Yes, I have read the McCarrick report, especially the footnotes, and skimming over those places in the main text that were obviously repeating previous information. It is 461 PDF pages long, prepared over at least 2 years by people working at the Vatican, with the aim to determine who knew what about Cardinal McCarrick and when.

I do recommend that you read it, because as they say, those who do not learn the lessons from history and doomed to repeat it.
​
http://www.vatican.va/resources/resources_rapporto-card-mccarrick_20201110_en.pdf

There are sections of the report that have lodged in my memory for various reasons, and deserve comment. I will try to go through those sections in chronological order. Many of these things have already been mentioned in online analyses.

Lest we be tempted to judge anyone mentioned in the report too harshly, we must recall that they had to view everything that came to them with the presumption of McCarrick being innocent. We read this report with the hindsight of knowing that he was guilty, beyond reasonable doubt, of exploiting power over minors, vulnerable adults, and maybe more besides, and that these activities were pre-meditated.

And it is difficult to keep this in mind.

As you would expect, I am reading the McCarrick Report through my own lens, which includes observed behaviour of at least one convicted priest, and the dodgy behaviour of many others.

A previous, particularly strict, parish priest had a policy of ignoring any information he was given unless it was attributable to a real person. Anything anonymous went straight into the bin.
In the light of the McCarrick report, such a policy must be completely re-thought.

The agonies Mother 1 went through, knowing that she had to alert the church authorities, yet being legitimately fearful of reprisals towards herself and her family, are real. Taking the only option she had, she sent her concerns in an anonymous manner.

The 1992 and 1993 letters which appear in the report in all capitals, are as we know now, telling the truth. Thankfully someone didn’t throw these ones away, but others were thrown away. But no investigation into the merits of these accusations was done. The excuse was the anonymity of the writer.

None of them should ever have been thrown away, but kept by an independent body, until fully investigated. Not that such investigations are easy, because no one wants to become the whistleblower or scapegoat or to be retaliated against for speaking up.  

In the report, persons in authority took the stance that if allegations were credible, then the persons alleging should provide details. No one put themselves in the shoes of a possible seminarian or ex-seminarian or ‘nephew’ and considered that providing details would be the same as agreeing to martyrdom.

I recall a blog I read a few years back where an ex-seminarian shared his story. He had been out of public view for several years, yet he was still tracked down, and subjected to the most vile reprisals for having spoken out, both by former friends and colleagues as well as the general public, so much so that he couldn’t leave the house.

The court of public opinion normally sides with the very clever, very charming, perpetrators, who have only ever shown their best side to the vast majority of people.  

I put it to you, that when it comes to the abuse of power, expecting a whistleblower to expose himself or herself to that kind of public martyrdom is completely unreasonable. Therefore all allegations, especially the anonymous ones, must be investigated.

Yes, there may be some unfounded accusations made for malicious purposes, but in the main, if someone has gone through the kind of soul searching that Mother 1 did, and that the writers of the 1992 and 1993 letters did, and have risked quite a lot to even put those thoughts in writing, then it is far better to take them seriously than to ignore them.

Yet, I really feel for Mother 1, because when you have a known problem at curial and therefore bishop level in your own diocese, where do you go, where should you go, to report it and ask for it to be fixed?

Our sacramental programme for children had major theological errors in it (it still does). Who do you write to? How are us people in the pews supposed to know which Vatican dicastery is the correct one to contact? I recall sending a full dossier to a retired cardinal, who sent it back. Not his bailiwick. And that is the same general response if you try and ask another bishop or higher, for assistance in fixing something in another bishop’s diocese.

The more I think about this problem, the more I want to see an independent body set up, one that does not contain any hierarchy, one that is only answerable to the Pope, but one which has real investigative expertise, and one that has sufficient authority to take real action, and to persevere until the issues are truly resolved. It may need to be a new order of religious, who not only work through the problems entrusted to them, but also pray through them too. Due to the long-term nature of many situations, I lean in favour of a new religious order.

Since as we read in the McCarrick report, part of the problem was how frequently the position of Apostolic Nuncio to the United States of America was replaced with a new person.
The lack of full handover from predecessor to new incumbent was also a significant factor. Not only with the Nuncio, but also with the bishops and archbishops. If you have known situations that may or may not explode during the reign of the new incumbent, then the new incumbent should be warned.

But the standard procedure with the clergy seems to be dropping one’s fellow clergy member in it. I see it all the time. Cleric A agrees to fill in at a Mass for Cleric B, in Cleric B’s parish. But does Cleric B inform Cleric A that the particular Mass he is helping out at also has associated commitments for the sacrament of reconciliation, or for benediction etc, or how to find the list for the roster of Mass offerings, or how to work the complicated sound system? No.

95%, if not more, clergy drop their brother priests in it without any handover of relevant information.

If the habit forms at priest level, a habit like that it isn’t going to be undone at bishop, archbishop or nuncio level. This standard operating procedure just has to change. First of all it isn’t a loving thing to do. Secondly, it does permit sub-optimal transfers of authority to take place.

As we have seen in the McCarrisk report, it is very easy for the hierarchy to get compromised. They, like the rest of us, are vulnerable to flattery, and vulnerable to manipulation through favours, gifts, and inside information. Vigano is getting a bad rap in the report, because at times he was looking into McCarrick’s errors, and at times he was ignoring and not following up on them. As Nuncio, he was a sitting duck, because McCarrick went out of his way to be charming, take him out to dinner, and provide him with useful contacts, inside information and reports. None of us are immune. But if you are outside the hierarchy, you have more chance of not being compromised.

However, it is what is lacking in the McCarrick report that really fills me with dismay. We see that the only things that motivated the hierarchy to action were loss of reputation, and public scandal. Please, God, may that change, and be forever changed. At no point is there any reference to concern or care for those who had been abused or mistreated. To me, this is the greatest problem of all, because it shows that a shepherd’s primary concern is for the welfare of other shepherds, and that there is no concern for the sheep at all.

If there had been concern for the sheep, then proper investigations would have happened when the first anonymous allegations arrived, because the thought that the sheep were being preyed on, that any sheep was being preyed on, should have been motivation enough for action.

Up until this point, the release of the McCarrick report, most of us lived under the illusion that it was a duty of the bishop to protect and safeguard the members of his diocese from predators of all kinds.

I’d like for a moment to talk about glamour and holiness. Secular glamour is easy for us to pick up on. I remember being at an event when Bob Hawke and Blanche D’Alpuget walked in. The physical impact of their presence dimmed the impact of everyone else at the event. All of us have encountered people like this from time to time. Holiness is similar, but different. True holiness makes a similar impact, however it doesn’t draw us to the person, but it draws us to God.

When glamour is seen in a member of the clergy, it is easy for us to mistake it for holiness. Any of you who have met Cardinal Wuerl would acknowledge that he makes an impact that makes you pay immediate attention. How much of that is glamour, and how much is holiness, I don’t know; all I know is that I couldn’t put a finger on why I was unsettled by it. But it does make those in the inner circle look like the ‘haves’ and everyone else feel like the ‘have nots’. I suspect that McCarrick was similar. The thing is, that when someone is part showman, that they can pull a magician’s trick and redirect your attention elsewhere while they do deeds of darkness. It is only the extremely likeable people who get away with heinous crimes. Whereas if that attraction isn’t present, we easily go after and investigate the people we don’t like.

There’s yet another reason why an independent investigative body is necessary. It goes like this. The average diocesan curia develops a sense of elitism. Maybe that’s the wrong word, but the net effect is, that of you don’t approach them according to their unwritten protocols, then whatever you try to communicate with them gets discarded. Maybe an analogy would help. At the time that I was attempting to deal with a diocesan curia on what I considered important stuff, I was also playing an online game, and the parallels were striking. In the game there was a regular level of play, but then there were other upper echelons as well, where deals were done in alliances with regard to ownership of territory. On the face of it, if a territory was vacant, it should be up for grabs to all comers. But in this upper echelon, certain areas of territory ‘traditionally’ belonged to certain tribes from certain alliances. If you had been part of the upper echelons for a while, you knew these unwritten rules. Those who didn’t know or comply with these unwritten, non-publicly declared rules, were jumped on from a great height. The curia was working in a similar way, if you didn’t abide by the unwritten rules, there was no comeback. Pew dwellers like me, and like most of the people who may need to pass crucial information up the food chain from time to time, don’t know these rules. However, an independent body shouldn’t be nearly so precious, and should act on any piece of information, no matter how crudely or how unsophisticatedly it was presented.
 
The McCarrick report does show that we do everyone a disservice if we break existing protocols. At the beginning the only red flag showing for McCarrick’s candidacy for the episcopate was ambition. That flag should have been enough to sideline him. When you read through Church history, and through the lives of the Saints, it was those who did not want to become bishops who were the best bishops. Anyone who sets a true store on the value of his soul would shudder and dread being given the responsibility for the welfare of so many souls, because he knows God will call him to account for the eternal destination of all of them. I also recall the story of a man who called at the door of a monastery and said that he wanted to be a priest. He was sent away forthwith. Some time later, the same man returned with a degree of fear and trembling and said, I believe God wants me to be a priest. This time he was admitted.

I also want to ask how McCarrick could possibly have been considered a candidate for the episcopacy when he didn’t have any time as parish priest in a parish. Yes, you need the further advanced degrees, but observed success in pastoring a parish is another normal requirement, under the biblical tradition of being promoted to higher things after having been successful and faithful at smaller things.

The protocols for investigation prior to elevation to an archdiocese that carries a Cardinal's hat should not have been waived. They were there for this precise reason.

The waiving the protocols of the canonical punishments for ordaining without due permissions, should never have been done either.

I am also struck at how astute McCarrick was from the get-go. The wisdom that made him alert to participation in projects that would make him noticed by the higher-ups. It would be good to have answered where the funds for the finishing school in Switzerland were obtained, by gift, by own funds, by scholarship or award, and who the benefactors were and what the criteria for selection were. I am only making an hypothesis here, but McCarrick could have had a mentor during these years, presumably a mentor well aware of McCarrick’s weaknesses, perhaps more than one mentor.

