To the Irish: may America help restore your faith!

In recent years, it has been quite amazing to watch as the Catholic Faith has been attacked and reviled by the secular media and world. Perhaps there is no more prolific place for this attack than in Ireland, once the Bastion of all things Catholic - and arguably the one-time cradle of Western Civilization as Irish Monks stored the patrimony of western culture in their quills and parchments. One might look to the classic book by Thomas Cahill, "How the Irish saved civilization" as proof to this claim. Michael Voris, who heads up RealCatholicTV.com posted this report from Ireland today:

It seems that, nowadays, there is a profound move away from the Catholic Faith in Ireland, though there are those who fight for the Kingdom of Christ found within the joy of Catholic teaching. One might look to the newspaper, The Irish Catholic, which continues to fight for the Kingdom of Christ and to help the Irish restore and strengthen their faith.

It is important that we, here at Notre Dame, understand there are two types of faith that every one of us holds, as Catholics. There are both types of what the Catechism of the Catholic Church calls the "fides quae" and the "fides qua." That is, the faith by which we believe, and the faith THAT is believed. To put it into philosophical terms, it is the subjective faith that each of us has, and the objective faith that Jesus taught the apostles and which he enjoined to them to:

"go therefore and make disciples of all nations. Baptize them in the name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Spirit. Teach them to carry out everything I have commanded you (Mt 28:19-20)."

This "everything I have commanded you" is the teaching of the Catholic Faith. To be truly Catholic is to have our personal, our subjective, our "fides quae" integrate with the teaching of the Holy Catholic Church. Certainly, all of us find ourselves struggling with sin - from the Pope down to each of us in the pews. Nevertheless, we have been baptized and called to holiness by Jesus Christ, Our Lord, in his Love and Mercy. He has given us the means to become saints, but we must learn that Way! We must come to understand what it means to belong to the Kingdom of Christ, and we must come to know what it means to live that faith out in our lives.

Let no one of us cease to "stir into flame the Gift of God bestowed (2 Tim 1:6)" within us! If the Catholic Church in Ireland is to be restored, then we Americans - having just celebrated our Independence to (in part) freely worship God - must raise a generation that will be witnesses to the Holy Catholic Faith and we must be the building block for that generation. May we and our next American generation be those "witnesses in Jerusalem, throughout Judea and Samaria... even to the ends of the earth (Acts 1:8)" so that Ireland, and all the world be restored to Christ!