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Daily Scripture

+ 7th Week of Easter

Much ado about nothing or, is there something to it?

Readings: Acts 19:1-8 Psalm 68:2-7 John 16:29-33

Paul traveled through the interior of the country and down to Ephesus where he found some disciples. He said to them, “Did you receive the Holy Spirit when you became believers?” They answered him, “We have never even heard that there is a Holy Spirit.” [Acts 19:1-3]

Depending on one’s sacramental theology and pastoral practice, this text has been variously interpreted. For example, those who work with the RCIA (catecheumenate) hold that the sacrament of Confirmation should be administered with Baptism as it was in the early Church. It is one of the sacraments of initiation—Baptism, Confirmation and Eucharist. The Eastern Rite of the Roman Catholic Church has retained the tradition of administering all three at Baptism. Yes, the infant receives a small piece of the Eucharist bread. And so in the Eastern Rite, there is no formal celebration of First Holy Communion at the age of reason or Confirmation by the bishop at whatever age the local diocese has determined the age of maturity appropriate for Confirmation. All three sacraments are administered shortly after birth.

Others feel that the celebration of First Communion and Confirmation at a later age ensures the participation of youngsters in parish religious education programs – at least until Confirmation. In this case, many Catholics view Confirmation as the completion of or graduation from religious studies.

In recent years I have become convinced that the RCIA folks and the Eastern Rite Catholics have it right. All three sacraments of initiation should be administered together. First Holy Communion and Confirmation have become more social than spiritual. I do not mean to suggest that there is no connection or that there should be no celebration after sacramental ceremonies but for many, the accent is on the wrong syllable.

The path from Baptism to Christian maturity is life-long and the benchmarks for progress are not easily measured by grouping children by age or grade level for a period of preparation that is largely academic.

This is not to suggest that religious education is optional. Faith development is unique to each person within the context first of family and then of parish. Religious education / formation is intended to provide insight into faith development at an age-appropriate level.

Catholicism has become ‘child-centered’ the result of which, we have an adult population whose religious and spiritual development stopped at Confirmation.

The celebration of Eucharist is the primary setting for faith formation. Religious education is a necessary component but detached from Eucharist, it remain just another subject to master.

Of course this all assumes that the parish celebration of the Eucharist is truly inclusive and meaningful rather than just an empty ritual. The parish at worship should be a rendition of a community of faith that strives to live its faith ‘in the town square’ as I mentioned in Sunday’s homily.

Notwithstanding my commitment to religious dialogue, I do believe that effective dialogue is based on the assumption that although both parties are knowledgeable about the topic. Though they may have different perspectives, they are not based on ignorance of the subject.

A Resilient Christianity

Wednesday May 6, 2009

By E.J. Dionne Jr.
Washington Post, Sunday, April 12, 2009

Are we witnessing this Easter season the decline of Christianity in America, or is this a moment of reform and renewal, a time when the deterioration that has been underway is arrested?
The death and resurrection of religion, if not of Jesus Christ, has been a favorite subject of newsmagazines since April 8, 1966, when Time momentously asked: “Is God Dead?”

This trend, announced on a somber black and red cover, lasted a little over three years. Or perhaps the original question was premature. In any event, on Dec. 26, 1969, Time offered a bright white, yellow, blue and purple cover carrying the hopeful query: “Is God Coming Back to Life?”

This Easter week, Newsweek doesn’t pretend to know God’s state, but its cover offers a stark declarative statement positing “The Decline and Fall of Christian America.”

The article by Jon Meacham, a thoroughly knowledgeable student of these issues, offers some powerful data, notably a near-doubling since 1990 of the number of Americans who claim no religious affiliation, from 8 percent to 15 percent. Meacham also points to a 10-point drop in the share of Americans who self-identify as Christian, from 86 percent to 76 percent.
As a Christian, I find these figures neither alarming nor surprising. There has been a long, steady growth in the proportion of Americans whom pollster Andrew Kohut calls “the seculars,” those disconnected from religious institutions who may or may not describe themselves as atheists. Yet the United States still runs well behind Western Europe in moving in this secular direction.

Immigration has also made us far more diverse religiously, which will inevitably reduce the size of the country’s Christian majority. Indeed, immigration long ago reduced the dominance of Protestantism, with Roman Catholics now constituting the nation’s largest single religious group.

Will Herberg wrote an important piece of religious sociology in 1955 called “Protestant- Catholic-Jew.” If he were here now, his book would have to be named “Protestant-Catholic- Jew-Muslim-Hindu-Sikh-Buddhist-Jain-Confucian.” And even that ungainly title wouldn’t exhaust the possibilities.

In fact, the United States has gone through many periods in which religious enthusiasm and affiliation waned, only to be renewed in subsequent revivals. Christianity is a rather durable faith. Many believers would ascribe this to the power of its truth claims, but its resilience also speaks to the adaptability of its core message.
But, yes, something is changing, and that change will strengthen rather than weaken the Christian church over the long run. For nearly a quarter-century, Christianity in the United States has been defined to a large degree by the voices and the ideas of a very conservative evangelical strain that, over time, became highly politicized and closely allied with a single political party.
These conservative Christians had as much right as any other group to bring their core concerns to politics. But in doing so, they narrowed the Christian message. They sometimes became apologists for politicians whose behavior and attitudes could not easily be called Christian and forgot that Christ himself became a victim of injustice at the hands of a mighty empire.
As James Carroll notes in his lovely new book, “Practicing Catholic,” the idea that there is no “light of Easter dawn” without “the darkness of the Good Friday noon” is at the heart of the Christian message. It entails the “exaltation of servanthood over lordship” and a Resurrection that turns “defeat into a kind of victory.”

Religion is always corrupted when it gets too close to political power. It’s possible to win a precinct caucus and lose your soul, to mistake political victory for salvation itself.

It is this approach to Christianity that is decidedly in decline, thank God, in part because conservative Christians themselves are rediscovering the church’s mission to the poor, the sick, the strangers and the outcasts. This augurs new life, not decay.
The theologian H. Richard Niebuhr offered the classic criticism of a feel-good brand of American religion that presented no challenges and posed no problems. He said that it peddled the idea that “a God without wrath brought men without sin into a kingdom without judgment through the ministrations of a Christ without a cross.”

Niebuhr was critiquing certain varieties of liberal Christianity, but his scolding applies to all Christians too eager to conform their faith to the political and cultural whims of the moment. Grace is never cheap, and a Christianity that is struggling with itself is on the path of rediscovering its true calling.

ejdionne@washpost.com