An intriguing paragraph in the Catechism of the Catholic Church, which I have often pondered, is #675:
The Church’s ultimate trial. Before Christ’s second coming, the Church must pass through a final trial that will shake the faith of many believers. The persecution which accompanies her pilgrimage on earth will unveil “the mystery of iniquity” in the form of a religious deception offering men an apparent solution to their problems at the price of apostasy from the truth. The supreme religious deception is that of the Antichrist, a pseudo-messianism by which man glorifies himself in place of God and of his Messiah come in the flesh.
Very few people sin because they want to make themselves miserable and endanger the salvation of their soul.
Evil usually comes to us disguised as an angel of light, promising us happiness and fulfillment if we simply surrender to our temptations towards the seven deadly sins, whether it be pride, avarice, anger, lust, sloth, envy, or gluttony.
Once we have fallen for the treachery of sin, it rips off its deceptive mask and reveals both its moral ugliness and its radical inability to ever fulfill its false promises of joy, shaming us for our sinful choices. Or, worse, it convinces us that we need just a little more of that sin to be satisfied, creating a pathway to dependency or outright addiction.
Because of humanity’s fundamental enslavement to sin and its tragic consequence of death, Jesus Christ came to rescue us and restore our original identity as children of the Father, freed and forgiven, through the power of His death and resurrection.
Forgiveness and Redemption
As the essential “sacrament” of Christ’s presence and mission in the world until the end of time, the Catholic Church both teaches the divine revelation given to us through the Scriptures and the Tradition and offers the merciful reconciliation won for us in Christ, so that we can be freed from the grasp of sin and death.
In other words, the Church both convicts us of our sin, getting us in touch with our profound need of Christ and His salvation, and then offers the only solution to our lost and broken state: Forgiveness and redemption in the Lord through faith and the grace of the Sacraments.
In a world where we are increasingly awash in conflicting information, the Church offers us God-given truth. As we become ever more polarized, the Church reminds us that we are brothers and sisters in the human family, and invites us to even deeper unity by becoming adopted sons and daughters in God’s family through Baptism. When we invariably fall short and choose sin over the good, the Church extends God’s mercy and healing by forgiveness through Reconciliation. And since we are too weak to fight the spiritual battle on our own and need to be strengthened and transformed by the One who is greater than us, the Church nourishes us with the very Body and Blood of Christ.
The Current Crisis
Despite these incredible gifts, we remain affected by Original Sin—darkened in intellect so that it’s harder to identify the good and weakened in will so that it’s harder to choose it. Although we are still “very good” and made in God’s image (cf Gen 1:31 and Gn 1:26–27) we feel a pull toward sin. A bad fruit of our inclination to rebellion against God and His truth, brewing in the West for a very long time but now reaching fever pitch in the wake of the sexual revolution, is the fundamental denial of moral absolutes and natural law. We may not be living through the persecution described in the Catechism reference above, but we certainly are living in a time when “man glorifies himself in place of God.”
Many influential voices in our society question the given reality of human nature, the sacredness of life in the womb, the meaning and purpose of sexuality, the definition of marriage, and even the identity of man and woman. Catholics voicing opinions opposed to Church teaching are too common.
In April 2023, Dan Hitchens insightfully wrote that Catholicism faces its third great crisis. The first, addressed by ecumenical councils over multiple centuries, was a theological crisis: Who is God? The second, from the Great Schism to the Protestant Reformation, was ecclesial: What is the Church? And the third, raging since last century, is anthropological: What is man? This last question is ravaging the Church and the culture. Who exactly is man? Does he have a fixed, God-given nature or is he completely autonomous, deciding for himself what he is? Is there a universal moral law to which he either submits and blossoms or rebels and harms himself, or does he decide right and wrong for himself? Is he part of a community through which he both sacrifices and benefits on his way to becoming the person God created him to be, or are any bonds and communal obligations things to be thrown off and avoided so that he can create an identity for himself with as few restraints as possible?
