Tranquility in the Church is a rare and beautiful thing, with an emphasis on that word, “rare.” And this explains why two of my favorite saints are Francis of Assisi and Augustine of Hippo.
Both men lived at a time of conflict within the Church and turmoil in the surrounding culture. And neither man was weak or naïve. Francis was very far from the effeminate flower child of popular imagination. He was a formidable man and a demanding religious founder with an intense devotion to the Eucharist. And Augustine was a faithful shepherd to his people in a world of widespread heresy; a bishop not just with a great intellect, but also with the backbone to speak and fight for the truth. Which he did, vigorously, throughout his ministry.
And that brings us to a paradox. The Church is our Mater et Magistra, our mother and teacher, the source of our solace. She exists to transform the world through the proclamation of Jesus Christ. And history shows that, on the balance, she’s done a pretty good job of it. The Church is, and always has been, loaded with unknown, everyday saints, and a great many other good people trying to be saints. And yet, right alongside them in the Church is an energetic minority of frauds, hypocrites, and villains.
In the real world, the Church is peopled and led by human beings. And humans are creatures with flaws. And yet, here we are 20 centuries later, still yearning for something more than this world; still praising Jesus Christ; still believing in the Church and her mission. Something sustains and ennobles the Church over the terrain of hard centuries despite our best efforts at ruining her. And that “something” is a loving God who never abandons his bride.
So here’s the point: When we look to the future as Christians, there’s good news and bad news. C.S. Lewis described Christianity as a “fighting religion” for a reason. There’s evil in the world, and evil in our own hearts. The process of conversion involves unavoidable conflict. But the Gospel is good news. And in the end, the good news outweighs the bad. There are too many reasons for hope and confidence, too many sources of gratitude and joy, to ever justify despair. Reread the letters of St. Paul: Here’s a man who was rejected, beaten, jailed, and run out of town by angry mobs, again and again. But he never lost his confidence or joy because he knew and loved Jesus Christ. And with just those two weapons—the knowledge and love of Jesus Christ—he reset the course the world. That happened once. And it can happen again, starting with each of us.
Of course, the bad news is still bad. And bad news does serve a purpose. It’s medicinal, like a cold shower for drunks. It gets our attention. It suggests that maybe we need to sober up and start thinking and acting differently. We tend to associate the word “apocalypse” with disaster and suffering; the end of the world. But that’s not really accurate. Our English word “apocalypse” comes from the Greek word apokalyptein, which means to uncover things that are concealed. An apocalypse shows us the truth. And Somebody famous once said that the truth will make us free; not necessarily comfortable, but free to change the way we think and act. So since we’re now living through a kind of “apocalypse,” we might profitably focus on three very simple items: first, where we are now as the Church in the United States; second, how and why we got here; and third—and more happily—what we can do about it.
So, regarding Item No. 1, where we are now: Most of us can already sense that the Church in this country now operates in a very complicated environment. Government is increasingly unfriendly. Much of the media establishment is hostile. The clergy abuse scandal hurt a lot of good people and damaged Church credibility. Catholic sexual morality—which undergirds the whole biblical understanding of who and what it means to be human—is often seen as a form of bigotry. Baptisms, sacramental marriages, and church attendance are generally down. As many as one in three priests nominated for the episcopate now decline the ministry because of the burdens and criticism that come with the job.
We’re living through a multi-generational sea change in beliefs and values. It has enormous momentum. It won’t be easily reversed. And it’s causing both ambiguity and division within Church leadership, and a sense of confusion and powerlessness among individual believers—or at least those believers who are paying attention. The country I grew up in no longer really exists. And there’s no quick-fix to the problems we behaved ourselves into. The Wall Street Journal published data just last week (March 27) showing a sharp decline in American attitudes toward religion, patriotism, community involvement, tolerance for other people’s opinions, and even having children.
So let’s move on to Item No. 2: how and why we got here. In the wake of the clergy abuse scandal, it’s tempting to blame our bishops for just about everything wrong with the Church. That would be convenient. It would also be wrong. I’ll say more about bishops shortly. In the meantime, we should realize that the main factors now rewiring our culture come from outside the Church. And they’re beyond any religious leader’s control.
