What Is True Catholic Faith? by Bill Droel

  

Catholics are schooled in the faith by memorizing dogmatic points and lots of Catholic trivia. What are the colors for various liturgical seasons and special feast days? What are the three possible destinations upon one’s death? Name the seven sacraments. Name the glorious mysteries of the rosary. Name the four gospels.

This quiz show format is perhaps acceptable for primary-grade children. It is regularly used in parish-based religious education programs and in a few light-hearted card games and skits. However, today’s Catholic young adults--with exceptions--exhibit little interest in or basic understanding of essential dogmas like the Trinity or the Real Presence in the Eucharist. When young adults do not know or do not comprehend or are uninterested in essential beliefs, their practice of Catholic faith wanes.

Nonetheless, many young adults are humanists. They are good people who episodically help with charitable efforts. They are conscientious on the job. They are loyal to friends. They possess some humor.  In a sense they are good enough Catholics, even though they don’t proudly identify as such.

In addition to basic knowledge of the faith there is another component to Catholicism. Catholics and other Christians have faith because in some manner Jesus fills their hearts and souls. Maybe the points of dogma and the elements of Catholic culture come first; maybe they come later. Likely the two are in a blender. But without a relationship with Jesus/God, faith is unsustainable.

Our Catholic bishops, deliberating at Vatican II (1962-1965), concluded that in daily life the deductive method must be complemented by reflection on one’s experience, leading to wise application. For example, there is a philosophical explanation of how Jesus is present in the Eucharist. There might be found here and there a young adult or two who has learned some of Aristotle’s distinctions and can articulate that explanation of the Real Presence. That same young adult, however, might never know or feel Jesus’ presence as they go about their job, their family life, or any of their other involvements. Another young adult can recite Psalm23 from memory without ever knowing the Shepherd. An exclusive reliance on the top-down approach of transmitting the faith potentially stifles creativity, inhibits research and expansion, distorts understanding of complexities, discourages action and cheapens relationships. Therefore, experience must be prior to any theory or ideology—not necessarily prior chronologically, but it is an essential ingredient to faith.

Vatican II teaches that religious experience is not separate from daily experience. In fact, faith begins with so-called ordinary encounters. To use a theological catch phrase: grace builds upon nature.

Yet, experience alone is insufficient. A person can fly through the months—a job promotion, new “friends” through social media, travel, a full social life, a positive health report and the like. Vatican II asks such a person, and all of us, “what is the meaning of this feverish activity?” Am I holy? Do I really love? How do I get my conversations past the superficialities? Why is my experience so episodic? Where will I be in five years? What’s the point of my prayer? Where did I put my moral compass?

Experience plus reflection equals faithful wisdom. A faithful person needs quiet time. The mobile device is locked away for an hour, or at least 45 minutes each day. The laptop is also asleep. The TV is disconnected. Still, wisdom does not arrive on the first try. It must be nurtured and sustained, especially through the dry times. Wisdom is particularly hard to gain in our individualistic, vacuous culture. It takes practice.

 The multitudinous rules of Catholicism are useless without faith-based wisdom. Catholicism admittedly comes with faults galore, some of which are scandalously immoral. However, Catholicism is a carrier of a sophisticated ethic, a rich culture with interesting symbols, a profound liturgy, inexhaustible Scripture and a heavenly host of role models. Going forward, the challenge is to observe and act in one’s surroundings, to judge the signs of the times and with discipline to reflect on growth in the love of Christ. Does it sound too pious? Well, be sure to put perfection aside. Then, holiness is possible in the here-and-now. Experience counts.

 

Droel is editor at National Center for the Laity (PO Box 291102, Chicago, IL 60629).

 

Catholicism and AI by Bill Droel

 

With hammer in hand, Martin Luther (1483-1546) struck a significant blow against clericalism and for the laity in the world by insisting on the universal call to holiness. A cobbler’s work is as valuable to God as is a priest’s, he explained. The vocation of a homemaker is no further away from God than that of a priest in the pulpit.

