The LampStand Foundation
Creating tools for the deep knowledge leadership of grassroots organizations whose mission is the transformation of criminals.
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The Lay Apostolate |
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(899) The initiative of lay Christians is necessary especially when the matter involves discovering or inventing the means for permeating social, political, and economic realities with the demands of Christian doctrine and life. This initiative is a normal element of the life of the Church: "Lay believers are in the front line of Church life; for them the Church is the animating principle of human society. Therefore, they in particular ought to have an ever-clearer consciousness not only of belonging to the Church, but of being the Church, that is to say, the community of the faithful on earth, under the leadership of the Pope, the common Head, and of the bishops in communion with him. They are the Church." (Pope Pius XII) (900) Since, like all the faithful, lay Christians are entrusted by God with the apostolate by virtue of their Baptism and Confirmation, they have the right and duty, individually or grouped in associations, to work so that the divine message of salvation may be known and accepted by all men throughout the earth. This duty is the more pressing when it is only through them that men can hear the Gospel and know Christ. Their activity in ecclesial communities is so necessary that, for the most part, the apostolate of the pastors cannot be fully effective without it. (Catechism of the Catholic Church, 1997, #899-900)
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Lighted Lamp
A professional criminal who transforms his life and
seeks to help others is a lighted lamp capable of great work within
the field of criminal reformation.
The professional criminal is a person who commits crimes for money, to whom crime is a way of life, habitual, as in "of the nature of a habit; fixed by habit; constantly repeated or continued; customary" (Oxford Dictionary) and prison time an occupational hazard.
A criminal, as we use the term, is a professional criminal.
It is used by LampStand rather than other terms like offender/ex-offender, convict/ex-convict, or felon/ex-felon, because none of those specifically define the act of crime which is committed for economic reasons, while excluding those offenses of lust and perversion, addiction, momentary rage, mental illness, or accident.
The use of this term creates a clear line of demarcation between the individuals to whom our work is directed, and from whom we look for innovative and effective solutions for criminal reentry programs.
We consider time in maximum security prison as a qualifying factor in identifying criminal world leaders from the same perspective national business leaders would be identified by their involvement in nationally important business organizations.
Transformation and reformation are the primary terms used rather than rehabilitation, because it implies a previous state when one was not a criminal, while the criminals LampStand's work is directed to were essentially born into the criminal world.
Professional criminals become part of the communal community when they make the choice to transform themselves, to create from within a different person than whom they were previously, to become a person whose motivation is based on an eternal truth potent enough to trump the truth of the criminal world, and this eternal truth is only found in the Catholic Church.
Pentiential criminals who have found this truth, and also taken the steps necessary to become community leaders in the transformation of other criminals -- becoming lighted lamps -- are those to whom our work is directed.
For a transformed criminal to retain his baptismal balance within the world, he must daily practice those ancient rituals dedicated workers of the apostolate have relied on for centuries to strengthen themselves -- he must walk the eternal path seeking the deepest knowledge of all.
It is the knowledge gained from continuous commuion with God; the continual prayer and daily practice set forth by the reach for perfection to which each Catholic is called through baptism and communion within the Kingdom of God.
In olden times, the paths humans made to travel here and there were made by human feet, traveling the same way through the forest and over the plain as the day and the year before, and as the years deepened the path, it became a hardened way that remained for guidance through the woods and mountains on the way home.
As it is with our own path, made daily through the rituals established by the Church to feed her saints and priests the food divine -- morning prayer, Mass, midday prayer, praying the Rosary, examination of conscience, sacrifices to the Church, to God, to Peter, Friday fasting, resolute against sin and strengthening virtue -- and through this daily practice, the armor of God is slowly crafted as the pentiential and transformed criminal aspiring to community leadership -- for whom this is a vital journey of lifetime atonement from the years of harm caused to others through his criminality -- enters into the hardened path of the priestly soul and saintly temperament on the long journey home, becoming a lighted lamp to his brothers.
"To those who are searching for a new and authentic theory and praxis of liberation, the Church offers not only her social doctrine and, in general, her teaching about the human person redeeemed in Christ, but also her concrete commitment and material assistance in the struggle against marginalization and suffering." (Pope John Paul II, Centesimus Annus)