatory religious behavior.
Today is All Saints Day, and the Church should remind us that martyrdom is not for limp wristed cowards. We should be exhorted to live our Faith in a way that would get us arrested in:
ChinaCubaNicazuelaNigeria, etc.
As one of our hymns says, let our shout be heard above the pagan horde:
As for me and my house, we will serve the LORD !!!
All Saints, please pray for us!
Jacques Maritain a Cardinal?
It was suggested but never happened.
Yes, all saints, pray to God for us!
Thanks for the correction.
Now there's still a recommendation for some sort of penance on Friday. I'm still wondering what, if anything, people do for that. I racked my brain for a while and came to the conclusion that as far as a regular practice of penance is concerned, fasting and abstinence is about the easiest thing to integrate into your life that there is.
The official position of the Usccb is that the meat penance is still supposed to be the normal practice. They say that they "the Catholic community will ordinarily continue to abstain from meat by free choice as formerly we did in obedience to Church law"
Sure. But they allow the substitution of any other penance, and I haven't ever had a conversation with anyone who does any other penance (save those who occasionally substitute a rosary when they forget and eat meat). So I'm still wondering.