Cardinal tells Alaskans of top challenges for the church

By MARIO BIRD
CatholicAnchor.org

700 pack Anchorage parish for public talk

Cardinal Timothy Dolan held an estimated 700 Alaskans in rapt attention during a standing room only presentation at Our Lady of Guadalupe Church in Anchorage on March 24.

The cardinal archbishop of New York, who often draws comparisons to the late Catholic author and good-humored apologist G.K. Chesterton, spoke of the pressing challenges facing the Catholic Church, but did so with wit and humor.

Anchorage Archbishop Roger Schwietz invited Cardinal Dolan to Alaska to speak during the annual statewide gathering of priests from all three of Alaska’s dioceses. But before spending two full days with the priests, Cardinal Dolan began his first full day in Alaska with a public presentation titled “Three Challenges Facing Pope Francis and the Church.” In the audience were laity, bishops, priests, seminarians, consecrated religious, and even U.S. Senate candidates Dan Sullivan and Mead Treadwell.

With rollicking humor, Cardinal Dolan recounted the single year that has elapsed since Pope Francis’ election in March 2013, and commented on how the world has lavished acclaim and praise on the pope, despite the fact that the pontiff wants none of it. But Cardinal Dolan said this shouldn’t come as a surprise.

“Because that’s what Jesus told us would happen, if we put the Gospel first, if we come to serve, and not to be served, then we’re going to gather many people,” he said. “And that’s what Pope Francis is doing.”

MARRIAGE & THE FAMILY

Cardinal Dolan emphasized that marriage and the family are so important to Pope Francis that he has scheduled two extraordinary synods of bishops from around the world to address this topic, first in October and then again in 2015.

Cardinal Dolan concurred with Pope Francis’ agenda, noting that the primary crisis in the church is not so much a lack of new priests, but the crumbling of sacramental marriages.
“Our Catholic people aren’t getting married anymore,” he told the audience. “And those that do, a good number of them end up in divorce. Our young people aren’t thinking about marriage. They’re putting it off, they’re living together previous to marriage. If they decide to get married, more often than not it’s not sacramental.”

He added: “If you increase vocations to life-long, life-giving, faithful, loving, sacramental marriages, you’ll have all the priests and nuns you need.”

Alluding to Saint Paul’s Letter to the Ephesians, Cardinal Dolan reminded the audience that marriage between man and woman is a reflection of how God loves us. “Marriage is not ours to change, but to cherish and love.”

RESTORING THE CHURCH’S LUSTER

Getting people to listen to the church and embrace her timeless truths is increasingly difficult, Cardinal Dolan noted, especially since the church has suffered a loss of credibility in the eyes of the world. But Pope Francis has set about to “restore her luster,” he added.

One of the great challenges facing the church is the growing phenomena of Americans who say they are “spiritual but not religious” and who increasingly see no need to join or participate in the life of the church, Dolan observed.

But the notion that one can follow Christ, while rejecting his church is false, Cardinal Dolan noted. He reiterated the words of Pope Francis who has repeatedly affirmed that there are no Christians without the church.

Developing the theme of church as the Body of Christ, as well as His Bride, Cardinal Dolan said that “there is no break between Christ and the church.”

“Remember Saul on the road to Damascus. Jesus did not say, ‘Saul, Saul, why do you persecute my church,’ he said, ‘Why do you persecute me?’ But today, we have a lot of people who say, ‘I’ve got no problem with Jesus, but I don’t need the church.’”

To address this problem, Cardinal Dolan suggested that Pope Francis has two approaches, one negative, and one positive.

“His negative approach is reforming and renewing the structures of the church, whether that’s the clerical abuse scandal, the Vatican Bank, or cleaning up the Curia.”

But his positive approach is much more important, Cardinal Dolan observed, and that’s why the cardinals elected Cardinal Jorge Mario Bergoglio to be the pope.

“Like St. Francis of Assisi, Jorge Bergoglio is a man of sincerity, simplicity, and love for the poor,” Cardinal Dolan said. “Both of them have been able to tap into the imagination of the people.”

As Saint Francis was commissioned by Jesus to “rebuild my church” in the 13th century, Cardinal Dolan sees Pope Francis as sharing that same divine charge.

“Francis has reclaimed the ancient Latin phrase Ecclesia semper reformanda — the church always needs reform,” he said.

ENGAGING THE CULTURE

So how does the average Catholic in the pew go about following Pope Francis’ plan?
It’s not so easy anymore, Cardinal Dolan admitted, precisely because our culture is more and more against religion.

“Traditionally, culture was an ally of the church,” he said. “In my family growing up, the church was the normative influence. We had a Catholic calendar, Catholic feast days, Catholic fast days, we went to Catholic school, the parish was the center of athletics, of social events.”

“But what’s the most normative, towering influence upon your kids and grandkids now?” he asked. “It’s not the church.”

Despite this worrying trend, Cardinal Dolan contended that neither hatred of, nor running away from, nor capitulating to modern culture is the answer. Rather, Catholics must be the “yeast and leaven” to the culture, and employ what Blessed Pope John Paul II termed the “New Evangelization.”

“We’ve got to re-evangelize, not missionary territories, but formerly Catholic countries,” he said. “Yet while we can no longer count on culture to teach the church, we can reclaim the culture for Jesus Christ.”

That’s the “what,” said Cardinal Dolan, but what has intrigued the world about Pope Francis is the “how.” And that intrigue is not limited to the secular world, he noted.

Cardinal Dolan recalled Pope Francis’ homily to the college of cardinals at last year’s Feast of Saint Joseph, shortly after the pope was elected. There Pope Francis implored his brother bishops to imitate the “tenderness” of love shown by Saint Joseph for the Holy Family.

Many of the cardinals were moved, Cardinal Dolan recalled. In fact, the author of the Catechism, Cardinal Christoph Schonborn of Vienna, turned to Cardinal Dolan and said, “Tim, he preaches like Jesus!”

Quipped Dolan, “Chris, I think that’s the job description.”