Given this fixation on ‘uncle’ and ‘nephew’, a further hypothesis is that McCarrick had some predators in his formative years, and with whom touchy-feely activities were just ‘normal’.

Fundraising, administrative paperwork and the odd bit of head-kicking (a.k.a. having disciplinary conversations), are things that the majority of clergy shy away from. Someone who likes doing those unpleasant tasks will win favour, even if they don’t win trust.

The few references to lack of candor in the responses that were part of the investigation before being made an auxiliary bishop do take on a whole new light in hindsight. Again I come up against this reluctance to speak the whole truth, lest there be some kind of retribution. Anyone with a modicum of intelligence suspects that these confidential reports may one day find themselves in the hands of the person about whom they were written. Lack of candor means an ability to deftly steer conversation away from its intended trajectory, and an ability to perhaps disclose part of the truth, but not the full truth that should have been disclosed.

We can only hope that in the light of the McCarrick report that those on the selection teams will ask further questions of any respondent who has the slightest reservation about a candidate, and seek details of the incident/s which led the respondent to make those judgements.

We can only hope that the protocols of no sleepovers, and of only sending out seminarians in pairs will continue. But to this should also be added a ban on alcohol. Far too many stories in decades past of seminary antics have reached me, and even within the last 12 months rumours of lateness at important functions due to celebrations including alcohol have reached me. As Mother 1 noted, alcohol decreases inhibitions, and exposes drinkers to the risk of some kind of predator taking advantage.

Risk taking behaviour comes in many forms, and all of us need to be aware of the need to speak out when we notice it. Take for example a parish priest who seeks out the company of vulnerable women; older single women of marriageable age, and single mothers. Spending time close to the thrill of temptation is always a risky strategy, and it never ends well. Either the temptation gets given in to, or hearts get too involved and broken, or both.

It looks like McCarrick also lived a high risk, ‘close to the wind’ life. It was, after all, the 'work hard, play hard' era. He sought opportunities to be close to vulnerable young men, and was known to be touchy-feely (other people would call it groping). But if you have a predilection for young adult male company, getting a feel for whether there is a flight, fight, freeze or welcome response, is a selection process. He made sure that he only went ‘so far’ and ‘no further’, other than the times he forgot and expunged from memory, so that he could in good conscience make the Clinton-Lewinski defence, ‘I never had sexual relations with that woman’ – using a definition that only included completion of the act, and not the many preludes prior to the act.

What we must realize is that as soon as you overstep someone’s sexual boundaries without permission, that you cause trauma. There will be many degrees within the levels of overstepping those boundaries, but they will all cause levels of trauma, of discomfort, of trust being violated. Being repeatedly molested in pre-adult years damages a person, and the more sensitive and vulnerable they are, the worse the trauma will be, even if there was no deposit of bodily fluids.

Yet any of us who have watched enough detective shows on TV will know, over time a predator will seek higher risks because the lower risks don’t satisfy any more. They call it ‘escalation’. We can see this progression up until the time the sleepover ban came in and the episcopal request to stop whatever he was up to, which all ceased as the possibilities for episcopal advancement increased.

However, the little hidden apartment speaks to me of pre-mediation, as does the cancelling of beach house visits if there were insufficient guests to provide bed-sharing.

What gets to me is that such high risk behaviour normally doesn’t cease as much as it morphs. Perhaps it morphed into more consensual arrangements, but I worry that it may have morphed into high risk activities conducted only when he was in third world countries. This is only an hypothesis, but if it is hard to bring forward an allegation in English, how much harder would it be to bring forward an allegation in a third world language?

Another predatory behaviour is the going on the offensive, and the re-framing of the narrative. I’ve seen this in action; the plea to feel sorry for the predator and to plea to believe in his innocence, and the belittling of those who have made allegations. It begs others to see the predator as a victim, and one that needs protecting, thus inviting others to unwittingly join in the cover up. To call something an indiscretion or lapse of judgement when it was premeditated and had traumatic consequences for others, is part of the iniquity of sin, where we keep telling ourselves that what we did was excusable, and not so bad after all.

As always, the litmus test of holiness is obedience. To be asked by the reigning pontiff to retire to a life of prayer and penance for the good of the church is serious stuff. True obedience doesn’t require a formal order, the request made, and made for such a particular purpose, should have been sufficient. Instead what do we hear? Echoes of the serpent, ‘Did God really say?’, ‘Did the pope really mean me to curtail everything?’ Not only that, flaunting disobedience at every opportunity, even at World Youth Day, knowing that no one likes to create a public scene of conflict. This flaunting of the papal request alone should have been enough for further investigations of the sexual misconduct allegations to be made. ‘I will not obey’ is the mantra of the evil one.

I do maintain a concern that many of these unauthorized international trips had more than their outward agenda. Yes, there was the perceived personal need to remain seen, and active, and relevant, by gathering inside information and sharing it. But what if there was some spy craft afoot as well? Hypothesis only, at this stage. And/or the freedom to engage in high risk behaviour? (And we know this didn’t cease, because even in his 80s living in seminary quarters he was still perceived as touchy feely (ie grope-y).

“The cardinal is always agitated, nervous; he does not feel himself if he does not travel and if he does not have people around him”. This report bothers me. A moving target is always harder to hit than a stationary one. It is this report that makes me hypothesize that there was more to these international trips than we realise.

Are there other McCarrick’s out there? Probably.

Here’s why. I vividly recall in the mid 80’s, when some religious orders were already being called to account for sexual abuse-tour, visiting the mother house of an order, and being so proud of these men because there hadn’t been any scandal attached to them. Now several are serving custodial sentences. So I put it to you that the easy cases get found first, and that the more difficult cases get found second, and that the most heinous cases only get found out last.

Here’s another why. No one is yet investigating the other clergy problems, gambling, inappropriate relationships with women, alcohol, homosexuality, abuse of power. Very few people have the stomach to start draining the swamp, because they are legitimately afraid of what they will uncover. Very few don’t have their own private secrets.

Here’s a third why. There are many rumours of these high risk behaviours being organized and of intricate networks of rings of corruption. I can point to two elusive situations, one where I felt my siblings and I being watched and evaluated by an unknown third party; the other when a visiting international priest got a bit touchy-feely (my unproven gut feel on this, in hindsight, is that such actions wouldn’t have happened unless a previous predator had bragged/shared in a network). None of these kinds of rings and networks have been exposed yet. May God grant that they will be, that those in authority will be given the guts to deal with it, and that these levels of corruption in the Church be expunged forever.

Will there be further McCarrick’s? Probably. But they will be even cleverer at hiding their high risk behaviours, and even more astute at dealing with dysfunctional hierarchies.

​May God have mercy on us, and upon His Church, even if it needs to be a severe mercy. Amen.

Obviously I have a particular organization, and a particular online event, in mind as I write. But these thoughts are applicable across the board, in parishes, dioceses, religious organisations etc.

So I dare you to come and do a pulse check on your church culture.

Some of you may have participated in the Pilgrimage to Pentecost that happened this year in the 6 weeks leading up to Pentecost 2020. Each week 2 tranches of talks were released, one on Sunday and one on Wednesday. You had to sign into a website portal to gain access to these talks, most of which were in the 20-30 minute range, from a wide range of international speakers, and a diversity of vocations. Each talk had a page with a brief description of the talk and the speaker, the link, and a place to leave comments. Participants left a healthy number of comments, 30 comments seemed to be about average for each talk, and the subset of commentators varied significantly from talk to talk (it wasn’t just the same people leaving the same comments). This is a healthy level of engagement.

Compare this to the final talk of a conference, shared on a religious organisation’s Facebook page, bearing in mind that the organisation would have to have upwards of 400 members. Admittedly the holding image for the video recording was uninspiring, but zero comments, 2 likes and 1 share? That is definitely Not a healthy level of engagement!

On the week after the conference the number of likes on YouTube for the talks were in single digits, and now three weeks later they are in the teens, and only one or two comments. Again, this is a very low level of engagement.

If you have proportionately low levels of engagement on social media for your major events, that means there is something amiss with your organisation’s culture.

If something is good, the natural response is to share it, and to share it with as many people as possible.
So either the event didn’t touch a chord with your people,
or your people are ignorant about social media,
or your people are not alert to the easy ways of promoting a message,
or a combination of all of them.

Organisations that value the means of social communication will automatically include a final note which says, ‘If you found this useful or valuable to you, please like and share this ….(insert type of media)… or leave a comment or subscribe so that you don’t miss out on future content”.

Because people do look at the number of views, reviews, likes and comments before committing themselves to watching something on YouTube, or downloading a game or app, or buying a book.

The next thing to remember is that when you post online content, be it website, Facebook, or anywhere else, the whole world is watching. This means that you need to rethink any member only information, and how things look to an outsider.

For example, doing a lovely 30 countdown to a major event as an encouragement for members to pray and fast for the event is great. But to then have radio silence as the event is happening is not great at all. If you want to make it even worse, barely refer to the event after it concludes. Those outsiders who have been watching your countdown on social media will now be completely baffled as to what all the fuss was about, and as a result will consider unfriending or unfollowing your organisation.

At a minimum you should be inviting online discussion after each talk of your event, and/or posting a brief video clip from each session as a discussion starter.

Do you realise that at secular events and at many religious events, that people choose to live tweet during the event? They do, it is a really good thing to do, and it should be encouraged. Not only because they capture the most important points of a talk/presentation, but because they also provide access for those unable to attend, and because it documents your event. These days it is true, if it didn’t make it to social media, then it didn’t happen (even if it did!).

If you don’t have ‘roving reporters’ sharing the best of your event, then you need to find the people you already have who are capable, training them up, and activating them. It will be harder if the event is online, but just as necessary. Screen shots are easy to produce and package for social media, if you know how. Encourage them to always add text, because an photo/image on its own says ‘we were having a great time, and you missed it’ whereas adding text says ‘we were having a great time, this is why, and I don’t want you to miss out on this part that touched my heart’.