I’m a father and grandfather. I’m as angry as everyone else about the clergy abuse scandal. I dealt with its human damage for more than half of my career as a diocesan staffer. But we’d be fools to think that weird and wicked sex is somehow uniquely Catholic. Because it’s very clearly not. We live in a hypersexualized society. It impacts everybody and everything. And the Church is not immune. We now have a culture as soaked in hardcore pornography as Rome was in the First Century A.D.
And while we’re on the subject of Rome, it’s the distinguished historian Tom Holland, not some right-wing alarmist, who draws parallels between the end of the Roman Republic and the declining health of today’s Western democracies. Whatever America once was, and to some extent still is, it’s also an empire with global interests, increasing class divisions, and a massive, obscene concentration of wealth in its leadership elites. Empires are big, and bigness is a problem. The machinery of empires is remote from the beliefs and concerns of the people they claim to serve. In practice, majority opinion doesn’t matter. Elite opinion does.
Given the last three years, that should be obvious.
There’s one more key external factor that shapes our current circumstances. The moveable-type press was invented to print the Bible. And it did that really well. Another thing it did really well was fuel the Reformation and 150 years of political turmoil in Europe before a new equilibrium was reached. That was the effect of just one technological advance. The tech world today is permanently fluid. The speed of today’s technological changes dwarfs anything in human experience. That creates emotional turbulence, and it has a nonstop, unsettling impact on society and on the individual human psyche. Simply to stay sane, we need to somehow restore a sense of permanence and transcendent meaning in minds that are baked to a crisp by information overload. And that seems like a natural task for the Church.
So why hasn’t the Church done better in her response? Lots of reasons. We might start by blaming two generations of bad catechesis since Vatican II. Or maybe the absence of beauty in our worship. When young people run to the old Latin Mass, two of the things they’re running away from are mediocrity and ugliness in mainstream Catholic liturgy and preaching. The point is, beauty inspires. The lack of it repels. And the Church, in too many of our parishes, has too little compelling beauty; too little reason to love her as a mother.
There are three other internal factors to quickly note in explaining our circumstances. The Church is a big ship. She turns slowly. That’s a strength, but also a weakness. She’s not structured to adapt rapidly to change. We American Catholics also cling to the delusion that the Church is a valued partner in addressing the nation’s issues of public concern. She should be; she once was; but increasingly she’s not. And finally, our Catholic parents and grandparents worked very hard for many decades to prove their patriotism, to join the American Dream, and to make a material success of their lives. And they succeeded. They succeeded so well that many of us today are indistinguishable from everyone else in our customs and moral convictions—including those people who reject everything about the religion we claim to follow.
To put it very simply: We’ve forgotten who we are; what our baptism means; what a genuinely Catholic life invites and requires.
At this point, some are no doubt wondering where the “good” news is. So let’s move along to Item No. 3: What we can do now; what we need to do now.
If we call ourselves Christians, we need to stop thinking and acting like embarrassed losers. Jesus Christ has already done the hard work. We Catholics seem to have a special charism for whining. We have a gift for defeating ourselves. Bad news is only deadly if we accept it as the last word. The one thing history proves, again and again, is that the Christian Church is very, very good at the long game. But she does need us to wake up and own our mission; own our discipleship.
And while we’re on the subject of history, we need to remember more of it. History is the memory of a people. A person without memory is a person without identity, and therefore without a purpose. The same applies to the Church. The Jewish people have survived centuries of persecution because they relentlessly remember who they are. But Americans are chronically bad at history because we don’t like it. We’re a novus ordo seclorum; a “new order of the ages.” We tend to see history as a burden; an obstacle to our ability to reinvent ourselves. For American Catholics, though, that attitude is toxic. As Catholics, we’re part of an on-going salvation story that goes back 2,000 years. And we need to treasure that. History always teaches us two vital things: humility, because we have a remarkable genius for screwing things up; and hope, because even at our worst, God never abandons his people.
As for our bishops: All of them have different skills, different personalities, and different diocesan situations: some urban, some rural; some financially sound, others poor and struggling. But they’re—not all, but dominantly—good men committed to their people. We need to love and respect our bishops, because the work they do is consuming and often thankless. That doesn’t preclude legitimate criticism of our leaders. Anger is not always a sin, and we have a duty to speak the truth. Christian fidelity and obedience are very different from servility. Any happily married couple can tell you that. My lovely bride of 52 years has no trouble helping me see my defects with exquisite clarity. But it’s hard to convert the guy next door, much less the world, if we’re busy demeaning the men who lead us.
