Advancing the Kingdom

The University Crest of the second largest Catholic University in the United States bears this inscription. As its 15,000 plus student body will attest, the school exemplifies the phrase’s translation: A Christian education perfects the soul. What is the second largest Catholic University? No, it is not the one in Indiana, or the one in Washington, D.C. In this regard, the Holy Cross Fathers and the Jesuits step aside for the Vincentian Fathers who founded St. John’s University in 1870 in Brooklyn, New York. Their mission was to provide the youth of the city with a Catholic intellectual and moral education. As its website explains (www.stjohns.edu) , the school grew and – following the charism of St. Vincent de Paul –  educated its students  with a focus on social justice, charity and service. In 1954 it relocated to its current site in Queens, New York.The university now comprises five undergraduate…

“But I, brothers, could not address you as ‘spiritual people’, but as people of the flesh, as infants in Christ. I fed you with milk, not solid food, for you were not ready for it.” St. Paul’s first letter to the Corinthians brings to mind Vagabond Missions  (www.vagabondmissions.com) which was started in 2007 in Steubenville, Ohio and now has ‘teams of missionaries’ serving in nine cities: Steubenville, Wichita, Baton Rouge, Greenville (NC), Mobile, Indianapolis, Oklahoma City, Philadelphia and Pittsburgh. Its purpose is to engage young adult Catholics willing to serve as volunteer ‘missionaries’ in the cause of evangelizing inner-city high school students who have had little or no exposure to Christianity let alone to Catholicism. These urban youth typically are teens from low-income families and historically underserved, marginalized racial and ethnic populations. As its website states: “As Jesus was a vagabond during his earthly ministry, wandering to the margins of…

For those with long memories references to the archipelago of Malta bring to mind The Maltese Falcon, that 1941 film noir classic starring Humphrey Bogart and Mary Astor. As time goes by (apologies to Bogart and Casablanca) mention of Malta will elicit in our modern minds a very different reference because of the expanding ministry of an organization whose roots reach back almost a millennium. The Sovereign Military Hospitaller Order of St. John of Jerusalem or Rhodes and of Malta – a.k.a. The Order of Malta – was founded in the Holy Land (the Kingdom of Jerusalem) the latter part of the eleventh century and recognized as a religious Order by Pope Paschal II in the year 1113. Though linked to the Holy See, it is an independent sovereign entity with over 13,500 lay men and women members (Knights and Dames of Malta) around the world who are grouped in…

In spite of the realities of globe-shrinking travel and universal communication, our imaginations still enshroud places on the other side of the world with antipodal remoteness. Understandably, Christians  in America, mindful of our Lord’s Great Commission, might wonder how the Good News could reach such faraway quarters. They will be inspired by what’s happening in Kathmandu. In this regard, the trustees of NCCF are thrilled to report that a donor advised fund has been established to bolster the works of the Church in Nepal, our first outreach to that distant land.  There are two stories here, one about Caritas-Nepal, the other about its remarkable Director. As its website indicates (www.caritasnepal.org), Caritas Nepal “is the social development arm of the Roman Catholic Church, it works in solidarity with marginalized communities in Nepal to empower them to overcome poverty, to realize basic human rights and social justice, and to provide relief to…

As colloquialisms go, “reaching out’ is relatively new. It has actually been awarded entry in Merriam Webster as a ‘verbal phrase’, the meaning of which is ‘to make an effort to do something for other people’.   Catholics in the United States are fortunate. Several agencies exist to facilitate their ‘reaching out’ to others across the world who are in need. These organizations not only enable the successful transfer of funds, they also assure and attest to their proper use. And, because they are legitimate  501© (3 ) entities, contributions to them are recognized as charitable deductions for income tax purposes. One such agency is Cross Catholic Outreach. We reported on Cross Catholic four years ago. It’s a pleasure now to provide an update. Since its founding in 2001 and headquartered in Boca Raton, Florida, Cross Catholic has been responsible for the transfer of $4 billion in total aid assistance…

It would be difficult to find a Catholic, or for that matter an American, who has not heard of the Knights of Columbus. It was founded as a fraternal society by Father Michael McGivney in New Haven, Connecticut in 1882. Its purpose was to bring financial aid and assistance to the sick, disabled and needy members and their families. Today, one-hundred and forty some years later, the Knights of Columbus is the world’s largest organization of Catholic men and has over two million members worldwide. The core values of this venerable institution are charity, unity, fraternity and patriotism. As demonstrated by the history outlined on its website, all of these values have been championed by the Knights thought the challenging decades in the last century and until now. Readers familiar with ecclesial history in the United States can appreciate the role the Knights have played in promoting the welfare of…

