Charity in America by Archbishop Chaput

Here are some recent articles and posts by Charles J. Chaput, O.F.M Cap., archbishop of Denver, at First Things. They are worth checking out.

A Charitable Endeavor

A Principled Charity

Catholic Charity in Secular America

Archbishop Chaput - Fire Upon the Earth

Fire Upon the Earth by Archbishop Charles J. Chaput, O.F.M. Cap.

My goal tonight is to speak about personal conversion and the new evangelization, through the lens of the Year of Faith. And I’d like to do that in three steps. First, I’ll revisit what a “year of faith” is, and why Pope Benedict felt we needed one. Second, I’ll talk about Pope Francis and the new spirit he brings to witnessing our faith as a Church. And third and most important, I’ll speak about what we need to do, and how we need to live, going forward–in other words, how we might share our faith so fully and joyfully that we truly become God’s lumen gentium, God’s “light to the nations”... TO READ MORE CLICK ABOVE.

Culture Warrior Bishops

NCR - Chaput: The Problem With Culture Warrior Bishops

On the Square - Chaput’s Unconvincing Critics

CERC - Rise of the Evangelical Catholic Bishops

LIVING WITHIN THE TRUTH by Archbishop Chaput

RELIGIOUS LIBERTY AND CATHOLIC MISSION IN THE NEW ORDER OF THE WORLD by Charles J. Chaput

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The Vocation of Christians in American Public Life

CERC - ARCHBISHOP CHARLES CHAPUT, O.F.M. CAP.

Precisely fifty years after the memorable speech that John F. Kennedy gave to the Protestant pastors of Houston in order to convince them and the entire nation that as a Catholic he could be a good president, the archbishop of Denver, Charles J. Chaput, has returned to the scene of the crime, in Houston, for a Baptist conference on the role of Christians in public life...

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tNP - Resurrecting Caelum et Terra by Jeremy Beer

The Imaginative Conservative - Philosopher of Love: David L. Schindler by Jeremy Beer

CatholicCulture.org - Archbishop Charles J. Chaput, O.F.M. Cap.
A City Upon a Hill: Augustine, John Winthrop and the Soul of the American Experiment Today

Religion, the State, and the Common Good

FTs - Orestes Brownson and the Truth About America by Peter Lawler

Christopher Blosser and I built the following website on this topic.
The Catholic Church and The Liberal Tradition

The origin and whole history of this blog is really focused on this exact topic.  Refer to the classic posts on the right column.

recent articles on ZENIT

Love Is the Soul of the Church, Says Pope

Papal Address to Theology Professors - "Listen to the Answers That the Christian Faith Gives Us"

Archbishop Chaput on the Common Good

A Curator's Faith; Bernini's Passion

Christians in Hollywood

Vatican Official: Abortion a Type of Terrorism

Not Just a Material World

Robert George on Politics and Conscience

Panel Backs Hopes for Unbaptized Infants Who Die

Synopsis of Pope's Book

recent posts on Insight Scoop

Evangelicals and Catholics in Dialogue in San Diego

The Internet Monk responds

Why I am no longer a Protestant

Catholics and the political realm

Fr. Oakes on prayer and politics

Archbishop Chaput on education and witness

Fr. Fessio: There's "nothing surprising" or "sensational"...

Plus check out many new articles on Ignatius Insight.

How Catholics Can Save Civilization

CERC - How Catholics Can Save Civilization by ARCHBISHOP CHARLES J. CHAPUT, O.F.M. CAP.
We need to understand that the more secular we become, the more our sense of community erodes, and the more we feed four problems that cripple us as a society.

"Here's the first problem: More and more often, we're unable to think clearly...

Here's the second problem: More and more often, we're unable to remember...

Here's problem three: More and more often, we're unable to imagine and hope...

Here's problem four: More and more often, we're unable to recognize and live real freedom...

...The America we have today is a culture built on marketing — and marketing works in exactly the opposite way. Marketing appeals to desire and emotion. It depends on the suppression of critical thought, because thinking can get in the way of buying the product or believing the message. And that explains why marketing is tied so tightly to images. Images operate below the radar of critical thought. This is why car dealers put an attractive female model next to their latest sports car, instead of a stack of performance statistics...

Jeremy Rifkin, the author and social critic, once described modern culture — in the United States and elsewhere in the developed world — as a "paid-for experience" based on the commodification of passion, ideals, relationships and even time. [2] That's a hard judgment, but too often it seems to be true. If we want freedom, we try to buy it by purchasing this car or that smartphone. If we want romance, we try to buy it by purchasing this vacation cruise or that hotel package...