Here’s another point: All Christian activism, projects, and ministries fail—inevitably fail—unless they’re rooted in contemplation. One of the priests I spoke with recently runs the parish restructuring effort for a major urban diocese in the east. It’s a job that pretty well duplicates the worst pains of purgatory. He deals with buildings, budgets, real estate, canon lawyers, civil lawyers, unhappy parishioners, and testy pastors nearly every day. I asked him which two things he would name to start a fundamental renewal in Catholic life. His answer—and he didn’t hesitate for a second—was personal confession and Eucharistic adoration. Both involve intimacy with the Lord, mostly in silence. Without that intimacy, everything else in Christian life is empty noise.
Here’s another point worth noting: I once asked Mike C., who’s a permanent deacon and a family friend, what he thought the Church would look like in 20 years. His answer was interesting. He said he didn’t know, and didn’t spend much time worrying about it. You see, Mike is an ex-cop; a former police lieutenant in a major eastern city. Every day for more than two decades he would show up at his desk, and ask himself—and I’m quoting him here—“What’s the mission? What’s my purpose? What can I learn from the past without repeating it? What can I do today to improve the future?”
We have limited influence on the future, which in any case doesn’t yet exist. But we have a lot of influence on the choices we make and the actions we take, here and now. “Now” matters. It matters because all the “nows” in a lifetime add up to the kind of people we become, and the kind of world we help to heal or degrade. Our power as individuals lies in what we do now; in our willingness to speak and live the truth today, now, whatever the cost. It lies in our refusal to cooperate with a culture of distortion and deceit—like the soul-murdering gender theory that’s being forced down our throats today.
Over the past couple of years, I’ve come across dozens of extraordinary Catholic men and women. Despite all of today’s anxiety about the future, the Church has a deep well of talent and apostolates that do astonishing work: the Augustine Institute, the Fellowship of Catholic University Students, Catholic Leadership Institute, the Leonine Forum, the Napa Institute, and so many others. And that’s a huge source of hope. The 10th century—the 900s A.D.—was one of the darkest periods in Christian history, filled with corruption and bad Church leaders; Pope John XII, to take just one example, was a murderer and a sex addict. But that same century was also the beginning of the great Cluniac renewal of the monasteries. And that led to a resurgence of Catholic piety and the great papal reforms of the 11th century. It’s always been so . . . and so it is now. God uses even our sins and failures as the soil to grow new life.
So here’s a parting thought. We have the command from Jesus himself to “make disciples of all nations,” to transform our culture with the integrity of our lives. And that reminds me of some words from my favorite Chinese theologian, Mao Zedong.
Yes, it’s true: Mao was a mass murderer and a hideous excuse for a human being. Nobody’s perfect. But even very wicked men can have very shrewd strategic minds. And given his behavior, it seems only right to steal from him. Mao wrote an essay in 1938 with the title “On Protracted War,” and in it he said, “Weapons are an important factor in war, but not the decisive factor; it is people, not things, that are decisive.” I’ve never forgotten those words: People, not things, are decisive. Christians, as C.S. Lewis wrote, belong to a fighting religion; a religion engaged in a nonviolent struggle for the soul of the world. Our weapons are faith, hope and charity; justice, mercy, and courage. But all of those virtues are useless without the men and women to live and witness them . . . because people, not things, are decisive. That’s why each of us is so important.
The great Lutheran pastor, Dietrich Bonhoeffer, once said that it’s “only with gratitude that life becomes rich.” He wrote those words in a letter from prison just months before he was hanged by the Third Reich. Gratitude is the beginning of joy, no matter what our circumstances. And of course, that’s at the very heart of Catholic Christian life. That’s what the word “eucharist” means. It comes from the Greek word eukharistia, which means thanksgiving. And for a Christian, “thanksgiving”—even on the most trying of days—is the true and fitting word to close on.
(Note: The above text is revised and adapted from remarks to a Desert Disciples gathering [April 5] and a Benedictine College lecture [March 24].)
