What it's really all about

I have been incredibly blessed to be a Catholic throughout my life. Growing up in the Church, being educated at both a Catholic high school and a Catholic college, I have been given the opportunity to see all the riches the Church has to offer. I've seen the beauty of her cultural impacts in art, music, literature, theater and poetry. She's captivated my intellect with her many theological and philosophical contributions. She has overawed me with her beautiful collection of religious orders, teachers, and friends.

We Catholics have a beautiful treasury of tradition that is ours to give to the world. We have small symbols, such as the sign of the Cross, that mean so much. Most of the time when I talk to other people about the state the world is in today, we talk about how we can make these things prominent again. We wonder why Gregorian chant is not more common in the liturgy, or we rail against the effects of immodesty in our culture. We talk about how we can once again bring about a "Catholic culture" in the world, and often times our minds go back to the Middle Ages when Catholicism was in every fabric of societal life.

Well, sort of. In the end, what we end up doing is romanticizing the Middle Ages and forgetting what Catholicism truly is. We look at the art, the music, the buildings but we forget the people of the Middle Ages. We brush over in our minds the fact that so many priests kept mistresses, that there was rampant corruption among the bishops and cardinals of the Church, and that even the papacy was often occupied by less than reputable characters. We forget that the philosophy and theology so widespread throughout the laity of today were not available to the peasants of the Middle Ages. Yes, the Church was everywhere, but the majority of those within the hierarchy were not living as disciples of Christ. The Middle Ages had all the trappings of a Catholic culture, so why wasn't it perfect? Why was corruption in the hierarchy of the Church so rampant?

It's an age old error found within the Church; we begin to equate Catholicism with its effects. We begin to think of Catholicism as simply a system for organizing all human life, including culture, morality, intellectual endeavors and government. However, Catholicism loses its core meaning when it becomes solely a source of temporal salvation and well being. Its core meaning is not to organize the world, but to draw souls into a relationship with the Creator of the world. Pope Benedict XVI said it best when he said:

 "Christianity is not a new philosophy or a new morality. We are only Christians if we encounter Christ...Only in this personal relationship with Christ, only in this encounter with the Risen One do we truly become Christians." Sept. 3, 2008 Wednesday Address

Catholicism, then, is not ultimately about the music, art, or literature. Catholicism is first and foremost about a relationship with a person, THE Person. It is about living out a love story with Jesus. All the music, art, and literature find their meaning in how they lead the soul into a more intimate knowledge of the Savior. The cultural influences of the Church only derive their goodness from how they lead people closer to Jesus.

Many in the Middle Ages lost this understanding of Catholicism. They began to see the Church as simply a means to organize a world in chaos after the fall of the Roman Empire. What made the great saints of the Middle Ages saints, such as Sts. Francis, Dominic, Thomas Aquinas, Bonaventure, Teresa of Avila, and Catherine of Sienna, was that they were in love with Christ, and they wanted to make other people fall in love with Him as well. Yes, they made their contributions to culture, but only in order to bring souls to Jesus. St. Thomas never sought to revolutionize philosophical thought simply to make it more "Catholic," his goal was to introduce others to the Truth. St. Theresa of Avila didn't just want to reform the Carmelites because they made the Church look bad, she wanted to reform them so that they could come closer to Jesus.

These saints also understood another thing: Jesus's kingdom is not of this world. Despite the best intentions of Catholics throughout history, this world will never become the New Jerusalem until the end of time, and then it will not be brought about by the efforts of man. True Catholicism, the living out of a relationship with Jesus, has never been popular, even during the supposedly "Catholic" Middle Ages. Yes, the Church was prominent, but that didn't mean that St. Theresa of Avila was popular. When she began her reforms of the Carmelites, many were angry with her.

Jesus promised us, "If you were of the world, the world would love its own; but because you are not of the world, but I chose you out of the world, therefore the world hates you" Jn 15:9. As Catholics, we must strive to love Jesus, to live out this relationship with him. We cannot become distracted by trying to make this world into a Catholic paradise. Rather, all the things we do to bring about a Catholic culture must be done out of a true desire to introduce others to the Love we already know ourselves. We should expect the world to hate us, because it hated Him. We have become and are sojourners in a foreign country. In turn, let us then run all the more towards Jesus, focusing on the Person of Christ more and temporal welfare less. This is one of the great themes of Benedict XVI's papacy: to be a Christian is fundamentally to be in a relationship with Christ, nothing more and nothing less.