“Free to choose but not free not to choose”. In his recently published book The Hell There Is Msgr. Charles Pope forcefully warns us against our insouciant (if not nonexistent) regard for what awaits us after our earthly sojourn. We are at liberty to choose between life of eternal fulfillment in Heaven or life of eternal frustration in Hell. What we are not at liberty to do is to avoid or to ignore the choice.  Although God has bestowed on us free will, this freedom has one limitation. We do not have the option of non-existence. One or the other fate awaits us. Philanthropy, especially Christian philanthropy, addresses the corporal works of mercy identified in chapter 25 of Matthew’s Gospel, i.e. feeding the hungry, caring for the poor, clothing the naked, etc.  It also addresses, and perhaps should do so even more, the spiritual works of mercy which inter alia…

“The falcon cannot hear the falconer, things fall apart. The centre cannot hold”. William Butler Yeats wrote these lines in 1919 in “The Second Coming”, his celebrated poem prompted by the ravages of the First World War. Now, a century later, persistent echoes of his plaintive plea resound. Everywhere, it seems, one hears of the collapse of civilization. The question weighing on our minds is: will our descent into barbarism be a gradual slide on a slippery slope or a sudden fall from an undetected precipice?  This alarm sensed by students of history, indeed by those old enough to remember how things were just a few generations ago, is understandable. Consider the ills which affect our society: the decline of marriage and of the family, sexual promiscuity and perversion, the promotion of suicide and euthanasia, abortion, pervasive boredom and purposelessness, the confusion about sex and gender, out-of-wedlock births, etc.  …

Cardinal Robert Prevost has been elevated to the Chair of Peter. He is an American, a one-time head of the Augustinian Order, and a missionary who spent twenty years ministering to the poor in Peru. Is it a surprise that he chose as his papal name Leo XIV, honoring the immediate predecessor of that title known for his commitment to social justice? I was reminded of our news pope’s quiet and apparently solid commitment to social justice while re-reading the work of another well-known American spiritual leader and theologian, who died sixteen years ago, Fr. Richard Neuhaus. In his book America Against Itself: Moral Vision and the Public Order Fr. Neuhaus underscores that civilization depends upon “obedience to the unenforceable”, such as virtue, honor, discernment, decency, compassion and hope. Although written thirty years ago, his book seems even more timely today. He, of course, associates these “unenforceables” with religion and…

The white smoke has arisen. A new pope has been elected. Around the world hope is reinforced. One would be hard pressed to gainsay the need for it in the native land of Pope Leo XIV. Conventional wisdom has it that the USA is ‘post-Christian’. It asserts that the surging godlessness of such ‘isms’ as nihilism, materialism, and relativism is greasing the already slippery slope of secularism and portends our irreversible descent into collapsed civic order.  It is easy to understand how such a gloomy prediction could develop. How easily so many of us forget – or never learned – that our founding fathers understood a vibrant republic rested on the foundation of a virtuous public who more or less share an awareness of a supreme Deity and more or less abide by the morality concomitant with such awareness.  Why are these ‘isms’ so toxic? Simply put, it is because…

“Do not be so open-minded that your brains fall out”.  This was once a popular aphorism. Even so, while its popularity today is lost, its significance isn’t.  What brings this fact to mind is the rise of what is called ‘non-denominational Christianity’. What is non-denominational Christianity? Is it a closed-minded system developed to avoid the distinguishing and at times divisive tenets of various denominations? Or, is it an all-embracing, open-minded attitude where everything is believed in theory and therefore nothing is believed in fact?  Ironically, though it eschews links to actual denominations and, presumably, has no links among its own practitioners, non-denominationalism is attracting followers. Given the recent trends in society to ‘be religious’, perhaps this is not a surprising development. Shortly before the start of the new millennium, the now canonized John Paul II predicted a ‘new springtime’, a spiritual renewal. Such a renaissance appears to be upon us.…

Lately, the sudden preoccupation with pronouns has received much media coverage. Unfortunately, this attention has not been aroused by concern over that annoyingly ubiquitous grammatical violation ‘between you and I’, but rather it is due to the conflation of the words ‘sex’ and ‘gender’.  Perhaps it is a consequence of a stunted education, but I always understood that ‘sex’ and ‘gender’ are, respectively, biological and linguistic terms. There are two sexes (masculine and feminine) and three genders (the third being neuter). Has the synonymization of ‘sex’ and ‘gender’ contributed to today’s notion of ‘gender fluidity’? Has it unleashed the cavalier and widespread misuse of pronouns where the masculine is used for the feminine and vice versa, and the plural for the singular, etc.? Let’s leave these questions to sociologists and grammarians. The discussion of pronouns does, however, give rise to another question, which might stir some fruitful reflection about philanthropy,…