- Feb 5, 2002
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Recently I have (yet again) heard the accusation that we at CatholicCulture.org, since we refuse to admit that Pope Francis is an anti-pope, are merely trying to curry favor with him for venal reasons of our own. There are, of course, many variations on this theme, which arise from the dissatisfaction of Catholics who are, at best, worried or, at worst, convinced that the sin of private judgment is essential under today’s ecclesiastical conditions. But we ought never to panic or behave like loose cannons simply because our personal spiritual sensibilities are frustrated. And so I respond to the essential problem as follows:
Living in an era in which the Church has very little influence over human society as a whole, we are apt to feel somewhat abandoned by God. The oldest among us can still remember a time when the Church seemed solid within herself and influential in the wider human community (not realizing, perhaps, how much this depended on an inherited but rapidly waning prior European culture). But even those memories are now some two generations in the rear-view mirror. We are now far more visibly surrounded by severe evils which too many even in today’s Church regard as goods. Where, in all this, is God?
The Jews might have asked the same question before the coming of Christ, and indeed the more zealous among them were asking that question even while many others were intent on preserving the outward shell of Judaism without seeking the strength which could come only from its purification. Among the many false lessons taught by both first-century Judaism and twenty-first century Catholicism—that is, the lessons on how to accommodate our beliefs and actions to the dominant culture while attempting to retain our public religious acceptability—there is surely at least one true lesson also to be learned: Namely, that God uses even the unconverted to further His plan.
Moreover, His plan always involves both the influence and the purification of His visible “chosen people”, whether the Jews before the coming of Christ, or the Catholic Church.
In the Old Testament
Continued below.
www.catholicculture.org
Living in an era in which the Church has very little influence over human society as a whole, we are apt to feel somewhat abandoned by God. The oldest among us can still remember a time when the Church seemed solid within herself and influential in the wider human community (not realizing, perhaps, how much this depended on an inherited but rapidly waning prior European culture). But even those memories are now some two generations in the rear-view mirror. We are now far more visibly surrounded by severe evils which too many even in today’s Church regard as goods. Where, in all this, is God?
The Jews might have asked the same question before the coming of Christ, and indeed the more zealous among them were asking that question even while many others were intent on preserving the outward shell of Judaism without seeking the strength which could come only from its purification. Among the many false lessons taught by both first-century Judaism and twenty-first century Catholicism—that is, the lessons on how to accommodate our beliefs and actions to the dominant culture while attempting to retain our public religious acceptability—there is surely at least one true lesson also to be learned: Namely, that God uses even the unconverted to further His plan.
Moreover, His plan always involves both the influence and the purification of His visible “chosen people”, whether the Jews before the coming of Christ, or the Catholic Church.
In the Old Testament
Continued below.
Do not panic! God uses evil for good, even in the Church.
We ought not to panic or behave like loose cannons because our spiritual sensibilities are frustrated. And so I respond to the essential problem as follows.
www.catholicculture.org
