Real Catholic Blog

Merry Christmas from myself, Brother John and the team at RealCatholicBlog.com and RealCatholic.com, our online Catholic book and merchandise store. We offer our prayers for a joyous, blessed and merry Christmas season and a happy, healthy and prosperous New Year. We look forward 2011 for continued renewal and a further growth in the Faith as individuals and for the Church Universal, and for a rebirth of a culture of life throughout society. We ask for your prayers in these causes.

Why do we look forward to Christmas? Why should we? Please watch this short video from Pope Benedict XVI’s last general audience before Christmas.

Pope Benedict: The coming of Jesus is intended to “teach us to see and love events, the world and everything around us, with the same eyes of God. … The Word became a baby to help us understand how God acts, so we can let ourselves be ever more transformed by His goodness and His infinite mercy. …”

Remember the game show To Tell The Truth? A panel of celebrity judges had to determine, by asking each certain questions, which of three contestants was the real person and which two were the impostors. When they made their determinations, they explained which answers tipped them to pick one over the other two. After that, the host would ask for the “real” person to step forward and, after several fits and starts among the three, the real person would step forward.

Thursday night, the leaders of the three major parties in Great Britain held the second of an unprecedented series of debates in advance of the country’s parliamentary elections. The prime minister is not elected directly by the people — the P.M. is the party leader of the party that captures a majority of seats in the House of Commons — so these debates are causing quite a buzz not only within the UK but internationally as well because they are, in effect, nationalizing the election around these individual men. It’s also caused a stir because the leader of the long-time third party, the Liberal Democrats (acknowledged to be further to the left than even the Labour Party), was acknowledged to have won the debate. Coupled with the quickly falling poll numbers of the front-running, and main opposition, Conservative Party, incumbent Labour is back in the hunt in a nearly three way tie.

Background as prologue done, please see the video below from the debate last Thursday. The replies are in response to a question from a voter who supports homosexual unions, abortion, and condom distribution, who wants Pope Benedict’s fall visit to Great Britain cancelled. (It is expected he will beatify 19th century English Cardinal John Henry Newman during the visit.) Then, try to identify the “Conservative Party” candidate. It’s well nigh impossible.

To Tell The Truth: Will the real conservative, if there really is one, please stand up?

If the Conservative Party is on the same plank as the two leftist parties, is there hope in the UK? No wonder it’s an island of moral irrelevence where the dictatorship of relativism rules. (Who needs an election, then?)

If you think this is amazingly sad, I wish I could find a video with the complete discussion — there was a follow up in which all three lauded Britain’s homosexual union law with the “Conservative Party” candidate even saying, “the Pope needs to get with the times,” which prototypically misunderstands the point. A man, The Pope, does not make Church doctrine. No man can. The Pope defends Church teaching which is the teaching of our Creator, our Heavenly God.

One of the three, as you heard, even said he was “not a man of faith,” which may make him the first such Western leader. All three gladly said they were in agreement on disagreeing with the Pope. 

But I guess we should be thankful that they at least will welcome His Holiness to their country. Or will he even attend now? Because, as the Brits like to say, there is a twist to the tale.

Apart from the debate, but at about the same time, a memo by a government official about the historic first-ever Papal visit to Britain became public. In it, he wrote such vile as that the Pope might, during the visit, launch Papal-branded condoms, bless homosexual marriages and open an abortion ward (see American Catholic blog).

If this insult was made about a Muslim leader, the official would have been fired immediately. Instead, this man is allowed to stay in Prime Minister Gordon Brown’s government. Or, as Gerald Warner of the Daily Telegraph wrote:

Wear a cross to work and you are sacked; insult the Pope and you are “transferred to other duties.”

The Vatican, however, showing the humility of Christ, stated the visit is still on, despite forceful letters of protest by Scottish and English Catholic bishops (The Scotsman). No doubt, this will put whoever wins the election and has the great honor of receiving Pope Benedict, in a more humble position in lieu of their adamantly arrogant ”disagreements with the Pope.” Maybe they will learn a lesson in humility from him. 

To Tell The Truth identities. Oh yeah, in case you are wondering: The man on the left, the first to answer the question, is David Cameron, the Conservative Party leader; the man who admits he is of no faith is Nick Clegg, of the third party Liberal Democrats; and the third candidate is incumbent Prime Minister Gordon Brown of the Labour Party. 

As nice as it is to see Saint Patrick’s Day celebrated — not many saints are celebrated in the secular world — that’s also it’s drawback. That is to say, the day itself has been so secularized, the meaning of it is obfuscated, even trivialized, to the point that it is caricatured. It’s as if it’s only worth celebrating by drinking a lot of green beer. Worship is belittled to that of a secular god — alcohol.

Does it remind you of anything? It should. One beer company a couple of years ago even ran a nauseating series of television ads for weeks, leading up to, and equating, Saint Patrick’s Day with “secular” Christmas, complete with adults dressed like children, eagerly awaiting Saint Patrick’s Day morning, running downstairs to open their presents (of beer).

