THE ACT OF FAITH
The effort to Evangelize for the growth of the Catholic Church has a long history of conflict with evil angelic forces. But let us just look at this conflict from the beginnings of Vatican II. The topic to purify the Church’s Evangelization process for the growth of the Church begun around the third session of the council. And Archbishop Frings was vocal in showing the need for a very clear doctrinal description on Evangelization amidst attempts to compose a watered down, unclear and confusing document. A good document came out from his attempts. His periti was Joseph Ratzinger. But after Vatican II the document was not given importance and the proposals of missiologists and other dissident theologians who insisted on merely psychological, sociological, and environmental issues prevailed. Pope Paul VI and Pope John Paul II tried to patch up the vacuum in the Evangelization process that made it ineffective. The present Pope had given his all out effort during his Pontificate to right the Evangelization which is the very life of the Church. But efforts to derail the process continued up to this very moment. It waned for a moment when Cardinal Ratzinger pin pointed these efforts on derailment as coming from men with no Faith in his ‘Ratzinger Report.’ But almost rose again in the form of a movement to create a new man- made catholic church. First theorized by a priest pseudo-scientist, it has become a battle cry under the banner of reform and renewal……towards nowhere. Schools of theology had embraced it and bishops are unwittingly preaching this heresy because its undercurrents are in the 58 proposals of the Bishop’s synod.
The Holy Father gave us, as Cardinal Prefect of the CDF, the ‘New Evangelization’ as early as 2000 AD. He had described the four steps towards Eternal Life, of which Evangelization is only the first step. The Pope put this first step under the title of ‘conversion’ since Evangelization is the process of conversion that leads to Faith. This is clearly described in the ‘Apostolic Commission’ which Christ gave to His disciples…. the instruction to Evangelize, going to all nations etc…The Fathers of the Church like St. Augustine had described this process so well, on how to preach. And the Catholic Church had been doing this for the last more than 2000 years.
Evangelization was going on well until something around the 15th century happened that caused so much confusion in the Church up to the present. The ‘Way of Evangelization’ that leads to ‘conversion’ of souls that disposes them to the Act of Faith became so confused there was fear that hardly anyone was evangelizing properly and hardly anyone was undergoing conversion. The signs of the presence of Faith that was most evident in the Church that made her stand out as the true Church was nowhere to be found. What we see now is the opposite. These opposite signs are found in Bishops, priests, brothers, nuns and lay faithful. It is the sign of vices which cannot exist side by side with the virtues of Faith, Hope and Charity. Cardinal Ratzinger described what went wrong;” a defect in the method and contents of Evangelization.” That is like saying everything went wrong.
So Pope Benedict called a ‘Year of Faifh.’ But even now we see signs of confusion exactly what happened during Vatican II. It is the same malevolent spirit! The office that sent the Lineamenta, a letter of instruction from the Vatican to all bishops, issued a defective document dissimilar from the instruction of the Pope. The ‘Instrumentum Laboris’ which is the response of all the bishops around the world, also, showed, a defective concept of Evangelization. The very Bishop’s Synod just concluded and its 58 resolutions show confusion but more importantly noncompliance to the instruction of the Holy Father. The proposals are similar to the proposals made during Vatican II that Archbishop Frings considered ‘impossible and unacceptable.”
Then we mentioned a light in the midst of the storm. The International Theological Comission, a group of 30 Catholic Theologians gathered to, first, advice the CDF but now officially advising the Magisterium, came up with a document in aid of the Evangelization that leads to Porta Fidei. They repeated the 4 – pt schema of the Holy Father and, as the Holy Father stressed last March, emphasized the importance of ‘conversion’ as CENTRAL to the ‘Year of Faith.’
As soon as the only bright light shone amidst the storm, the light was immediately covered with clouds as a Theological school of a famed religious order in Rome came out to use one of their order’s author of doubtful orthodoxy as a model of Evangelization. This author had been corrected several times by Rome for dangerous doctrine, specially of Pantheism and a dangerous ‘spirit’ in proposing an entirely ‘new catholic church’ a heresy so prevalent among Bishops and theologians yet they call it the ‘new Evangelization.”
The confusion and attempts to derail the Pope’s efforts to lead souls to Faith and the salvation of their souls continuous unabatted. And like the classical story of the Trojan Horse in the siege of Troy the enemy is within the Church in both the Bishops, the clerics, the theological schools, the seminaries and in the big religious order of the Church. With people like these the Pope does not need enemies.
Not all bishops and theologians are tainted by this ‘spirit’. But the few who are faithful to the Church are not vocal. Fortunately we have the ITC. The Holy Father and the International Theological Commission had this simple suggestion: for this ‘Year of Faith’ …. simply teach ourselves and others how the Act of Faith is to be done. All the other topics can be set aside first. And here it is according to St. Augustine.