Wrestling with these previously settled questions has provoked both an identity and a common sense crisis. We have arrived at a point of such intellectual and moral confusion that myriads of intelligent and educated people deny the basic facts of our biology and humanity, but, as G. K. Chesterton reminds us, asserting that the sky is green does not make it so.
Reaffirming the Truth
This desire to redefine moral reality has now found a voice within the Church Herself, as some individuals, certainly theologians, but even some bishops and priests, advocate for fundamental shifts in Catholic teaching regarding the acceptance of contraception, homosexual activity, transgenderism, even including puberty blockers and surgery for minors, and euthanasia.
While I am not suggesting that we are in the “final trial” or that the end of the world is near (although that always remains a possibility), could this current dynamic of seeking to redefine Church teaching be part of what the Catechism refers to in paragraph #675: The deceiving temptation to solve man’s problems by denying the Truth which the Church has always taught, and to redefine sin, in order to simply affirm people in their moral choices?
In this confusing time when everything seems up for critique, redefinition, and question, it is vitally important to reaffirm the eternal and unchanging realities of Truth.
God, the Scriptures, the beautiful teachings of our Faith, the inestimable gift of human nature, and the identity and mission of the Church do not change.
We can change, hopefully for the good, as we grow in our understanding of these timeless gifts revealed to us by God, but we do not have the power to redefine or adapt what the Lord has given us just to conform to the cultural fashions of the moment.
There is no faster or easier way to render the Church impotent and irrelevant than to follow the cultural zeitgeist.
Rather, we must stand courageously and lovingly in the radiant light of the Lord, teaching the Truth given to us as the lasting guarantor of human freedom and dignity and compassionately accompanying those who struggle and even fail to accept and live aspects of that Truth.
We are all sinners. Despite assertions to the contrary, one can and should be faithful and pastoral at the same time. We can follow Jesus’ example when the Pharisees brought a woman caught in adultery before Him. The religious teachers of the day were trying to trap Jesus: He could either uphold Mosaic law and declare the woman deserving of death (and appear to be a rebel, since by law only the Roman government claimed the right to capital punishment), or He could equivocate (and appear to be a lukewarm Jew, who eschewed Mosaic law). Instead, Jesus chose a third and better option: to judge the action (“Go your way, and from now on do not sin again”) but not condemn the person (“Neither do I condemn you” [Jn 8:11]). Today we are often similarly confronted with two choices: to be faithful to Church teaching and condemn the person, or to be pastoral and soften Church teaching in an attempt to show him or her compassion. We must follow Jesus’ third and better way: to love the person by sharing the truth; to be merciful and compassionate while also holding up what is truly good for him or her.
We can profoundly harm a brother or sister by not offering them the fullness of Church teaching, just as we can harm them by not loving and walking with them in their hurt, pain, and struggle. Each of us is inclined toward one of these approaches over the other. Whichever our particular preference, we must work to extract what’s good and true in both approaches and leave behind what’s misguided as we follow Jesus’ third way.
This fusion of truth and charity is the hallmark of Jesus’ identity and mission, and so it must be for us. What we need now is to take up this missionary identity, live it out with Jesus’ holistic approach, and offer a hurting world the grace, forgiveness, hope, and love found in the Church.
(Note: This essay, which is revised and adapted from a column originally appearing in the Diocese of Madison’s Catholic Herald on July 26, 2023, was posted on the What We Need Now Substack and is reprinted here with kind permission.)
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A ‘tour de force’ of Catholic teaching. Thank you, Bishop.
Oh how I wish that every pastor reading this would reproduce it and place it as an insert in their parish bulletin.
Amen!
