Bishop Lyke, apostolic administrator, hopes to be able to write in The Georgia Bulletin regularly. This column on what it means to be a Catholic Christian is the concluding portion of a keynote talk given by him at the 15th annual Galveston Houston Congress sponsored by the Continuing Education office of that diocese on Feb. 17, 1990.

Bishop James P. Lyke, OFM

First and foremost, to be a Catholic Christian means to be Christ-centered. Every other element of our faith finds its meaning in relationship to this concept. Having hopefully made that point strongly, I want to discuss three specific dimensions of our identity: the universality of the call to Church; the historical nature of the Church; and the call to Church as a call to involvement in the contemporary world.

Universality: To be a Catholic Christian means to walk through life with a sense that God wishes all to be saved; that no human designation pertaining to race, nationality, origin, culture and way of life presents a barrier to God's entry into the human heart. Put very simply, every human being is equally a child of God, regardless of the specific circumstances of his or her life, and every human being is equally called to be a full member of the people of God.

The word "catholic" as you know means "universal," and long before there was any implication that Catholic Christians could be distinguished from other Christians, the whole Christian family understood itself to be "catholic." The words of the Profession of Faith that date back to the fourth century make this clear. To be Catholic means to be one and diverse at the same time.

As the Church expanded, in keeping with Jesus' mandate to go out "into the whole world and baptize all nations," it adopted the language, customs, and cultural style of the diverse peoples who heard and accepted the call of the gospel. This is the origin of the many "Rites" of the Church. While professing one faith, people of different Rites worship in different languages, following customs reflective of the culture the Rite serves.

The existence of these historical "Rites" should remind us that there is a continuing need for the Church, in order to be truly catholic, truly universal, to continue the process of cultural adaptation. To be faithful to our tradition, we within the Roman Rite today must find ways to incorporate fully the diverse cultural styles of those who comprise the Church.

Whether one's background is European, Asian, African, or Latin, the church should be equally "home" to all. In parishes that have genuinely "multi-cultural" congregations, every effort should be made to incorporate the customs of all to some degree. Above all, anything that might appear offensive, foolish or inauthentic, even to a small minority, must be carefully avoided.

Let us not make our 20th century suburban, yuppie experience the rule for all Catholic worship in the United States! Without such cultural sensitivity, and without the effort to make the faith live fully among people, regardless of their ethnic heritage, we lack the universality that is necessary to deserve the title "Catholic Christian." We - all of us - need to grow beyond our immediate experience and knowledge by integrating customs, practices, and traditions of other and ancient cultures.

Historicity: The second major concept involved in the identity we have as Catholic Christians is our sense of history as a factor shaping the life and mission of the Church. This means more than to simply say that the Church exists in historical times and cultures. It is to say that our understanding of the faith and the meaning of the Scriptures on which it is founded can and should grow with changing times.

At the time of the Second Vatican Council one of the themes that received a great deal of attention involved the relationship between Scripture and Tradition. Often the statement would be made: "Protestants believe in Scripture alone as a source of revelation; Catholics believe in two sources: Scripture and Tradition." Many saw this dichotomy as a serious stumbling block to Christian unity. But as the Council fathers reflected on the concept of revelation, it became clear that what Catholics should be speaking about is not two sources of revelation, but two dimensions of the same source.

All revelation comes from God and finds its fundamental expression in Scripture. But the Scriptures themselves are historical documents. They are the legal codes, historical narratives, epic tales, fervent preachings, and elevating poetry of the Hebrew writers. In the case of the Gospels, they are remembered words and deeds of Jesus as passed on by oral tradition, or in an interpretation by one or other of the apostles, in the case of the epistles.

Even the Scriptures themselves have a clear historical dimension to them: they reflect the "Tradition" of the Church in its earliest stage. Further, the determination of exactly which of the many writings that come from those early years should be regarded as normative for the Church was a decision made through an historical process in the Church that took several centuries. Once the canon of Scriptures, the definitive list of books, was established, we understand the Scriptures as the source of all revelation from God.

However, what we call the "Living Tradition," the Church of the faithful still experiencing, interpreting, understanding, proclaiming the one and only saving Lord who still leads us, guides us, saves us, and prepares us for our residency in heaven - this Living Tradition of the church plays a vital role in determining how the Scriptures are to be understood or applied in changing ages.

Historical Unfolding

In this sense, the historical unfolding of the life of the Church deepens the meaning of the basic revelation contained in Scripture. It does this in at least three ways:

1) As history unfolds, we often obtain new insights into the meaning of the scriptural text itself. Theology is, as Saint Anselm defined it, "faith seeking understanding." People of faith sometimes come to understand the faith, rooted in the Scripture, in better ways because of the theological reflection upon the Scriptures which takes place in history.

