June 6th Reflection

We began this evening's meeting by listening to the following excerpt from John Henry Newman: A Conversion To Die For by David Birch, Professor of Communication, Deakin University, Melbourne, Australia, Associate Editor of The Priest: The Journal of the Australian Confraternity of Catholic Clergy. Reflection on Newman's way of 'simply doing God's will'.

On 25 September 1843, the Rev. John Henry Newman, Vicar of one of the most famous churches in England, St Mary's Oxford, preached his last sermon as an Anglican at Littlemore, (a satellite parish of St Mary's where he now lived in a small community of men living in an interesting "monastic" experiment in Anglican Catholicism.) He asked the congregation to, "pray for him, that in all things he may know God's will, and at all times he may be ready to fulfil it".

What Newman did in becoming a Catholic in a mid-19th Century world where the privileging of man and the natural world was taking over in all spheres of activity and thinking (as it is doing so even more today); where unbelief was growing exponentially; where science and engineering were the new gods. What Newman did made him stand out from the world of […] privilege and status. He […] stood out for the salvation of his soul over and above everything else in the world of religious indifference and the unbelief that surrounded him. His becoming a Catholic to save his soul (and not because he liked the "bells and smells") was a total indictment of, and embarrassment to, not only Erastian  Anglicanism, but also to the State itself. It was a very public celebration of the religious over the secular.

He wrote, many years before his conversion that, "The Church of Christ [...] is not an institution of man, not a mere political establishment, not a creature of the state, depending on the state's breath, made and unmade at its will, but it is a Divine society, a great work of God". […]

Discussion began with a consideration of the following questions:

1. How is our society like that of Newman’s day?

2. How do we bring people to a saving knowledge of Christ?

3. How might we remain charitable and kind when we encounter an often hostile opposition?

4. How do we promote the inalienable rights enumerated in the Charter of Rights and Freedoms?

A young man from Catholic Christian Outreach, a campus missionary ministry, provided insights related to his work as a missionary.

To conclude the discussion, the following excerpt was presented.

Letter 130 (A.D. 412)To Proba, a Devoted Handmaid of God, Bishop Augustine, a Servant of Christ and of Christ's Servants, Sends Greeting in the Name of the Lord of Lords.

Chapter 23. It becomes you, therefore, out of love to this true life (in Christ), to account yourself desolate in this world, however great the prosperity of your lot may be. For as that is the true life, in comparison with which the present life, which is much loved, is not worthy to be called life, however happy and prolonged it be, so is it also the true consolation promised by the Lord in the words of Isaiah, I will give him the true consolation, peace upon peace, without which consolation men find themselves, in the midst of every mere earthly solace, rather desolate than comforted. For as for riches and high rank, and all other things in which men who are strangers to true felicity imagine that happiness exists, what comfort do they bring, seeing that it is better to be independent of such things than to enjoy abundance of them, because, when possessed, they occasion, through our fear of losing them, more vexation than was caused by the strength of desire with which their possession was coveted? Men are not made good by possessing these so-called good things, but, if men have become good otherwise, they make these things to be really good by using them well. Therefore true comfort is to be found not in them, but rather in those things in which true life is found. For a man can be made blessed only by the same power by which he is made good.

Prior to sung Compline, a survey was conducted to explore the development of:

1. a Catholic men’s prayer breakfast

2. a men’s public Rosary rally

3. educational scholarships and/or sponsorships of missions

4. a Catholic men & boys/youth day sailing or canoeing camp

A scholarly assessment of the impact of Provincial health policy on doctor-patient relationships was distributed by a member.

During Compline, prayers were offered for Heather Walters, in Toronto, who is terminally ill with cancer and not expected to live beyond 2 to 4 weeks. Please, in your charity, offer a prayer for Heather, who is a lifelong friend of a member's wife. Heather will be added to our Rosary intentions this Saturday: http://newmanrosaryguild.blogspot.com/

To our host this evening,

Greg K. - many thanks for your kind hospitality!