Almost Catholics
Charlie Kirk was seemingly on a trajectory into the Catholic Church, under the influence of his amazing, best-of-many-worlds wife, Erika. Who knew that a woman could be Evangelical and Catholic, a social activist, a mother, a gorgeous celebrity, and a prayerful theologian?
Jordan Peterson, whose wife famously entered the Church, stands frozen at the boundary, apparently unwilling to or incapable of crossing that line of trust, even as he powerfully articulates Catholic views.
C.S. Lewis remained Anglican, apparently retaining reservations about the papacy and Marian devotion as well as some residual prejudice against Catholicism from his childhood. His teachings were resoundingly Catholic. If he were alive today, it is hard to imagine that he could resist the pull across the Tiber.
Simone Weil, brilliant philosopher-social activist-mystic, was possessed by love for the poor and by the person of Jesus Christ. She was deeply drawn to the prayer of the Church but rejected baptism out of a disgust for dogmatic and institutional dimensions of the Church.
Mother Margaret Cusack, a fiery Irish nationalist and brilliant, prodigious writer (35 books)fought the English overlords and fed the starving during the famine before converting to Catholicism. Described as eccentric, passionate, rebellious and difficult (think Maureen O'Hara in The Quiet Man), she was an early advocate of the apparitions at Knock and claimed that the Blessed Mother spoke directly to her. After fighting with the episcopacy in Ireland, she got permission personally from the Pope to found a new order, the Sisters of St. Joseph of Peace, to house and train "friendless girls." In 1885 she opened a home (still there) in Jersey City. She again got into ecclesiastical trouble, now with Newark authorities and NYC's Archbishop Corrigan over her support for a leftwing activist priest and over funds. She left the Catholic Church, returned to the Anglican and was buried therein.
My high school friend Frank was a Catholic priest for 25 years and an Episcopalian priest for just over that. He considers himself a Roman Catholic who has a job with the Anglicans. He says as Episcopalian he does half the work and gets twice the pay he did as Catholic. When he isn't presiding at Eucharist as a visitor he attends a Catholic mass. He, unlike myself, seems untroubled that the mass he celebrates is probably valid but illicit and therefore at least disrespectful but perhaps sacrilegious as his communicants entertain various theologies of the mass.
Another friend left the Church to be ordained a Methodist minister; then reverted to Catholicism, renouncing his ordination; then re-reverted to Methodism; then re-re-reverted to Catholicism. He is intelligent, passionate and articulate in his faith.
I graduated in 1969 from Maryknoll College Seminary with over 50 classmates after 4 years preparing to be missionary priests. Today most do not practice our faith. In large part, their children and grandchildren are minimally familiar with our faith.
If I were to honor, from my generational cohort of idealists, priests, psychologists, activists, and academics, one figure for his service to the suffering and his prayerfulness of life it would clearly be college classmate John: ordained a missionary priest, he still happily displays a picture of himself concelebrating mass with John Paul II. He left the missionary priesthood, confronted his alcoholism, surrendered himself to the 12 steps and prayer, married, raised a son, and built a marvelous community of service to the addicted, homeless and mentally ill. He speaks with affection, gratitude and reverence of the Church as he seems to remain distant.
To summarize, we contemplate with awe the complexities, nuances, depth and boundless variety in such relationships with the Church.
A Church in Decline?
By all the numbers, our Church has been in steady, steep decline for the last six decades since the Council. There seems to be now a plateau, and even signs of a revival, certainly among young men in the USA. But numbers do not accurately disclose spiritual realities. And so, the argument here is that the reality of God and his Church in our lives is immeasurable, mysterious, dense, largely anonymous.
Not long ago, Catholics were 50% of the NJ population; now it is closer to 33%. The NONES are now more than 25% and possibly half of them are ex-Catholics. Only one in six Catholics practice their faith by weekly participation in Sunday mass. So, in NJ about one in eighteen, just over 5%, people practice our faith. Even these are largely victims of the catechetical famine that afflicted us from the Council until the pontificates of John Paul and Benedict (from 1965 through the 70s). Few understand with any depth and clarity our faith. So, integral, intelligent, passionate Catholic faith has become rare, almost a cult, found in niches like religious orders, priests, renewal movements and the Latin Mass. (For example, many Sunday mass attendees would be unpleasantly surprised by the previous essay on the structure of the spousal act.)
However, (as noted in an earlier blog essay), our experience in hospital ministry shows that while institutional loyalty has declined, there abides a immense, deep Catholic influence. Almost everyone we encounter has some connection, usually positive, with the Church. Some are influenced by marriage or a family member. Many retain practices and beliefs: devotion to Mary or the rosary, Padre Pio, St. Francis. Most at least admire the Church's solicitude for the poor and suffering. Most respect and (to some extent) emulate the ideals of marital fidelity. Even those who self-identify as agnostics or even atheists are open to prayer as they entertain some uncertainty in their "unbelief." Frequently we hear grateful mention of a happy connection with a priest, nun, devout layperson or a vibrant institution.
The Church is like other movements and communities of value: there are concentric circles of participation. At the very center, those fully dedicated: professionally or voluntarily, but wholeheartedly. Moving outward, we find decreasing intensity. At the outside circles we have nonmembers who nevertheless are influenced, and therefore participant in some degree. At least in NJ, it is like St. Patrick's Day when everyone is Irish: everyone is, however incompletely, Catholic.
Conclusion
Christ and His Church is a bright, flaming, illuminating, warming fire at the heart of creation, history, society. It reaches everything and everywhere. Even as some are moving away; others moving closer; many strangely moving now one way and then another. The warmth and light is available everywhere to everyone. There are shadows everywhere; and in everyone. There are also black holes of sin ready to devour the willing.
May we despise the dark and the cold. May we crave the light and the warmth. May we draw each other closer to that Fire!
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