There are two schools of thought when it comes to online events where a registration fee is paid.
The first school says only those who paid should have access. In that case, you need to set up some kind of simple login procedure to give access. Pilgrimage to Pentecost did it with a website link that required email address for access.
The second school of thought sees the registration fees as seed for harvest; the fees enable the event to happen (technical equipment, labour, administration, marketing, talent), but once the event is live and recorded, the expectation is that it gets shared to as many people as possible, so that the maximum number of people benefit.

If it is an event that has the capacity to bring someone closer to Jesus, surely you want to maximize those who experience it (in person and/or via recording).

There are hybrid models, where only the plenary sessions of an event get shared publicly, and the non-plenary sessions get recorded but not put online, and later the recordings get packaged for sale.

Or where a temporary YouTube channel is set up for an online event, permitting people to get to all the sessions in their own time, and re-watch them if desired. For this one, by its very nature, if it is on YouTube and not login protected, then anyone can share it. If the content is good, then such sharing should be encouraged.

Isn’t it better if 650 people or 830 people or 2000 people see the fruits of the hard work and many prayers rather than only the 400 who registered?

Some may object, ‘Why bother paying a registration fee if I can get it for free?’, but most will be happy to pay a registration fee (if it is reasonable and not exorbitant) if it is presented as seed money to get the event possible and happening, and even happier to pay that seed money if there are plans to share the good content of the event as widely as possible, and to enable those who could never afford it to participate.

Here's the pulse check:
*Do you have healthy levels of online engagement for your organisation’s size?
*Do you have reminders somewhere in the content, to like and share if they found it valuable?
*Do you encourage people to leave comments on your online content?
*Do you encourage your people to engage with your online content?
*Do you have enough members online?
*Do you encourage or discourage social media use in your organisation? (not talking about it at all is passive discouragement, talking about social media negatively is active discouragement)
*Are you on social media yourself? (lead by good example)
*Does your online content remember that it isn’t a members only forum?
*Do you promote online discussion after special events?
*Do you have any ‘roving reporters’ or ‘social media natives’?
*If so, have you activated them and given them a vision for this kind of ministry?
*Do you include text with your photos, or do you leave people to guess why you posted them?
*Do you have a plan and a vision for maximizing the number of people who can access your events, your content and your message?

Now is the time to start doing something about it, if you weren't able to answer Yes (honestly, and with evidence to back it up) to just about all of them. A great number of the people you want to reach with the Gospel message are online, but you have to be intentional in your online activities in order to reach them. 

A Christian is someone who has accepted Jesus as Lord and Saviour. Most of us find the Saviour part easy, and it is the Lord part we struggle with.

​This relatively short talk (34 mins) is one of the best I have ever heard on that topic:

Joe Chircop is one of the founders of the Servants of Jesus Community in Western Sydney, it is an ecumenical community, and this talk was presented in the middle of the lockdown that Sydney experienced from mid March - late May. 2020. His heritage is Maltese.
 
The first 3 mins are rather slow, as they give background to why he is speaking on the Discipleship topic. The last few minutes contain a prayer which extends to all online viewers.
 
Here is an excerpt:
 
Imagine if a young man proposed to a young woman - re marriage - and instead of giving her... and the young woman instead of giving herself she says to the man, you can have my jewellery, you can have my house, you can have my car, you can have my property, you can have my wealth: what would we think of that? We would think that's a bit strange. But actually Jesus is asking us the same thing, but we often say, well I'll give You my tithe, I'll give You my house, my talent or whatever, but refuse to give Him our selves.

.......................................................

I am blogging about this talk because I want to be able to find it again, and I am hoping that you might want to find it again too. All too frequently the things we share on social media get submerged and rarely found again.

I see this talk as a great resource for anyone assisting those who have recently accepted Jesus as their Saviour, and for those assisting others on their way to the fullness of the Christian life. As we all know, it is possible to get stuck along the way, and this video will go a long way to helping people get unstuck. It is short enough to be played at a Youth Group or Connect Group as a discussion starter.

Why? Because it often isn't easy to have a conversation about the truths this video contains, and I have rarely heard them expressed so clearly and in an easily understandable way.

But there's another reason I am blogging about this talk, and that is our responsibility to share with others the good things we have found. All too often we come across a great book, podcast episode, twitter thread, newspaper article or video link, and we do nothing to pass that good stuff on to others. 

It doesn't take much effort to write a review of a book and post it online at Amazon, Goodreads or elsewhere. It doesn't take much effort to like and share a podcast episode on Facebook. It doesn't take almost any effort at all to like and retweet a twitter thread. It is normally only a matter of using a search engine to find an online version of the newspaper article and to then share it on social media, or to take a photograph of the article and share that instead. It is rather easy to share YouTube videos on social media, and even easier to click the like button or to add a positive comment.

And yet so few people think to do so.

Your challenge today, should you choose to accept it,
​is to determine which content had the most positive impact upon you and your life during the past 7 days, and to then share it with others in at least 2 different ways, and with at least one of those ways being through social media.   

Following the blog post of 30 Aug 2020, 
​august-discoveries.html
it seemed like a very good idea to produce a beginners guide to Reddit, to assist anyone who felt called to take up Bishop Barron's challenge. 

What's Reddit?
Reddit is basically a large group of forums in which registered users can talk about almost anything you can imagine, from news, to pop culture, to technology, to comics, to film, to literature, to the weirdest things in the world, including 'Not Safe For Work' stuff.  Reddit is a massive and diverse community. And just like a vibrant city, there are the nice parts of town and there are those notorious streets where you shouldn’t park your car. Redditors are looking to learn, read, and debate all the important issues in their life.

What's a subreddit?
Those specialized forums are called "subreddits," which are referred to as r/"topic" (example: r/gadgets). There are more than 138,000 active subreddits. You can read and participate in all of them freely except private subreddits, which require an admission process. You can also subscribe to the subreddits, so their most popular posts appear on your personalized Reddit front page.

It can sometimes save time just to type in the subreddit you are primarily interested in at the search bar at the top.

Why join in?
Because it is a place where many young people (aged 13-30) go to ask questions, most of them young men, questions that they are not getting answered elsewhere or that they are not comfortable asking in person. If people with faith, experience and knowledge don't answer them there, other people certainly will (directing them to sites like Recovering From Religion).

The subreddit r/Catholicism gets a vast array of questions ranging from the precise liturgical, to pre RCIA and RCIA questions, as well as lots of God-seeking questions, confession related questions (lots of people with scruples), how to deal with demonic influence questions, and lots of struggling with male chastity questions. This last one is a real need, one which could really do with input from people experienced in helping young men via the training received in seminary or in religious formation, and from those with life experience in guiding other young men through to victory in these areas.

At times it can be hard to judge whether a question is honest, or someone larking around. For these questions it is better to assume they are honest ones, lest a real one slip through the cracks.

r/Catholic is a less safe place
r/exCatholic has a lot of vitriol, but the occasional honest question
r/agnostic is a bit on the wild side, but it is far less toxic than r/atheist
r/Christianity gets its fair share of 'how can I know God is real?' questions like R/Catholicism does, and a few other questions where a gentle Catholic perspective would help
r/CatholicPhilosophy is also available
r/RCIA exists, and is very small compared with other subreddits

But if no one shines a light in these dark corners, how are they going to find it?

With some questions, all you can do is pray, and that may be enough.

Sometimes all that is necessary is to upvote someone else's good answer.

There are some bishops (few), priests and seminarians who are active on Reddit. Should you find someone that has a track record of talking sense, by clicking on their Reddit handle you can choose to follow them and therefore have their posts etc show up in your personalised feed. Many of them need the support and encouragement of upvotes particularly when they are trying to present unpalatable truths in the most palatable way possible.

Don't be surprised to see people who profess to be Catholic holding opinions at total variance to the teachings in the Catechism. Be gentle, everyone is on the path to the fullness of faith and will have many mini conversions along the way. The most we can do is pray, and offer the best counter arguments possible, without getting personal, vindictive or emotional.

This is a specialised ministry/apostolate that only some people are equipped for. Not everyone has the requisite combination of active faith, solid prayer life, wide knowledge, diligent ongoing study and sufficient life experience. Should you come across such a person, please invite them to take up this ministry/apostolate.

Because it is really is a ministry, you need to pray for the help and guidance of the Holy Spirit each and every time you open up Reddit. The Holy Spirit knows the answers that the questioners need most, and the best way of lovingly expressing those answers.

You may never know the impact the answers inspired by the Holy Spirit, pulled together from the raw material of your experience, studies and interests, will have. It isn't about chasing votes, it is about helping souls. Should you go to a lot of trouble to pull together a comprehensive answer, and it gets no public response, that's OK. You never know when that answer might be pulled up by a search engine in answer to a query, and have more impact than you could have ever dreamed possible. But if it only gets read by the questioner, that's OK, because we know Jesus is willing to go in search of a single stray whatever the cost.

How do I submit to Reddit, comment and vote?
Reddit is open to anyone to navigate and read freely. This means that you can take your time getting to know how the subreddits function before signing up.

You can also register and become more involved.

Registered users can make submissions to any of the public subreddits. This is like posting information on other social media sites. They can also join the subreddits, an action that will affect how Reddit's front page will look for you (more on this later).

Registered users can also comment on other people's submissions by just clicking on the open comment field right under the submission. In the same way, you can reply to people's comments by clicking reply.

And finally, registered users can upvote or downvote any of the submissions, which is the way that Reddit makes submissions surface to the front page. An upvote is not the same as a like, it is a vote for a worthy argument. In a similar way a downvote is not a don't-like, but sending a message that this is a poor, unworthy argument or not relevant to the discussion.

Posts on Reddit come in two categories; statements/something to share or questions.
The questions are usually far more interesting.

