2024-04-19-eEdition

PAGE 4 THE CATHOLIC WEEK APRIL 19, 2024 he Eucharist is good in and of itself. Christ nour- ishes us with His own body and blood.This is true, but I think we often miss a very important aspect of receiving the Eucharist. Namely, we are sent on a mis- sion. We are charged to go forth and bring the Gospel to the world.There is something amiss if we receive the Eucharist and then do not evangelize. Most of us are American in the way we think and that way of thinking is often influenced greatly by consumerism.This means that we tend to see consumption as good and desirable. I think that can lead to replacing God with material goods, but that topic will be for another column. I would like to propose that the Eucharist should compel us to go out and spread the Good News, care for the sick and lonely, console the sorrowful, etc. Attending Mass and receiv- ing Communion are good, but if that is the end of the story it leaves much to be desired. Imagine an army. It is en- camped and there is a mess tent and a field hospital. Both very useful and important; how- ever, there would be something disordered if this army never did battle or provided logistical support for the mission.The purpose of the field hospital is to help heal soldiers so they can perform their mission.The mess tent is to feed soldiers so they can fulfill their mission.They should not be sitting around eating and getting fat. Such an army would soon lose its identity. We receive the Eucharist and that is a start, but it should be only the beginning. St. James admonishes us in his letter, “Be doers of the word and not hearers only, deluding yourselves.” It is good that we worship weekly at Mass, but we are called to action by our participa- tion in the Eucharistic celebra- tion. We are called to be doers of the word, and not just attend Mass and consider “the box” to be checked. Let us be doers! — Pat Arensberg is the Direc- tor of the Office for Evangeliza- tion and Family Life. Email him at parensberg@mobarch.org n May 1993, the “World Russian People’s Council,” a “meeting place” for those “con- cerned about the present and future of Russia,” was created at the instigation of Metropolitan Kirill of Smolensk (now Patri- arch of Moscow and head of the Russian Orthodox Church). Kirill is now the presiding officer of the Council, which met on March 27 in Mos- cow’s Cathedral of Christ the Savior, built to replace an earlier church dynamited in 1931 on orders of the Soviet Politburo. The March 27 Council meet- ing did its own dynamiting, however. In this instance, the truth was destroyed. So was any claim that Kirill is committed to Christian orthodoxy. In a document entitled “The Present and Future of the Rus- sian World” (a notion already condemned as heretical by hundreds of Orthodox theolo- gians), the Kirill-led Council described the war in Ukraine in these Orwellian terms, which combined lies — of a magnitude that might have made Nazi mouthpiece Joseph Goebbels blush—with heresy. The special military opera- tion (SVO) in Ukraine is a new stage in the national libera- tion struggle of the Russian people against the criminal Kyiv regime and the collective West behind it, waged on the lands of Southwestern Russia since 2014. During the SVO, the Russian people, with arms in hand, defend their lives, free- dom, statehood, civilizational, religious, national, and cultural identity, as well as their right to live on their own land within a single Russian state. From a spiritual and moral point of view, a special military opera- tion is a Holy War, in which Russia and its people, defend- ing the single spiritual space of Holy Rus’, fulfill the mission of “Holding”, protecting the world from the onslaught of globalism and the victory of the West, which has fallen into Satanism. The lies and heresies then bled into a colossal falsifica- tion of history and a genocidal policy prescription built around the ideology of the “Russian World,” of which Patriarch Kirill has been a principal pro- pagandist. The highest meaning of the existence of Russia and the Russian world it created — their spiritual mission — is to be the global “Holder,” protect- ing the world from evil …The reunification of the Russian people should become one of the priorities of Russian foreign policy. Russia should return to the doctrine of the trinity of the Russian people, which has existed for more than three centuries, according to which the Russian people consist of Great Russians, Little Rus- sians, and Belarusians, who are branches (sub-divisions) of one people.The concept “Russian” covers all the eastern Slavs — the descendants of the histori- cal Rus’. Forgive me the analogy to the 1930s that some find strained or obnoxious, but this is madness on the scale of Mein Kampf. Such madness must be taken seriously, however. Just as a failed artist and political agitator, scribbling his ravings in Landsberg Prison in 1924, was in deadly earnest about his ideological pretensions and geopolitical aims (which led in due course to the Second World War in Europe and the Holocaust of European Jewry), those responsible for “The Pres- ent and Future of the Russian World” are in deadly earnest about the future they seek, however crack-brained that future may seem and however wicked their alleged justifica- tions for pursuing it. To ignore what the World Russian People’s Council has just proclaimed is danger- ous folly. These people — and Czar Putin, to whom they give nauseating “spiritual” cover — are serious.Those who seem incapable of grasping that, from Tucker Carlson to Senator J.D. Vance to the nine House Re- publicans who voted against a bipartisan resolution deploring Russia’s abduction of Ukrainian children, are threats to both world peace and American national security. In light of this most recent statement of Russian genocidal purpose, calls for “peace” negoti- ations in Ukraine serve no pur- pose except to foul the global information space further. If Vatican leaders want to con- tribute to resolving the crises of the new world disorder for which Czar Putin and Patriarch Kirill are responsible, the Holy See should put its efforts into rallying international Christian leaders to condemn the hereti- cal claim that Russia is engaged in a “holy war;” to condemn the genocidal claim that Ukraine is simply “Little Russia” and not a nation with its own cultural and political identity; and to denounce the blasphemous claim that the “Russian World” has a unique, messianic mission in the 21st century. Willingness to take bold leadership in such an effort to defend Christian orthodoxy against its expropriation by child kidnappers and war crimi- nals should also be a criterion in assessing candidates for the papacy of the future. — George Weigel’s column "The Catholic Difference" is syndi- cated by the Denver Catholic, the official publication of the Archdio- cese of Denver. I THE CATHOLIC DIFFERENCE When ideology and blasphemy come together T BEST OF THE BLOG TheEucharistic celebration should call us into action Pat Arensberg Custom designed jewelry DESIGN IN JEWELRY 4503 Old Shell Road Mobile, Alabama Hours 9:30 - 5:00, Mon. - Sat. PAT, DANNYAND TONY CLARKE PH. 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