To understand this shepherding moment of centuries, this article builds on the understanding provided in these two articles: Living in a Catholic Monarchy and Mass Confusion.

If shepherding occurs in moments, different moments require shepherding differently. Again, good Catholic fathers inherently know this, shepherding a preschooler in temper tantrum differently than a willfully rebellious teen differently than a dutiful teen, even if the issue in each case is poor performance in school.

Shepherd's Examination of Conscience

The good shepherd begins with an examination of conscience, recognizing Saint Augustine's point that all shepherds are ever also sheep first (Letter to Pastors, Office of Readings). As a shepherd, we are called to ask questions such as: Do I see this moment clearly? How did we get here? How is/might my own sinner blind me and how do I ask Christ to heal it and have the faith to receive it? Do I need to grow more into this office of being a parent, deepening in faith and virtue and salvation arts?

Like a good daily examination of conscience or one prior to making a good confession, self assessment of one's capacity to shepherd may be brutal, if honest, yet also reveal clear steps to heal my deafness, dumbness, blindness, and stupidity that comes to light. Confession may be one of the steps to move forward.

Sheep Assessment and the Crux of the Cross

Next, having prepared to be the best shepherd he knows how to be, the good Catholic father assesses the sheep entrusted to him by Christ. A great many errors of shepherding occur here.

We are called to shepherd from the crux of the cross, where the horizontal beam and vertical beam meet, at Christ's Most Sacred Heart; not false compassion out on the horizontal beam where “admonishing the sinner” doesn't occur nor up on the vertical beam brow beating with false justice absent Love and Mercy.

Jesus on the road to Emmaus is our Good Shepherd, revealing we are called to meet our sheep wherever they are and interact with them (the horizontal beam of Love and Mercy) and then, lest the horizontal beam, being detached from the vertical beam of Truth and Justice, never be lifted out of the quagmire and miasma of sin's filth, admonish them to drive home the need to turn away from sin and live faithful to the Gospel: “Oh how foolish you are!” (Luke 24:25) so as to motivate them to hear with fresh ears God's Love (Truth, Justice, and Mercy), for only then can they have eyes to see Christ in the breaking of the bread and realize He was with them all along.

Just beginning to sort out Vatican II

We botched both our understanding and initial implementation of the Second Vatican Council. Our Church is beginning to see that the Second Vatican Council offered a slight redirecting without promulgating anything new or changing Church teaching. The so called “spirit” of Vatican II told us we were to largely ignore everything prior to 1960 and only their secret understanding of the Council was to be paid attention to (Manichaeism heresy, anyone?). We are just beginning to realize that the grave errors of this so called “spirit” of Vatican II are not the actual Truth (Love, Justice, and Mercy) of Vatican II. Bishop Nickless, referencing Pope Benedict XVI, explains: “The so called “spirit” of the Council has no authoritative interpretation. It is a ghost or demon that must be exorcised if we are to proceed with the Lord's work” (Pastoral Letter Ecclesia Semper Reformanda: The Church is Always in Need of Renewal).

In other words, we have no idea what Mass would look like had the Church actually obeyed Vatican II's Sacrosanctum Concilium, the Constitution on the Sacred Liturgy. It called for a very different process and metrics for instituting change. It called us to retain Latin except in specific parts, give primacy of place to Gregorian Chant, and never called for the priest to face the people as the default posture. This confusion in the Church hierarchy and confused milieu of the faithful greatly defines this shepherding moment and what the faithful need as one next step toward Christ.

Shepherding Poverty?

With such confusion, how likely is it our current understanding of shepherding is less than what it has been in our Church's more than two-thousand-years? Do we suffer from a poverty of shepherds and thus shepherding? How goes our examination of shepherding conscience? Is our understanding of shepherding impoverished? If so, how do we invite Christ to heal it and deepen our faith, prayer, and fasting, so we more fully grow into the shepherding office with which Christ has entrusted us? Are we living up to the revealed example of Our Good Shepherd to “Love one another as I have loved you” and the two millennia of lived shepherding wisdom and experience? (John 13:34). How goes our shepherding examination of conscience?