As far as it goes, refreshing to read this from a member of the American episcopate. We inhabit a pathological dysfunctional reality which has serious spiritual consequences– but since that reality is actually not believed at all the bishop’s contribution is reduced to a disingenuous word salad — ecclesiastical mumbo-jumbo — or in polite terms, rhetoric. Passive-aggressive acrobatics in the service of imperial clerical egoism. I’m thinking a conclave which lasts less than a year will produce more of the same stew.
Its long past time to raise Cain. The impending demise of the Bergoglian sandbox provides to perfect moment to have the “intervention.”
It won’t happen.
“Stand courageously and lovingly in the radiant light of the Lord”. Thank you, Bishop Hying for a beautifully written and concise article expressing rock-solid truths that anchor the soul.
We read: “God, the Scriptures, the beautiful teachings of our Faith, the inestimable gift of human nature [!], and the identity and mission of the Church do not change.”
Two supportive comments:
FIRST, at the head of modernity’s roundtable “tyranny of relativism” (Benedict XVI)— that is, at the head of our “ultimate trial”–we find the antipope/antihuman Jean Paul Sartre. He would not only change “human nature,” but insisted that “it” does not even exist.
About this atheist existentialist, the oracle Jean Paul Sartre, the Thomist JOSEF PIEPER said this:
“…I am well aware that the concept ‘human nature,’ which, in truth, has never been capable of exhaustive definition, must be thought out anew. BUT I remain at the same time convinced that mankind risks dehumanization as well as denaturation the moment human nature fails to be understood as something created [!], as something that has been designed and brought into being by a creative spirit absolutely superior to man [!]” (“For the Love of Wisdom,” 1995, Ignatius 2006).
And, SECOND, bearing on Sartre’s strangling materialism, G.K. CHESTERTON echoes Bishop Hying’s (July 2023) insights on forgiveness and redemption:
“The size of the scientific universe gave one no novelty, no relief. The cosmos went on forever, but not in its wildest constellation could there be anything really interesting; anything, for instance, such as forgiveness or free will” (“Orthodoxy,” 1925).
SUMMARY: two distinct laymen “walking together” with a distinct successor of the Apostles! And, as uncoupled from the dehumanizing, denaturizing and uncreative misunderstandings of Fiducia Supplicans (December 2023)!
The good Bishop noted “ We can profoundly harm a brother or sister by not offering them the fullness of Church teaching, just as we can harm them by not loving and walking with them in their hurt, pain, and struggle” by which he overlooks a third alternative that plagues the Church by the progressive church to sow confusion by not calling sin, sinful in clear and no uncertain terms that are clearly defined as sinful within Scripture.
The modern matriarchal church appears to accommodate that sinfulness incapable of the “tough love” of our Patriarchal God the Father via God the Son in cooperation with God the Holy Spirit ignoring the command given by St Mary, Mother of God to the servants at the Wedding Feast to “Do whatever He tells you to do”.
“Could this current dynamic of seeking to redefine Church teaching be part of what the Catechism refers to in paragraph #675: The deceiving temptation to solve man’s problems by denying the Truth, to redefine sin, in order to simply affirm people in their moral choices?”.
Bishop Hying recognizes the signs that indicate what may be and offers us the best, most efficacious approach. He spells it out well for the reader so I won’t paraphrase what cannot be better said. That said, a most trying result of the mass confusion, anger and alarm is the polarization of the Christian body into RadTrad or Far left both bordering on heresy.
We’ve lost the benevolence of a middle ground falsely interpreting moderation as surrender to lies. Some offer insulting comparisons as Christ spitting out lukewarm water, whereas a virtuous mean here means being strictly adherent to principles of truth that are inviolable while remaining charitably aware of exceptions when persons are under severe duress. Take for example the illegal migrants scenario, the unwillingness to offer any sort of charity to landed migrants while they’re in our midst as if doing so is criminal. The refusal to show some sense of spiritual sorrow and love for those suffering sexual disorders. Not the accommodating Fr James Martin kind, rather that which an Archbishop Cordileone, or Cardinal Burke would be expected to show. These men condemn the sin but don’t preach hatred.
