Needless to say, morale in much of the Church in 2019 is low. But what else should, reasonably, be expected? Given that the past 25+ years has been a hard time for Catholics, especially those in the formerly Protestant, Anglophone, world, where the Church has been damaged - entirely justifiably - by its seemingly endless sex abuse scandals. It cannot be overstated just how much the moral filth of sex abuse and its covering up has disfigured the Church. The repeated scandals, the gravity of the crimes, the seriousness of the sin, and the sense that one’s church was not the solution to any problem but was the problem, has caused so many Catholics to question their hierarchy and, even, put their own faith on a time out.
This scandal-induced demoralisation has been compounded by the general post-Vatican II sense among many Catholics, for some time, that no one is all that sure what the Church still teaches, what is essential and what is optional, and even whether the Pope, himself, was, per the old joke, still a Catholic. One can exaggerate these problems, of course, and the rot that has infested the Western or Latin/Roman-rite of the Church has not been true for the universal Church, especially in central and eastern Europe and Russia, as well as Asia and Africa.
Thankfully, while the post-modern Church may have its issues, the ancient Church’s 20+ other Rites continue to march the ‘church militant’ onward and upward, if not always at the same speed. I pass over issues in the Russian and Chinese branches of the Church, here, for reasons of brevity and because, as Zhou Enlai said of the French Revolution’s effects, it remains too early to tell what will happen. As the wise Jesuit says, “If the question is who runs the Church, who is in Hell, or when does the world end, those are Management decisions and we are in Sales.”
This said, among the Anglophone laity, while there has been a steady but sure decline in Sunday Mass attendance, and numerous examples of terrible catechetical teaching, Catholics continue to identify as such despite enormous temptations to defect elsewhere or go for a ‘spiritual not religious’ identification. Moreover, while all these storms have rocked the barque of St Peter, the Church still performs, throughout the world, its "good works" and historic mission of operating schools, hospitals, shelters, universities, clinics, and receiving and resettling refugees of all faiths and all nationalities in enormous numbers and with an effectiveness beyond, and at a cost significantly below, that done by secular bureaucracies.
As a cradle Catholic (albeit with Presbyterian ancestry), I take as much of this as I can in my stride, as no doubt my ancestors did. The Church will always be imperfect, as humanity is fallen, and prone to Sin. As the book of Ecclesiastes both promises and warns, “What has been, will be again, what has been done - will be done again; there is nothing new under the sun” [Ecclesiastes 1:9].
Taking a step back, it is difficult to overstate how supranational the Catholic Church is: it is in every country on earth, and usually well before that territory was its own nation-state. The Church is truly universal and if one is after true ‘diversity’ in one’s religion, then go to any Mass at the Vatican or, indeed, in Sydney or London or New York, where sitting next to each other in the pews, one will find bankers and paupers, peers and commoners, lawyers and former convicts, ancient landowners and new immigrants, all reciting the same creed and exchanging, usually awkwardly, the same sign of peace, while singing badly to really terrible modern hymns. In our parents’ generation, and both of my late parents were Vatican II refuseniks, it was even more universality amid diversity: all of this would have been said and done the same, in Latin and had incense, wherever you were in the world, in line with the Mass of Pope Paul V of 1570. The Catholic Church was described by someone as, “Here comes everyone”.
For all these good works and for all this ‘diversity’, like its Orthodox brethren - and unlike all too many protestant churches - Catholicism has steadfastly refused to ‘evolve’ or apostatise itself on the issues of the day. On abortion, on euthanasia, on marriage, Catholicism, even now amid the current storms, has not capitulated to fashion or surrendered to what is fashionable. While Pope Francis has been attacked from within his own Church, often unfairly, there has been no Pope in my lifetime who has more vehemently denounced abortion and spoken for life than the current Shepherd. The deposit of Faith has been kept secure and, for Catholics, the fact that, looking back over two millennia, even the worst Popes did not alter the Church’s doctrine, especially in this day and age of weak bishops and episcobabble, is a source of great and enduring comfort. Moreover, there were also, always, good Popes conferred on the Church to guide it through the worst of times.
