Help. Need Citation about Catholic Identity.

[Gabriela]

Watup Phatmassers. I'm writing a paper (it's done, really), but one section needs a citation from Church documents about Catholic identity being founded on relationship with God. I've searched the CCC and can't find anything that states this explicitly enough.

Can anyone provide a source?

[Basilisa Marie]

Lumen Gentium chapter 2? I don't know how explicit you're hoping to go, it'd probably be easier and more likely that you'll find some quotes you'll have to explicate. 

[Gabriela]

Yeah, that's not direct enough. And I don't have space to explain.

SIGH.

[Era Might]

"The authority of Jesus - and the authority of the Christian – comes from this ability to understand the things of the Spirit, to speak the language of the Spirit. It is from this anointing of the Holy Spirit. Often, so often, we find among our faithful, simple old women who perhaps didn’t even finish elementary school, but who can speak to us of things better than any theologian, because they have the Spirit of Christ. Exactly like St. Paul. We all need to ask for this. Lord grant us Christian identity, which You had. Grant us Your Spirit. Grant us Your way of thinking, feeling, speaking: May the Lord grant us the anointing of the Holy Spirit. "

--Pope Francis http://www.news.va/en/news/pope-at-santa-marta-the-authority-of-christian-ide

It would do us good today to think about our Christian identity. Our Christian identity is belonging to a people: the Church . Without this, we are not Christians. We entered the Church through baptism: there we are Christians. And for this reason, we should be in the habit of asking for the grace of memory, the memory of the journey that the people of God has made; also of personal memory: What God did for me, in my life, how has he made me walk ... Ask for the grace of hope, which is not optimism: no, no! It 's something else. And ask for the grace to renew the covenant with the Lord who has called us every day. May the Lord give us these three graces, which are necessary for the Christian identity

http://www.news.va/en/news/pope-at-mass-we-are-not-christian-without-the-chur

Edited April 23, 2015 by Era Might

[Ark]

We used to identify with our Roman rite (e.g. Roman Catholic). Not sure how most Catholics identify nowadays.

[Gabriela]

    It would do us good today to think about our Christian identity. Our Christian identity is belonging to a people....

​Hmmm... That rather works directly against my argument. I'm looking for this for the paper I'm writing on hymnals. Post-Vatican II, there was a statistically significant rise in self-referential pronouns, suggesting that our Christian identity is being reframed, from being built on relationship with God, to being built on our relationship with one another. (Hands-down, the pronoun that increased the most in usage was "we".)

See how that's a problem with this quote? I think my (non-Catholic) readers might think this actually works against me.

I do very much appreciate your efforts to find this, though. I didn't find it, and I searched, so it must have been difficult!

[Nihil Obstat]

Proving harder than I anticipated.  Here is Redemptor Hominis. I figured pre-VII might be somewhat more useful for your purposes, but this seems to be nearly along the lines of what you are looking for. I will try to keep searching tomorrow.

 

10 . The human dimension of the mystery of the Redemption

Man cannot live without love. He remains a being that is incomprehensible for himself, his life is senseless, if love is not revealed to him, if he does not encounter love, if he does not experience it and make it his own, if he does not participate intimately in it. This, as has already been said, is why Christ the Redeemer "fully reveals man to himself". If we may use the expression, this is the human dimension of the mystery of the Redemption. In this dimension man finds again the greatness, dignity and value that belong to his humanity. In the mystery of the Redemption man becomes newly "expressed" and, in a way, is newly created. He is newly created! "There is neither Jew nor Greek, there is neither slave nor free, there is neither male nor female; for you are all one in Christ Jesus"⁶⁴. The man who wishes to understand himself thoroughly-and not just in accordance with immediate, partial, often superficial, and even illusory standards and measures of his being-he must with his unrest, uncertainty and even his weakness and sinfulness, with his life and death, draw near to Christ. He must, so to speak, enter into him with all his own self, he must "appropriate" and assimilate the whole of the reality of the Incarnation and Redemption in order to find himself. If this profound process takes place within him, he then bears fruit not only of adoration of God but also of deep wonder at himself. How precious must man be in the eyes of the Creator, if he "gained so great a Redeemer"⁶⁵, and if God "gave his only Son "in order that man "should not perish but have eternal life"⁶⁶.

In reality, the name for that deep amazement at man's worth and dignity is the Gospel, that is to say: the Good News. It is also called Christianity. This amazement determines the Church's mission in the world and, perhaps even more so, "in the modern world". This amazement, which is also a conviction and a certitude-at its deepest root it is the certainty of faith, but in a hidden and mysterious way it vivifies every aspect of authentic humanism-is closely connected with Christ. It also fixes Christ's place-so to speak, his particular right of citizenship-in the history of man and mankind. Unceasingly contemplating the whole of Christ's mystery, the Church knows with all the certainty of faith that the Redemption that took place through the Cross has definitively restored his dignity to man and given back meaning to his life in the world, a meaning that was lost to a considerable extent because of sin. And for that reason, the Redemption was accomplished in the paschal mystery, leading through the Cross and death to Resurrection.

The Church's fundamental function in every age and particularly in ours is to direct man's gaze, to point the awareness and experience of the whole of humanity towards the mystery of God, to help all men to be familiar with the profundity of the Redemption taking place in Christ Jesus. At the same time man's deepest sphere is involved-we mean the sphere of human hearts, consciences and events.

[truthfinder]

All I can think of is the book by Thomas Day - Why Catholics Can't Sing (New York: Crossroads, 1990) . I know there is a section in it about the rise in personal pronouns - It's possible there might be a citation in there that might help.

[Era Might]

​Hmmm... That rather works directly against my argument. I'm looking for this for the paper I'm writing on hymnals. Post-Vatican II, there was a statistically significant rise in self-referential pronouns, suggesting that our Christian identity is being reframed, from being built on relationship with God, to being built on our relationship with one another. (Hands-down, the pronoun that increased the most in usage was "we".)

See how that's a problem with this quote? I think my (non-Catholic) readers might think this actually works against me.

I do very much appreciate your efforts to find this, though. I didn't find it, and I searched, so it must have been difficult!

​Interesting. "We" is definitely a word to be wary of, it is a word of control, including people in what you say without their participation or ability to speak (since you have spoken for them already). Here's something that might give you some more food for thought, not a church document but from a discussion of the Jewish/Christian "we" (beginning on page 48)

https://books.google.com/books?id=FBWzFb4vGl4C&pg=PA48&lpg=PA48&dq="ivan+illich"+"social+we"&source=bl&ots=-rB8I2aKu6&sig=CxkoaRfKHksNfNI9aZw-aceInVQ&hl=en&sa=X&ei=TEM6Vf7BCoGusQXXnYCwDw&ved=0CC0Q6AEwAg#v=onepage&q="ivan illich" "social we"&f=false

The author talks about how the unique "we" of Christianity is different from the ethnic "we" of a tribe or nation of civilization. The Christian "we" is the "we" of the Good Samaritan, who steps outside his separation from the Jew, and creates a new "I-Thou" relationship that cannot be created except as a conscious and deliberate choice, it is a choice of faith that creates both a new "I" and a new "We." But this is not a generic "we" but a "we" with a face and a name. This kind of "we" is only made possible by the God who became man and disrupted our human relationships..."there is no longer Jew nor Greek, slave nor free, male nor female, but all are one in Christ Jesus..."