What's the REAL threat?

Many years ago Archbishop Fulton Sheen pointed out that sometimes God lets us struggle with carrying certain crosses in life in order to protect us from larger, more dangerous ones. For instance, Sheen explained, God may allow someone to struggle very desperately with lust in order to avoid the greater sin of pride. A person so aware of his or her own weakness in this area may be more able to discover humility and thus avoid be drawn into the devastation that awaits when we are caught up in pride and vanity.

It has been suggested that Mother Teresa was allowed by the Lord to struggle with very long and painful periods of doubt and feelings of separation from God in order to protect her from growing fond of fame and the spotlight. In the public eye for decades, she could perhaps have fallen quite easily in love with all of the attention if it were not abundantly clear to her that she needed to exhaust herself in her search for the God she was frequently tempted to doubt even existed.

Even Saint Paul, legendary convert and champion of Christ to the ends of the earth described a "thorn" that he begged God to remove time and time again. But the God who always sees our lives in their entirety had different plans:

And to keep me from being too elated by the abundance of revelations, a thorn was given me in the flesh, a messenger of Satan, to harass me, to keep me from being too elated. Three times I begged the Lord about this, that it should leave me; but he said to me, “My grace is sufficient for you, for my power is made perfect in weakness.” I will all the more gladly boast of my weaknesses, that the power of Christ may rest upon me. For the sake of Christ, then, I am content with weaknesses, insults, hardships, persecutions, and calamities; for when I am weak, then I am strong (2 Cor. 12:7-10). 

And that, I would say, is the point here. Our spiritual lives are not ultimately reliant upon our own strength. God is our strength. It is all too often the case that we lose sight of this reality. If not unchecked, pride can be like a magnet pulling on us from all directions at all times. It has a way of distracting us so that we aren't even aware that it's pride we're facing, and it's pride that seems to be the first and the last gap between us and God.

When Lucifer, the "light bearer", saw his magnificent beauty, he made a deadly choice. Giving way to pride, he tragically lost sight of the infinitely greater beauty of the One who had fashioned him. Every time we sin, we do the same thing. But God is merciful, and He loves me so much that He will spare no effort to save me.

Prayer is the key, I think. If we think of prayer as spending time with God, especially listening to Him in a quiet environment, we can begin to hear Him more clearly and more consistently. We can begin to hear what He is calling us to do and who to be in life, and we acknowledge His primacy in all things. We can then see the obstacles that stand in our way more clearly. Only then does it become possible for us to plan how to confront these struggles appropriately. In order to fight the right fight, I need to know who my enemy is. I need to resist distraction and diversion in order to know what the real threat is. May we all devote a little more time to God each day so that He can draw our attention to the areas in which we need the most healing and growth.

Big Bang & Evolution... Did Pope Francis Break with Tradition?

No. He didn't. The reporting on the Holy Father's recent remarks to the Pontifical Academy for the Sciences in Rome is truly astonishing to me. Headlines started exploding all over news outlets and social media sites: Pope breaks with tradition... Francis opposes Benedict XVI on Big Bang and Evolution... New light scatters the darkness in the Catholic Church when it comes to science.

It's truly frustrating to see things like this out there and, what's more disappointing, to see how many people immediately take hold of such misleading notions without doing their homework. There are so many things in play here I just wanted to point out a few for anyone who's interested in a more accurate understanding of the Catholic Church's view on these issues:

1. Popes are not American presidents. They are not senators. They are not governors, representatives, school board members, non-profit organizers, or social club leaders. The more we talk about them as if they are, the less we will be able to understand anything they say and do. Do a little research some time on how often Pope Francis directly quotes his predecessor, Pope Benedict XVI - you might be surprised. They are dear friends who do not disagree one iota on Church teaching. Pope Pius XII released an encyclical document in August of 1950 called Humani Generis. In it, he laid out an explanation of how evolution (at least in certain forms) is not intrinsically opposed to the teachings of the Catholic Church in the slightest. Popes since Pius have reiterated this and expanded upon it. It is staggering to me that so many news outlets can so boldly publish articles that have such a disappointing lack of knowledge about their subject, and I wonder if it would be tolerated in their coverage of any other subject (like the newest viral video phenomenon or a baseball game). 

2. "Evolution" can be a tricky term as there are multiple facets and theories surrounding the broader issue. The simplest, most basic Catholic understanding, emphasized by many Church leaders and popes since at least 1950, is that we believe God created everything in the universe and that he sustains all being. We don't know exactly how he does that, especially how he did it in the formative eons of time. What we believe for certain is that even if God used some kind of "evolution" to develop the human body, at some precise moment in history he breathed into man a trans-physical, immaterial, spiritual animating principle or "soul." This was the instant in which we would have become true and full "human beings." Spiritual souls do not evolve with biological processes. Each soul is a gift directly from God.

3. The Big Bang theory was first proposed by Georges Lemaître, a Belgian Catholic priest. It's unbelievable how hidden this fascinating fact is these days. Father Lemaître's original proposal was introduced in 1927 and faced a great deal of criticism from many scientists at first (including Einstein). 
 
Elise Harris over at Catholic News Agency has done a great job highlighting some of these realities in an article in which she speaks with Brother Guy Consolmagno, a Jesuit planetary scientist and research astronomer at the Vatican Observatory. I encourage you to check out the article: (click here)

At the risk of sounding like a broken record, please do yourself a favor when you see headlines and reports like these - go to the source of the original comments. Go to the Vatican's website and look for official English translations. Check out the U.S. Bishops' website for any comments they might have. Go to any number of good, solid sites that report news about the Catholic Church with an eye to primary documents and actual, full transcripts (not mere soundbites taken out of context). The temptation is to believe the headline I see flash across my Twitter feed without ever making the effort to investigate the full story.

I sincerely believe that our modern cultural obsession with instant information (even if it's grossly inaccurate and misleading) should deeply concern all of us. What ever happened to undertaking thoughtful, responsible research before we make any conclusions? Ironically enough, isn't that the heart of the scientific method?


Other Resources to check out:

- Full Transcript of Pope's comments: zenit.org/en/articles/pope-francis-address-at-inauguration-of-bronze-bust-of-benedict-xv

- Catholics United for the Faith fact sheet about the Church on evolution: cuf.org/FileDownloads/evolution.pdf

- Bio of Monsignor Georges Lemaître: catholicculture.org/culture/library/view.cfm?recnum=8847