In the next three letters, I will consider the significant developments or happenings in the Catholic Church in my lifespan, the last 75 years, the post-war era. The previous letter highlighted the organic nature of the Church: living, changing, developing in time. These three will maintain that awareness but emphasize the "dramatic" reality of the Church as she relates to God, the world, and the dark kingdom. Rather than describing "developments" which suggests inevitable, interior, biology-like change, I will speak of "events" or "happenings" or "encounters." This language highlights the dramatic nature of the interaction of heaven with earth, the engagement of freedoms, heavenly and earthly and demonic. This letter focuses on the three most important happenings; the second on a dozen of secondary significance; and the last on disruptions, deviations and diminishments in our time.
Clearly, in the love affair between the bridal Church and Christ her bridegroom, three events illuminate the last 75 years. These are not evolutionary developments, human achievements, novel innovations, or historical contingencies. Rather, they are initiatives from the Trinity, infusions of heavenly life into our earthly Church. They are: first, personal encounter with Jesus Christ, God and man, as our brother, Lord and Savior. Second, reception of the Holy Spirit, intimately, powerfully and personally. Third, engagement with the Mercy of our heavenly Father, through Jesus in the Holy Spirit. Together, they draw us into deeper communion with the Trinity.
These three realities have, of course, been the essence of the Church since the coming of Christ. They are not innovative. But this love affair is a dynamic, living, surprising encounter that is acted out anew with every generation and every single person. It is a renewal of the spousal communion, a continuation that is also fresh, free, ever-surpassing, serendipitous. Imagine a couple, celebrating 50 years of marriage, in a second honeymoon: they affirm the very union created between them by God half a century previously; they go to a new place with exciting discoveries and joys; they celebrate all the gifts received from above including children, in-laws, grandchildren, friends, accomplishments and even the failures, disappointments and mutual hurts. This is not a duplicate of the first honeymoon; it is quite different; but the interior form is the same, an abiding exchange of love. It is ever old and ever new. And that applies to every single day: of our own marriages and vows and above all our romance with God in Christ. We might imagine our Church as a bride who is often erratic, cold, indifferent and even unfaithful to her spouse. But the Bridegroom is ever patient, tender, loyal...although at times stern and forthright. And so he is tireless, relentless, fierce in his pursuit of her. And so, we see these courtly gestures of love from heaven.
Significantly, each of the three was addressed by St. Pope John Paul II in three of his earliest, and arguably most valuable encyclicals: Redeemer of Man, 1979; Lord and Giver of Life, 1986; Rich in Mercy, 1980. With my own spouse, I experienced each of these personally, in remarkable and miraculous fashion, early in our married life in the 1970s.
Encounter with Jesus as Lord and Savior
The singular failure of the Catholic Church in America 1945-65 was distance from and indifference to the person of Jesus Christ. The Church of that era erected a magnificent edifice of buildings, institutions, schools as well as large families, flourishing religious orders and seminaries. In great numbers we were moralized (taught sexual ethics, social justice, etc.), sacramentalized (inducted into the liturgy and sacramental economy) and dogmatized (taught the basics of Catholic theology.) This huge edifice was built upon a weak foundation: it was not grounded in a personal, experiential, intimate relationship with the person of Jesus Christ. We were not evangelized. We were not properly catechized. Large majorities of us who processed through that impressive religious itinerary no longer practice the Catholic faith; they have been absorbed into bourgeois, moralistic-therapeutic-deistic, careerist-consumerist-technocratic, softly-secular mediocrity.
I was a product of this system. Blessed by a pious family, good schools, and four years of college seminary, I enjoyed a steady, low-key faith in God's fatherly love, an attachment to the Church in her sacraments-teaching-ethics; and a compassion for the suffering. But I was not so sure about Jesus. I ascribed to a "low Christology" in that I saw him as a role model, the man closest to God, the one to emulate. But I really didn't get his divine nature. I didn't know him personally, experientially, as my own intimate Lord and Savior. My faith lacked, along with my generation, a solid evangelical foundation. I drank the liberal cool aid of the 1960s: accepted contraception as morally sound and leaned into leftist politics and the therapeutic.
My life changed on April 1, 1973, just over 50 years ago, when I made my Cursillo. This retreat movement out of Spain of 1950s clearly announced the Gospel of Jesus Christ as Lord and Savior. I heard the message. I believed. I felt his love, his closeness, his intimacy. I knew him, felt him, personally. I experienced an invigoration of all elements of my Catholic faith as now rooted in the person of our Lord. The splendid Catholic symphony, now unified in Christ and Triune love, exploded with love, truth and beauty in all its elements, profundity and complexity.
This rediscovery of the Gospel did not come out of nowhere. It always informed the Church. In the post-war era we had the crystal clear teaching of Bishop Fulton Sheen and an army of preachers, priests and theologians. But it found particularly lucid expression in the Vatican Council and then the dual-papacy of John Paul and Benedict.
