God is Counting on Us

Thirteen years ago, political firebrand Pat Buchanan wrote “Suicide of a Superpower: Will America Survive to 2025?”  The answer to Mr. Buchanan’s question appears to be that ‘yes,’ America will make it to 2025, but in what shape remains to be seen.  The political and social environment in which Mr. Buchanan penned his book seems almost quaintly subdued when compared with the current cultural, political and economic torrents.  Yet despite the changes that have occurred during the past thirteen years, some of Mr. Buchanan’s insights regarding America’s ills, and his prescriptions for them, remain insightful and on-point.

Of particular relevance for readers of this journal might be his position on the general decline of Christianity in the U.S.  Like many co-religionists, Mr. Buchanan sees the loss of the Christian faith in America as having dire consequences for the nation.  But unlike other commentators on this general trend, Mr. Buchanan’s view as to what the nation needs to remedy this problem is daring to the point of profundity.  It also gibes perfectly with another perspective offered by the late Pope Benedict XVI.  Together, these rather divergent figures provide a lens on the current situation that is ultimately hopeful, beautiful and true.

The natural human inclination in times of crisis is to look inward, to circle the proverbial wagons, and to ride out the worst of what is to come as best one can.  In such moments, the human brain often reverts to well-worn neural pathways, or habits, as a means for coping with the stress and uncertainty of perceived danger.

Under the circumstances, it is rather unsurprising that in the face of the current cultural, technological and economic turbulence, a significant portion of the US Church would want to turn inward and backward in an attempt to find safe harbor in the tempest.  As anecdotal evidence of this tendency, there are no shortage of articles and posts about the popularity of Latin masses and vespers services, especially among the young, and the enthusiasm many newly consecrated priests for pre-Vatican II ways.

But the current nostalgia in parts of the American Church for more stable days is borne of crises that are largely benign by historical standards.  In many ways, people have never had it better.  Beyond the general material well-being that Americans enjoy, the US faces no imminent political, economic or military collapse as have so many nations and empires in the past.  In terms of the Church, the clergy are in no danger of being jailed or executed as happens in other parts of the world.  Regardless of the relative benign-ness of the current crisis, the feeling of impending catastrophe may be just as strong for contemporary Americans as it was for people of different ages coping with more existential threats.  More importantly, in the late Pope Benedict XVI’s view, certain of these historic times of stress have valuable lessons to teach the contemporary Church.

Writing in 1971, then Fr. Ratzinger applied a historical lens to the Church as he imagined it in 2000.  With incredible foresight, Fr. Ratzinger foretold a much smaller faith community, facing cultural headwinds and largely shorn of its institutional trappings.  His mustard seed church as it came to be known was often imagined as a rump of Catholic traditionalists who would somehow muddle through a new dark age until the light of faith shone brightly again.  Yet Fr. Ratzinger’s inspiration for the future Church that would endure societal storms and torrents did not come from walled monasteries or desert hermitages.  Rather, his confidence, hope and even joy for this buffeted community came from other seemingly foreboding times for the Body of Christ and the saints of these ages that went forth in the world to share the truth in love.

The age that inspired Ratzinger the most in in terms of the future of the Church, and that he saw as the most directly relevant, was the period of the French Revolution and the subsequent Napoleonic wars.  This era was arguably one of the most traumatic periods in the history of Europe since the fall of the Roman Empire.  Largely forgotten in the modern age is that the goal of the Revolution was nothing less than complete societal transformation at gun point.  Like Mau and Lenin, Marat and Robespierre sought to erase every vestige of the old order and to create a utopia in its place and were willing to do whatever was necessary to achieve this end.

The Church was one of the foremost targets for the French revolutionaries in their quest to remake the world.  Incalcitrant clergy were routinely executed and as Fr. Ratzinger points out, even compliant shepherds, such as Jean-Baptiste Gobel, the bishop of Paris who renounced the faith, were not spared.  Ironically, having left the Church, the former bishop was  beheaded for being an atheist and denying the revolutionary cult of the supreme being.

Ratzinger points to Gobel as a cautionary tale for those who would sacrifice the core of the faith in order to comport with societal demands or seek to reduce the Church to a social welfare organization.  But of far greater interest and inspiration to him are the saints of the same revolutionary age.  In particular, he points to two exemplars who went into this world, engaged with it, and ultimately set it on a new course.  While largely unknown in the modern world, Johann Sailer and Clement Hofbauer quietly and humbly demonstrated the truth of the faith through their lives and works and laid the foundation for a newer and stronger Church that would arise from the wreckage of the revolution.