A virtuous mean exercises Justice, which virtue has no median and condemns the sin, while it exercises the compassion that is the mean between accommodation and hatred.
“…walking with them in their hurt, pain, and struggle.”
Do we distinguish between these, and those who defiantly proclaim that evil things are good? Or that Catholic teaching ought be changed? Or who proceed defiantly to mutilate or kill children, or to persecute those who would protect them, or simply speak the truth? Does the bishop leave out this aspect of the situation in his discussion of the three approaches? They seem to me to be a different category from the struggling sinner, more akin to the Pharisees in their sureness of the rightness of their “progressive”, “enlightened” views, and in their willingness to dominate the culture and the Church with their views. And Jesus dealt with such far more sharply.
This is an interesting article to examine. I’m reminded of a phenomenon that I’ve experienced and others have spoken about to me as well. I’m referring to the sacrament of reconciliation with an old priest, a well intentioned priest for sure, but who hears the confession, which may include sloth to a level of irresponsibility, disordered anger, envy, an impure thought, speaking negatively against another, gossiping about another, disordered love of certain goods, greed, etc., but the priest immediately zeroes in on the impure thought, inquiring and seeking more detail, the circumstances, did it involve consent of the will? Etc. The person thinks to himself “I just confessed all these serious sins that adversely affect others, and he’s zeroing in on a very trivial sexual matter to an obsessive degree”. Clearly it says a great deal about the priest.
This article attempts to provide an overall picture, a bird’s eye view of the relationship between the world and the “gospel”. First, the bishop talks of sin. The first example of what he’s referring to: the sexual revolution. Then he mentions denial of moral absolutes and natural law. Then more examples, which include abortion, the meaning and purpose of sexuality, definition of marriage, and gender issues. These apparently characterize the world we are living in. So the focus is clearly on “the moral law”. So far, things are very moralistic. And then of course we have this supposedly clever quip that asserting the sky is green does not make it so. This is followed by more examples of the problems with the world and the Church: acceptance of contraception, homosexual activity, transgenderism and puberty blockers and euthanasia.
The thought that came to me is that this is not something new. It has been going on since Humanae Vitae, for the past 57 years. In any case, we have all this talk on Truth (upper case), and the Truth is the Lord’s teaching. But I can’t help feel a radical change in temperature when going from this article, which is rooted in a very specific paradigm, and the gospel.
When we consider a bird’s eye view of the gospel, we see something very different with a very different emphasis. Christ eats with tax collectors and sinners (challenging the culture and social structure of prestige), he picks corn on the sabbath (violating religious law), he cures the man with a withered hand, he curses the rich, those who have plenty to eat now, those who laugh now, blesses the poor, the hungry, those who are weeping, he speaks of the importance of compassion, he speaks of the true disciple, he raises the dead to life, he proclaims the coming of God’s kingdom, he demonstrates power over nature, he speaks of taking up his cross and following him and he gives power to heal, he provides the criterion for greatness (humility, childlikeness), he teaches us to forgive those who have trespassed against us, he exhorts us to give alms and to sell our possessions, to trust in providence, he derides the hypocrisy of the religious leaders, he teaches about the Lord’s incomprehensible mercy in three parables, there is one verse (Lk 16, 18) on divorce, and immediately after that we have a rather large parable: the rich man and lazarus, more verses on the need for persistence in prayer, more on the dangers of riches, the parable of the good samaritan which shines the light on the problem of putting liturgical purity over attending to the needs of our neighbour, and in his Beatitudes in Matthew, we have poverty of spirit, meekness, hunger and thirst for what is right, mercy, peacemakers, endurance in persecution, another single verse on divorce, followed by a multitude of verses on nursing anger, looking upon another with contempt, and damaging a person’s reputation, more exhortation to remember the poor, trust in providence, exhortation not to judge, prayer, more cures, eating with sinners and tax collectors, parables of the kingdom of God, compassion upon the hungry and the subsequent miracle of the loaves and fishes, a single mention about fornication and adultery (15, 20), another miracle of the loaves, more deriding of the religious leaders, a parable of the lost sheep which emphasizes not that they are lost as a result of their rejection of moral absolutes and natural law, but emphasizing the fact that the Shepherd goes out looking for the lost, is concerned about the lost, will not stop until he finds the lost sheep, and the parable of the last judgment, which mentions nothing about sex, gender, divorce, homosexuality, but attending to the hungry, thirsty, lonely, the sick, the imprisoned, who have been identified with the Lord.