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Yes, bad news wakes a soul up to make them attentive. Sadly, too many Christians today do not seriously believe and practice “fear of the Lord”, because it has been pastoralized to meaningless. Just like bad news, “ fear of the Lord” wakes up a soul to make them attentive to the ultimate reality. I guess this is bad news to many Pastors and churchgoers.
This part is good::
“If we call ourselves Christians, we need to stop thinking and acting like embarrassed losers. Jesus Christ has already done the hard work…We have a gift for defeating ourselves. Bad news is only deadly if we accept it as the last word. The one thing history proves, again and again, is that the Christian Church is very, very good at the long game. But she does need us to wake up and own our mission; own our discipleship.”
This part is naive (especially for a person of such age)::
promoting social justice “theology”, communist China and the jewish response to “persecution”.
Who’s promoting “the soul-murdering gender theory that’s being forced down our throats today”?
#groomers
#jgroomers
https://twitter.com/jewishaction/status/1641821445775826945
https://twitter.com/switchboardLGBT/status/1643644888389410819
https://twitter.com/GamePhantomDM/status/1636024323923214338
https://twitter.com/Phantomcrossing/status/1636024634649845763
Where there is faith there is hope and chatity soon follows.PRAISE GOD!!! 😊
Bravo for this truth-telling, Mr. Maier.
1. A papal encyclical issued in 1928 condemned the new doctrines of “ecumenism” and “degrees of communion” that were approved and mandated in a 1964 document issued by the Vatican II Council.
2. A papal document issued in 1864 condemned the new doctrine of “religious libety” that was approved and mandated in a 1964 document issued by the Vatican II Council.
3. Anyone can read these documents and see with their own eyes and tbeir own mind that these texts of the Vatican II Council constituted rebellions against perennial doctrines of the Church. No imposed-from-the-top “hermeneutic of continuity” can cure these contradictions.
4. I propose we would do well to look to these doctrinal flip-flops (and others) from the mid-1960s as a source of the precipitous decline in the life of the Church during the last 60 years.
5. The assertion that “bad catechesis” is to blame has been heard for 50 years now from the episcopal authorities, and no longer seems credible.
It’s always darkest before it’s totally black, a misinterpretation [allegedly attributed to John McCain] of Mao’s, It’s always darkest before dawn. Mao Zedong’s totalitarian Red Dawn is darkness of soul. Despite the darkness there’s light, the many who protest, the many who turned to Christ.
During his cataloging reasons for rejuvenation of the Mystical Body, Francis Maier notes a pastor’s response, adoration of the Eucharist, confession. Heart to heart transaction with the Real Presence is the remedy for all of us, a contemplative transaction through the Holy Spirit much needed highly effective. “Everything starts from the Father, passes through the Son, and reaches us in the Spirit; in the order of the coming back of creatures to God, everything, inversely, begins with the Holy Spirit, passes through the Son, and returns to the Father” (Card Cantalamessa OFM Cap in de Souza Treasure Trove of Sermons NCReg).
Opposed, “an energetic minority of frauds, hypocrites, and villains”, who are really our greatest threat. They’re at the helm. Darkness will be greatest before it’s totally black if they succeed. Whether that transpires the Word assures us that the Dawn will follow.
May I say, Fr. Cantalamessa’s formula would seem to diminish the Trinity of Persons and the Incarnate Word. It’s much too “linear”? Also Jesus said all authority in heaven and earth is given to Him: things must root in Him, through Him, with Him.
But I haven’t read his work.
‘ “Everything starts from the Father, passes through the Son, and reaches us in the Spirit; in the order of the coming back of creatures to God, everything, inversely, begins with the Holy Spirit, passes through the Son, and returns to the Father.
– Card Cantalamessa OFM Cap in de Souza Treasure Trove of Sermons NCReg. ‘
Elias there must be a Trinitarian inter person exchange that existed from all eternity. When we speak of linear we’re thinking in human imaginative terms. There is no measurement here. We’re speaking of pure act of existence within which familial love is expressed in the unity of three persons.
We on earth do receive that grace from the Son, who is one substance with the Father, as well as with the Holy Spirit. The mistake is as said to visualize this in geometric terms. So Card Cantalamessa can reference that dynamic as an ordered consequential transaction of the Trinity. As Christ speaks of sending us the Holy Spirit in which we share a meal with him and the Father.
