Real faith for a real world
It’s easy to get so caught up in the busyness of life that we navigate our days on autopilot, rarely taking time to think, “Why am I doing this?” or even “Should I be doing this?” We don’t have time to process the nitty-gritty quandaries of daily life through the lens of our Catholic faith. Sometimes we end up interacting with people, institutions and issues in ways that do not authentically reflect our identity as disciples of Jesus and beloved children made in the image of God.
This doesn’t make us bad people. It makes us fallible humans living a reality in which other things are constantly demanding our attention.
Intentional Catholic is about wrestling with what it means to be a Catholic Christian in the midst of a real–and messy–world. How do we live out the faith in a practical way outside the confines of Sunday Mass? After all, Jesus never directly addressed many of the thorniest issues we wrestle with today.
But just because Jesus didn’t get down in the weeds on every issue humanity would ever face doesn’t mean we’re all out of luck. The Church, through her saints, shepherds and documents, has been speaking on issues throughout the ages. We just have to be open to listening. The excerpts you will find here speak profoundly to what it means to interact with the world as a disciple of Christ. Sometimes they will inspire. Other times, they will challenge. My hope is that the quotes will act as an invitation to dig into the source documents themselves. (The Church has obligingly archived these documents online; find them linked here.) May they lead us all to enter more deeply into the journey of discipleship.
Intentional Catholic 