How Not to Lose Your Faith During the Present Cris…

How Not to Lose Your Faith During the Present Crisis

The items that are filling the newspapers daily now, are the same items that I had to deal with daily almost twenty years ago when I was involved in the daily life of the church. I came very close to losing my faith. I contemplated joining the Orthodox Church among other things, but ultimately through a very trying period, that tested the very core of everything that I had been taught and believed–I have remained a Roman Catholic.

Now, it is like reliving a nightmare, only everyone is in on it this time. I would like to share some points to contemplate on if you, like me, find yourself at a loss in the present situation in the Church. None of them by themself will convince you to stay, but I think if you try most of them you’ll find that God has a mission for you; to rebuild and to enliven the Church, that as St. Francis was told years ago by Christ, is falling into ruin.

(1) Do not deny that there is a problem

This is the usually the first sign that someone is losing their faith, when they can’t face reality. They want to make believe problems either don’t exist or are being made up. Sort of like the famous scene in the Gospels where Peter says after the crucifixion, “I’m going fishing”.

Whenever I post anything unpopular on here (like the sins of a founder of a conservative order or the reported homosexuality of a famous bishop), I receive a lot of email from angry readers. Why are they angry? Because they cannot believe that so and so might have sinned and sinned seriously.

Reflect on this:

If we say, “We are free of the guilt of sin,” we deceive ourselves; the truth is not to be found in us. But if we acknowledge our sins, he who is just can be trusted to forgive our sins and cleanse us of every wrong. If we say, “We have never sinned,” we make him a liar and his word finds no place in us. 1 John 9-10

We can apply this passage to ourselves, everyone else in the church and indeed the Body of Christ (the Church-minus the head of the Church–Jesus and of course his mother Mary).

We deceive ourselves if we think of anyone besides Christ as sinless and often reveal something of idol worship in the process.

The true apostles whose sins are for all to see in the Gospels, did not for a minute allow the early church to worship them when they carried the healing power of Jesus with them. They reminded the people that they were mortal men just like the rest.

We must remind ourselves that there is only one God and that the founder of a religious order or bishop is not him. Many of the leaders of the Church need to be reminded of that too and not allow people to worship or pay them undue respect which is the command of Christ himself in the Gospel.

Have you worshipped an individual within the church in the past? Has your faith been shaken in that individual? Good–there is one God, him alone shall you worship!

(2) Read the Gospel of Mark

We have a tendency to think of the early Church as a pristine time when everyone believed and their were no problems. Although we may accept the fact that among Jesus’ followers there was a traitor–Judas, we often forget how frustrated Jesus was with his Apostles. If it was that way when he was with them physically, why should we expect perfection from the successors to the Apostles today?

The Gospel of Mark brings out the deficiencies of the Apostles in a remarkable way.

Traditionally it has been held that the author of Mark’s Gospel was John Mark, who first accompanied Paul and Barnabas, but left them during one of their missionary journeys. Later when John Mark wished to return to the ministry, Paul forbade him. Paul and Barnabas had a falling out over this and tradition has it that John Mark ended up with the Apostle Peter, and served as the Galilean fisherman’s interpreter on his journeys. The Gospel of Mark, is then thought to be Peter’s remembrance of Jesus’ interaction with the Apostles, and has the marks of someone who had failed his Lord at the crucial moment and remembered well that this was not a solitary occurence.

The Gospel of Mark is short and in it we see the Lord who is frustrated time and again with the lack of faith and understanding that he encounters from those closest to him:

(3) Pray Psalm 73

The psalms are prayers that are experiential. They bless and curse, express faith and doubt. They were prayed by Jesus (and are often quoted by Him in the Gospels). Psalm 73 puts everything in perspective, it paints the picture of the world we see but then brings us into the Sanctuary of God’s presence and reminds us of the real situation. It is easy to be distracted by the apparent success of the sinful–praying Psalm 73 reminds us to keep the end in mind, when the present seems bleak.

Truly God is good to the upright,

to those who are pure in heart.

But as for me, my feet had almost stumbled,

my steps had well nigh slipped.

For I was envious of the arrogant,

when I saw the prosperity of the wicked.

For they have no pangs;

their bodies are sound and sleek.

They are not in trouble as other men are;

they are not stricken like other men.

Therefore pride is their necklace;

violence covers them as a garment.

Their eyes swell out with fatness,

their hearts overflow with follies.

They scoff and speak with malice;

loftily they threaten oppression.

They set their mouths against the heavens,

and their tongue struts through the earth.

Therefore the people turn and praise them;

and find no fault in them.

And they say, “How can God know?

Is there knowledge in the Most High?”

Behold, these are the wicked;

always at ease, they increase in riches.

All in vain have I kept my heart clean

and washed my hands in innocence.

For all the day long I have been stricken,

and chastened every morning.

