Advancing the Kingdom

Though we may gainsay the characterization, we Americans are romantic. Perhaps our sesquicentennial is an opportune time to remind ourselves of this feature. We are romantic because we demonstrate and celebrate the mysteriously symbiotic relationship between freedom and purpose. We understand that together they are like a fruitful marriage in that they sustain, nourish and cultivate each other. Imagine, for instance, purpose without freedom to pursue it, or freedom with no purpose to pursue.  In a way, a pledge is a romance, a romance where freedom and purpose combine. Our nation is founded on a pledge. In the closing sentence of the Declaration of Independence, the signers “mutually pledge our lives, our fortunes, and our sacred honor”. They claimed freedom to do so, and their purpose was political autonomy. The opening lines of the Constitution – a document composed by recently ‘freed’ men – confirms the purpose of the founders’…

I call heaven and earth to witness against you today, that I have placed before you life and death, the blessing and the curse. So choose life in order that you may live, you and your descendants, (Deut. 30:19) With these words in his final address to them Moses exhorts the Israelites to remain faithful to their covenant with God for to do so is to assure life for them and for their descendants. To ignore the covenant is to choose death. This exhortation by the Great Lawgiver comes to mind as one learns this week of the issuance of Pope Leo XIV’s first encyclical, ‘Magnifica Humanitas’. The theme of this 42,000-word document is the Church’s primary social teaching on artificial intelligence. Essentially, in response to the growing influence A.I. has in our lives, the Holy Father calls for appropriate ethical and political oversight to safeguard human dignity and the…

What saint is associated with a sword and rosary? Most hagiographers would likely name as their first choice Saint Ignatius of Loyola, the sixteenth-century nobleman who, after being a soldier for Spain became as ‘soldier for Christ’ and founded the Society of Jesus (Jesuits) in 1534. St. Ignatius had a profound devotion to the Rosary.  Those who grow up in Switzerland might suggest another candidate: St. Nicholas de Flue, honored by Protestants and venerated by Catholics as the Patron Saint of that country. A fifteenth-century soldier turned hermit, he too is remembered for his military prowess and his reverence for the Blessed Mother. Perhaps today the closest living paragons for this distinction would be the members of the Guardia Svizzera Pontificia, generally known as the Swiss Guard. Indeed, the patron saint of the Swiss Guard is in fact St. Nicholas of Flue. NCCF is proud to report that the Swiss…

In the welter of today’s unsettled world those of us old enough to remember the Baltimore Catechism might in retrospect be struck by the astonishing simplicity of its pedagogy. To the question ‘why did God create us’ its brief answer was ‘to know, love and serve him in this world and to be happy with him forever in the next’. Succinct and spare as it is this response imparts a profound – and today altogether too ignored – reality. If God created us for these reasons, it must be that our lives are purposeful, that we share this purpose, and that we have in common an intended destiny or teleology. If God’s reasons for creating us are as stated, it follows that all his creation is integral and in a mysterious way in sync with this divine plan. This is the reality that today is too ignored: the unity of…

Addis Ababa, Amman, Asmara, Beirut, Ernakulam, Jerusalem, the Caucasus, Ukraine. What do these disparate locations have in common? In each of them resides a regional team of an international organization which is celebrating its centennial this year. In 1926 Pope Pius XI consolidated the Holy See’s Sacred Congregation for the Eastern Church and the original Catholic Near East Welfare Association into one papal agency which retained the latter’s name. In the 1930s CNEWA was restructured and placed under the administration of the archbishop of New York, its current world headquarters.  The initial impetus for the relief movements leading to the creation of CNEWA was the extensive displacement of people in Europe and the Middle East resulting from World War I and the collapse of the Ottoman Empire. Ever since, the disruptions of wars have consumed its humanitarian and Christian response – even now up through the conflicts in Ukraine and…

The support donors in the National Catholic Community Foundation community provide for Catholic education is noteworthy. Among them there is a prevailing understanding that Catholic education transcends apprenticeship in the basic skills of life by inviting students to explore various paths to Truth. This steady support by our donors brings to mind our Lord’s words in St. John’s Gospel: “the truth will set you free”. Other than their soteriological significance – namely how they relate to our salvation from the bondage of sin – these words of Jesus prompt reflection on the symbiotic relationship in our time on this earth among education, truth and freedom. Three educational endeavors helped by our donors in recent years demonstrate in different ways the efficacy of this triadic relationship. Interestingly, all three are anchored in university settings. The first is the Council for Research in Values and Philosophy (www.crvp.org) which was established several decades…

