Mike Lewis asks a critical question for any Catholic who cares about bearing witness to Jesus Christ. It is particularly pertinent on this Feast of the Triumph of the Holy Cross:
Today, the cultural division between the Catholic Church and Western society—especially on moral issues—is as wide as it has been since the rise of Christendom. The dictatorship of relativism that Pope Benedict XVI decried in 2005, which “does not recognize anything as definitive and whose ultimate goal consists solely of one’s own ego and desires,” has fallen and been replaced by a new societal orthodoxy holding new doctrines that are often incompatible with long-established teachings and traditions of Christianity. Today’s progressives aren’t “relativists” because they subscribe to moral dogmas just as strongly as Catholics do, and some of these beliefs are very much at odds with traditional Catholic ideas, especially regarding women’s and LGBT rights.
In his 1975 encyclical, Evangelii Nuntiandi, Saint Paul VI reminded us that the Church “exists in order to evangelize, that is to say, in order to preach and teach, to be the channel of the gift of grace” (14). Later in the encyclical, he explained the importance of changing our approach to evangelization when situations require it. He wrote, “This question of ‘how to evangelize’ is permanently relevant, because the methods of evangelizing vary according to the different circumstances of time, place and culture” (40).
Successful evangelization today must respond creatively to unprecedented changes in the world, and should be mindful of the unique obstacles in each society. In the West, the evangelization challenge for the Church is to show that Catholicism is not an obsolete religion filled with superstitious bigots and conspiracy theorists. If we are unsuccessful, sharing the Gospel will be impossible. In the developing world, the evangelization challenges are to inculturate the faith and to liberate the oppressed. Failure to do this will lead the people to seek God elsewhere. Where the Church is tiny and persecuted, including China and parts of the Muslim world, the challenge is to show these societies that Catholics can live in fraternity as neighbors despite differences in belief, and can help work toward the common good of all. Failure to rise to this challenge means they will be crushed.
The declining Church in the West has suffered serious blows to its moral credibility in recent decades. This has resulted in declines in its ability to witness in the public square, its influence in halls of power, and its capacity to evangelize the culture. Historians and sociologists will research, write, and debate what caused the fall of Christendom for ages to come, but we Christians today don’t have the luxury of centuries to take stock of what went wrong if we want to survive this crisis. More importantly, if we fail to recognize how the Church is perceived by the wider society, our beloved faith will be reduced to little more than an afterthought by the prevailing culture in a generation or two.
This is the key challenge facing Church leaders today, and it is something that Pope Francis has consistently tried to address. He has faced strong resistance in these efforts, mostly from within the Church. Many times during his eight-year pontificate, Francis’s progress has been hindered. His initiatives have been blocked repeatedly by other Catholic leaders who promote more reactionary, ideological approaches to the faith. And this has cost valuable time. Unless our Church leaders can quickly learn how to be serious voices of social and moral truth on the world stage, Catholicism will soon drift into an age of cultural irrelevance.
Me: I think the core blunder of conservative Catholicism in our time is that it imagines our task is to impose a moral code (or at least those fragments of the moral code conservatives find useful in their nihilist grab for power) on people who have never been given a credible witness to Jesus Christ and who therefore cannot for the life of them imagine why they should live by the code when they have no faith in Jesus. What Catholic conservatives have increasingly striven to do is hunker down in a Fortress of law, fear, and force and try to make the world live by their standards while showing (especially since their prostration to Trump) that they don’t believe the gospel and don’t trust Jesus Christ to save or lead his Church. Every day they make clear that they think they must fight a rear-guard action to defend the Church from the pope while struggling to force unbelievers to act as if they believe a gospel that even the Catholic KKKrusader for Trump and “Western civilization” does not believe. They evince no trust that God is the Lord of History. They show no faith that God guides the Church. They make clear they do not believe in the indefectibility of the Church.
They make clear, in a word, that they think themselves, and not Jesus, the saviors of the Church and that they are fighting a losing battle to stave off Gotterdammerung. The world is not the place where the fields are white for harvest and the gates of hell cannot prevail against the Church. It is the terrible realm of the enemy and nearly every person they meet is not somebody seeking happiness (and therefore Jesus, who is our happiness) but an enemy to be feared and defeated. The very idea that the Church should have something to offer the world is dismissed as kumbayah snowflake talk. We are not to cater to the wants of the world! We are to smash this selfish world! People who come to the Church filled with wounds and needs are libs, parasites, and weaklings demanding a handout or subversives trying to destroy us. Their needs are contemptible. They should bend the knee, not prate about their needs! What the Church needs is manly shock troops to storm the beaches and force liberals to bend the knee! Not wussy snowflakes complaining about how their lives are hard!