What happened to us was not exceptional: the same romantic drama was being enacted across the globe. All the lay renewal movements...Communion and Liberation, Cursillo, Charismatic Renewal, Neocatechumenal Way, Focolare...were driven by this personal-yet-communal love for Jesus Christ in a popular, down-to-earth mysticism that moved beyond moralism, dogmatism, ritualism, and legalism.
Beyond the boundaries of the Catholic Church the same thing was happening: Jesus movement, global Pentecostalism, and a vibrant Evangelicalism. In the face of the Cultural Revolution, a more conservative ecumenical alliance surged to defend ancient traditions against raging Cultural Liberalism.
This was the same romance the Great Lover has always had with his Bride, but with fresh, creative, and surprising gestures of love.
New Movement of the Holy Spirit
The night after my wife finished her own Cursillo, we attended our first charismatic prayer meeting. This was a second life-changer. We were directed to relax in God's love; to listen to readings from Scripture and preaching; to surrender to song and praise; to open our hearts to the movement of the Holy Spirit. We were to relieve ourselves of agency, moral obligation, guilt, anxiety and yield to expectant faith. I heard the Word! I believed! Eventually we were baptized in the Holy Spirit and experienced a new serenity, direct guidance, praise in tongues, a new appetite for holy Scripture, a zeal to share this banquet of new blessedness.
This current of the Holy Spirit was blowing, in somewhat different styles, through all the lay renewal movements mentioned above. It was spreading, as Pentecostalism, through all the mainstream Churches and very powerfully across Latin America and Africa. It is surely the most promising happening in the broader global Church in our time.
As an Evangelical Catholic I share a deep bond, informally, with all who acknowledge Jesus Christ as their personal Lord and Savior. So, for example, when I read the alarming statistics of those leaving the Catholic Church, especially in Latin America, I am heartened to consider that many are leaving a lifeless, mechanical religious practice for a Spirit-filled encounter with the living Lord and engagement with an intensive community of faith, hope and love. Although institutional membership in the Catholic Church decreases, the deeper communion in Christ is a net gain for the mystical Church.
This is the same Holy Spirit that moved over the chaos at Creation; that moved the patriarchs, prophets and kings; and that inflamed the apostles at Pentecost. But this breath of God, this fire of Divine Love, moves in ever new ways in every time.
Divine Mercy
I read John Paul's encyclical Full of Mercy or Dives in Misericordia at the very time our family was struck by our greatest tragedy: death by suicide of my brother-in-law Al. At that wake and funeral, the outpouring of compassion and kindness was so overwhelming that I could only think, over and over again: "If all these people overflow with such mercy, how much more must God!" The entire death and loss was suffused with Mercy. Al's last acts were: he assisted his aging stepfather to remove his boots; and then he lit a candle, a sign of hope. And he passed. Mercy became my favorite word.
I learned the devotion to the Divine Mercy of St. Faustina. I prayed: "Jesus I trust in you." "Let your Mercy be upon us as we place our trust in you." Trust and surrender to the Divine Mercy, along with love for Christ and reception of the Holy Spirit, became the lifeblood of my heart and soul.
The Divine Mercy is at the heart of Scripture and our entire Tradition. But it is a dense, complex and mysterious reality. It is also infused with Godly wrath against evil, with holy judgement against sin, with fierce Justice and Truth. The mutual interpenetration of Mercy with Wrath, Justice, and Truth is the deepest of mysteries and can elude us in two directions: too severe or too soft.
In earlier times, the threat of damnation and sin was held over us in popular piety in a manner that could obscure the preeminence of Mercy. For example, suicide victims were denied Catholic burial since their last known act was a mortal sin and the Church did not want to encourage presumption about such a grave act. There prevailed a fear of hell and the assumption that many go there because of God's wrath and justice.
More recently, especially over the last decade during the current pontificate, we see the other extreme: a soft, weak or cheap mercy. God is imagined as all-kind-and-nice, forgiving and even indulgent of all behavior. A loving God can condemn no one to hell! Compassion, kindness and unconditional acceptance will conquer all. There is a diminished sense of sin and evil. No lines at the confessional. Mafia hit men are buried and their family sentimentally say "He is at a better place now." Those who have avoided Sunday Eucharist for years and years attend a funeral or wedding and, in presumption and sacrilege, receive Communion like it were a party favor at a birthday party. The negativity of the past has been replaced by something worse: sentimental presumption.
The authentic prophets of Mercy...St. Faustina, St. Theresa of Lisieux, St. John Paul, St. Padre Pio, and countless saints through the centuries...proclaim Divine Mercy in its wrath against sin and evil. They proclaim the weight of our own Freedom: that nothing is automatic or predetermined; that we cannot presume and persist in evil; that the our own eternal destiny, and that of those we are bound to, rests in the Mercy of God and also in our free act of trust-surrender-obedience
Conclusion
Over the last 75 years, the Great Lover has dramatically visited us...our own marriage, the Catholic Church, and the entirety of humanity...drawing us to himself, in the Holy Spirit, under the Divine Mercy. In the Communion, the Event of Love, that is the Trinity. He does so in every life. And in every age and place. Always in new ways.
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