When you are at war and you see that you’ve been losing the war for decades now and yet you continue to employ the same strategy, you are a lousy general. You need to retire and be replaced by a new general with fresh ideas and a brilliant military strategy that will work. Just asserting old “moralistic” truths that have been long rejected is not going to cut it. And dividing the world neatly into “us” (the faithful ones who possess the “Truth”) and “them” (the ones who are confused, lost, and immoral) is simple minded and just not true to the facts. You have to be able to understand them, see that things are not so simple, that so many of these people embrace many good things, are in many ways good willed but have some inconsistencies in their thinking, like many in the Church who are on the “left” and the “right”. You have to be the kind of person who is able to enter into their lives, as Christ entered into the lives of those rejected, the outcasts, the downtrodden, the poor, those who were considered to be “forsaken” by God, and you have to be able to move them to love the Lord, but you can only do that the same way a mother awakens a smile in her baby, by smiling at the baby. You have to be able to see the goodness in others and help them to see themselves from God’s point of view. Moralizing is not going to cut it. Quoting the Catechism is not going to cut it. Immersing yourself into the Scriptures is probably the place to begin. Put down the natural law treatises and the Catechism of the Catholic Church and put on the mind of Christ. As Metropolitan Anthony Bloom points out, don’t confuse Christianity with Churchianity. Your approach has failed. We need a new strategy that is more focused on real concrete people who are struggling to survive, and a strategy more focused on the Person of Christ and his message, which is a message of mercy, the love of God, that we are loved by God, that he loves us so much that he seeks us out and won’t stop till he finds us. Moralizing kills. St. Paul said that in so many words.
Thank you. It is an amazing fact that your straightforward catechesis is rare for a bishop.
In light of this pontificate, we have moved onto a fourth great crisis of the Catechism: What is sin?
As excellent as Bishop Hying’s is in dealing with the hot-button issues plaguing our Church today (i.e., in Bishop Hying’s words, “acceptance of contraception, homosexual activity, transgenderism, even including puberty blockers and surgery for minors, and euthanasia”), I fear that he’s only scratching the surface of the deeper problem behind the manifestations of the problem listed above, i.e., our Church’s acceptance of the Heresy of Modernism in its current and ongoing complex efforts to orchestrate a strange new aura of infallibility for the current Pope’s vision of a globalist (and modernist) “Synod-on-Synodality” type of Church in which understandings of God’s Eternal Truths are now to be found in a “synodaling” consensus among all Catholics. The end result of this dalliance with (and even acceptance of) the Heresy of Modernism is already occurring. The timeless truths of our Catholic Faith are being scrapped in favor of heretical Modernist drivel: i.e., times-conscious, trendy untruths, created in the chaos of modern fickle human social, political, and religious preferences—turning God into an image and likeness of Us!
Well I think Thomas James at 7:25 is so right on. I’m an 83 year old Catholic widow and I ask is what we have now the Church that Jesus meant to be? So much focus on sin sin and how horrible we are. Who can move forward to have a loving relationship with Jesus when we’re made to feel like crap? I think a lot more emphasis on love and relationship is needed. When you love and trust someone, wanting what’s best for them follows. When we are encouraged to build a loving relationship with Jesus, good things will follow.