Instead of a false pluralism of religions, we can learn well from a pluralism of cultures. Attributed to a diversity (!) of sources (China, Russia, Poland, England, Greece, the Turks, etc.), is this: “A fish rots from the head down.”
We will not be reconstructing Christendom any time soon. Instead, we are thrown back to Apostolic times, and then the 4th-century St. Augustine is a good start. Not synthesis in the world, but radical Christianity.
Thanks for this on St. Francis: “He was a formidable man and demanding religious founder….”
Few attend to the first or last paragraphs of his famously abridged “Canticle of the Creatures.” The fearless Christian soldiers should know it well:
“All praise be yours, my Lord, through Sister Death,
From whose embrace no mortal can escape.
How dreadful for those who die in sin!
How lovely for those found in Your Most Holy Will.
The second death can do them no harm.
Praise and bless my Lord, and give him thanks,
And serve him with great humility.”
And once he instructed a Franciscan brother to sing the Canticle to the people to whom he’d preached, saying, “…[as] our fee for this performance, we want you to live in true penitence’” (Surrounded by Love: Seven Teachings from Saint Francis). The mention of penitence should dispel any cloud of smoke deluding Francis as flower child.
I guess. I’m sorry to say this but there is no energy in this – nothing prescriptive. It reads like laundry list and unfortunately it is the same feel I get with my own home parish – and pretty much every parish I’ve ever been associated with.
We do not live in 1950’s, 60’s, 70’s, 80’s or even 90’s America anymore.
Do something in your local parish and even diocese.
And if you don’t want to lose anything more, you have to be the one to take action.
To borrow from another secular (non)theologian: “You better get busy living or get busy dying.”
Attack evil from all angles.
Fail fast! Get back up.
In Mass, pay attention with your whole heart, mind and soul each week, each day.
Confess with the contrition of the man on death row.
Go get that bible study started like Hell is outside the church door and only God’s love will stop it.
Teach Religious Ed like the kids are going off to war and only God’s love will stop it. (Just go to the class to help if nothing else.)
Get a meeting going with the parents waiting in their cars for the kids to come out of religious ed each week.
C’mon folks, get busy livin’ in Christ or …
And Mr Maier, can you find some energy, please?
I understand the temptation to cynicism. But why project it onto others?
True, Carl…
But isn’t there also at least a tidbit to be gleaned from, say, the 1976 movie, “The Network,” where the talking-head newscaster finally comes alive to offer his well-considered and abrasive theology? “I’m as mad as hell, and I’m not going to take this anymore!” And the network ratings go through the roof!
Now THAT’s unharmonized synodality! A great theological reflection, too, almost as good as the much earlier biblical line about millstones.
I am so glad you made that comment Mr Olson. The world is tired and quite terrifying at the moment. The last thing we need is to hear the soft flop of more towels being thrown.
I’d feel EXACTLY this way if I had not pulled my child from the local parish school and begun homeschooling using a truly Catholic curriculum. This led to my finding a truly Catholic homeschool co-op, which led to a nearby parish that was a hub for homeschoolers. We switched parishes and are living a joyful life. Yes, old structures are falling apart but the new ones are being built right now. Reread the paragraph about the Augustine Institute, et al. That is a very, very tiny list of what is going on right now. You feel like Elijah (1 Kings 18:22, “I am the only one left”) because you have not yet found a way to connect with the network of faithful Catholics who are already engaged in building the future. I had a young child and I absolutely, positively could not allow her to be taught to be a fence-sitter, like I was taught during my years at Catholic schools. In my years at Catholic schools, our Dominican nuns were still teaching the faith, but my peers (and presumably their parents) were nay-saying everything the nuns said, and so I learned to be silent. And the local parish school that my daughter went to had no nuns, so it was worse. Because I was the parent of a young child, I was forced to make a change for her sake. I’m surprised that many of the lovely ladies in my old parish don’t change parishes, but there is a good ladies’ Bible study at my old parish, and a prayer team, and that is their hub, I guess. But it sounds like you don’t even have that.
