Advancing the Kingdom

Those of us alive at the time were too young to understand. The middle of the last century witnessed major historical developments in the world and in the Church. With the wisdom of retrospection, we now better appreciate their significance. The first half of that period was marked with unrest of epochal implications: two global conflicts, the holocaust, the surge of totalitarianism, economic reversals, regional wars, and the threat of nuclear annihilation posed by the globe’s two superpowers. The ‘welfare gap’ between what became known as the developed and ‘third world’ countries was widening. Hope was in short supply. Darwinism, Nietzscheanism, and Freudianism were ascendent, and their adherents intentionally or otherwise fomented insecurity, nihilism and even despair. Two Providential events occurred at midcentury. One was the momentous convocation by St. Pope John XXIII in the early 1960s of the Second Vatican Council. Its last and longest conciliar document – The…

Older readers may recall that although his feast day was removed from the Church’s universal calendar in 1969 Christopher continues to be recognized as a saint and venerated worldwide as the patron saint of travelers.  This distinction arises from the tradition which places him in southern Turkey in the early third century. A proud non-Christian known for is extraordinary physical strength, he was carrying a small child across a river when the child’s weight became almost insupportable. Arriving at the opposite shore he was humbled to learn that his passenger was the Christ Child who carried the weight of the world on his own shoulders. Christopher became a Christian, preached the faith and eventually was martyred. In 1909 the Franciscan Friars of the Atonement established a residence in Graymoor, New York for the purpose of providing ‘lodging for the pilgrims of the road’, wandering men who for various reasons were…

“On those living in the land of deep darkness a light has dawned”. These words of the prophet Isaiah spoken eight hundred years before the birth of Christ today bring to mind the rapid propagation of the faith in Africa. Known for centuries by Europeans, perhaps pejoratively, as the ‘dark continent’ – an image reinforced by Joseph Conrad’s 1899 novel ‘The Heart of Darkness’ – Africa today is experiencing the highest rate of growth in Catholicism in the world. Its identity as the dark continent obscures Africa’s role in the early Church.  Alexandria was one of the original four Patriarchates. Origen, Tertullian, Clement and Athanasius of Alexandria, three of the early Popes, to say nothing of St. Augustine of Hippo, were all North Africans. The rise of Islam in the seventh century led to the disappearance of most of Christianity. Not until the fifteenth century did the Portuguese begin exploring…

Readers who recognize the term ‘Frassati Fridays’ are either members of the Catholic cognoscenti or students at Martin Saints Classical High School in East Norriton, Pennsylvania. Otherwise, how would they recognize the Frassati reference? Born in 1901, Pier Giorgio Frassati belonged to a prosperous family in Turin, Italy. A young Catholic keen on mountain climbing and hiking with his friends, he was committed to a life of prayer and service to the poor. He died in 1925 after contracting a fatal illness. Beatified by Pope John Paul II in 1980, he was canonized one year ago by Pope Leo XIV.  The term ‘Frassati’ has subsequently come to refer to group of young Catholics who gather for faith, fellowship, and service to the poor. Some long-term readers of Advancing the Kingdom will remember previous coverage of Martin Saints High School. A member of the nationwide Chesterton Schools Network, MSC is named…

With mixed emotions, we report on the death of our first Trustee Emeritus. George Creel, whose obituary is attached here, left this world on May 7th at the venerable age of ninety-two.   George was an early and longtime booster of the National Catholic Community Foundation. Indeed, since our early days three decades ago, his support for and commitment to our cause were instrumental in the successful development of NCCF. Philanthropists at heart, he and his wife, Marian, in the late 1990s were prepared to establish a donor-advised fund with a commercial financial institution. But, a Christian to the core, George wondered why there wasn’t a more appropriate group that could accommodate their Catholic sensitivities. It was his accountant, as we recall, who introduced him to a fledgling community foundation recently launched by the Raskob Foundation for Catholic Activities. George and Marian became one of the first families to create a…

It is a fair question. Those familiar with the services of the National Catholic Community Foundation may understandably ask it. After all, NCCF, now completing its third decade of ministry, has enabled donors in the United States to support a broad array of charitable organizations both in this country and overseas. While most of these receiving organizations fall ‘officially’ under the aegis of the Catholic Church, many do not. These latter, for instance, include environmental and cultural causes, social programs, and educational initiatives that in no way are related to the Catholic hierarchy. “So,” some will ask, “if the grants NCCF approves are not limited to the Church, how can it self-identify as Catholic?” It’s a fair question. Some of us remember how things were before the Second Vatican Council in the 1960s when ‘nothing was Catholic unless it was’. Perhaps it was because Catholics were not yet fully assimilated…

Have you noticed how over the past half-century the trend in religiously affiliated real estate has been one of secularization?  Churches have become theatres, chapels boutique salons, and convents office buildings. Even some one-time Catholic campuses have become industrial parks. Could it be the trend is reversing? Two years ago, who would have guessed that the 284-acre Boeing Leadership Center in Florissant, Missouri would become the new home for the Augustine Institute? The Augustine Institute (www.augustineinstitute.org) is one of several ‘centers of vibrancy’ we at the National Catholic Community Foundation have come across these past few years. Founded in Denver, Colorado in 2005 as a graduate theology school, it has grown into a major producer of Catholic educational content for individuals, parishes, schools and dioceses.  Accredited by the Association of Theological Schools, the Institute is faithful to the Magisterium and with both on-campus and on-line formats offers master’s degrees in…

‘Ambiguity’. ‘Adventure’. In the visiting priest’s homily at Mass last Sunday in our local parish these two words galvanized the congregation.  Faith in God is like marriage. It is a covenant more than a contract, a relationship whose ambiguity, while not without risk, is pregnant with adventure and potential. In faith as in marriage, there are no contractual guarantees that what we expect or ‘signed up for’ will occur. Our only assurance is that God is involved, that he loves us, that he knows what he is doing, and that he rewards our faithfulness with redemption.  And again, as in marriage, the value of a covenant is measured not by accomplishment but by commitment.(One is reminded of sainted Mother Theresa’s reply to her incredulous interviewer that God calls us not to be successful but to be faithful). A covenant, unlike a contract, leaves room for – indeed expects – freedom…

Through his fund at NCCF, one of our advisors recently initiated a distribution to the Saint Ignatius Parish in Msaladzi, Madagascar. He has forwarded to us the following response and two photos from the pastor, Fr. Heribert Muller. Readers will be as moved as we trustees are by this penetrating manifestation of the vibrancy of the faith. I write these lines with immense gratitude for the help from NCCF that has reached us here at St. Ignatius Parish in Msaladzi in the northwestern Province of Angonia, Mozambique.  Yesterday, the First Friday of the month, was a special day. The parish coordinator, two altar boys, and I set off early by motorbike for Mwalanga. Since fuel has become so expensive and hard to find, the parish car had to stay home. Motorbikes are the solution, for one liter of gasoline gets our motorbike 50 kilometers. The ride is most adventurous. Pigs,…

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…