Not that I oppose a celebratory beer. But I don’t want people to lose sight of this significant saint and consign him to cartoon-like fiction.

Saint Patrick was captured (from his home in Scotland, sorry about that truth) and enslaved as a 14-year-old in then-pagan Ireland (Catholic Online). In captivity, he prayed each day. Later, he wrote:

The love of God and his fear grew in me more and more, as did the faith, and my soul was rosed, so that, in a single day, I have said as many as a hundred prayers and in the night, nearly the same. I prayed in the woods and on the mountain, even before dawn. I felt no hurt from the snow or ice or rain.

As with all saints, there is much to learn from his life. His feast day comes at an appropriate time, during the heart of Lent, because his story is reflective of the season’s meaning — through prayer, he drew closer to Christ, who Himself drew closer to the Father through prayer the night of His Passion. It was that prayer, that closeness that sustained him and led him to freedom and greater things in his life, a life that glorified God.

A couple of notes: Patrick used the shamrock to explain the Trinity. It has been associated with him and the Irish since that time.

Unlike the raucous celebrations in his name today, Patrick was humble, pious and gentle. He had a total and devout love and trust in God. He is an example to each of us, for he feared nothing, not even death, because of his complete trust in God.

Saint Patrick: Someone to draw guidance from, not drink a beer to.

Here is a wonderful homily by Father Bonaventure of Ave Maria, who preaches on today’s Gospel that tells us of the need to love God above all else because he knows what we need and we can love all others through Him. Lent is a time of self sacrifice that focuses our love for the Holy Trinity and the great gift of God’s only begotten Son, Jesus Christ, who humbled himself not only to live among us, but to die for us. It is a short homily, but Father Bonaventure packs every word and sentence with powerful theology about our life on earth, love of God and receiving His Grace on earth that will reward us with life in Heaven, where we are ultimately meant to be.

That Grace we receive from Him is not a natural virtue. It must be acquired through patience and prayer.

As we’ve noted before, Pope Benedict XVI endorses new media and digital technology as a vital tool in reaching and teaching people about God, our faith and the Church. Now, he’s taking it a step further. In a recent message, he promoted the 44th World Day of Social Communications, and calls “urgent and unavoidable task for priests and consecrated men and women,” to communicate through this new avenue of reaching people not before available through traditional forms of communication. He practices what he preaches — the Vatican has an excellent YouTube channel and Web site, for example. We would add that lay people have their own responsibility to reach out to those who are not familiar with the Church; or those who are, but who have declined the Lord’s invitation to come home.

Pope Benedict says: Get online, log on and log into the Word of God!

The Holy Father’s homily yesterday at the canonization of the five saints starts out strong and only gets better — a must read! These are just the first two paragraphs, but you can read it in its entirety, here, courtesy of ZENIT. It’s about 2,000 words.

His emphasis is the example of the saints. “Come, follow me!” They followed Jesus, unlike the rich man in the Gospel. They put themselves aside to serve Jesus, rejected the temptation of a life of self, and rejected cultures that rejected God. It is hard, no question, and requires great humility. But isn’t anything worthwhile hard? Aren’t the greatest reward realized after hard work? Is there a greater reward than Heavenly salvation? 

“What must I do to inherit eternal life?” This is the question that opens the brief dialogue we heard in the Gospel, between a man, identified elsewhere as the rich young man, and Jesus (cf Mk 10:17-30). We do not have very many details about this nameless character: all the same from the little we do have we are able to perceive his sincere desire to attain eternal life by living an honest and virtuous existence on earth. In fact he knows the commandments and has obeyed them since childhood. And yet all of this, while important, is not sufficient — says Jesus — there is one thing missing, but it is an essential thing. Seeing then that he is willing, the Divine Master looks at him with love and proposes the qualitative leap, he calls him to the heroism of sanctity, he asks him to abandon everything and follow him: “Sell what you own and give the money to the poor . . . then come, follow me!” (V. 21).

“Then come, follow me!” This is the Christian vocation that flows from a proposal of love by the Lord, and that can be realized only thanks to our loving reply. Jesus invites his disciples to the total giving of their lives, without calculation or personal gain, with unfailing trust in God. The saints welcome this demanding invitation and set about following the crucified and risen Christ with humble docility. Their perfection, in the logic of a faith that is humanly incomprehensible at times, consists in no longer placing themselves at the center, but choosing to go against the flow and live according to the Gospel. This is what was done by the five saints who today, with great joy, are being put forward for veneration by the universal Church: Zygmunt Szczęsny Feliński, Francisco Coll y Guitart, Jozef Damiaan de Veuster, Rafael Arnáiz Barón, Marie de la Croix (Jeanne) Jugan. In them we can contemplate the realization of the words of the Apostle Peter: “Look, we have left everything and followed you” (V. 28) and the consoling reassurance of Jesus: “There is no one who has left house, brothers, sisters, mother, father, children or land for my sake and for the sake of the gospel who will not receive a hundred times as much…and persecutions too, now in this present time and, in the world to come, eternal life” (VV. 29-30)