How does the front page work?
Reddit has a front page in which certain submissions are featured, thanks to different algorithms. This front page has different tabs.

If you are not registered, the default tab is "Hot," which is basically a view of the submissions with the highest scores over a period of time. The score is determined by subtracting the downvotes from the upvotes.

If you are registered, then the default tab is called "Best." It features the most-voted posts from all the subreddits but it takes into account other things, like the submissions in which you have spent time before or the subreddits you have joined. This is a personalized view that will also eliminate things that you have already clicked through the next time you load the front page. This is done to ensure that the Best page remains fresh.

On a subreddit you can choose how the posts are sorted, eg hot, new, top, controversial or rising. My preference is for the fresh questions, so my default is new.

No self-promotion or spam is allowed. Just be mindful about what you do, try to be respectful of others, and you will be fine.

Do subreddits have extra rules?
Yes, beyond the logical etiquette, (no self-promotion or spam allowed) each subreddit has its own rules that you should read and abide by when posting or commenting. Some subreddits — like r/pics — may only accept image submissions and no external links, for example. Others will require you to be more descriptive in your posts, like r/science.

What's a "flair"?
Some subreddits will require you to apply a "flair" to your submission, which roughly identifies what it is about. Example: The subreddit r/gadgets has flairs like Phones, Desktop/Laptop, TV/Projectors, Music or Transportation, among others.

There are other tabs, like "Rising" — which features posts that are new and are getting upvotes quickly — and "Controversial" — which uses an algorithm to determine which posts are the subject of conflicting opinions by looking at the fluctuation of the upvotes and downvotes.

Common flairs are 'Question', 'Support', 'Rant', 'Advice', 'Experience Report'.

Others are related to the subbreddit, for example r/Catholicism has a rule that promotions are only permissible on Fridays, hence the flair 'Free Friday'.

Other Tips
Setting up an account requires an email address, and for you to provide a username and password. The username cannot be changed. Anonymity is highly valued on Reddit.

Read the rules for individual subreddits, not all subreddits want you to act exactly the same.

If you don't have time to comment, but want to do so later, you can save the post. Just click in the top right hand corner there is a white icon. Then later open up your profile, and one of the options is 'Saved'. You will find any saved posts there. It is a rather useful feature.

It can also be useful to click on someone's reddit handle, or hover over it. Sometimes there are descriptions. If you click on the handle/username you can see their most recent posts. Often there can be more than one post on a developing situation or struggle.

Start getting karma by commenting smart/funny/constructive things and eventually post your original content on relevant subreddits.

/s means sarcasm which may result in a bunch of downvotes if you interpret this incorrectly.

At first, you will have a limit on the number of comments you can make. This is to ensure that you aren't a spam-bot. Once you get some positive karma, you will no longer be limited.

Seriously take the time to really become a Redditor, so you can understand the platform, its features, and its users.

Find the Subreddits you are passionate about so that you can better understand the conversations happening. Become familiar with the intricacies from one Subreddit to another and participate with a sense of authority around the topics and discussions you already understand.

Take the time to really understand all the features Reddit has to offer, including settings options and the various sections of your profile.

Learn the Reddit language, so when you are engaging in each Subreddit, you sound like you belong. There are a lot of Reddit terms and phrases you definitely do not know but should if you want to have success on Reddit.
​
Is there any specific Reddit lingo?
Yes, there is. Aside from the usual internet acronyms like 'As Far As I Know' or 'In My Opinion', Reddit has a lot of specific acronyms and expressions. Here are some useful ones: 
AMA: Ask Me Anything. People — generally those who are famous or have done something of interest — use this acronym on a submission to have a dialogue with redditors. There's also a subreddit dedicated to AMAs in which everyone from Barack Obama to NASA scientists to Bill Gates (who often participates) answers questions from users. To get an idea, here's a top 10 of best AMAs ,or just go to the subreddit here.
ELI5: Explain Like I'm 5 (years old). If you have a question about a complex subject, use this to ask it. There's a subreddit for this, too.
EDIT and ETA: Edit and Edited To Add are expressions added to comments when people edit them. It seems to be etiquette to explain why you edited a post or comment.
TL;DR: Too Long; Didn't Read. This is used at the end of long text posts or comments to criticize an article or comment as being too long to read. It can also be used to provide a summary of the main point of the text in case people don't have time to read the entire thing. 
Alt - Alternative user account.
AMAA - Ask Me Almost Anything
At a [0-10] - "Being at a [0-10]" is a sliding scale of "highness" from marijuana, with 0 being sober and 10 being blown into space. Mostly used in subreddits like /r/trees. Example: "I wrote this at a solid [7]"
Cakeday - The day a user joined reddit. Like a birthday. It displays a small icon next to the username.
Crosspost - Indicates that the post was also posted on another subreddit where OP recognized it.
Ctrl-F - Indicates that the user was searching for this specific reference in a thread.
DAE - Does Anyone Else - An appeal to a common feeling/situation/dilemma. Also a subreddit
EDIT - Indicates someone has changed their comment after first posting it. Usually followed by additional text, responses to subsequent comments, or explanations of why they edited their comment and what they changed.
Flair - The images or text that appears next to usernames in certain subreddits. Usually customizable.
[FIXED] - A remix of an original post, often with the effort of making the post more relevant/close to the truth.
FTA - From The Article
FTFY - Fixed That For You - A small edit of a previous comment that changes the meaning in a (sometimes) fundamental and (almost always) humorous way.
IAMA - I Am A - Also a subreddit in which famous or uncommon people get interviewed by the reddit community. It featured guests like President Obama, Snoop Dogg, Neil deGrasse Tyson, Scientists of the Mars Curiosity Rover Mission and many more.
IMO - "In My Opinion".
IMHO - "In My Humble (Honest) Opinion".
IIRC - If I Recall Correctly.
ITT - "In This Thread".
Karma - The point system Reddit uses. If people upvote on of your posts you get link-karma, if they upvote one of your comments you get comment-karma. The opposite when they downvote. Self-posts (submissions in "text" mode) don't bring you karma. You can see a total of your karma on your overview page (when you click your username) and it is broken down in to comment and link karma if you use the RES extension. Karma is practically completely use- and worthless. The only practical use it has on reddit is removing a rate-timer for posts in subreddits in which you got a specific amount of karma (you can post faster), and for wiki pages if the mods set a subreddit-karma limit. There are several sites that provide karma statistics like karmawhores.net
MIC - More In Comments.
Mod - Moderator of a subreddit. They have the power to remove comments and posts, among other things.
NSFW – Not Safe For Work – Usually a warning of a link to a sexual image/video or gory content. People can also tag their posts to be nsfw by clicking "nsfw->yes" below the posted link.
NSFL – Not Safe For Life – Usually a warning of a link to extreme gore.
OP - Original Poster. The person who made the submission that is now being commented upon.
Orangered - The color of the envelope icon when a you have a unread reply/message. To have an orangered is to have unread messages waiting.
RTFA - Read the f…..ing article.
SJW - Social Justice Warrior. Almost always an insult. What it refers to exactly ranges from "crazy person who takes everything as a personal insult and uses the rhetoric of social justice to bully people" to "person whose politics are left of mine".
Sub - An individual subreddit.
TIL - Today, I learned...
TL;DR - Too Long; Didn't Read - After a wall of text a commenter may include a shorter description of what they wrote about, sometimes humourously. Also sometimes inserted by another commentator to explain an article or previous comment.
Whoooosh. - Indicates that a joke has gone over someone's head.
WIP - Work in progress.
X-post - Indicates something that has been posted in multiple subreddits.
 
References:
https://www.tomsguide.com/reference/what-is-reddit  viewed 5 Sep 2020
https://www.wikihow.com/Use-Reddit   viewed 5 Sep 2020
https://www.searchenginejournal.com/social-media/reddit-guide/#ok    viewed 5 Sep 2020
https://www.reddit.com/r/TheoryOfReddit/wiki/glossary   viewed 5/Sep 2020
 
Blog-post last updated 21 Sep 2020

​After wading through the first third of the Congregation of the Clergy’s Instruction on Parish Renewal, I came across Fr Michael White’s blog on the Parish of the Future, http://nativitypastor.tv/the-parish-of-the-future/ which includes discussion on this Instruction.

He inspired me to attempt my own report on the Instruction, which I had already half begun to think about. Why? Because I’m finding the document hard to decode without some examples to apply it to.

Here is a copy of the Instruction in English, 27 x A4 pages in length:
Don’t worry, it isn’t as quite as much reading as that; the last 8 pages are references for footnotes. 

We all come at these Vatican documents with different lenses, so I will disclose mine. I have lived in both city-suburban and regional parishes, but not yet in a cathedral parish. I have visited parish churches and cathedrals in many parts of Australia and in some overseas locations.
​
I was part of a covenant community at the time they were applying to be recognized as an Association of Christ’s Faithful. Because of this experience, I understand the tensions between an organization that gathers and serves beyond a parish’s boundaries and the parishes where the members of that organization regularly worship.

I also understand, first hand, how it is possible to be members of more than one parish simultaneously, eg weekday parish vs weekend parish; the parish you go to when you are rostered on vs the parish you go to when you are not rostered on; the parish you go to for most things vs the parish you go to for confession; and in these pandemic times and in times of chronic ill health, the parish you live in vs the parish/es you visit for live-streamed Masses.

This would also be the case for those who belong to one of the Eastern rites of the Church, but who also attend the Latin rite. Ditto for those who attend a Traditional Latin Mass regularly but also attend Novos Ordo Masses. Then there are those who attend Masses as part of a national chaplaincy service (eg Vietnamese, Korean, Filipino etc) as well as local parish Masses. Similarly there would be members of the Anglican Ordinariate who from time to time would attend a local parish Mass or non-Ordinariate Mass when on holidays.

