Lesson for the catechist

The topics today were the Sacrament of Matrimony, the Sixth Commandment, and the Ninth Commandment.

I sat in the back and kept my yap shut most of the morning, which is what I try to do when I don't have anything particularly insightful to add. On these topics, my insights don't run much deeper than, "Love your spouse sacrificially. Don't mess around. Don't even think about messing around."

Sure, marriage is a mystery, but it ain't rocket science.

I did, though, open my yap three times that I recall. The first time, in response to a comment that our fallen race doesn't properly value each other as persons, I said something like, "If you don't know what a thing is, you can't properly value it. It so happens that we can't know what a human person is apart from our intended relationship with God. And if you don't believe in God... you get cable television."

My second comment was some get-off-my-lawn gruff about how the "today's society" out of step with which the Catholic Church is, is intentionally misshaped by people who make money out of having society misshaped the way it is.

My final yap was just a prestatement of something the presenter was about to say, one of those stunningly obvious things I couldn't believe I hadn't noticed before. The presenter was making the point that the culture of death operates by dividing the human soul and the human body, pitting them against each other. I interrupted with, "Separating the soul from the body is 'dying.'"

It's not a culture of death merely per effectum, as a result of the acts of intentional killing the culture countenances or celebrates. The Manichean spirit that animates the culture is essentially a spirit of death and disintegration, separating the soul from the body, disposing of the former and despising the latter.

Labels: RCIA

Link | 0 comments | Tweet

---