George Cardinal Pell - Test Everything: Hold Fast to what is Good

TEST EVERYTHING

GEORGE CARDINAL PELL

Hold Fast to What Is Good

Edited by
TESS LIVINGSTONE

IGNATIUS PRESS SAN FRANCISCO

First edition was published by
Connor Court Publishing Pty Ltd.,
Ballarat, Victoria, Australia 2010
2010 by George Pell and Tess Livingstone

Cover art:
Christ the Savior ( Pantocrator )
Saint Catherine's Monastery, Mount Sinai
Wikimedia Commons

Cover design by
Enrique Javier Aguilar Pinto

2015 by Ignatius Press, San Francisco
All rights reserved
ISBN 978-1-58617-992-2 (PB)
ISBN 978-1-68149-663-4 (E)
Library of Congress Control Number 2014949944
Printed in the United States of America

To my sister Margaret, much loved, true friend

Two thousand years after he wrote it, Saint Pauls advice to the Thessalonians, Test everything. Hold fast to what is good is as pertinent as ever. Halfway through the second decade of the twenty-first century, the civilized world is being severely tested, especially by the barbarism of ISIS, the self-styled Islamic State. Amid reports of its almost unimaginable atrocities, the death cults propaganda magazine has boasted of its ambition to hoist its sinister banner atop St Peters Square. For faithful Catholics, the situation is surely another reason to hold fast to what is good by turning to Our Lord, and to His Blessed Mother and the saints in prayer.

he reasserted that indissolubility of marriage is one of the rich truths of divine revelation.

Internal conflict and intrigue, of course, are nothing new to the Church. Cardinal Pells office in the Apostolic Palace overlooks the ancient stairway that was Pope Pius IXs escape route when he fled the Vatican, dressed as an ordinary priest, during the European upheavals of 1848.

Cardinal Pells current focus is Vatican finances. But this collection is a snapshot of how he has taught the faith, in all its richness, for decades. As he writes, human beings, especially the young,

need a person to follow, a cause to embrace, reasons to believe. Most importantly, they need to find among those of us who are older credible signs of faith and goodness and caring communities of service.
The best the Catholic Church has to offer is the gift of faith. To know the love and forgiveness of the one true God offered to us by His Son Jesus Christ provides an unparalleled sense of security and makes a world of difference in everyday living and in eternity. God is invisible, but God is real.

From the Old Testament prophets, the collection proceeds to examine the God question and to explore the historical figure of Christ and His teachings. It delves into some of the extraordinary characters the Church has produced through the centuries, including Saint Paul the missionary trailblazer, Australias Saint Mary of the Cross MacKillop, the heroic Japanese Martyrs of Nagasaki and Englands Thomas More and John Fisher, among others. Other pieces focus on prayer, love, leadership and the contribution of military chaplains.

The 80 pieces, delivered originally as far afield as Front Royal Virginia, Oxford, Malta, California, Ireland, Rome, the Isle of Wight, Germany, and of course Australia, are incisive, often unpredictable, sometimes sensitive, occasionally hard-hitting and always engaging. None are dull. While Australian in flavor, they will resonate in all corners of the universal Church. They reflect the cardinals wealth of experience as Archbishop of Sydney for thirteen years; Archbishop of Melbourne for five years; fostering of a new generation of young priests; leading World Youth Day in Sydney in 2008; reforming school catechetics; founding Catholic universities and establishing Domus Australia in Rome.

Many readers will be delighted, a few will be outraged and some will be stunned by the frank expose of a few modernist theologians efforts to trivialize Jesus Christ and His sufferings on the Cross. Like many good books, this one poses a raft of new questions to be explored. The cardinals contention that Children who are not loved by their parents or other significant figures find it hard to understand Gods love, for instance, could prompt an altogether different book or psychological treatise.

The collection challenges readers, whatever their beliefs or understandings, to consider some of the ultimate questions that confront us all, sooner or later: Why are we here on earth? What is the point of it all, given suffering and death? What is the good life?

After more than forty-eight years service as a priest, an Oxford doctorate in history and years of studying philosophy and theology, Cardinal Pell is convinced: It is more reasonable to believe in God than to reject the hypothesis of God by appealing to chance.... Goodness, truth, and beauty call for an explanation as do the principles of mathematics, physics, and the purpose-driven miracles of biology which run through our universe. The human capacities to recognize these qualities of truth, goodness, and beauty, to invent and construct, also call for an explanation.

From the United States to Ireland, Canada to New Zealand, English-speaking Catholics are reaping the benefits of a more reverent and uplifting Mass as a result of Cardinal Pell overseeing the English translation of the Roman Missal, under the Pontificates of Saint John Paul II and Benedict XVI. Those yet to discover the cardinals writings have a treat in store. In what is unfortunately turning into a fairly bleak and barren landscape, this collection will serve readers outside Australia as an introduction to one of the twenty-first century Churchs more interesting leaders.

In carrying out Christs instruction to Saint Peter Go teach all nations, the Churchs task is harder these days than it was for centuries. The public square is no longer a community hub outside the local parish. It is a worldwide marketplace of often conflicting ideas and philosophies, accessible anywhere, by anyone, at any hour of the day or night, at the touch of a button. This is no time for Catholic leaders to be shrinking violets. Test Everything. Hold fast to what is Good has the gravitas and style to thrive in the global public square.

TESS LIVINGSTONE
Ash Wednesday, 2015

THIS PUBLICATION collects eighty homilies, discourses, and pastoral letters of a great, contemporary man of the Church, George Cardinal Pell, the archbishop of Sydney. The earliest was written in 1984, the last in 2009. In 1984, Doctor Pell was the relatively youthful rector of Corpus Christi, the regional seminary located in the archdiocese of Melbourne. He had not yet been consecrated a bishop. That event would take place in 1987, when, at the age of forty-five, he was consecrated to assist the archbishop of Melbourne, Frank Little, as auxiliary. So the writings in this collection span nearly a generation. During that time, Australians have become more and more alert to the dramatic fact that the truth cannot happen without suffering. Cardinal Pell has become a central protagonist in the drama.

What is the view from the cardinals heights? He is a leader who knows his people well and writes with clarity and insight. His critical choices regarding the cultural wars are on target. With irony, humor, and easily worn scholarship, he counsels and cajoles the reader, always using the Cross of Christ as the unique and final measure of what it means to be human and thus holy.

His writings reveal a strong, gentle, and all-embracing heart. The style is fluent and fresh. Mulling over them is a source of joy, wisdom, and wonder. Besides the cathedrals of Melbourne and Sydney, their settings include Rome, Dusseldorf, the Isle of Wight, Oxford, and others. The topics unfold a splendid panoply of Christian thought. All are peppered with calls to conversion; some are very urgent. But he is consistently beyond moralism. Without laboring to do so, he penetrates to the depths of the Paschal Triduum. The reader is faced with the mystery of Gods absolute love. Without doubt, the cardinals writings make easy and delightful reading, but they are anything but easy-going in doctrine or moral application. He emphasizes the real in Christianity. The homilies are inescapably personal. In one of his most powerful homilies, Redemption and Suffering, he speaks to young people about crucifixion Christianity. Many Christians today pass over Jesus violent death quickly. In Australia we have more at our Christmas Masses than at Easter. So too outsiders and even Catholics who believe in a one-dimensional, kind, and tolerant Jesus are disconcerted when reminded that Jesus was killed for His teaching and activities. They are uneasy about crucifixion Christianity.

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