The Instruction begins by referencing Pope Francis in Evangelii Gaudium 27, and this Instruction could be considered a response to that papal challenge.
“I dream of a “missionary option”, that is, a missionary impulse capable of transforming everything, so that the Church’s customs, ways of doing things, times and schedules, language and structures can be suitably channeled for the evangelization of today’s world rather than for her self-preservation. The renewal of structures demanded by pastoral conversion can only be understood in this light: as part of an effort to make them more mission-oriented, to make ordinary pastoral activity on every level more inclusive and open, to inspire in pastoral workers a constant desire to go forth and in this way to elicit a positive response from all those whom Jesus summons to friendship with Himself.”

The traditional view of parish, in living memory, is situated in a specific geographical location and ministers to the people who inhabit that location, and where you would expect most people to be baptized, married and buried from the parish in that location. In modern society this lifetime identification with a single location is now more the exception than the rule.

It also makes building sustainable ministries quite difficult. A pastor of an inner city parish expressed the difficulty to me something like this: As an inner city parish he had lots of couples who had moved in to be close to work in the CBD, but by the time he had got to know them, they had received an interstate or international transfer with work, or had moved out of their apartments to a location in the suburbs more conducive to bringing up their first child or welcoming their second. The average length of stay of these couples was 3 years. By the time you got to know them, found a fit for their ministry passions and talents, within 6 months they were gone. When the ‘bricks’ keep on moving, it is hard to build anything.

In this context, section 9 of the Instruction makes sense:
9. As a living community of believers, the Parish finds itself in a context whereby the territorial affiliation is increasingly less evident, where places of association are multiplied and where interpersonal relationships risk being dissolved into a virtual world without any commitment or responsibility towards one’s neighbour.

Not all parishes and pastors are equal, and people do vote with their feet if it is convenient to do so. While parish leadership may consider parish loyalty a virtue, in reality many parents choose to attend the parish that has the greatest chance of engaging their children (children’s ministry, youth group, better than average preacher, better than average music, convenient time, ample parking) and adults go where they feel they are receiving the most spiritual nourishment even if they have to travel 30-50 mins away to do so. The concept of staying within the parish boundaries to receive sacramental ministry is quite foreign to many, especially those who don’t live in rural and outback locations.

I do know of current experiments where non-parish faith communities have been given permission to have chaplains and to administer sacraments to their members. What I can’t remember is whether that non-parish faith community was linked to a television-and-parish-mission ministry or whether it was linked to an ecumenical covenant community’s Catholic fellowship. Not that it matters too much, because I can see the logic in bringing someone into sacramental participation among the same people who evangelized them rather than sending them to his/her local parish where they have no personal connection. It also makes some degree of sense that if the person to be initiated into sacramental life has taken on the sense of mission and is growing in the charisms given to that non-parish faith community, then receiving the sacraments within that community will strengthen and support that vocation. Obviously, a non-parish faith community would have to be of substantial size to receive this kind of permission, and would have to demonstrate processes of keeping in communion with the universal church.

But we also live in an age of online communities and movements. Think of Bishop Barron and Word On Fire and of Fr James Mallon and Divine Renovation. It could be argued that they lead far more than the diocesan and parish responsibilities entrusted to them. With their online content, and offline content, they have attracted many people from across the globe who look to them for spiritual nourishment and who have formed online communities of shared faith.

It seems to me that if you are feeding God’s sheep, online or otherwise, and those sheep engage with you in a substantial way, eg sign up for email newsletters, follow on social media, participate in on-going online discussions (eg Alpha, Bible Study, mentorship, online training course, then you have ipso facto pastoral care for them until such time as they have been successfully integrated into an in-real-life parish community. It further seems to me that this Instruction is acknowledging that this pre-evangelism, evangelism, catechesis process is taking place outside the traditional parish model, and also giving it the green light to be explored and developed further.

At minimum, if by sharing the Word of God with people online or offline, we are feeding them, then we should also be praying for them consistently and regularly, even if we don’t yet know what their names are, nor where they live. And this applies as much to lay people and religious, as it does to those ordained to be pastors.

Here’s what the Instruction actually says:

14. With the Parish no longer being the primary gathering and social centre, as in former days, it is thus necessary to find new forms of accompaniment and closeness. A task of this kind ought not to be seen as a burden, but rather as a challenge to be embraced with enthusiasm.
 
16. The Parish territory is no longer a geographical space only, but also the context in which people express their lives in terms of relationships, reciprocal service and ancient traditions. It is in this “existential territory” where the challenges facing the Church in the midst of the community are played out.

18. Ecclesial membership in our present age is less a question of birthplace, much less where someone grew up, as it is about being part of a community by adoption, where the faithful have a more extensive experience of the Word of God than they do of being a body made up of many members, with everyone working for the common good.

These are some other excerpts that caught my attention

24. In these times, marked as they are by indifferentism, individualism and the exclusion of others, the rediscovery of brotherhood is paramount and integral to evangelisation, which is closely linked to human relationships.

25. A Parish must be a place that brings people together and fosters long-term personal relationships, thereby giving people a sense of belonging and being wanted.

27. The Code of Canon Law emphasises that the Parish is not identified as a building or a series of structures, but rather as a specific community of the faithful, where the Parish Priest is the proper pastor.

29. The Parish is a community gathered together by the Holy Spirit to announce the Word of God and bring new children of God to birth in the baptismal font.

I think these excerpts give us permission to think about parishes as groups of sheep under a shepherd, and to loosen our focus on parish buildings and sharpen them on relationships; relationships between pastor and parishioners, and between parishioners who are on a discipleship journey through pre-evangelisation through to missionary discipleship.

What a very different place/community our parishes would be if the commitment to building long term faith-sharing relationships was normal and had some primacy in our structures of accepted/cherished values!

The Instruction has to speak in terms that are universally applicable. It is possible that they had the concept of a personal parish in mind. If you want to know what that looks like in practice, read this article about this parish in Pittsburgh USA:
https://www.ncregister.com/daily-news/pittsburghs-newest-personal-parish-shines-light-on-the-black-catholic-tradi

The team at Divine Renovation also did a 5 part video series discussing this document. It is worth watching/listening to.
Hopefully this link gets you to the playlist for the full 5 parts:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YpDOJiw6wP4&list=PLqZfwqi7RxBDzEYiTzvJ0DITKyuJbN7OV

The Instruction also goes into some detail about what is, and isn’t, possible according to Canon Law, and the various ecclesial structures other than the traditional parish which are considered legitimate. That section takes some ploughing through, but it is useful information for everyone to be familiar with. Many of these non-traditional structures are quite common in places considered to be mission territory, and I recognized some of them from my studies in early Australian Catholic history and from conversations with a missionary priest resident in South America.

If God is bringing about something new and more pastorally effective in this post-Covid era, then the recommendation about putting new wine into new wine-skins applies. If the familiar structures are no longer suitable for the mission, then we need to be open to different structures, and to be willing to explore them, as the Holy Spirit leads. This Instruction functions as high octane motivation power to get that exploration and innovation started.

May God bless, protect and empower those who are called to take the permissions given in this Instruction seriously, and who called to be pioneers of the new things God wishes to come forth in this new era.
​
Our Lady, Queen of the Apostles, pray for us.

During the month of August, a lot of good, thought provoking content came my way. It was my intention to complete a blog-post about one of them, but that’s still in process. So instead I will share the rest of the thought provoking content with you now.

If you haven’t read many of Pope Francis’ recent speeches and homilies, you have been missing out. I went searching through them for excerpts suitable for meditating on the Joyful and Glorious mysteries of the Rosary, and found some gold. You can find those edited excerpts on the Resources – Prayer 2 page, about half-way down.

Then there was the discovery of ‘The Letter’ produced as the fruit of the 2016 Synod from the archdiocese of Detroit. Please read it: https://www.unleashthegospel.org/the-letter/
Truly it is everything I ever hoped our Plenary Council would produce. Do you want a road map for the new evangelization? Well, this is about as close and as clear as you are going to get.
(#PlenaryCouncil)

Related to that is a small article by Fr Stephen Pullis of the same archdiocese on practical and doable pathways of evangelization for people in the pews. https://www.unleashthegospel.org/2020/08/three-key-ways-to-be-missionary-at-your-parish/

After that, recommended to me was Bishop Barron’s presentation to the 2019 USCCB’s Conference on Reaching Out to the Religiously Unaffiliated, available on YouTube. It is 1 hour 24 mins in length, but the beginning is a video presentation, then Bishop Barron speaks and following that the Q and A session is sufficiently interesting. https://youtu.be/bUmg-DLBa1E

