No More Chicken Littles: Archbishop Dolan Calls Us All to Living Faith and Hope

We are called to follow the One who stretched out His arms and embraced the whole world on that second tree on Calvary's hill

We bishops come to you, as did the apostles to Jesus, to report with praise to God about all that His Word continues to accomplish.Holy Father, we have difficulties and worries galore. We have spoken to you about some of them over the last two days. The Church has had them since Pentecost. They do not crush us, but only prompt us to trust in Jesus and his promises.They only move us to seek a blessing, and a word of hope from you as we commence Advent this very evening

P>ROME,Italy (Catholic Online) - John Thavis of Catholic News Service recently published the  faith-filled words which Archbishop Timothy Dolan shared with Pope Benedict XVI at a recent Ad Limina visit to Rome. They can be read in the entirety here:

These words - spoken by a Bishop who is fully aware of the challenges the Church faces in the United States, to a Pope, well aware of the global challenges faced by that same Church - call us all to examine ourselves. After all, Advent is a season of hope. These words invite us to recover the dynamic, living faith we need in this hour.

The Archbishop told Pope Benedict XVI "we bishops come to you, as did the apostles to Jesus, to report with praise to God about all that His Word continues to accomplish in the eight dioceses of the State of New York. God's grace and mercy are as abundant now as they once were in the lives of New Yorkers in the past whom we revere as saints or future saints.

"The work of evangelization goes on, as it did centuries ago in our state through St. Isaac Jogues, John De Brebeuf, and the North American Martyrs. Our catechumens, children, young people and adults still respond to the invitation of Jesus to conversion of heart and the call to holiness, as our own Blessed Kateri Tekawitha and Father Paul Watson once did.

"Our priests, consecrated religious, and faithful people continue to feed the poor, heal the sick, clothe the naked, and house the homeless as our hopefully future saints such as Pierre Toussaint, Monsignor Nelson Baker, Sister Rose Hawthorne, Mother Marianne Cope, Monsignor Bernard Quinn, and Dorothy Day did in the past. Our children still learn about "the way, the truth, and the life" in excellent Catholic schools and programs of religious education, taught today as they once were by our own St. Elizabeth Ann Seton.

"Our priests continue to preach, serve, and sanctify, bolstered by the example of predecessors such as Felix Varela, Isaac Hecker, James Walsh, Thomas Price, Vincent Capodanno, Fulton Sheen, and Terrance Cooke, all of whom we hope one day to venerate as Saints.Immigrants from Latin America, the Caribbean, Africa and Asia, welcomed by the Statue of Liberty and Mother Church, are embraced now as once they were by Mother Francis Xavier Cabrini.

"Holy Father, we have difficulties and worries galore. We have spoken to you about some of them over the last two days. The Church has had them since Pentecost; New York has had them since the first Catholics came three-and-a-half centuries ago.

"They do not crush us, but only prompt us to trust in Jesus and his promises, to rely on our faithful and generous people, zealous priests and deacons, indefatigable religious women and men. They only move us to seek a blessing, and a word of hope from you as we commence Advent this very evening"

Thank God for the leadership of this courageous Bishop in this critical hour. He shows us the kind of dynamically orthodox Catholic Christian faith to which we are all called in this new missionary age. However, there seems to be what I call a "Chicken Little" attitude growing in too many of our circles these days.   

Remember the story of Chicken Little? We heard it so many times when we were children we could probably repeat the beginning: "Chicken Little was in the woods one day when an acorn fell on her head. It scared her so much she trembled all over. She shook so hard, half her feathers fell out. Chicken Little: "Help! Help! The sky is falling! I have to go tell the king!"

The story proceeds through many different encounters and ends with the little chicken learning the lessons of courage and the practicality of good preparation for every journey in life. I fear that the condition of too many Catholics these days is more akin to the fear demonstrated by Chicken Little than to the living permeating the words of the good Archbishop.

It seems wherever I look Catholics are afraid or complaining about the acorns. Worse yet, some are causing others to succumb to fear or despair. What happened to faith, hope and love, those "theological virtues" infused within us when we rose from those waters of Baptism? Why, of all people, do those who know the real King and Sovereign of the entire universe so easily give in to the kind of crippling fear which is such an impediment to living faith?

I have decided that I am going to put up my spiritual umbrella every morning before I even open up my E Mails as Advent continues. Too many "Chicken Littles" are using this great treasure of virtual community called the World Wide Web to throw acorns and I need that umbrella!

Do not think that I am suffering from naïveté. I have been in the trenches for years. I grasp the gravity of the real challenges and struggles we face in this contemporary culture of death. I understand the deep effects of what our Holy Father Pope Benedict XVI rightly called the "Dictatorship of Relativism." I know how hard it is to live in an age which has lost its moral compass.

However, perhaps because I have also spent years studying our Christian history, I also know that none of this is new. For example, the early Christians who went into a declining Roman empire had to contend with a culture of death that accepted as normal the placing of unwanted infants out on rocks to be either eaten by animals or taken by slave traders. It was a practice called "exposure."

Those early followers of Jesus Christ - and many, many other Christians throughout the ages - also had to face the rancid fruit that always accompanies a culture's descent into hedonism, nihilism and self idolatry. However, they went into their cultures as leaven and light, filled with faith, hope and love - and so must we.

We are called to follow the One who stretched out His arms and embraced the whole world on that second tree on Calvary's hill, doing for us what we could never do for ourselves. That Cross brought heaven to earth and earth to heaven, forming a bridge between them. With His great act of surrendered love, He who knew no sin ended the separation which resulted from it and created the world anew in Himself. (See, 2 Cor. 5: 17 - 21)

From the wounded side of the New Man, the Second Adam, Jesus Christ, the Church was formed and that Church is called to continue His redemptive work until He returns to complete the total recapitulation of all things. He defeated death by Death and through His glorious Resurrection He mediates the hope that we who bear His name can walk in, if we choose to do so.

So, let the acorns fall all around you, I assure you the sky is not falling, even if it appears to be. In fact, Christians are the ones called to hold the sky up for others by living our lives now in Christ and helping those bound by the fear of death to find new life in the One who conquered it.

"Now since the children share in blood and flesh, he likewise shared in them, that through death he might destroy the one who has the power of death, that is, the devil, and free those who through fear of death had been subject to slavery all their life" (Heb 2:14-15)

I going to practice a "new technology" version of what has long been called "custody of the eyes" in Moral theology. I am going to stop reading the growing number of naysayers in the camp who are losing the supernatural sight which is informed by faith and fueled by Christian hope. They are the Chicken Little's of our own time and seem to have forgotten their umbrellas.

Our Catechism reminds us in one of its numerous treatments concerning hope that "The first commandment is also concerned with sins against hope, namely, despair and presumption". (CCC #2091) Thank God for the leadership of men of faith like Archbishop Dolan who remind us of the way of living faith and hope.  

By the way, remember the end of that little childhood story: "Chicken Little always carried an umbrella with her when she walked in the woods. The umbrella was a present from the king. And if - KERPLUNK - an acorn fell, Chicken Little didn't mind a bit. In fact, she didn't notice it at all." Catholics and other Christians are called to 'Hold up the Sky'.

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