Posted on Oct 13, 2019
On Recovering the Fearlessness of the Catholic Intellectual Tradition
642
13
7
5
5
0
"Yesterday, I wrote of my appreciation for the Catholic intellectual tradition and what a relief it was for me to step into the wide sunlands of a Catholic Christianity that was not afraid to engage with the wide range of human culture and thought. From St. Paul on the Areopagus down through the Catholic invention of the university to the present, the Church’s capacity for engagement with the breadth of the human experience is one of the most beautiful things about her and I have always loved her capaciousness and ability to, as Paul says, “test everything and hold fast to what is good” (1 Thessalonians 5:21)".
On Recovering the Fearlessness of the Catholic Intellectual Tradition
Posted from patheos.com
Religion
Christianity
Theology
Culture
Society
Posted 5 y ago
Responses: 4
2
2
0
2
2
0
Romans 6:23 For the wages of sin is death but the gift of God is eternal life in Christ Jesus our lord.
(2)
(0)
1
1
0
Great share. The "panics" that the article deacribes are indeed based on gear and what I would characterize as a willing ignorance. This sort of intellectual weakness is exactly the thing many apostolates are battling--Bishop Robert Barron's Word On Fire Ministry comes immediately to mind. I'm with Bishop Barron on trying to move away from the extra labels that we tend to put on ourselves in regards to our faith; separating ourselves as "liberal" or "conservative" Catholics, especially as we use those terms in a political way, has started to cause cracks to form in our own Catholic community. Our identity as Catholics ought to be the defining, and unqualified moniker that we use to identify ourselves, free from extraneous labels that conflate politics and theology.
But I'm also with Bishop Barron on what is probably the truest panic when it comes to matters of understanding faith: that about 60% of American Catholics do not believe in the Real Presence of the Eucharist, according to a recent Pew survey. Statistics also show that 75% of Americans who identify as Catholic don't go to Mass on a regular basis, and that for every 1 person who joins the Catholic Church in the U.S., 6 are leaving. This is an apolitical problem, and one that can get obscured by the inside baseball of playing a political blame game.
But I'm also with Bishop Barron on what is probably the truest panic when it comes to matters of understanding faith: that about 60% of American Catholics do not believe in the Real Presence of the Eucharist, according to a recent Pew survey. Statistics also show that 75% of Americans who identify as Catholic don't go to Mass on a regular basis, and that for every 1 person who joins the Catholic Church in the U.S., 6 are leaving. This is an apolitical problem, and one that can get obscured by the inside baseball of playing a political blame game.
(1)
(0)
Read This Next
Continue with Facebook 
Continue with Google