“Freeing” Catholicism 

Fr. Joshua Whitfield is the pastor of St. Rita Catholic Church in Dallas, TX where he has served since his ordination to the priesthood in 2009. In a recent post on Twitter/X, Fr. Whitfield shared his experience of talking with people who have come to him for advice about how they might have a deeper experience of their Catholic faith. He always gives them the following counsel: “go to confession, pray daily, read the Bible, and stop treating youth sports like a religion; and then I tell them never, ever miss Sunday Mass.” Usually, this advice is not what they were looking for, so people often leave the conversation feeling disappointed. While affirming their sincerity, he speculates that those who seek him out are “after a feeling, maybe a perspective, a devotion – something tinged with sentimentality.” What they don’t want is anything that “calls into question practices, habits, the forms of life, ethics; nothing like repentance and change.”  

But this tends to be true for all of us. If what we’re hoping to get from Catholicism are feelings or sentimentality, then it’s always going to let us down. That’s not because there’s something deficient in Catholicism. The problem lies with us, because it’s hard for us to accept that the fulfilment of our deepest desires is found in the routine, the ordinary, even the arduous. Fr. Whitfield writes: “Catholicism is no gimmick, no perspective or feeling. It’s salvation and the daily work of holiness. It doesn’t conform to your expectations. It never will. Which is why if you want real Catholicism, work at it. Show up, change your habits, live the precepts of the Church. It’s not complicated or sexy or trendy. It’s just daily work, sacred habits, piety in stability. Anyone telling you anything else is selling you something.”  

Fr. Whitfield concludes, saying: “If you want truly freeing Catholicism, the sort that changes your life, don’t chase after gimmicks or feelings. Just get to Mass; live the sacraments; let the timing and shape of liturgies shape your life. Do it until it becomes habit, the spiritual structure of your being. Then you’ll be free. Then the noise and the nonsense of the world, and even a lot of noise and nonsense in the Church will simply hush. And then you will find your God – in stillness.”   

Fr. Whitfield’s sound advice reminds me of something the writer Flannery O’Connor once said: “What people don’t realize is how much religion costs. They think faith is a big electric blanket, when of course it is the cross.” As much as we might like one, there are no shortcuts around the cross. But the cross is Christ’s, and Easter reminds us that the cross of Christ leads to new life in His resurrection. If we want a share in that new life, we must recommit ourselves to following Him along the way of the cross, which we do through daily fidelity to religious practice.  

On behalf of Fr. Mariusz, Deacon Larry, and our parish staff, I wish you and yours a blessed Easter. 

posted 3/31/24