Subsequent leaders of the Reformation lost sight of Luther’s significant contribution on the primacy of baptism and the centrality of lay spirituality. Instead, those leaders preached the “utter depravity” of each person and claimed that the world was a playground for the devil. Temptation lurked all around. This pessimistic turn in Protestant thinking only reinforced the heaven and earth dualism, the difference between clergy and laity.

Gradually, Protestants found a way to balance the good that people can do in the world and the persistence of worldly evil. For example, successful industrialist Andrew Carnegie (1835-1919) pointed to the philanthropic responsibilities for monied Christians, in his 1889 essay “The Gospel of Wealth.”

Max Weber (1864-1920), a founder of sociology, popularized the balanced approach in The Protestant Ethic and the Spirit of Capitalism (Penguin, 1904). Certain Christian virtues (like thrift, competence, loyalty, efficiency, measured charity) reinforce habits that are important to success in a capitalist economy, he wrote. Unfortunately, the Christian side of this philosophy has been eclipsed these days by a laissez faire style of capitalism that prizes utilitarian ethics, individualism, and consumerism.

What does Catholicism have to say about work?

Karl Marx (1818-1883) and Friedrich Engels (1820-1895) were greatly disturbed by the downside of capitalism: crowded housing, dangerous occupations, child labor, in a word, misery. Their radical proposals included the abolition of private property.

Pope Leo XIII (1810-1903) came to the defense of private property in his 1891 encyclical, On the Condition of Labor. Leo XIII added, however, that capitalism must have restraints, like government regulation, labor unions, professional standards and more.

In his Theology of Work (Regnery, 1966), Fr. Marie-Dominique Chenu, OP (1895-1990) further developed Catholic doctrine about the laity at work. His perspective, like that of other contributors to Vatican II (1962-1965), was pegged to an industrial economy with its impoverishing downside.

Before his election as pope, Saint John Paul II (1920-2005) was a stonecutter in a limestone quarry. He was employed in a chemical plant and as a railroad maintenance man. He was a dramatist and a theater promoter. He was also quite fluent in the Marxist perspective on work. As pope, he wrote a September 1981 encyclical, On Human Work. It stands as a masterful Catholic reflection on the philosophy and theology of work.

Kate Ward of Marquette University brings the topic into our post-industrial context with Making a Life: Catholic Social Teaching and the Meaning of Work (National Center for the Laity, 2026).

Ward begins with a contrast between a work-until-you-drop mindset and a Catholic worldview. Our current economy is premised on what she calls workism. It values activity in the world exclusively by “outputs that can literally be counted.” Workism is associated with long hours on the job, with unpredictable job schedules, and with side hustles (aka entrepreneurship or gigs).

By contrast, as she details, Catholicism uses “an inclusive definition of work.” For starters, Catholic theology regards work as “more than what we do for pay… Unpaid work is work.” It is “any activity through which humans transform the world.”

Ward heaves aside the pessimistic idea that work is a punishment for sin. Adam and Eve were (in one translation) “dressing paradise” before the Fall and they continued to work thereafter. Rather than a punishment, work in and of itself contributes to holiness.

Though Catholicism maintains ideals about work, it is realistic; work--on the job, around the home and in the community--is irksome. Nonetheless, keep in mind that through toil and accomplishment the “primary importance” of our activity “is how it shapes the worker, rather than what work produces,” Ward urges.

Injustice finds its way into the world of work—again, on the job, in the home and in the community. Inadequate wages are a prime example. Yet, a person’s employer might be paying “the best they can afford,” Ward interestingly acknowledges. She goes on to explain the concept of indirect employers. These are the entities that set the terms within which a person’s direct employer (like a small business owner, a non-profit agency, or a franchise) operates—factors like government regulations, the sector’s expectations, the corporate office that controls significant variables.

Ward concludes Making a Life with applications of Catholic doctrine to caregiving, to art and leisure. She also examines food preparation from farm to table. Like all products of work, a meal is “a larger reality that can be called sacramental.” It stands “for something larger; the labor that produced it.” That labor is an extension of God’s ongoing creation and thus a meal (like other products or accomplishments) contains grace.

