Looking back at the weekly messages of Father Paul Counce, first published in The Carpenter, our weekly Parish Bulletin
Published: October 11, 2020
Dear Parishioners and Friends,
One of my regular activities is to keep a “To Do” List. It’s an easy thing to accomplish with a smart phone that – mostly! – understands me when I talk to it! And in fact, I have a number of lists: one is “things to read,” another is “things to do,” of course there is a shopping list of “things to get,” and there is perhaps my favorite one: “things to cook and eat”!
The trouble with all of my lists is that I generally tend to add things only, without ever shortening them. For example, the list of books I want to read has really turned into a list of “books I’ve started but never finished”!
Something I’ve just put on that list is the latest encyclical of Pope Francis, Fratelli Tutti. The Holy Father began it with Italian words used by his namesake St. Francis of Assisi in writing to “All brothers and sisters.” Its subject matter is the “fraternity and social friendship” of humanity, something which followers of Jesus Christ like us should foster deliberately and constantly.
I admit I really haven’t started it yet. I’ve already started about a dozen books already, so I’ll be able to wait to purchase an inexpensive copy soon! (It can be downloaded already from the Vatican’s website, but it comes to 78 pages, not counting the footnotes!)
Still, when signing the document last weekend, the Holy Father his hope that all peoples everywhere know of God’s invitation “to a love that goes to beyond the barriers of geography and space.” Pope Francis says that, inspired by St. Francis, all of us should “dream as one humanity, as travelers made of the same human flesh, as children of the same land which hosts all of us, each with the richness of faith or convictions, each with their own voice, all brothers and sisters!” Then, the way forward, made up of common action together, can enable real progress again.
From news reports I’ve seen, one of the Pope’s motives in writing this message to us all is that in the current time of the coronavirus pandemic, we’ve clearly become more isolated from each other. But frankly, I have to agree with the Pope’s reported assessment as well that the general progress that countries and peoples have made since World War II to overcome differences and work together for real advancement has slowed, and this despite Covid-19. While secular observers might point to political and economic causes here, Pope Francis brings in the more serious, underlying factor: sin. Evil is never overcome accidentally, so we need to purposefully work against what the Holy Father calls “the dark clouds” within us and outside of us that, unless changed, ultimately will bring about destruction.
It will be interesting to see if Pope Francis’ typical optimistic outlook – as was evidenced especially in his earlier writings Evangelii Gaudium and Laudato Sí – still prevails as he voices his concerns for humanity’s future. Optimism is called for: Pope St. John Paul II’s own favorite document of the Second Vatican Council (1962-1965), Gaudium et Spes, the Pastoral Constitution on the Church in the Modern World, embraced as inevitable the progress which humanity was taking, and demanded its priority. Yet always it’s hard to sustain concerted action as generations rise and fall and human achievements cede to historical reality.
Anyway, I do hope to get to this soon. As with most Church documents, the encyclical is best read and prayed-over simultaneously. This makes for slow reading, but many moments of insight and thus resolve for the future. We can only influence the future for the better by deciding to do so, and that is one thing that I am sure that Pope Francis is hoping all of us do!
Yours in Christ,
Very Rev. Paul D. Counce