If I had said, “I will speak thus,”

I would have been untrue to the generation of thy children.

But when I thought how to understand this,

it seemed to me a wearisome task,

until I went into the sanctuary of God;

then I perceived their end.

Truly thou dost set them in slippery places;

thou dost make them fall to ruin.

How they are destroyed in a moment,

swept away utterly by terrors!

They are like a dream when one awakes,

on awaking you despise their phantoms.

When my soul was embittered,

when I was pricked in heart,

I was stupid and ignorant,

I was like a beast toward thee.

Nevertheless I am continually with thee;

thou dost hold my right hand.

Thou dost guide me with thy counsel,

and afterward thou wilt receive me to glory.

Whom have I in heaven but thee?

And there is nothing upon earth that I desire besides thee.

My flesh and my heart may fail,

but God is the strength of my heart and my portion for ever.

For lo, those who are far from thee shall perish;

thou dost put an end to those who are false to thee.

But for me it is good to be near God;

I have made the Lord GOD my refuge, that I may tell of all thy works.

(4) Visit a Catholic Church

Step into the Church at a time when nothing is going on, when you can sit in silence; just you and Our Lord in the Eucharist. Pour out your heart to him, and then sit and listen.

Bishop Sheen once commented, that most of the conversion he was credited with, came about from the practice of pointing people (non-Christians and former Christians) to this practice.

I have a close friend who was born in Jerusalem, and later studied to be a rabbi in Brazil. While engaged in rabbinical studies, he became interested with what he heard from some Christian fundamentalists, that he encountered in the streets of San Paulo, one day. Considering himself a searcher for the truth, he walked into the first Christian Church that he came across on his way home. It happened to be a Catholic Church.

Walking in, he told me, he encountered a huge crucifix. He went up to the front of the church and standing in front of the crucifix he looked up at the image of the crucified Jesus and said, “If it is true, that you are the messiah, tell me.”

“What did he tell you?” I would ask my Jewish friend and always receive the same response, from my friend who now is a Catholic priest–“Well, I’m here now.”

This same friend who experienced total alienation from his family and friends to follow Jesus, joined the Catholic Church because of what he heard that day alone with Jesus in the Church.

Once when I asked him about the Catholic Church in Brazil, where it was highly rumored that priests openly lived with women and some were even openly married, he replied, “Yes, what you say is true, but in Brazil they say of the United States that the priest live with men.”

Neither of these experiences dissuaded my friend, who endured many hardships from within and without the Church before being ordained a priest. His faith was based on the answer God had given him to a simple question and nothing else mattered.

Take your doubts with you into the presence of God and let him answer them.

(5) Practice the Prayer “God Alone”

On the right hand column of this blog is a picture of the entrance to the cloister of Gethsemane, most known by people in this country for having been the monastery where Thomas Merton was a monk. Over the gate are simple words that the monk would encounter as he makes his way into the cloister. They are also words, that the visitor to the chapel also encounters.

They have left a mark in my consciousness. In my better moments they haunt me. It is a good thing.

Too often we create idols that interfere with our worship of God. Often these idols come crashing down around us. Jesus told the rich young man that the greatest commandment was to, “Love God with your whole heart, mind and soul.” The rich young man went away sad, because his “possessions” were many.

Our possessions, the things that we either possess or possess us can keep us from God. All it takes is a blow to our health, the suffer of some financial loss, or some other malady to befall us for us to be faced with the truth of which they all are for us–items we own or are owned by.

The practice of keeping “God Alone” always before us, can keep us focused on what really matters. It can help us to treat our fellow human beings with the dignity that they deserve, it can help us to see meaning in what other wise seem meaningless events.

If we focus on the strength of the winds, the enormity of our problems we will sink. If we focus on “God Alone” nothing can defeat us.

(6) Let Go of Your Plan for the Church

In the midst of the current crisis, everyone has a plan. In fact most of us always have a plan for how to make the Church, heaven on earth. Let go of it…

The disciples on the road to Emmaus (Luke 24) had just witnessed the crucifixion and now on the third day they had also heard of an empty tomb and the presence of angels. All of this disturbed them a great deal, to such a degree that when the Risen Lord, who they mourned, joined them on the road they did not recognize him.

When they told him what they were discussing, he opened the Scriptures up to them, and told them that all of these things that they had witnessed “had to happen”.

Most of us suffer a crisis of faith because we believe just the opposite that “things didn’t have to be that way.” Jesus comes to us as a stranger in the midst of our lives and tells us just the opposite.

It had to be.

If for a second, you and I stop and think about that, applying it to our lives as they have been lived up to now, how does it make us feel?

Do we not want to protest, no it should have been otherwise?

But it was not and is no other way, than what it has been. Can God save us?