An example of this might be found in the doctrine of the Immaculate Conception of Mary, which gives further understanding to the meaning of the phrase, "Hail, full of grace." It took many centuries of theological reflection before it was understood how the notion of Mary conceived without sin could be reconciled with the notion of Christ as universal savior. Once the formula was suggested in the Middle Ages, that Mary was redeemed by the foreseen merits of Christ, a new insight into the interpretation of Gabriel's words from Luke's gospel was found. This kind of new understanding comes from Tradition, but a tradition always rooted in Scripture.

2) Sometimes Tradition, in the sense of the lived history of the Christian community, discovers new data that enables us to understand better the meaning of a scripture text. One of the most dramatic instances of this kind occurred with the discovery of the Dead Sea Scrolls in the cave of Qumran some years back. The documents, which contain descriptions of the Essene community at the time of Christ, shed light upon many of the practices which have reference in the gospels, and lead to a deeper understanding of the role of John the Baptist and his disciples as well as the discipleship of the apostles and other followers of Jesus.

3) A third way in which Scriptures are enhanced by Tradition is through the application of scriptural principles to new and changing situations. Only this kind of living Tradition can form the basis for a contemporary moral theology. The Scriptures alone can never give a direct answer to moral questions that presuppose historical developments which have occurred since the times or Christ.

The Scriptures cannot directly answer questions regarding the morality of nuclear war, for example, or regarding the morality of in-vitro fertilization and other medical-moral questions involving a technology unknown at the time the Scriptures were written. But we find in the Scriptures certain principles about the dignity of the human person, the value of human life, the necessity of justice, the integrity of sexual relationships, and other realities that can form the basis for applying scriptural teaching to new situations that arise in the historical life of the church. Our identity as Catholic Christians implies a belief that such applications can be made. This is the task of the Church community, especially through its magisterial teaching, to assist the membership in applying moral principles in this way.

Contemporanity: Such reflection on the application of moral principles to changing situations provides a good introduction to a third important dimension of the Catholic-Christian identity - that the Church must be fully involved in the here and now. To be a Catholic means to be filled with a sense of being God's agent in completing the work of redemption and to have a keen awareness of the "nowness" of redemption.

Redemption now must continue to speak in the public square, in the marketplace of ideas. Redemption is for the societies and systems that are enslaved by sin as well as for the individual person in need of conversion. It means to be concerned with the needs of our brothers and sisters in the world, whether these be primarily spiritual needs or the basic human concerns which in their own way also reflect the spiritual realm.

Evangelization Our Word

Because of this, first of all, the church is always an evangelizing church. The word "evangelization" may still ring foreign to some Catholic ears, but it is our word already. It is a word we must become at home with. It is a word we must appropriate and make our own. We are and must be an evangelizing Church, because we have received the command from the Lord to preach the gospel to all people. But to breach the gospel effectively we must have an awareness of the world in which we preach and the needs of the people to whom we preach. Pope Paul VI expressed this well in his encyclical letter on Evangelization:

"Evangelization loses much of its force and effectiveness if it does not take into consideration the actual people to whom it is addressed, if it does not use their language, their signs and symbols, if it does not answer the questions they ask, and if it does not have an impact on their concrete life." Evangelization in the Modern World, n.63

It is especially important that those involved in the ministry of the Church be people fully in touch with the contemporary world. That doesn't mean that we need to derive our values from the secular society; quite the contrary, we must often be "counter-cultural" people whose lives challenge rather than reflect the world around us.

Today we may especially have to challenge first whether we know and understand the world we live in. The separate university upon the leafy-green campus out of touch with the urban landscape, the factory's thunder, or the working person's plight can be seriously ignorant about life and living. Gone are the days when training programs for priesthood or religious life can take place in isolation from "the world." Surely, one of the blessings of a much fuller lay involvement in the Church is precisely the diversity of experience with life that is brought to the tasks with which the Church is involved.

While such contemporary awareness is necessary for evangelization, it is also necessary for the Church to be a social and moral leader, not only for Church members but for the world. The splendid example of Pope John Paul II as a powerful force for justice and peace stands out in this regard. No world leader has more consistent access to other world leaders, East and West, North and South, than has the Pope. Similarly, one of our tasks as bishops in the Church is to address contemporary moral and social issues and bring Christian principles to bear upon them.

Foremost among these in the United States today is the issue of human life. By proposing the seamless garment of pro-life issues, the Church in the United States challenges the society in which we exist to consistently recognize and respect the dignity of every human person.

