Denver Catholic

18 FEBRUARY 10-23, 2018 | DENVER CATHOLIC Five things to do for your beloved on Ash Valentine's Day I t's not every year that Ash Wednesday and Valentine's Day fall on the same day. In fact, the last time such an occurrence hap- pened was 73 years ago in 1945. While Valentine's Day has its roots in the Catholic Church, originally a feast day honoring various saints named Valentine who were martyred in the 2nd century, it has since become a day dedicated to love and romance. As such, it has become a tradition in society to take your beloved out for an extravagant date – a tough thing to do if the date also happens to fall on the beginning of the penitential season of Lent. So, what's a smitten Catholic to do? A few bishops in the U.S. have issued statements saying that the observance of Ash Wednesday should take precedence over that of Valen- tine's Day, and of course, we agree. This means that for Christians, it's probably not appropriate to gorge on bottles of champagne, boxes of choco- lates and buckets of candy hearts with your sweetheart. That said, there are still ways for Catholic lovers to indulge in the romance of Valentine's Day and still fulfi ll the requirements of Ash Wednesday. Here are fi ve. Perspectives Aaron Lambert is the Comm. Manager for the Archdiocese of Denver. AARON LAMBERT Men without conviction, churches without people E urope's wholesale abandon- ment of its Christian faith is often explained as the inev- itable by-product of modern social, economic, and political life. But there is far more to the story of Euro-sec- ularization than that, as three eccle- siastics, a Presbyte- rian minis- ter and two Italian priests, demonstrated this past Christmas. The minister in question was the Moderator of the Church of Scotland, the Rt. Rev. Dr. Derek Browning. In his Yuletide message to his disappearing fl ock, Dr. Browning confessed that in his "darker moments," he sometimes wondered whether "...the world would have been a better place without [Jesus]. If there was no Jesus, and therefore no Christianity, would there have been no Crusades? Would there have been no Spanish Inquisition?" (Dr. Browning didn't contemplate the possibility that, without Jesus, there would have been no iconoclas- tic destruction of Scotland's ancient and beautiful Catholic churches, or no mass burnings of "witches" by his forebears in the kirk; but that, perhaps, would have been cutting a bit too close to the bone.) Then there was Father Fredo Oli- vero of the Church of San Rocco di Torino in the Archdiocese of Turin. At Christmas midnight Mass, Don Fredo substituted the syrupy Italian pop-reli- gious tune, Dolce sentire, for the Creed, explaining, "Do you know why I do not say the Creed? Because I do not believe it....after many years I understood that it was something I did not understand and that I could not accept. So let's sing something else that says the essential things of life..." Which, evidently, do not include the confession of faith that Jesus is Lord and Savior. Not to be outdone by those uppity Piedmontese in Turin, a priest of Genoa, Father Paolo Farinella, announced in the leftist Italian news- paper, La Repubblica, that he had can- celed his parish Masses for Jan. 1 (the Octave of Christmas and the Solemnity of Mary, Mother of God) and Jan. 6 (the Epiphany). Why? Because, according to Don Paolo, Christmas is now "a fairy tale from the nativity scene with lullabies and bagpipes, the exclusive support of a capitalist and consumerist economy, transforming the whole of Christianity into civil religion." So there. No Mass. These three episodes illustrate a larger point: "secularization" is not something that just happened to west- ern Europe, like the Black Death. The radical secularization that has trans- formed Christianity's heartland into the most religiously arid half-conti- nent on the planet has at least as much to do with the craven surrender of ministers of the Gospel to theological and political fads, and their consequent loss of faith, as it does with the impact of urbanization, mass education, and the industrial revolution on Europe- ans' understanding of themselves. If the Gospel is not preached with conviction – the convictions that humanity is in need of salvation and that Jesus is the Savior who liberates us into the fullness of our humanity and gives us eternal life – then the Gospel will not be believed. If ministers of the Gospel indulge in gratuitous virtue-signaling by pro- moting the worst of black legends, as if the sum total of Christianity's impact on world history is embodied by "the Crusades and the Spanish Inquisi- tion," why would anyone come to their churches or listen to whatever's being oš ered there by way of I'm-OK- You're-OK therapeutic balm? If ministers of the Gospel cannot challenge the world's distortions of the Gospel with the truth of the Gospel, but fall back instead on penny-ante pseudo-Marxist clichés, is it any wonder that their church pews are empty? Christianity is dying in western Europe. There are many reasons for that, including the complicity of many churchmen in the ideological awful- ness that turned mid-20th century Europe into a slaughterhouse. But the Gospel has power, and those who believe that, and preach it in the con- viction that it can transform and enno- ble lives, can still get a hearing. Indeed, as post-modernity decomposes into ever more bizarre forms of irrational- ity, the cleansing, liberating truth of the Gospel and the vision of life well- lived found in the Beatitudes ought to be a compelling oš er. But the o… er must be made. And it won't be made by churchmen who wonder aloud whether the world wouldn't have been better oš without Jesus, or who substitute treacle for the Creed, or who throw public hissy-fi ts rather than celebrating the Eucharist. The Catholic Di± erence George Weigel is a distinguished senior fellow of the Ethics and Public Policy Center in Washington, D.C. GEORGE WEIGEL Nothing says "holy romance" like eating a salad with ashes smudged on your forehead.

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