The bit that interests me the most starts about 12.5 mins in,
and here is a basic transcription of it:
‘Young people, the people that we are interested in reaching, they have so many questions that have remained answered for them, I hear from many of them every single day in my internet work: What’s religion? It’s stupid, it’s irrational, it’s pre-scientific nonsense, it’s bronze age mythology, they use all the phrases of the new atheists. Of course, it breaks your heart. Yes, we have a beautiful tradition, but we have a very smart tradition, but we have not it seems to me communicated that effectively to our young people. And it leaves a lot of their questions unanswered, which is causing them enormous difficulty. You know, I use the language of (Pope) Francis again here, to my mind this is simply one of the key ways that we accompany young people. Anyone who accompanies young people know that they are filled with questions. I hear them every day in my work. I’ll give you a recent example, I think last June I mentioned this to you, Reddit is a very popular website, one of the most popular in the world. And it is a forum for the exchange of ideas. So think of like Hyde Park corner, or the Areopagus, now updated to the internet. So you can exchange views. It is a very popular website. There’s something on it called the Reddit A.M.A., which means Ask Me Anything, so it is like a quodlibetal question from the middle ages. It’s just, here I am, ask me anything. So I did one about a year ago, and I just did a second one a few months ago. My first one was the third most popular Reddit AMA of the previous year, this last one was number two. I was just after Beto O’Rourke and ahead of Bernie Sanders. Now I say that not to say, O aren’t I famous, because I’m sure 98% of the people on it had no idea of who I was, but you announce yourself, I did it this way, I am a Catholic bishop who loves dialoguing with atheists, agnostics and non-believers, well 15,000 questions later, that’s in about 2 hours, 15,000 questions came through. And it’s very interesting, to go on Reddit you need galoshes and rubber gloves, I mean it’s a pretty messy space, you have to get through a lot of silliness and obscenity and all that, but once you’re past that, some very clear patterns emerge, and I’ve seen it in my own work, but, Who is God? How do you know there’s a God? Can you possibly prove there’s a God? Doesn’t science disprove God? I mean, just thousands of questions along those lines. Secondly, to no one’s surprise, the problem of evil, how can there be a God is there’s suffering in the world? Third, typolitic of our time, How do you know your religion is right? Aren’t there a thousand different religions, how could you get up and say yours is right? Fourth issue, sexuality, especially homosexuality and trans-genderism. So I mean, 15,000 questions, and you can discern very clear patterns. Well, we’ve got a smart tradition, and I think providing good answers to honest questions is a major part of accompaniment. Something we brought up a lot at the Youth Synod last year was the Emmaus image. So here’s Jesus walking with the disciples, and doing all these wonderful things like walking with them, even as they walk in the wrong direction, listening to them, yes indeed, what are you talking about as you go on the way?, non-judgmental accompaniment, all those wonderful things and then at a key moment Jesus teaches and then their hearts caught on fire. Were not our hearts burning within us as He explained the scriptures to us on the way? So to my mind, that’s all just part of a process of accompaniment and presenting a smart version of Catholicism is key to it.’

I highly recommend that you watch the whole presentation.

Which leads to https://www.reddit.com/. If there are young people out there asking honest questions, the least we can do is go and have a look see. So I spent about a week lurking, and then bit the bullet and joined. After about a week in the trenches I can confirm that there are indeed many young people asking good questions, and not enough well-educated-in-the-Catholic-faith people around answering them. The sub-reddits r/Catholicism and r/Christianity are good places to start.
Consider yourself challenged to do likewise.

If you are intrigued enough to investigate Reddit, here is a guide for beginners.

This conundrum has often puzzled me. The general Gospel story is that Jesus and the apostles went by boat to a deserted spot on the shores of Lake Galilee, and a huge crowd travelling on foot got there before them.

It doesn’t make sense to me for two reasons,
firstly, going by foot has to be slower than going by boat
secondly, there’s this sense of surprise about Jesus seeing this big crowd, and surely a crowd that big would have been visible from the boat a long way off from the shore.

The Gospel for this coming Sunday, the 18th Sunday of Ordinary Time Year A, is one such account, this time from Matthew 14:13-21.

It is a more condensed account than some of the other accounts, and one thing struck me immediately. In this account of St Matthew, there is no preaching and teaching from Jesus. Something weird is going on.

As I plodded through the Greek to English trans-literation (thank you biblehub.com) I found a second weird thing, Matt 14:14 doesn’t actually say Jesus stepped ashore, it uses ‘exelthon’ a Greek verb that is usually translated as ‘to go out’ ‘to come out’ and in other New Testament places the same verb gets translated as ‘came out’, ‘came forth’, ‘went out’, ‘went forth’. Using ‘stepped ashore’ really isn’t a very good translation.

Later on in that same verse, it says that Jesus healed their sick. No one travelling with a sick person can go at speed. You have to go at their pace if they are limping or injured. You need more rest stops if they are in pain, and often more toilet stops and clean-up stops as well. Which also begs the question, why take your sick on such an arduous journey of many hours?

So it is time to have a look at what has been happening in this Gospel prior to Matt 14:13. We do know that the catalyst for this journey undertaken by Jesus and the Apostles was the news of St John the Baptist’s death.

After all the parables in Matt 13, Jesus had left the district and paid a visit to Nazareth, and in the first part of Matt 14 we have an account of the death of St John the Baptist. Therefore the lakeside towns had not seen Jesus for a little while.

What we do know is that the disciples of St John the Baptist got the news to Jesus, and by extension to those disciples of Jesus who had previously been disciples of John. Jesus and John were blood relatives, cousins, and several of the apostles would have looked upon John as a spiritual father. Due to these close connections, it is likely that this news got to Jesus before it got to the rest of the district, possibly by some of John’s disciples travelling in haste.

This put Jesus and those apostles into an official period of mourning, which is a week in length and known as shiva. During this time of shiva mourners are not expected to do much more than exist, but they do expect condolence visits from friends and relatives, and the visitors are expected to bring the food.

The news must have hit the apostolic company hard, and it seems like Jesus wasted no time in getting them off to a lonely spot where they could have some privacy to work through the initial waves of grief. They pack their travelling gear and they pack provisions and off they go. It seems reasonable that they park Peter’s boat and then head deep into the hills to sit shiva together.

Meanwhile, back in the lakeside towns of Galilee, the news of the death of St John the Baptist breaks. In their lifetime, a true prophet has been killed, one whom many of them had met, and all of them had heard of. It is shocking. In their bereft-ness, they want to try and make sense of this with Jesus. He’s not at home. Neither are the apostles, nor their travel gear. Peter’s boat isn’t moored in its usual place, but everyone knows what Peter’s boat looks like. It isn’t long before sailors and fishermen bring in the news of where Peter’s boat is now. The crowds aren’t stupid, they can put 2 and 2 together, and deduce that they are sitting shiva privately. But at some point shiva will end, and Jesus and the apostles will return to the boat, however there’s no guarantee that they are going to go back home.

But they will return to the boat, and the crowds can make educated guesses about when shiva will end. They could get themselves and their sick ones to that lonely place by then. And they need the reassurance that God is still in control. So travel plans are made, and off on foot they go. Plenty of them may have even camped out waiting for Jesus to reappear. Just like people get to places early to watch New Year’s Eve fireworks or Boxing Day sales. Some wish to offer condolence, some want their sick ones healed, some want reassurance.

Chances are that it took a little bit longer than expected for Jesus and the apostles to re-emerge. Likely too that the foot-travellers’ provisions were close to empty. We know that the apostles’ provisions were empty, because if they filled twelve baskets full of scraps, it stands to reason they were empty to begin with. It is another reason that the shiva concept makes sense. If they had just arrived, those baskets would have been full, not empty but for 5 loaves and 2 fish. The actual word used for these baskets is ‘kophinous’, the kind of baskets to carry kosher food that travellers used.

In this scenario, the timing makes sense, the size of the crowd makes sense, the coming forth of Jesus from seclusion makes sense, the absence of teaching and preaching makes sense, and the filling of the baskets makes sense.

This was a ministry time of presence to the people, listening to their fears, their grief and anxiety, and healing those sick ones who had made the difficult journey.

But there’s no food!

And food is definitely a part of shiva! Visitors are encouraged to bring food that is crowd pleasing and which can easily be served and shared, and to avoid food that requires work on the part of the mourners.

The 7 days of shiva might be closing for Jesus and the apostles, but it is likely that it is still within shiva for the crowd – assuming that Jesus got the news of St John the Baptist’s death at least half a day, and maybe up to 2 days before the crowd did.

God provides the food, through the miracle. Bread that is easy to serve and easy to share. What a thought! That through this miracle God the Father is sitting shiva together with His people over the death of St John the Baptist, and thereby consoling them in an extraordinary way. What a memorable wake for the prophet who heralded Jesus!

If you are in grief right now, let that truth sink in. Jesus knew how to mourn, and he fully entered into the process, it is OK to grieve, and He mourns with you, and He will provide for you.

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P.S. Remember. This is according to St Matthew’s account. The accounts in the other Gospels have different contexts and different purposes.

Why do You talk to them in parables?

This is a question the disciples put to Jesus in the 13th Chapter of St Matthew’s Gospel. Many of us still ask that question.

Part of the answer is that human beings were made to love puzzles. We find in ancient cultures deep appreciation for the riddle, and in biblical cultures appreciation for teaching through use of mashal or allegory. Consider the modern equivalent, the meme, which we all like trying to decode, even if we don’t always succeed at it.

A good parable is something that you chew over, and look at from different angles, with a group of friends or relatives, sharing insights and arguing over meaning and interpretation. They are, in essence, discussion starters.

But St Matthew’s Gospel provides us with a reasonable answer to why Jesus used parables, and why after a period of public ministry without parables He started using them almost exclusively.

The beginning of Chapter 13 says, ‘that same day, Jesus left the house and sat by the lakeside, but such large crowds gathered round Him that He got into a boat and sat there. The people all stood on the shore, and He told them many things in parables’.

So what happened earlier that day?

Chapter 12 has Jesus curing a blind and dumb demoniac and then He gets accused of being Beelzebul, and then the scribes and Pharisees ask for a sign (none of the previous healings and miracles are enough for them, they want to set the conditions for a sign they will accept, God has to dance to their tune first before they will consider dancing to His), and then family members demand words with Him, so it hasn’t exactly been a good day for Jesus. For all His efforts up to this point don’t seem to be bearing the fruits of repentance He has been looking for, otherwise He would not in Chapter 11 have called down reproaches upon the Galilean towns where most of His miracles had been worked.

In order for any of us to get closer to God in our lives, something has to change. If we do the same things, how can we expect different outcomes? Yet frequently our response is, ‘I don’t want to change’, ‘I don’t need to change’, ‘there’s nothing in my life that needs changing’, ‘I am quite content as I am thanks, quit trying to upset my equilibrium’, ‘the person sitting over there needs more change than I do’. And this seems to be exactly what Jesus was facing, crowds of people happy to see miracles happen, and happy to listen to good teaching, and happy to continue doing so, (Jesus had very high entertainment value), but very few allowing that teaching to transform the way they were living.

So we see Jesus in that post lunch / siesta time go and sit by the lakeside, letting prayer and natural beauty do their work in freeing Him from the frustrations of the morning. It is a time of pause. It is a time of re-set. It is time to try a different approach to the hearts of His listeners.