There is a vital link between our respect for the pre-born, for the elderly, for the mentally or physically handicapped, for the poor, for both the victims and perpetrators of crime, for the addicted, for peoples of all races and nations.

There is an intimate link between our respect for peoples and our concern for the ecology of the world in which we all exist. It is part of our Catholic-Christian identity to apply the principles of the gospel to the social and even political reality of the world which is ours to live in and care for.

Now there is one distinctive characteristic of Catholicism - of being a Catholic Christian - that some would say most clearly and determinatively sets us apart from all other Christian traditions: that of the Petrine Ministry and Episcopal Oversight and the way in which these two offices interrelate. Truly, no other Christian tradition has a Pope and a College of Bishops in union with that Pope, or a people in union with their bishop, in the manner in which we as Catholics understand it. In the Dogmatic Constitution on the Church of the Second Vatican Council, these unique ministries are clearly stated:

"The Lord made Peter alone the rock-foundation and the holder of the keys of the Church (confer Matthew 16:18-19), and constituted him shepherd of the whole flock (confer John 21: 15ff). It is clear however, that the office of binding and loosing which was given to Peter (Matthew 16:19) was also assigned to the college of the apostles united to its head (Matthew 18:18; 28:16-20). This college, in so far as it is composed of many members, is the expression of the multifariousness and universality of the People of God; and of the unity of the flock of Christ, in so far as it is assembled under one head. In it the bishops, while loyally respecting the primacy and pre-eminence of their head, exercise their own proper authority for the good of their faithful, indeed even for the good of the whole Church, the organic structure and harmony of which are strengthened by the continued influence of the Holy Spirit." (paragraph 22)

Form an historical perspective, I wish to state that, while today the designation "Catholic" has taken on a denominational meaning, it is critical to note that historically the name "catholic" is not simply a descriptive adjective qualifying the name "Christian," -- as in a Catholic Christian, a Baptist Christian, a Lutheran Christian, a Methodist Christian, and so on.

The word "catholic" is also an essentialistic adjective which gives the word "Christian" its fullest meaning. Thus, he Catholic Church and the Catholic Christian denote a faith tradition that is all embracing in its outreach to people of every land, nation and race and in every time. The designation "catholic" takes its first sense from the Matthean mandate "Go, therefore, and make disciples of all nations..." (Matthew 28:19) -- and includes the Church's and the Catholic Christian's comfort in welcoming all cultures into its fold and simultaneously infusing all cultures with the light of the Gospel.

But, the word "catholic" also refers to the Church's claim that the ministry of Peter and the Apostles and their successors constitute a necessary portion of the very nature of the Church. When the word "catholic" originated, it arose in an historical context, where all who called themselves Christian recognized and acknowledged "ubi episcopus, ibi ecclesia," "where there is the bishop, there is the Church," -- and the authentic bishop was in union with Peter's successor, the Bishop of Rome, and the bishops throughout the world.

Historical Account

Here I wish to quote from Francis A. Sullivan in his book The Church We Believe In, where he gives an historical account of the word "catholic." We writes: "In the account of the martyrdom of Saint Polycarp, bishop of Smyrna, written by the presbyters of his church around the year 160, there are four occurrences of the word 'catholic' in reference to the church... The fourth use of 'catholic' in the 'Martyrdom of Polycarp' introduces a strikingly new application of the word: Polycarp is described as 'the bishop of the catholic church of Smyrna.' Here it is clearly the local church of Smyrna that is being described as 'the catholic church.' If one asks in what sense a local church could be designated by an adjective whose basic meaning is 'universal,' the answer seems to be found in that fact that in the course of the second century, the orthodox Christians began to distinguish their church from the numerous heretical and schismatic sects on the ground of the oneness and universality of the true church, in contrast to the multiplicity and locally limited nature of the sects. Thus, 'catholicity' came to be recognized as a criterion of orthodoxy, and 'catholic' came to mean the opposite of 'sectarian' and 'heretical.' According to J.N.D. Kelly, 'This is the dominant meaning of 'catholic' from the second half of the second century onwards in East and West alike; it denotes the one, true church of Christ as opposed to all heretical and schismatic groups, and points to the universality of the former as the guarantee of its authenticity.'"

These are, I believe, some of the key elements in our Catholic Christian identity, some elements of what it means to be a Catholic Christian today. I hope it has been made clear that what I have described is not primarily what separates "Catholics" from "Protestants," but what it means in the more radical sense to be a Catholic Christian. Part of the work of ecumenism today will be to reach a day when "Catholic" is no longer a denominational description, but a word that expresses the full nature of the faith of all who follow Jesus as their Lord and Savior.