Wayward Society

Society is wayward. No longer are the Church and her princes viewed positively, let alone as authoritative. We are dismissed by modernists of all flavors as just another voice spouting primitive religion that humanity has supposedly outgrown.

And yet...growing numbers of people in the younger generations see the poisonous fruit of twisted liberty, no Truth or authority, communism, progressivism, and liberalism surrounding them. They hunger for something solid: Truth (Love, Justice, Mercy) eternal. They are much like native peoples who hunger for truth and without ever hearing of Christ, are yet humbly obedient to the idea there is Truth (Love, Justice, Mercy) larger than opinions or feelings or any group, that marriage must be more than “love is love, while it lasts,” among other aspects of God's natural law they feel written on the human heart. This reality, and all that has led to it also greatly defines this shepherding moment.

How do we shepherd in this moment?

How do we meet people where they are, walk with them (yes, Christ's version of synodality, which is incomplete without the rest of what He did on the road to Emmaus), admonish the sinner, reveal God's Love (Truth, Justice, and Mercy) in their lives and in salvation history, and then, at the crossroads go our own way, and if they invite us to join them for it is late, break bread with them, revealing Christ is with them always and giving the instruction on how to become Catholic as we go about our shepherding way, leaving them with a choice to make...continue to run away or return to Jerusalem and become Catholic.

This gives a glimpse of the hard questions and state of shepherds, the faithful, and society. This is the current shepherding moment of centuries. How will we shepherd?

#CurrentlyTimeless #Catholic #HumanEndeavor #Parenting #Shepherding #SpiritualDirection #Symposium #VaticanII #SpiritOfVaticanII

• Subscribe (free) to new articles
• Share to socials, friends, and family —- All content of CSFquarterly.org is ©, all rights reserved.

We live in a Catholic monarchy. Jesus our Christ is our King, our Blessed Virgin Mother our Queen. True, in the United States, our local government is, of the moment, if we can keep it, a democratic republic, with regions devolving into anarchy courtesy of modernism's progressivism. Yet, we all, each and every one, regardless of belief, live in a Catholic monarchy. This realization likely leaves us with a lot to (re)examine, including history, monarchy, some of our cherished human rights, and how we Catholics answer Christ's call to be in the world but not of it.

An overarching Catholic monarchy lived by Catholics threatens and terrifies tyrants and anarchists, other despots, and those whose delusions depend on God's non-existence. Interestingly enough, this terror of the Truth (Love, Justice, and Mercy) is part of the proof of the Truth. Catholics, therefore, appear to “hate” much in the modern world, when we love one another as Christ has loved us (Jn 13:34). Pride has those deluded by the various poisons of the fallen world needing to rule at the top; be it a kingdom of many or, in the case of nihilists and anarchists, an ever dwindling kingdom of one.

Monarchy is the governance model God gives us, and He freely shares His authority. He appoint husbands as head of house to love their wives as Christ loves His Church (Eph 5), priests, bishops, and our pope, all as ruling shepherds over the sheep entrusted to them by Christ.

A brief history may help, for modern history ignores the Catholic Golden Age, claiming it was part of the Dark Ages. For 1,200 years, from Charlemagne in 600 to the last vestiges ended unjustly after World War 1 due to the fear and hatred described above, the Holy Roman Empire served her people in various forms and imperfections. Yet, by the grace of God working through His authority on earth, she ushered in a Catholic Golden Age, out of the Dark Ages following the fall of the Roman Empire. Agriculture and trade developed and flourished, universities and hospitals formed, various sciences emerged—advances that occurred nowhere else.

