"To poison ecclesial relations with the logic of politics is making trouble," says Cardinal Matteo Zuppi, the president of the Italian bishops' conference.

This isn't just a problem in Italy, he adds. It is also evident in "the marked political polarisation seen in the American church.

"But wherever politics has used pseudo-theological or spiritual categories to contaminate ecclesial life, everyone has lost in the end."

Zuppi says we must pay close attention to this issue - partly because of manipulation from the outside and also because of the divisions within.

"Trouble results from falling into these traps, for example, of false conflicts between the social and spiritual (dimensions) or the often-contrived divisions on ethical issues," he added.

Polarisation and the problems it causes are everywhere. It's "ruling supreme on every issue, big and small," he says.

Zuppi points out that taking sides seems like a quick and easy way to respond to the many complexities in the world. There's no requirement to think or tackle too many questions, he says.

"Instead, we have to face complexity without fear, to ask ourselves questions, especially questions concerning ‘who,' that is, putting the human person at the centre" of the discussion.

When it comes to ethical issues, Zuppi says "we cannot simply repeat little lectures from the past, instead we must find new words for new questions".

"To be very frank, if the world is heading (in) the other direction on ethical issues, it certainly means that we must not conform to or say what the world wants to hear, but that we must know how to tell the eternal truths in today's culture" or terminology.

"Otherwise, we repeat a truth that has become hard to accept."

Zuppi notes that St Paul VI called for increased participation of the laity, church reform and outreach to the marginalised in the years ahead of the Second Vatican Council. The large numbers who have left the Church aren't the problem, he says.

"The problem is not them, it is us."

People are implicitly calling for "a Church that is more evangelical, more motherly and, for this reason, demanding and engaging, that does not play the (wicked) stepmother and says, ‘I told you so,'" he added.

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• Crux Now

The council of Nicaea is best known for the profession of faith - the ‘Nicene Creed' - which is still recited in most parishes every Sunday immediately after the sermon.

However, the council also issued twenty canons of a practical nature, dealing with various aspects of church life, and the fifth of these canons speaks of Lent.

The word used for Lent in this fifth canon is tessarakonta (in the original Greek), which means ‘forty'.

For the first time in recorded history, we have mention of this period of preparation for Easter as lasting forty days.

Much earlier, Christians had introduced Easter Sunday to celebrate Christ's resurrection. Soon afterwards, a period of two or three days preparation, specially commemorating Christ's passion and death - the ‘Holy Week' part of Lent today - had been adopted by various Christian communities.

But the first mention of a preparatory period lasting the forty days comes from this fifth canon of Nicaea. Continue reading.

Source: ThinkingFaith

Image: The Catholic Spirit