The easy to understand stuff, the sermon on the mount, the miracles and healings, haven’t born the expected levels of fruit. Something different is needed, something that engages hearts and minds more, something that requires some personal effort.

As Jesus sits on the lakeside, gradually the crowd gathers behind Him, and an expectancy grows. This time when Jesus preaches, it is different. This time He begins to use parables.

The first parable, the sower and the seed, is very instructive.

What is the purpose of sowing seed? To get a good harvest. And where is that good harvest?

It isn’t in those who aren’t paying attention (seed on the path).

It isn’t in those who get excited about what Jesus is saying, and then do nothing much about it (seed on rocky ground with little depth) or fall away very quickly.

It isn’t in those who make a start, and good progress, and then give up halfway through the process (seed among thorns).

It is in those who go through the whole process of transformation, in those who wrestle with the words of Jesus until they come to understanding, and then let that understanding change the way they live.

And how do you get to that sort of harvest? By using parables.

Because those who aren’t interested won’t bother.
 
Because those who want quick and easy answers will give up without much of a struggle.

Because those who will give it a go, and attempt to come to understanding, but who fail to reach full understanding because the cost of change is beyond them, will sooner or later give up.

Because those who patiently work at understanding, and who persevere at it, until the understanding fully comes and who then change their lives accordingly, they are the kind of disciples you really want. And using parables is an efficient way of finding them. These are the ones who make mature commitment to discipleship, and the process takes time, it isn’t quick.

Parables are how you find disciples from among the crowds.

There are at least two implications for us:

Firstly, that if the word of God is not challenging us nor changing us, then we haven’t understood it properly. Jesus really wants to see fruits of repentance in us. Why? Because change is the gateway to the kingdom of God and our greatest happiness. ‘Repent, for the kingdom of heaven is close at hand’ is what both Jesus and John the Baptist preached.

Secondly, if you issue a call to action, the ones you want aren’t in the first wave of responders, nor in the second wave of responders, the ones you really want are in the third wave of responders, on them alone can you build something that will last.

Knowing how to sift true from false prophecy is something that everyone needs. It may be easier to understand if some case studies are used.

This need came to my attention through a friend who had been sent an unsolicited prophetic word by an email. The friend had no idea where the prophet had obtained the email address from. However, it was a lengthy piece, and it spoke into all the hopes and frustrations this friend was experiencing, ie it was exactly what the friend wanted to be true.

Thankfully the friend had the courage to share it with me.

The very first thing after reading the prophetic word and ascertaining that it contained nothing specifically pertaining to the life of this friend, ie there was nothing in it that couldn’t easily be applied to the life of just about anyone else (warning flag 1) was to search the internet for what could be learned about the prophet.

The website had a pleasant feel, and a link to what must be a very inspiring conversion story, and some very basic Christian teaching without any perceived denominational biases. But it did contain a few things that gave me significant pause; a few very general prophetic words that were undated, no contact information or details, and no affiliation with any faith community.

It is so unusual for a prophetic word to be undated (warning flag 2). No address, no social media links, no email address, no contact form where you would expect it to be (ie an easily visible Contact page), but given bit by bit under a ‘please support this ministry’ sub-page that begins by asking for donations (warning flag 3). There is no indication on the website that the prophet is part of a faith community, in leadership of a faith community, or anything other than a lone ranger. Ideally a prophet should have a regular small group to which he/she is personally accountable, and should also be under some form of leadership to whom he/she is also accountable. Otherwise there are none of the normal and natural checks and balances that come from community life where people are invested in you enough to ask the odd quiet question if you are looking like going off the rails, or when your walk doesn’t match your talk. (major warning flag 4).

If something is exactly what you want to hear, (eg in order for the destiny God has for you to unfold, don’t let anyone box you in to their mindsets) and it doesn’t contain any invitation to transformation that leads to a deeper relationship with God, that should put up a warning flag too. It is a hallmark of the Gospel accounts that Jesus always invited people to the next level of relationship with Him, requiring either a change of heart or a change of life.

There were enough warning flags to safely dismiss and delete that email.

Around the internet at present there is a set of major ‘doom and gloom’ prophecies going around. The prophet is not a regular prophet, but is in leadership with a Christian community, and has had some vivid dreams that were felt to be prophetic for a national and global scale.

Can God call anybody to deliver a message? Yes, He can, for example the prophet Amos. However, it is more usual for an important wake-up call kind of message to be given to someone who is mature in the prophetic gifting and widely recognised as such, with a reasonable track record for accuracy.

There is also a difference between a Jonah-like warning message that invites to repentance and a Daniel-like message declaring that God’s judgement on bad behaviour is going to manifest in specific ways. Neither are certain; the former can be mitigated or even avoided by repentance (Ninevah); the latter can be mitigated by intercession (2 Sam 24). But even the most dire of messages warning of austere times to come contain an inkling of hope, that after punishment and exile that there would be restoration and return (Jeremiah).

However if the prophet reveals that his/her consumption of news media is greater than his/her consumption of God’s word in scripture, then extra caution is required.

Many years back this lesson was given to me. It happened like this. The community I was a member of at that time was receiving lots of apocalyptic sounding prophecy. It somehow happened that I was able to have a chat to one of the most accredited prophets in that community about all this apocalyptic stuff. His response was that many in the community had been reading the same spiritual/devotional literature that contained that kind of language. The ideas you consume eventually come out again, and often get processed in dreams and can be expressed in prophecy. And that was what had been happening in that community situation. You can see it too in less mature prophets who drink in what a lot of other prophets are releasing online. Sometime down the track, all of that prophetic soup will emerge in a very generic prophecy (and very sincerely given) that is a reasonable summary of the main flavours of the soup.

Such known human weaknesses do make it less clear to discern whether God is telling everyone the same message (in which case, Pay Attention!!!), or whether everyone has collectively gone off on a non-God inspired tangent. For this reason, keep aware of times of the liturgical year that various messages arise.

Sometimes they are collective wishful thinking born of deep desire to see God act in powerful ways, as what often happens as Easter, Pentecost and Christmas draw near or something related to the Jewish liturgical calendar. You see this big crescendo of expectation, and then as the special date passes, there is a lull until someone comes out with a statement that the date was still very important, and we will find out why in due time things didn’t manifest in the natural and there’s even bigger and better things coming in a month or 3 months’ time. Yes, it is easy to become cynical, but we do have to fight against that lest we dismiss a true message from God. That’s why growing in discernment is so important and so necessary.

Discernment can take time. And it is easy for us to get it wrong.

Just recently I have had to sadly acknowledge that someone I had on my short list of trusted online prophets was no longer worthy of being on that list. When the messages are exactly what you want to hear, and those messages get picked up and promoted by others and there are online followers in the order of tens of thousands, then of course you are biased towards the messages being true prophecy. But slowly some question marks began to arise. The first question marks happened when some of my cautionary comments that had logical merit were rejected out of hand. The second question marks began when there were more lists of how to do this or how to respond to that, which were all just human thoughts. The third set of question marks began when ‘sign up for my online course’ appeared at the end of prophetic messages, and it was an almost seamless segue. The final question marks were due to the disclosure by way of sharing personal background that this was, despite friendships and recognition from other prophets in good standing, very much a lone ranger ministry although it was couched in pioneer terminology. So I went back and took a more detailed look at the associated website, and the lack of accountable relationships became apparent.

It is like this, as far as possible there should be no conflict of interest between the ministry of a prophet and the way a prophet earns a living. The whole ‘God showed me how to deal with issue X in a whole new and effective way, but you need to pay $$ before I will share it with you’ thing flies in the face of ‘you received without charge, give without charge’ Matt 10:8. At the same time, a labourer is worthy of his hire, so there is no objection to a Donate/Give page. But when the prophet’s main source of income is online mentoring courses or similar, how can the prayers and natural desires for a good sign-up rate not transmute consciously or unconsciously into the prophetic messages, particularly when those messages are squarely aimed at hidden and forgotten ones who have a big destiny in God’s plan? Isn’t this what we all long to hear when we feel that life has passed us by, thus making us very vulnerable and susceptible to exploitation?

Then again, some things are presented as prophecy, when in fact all they are is teaching or preaching on some topic of the life of faith. Weigh it for what it is, not what it purports to be.

In this age of prophets with some celebrity status, it is well to remember that popularity is not a guarantee of accuracy. In the time of Jeremiah there were plenty of prophets announcing times of prosperity ahead, and only Jeremiah repeating God’s warning that the punishment of exile for their sins was coming. Of course the people of that time wanted to listen to the other prophets who spoke what they wanted to hear, and of course they wanted to shut Jeremiah up by any means necessary.

There will be times of restoration and refreshing, just as there will be times of trial and testing, therefore the maxim, ‘test everything, and hold onto what is good’ has to be our guide, as well as frequent prayers for guidance and discernment.

Why is the accountability thing so important? Because a true prophet is going to have enough humility to mistrust his/her own judgement, and be open to correction and submission/obedience to leadership. Even the best of prophets don’t get it 100% right every time (1 Cor 13:9). Obedience to lawful human authority despite what the prophet believes God has told him/her is the ultimate test of legitimacy. If it is of God it will come to pass, despite setbacks, delays and misunderstandings. Any prophet who thinks that everything they receive is always 100% from God is deluding themselves, and a big danger to themselves and others. Do you know what the worst punishment is from God? To be let drift into error. Because unless someone intercedes for you, there’s no way out. (read St John of Avila’s ‘Listen Daughter’ a.k.a. ‘Audi Filia’ for the best ever explanation of this.) Even Moses had his father-in-law Jethro as someone willing to speak truth into his life.

Now should a prophet make a grand prediction, and it doesn’t come to pass, eg a major share market crash during the visit of a specified world leader, then said prophet is automatically and completely discredited.