Remember the story of Joseph in Genesis. Joseph has a dream. The dream leads to his persecution. He is sold into slavery. He is falsely accused. He is sent to prison. He is there when two of Pharaoh’s servants are arrested. He interprets their dreams. The one who lives some years later remembers the Hebrew slave in prison who interpreted his dream. Joseph interprets Pharaoh’s dream correctly. Pharaoh makes Joseph master over his house. Joseph’s brothers are sent to Egypt by their father during the famine. Soon his family is reunited. At the end of the story the brothers tell Joseph that their father told them to tell Joseph to forgive them for what they had done to him. He says, “Who am I God? What you did to me you meant for evil, but God meant it for good–for the salvation of the many.”

Many people do evil things, but God is all powerful. He can give life to those whose lives are taken from them by evil people. He can bring healing to those who are sinned against.

The lesson for the disciples on the road to Emmaus and the lesson of Joseph in Genesis is to trust in God’s plan.

(7) Listen to Talks Given by Archbishop Fulton J. Sheen

This may seem like a strange suggestion. But actually it was what prompted me to write this piece in the first place. I believe that Bishop Sheen suffered exactly what we all are suffering from now and in fact saw his whole career in the church destroyed by it.

Late in his life, Archbishop Sheen often spoke of ten years of intense suffering, that he endured that greatly tested his faith. During that time he wrote the Life of Christ, reflecting on the life of Jesus, the betrayal of the apostles–helped him to endure this suffering.

Thomas Reeves alludes to this period of suffering in his excellent biography of Fulton Sheen entitled America’s Bishop. He relates that suffering that Sheen so often referred to had to do with the bishop’s relationship with Cardinal Spellman. Reeves claims that the correspondence between the two was originally proposed by Fulton J. Sheen to be placed in his archives in Rochester, NY. Some on the staff who saw the correspondence did not think this wise because they feared lawsuits arising from the correspondence.

The correspondence, Reeves says, disappeared after that. His attempts to locate the letters were not fruitful. The best that he could determine was that they are in the Vatican and inaccessible to all. Reeves concludes that the correspondence includes fiery letters between two very proud men.

I would reason that “pride” would hardly merit a trip to the Vatican archives. In fact even the questionable financial practices of Cardinal Spellman would not rise to that level of secrecy.

I believe, as has already been reported in the New York Press, that Cardinal Spellman’s flagrant homosexuality was the source of all the tension between the two powerful men. I also believe, that this will become even more apparent when Father Paul Shanley goes to trial and reveals that he was abused by Spellman while a seminarian in Boston. (You may recall that it has earlier been reported that Shanley claimed that he had been molested by one of the predecessors of Law or O’Connor–Spellman, a Boston native, would seem the likely candidate).

Sheen, no doubt horrified by what he witnessed of Spellman wanted him to either resign or be removed.

During their lifetime, Spellman won and Sheen ultimately was banished to Rochester, NY.

Several months before his death when Pope John Paul II embraced Sheen in St. Patrick’s Cathedral, he praised Sheen for being a “loyal son” of the church.

How come he never spoke out? Why did he stay at a time when everyone was leaving?

The answer is everywhere in the talks that he gave during the last ten years of his life.

Listen to them. Most of them are available in Catholic Bookstores or from Keep the Faith, Inc online.

Bad priests are talked about frequently. They are a reality. Sheen lays out a recipe for not being like them:

Grow closer to Christ.

Make a holy hour everyday. Read the Scriptures. Pray.

This is advice for all of us. The church is changed as we become the good wheat growing amidst the tares.

We need a Fulton Sheen today, to speak out for the truth, but isn’t it interesting that if I’m right (and I’m pretty sure that I am) that once the Pope didn’t act on Sheen’s advice that Sheen suffered quietly and refocused on what his mission in the Church was.

This is what we should do too. But listen to him. Pray that his cause may be furthered, we could use a Saint Fulton J. Sheen! And on that day it will be Sheen who truly won! May we join him!

(8) Meditate on the Work of the Enemy in the Church

Since the devil is hardly ever discussed in the Church, it should not surprise us that we find it so hard to explain blatant evil that exists, when faced with it, as we are in the present situation.

Read the Parable of the Weeds among the Wheat in Matthew’s Gospel, Chapter13:24-30.

Notice that in Jesus’ parable that the Kingdom of Heaven is not exempt from the work of the evil one. As the farmer sows good seed, the enemy sows bad. Both are allowed to grow side by side until the harvest. Contrary to our expectations the master (God) does not have his slaves go out and rip the bad from the good–out of concern for the good. In the end though the bad will suffer eternal fire.

There are two reasons it is good to meditate on this parable. One, it shows that Jesus from the very start knew that the good that he would do, would be matched by the evil that would be worked from within. Secondly, it counsels us to be patient and turn again to God who will take care of them in good time.

We must believe in God and avoid the temptation to search for him elsewhere.

More to come…