“Priests are just like men”. Years ago it was not unusual to hear this innocent but confused exclamation from elementary students as they learned about the seven sacraments in catechism class. Today it seems this callow confusion among youngsters has given way to something more widespread – a regrettable unawareness or indifference among older adolescents. Why is the Holy Spirit’s call to the priestly vocation not being heard or heeded? There may be multiple reasons. One for sure is that young men are not being encouraged to ‘open their ears and hearts’ to the whispers of the Holy Spirit. The concerns, distractions and allurements of their secular lifestyle overwhelm and dull their responsiveness.  Consequently, the ability to discern, let alone the desire to do so, is foreign to them.  Another contributing factor is the inadequate understanding which generally prevails among us Catholics about the sacrament of Holy Orders. Priests are…

Congratulations to the International Catholic Migration Commission for having been in existence for seventy-five years! Among the donors of the National Catholic Community Foundation are supporters of international organizations like ICMC. It is a privilege to highlight it here. Since our expulsion from the Garden of Eden migration and its boons and banes have been persistent realities in our long history. Whether voluntary or forced, migration has been caused by both natural and manmade disasters including floods, droughts, famine, wars, persecution, etc. In recent centuries some migratory movements have been inter-national such as the Irish escaping the potato famine in the 19th century, the Vietnamese ‘boat people’ coming to the United States in 1979, and refugees of the Syrian civil war in 2011. Other movements have been intra-national, such as the relocation of millions within Russia during the Stalin era, or the voluntary move of thousands of African Americans from…

Although it appeared on coins as early as the Civil War, it was during the Eisenhower administration that Congress, by unanimous consent, approved ‘In God We Trust’ as an official national motto.  One might ask that if it were proposed today would the motto attract such support. Are we a faithful nation and how can our faith be described? Is it merely an observance of cultural traditions, a fuzzy awareness of ethics? If transcendental, is it more spiritual than religious, more personal than creedal? Does theology continue to be its guide? Or, has theology been supplanted by sociology, humanitarianism – or Artificial Intelligence? Has our faith in God been misplaced and is now invested in ourselves as we aspire to construct some secular utopia – one agnostic of the eternal absolutes and based on the false grounds of relativism? Is the much-noted decline in our participation in organized religion over…

“The Spirit of the Lord is upon us because he has anointed me to proclaim good news to the poor. He has sent me to proclaim liberty to the captives and recovering of sight to the blind, to set at liberty those who are oppressed, to proclaim the year of the Lord’s poor” (Lk 4:14-19) Standing in the synagogue in his hometown of Nazareth, Jesus with unusual authority read these lines from the scroll of the prophet Isaiah. He then announced to the startled congregation: ‘Today this Scripture has been fulfilled in your hearing.” This fulfillment continues today, but perhaps in a way not foreseen by Isaiah, but certainly one inspired by the Christ’s message of liberation. Countless women and children are being liberated from the scourge known as human trafficking. Human trafficking, a form of slavery, is said to be the fastest growing criminal industry in the world. Through…

Even in the aura of the mind-boggling technology which purports to enhance our ‘quality of life’, pessimism pervades. Violence, addiction, civil and international unrest, the decline of the family, moral decadence all contribute to the sense that our way of life is deteriorating. Some wonder if, like ancient Rome, the civilization we know is falling. These folk can take heart and learn about something that is rising. Scripture is replete with imagery of ‘rising’. God tells Abram: “Arise, walk through the land”; Proverbs states: “A righteous man fall seven times and rises again”; Isaiah says: “Arise, shine, for your light has come”; the Book of Numbers predicts: “A star rising out of Jacob”. Of course, our Lord rises from the dead.  Interestingly, the verb ‘to orient’ – as in ‘to face toward’ – comes from the Latin oriens meaning ‘rising’. (The sun rises in the east, hence the root for…

“A people without understanding comes to ruin”. These are the words of the prophet Hosea who, addressing the Israelites in the northern kingdom in the eighth century before the Assyrian capture of Samaria, admonished them for their willful ignorance of the commands of God.Though addressed to a specific people at a specific place, the prophet’s oracular warning is just as relevant today for the global community as it was for the Israelites then. Ten years ago this NCCF column reported on the work of Fr. George McLean, OMI, who in 1983 founded the Council for Research in Values and Philosophy (RVP). Fr. McLean has since departed this world, but the seed he had planted has beautifully blossomed. The NCCF column likened Fr. McLean’s vision to that of the English Benedictine, Bede Griffiths (d.1993) whose 1954 autobiography, The Golden String contained insights later echoed in Vatican II documents. He wrote: “The…