My point is this: The more our economy misuses the language of our desires, dreams and ideals to sell products, to create new hungers and to commodify life … then the darker our appetites grow, and the more mixed up our dreams and ideals become. We feed our spiritual longings with material things, and we end up starving morally. We confuse ourselves to a point where we no longer know what real love, real intimacy, honest work, personal maturity, freedom, virtue, duty, family — and even a meaningful life itself — look like. We're left with a chronic aching for more; more of everything and anything, except the one thing that matters: God. We end up cocooned in unreality; a Fantasyland of our own making... 

...In the second book of The Life of St. Francis by Thomas of Celano we read this description of the 13^th century man who sought to live the Gospel without gloss or compromise, and who inspires our current Holy Father so powerfully:

"In these last times, a new evangelist, like one of the rivers of paradise, has poured out the streams of the Gospel in a holy flood over the whole world. [St. Francis] preached the way of the Son of God and the teaching of truth in his deeds. In him and through him an unexpected joy and a holy newness came into the world. A shoot of the ancient religion suddenly renewed the old and decrepit. A new spirit was placed in the hearts of the elect, and a holy anointing has been poured out in their midst" (89).

Elsewhere Thomas of Celano writes:

"The brothers who lived with [St. Francis] knew that daily, constantly, talk of Jesus was always on his lips. He was always with Jesus: Jesus in his heart, Jesus in his mouth, Jesus in his ears, Jesus in his eyes, Jesus in his hands. He bore Jesus always in his whole body . . . Often as he walked along a road, thinking and singing of Jesus, he would forget his destination and start inviting all the elements to praise Jesus" (115).

The heart of every new work of evangelization is this kind of ardor; a simple, passionate faith that can only come from seeking out and giving ourselves entirely to Jesus Christ, no matter what the cost. It's fitting that Francis of Assisi is the patron saint of Colorado, and that our new Holy Father took the name of Francis. Just as St. Francis was raised up in his time to preach the Gospel with new passion in new kinds of ways, so God asks all of us here today to follow the same path, with the same unshakeable faith, to preach Jesus Christ by word and deed in our families, our friendships, our business dealings and in every corner of daily life."  CLICK HERE TO READ THE ENTIRE ARTICLE.

recent ZENIT interviews and articles

Interview With Archbishop Bruno Forte
What a Theologian-Pope Tells Theology (Part 1) & (Part 2)

Archbishop Chaput to Congress on Priests and Laity
"The Prince of This World and the Evangelization of Culture"

A Heart on Fire, Catholic Witness and the Next America

CNA - Archbishop Chaput sees US trending against religious liberty

A Heart on Fire: Catholic Witness and the Next America

The Doctrine of the Catholic Kennedy? Worthless

In 1960, he theorized the most rigid separation between Church and state, in order to be acceptable as president. Half a century later, Archbishop Chaput is accusing him of causing serious damage. An essay by Professor Diotallevi on the limits and shortcomings of secularism by Sandro Magister

Related Post

CERC - Party Girl - Colleen Carroll Campbell - chapter 1 from My Sisters the Saints: A Spiritual Memoir

A poignant and powerful spiritual memoir about how the lives of the saints changed the life of a modern woman. His Grace Charles J. Chaput, Archbishop of Philadelphia, introduces Colleen Carroll Campbell's new book this way:

Colleen Carroll Campbell is one of the finest writers on the American Catholic scene, and My Sisters the Saints: A Spiritual Memoir shows her heart, her skill, and her keen intelligence at their best. This is a wonderful, engaging personal memoir and a great witness of faith.

Joseph Bottum, former editor of First Things, frequently has something a little different to contribute. He has this to say about Colleen's new book:

The saints undo the world — for by their sheer existence, they tell us we may have gotten it wrong: all our conventions, all our agreements, all our correctnesses and easy thoughts are no help when things come crashing in. In troubled times, Colleen Carroll Campbell found herself by reading the lives of the great women saints. And you might find your own self, reading Campbell's My Sisters the Saints.

Subject to the Governor of the Universe

The American Experience and Global Religious Liberty by Archbishop Charles J. Chaput, O.F.M. Cap.

recent articles by Deacon Keith Fournier

Light of the World: Summer Conversations between Pope and Peter Seewald a Book

A Catholicism of Resistance: Archbishop Charles Chaput's Prophetic Voice

Chaput on the Church and Caesar

Insight Scoop

recent ZENIT articles

Archbishop Chaput's Reflections on Vatican II

Crisis of Rationality in European Democracy

Supreme Knight Extols an Anthropology of Love

Chaput as new D.C. Archbishop?

This is very interesting.