2018-10-12-eEdition

PAGE 4 THE CATHOLIC WEEK OCTOBER 12, 2018 his Sunday, the Gospel of Mark 10:17-30 delivers a difficult lesson on wealth and belongings. Too often we replace God with the “stuff ” in our life. But “stuff ” is not going to help us achieve our ultimate goal, Heaven. In today’s society our success is measured by the size of our house, the car we drive and the luxuries we can or cannot afford! Our children want the latest electronic device or video game, because “everybody” has it. This mentality causes us to upgrade, upsize and outdo. The “more is better” culture is dangerous to the faithfulness of a good Christian Steward. St. Teresa of Calcutta said “God has not called me to be successful, He called me to be faithful.” In St. Mark’s Gospel, a man asked Jesus how to inherit eternal life. Jesus replied “You are lacking in one thing. Go, sell what you have, and give to the poor and you will have treasure in heaven; then come, followme.”Jesus goes on to say “It is easier for a camel to pass through the eye of a nee- dle than for one who is rich to enter the kingdom of God.” A wise lady once told me a true story. She was reading the obituaries when she notices a local celebrity had passed. Pon- dering on their wealth, she asked her husband, “How much do you think they left?” Her hus- band quickly replied, “They left it ALL.There are no U-Hauls in Heaven!” At the end of the day, we can’t take it with us. We are called to give it to those in need and to generously tithe to our church. — Shannon Roh is the Execu- tive Director of the Office of De- velopment and Stewardship for the Archdiocese of Mobile. We can’t take our ‘stuff’ with us toHeaven STEWARDSHIP IS ... T Shannon Roh George Weigel never took a class from histo- rian Frank Orlando, but the motto he placed in the faculty section of my college yearbook — “History is an antidote for despair” — has stuck with me for 45 years. It also seems quite appropriate at this disturb- ing moment in the life of the Church, so perhaps a history lesson is in order. Forty years ago, the Catholic Church was in serious trouble. The last years of Pope Paul VI had witnessed an endless se- quence of controversies, of which mass dissent from the en- cyclical Humanae Vitae — dis- sent that would have devastating effects on clerical discipline and erode episcopal authority — was but one. The pope seemed dispirited toward the end of his reign, publicly berating God for having not heard his prayer that the life of his friend Aldo Moro be spared (Moro had been mur- dered by terrorists).The promise of evangelical Catholic renewal that had animated John XXIII’s opening address to the Second Vatican Council in 1962 seemed falsified by the trauma of the post-conciliar years. Then came a brief moment of exuberance, as Catholic spir- its were lifted by the election of Cardinal Albino Luciani to the papacy. The new John Paul I smiled. He gave brilliant little catechetical lessons during his Wednesday general audiences. A book of his “letters” to charac- ters ranging from Dickens and Chesterton to Pinocchio and Figaro the Barber charmed the world.The Good News seemed, well, good again. Then, 33 days into what seemed a promising pontificate, Pope John Paul I was found dead in his bed on the morning of Sept. 28, 1978. And the Church was plunged back into Bunyan’s Slough of Despond. The shock of the pope’s death was perhaps most intense among the men who had just put Luciani on the Chair of Peter. Twenty years later, an American cardinal-elector, William Baum, told me that this latest blow to the Church had been “a message from the Lord, quite out of the ordinary. ...This was an inter- vention from the Lord to teach us something.” Cardinal Joseph Ratzinger told me that he had been similarly stunned: “We were convinced that the election (of John Paul I) was made in ac- cordance with the will of God, not simply in a human way ... and if one month after being elected in accordance with the will of God, he died, God had something to say to us.” What God was saying, some cardinal-electors concluded, was that it was a time for courage. So when the two principal Italian contenders in the second conclave of 1978 deadlocked and essentially cancelled each other out as candidates, sev- eral cardinals summoned up the courage to propose what then seemed virtually unthinkable: looking outside Italy for a pope. Cardinal Franz Koenig of Vien- na was the leader of this party of dramatic change. But he was not alone. And those who rallied to Koenig and his courageous sug- gestion that the conclave elect a young man, 58-year old Karol Wojtyla of Krakow, should also be remembered: men like the Polish primate, Cardinal Ste- fan Wyszynski; the archbishop of Philadelphia, Cardinal John Krol; and one of the young- est and newest members of the conclave, Cardinal Joseph Ratz- inger, archbishop of Munich and Freising. It also took courage for Kar- ol Wojtyla to accept election, knowing that he would have to leave the rich Krakovian culture from which he drew strength and inspiration. But it’s the courage of the cardinal-electors on which we might well focus our attention now, when the Catholic Church seems bogged down in another Slough of De- spond. The Wojtyla electors were men accustomed to a certain order of things, who had them- selves benefited from that or- der. But in a moment of crisis they had the courage to think outside the conventional norms and imagine what once seemed unimaginable. They were pre- pared to face the skeptical, even hostile, reaction of fellow- cardinals who could not wrap their minds around such a dra- matic innovation, and whose instinctive reaction to crisis was to find a safe pair of hands who would calm things down. They were willing to try the unprec- edented. The story of their courage 40 years ago should be an antidote to the despair some Catholics feel today. It should also inspire the bishops to get to grips with this crisis and think outside the conventions in resolving it. And it should inspire the authorities in Rome, including the highest authority. — George Weigel is Distin- guished Senior Fellow of the Eth- ics and Public Policy Center in Washington, D.C. A story of courage in the Slough ofDespond THE CATHOLIC DIFFERENCE I Michael A. Mahoney, M.D. Cammy Beall, M.D. Janet Weinberger, M.D. 8:00AM-6:00PM 8:00AM-3:00PM