It was not destroyed. Diminished in stature, it is an organism still alive, continuous with the past, preserving in a lower, more humble key its essential life of worship, prayer, sacraments, devotions, dogma as truth, family life, and service of the poor. Better yet, there are surges of new life, like a plant that has new shoots or a garden with new flowers and fruits. It is clear that an old order has ended and a new one has begun. What is the outline of this new Church aborning? I suggest the following.
1. Structurally, we see in the lay renewal movements the emergence of smaller, intimate communities of faith which promise to restructure, if not replace, the traditional parish which is weak before a culture turned anti-Catholic. These are promising to the degree that they are evangelical (centered in the person of Jesus), orthodox (in thought and practice), and authentically Catholic in resistance to a thoroughly liberal, bourgeois, technological order.
2. Theologically the vision is crystal clear and firmly in place: the Communio School of John Paul, Benedict and Balthasar, developing the Resourcement Legacy that birthed the Council, presents a splendid theological symphony: faithful to tradition as it is fresh and creative in its acceptance of all that is best in recent history. It remains, of course, in dialogue with more traditional approaches such as Thomism as well as contemporary developments. It is clear,strikingly so in the current pontificate, that liberalism, the "cult of contraception," is inherently sterile even as it remains a temptation in its accomadation to the cultural mainsteam.
3.Politically, the Church cannot align with any political party or ideology. The strong Catholic-Democratic coalition of my childhood collapsed of course in the early 1970s when that party turned anti-Catholic even though about half of Catholics don't yet realize it. The Catholic-Republican alliance of the Reagan years always entailed dissonance with key aspects of Catholic social teaching but has in any case fallen apart in the Trump era. Trumpian populism, which could in theory be transformed into a Catholic-friendly collaboration between moral conservatives and advocates for the poor, is in its current form corrupted by the hopeless personal decadence of Trump himself. Relinguishing any firm alliance, the Catholic can only alternate between the anarchistic detachment of Dreher's Benedicat Option and the pragmatism of Adrian Vermulle's Christian Strategy: retreat from engagment with degenerate political institutions in tension with a readiness to cooperate in the politics of the good on a piecemeal basis. So, at the moment, we of course align ourselves with NATO and Biden in support of the Ukraine; but we do not forget that in the longer Culture War, Biden is more of a traitor-enemy than Putin.
4. Institutionally, McCarrick's ecclesiastical success because of financial wizardry, political shrewdness and sexual perversion has convinced me that the hierarchical Church for its own health and holiness must divest of large institutions (hospitals, schlools, etc.) to devote itself to the Gospel/Liturgy and leave the corporal works of mercy in the hands of the laity. This was the advice of Ivan Illich 70 years ago. It means a poor, humble, holy Church.
5. Culturaly, in a society so totally toxic and decadent...atheistic, technological, scientistic, bourgeois, meritocratic, materialistic, hedonistic, despairing...the Church must be increasingly counter-cultural and resistant. Listening to eccentrics and anarchists (Girard, Illich, Ellul, Day, Berry, and others) we will build within the shell of the decaying order small, organic, evangelical, dynamic communities of solidarity, intimacy, health, faith, hope and love.
These are exciting times to be Catholic. We cherish our childhood memories and preserve all that is best from them; but cannot nostalgically grieve an imagined Camelot. This is the time we are given! God ambitions to do beautiful things with us!
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