Out of the Dark Age, the Church upheld and recognized and aided the rising authority of Catholic monarchs. Pope Leo XIII, pope from 1878 to 1903, explains: “...when Christian rulers were at the head of States, the Church insisted much more on testifying and preaching how much sanctity was inherent in the authority of rulers” (Diuturum Illud, No. 21) So much so that “Obedience to authority is obedience to God” (Ibid. No. 27).

As Pope Leo XIII explains: “...from the time when the civil society of men raised from the ruins of the Roman Empire, gave hope of its future Christian greatness, the Roman Pontiffs, by the institution of the Holy Roman Empire, consecrated to political power in a wonderful manner. Greatly, indeed, was the authority of rulers ennobled; and it is not to be doubted that what was then instituted would always have been a very great gain, both to ecclesiastical and civil society, if princes and peoples had ever looked to the same object as the Church. And, indeed, tranquility and a sufficient prosperity lasted so long as there was a friendly agreement between the two powers” (Diuturum Illud, No. 22).

Pope Leo XIII goes on to explain the checks and balances on the State, as well as the people: “If the people were turbulent, the Church was at once the mediator for peace. Recalling all to their duty, she subdued the more lawless passions partly by kindness and partly by authority. So, if, in ruling, princes erred in their government, she went to them and, putting before them the rights, needs, and lawful wants of their people, urged them to equity, mercy, and kindness. Whence, it was often brought about that the dangers of civil wars and popular tumults were stayed” (Ibid.)

Arguably, we have fallen into a new Dark Age, under the weight of Martin Luther's attack on God's authority on earth, in the form of the Sola Heresies (I refer to them this way as each of his heresies' first word is “sola”: scriptura, fide, gratia). Pope Leo XIII again explains: “...the doctrines on political power invented by late writers (of the so called Enlightenment and Rationalists) have already produced great ills among men, and it is to be feared that they will cause the very greatest disasters to posterity. For an unwillingness to attribute the right of ruling to God, as its Author, is no less than a willingness to blot out the greatest splendor of political power and to destroy its force. And they who say that this power depends on the will of the people err in opinion first of all; then they place authority on too weak and unstable a foundation...From this heresy (the Sola Heresies of Martin Luther) there arose in the last century a false philosophy—a new right as it is called, and a popular authority, together with an unbridled license which many regard as the only true liberty. Hence we have reached the limit of horrors, to wit, Communism, Socialism, Nihilism, hideous deformities of the civil society of men and almost its ruin” (Ibid. No. 23).

This shocks the modern mind: A Catholic monarchy has more immediate and effective checks and balances on it than are built into the Constitution of the United States. A Catholic monarch strives to have bold, humble obedience to God, including His Church, the royal family, and the people of God. Read the writings of the Reigning Prince of Liechtenstein Hans-Adam II in The State in the Third Millennium and The Habsburg Way by Eduard Habsburg, Archduke of Austria and they also describe the workings of these checks and balances of a Catholic monarchy by God's authority on earth.

To understand history, and the rise and eventual neutering of Protestant monarchies, we need only understand that Martin Luther's Sola Heresies evaporated these checks and balances, leaving Protestant monarchs deluded into believing they alone were the highest authority to interpret God's revelation, something no good Catholic would do (keeping in mind Christ Himself defers to the will of the Father).

Is a Catholic monarchy perfect? Not this side of death's veil; it is, however, the best governance model there is, divinely instituted. As near as I can see, based on the nurturing and defense of obedience to God's authority on earth in each: Catholic monarchy > democratic republic >> Protestant monarchy >>>> all others.

As with any shifting and developing relationship, the emergence of a Catholic emperor caused challenges as the papacy and monarchy sorted out how and where authority flowed. Much the same long term learning is occurring in these recent centuries between emerging democratic republics and the papacy and society at large, especially with the added shift of the disenlightenment and rise of irrationalism that now infuses society. Time and experience improved the relationship with the Holy Roman Empire through the centuries, as both chose bold, humble obedience to Christ and thus learned and improved how each filled their divinely appointed office.