You may have grown children and cannot follow the homeschooling route in order to find your hub in the network. For me, the catalyst wasn’t homeschooling, though, I have to get back one more, crucial step: I did the “33 Days to Morning Glory” book study, and Marian Consecration. You sound like a devoted Catholic and you probably have already done this. In my case, Mary hit me with a 2×4 and led me somewhere I could not have foreseen. All I had to do was see the signs, make one bold step, and it was amazing how much fell into place after that. Jesus, Mary, and Joseph can guide you in some way. If you don’t live in an urban area, you may not have a vibrantly Catholic, “destination parish” as we call it, in your area. You may find your community on the airwaves and online, but they are true communities. Listen to Catholic Radio and follow up on some of the websites they discuss that resonate with you; study with the Augustine Institute and follow up with some of the online resources that resonate with you. Show up at the next pro-life rally and join one of the groups that are living without fear. Don’t only read Catholic news, it still is skewed towards bad news; pay attention to stories about groups that are doing something positive and FOLLOW THROUGH.
I imagine God is calling some people to stay at their local parish, to try to spark a renewal there, like the lovely ladies at my old parish. But He calls others to “skate to where the puck is going to be”; to pick up their jacks and go find another game; to stop looking at what is falling apart and just start building the future. The communities that are building the future are not perfect, but they are marked by joy. When I read this article, this is what I saw. I hope you find your community.
Hello Akakumar,
,
In my young adult era, before kids, I actually did both. I stayed and fought at my home parish and skated to find my home community Catholics at other Catholic parishes. A Catholic friend and I, while surfing all Catholic Parish young adult meetings in Seattle Metro, to find that special Catholic wife, found one special group of Catholics dedicated to traditional Catholicism, where we flourished in knowledge of God. Meanwhile, being a transplant to Seattle, I stayed rooted in my home parish which had welcomed me into Seattle.
Things were exploding in Seattle with the secular liberals protesting at the Federal Building. There were two thousand liberals being paid $15.00 an hour to protest for liberal billionaire Mr. Soros, and to destroy private property, vs me, my Catholic roommate, and ten others, who went to the Federal Building to protest the liberal protestors. The liberal protestors simply called themselves ‘anarchists’ at that time, but through the decades they now call themselves ‘Antifa’.
At that time, my liberal priest decided to protest hot secular issues from the pulpit at Mass. I thought, well ok, so after Communion I went to my trunk and pulled out my bull horn, and from the street I protested his liberal protest, as Mass was letting out. I preached the gospel and scriptures from my bull horn to my fellow Catholics. The next week, liberal Seattle Archbishop Hunthausen was at our parish for a children’s event. I decided I would lay low. Archbishop Hunthausen gave the usual homily for children. Then liberal Archbishop Hunthausen said he could not remain silent and went off on his liberal secular politics attack. I thought, ok, truce is off, and there I was out on the street after Mass preaching the gospel of Jesus from my bull horn. The next week we read in the newspaper of liberal Archbishop Hunthausen telling his priests not to get into secular politics at the pulpit, for the containment of conflict within parishes.
I guess what I am saying is, that you can stay united with your home parish fellow Catholics and fight those out to destroy Christ’s Church, while searching and sharing with new Catholic friends who have Catholic leaders who share Jesus’ teachings and our Catholic Faith.
As an historian I truly appreciate the wisdom of this article.
Very good speech/article. He even mentioned the cure for all problems…contemplation….returning God’s love for us. If everyone loved God with all their heart, mind and strength, we and the world would not be in this mess. And that is the only cure, first on the individual level, where that then shapes the world…and the Church.
Mr. Maier’s assessment of the Bishops is full of mercy with no Justice. Abortion, same-sex marriage, etc. would not be legal if the Bishops had not been so weak for over 50 years. Think of the impact if all or most had ever attended the DC March for Life. Or had their priests all speak to these topics from the pulpit regularly, reminding us of Church teaching. Poor shepherds are a large factor for why Catholics follow the “freedoms” of the immoral, secular culture. We need some with backbone
to tell us the hard Truths and why they lead us to Christ and our salvation. Shame on the Bishops !
1. This comment says: ” Abortion, same-sex marriage, etc. would not be legal if the Bishops had not been so weak for over 50 years.”
2. To me, that’s obviously correct.
3. And furthermore, it seems equally obvious that Catholic bishops would not have been so weak for over 50 years if the “renewal” ordered by the ecumenical pastoral Council of 1962-1965 had never taken place.