Pope Leo XIV chose his papal name, he says, precisely to build upon the Catholic theology of work begun in 1891 by Pope Leo XIII. Specifically, Leo XIV says Catholicism must reflect on an AI-economy. Kate Ward’s Making a Life is a good start to such reflection.

Droel is editor at National Center for the Laity (PO Box 291102, Chicago, IL 60629). It distributes On the Condition of Labor by Pope Leo XIII (free), On Human Work by Saint John Paul II ($7) and Making a Life by Kate Ward ($18).

 

Dilexi Te – A Root of Anti-Semitism?

Pope Leo XIV's 1st Encyclical

"Now I am going to make the synagogue of Satan--those who profess to be Jews, but are liars, because they are no such thing--I will make them come and fall at your feet and admit that you are the people that I love."  Rev.  3:9  

After the destruction of the Jewish temple in the year 70, the Jewish community was split between the synagogue Jews and the Christian Jews.  There was hostility between them as indicated by John’s book of Revelation and other scriptural passages.

Does Pope Leo XIV’s Encyclical serve as a follow-up to Leo XIII’s inaugural Encyclical on social justice, Rerum Novarum 1891, or simply a demonstration of a root of anti-semitism? 

Machine Politics and the Church by Bill Droel

 

The Catholic church and the political machine had a symbiotic relationship in Chicago and elsewhere for many years. So argues Dominic Pacyga in his latest book: Clout City (University of Chicago Press, 2025). Chicago politics was “a mixture of the sacred and the profane, a combination of cultural and religious roots and more worldly pursuits,” he writes. “Chicago is a secular, capitalist city, but one with a religious core.” Pacyga includes synagogues and Jewish organizations on the religious side. Both the machine and the church/synagogue were compassionate alternatives to the Protestant establishment, popularly called downtown or big corporate.

Within his timeframe, 1870 to 2023, Pacyga profiles many of the key actors in the machine, most of whom were Democrats. The machine’s efficient years were 1930-1965 when it was largely associated with Richard J Daley (1902-1976), whoserved 21 years as Chicago mayor and 23 years as the party’s chair in the county.His son Richard M Daley, now in his mid-80s, subsequently served 22 years as mayor.

The machine was hierarchical. The boss relied on faithful commissioners to oversee city services. With rare exceptions the boss also controlled the city council. The council member (called the aldermanin Chicagolingo) was paired with a ward committee person. The next level (covering maybe four to a dozen blocks) was the responsibility of a precinct captain, whose day job was often with the city.

The machine had a practical communitarian mindset in contrast to society’s dominant philosophy of individual achievement. A collective mentality was nurtured, in part, by ethnic and religious culture, says Pacyga. He uses De La Salle High School in Chicago’s near southside as an example. It was “a political incubator” for machine politicians, Pacyga details. Five mayors including the Daley’s graduated from De La Salle. Plus,the school educated two county presidents and “countless other politicians, judges and city officials [and] numerous businesspeople, police officers, firefighters and a host of city workers.” That high school stressed order, hierarchy and loyalty. It “encouraged Catholic attitudes toward fairness, duty and sin, often in deep contrast to the rampant individualism and unbridled capitalism” of Chicago.

Of course, the machine had corruption. However, neighborhood people overlooked it, as long as the community at large benefited from jobs, emergency assistance, license considerations, snow removal, trash collection, fire and police protection. The machine “existed side by side with an approach to political governance that derived from and centered on the communalism of Chicago’s immigrant and working-class communities.”

A similar description of New York’s machine, called Tammany Hall, is found in Terry Golway’s Machine Made (W.W. Norton, 2014). Again, political corruption was taken for granted. But for New York’s immigrants, especially those from Ireland, Tammany was able “to mediate the capriciousness of laissez-faire capitalism.” It delivered jobs and social services to working families in a respectful manner, untainted by paternal noblesse oblige.

As in Chicago, the New York machine relied implicitly on a foundation in the Catholic experience. Golway devotes several pages to Archbishop John Hughes (1797-1864), describing him as “aggressive and political to his very marrow.” Hughes, originally from Ireland, explained the feeling of Irish and other immigrants: For the first five days of my life, I was “on social and civil equality with the most favored subjects of the British Empire. Then I was baptized asa Catholic and became a second-class citizen.”