As the Western world changes and its public morals revert to the pagan norms of the pre-Christian world, the Church, battered and bruised, to be sure, still stands as a sign of contradiction. As the ageing St Paul wrote to his protégé Timothy, “I am giving you these instructions…so that by following them you may fight the good fight, having faith and a good conscience. By rejecting conscience, certain persons have suffered shipwreck in the faith” [1 Tim 1:18-19]. Indeed, a gaze over at 2019’s Church of England gives a sense of what the ‘shipwrecked’ future may have been had Popes listened to the zeitgeist: a shrinking church, which has routinely given into fashion even at the risk of schisms, now even offering re-baptisms of the human person to celebrate their new transgender identity. Where does this end?
While morale may be low and the current cohort of bishops often disappointing, the Church itself still has its laity which, having had its faith and loyalties tested by appalling scandals and lax governance, still turns up and still stands up. The laity turns up to march for life, to fight against abortion, to argue for the dignity of those so ill they cannot fight for themselves, and to fight for causes so unfashionable and so obnoxious to our times that one cannot but be in awe. The Catholic royalty, aristocracy, and intellectual leaders still hold the shepherds to account to protect the fundamental teachings of the Church. And in doing so, the Catholic laity gives witness to what the Psalmist said, “The sum of your word is truth; and every one of your righteous ordinances endures forever.” [Psalms 119:160] In this sense, then, especially as liberal Boomers pass from the Church's leadership and bureaucracies, thankfully leaving no heirs, the Church’s future is probably better than it may look now.
Indeed, in a Western world where the liberalism of the Tarpeian Rock awaits those who, in their conception, their sickness, and their mortality, will be or are burdens on ‘the pursuit of happiness’, the Church must be – indeed, it can only ever be – in the most vehement of opposition. The Church is, again, not just in opposition to the world but will be, again, a missionary church, as well as Pope Francis’ “field hospital” for the wounded. After all, as Jesus said to His disciples, "If the world hates you, know that it has hated me before it hated you." [John 15:18] For a Church in opposition, there is no greater assurance than this that its battle is the most thoroughly righteous one in which it can engage.
The Church went through tremendous scandals and reforms in the 16th century. Even then, its standard could still be carried forth by St Ignatius of Loyola and the new Jesuit order that he founded. Of the Jesuits’ number, the figure of St Edmund Campion loomed large and still looms large in the Anglophone world.
St Edmund Campion was a child prodigy and an Oxford student of such ability that he gave the speeches welcoming both Queen Mary and Queen Elizabeth to the university. Campion, while a nominal Anglican, would, through his studies and the divine will, find his way into the Church, where he would go to the continent and Rome to join the Jesuits, be ordained a priest, and then return to his native and newly protestant Elizabethan England as a missionary priest in 1580. It was not a long mission, and Campion was soon caught by the Queen’s spies and tortured. While offered many inducements by the Queen’s councillors to return to the Church of England, Campion stood strong in the Faith and, as a physically broken man, was brought to a show trial in 1581. All of the details of Campion’s trial are gory and unjust, and Campion was, inevitably, found guilty, sentenced to death, and then executed at Tyburn, as so many British saints and martyrs were during the Protestant ascendancy. Campion, however, left us with the closing words of his famous “brag” of 1581 where he challenged the Privy Council that was meeting to decide Campion’s fate. To the Privy Council, Campion closed:
The expense is reckoned, the enterprise is begun;
It is of God; it cannot be withstood.
So the Faith was planted;
So it must be restored.
From opposition to restoration is a worthy mission. So, my fellow Catholics, welcome to another Kulturkampf. As Pope St Leo XIII wrote in Sapientiae Christianae, "Christians are, moreover, born for combat, whereof the greater the vehemence, the more assured, God aiding, the triumph".
Keep the Faith!
