Rather funny that I saw an article today in Aleteia that mentioned Dostoevsky’s work The Idiot, which I quoted only yesterday in a journal entry! Here is the link to the article:

https://aleteia.org/2022/05/16/the-summer-theology-institute-invites-high-school-students-to-camp-to-explore-theology-of-beauty/

This article says:

The “Beauty Will Save the World” camp at The University of St. Francis features workshops on prayer, iconography, theology, fellowship and recreation……The Summer Theology Institute at the University of St. Francis in Fort Wayne, Indiana, is once again offering its highly acclaimed week-long overnight summer theology camp for high school students. 

Dubbed “Beauty Will Save the World,” the camp takes its name from a line in Fyodor Dostoevsky’s novel, “The Idiot”. Operating under the conviction that the Catholic faith can provide an antidote to the ills of a relativistic, modern world, the Summer Theology Institute is inviting students to “come to know their Creator through beauty,” explain the camp’s organizers.

Whilst I was pleasantly surpised to see the synchronious overlap in my expeience b/n yesterday and today re: Fyodor Dostoevsky, my heart sank when I thought of the paucity of such genuine retreat experiences (like the one described in this article) for adults in Melbourne, Australia!

This terrible lack has persistently beguiled Church life in Melbourne, Australia, more or less since the wrapping up of the episcopate of Rev. Archbishop Frank Little in the mid 1990s. From then on corruption eaked in to the infrastructural design and planning of the way things were run & done in the Melbourne Archdiocese. Many formely authentic apostolic works and outreaches became focussed on internalizing a worldly user-pays system which in-effect sold out the Church’s Catholic value system in exchange for adopting secularist operational mindsets and practices.

Six solid examples of this come to mind:

* The doing away with Christ College and substituting its solidly Catholic teacher education with a diluted variant blended with much worldly ethos in constructing the relatively recent educational disaster called ACU – (Australian Catholic University), which btw, is only Catholic in name but not much else!
* The downsizing and backgrounding of the Church’s public presence through the selling off of religious community properties to secular institutions and developers.
* The introduction of a secularist “user-pays” system into Catholic Support Agencies such as CentaCare (now Catholic Care) and Catholic Family Services.
* Cutting of archdiocesan funding to apostolic works for spiritual growth and enrichment such as the Carmelite Center and the Campion Center for Ignatian Spirituality.
* Adoption of secularist “user-pays” values and funding system into the coordination of the retreat centers that are left after most of them closed.
* The cost of retreats offered by these few remaining centers is excessive, unrealistic, and plainly unsuitable for something with a religious focal point as often such packages come within a $300-$1000 price bracket which is beyond the budget of low-income people and students. And what’s more, the timeframe now offered for preparing to attend is way too rushed to afford a decent window of prayerful discernment on whether to attend or not. In addition, there is no longer any refund if prospective attendees should have to cancel last minute through no fault of their own.

All this just squeezes the life out of what ought to be a spiritually thriving space, i.e. the Catholic Church in Melbourne for personal growth and development and positive social change in lieu of authentic Biblical principles being lived out as a Christ-centered witness to the wider world.

The “user-pays” value system must be evicted from the life of the Church in Australia as it is doing a grave injustice and disservice to its ultimate purpose and mission which is to save hearts and lives by providing an alternative path to that exemplified by the world in the showing through the charitable promotion and adulation of Catholic virtue, how to do life well – by living it with integrity and compassion, for the glory of God and the salvation of souls in both the temporal and spiritual domains of life and in all its fullness.

The values of the world must be prevented from entering the Church for they are incompatible within her. The Church has a sacred duty to be custodian of all knowledge and revelation inspired by God as well as to keep herself free from being stained by the values held dear to the world. She must therefore be careful and on guard to render unto God only those things that belong to Him and not those that are unfit to be “in His service”, i.e. those values that are an affront to God’s mercy and compassion since the value of true caritas – charity is of an inestimable worth compared to the profit motive. For it must be as Jesus says:

“Render unto Caesar, the things which are Caesar’s and unto God those that belong to Him.”

Matthew 22 : 21b

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Key Words:

Fyodor Dostoevsky, caritas, iconography, apostolic works, Aleteia, Catholic virtue, secularist, user-pays