In time the machine model of urban politics disintegrated, Pacyga says. The corruption became too enriching for too few while service delivery declined. Further, the post-1960s reform movement within the Democratic Party drew its leaders into elite circles. They associatedwith tech barons and favored focus groups over the word on the street. The Democratssupportedseveral cultural causes foreign to the Catholic sensibility. Suburbanization was the big factor in the machine’s decline. As immigrants left the city, they took on aspirations of the upper-class. Their Catholicism, if it remained at all, was like the individualism of evangelicals.

Nowadays, does a local politician or a pastor have any influence on one’s difficulties with health insurance or with internet providers or with immigration policies or employment opportunities? Does the notion of community have any traction in a society where the sum of striving individuals is the ethical norm? Is a government or church model based on services in any way compelling to today’s young adults?Should there be a new machine and what form would it take?

Droel edits a printed newsletter on faith and work: INITIATIVES (PO Box 291102, Chicago, IL 60629)

Prayer in Dodge County Detention Center

 

Dodge County Detention Center in Juneau, Wisconsin

God and Our Father, you are present here with us.                                                                    Thank you for bringing us together today in your honor.                                                            We ask you to light up our path                                                                                                  That we now walk in this world.                                                                                             

                                 You are the hope that we and our families                                                  Receive, the hope that you give us.                  Help us continue forward          With faith, and with love and dignity.                                                                                                                    God our Father, it is good that you are at our side                           Teach us to be resilient                        And thus overcome adversities.                                                                                                                                           Love for always,  For our families.                                                         But soon we will be back together                                          To carry on loving each other as always.                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                          This poem is the English translation of a song composed and sung by a volunteer visitor to the Detention Center.  After the visits with the immigrant detainees, individuals offer a prayer from their hearts.

Christmas 2025

 The word Evangelization is almost the same in Greek and in Latin.  

For the Romans it meant Good News, Pax Romana through military victory.  

For Christians, the Good News was announced on Christmas night by the angels singing, 

"Peace on Earth to men of good will."  

Evangelization meant peace through nonviolence, a direct contrast to the Roman Empire.  

For Christmas Donald Trump sent planes to bomb Nigeria, a Christmas present of the anti-Christ.  

People inspect the scene of a deadly bombing in a mosque in Maiduguri, Nigeria,  on Dec. 25, 2025.

Democratic Socialists - Who are they?

 In reference to the election of Democratic Socialist, Zohran Mamdani in New York City in November, 2025, we propose to present some defining information on Democratic Socialists.

Our Tastes Are Not the Same

by Frank Zeidler, Democratic Socialist Mayor of Milwaukee, Wisconsin.  (Reflections:  the Poetry of a Young Frank Zeidler, Milwaukee Public Library)

The 'Brotherhood of Man' becomes a trap and snare

    Unless a man reflects;

For only by a knowledge of our differences can we dare

        To remedy defects.

    Our tastes are not the same;

    We do not thrive in equal ways.

    And useless is the aim,

    Without this sight, for peace that stays.

Frank Zeidler

Frank Zeidler is among Milwaukee's most beloved and respected citizens.  A noted historian and statesman, Zeidler was mayor of Milwaukee from 1948 - 1960 and the Socialist party presidential candidate in 1976.

From The Making of Milwaukee by John Gurda, p. 211, Milwaukee County Historical Society.  Photo from the Milwaukee Public Library

Caption: The party press pictured the Socialist landslide of 1910 as "Milwaukee Welcoming the Sunrise."

After rising to a sustained ovation at the 1910 victory party, Victor Berger spoke, for once, with genuine humility:  

"Comrades, I want to ask every man and woman in this audience to stand up and with lifted hand take a pledge that we will do all in our power to help the men that the people have chosen to do their duty and to fulfill our promises.  The eyes of the country will be upon us.  We must make good for the faith that is in us." 

Victor Berger, the pragmatic idealist who became the Moses of Milwaukee Socialism.  (The Making of Milwaukee, by John Gurda, p. 205)