Jump forward to the current challenge between the papacy and modernist society: Is similar improvement possible when one of the parties rejects the existence of God? Improvement depends on bold, humble obedience to Christ; thus, the question becomes one of how to shepherd a wayward child who has turned away from Truth, Love, Justice, and Mercy. How did this happen? Since 1517, society has been in decline, not ascent. Authority—which is only granted by God—on earth, the Church, Catholic monarchies, and in individuals, was attacked by Martin Luther's Sola Heresies. The Church has reeled since with how to shepherd. How does one shepherd amidst the confusion of modernism? Naming and lamenting the errors, including that only the individual can discern Truth and the authority to rule derives from the people, not from God, is a start, yet how do we answer Christ's call of the spiritual act of mercy to “admonish the sinner”? Shepherding people out of modernism's many errors is akin to parenting a wayward teen running with the wrong crowd, relishing sex, drugs, and violence.

In theory, in a democratic republic, a well formed, faithful people have a collective authority of sensus fidelium, sense of the faithful, in discerning how they vote (the same authority that is a check and balance against a wayward Catholic monarch); yet when society erodes the “fidelium”, the authority decreases; so to, as leaders have less or no fidelium, what authority they had also erodes, for they have no Christ compass to recognize Truth, Love, Justice and Mercy.

Pope Leo XIII explains part of the root of this shepherding challenge with the many flavors of modernism—including liberalism, progressivism, communism, socialism, nihilism, and anarchy—“For fear, as Saint Thomas (Aquinas) admirably teaches 'is a weak foundation: for those who are subdued by fear would, should the occasion arise in which they might hope for immunity, rise more eagerly against their rulers, in proportion to the previous extent of their restraint through fear'” (Diuturum Illud, No. 24). With diminished authority, fear of punishment is the remaining motivation to obey to the law and there is no motivation to obey what is just.

This explains the chaos of our time. How, then, are we to be Catholic in a local democratic republic? Firstly, we ought always remember we are within the rule of Christ our King. Secondly, much as early Christians were faithful leaven as citizens of the Roman Empire, which persecuted them, we called to be leaven.

Saint Alphonsus De Liguori described Saint Sebastian's martyrdom: “Sebastian answered that he considered he was rendering the greatest possible service to the emperor (as a soldier), since the state benefited by having Christian subjects, whose fidelity to their sovereign is proportionate to their devotedness to Jesus Christ. The emperor, enraged at this reply, ordered that the saint should be instantly tied to a post and that a body of archers should discharge their arrows upon him” (Victories of the Martyrs, Ch. LXII).

In more modern times, Pope Leo explains: “The Church of Christ indeed cannot be an object of suspicion to rulers, nor of hatred to the people; for it urges rulers to follow justice, and in nothing to decline from their duty; while at the same time it strengthens and in many ways supports their authority” (Diuturum Illud, No. 26).

As faithful Catholics, our challenge is to be formed by the Church. We are called to turn to the shepherds Christ entrusts us to so Christ, through them, may shepherd us. As we become more formed, we become leaven throughout society. No matter the local government, or the state of society, Christ within us rises, elevating society. This is how the Church can shepherd manfully amidst these modern errors, and how we faithful can be manfully shepherded. Who but Christ through His Church can name error of our modern ways? For we hold as cherished rights these errors, so turned around by Satan are we: the supposed even plane of ideas, the individual as the highest authority of Truth, and the people, not God, as the source of authority to rulers, among others.

We Catholics are called to elevate public discourse, both with how we live our lives and how we converse with others who do not yet understand. We ought never entertain the voice and temptation and lies of Satan in modernism's many flavors. To modernist eyes, any just voice elevating discourse spouts authoritarian hate. To anarchists, everything looks like fascism.

We Catholics are called to be leaven. Let us turn to our shepherds to form us, that by living our Faith we elevate the city of man, in which we live but are not of, toward becoming the City of God, by being the light of Christ on the hill.