Particularly when it comes to dreams and visions, it can be crucial to separate the raw material of the prophecy from the interpretation of the prophecy. Quite often the raw material is correct, but the interpretation is incorrect or immature (ie the prophet has only grasped the first layer of the interpretation and not yet the underlying layers of interpretation.) In essence they are similar to parables. With time and diligent prayer, usually the full meaning comes to light.

Sometimes a prophecy (particularly to a community) is an invitation to go deeper, and the ‘more’ that God intended doesn’t happen because the response to the prophecy was mismanaged. For example, someone in that community who has been growing in the prophetic gifting shares that God has shown a vision of angels, surrounding the prayer meeting, who are waiting to be sent on assignment. Responding with a call to those at the prayer meeting to present their petitions to God is level 1. If you took that word seriously you would them get the prophet back and ask if there were any angels left, and if so, how many? (level 2) and if the answer wasn’t zero, you should then either get the people to petition some more, or better yet, ask the community to pray for wisdom in order to petition according to God’s desires (level 3) and delegate a leader to question the prophet about any details not disclosed in the initial message (ask if the angels were all the same size?, were they perhaps in groups?, was there anything to distinguish the groups eg colour, what they were holding?) which might give clues to the How to pray. If there is any sense that this might be a more significant word than first ascertained, then and there, or soon afterwards, get the prophet to have a go at drawing what they saw in as much detail as possible, and then share both the verbal and drawn parts with leadership and other prophets to pray over, discuss and ask further questions. After all, if it was God’s intention to lead the group into prolonged and specific intercession for local political leaders and business leaders, or for the bringing down of some stronghold that was preventing the conversion of the region, and everyone prayed for those they knew in personal, financial or family stress, then that was a comparatively poor outcome.

Some prophecies don’t find fulfilment for a year or several years, some don’t find fulfilment in our lifetimes. Because of this, some interpretations take a while to become clear. For example, St Catherine Laboure was convinced that much needed funds would appear if an area was dug down to a certain level. Everyone else thought she was crazy to keep insisting upon it. Yet in the years ahead, that area was the place where her body was buried, and not too long after a very sizable donation was anonymously placed on her tomb.

Care should be exercised when reading prophecies from years past and seeing in them relevance for today. That can indeed happen. However it is also possible that the mindset with which you read it today prejudices you into believing that it is solely about the current times. For example the pandemic situation the world has recently found itself in has seen a lot of re-evaluation of past prophecies. Many of them read like they were written for us today, and some of the phrases that were glossed over back then, now seem to carry increased meaning (eg A great shaking happening among the nations, and peoples locked down by a spirit of fear). ‘Lockdown’ carries a whole new level of meaning now that it didn’t pre-Covid19, as does ‘lawlessness’ in the wake of the George Floyd riots. Yet there is no guarantee that this is the only era it was meant for, or even if it was the primary era it was meant for.

We do know that God never takes back or revokes His gifts, and that He always invites us to grow. The intended life cycle of a prophet is that as they grow in experience, they also grow in holiness, and weightier and more important prophetic words can be given through them. However this doesn’t always happen; what started out relatively pure can become increasingly sullied with human frailty and error; or what started out pure can go through a wilderness period away from the moral life and then re-emerge stronger than ever after a sincere conversion. Sometimes there will be only a single season of profound revelation, and then no more, if that is God’s plan for them. St Bernadette is an example of this; and saw herself as a broom that was used by God for a while, and then put away. Always the revelation is firstly for the prophet, and then for others. If the prophet is growing in response to the revelation, and growing in holiness and in moral character, it is an indication that what they are receiving is God inspired.

If God is trying to get a message across, He will use more than one messenger, and probably from diverse sources. Therefore, if a message is of a personal nature, it will confirm something He has already called you to do, or in time to come it will be confirmed via other sources. So never change your life on the strength of a single unconfirmed word. Write it down, store it somewhere, refer back to it every 3-6 months, it may make more sense then. If it doesn’t, and there haven’t been any confirmations of it, you can safely forget all about it.

These are only general guidelines born of experience for sifting out the questionable. For every general guideline there are exceptions, because God is not limited and He sometimes chooses to use the unusual or discredited to get our attention and loosen our pre-conceived ideas.

Here are some scriptural reminders that the gift of prophecy is a good gift from God, and needed, and worth the effort of time in discernment and interpretation:

1 Thess 5:19-21 Never try to suppress the Spirit or treat the gift of prophecy with contempt: think before you do anything – hold on to what is good.

2 Peter 1:19b-20 You will be right to depend on prophecy and take it as a lamp for lighting a way through the dark until the dawn comes and the morning star rises in your minds. At the same time, we must be most careful to remember that the interpretation of scriptural prophecy is never a matter for the individual.

I Cor 14:3 The man who prophesies does talk to other people, to their improvement, their encouragement and their consolation.

1 Cor 14:32 Prophets can always control their prophetic spirits, since God is not a God of disorder but of peace.
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For more detailed guidance on prophecy, interpretation and discernment, please read the attached document, particularly pages 11-16 and pages 18-20.

Recently (July 9) the liturgical calendar had an optional memorial celebration for St Augustine Zhao Rong and companions, martyrs. Since the name didn’t ring any bells for me, I thought I should find out a bit more.

Other ‘and companions’ memorials have grown in our collective consciousness over the years. For some reason, it seems to take time for us to start celebrating them with gusto. To now not celebrate St Charles Llwanga and companions, St Paul Miki and companions, St Andrew Kim Taegon and companions, St Andrew Dun Lac and companions would be unthinkable. St Lawrence Ruiz and companions and St Christopher Magallanes and companions are still finding their place in our hearts, but have made recognizable in-roads.

St Augustine Zhao Rong and companions were canonized on 1 Oct 2000 by St John Paul II. Most of our missals and lives of the saints books were published prior to that date, which means that there is little printed information around, and all that we have are internet stories that don’t reference primary source documents.

Unlike some of the other ‘and companions’ lists, the 119 who died as martyrs in China didn’t die on the same day, nor during the same persecution. However they are representative of many more who died as martyrs in China between 1648 and 1930.

This comes from the Roman Martyrology
“In China, in Sichuan province, remembrance of St. Augustine Zhao Rong, priest and martyr, who, infuriating the persecution, because of his faith in Christ was thrown into prison, where he found a glorious death during winter.”

We can take that as fact.

It doesn’t help that there are several dates of remembrance for St Augustine Zhao Rong (27 January, 21 March, 9 July, 28 September) nor that he is also known as St Augustine Tchao, St Augustin Rong Zhao and St Augustinus Zhao.

He heads the list of martyr companions because he is the first native Chinese priest with a provable record of martyrdom.

There are two stories circulating about the internet concerning St Augustine Zhao Rong. One of them just doesn’t add up, or doesn’t add up yet, and the other is more plausible.

The first one goes something like this:
Augustine Zhao Rong was a Chinese soldier who accompanied Bishop John Gabriel Taurin Dufresse of the Paris Foreign Mission Society to his martyrdom in Beijing. Not long after his baptism, Augustine was ordained as a diocesan priest. He was martyred in 1815.

St Augustine Zhao Rong was martyred very early in 1815, the actual date is unknown, only that it was in the coldest part of the year before spring began.

St John Gabriel Taurin Dufresse was martyred 14 September 1815 in Sichuan province. This province is in south western China, but closer to the middle of China than to the Chinese border. Sichuan is a long way from Beijing.

The bishop had been arrested (prior to becoming a bishop in 1798) way back in 1784/85, and imprisoned for six months, and sent to Beijing. But this is well after 1781, the year when St Augustine Zhao Rong was ordained.

So the story doesn’t add up, unless Fr Dufresse had another, earlier imprisonment that hasn’t yet made it into the history books.

In all likelihood there is another of the 119 companions for whom this account is true, and it just got copied/translated down in the wrong place under the wrong name.

The second story is far more plausible, and it goes like this:
St Augustine Zhao Rong was born in 1746 in Wuchuan, China, into a pagan family. When he was 20 years old, he got a job serving in a country prison. When a religious persecution began in 1772, many Christians were arrested and Zhao Rong was appointed to guard them. Among the Catholic prisoners was their missionary, Martinus Moye, (or Mei), who preached the gospel to all his fellow prisoners. Many were converted. Zhao Rong also listened and was intrigued.

Later Mei was released from prison and Zhao Rong left to visit him and continue their discussions of Christianity. In 1776 he received his baptism and confirmation on August 28 and the name Augustine. He continued to grow in faith and became a good helper to both Mei and Matthew Lou. Mei noticed his firm belief and decided to teach him Latin, and he also explained the Bible to him. In 1779, there was a famine and plague in Sichuan. Augustine was sent there to help, and he baptized many dying infants.

Having completed the necessary theological studies, he was ordained a priest on 10 May 1781.

He distinguished himself as a preacher, since his words moved tears to listeners with the story of the passion of Jesus. It is said that when he visited a Christian community he spent three days with them, emphasizing the basics of the faith, viz the 10 commandments, the 7 cardinal sins, the sacrament of penance, the holy Eucharist and the sufferings of Jesus and sharing the scriptures with them. Father Augustine was sent to the western part of Sichuan, to assist in the conversion of the native peoples of that mountainous region.

Augustine would have had a working relationship with Bishop Dufresse, since he was the bishop of Sichuan province from around 1800 until his 1815 martyrdom, which is why Augustine formed part of the 12 companions beatified by Pope Leo XIII with Bishop Dufresse in 1900.

When the fresh persecution broke out, Augustine was arrested and had to endure terrible torture. He was returned to prison, but by then he was in his late 60s and already ill, he died in prison. By the time the death sentence issued by the mandarin was confirmed by the emperor, Augustine was already dead.


Hopefully in the years to come, the primary documents relating to the life and martyrdom of St Augustine Zhao Rong will come to light, and be correctly translated. In the meantime, this feast day of his and the other martyrs of China is an encouragement to us and a reminder to pray for the peoples of China and to give thanks for all those who have sacrificed their lives spreading the Gospel to them.
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St Augustine Zhao Rong and companions, pray for us.