Comments on USC's "7 Reasons...." article

This article should be made into a flyer and put in all of our churches. 

Ever since I converted to the Catholic Church, I've read and heard about the "lost" generation of Catholics who were not properly educated in our faith, and consequently, could not educate their children. It's my understanding that it was this process of unlearning the faith and rejecting Tradition that led to what Pope St. John Paul II referred to as a "silent apostasy" in the Church. He coined the phrase "new evangelization" as a strategy to bring these people back into the fold. 

Pope Emeritus Benedict, Archbishop Sample, Cardinal Burke, to name a few of the prominent voices of traditional liturgy in our time, have written and spoken of a "renewal of liturgical understanding" (from Ratzingers's _The Spirit of the Liturgy_) as the key to combating this silent apostasy. In this respect, as enticing as the Charismatic Renewal seems to be for certain types of people, the CR introduces a high potential for a long-winding detour away from the truth of the Catholic Church. 

As a youth, I went through the charismatic wringer which, ultimately, hangs one out to dry, spiritually speaking. By embracing emotion as the catalyst for worship, one tends to go whichever way the wind blows under the grievous presumption that whichever way the wind does blow is evidence of the Hand of (your own personal buddy-buddy) God. So, if a modernist theologian comes up with an exciting new take on certain scriptural texts, and one's emotions are tweaked by the presentation of this theological opinion, then it's true for that person. As a young charismatic, I belonged to a group that embraced something we liked to call  the "teaching of the Spirit," which, to my eyes, is the path to which the Charismatic Renewal leads. Every person is obligated to "listen" for the "Spirit's" direction as they read the Bible, worship, offer "praise," engage in a devotion, drive their car, and, using the example in the article, decide which vegetables to take at the cafeteria. Each time we listen to the Spirit, we establish our own personal traditions, some of which might be outside of the Voice of the Magisterium or unprecedented in the Church, in the context of, Mass, for example. Some of these personal traditions even reach into the realm of superstition. These traditions might start off small, like "must eat carrots on all Tuesdays...must take the back way to work on Monday and coming home on Fridays...must fling my arms in the air at the end of the 'Our Father'...anyone who doesn't weep during the communion hymn just doesn't 'get it'...." but, just as unchecked venial sin leads to mortal sin, this approach introduces error which seems small but only grows and multiplies.

Ultimately, abiding in the "teaching of the Spirit" promotes modernism in evolution theology, truth in flux. The Commandments are still acknowledged, but the details of the Church's teachings on the Commandments are only accepted according to one's conscience under the presumption that every thought, word, and deed are directed by the infallible guidance of the Holy Spirit. Why? Because that individual desires it to be so. In some cases, as mentioned above, perhaps a brand new theological opinion offering new insight is embraced by the "teaching of the Spirit" even though that opinion does not provide the scope and depth of the original Catholic teaching. The CR, in my opinion, creates followers of men and their theological opinions, not followers of God. 

I've been reading Fulton Sheen's _The Life of Christ_ and, as I read this article, I thought of two quotes from his section on the multiplication of the loaves. To paraphrase the first quote, the crowd that had received the loaves sought to make Jesus king, but not the King He was born to be. Instead, they sought to make him a king of earthly miracles, a king who would fill their stomachs and make exciting magic for them. Sheen wrote, "They looked FOR Jesus (for the miracles) but did not look TO Jesus (to His Divinity for salvation)." 

Archbishop Sheen concludes: "Excitement is not religion: if it was, an 'Alleluia' on Sunday could become a 'Crucify' on Friday."