We need more Bishops like Abp. Chaput

Archbishop Chaput - Denver, CO

Archbishop Charles Chaput of Denver tells it like it is. For those that read this blog, you know I have been a big fan of his since I read "Render Unto Caesar," a book you all should read. Well, he recently spoke to a group of European Church officials and had some rather forceful things to say:

“The main crisis of modern Christianity is not one of resources, or personnel, or marketing,” Archbishop Chaput asserted. “It is a crisis of faith. Millions of people claim to be Christian, but they don't really believe.”

“They don't study Scripture. They don't love the Church as a mother and teacher. And they settle for an inoffensive, vanilla Christianity that amounts to a system of decent social ethics.”

“This is self-delusion,” he warned, “the worst kind of phony Christianity that has no power to create hope out of suffering, to resist persecution, or to lead anyone else to God.”

How true is the statement that we live in a "Vanilla Christianity that amounts to a system of decent social ethics"? How often do we hear - "just be a good person." Without any set of moral laws or an understanding of absolute truth, this is simply a social construct and rather flimsy.

The most important statement that Abp. Chaput made though involved how we release from these idolatries:

But the Archbishop of Denver said that these human tendencies, leading to the worship of objects and of oneself, could not be driven out by the mere exercise of authority.

“The Christian remedy to these idolatries,” he explained, “can never simply be coerced from the outside, by stronger statements from stronger bishops.” He quoted Cardinal Lustiger's insight that these forms of idolatry “must be exorcised from the inside … To uproot them, we must be converted in depth.”

We must reclaim an authentic Catholicism where the precepts of the faith are what drive us, and not simply use them as guideposts and signs that direct us in some general way. Our faith must be apparent by the way we live, and must originate in the center of our being.



Original Link: Archbishop Chaupt - "Weak faith cannot compete with modern 'idolatry'" 

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