And so the Tough Guy Catholics like Voris, Heilman, and Altman try to impose their fake gospel with fear and force and heap contempt on the Holy Father’s calls for mercy and grace as the “Church of Nice” even as many in the fields white for harvest beg Christians to show them Jesus and are rebuffed by Real Catholics[TM] with hearts of stone. The Cross and real suffering is for other people. Self-pitying fantasies about suffering and martyrdom are for the Greatest Catholics of All Time.
I’m glad Where Peter Is exists to provide a sane counter-witness to the antichrist cult that has engulfed conservative Catholicism in its war on the Holy Father and its ongoing prostitution to the GQP Cult.
Advertisement
26 Responses
Picked up in order. Practically no commentary necessary at all.
“Today’s progressives aren’t “relativists” because they subscribe to moral dogmas just as strongly as Catholics do, and some of these beliefs are very much at odds with traditional Catholic ideas, especially regarding women’s and LGBT rights.”
ESPECIALLY.
“ In the West, the evangelization challenge for the Church is to show that Catholicism is not an obsolete religion filled with superstitious bigots and conspiracy theorists. If we are unsuccessful, sharing the Gospel will be impossible. In the developing world, the evangelization challenges are to inculturate the faith and to liberate the oppressed. ”
SOME OF THEM.
“ the challenge is to show these societies that Catholics can live in fraternity as neighbors despite differences in belief, and can help work toward the common good of all.”
MMMM-HMMMM.
“ More importantly, if we fail to recognize how the Church is perceived by the wider society, our beloved faith will be reduced to little more than an afterthought by the prevailing culture in a generation or two.”
MIRRORS. YOU CAN SEE ANYTHING IN MIRRORS, IF YA WANTS TA, .
“ It is the terrible realm of the enemy and nearly every person they meet is not somebody seeking happiness (and therefore Jesus, who is our happiness) but an enemy to be feared and defeated.”
PERVERTS, ENEMIES OF GOD, AND BABY KILLERS. AMIRITE?
Showing that a Christian is not superstitious *may* be feasible, depending on the interlocutor. Showing that we’re not bigots, quite impossible, considering the use of that particular word.
At any rate, I don’t have the slightest intention of doing either. As far as being neighbours, I don’t see any reason why the gay and the atheist are any less capable of coming to an agreement on the hedge between our respective premises than me, A Christian.
@ ArteveLde
I don’t either, but you and I have had that discussion before.
@ Ben
My mistake. That wasn’t meant as a reponse to you specifically.
@ ArteveLde
It wasn’t a problem. As I have said before, I respect your intelligence and perspicacity. We just don’t always agree. 😘
https://mail.google.com/mail/u/0/#search/bishop+barron's+sunday+sermon/FMfcgzGljlpdTdpbhjChVBLmdSwGRnfj
And yet, despite my dismay over what I was once sucked into, I can’t help but feel almost elated that the reactionary right and the Trump grovelers were a kind of gift to all of the well meaning people who felt there was something wrong all along, and *nothing* could have convinced us of this more expediently than the “visible from space” freak show.
There is this beauty to love Jesus–an intense love affair–that the reactionaries simply can’t touch–can’t come within a million miles of. More and more, I’ve been training myself not to hyper focus on all of the skullduggery, I won’t let them bring me down to their hell. The have the funniest mascots too. (A fiction writer would be hard pressed to come up with the”My Pillow” guy LOL!)
There is SO much to be grateful for. Bishop Barron’s sermon last Sunday was *particularly* good:
https://mail.google.com/mail/u/0/#search/bishop+barron's+sunday+sermon/FMfcgzGljlpdTdpbhjChVBLmdSwGRnfj
One of my older boys and I were talking about the U.S. and the role we have played on the world stage in the last 30 years. We are like a country ruled by entitled trust fund babies. Our older sibling, Europe, has the same problem, but has suffered more, and gained more wisdom in the process. It doesn’t bode well for us. Pride before the fall.
jj
”Friends, I have no quarrel with a university chaplaincy reaching out to seekers and nonbelievers. But I do have a problem with the religious leadership at Harvard University electing someone who does not believe in God precisely as chaplain.”