We must make the Act of Faith in the same way the Blessed Trinity would do it……if they had to do it. Of course, the Blessed Trinity does not need to do it.
The Blessed Trinity is three person in one God. God the Father, God the Son and God the Holy Spirit. We have been made to the image and likeness of God. Our memory represents the Father, our intellect represents the Son and our free will represents the Holy Spirit. But because of original and actual sins our memory, our intellect and our free will are not perfect images and likenss of God. Inspite of this defect our memory, intellect and free will are still the closes image and likeness of God we can have. No other religion can have an image of their own man-make gods as Catholics have of our God. In short, we can see the face of our God while others can see only a sculpture or painting of their gods. And the image of the God of the Catholic Church is within man himself.
The Holy Father had encourage all men to check on their beliefs in God, precisely by checking the image of their gods within them. If God would create man He would make him in a manner that he can recognize his creator. And what better way than for God to leave His image within man, himself. But man cannot know the image and likeness of God within him unless he does something first. And this something is the proper disposition for the Act of Faith.
So we have the three faculties of man that makes him similar to the image and likeness of God: the memory, the intellect and the free will. Now let us describe a soul that has the proper disposition to receive the grace of Faith after which he becomes a Faithful, he is inside the kingdom of God, he is wise, happy and holy and would now gradually learn all the teachings of Christ. Slowly, of course. It will take some time to accomplish this and lead him to the theological virtue of Charity. Let us go back to Faith. This is our interest in this ‘Year of Faith’….to make the Act of Faith.
Let us go to the Memory, the image and likeness of God the Father within man. Man reads and listens to everything he can naturally learn about God, specially Jesus Christ. As he closes the book or stops listening to a lecture he must retain all these information about God or Jesus Christ in his memory. And this he has to do 24 hours (keep in mind we are describing a soul so advanced in his quest for God that he is about to receive the grace of Faith and not a recent convert.) This is the first element in the Act of Faith that must be kept in mind. This is not yet Faith because two other things are still to be done.
Secondly, while all these Godly thoughts are in the memory and sustained in the memory permanenetly ……let us go to the next faculty, the intellect. The intellect should try to understand in the natural level the contents of the memory. While Divine Revelation is a help in filling up the memory with truths, the Fathers of the Church will be needed in interpreting the contents of the memory. So now we have the memory and the intellect in place for the Act of Faith. The intellect must not only interpret the contents of the memory correctly but must ALSO assent to both the contents of the memory and the intellect’s interpretation or explanation of the contents of the memory. Now the first two steps in the elements of the ACT of Faith are in place. Needless to say there should be absolutely no errors in the memory and in the interpretation or understanding of what is in the memory.
Then comes the third step, the free will or the heart. After the memory had stored all natural truths about God, after the intellect had meditated and thought about those truths and had given its mark of assent to those truths as worthy of belief, then the intellect convinces the blind faculty. the free will to love the truths the mind had judged to be good. The free will considers all these and convinced that it would be a good thing to love those truths pertaining to God and Jesus Christ, the free will gives its consent and loves God and/or Jesus Christ.
When the soul has his memory, intellect and free will in this state we say that he has the proper disposition to receive the gift of Faith. God, then, gives him the theological virtue of Faith and he undergoes a complete change and shows all the signs of Faith, namely, wisdom, happiness and holiness. But this Faith is weak at the beginning. It will be God who will directly instruct him on what to do to increase in Faith that would eventually lead to Hope and Charity. This is all we have to learn in this ‘Year of Faith.’
Many bishops, priests, brothers, nuns, members of ecclesial communities, converts from other sects and the vast number of converts from Africa and Asia may not realize it. They were INTELLECTUALLY attracted to the beauty of the Catholic Religion but have not really made an act of supernatural Faith…..because they had not been properly Evangelize, i.e. they were not taught how to make the Act of Faith. Even the 58 proposals issued by the Bishop’s Synod does not contain even a mention on how to make the Act of Faith. Except for the Pope I have not heard or read in any document on the ‘Year of Faith’ any description of the Act of Faith. The above is from St. Augustine. So what are we going to talk about in the ‘Year of Faith?’ Shouldn’t it be simply what the Act of Faith is ?
The process in which we acquire a memory as described above, an intellect as described above and a free will as described above is the long process called ‘conversion.’ This is not something we can accomplish overnight. Often not even in twenty or thirty years. Though it all depends on the generosity of the soul.
Faith is when we can keep our memories, intellects and free will as described above every second for all our lifetime.