Now, how do I get this bushel off my head?

May Christ startle you with joy!

#BlessedVirginMary #CurrentlyTimeless #HumanEndeavor #Catholic #Monarchy #Shepherding #Symposium #Communism #PopeLeoXIII #Nihilism #Modernism #Progressivism #MartinLuther #Habsburg #Lichtenstein #DarkAge #GoldenAge

• Subscribe (free) to new articles
• Share to socials, friends, and family —- All content of CSFquarterly.org is ©, all rights reserved.

Goal

Reinfuse Christ into human endeavor, as it was, however imperfectly, from the 12th into the early 16th centuries. Shepherding, education, healthcare, storytelling, technology, science, agriculture, governance, among others.

Method

Cultivate ongoing conversation among Catholics, particularly shepherds and those in a given area of human endeavor that addresses the question: what would (insert human endeavor here) look like if we were boldly, humbly obedient to Christ's full revealed Truth (Love, Justice, and Mercy)?

Authority

Christ gave His Church authority, humbly obedient to God, over the soul when He gave Saint Peter the power of the keys, to bind on earth and in heaven. This sole earthly authority includes the authority of the Sacrament of Confession and thus authority over souls, granted her by our Lord Jesus Christ. In this capacity, the Church as authority over every soul, and thus over every human endeavor.

Premises in Common (History and Current)

• In the 12th, 13th, 14th, and into the 15th centuries humanity ascended in broader Europe, the Holy Roman Empire, because, despite many flaws in people and emerging systems of human endeavor, Christ was central and foundational and thus bold, humble obedience to Christ (Love, Truth, Justice, and Mercy) was commonly rewarded. This ascension of human endeavor to the benefit of humanity would begin to visibly crumble in 1517, and continue crumbling until, with few exceptions, the very institutions founded by the Catholic faithful are unrecognizable as Catholic.
• In discerning Christ's presence, we need Ignatian holy equipoise—indifference to specific result of our labor in the result of how we achieve consolation in striving to reinfuse Christ into human endeavor.
• 1517: Martin Luther's 95 Theses, which became the Sola Heresies, attacked God's authority on earth: first in the Church, then Catholic monarchies, then disciplines of human endeavor, personal free will, and finally devolving into the self-refuting anarchic claim that “the only/highest truth is personal truth.” Over the centuries, this gravely harmed the presence of Love, Truth, Justice, and Mercy (Christ) in all human endeavor, including the Church, state, science, technology, medicine, education, pastoral care, manufacturing, food production, storage, and distribution, news and story telling, and many others. This has diminished and even poisoned the fruit of subsequent human endeavors. We need to restore bold, humble obedience to Christ in all human endeavor.

• We do not know what (insert human endeavor here) would look like had we kept Christ central; thus, per St. Ignatius, we in desolation must back track to the last time of consolation and sort out how to proceed forward in consolation.

  Tools and Resources

• Understanding Human Dignity (LINK)

• Shepherding Quick Guide

  Initial Observations

• What is the current state of this human endeavor? What does it do well, poorly, and sinfully from a Catholic perspective?

  Queries

• What questions need answers?

  Proposals

• What are the possible answers, or path toward discovering and discerning those answers, having humility to know that answers will rise through faithful conversation and dialogue?

Note: Saint John Paul II's encyclical Redemptor Hominis no. 15-18 gives the context for understanding the decline of human endeavor since the Sola Heresies and Christ as the remedy.

Where and How is this CSF Symposium?

Excellent question. Ideally, it becomes a global conversation among faithful Catholics. Thus, to start, the default “where” is the internet, with folks emailing me their posts, possibly including the Fediverse by the tags used here. Open to ideas beyond that.

#Catholic #HumanEndeavor #Shepherding #Symposium

• Subscribe (free) to new articles
• Share to socials, friends, and family —- All content of CSFquarterly.org is ©, all rights reserved.