Bishop Barron.
Come now. Atheists are perfect chaplains, and the more vehemently they oppose Christianity, the more sincere our outreach is by appointing them. Was it not jesus who said ”do not only love your enemies, but exalt them and proclaim the righeousness of their cause, lest someone may scream ”reactionary bigot”?
I had to Google it. Sure enough! Haha wow.
But then again the New Atheists do sound a lot alike, and they all unequivocally reject God as the vindictive Vampire Santa Claus. It’s a noble cause, — especially since so many Catholics and Protestants still believe in him.
I hope Mr. Epstein makes progress.
@arteveLde
Are they opposing Christianity, or do they oppose dominionism, or are they simply not sharing your beliefs? There is a world of difference.
Opposing Christianity are anti theists and anyone not a Christian.
Opposing dominionism are secular humanists, true believers in religious freedom, and people who do not like theocracy.
Atheists simply don’t share your beliefs. Most of us are simply secular humanists. As I have said many times, I have no objection to people believing whatever they want to believe. My objections come with me and says that I must believe it, too.
Bad link above, sorry:
Bishop Barron’s great sermon last Sunday
I guess this is as good as a place as any to share this article:
Kill the Cat Apologetics
Bullseye.
I hope a lot of people read the article.
Yikes. I shudder when I think what havoc such people can wreck when a malleable mind approaches them.
Drunk on offering guidance, leadership and management. The meek are not going to inherit anything at CA and EWTN.
Also, it’s *wreak* havoc, not wreck. I failed. Aaaaaaargh.
Wel, perhaps too broad a brush on my part. I like Jimmy Akin a lot better than Trent Horn, for instance.
I’ve been too busy to really comment lately (and have been going through a sort of personal religious crisis that will likely result in some very hard decisions), but wanted to say that was an excellent article that perfectly sums up a flaw I’ve noticed in the approach of some Catholics to the faith. I’ve met a lot of people who seem to think if you just “say the truth” as often and as loudly as possible, it’ll fix the problems in the Church and create better Christians. This usually goes along with an overreaction to “The Church of Nice.”
@Artevelde:
One of those archaic words that still hang around in specific contexts. You can wreak havoc. I suppose you can wreak vengeance. I don’t think you can wreak much of anything else. etymonline says the source is Old English wrecan “avenge,” originally “to drive, drive out, punish” – can you wreak timeout on your troublesome child?
Indeed, come to think of it, looking at that ‘drive’ above – I might wreak my car – but I doubt the insurance would pay for the results 🙂
Thank you, John! ”wreken” is Dutch for ”to avenge”, and ”wraken” means ”to challenge” as in challenging a judge or witness, driving him or her out of your case, so to speak.
@Artevelde:
There we go, then. We always thought Dutch sounded rather … archaic 🙂
Just curious, Artevelde – what is your native language? If it’s not English, I am impressed by your knowledge of English.
PS – feel free to e-mail me if you prefer. jjen009 at the usual gmail address
@John Thayer Jensen
My native language is Dutch. Your comment is not wrong, even though I think you meant it jokingly. Dutch *is* the most conservative of the three West-Germanic languages (German, Dutch an English, ignoring Frisian). English of course is only partially a Germanic language since the late Middle Ages, which makes German the closest relative to Dutch. That position belonged to English though, before you guys started using French words all the time 🙂
The joke at the University of Leuven was that they don’t know how to pronounce Old and (early) Middle English at Oxbridge. What you need is a really dumb Dutch speaker who pronounces every vowel and consonant as if he is speaking Dutch and thinks there are no silent letters.
Also, Thank you for the compliment.
I’m not sure my Friesian friends – Mr Hakema, for example – would appreciate leaving Friesian out 🙂
Yes, English’s relation to French reminds me of an article I once read part of, called (from memory) Modern Hebrew And The Other Slavic Languages
Artevelde is winsome when he agonizes over words and
Ah! The delightful propensity to perspicacity! Thanks Ben. Vocab makes me giddy.