Archbishop Chaput: ‘We can help God change us’

In his wide-ranging address at the eighth annual Los Angeles Catholic Prayer Breakfast — which drew 1,550 people to the Cathedral of Our Lady of the Angels’ Plaza — Archbishop Charles Chaput of Philadelphia spoke of the “debris of failure” that must be deal with if the Catholic Church in America is to be truly renewed.

The 68-year-old Capuchin Franciscan — and first Native American archbishop in the United States — said the obvious problems include the clergy sex abuse crisis, a decline in priestly vocations, struggling Catholic schools and parishes, years of deficit spending and unrealistic financial management, and drastic demographic changes.

“The fact remains that roughly 10 percent of Americans describe themselves as ex-Catholics,” he reported. “If they all joined together in a new ‘Church of the Formerly Catholic,’ they’d be the second largest denomination in the country.

“That’s our reality as disciples,” he added. “That’s the debris of failure we need to deal with if we want to repair God’s house.”

But Archbishop Chaput stressed that Pope Benedict XVI had given the Church a “roadmap” of renewal in his 2011 apostolic letter Porta Dei (“Door of Faith”), which announced an upcoming “Year of Faith” to begin Oct. 11 — the 50th anniversary of the opening of the Second Vatican Council — and ending Nov. 24, 2013, the solemnity of Christ the King. The special year will be highlighted with a worldwide program of worship, catechesis and evangelization.

“Morally, we live in chaotic times,” he said. “In such a climate, it’s very easy for people to develop habits that undermine virtue, character and moral judgment. It’s hard to reach a moral consensus when a culture can’t agree on even the most basic standards of right and wrong. As a result, for individuals, today’s conditions of daily life are often isolating and even frightening.”

Examine hearts and habits
Basically, during this period of new evangelization, the pope is asking Catholics to receive a blessing, said Archbishop Chaput. He’s asking members of his flock to examine their hearts and life habits without excuses or alibis.

“If you think that sounds easy or pious,” he mused, “try it for a week.”

Then he warned, “If our hearts are cold, if our minds are closed, if our spirits are fat and acquisitive, curled up on a pile of our possessions — possessions that can kill us — then the Church in this country will die.

“It’s happened before in our times and places, and it can happen here. We can’t change the world by ourselves. And we can’t reinvent the Church. But we can help God change us. We can live our faith with zeal and conviction — and then God will take care of the rest.”

The archbishop said the Holy Father had some “concrete suggestions” for parishes and church groups in the Year of Faith. First: to study in detail the Apostles’ Creed and the Catechism. Second: to intensify their witness of charity. And third — which the archbishop said should resonate deeply with U.S. Catholics — to study the history of their faith and, in particular, see how “holiness and sin” are so often woven together.

“The clergy scandal of the past decade has wounded victims and their families, damaged the faith of our laypeople, hurt many good priests and found too many American bishops guilty of failures in leadership that resulted in bitter suffering for innocent persons,” he frankly pointed out. “As a bishop, I repent and apologize for that failure — and I commit myself as zealously as I can to do the work a good bishop must do, which is shepherding and protecting his people.”

‘Doers of [God’s] word’
Then Archbishop Chaput became more sociological. He said waves of immigrant Catholics for the last 100 years have spent considerable effort pushing their way into the American mainstream. And, likewise, popular culture has pushed its way into the Church. “We’re just like everyone else — look at how many of our politicians favor abortion — and at a very high cost,” he said.

“We can’t love both God and Mammon,” he added. “And yet the entire fabric of American advertising and consumer life argues exactly the opposite — and yes, we can serve two masters, and yes, we’re already doing it. Real faith — the kind our Holy Father calls us to — demands that we seek out who Jesus Christ really is, and what he asks from each of us as disciples. And that always involves the cross.”

The archbishop, who was a pastor, college professor and communications director for the Capuchin province in Pittsburgh, said Catholics have too often tried to escape the “Christian vocation of radical love, to tame it and reshape it in the mold of our own comfort and willful ideas.” The result has been not only a failure to convert American culture to Christian ways, but also in many instances the failure to pass along the faith to their own children, which should make parents very uneasy.

“But we can begin again as we prepare for the Year of Faith,” he stressed. “Human beings make history, not the other way around. God is love; a God of life and deliverance and joy. His mercy endures forever. He made us to be happy with him; to be loved by him; and to bring others to know his love. That’s the glory of being alive. That’s the grandeur of being a disciple of Jesus Christ.”

The archbishop of Philadelphia reminded the prayer breakfast attendees that the task of growing and living the Catholic faith at this time and place in history belongs to them.

“So today, tomorrow, and in the coming Year of Faith, we need to remember the words of the Epistle of James: ‘Be doers of [God’s] word and not hearers only, deceiving yourselves,’” he said. “My brothers and sisters, we live for the glory of God, and we prove it in the love we show to each other.”