Very readable biographies of both men are available online, so for the purposes of this article, a very brief description of their respective lives will suffice. Sailer was an academic theologian who defended the orthodoxy of the faith, and Hofbauer established and ran orphanages and schools.  In their respective ways, each man lived the compelling truth of the faith.  More importantly, they demonstrated God’s love to the people around them despite overwhelming opposition and hardship.

Jumping from the obscure nineteenth century saints from whom Fr. Ratzinger drew inspiration for the future Church to Mr. Buchanan’s thesis on modern America  will seem a bit disjointed, but there is a common thread.  Mr. Buchanan uses the analogy of imperial Rome for the contemporary US, and his hope is St. Paul.  In “Suicide of a Superpower”, Buchanan argues that America needs nothing less than a new St. Paul in order to bring it back to sanity and to Christ.

The parallels between ancient Rome and the modern US in terms of an uneven and decadent society, and a voice arguing persuasively for an alternative set of values, are fairly obvious and Mr. Buchanan does not elaborate much more on how St. Paul’s ministry would translate to the present time, but inferences can certainly be drawn.

St. Paul largely taught and tended to the communities that he gathered throughout the eastern Mediterranean region.  His letters and orations about Christ were compelling in that they showed a better way to people in a highly religious, yet largely banal and vapid culture of self-indulgence.  Through his teachings, St. Paul gave them what their culture could not provide – meaning and real truth borne of God’s love.  The communities that Paul formed then began to demonstrate that same love on a wider and even more compelling basis in that truth translated into actions.  The early Christian communities shared their wealth.  They provided the only available safety net the destitute around them.  They also provided spiritual and societal liberation in a highly stratified and oppressive culture.

Taking Mr. Buchanan’s thesis a bit further, and perhaps not where he intended, these early churches established by Paul began to show the emptiness of what Roman culture had become as it was consumed from within by the pursuit of pleasure.  St. Augustine and Seneca, to name just two sources, exhaustively detail the growing hollowness of Imperial mores and customs.

This point is the common thread between Mr. Buchanan and Fr. Ratzinger.  When taken a little further than he might, Mr. Buchanan’s position could be argued as holding that the early Church, as established by St. Paul, showed the Roman world a better way by revealing its own cruel banality.  This is exactly the point that Fr. Ratzinger makes about Sailer and Hofbauer.

Many of the leaders of their respective societies were drawn to Sailer and Hofbauer by virtue of the compelling force of their love, as enabled by Christ.  It was this realization of the emptiness of the values of their culture when compared to the peace and strength that Sailer and Hofbauer radiated that brought many back to the beauty and reality of the faith.

Ratzinger makes clear that there were likely many more Sailers and Hofbauers during the incredibly tumultuous and trying times of the early nineteenth century.  These quiet, pure and genuine exemplars of the power of God’s love in their lives likely also showed the cruel emptiness of the culture that surrounded them.

Because of these unknown men and women, the Enlightenment and French Revolution that largely sought to do away with the Church gave way to a massive revival of faith in the nineteenth century.  The Roman world gave way to a Christian one because of the example, inspired and guided by God’s love, of the early Church.  The faith of the nameless men and women in each era was not lived by turning backward or inward, but by showing compassion and love to the inadvertent lepers that were the adherents of the culture of the age.

These were the few laborers of whom the Lord spoke in Matthew’s gospel.  They also were the antithesis to the ineffectual, loveless, clanging symbols that Paul writes of in his first letter to the of Corinthians and with which the modern world is saturated.

The truth did not need to be protected or sheltered in Roman or Revolutionary times.  It needed to be shared in the power of God’s infinite love and compassion for humanity through his saints. Their faith and love were brave and fearless.  It was what ultimately changed the world.

In hindsight, history seems neat, predictable and almost quaint compared with the confusion and cruelty of the modern world.  But the current age really is not that much more confusing or cruel than ages past, and the remedy is no different.  A real, hopeful Church that goes out, unafraid and only concerned with living the truth of the transformation that it has experienced by its encounter with the living God is what is needed, as it has always been.

The emptiness and self-importance of the present is not that different from Roman times, or the age of the French Revolution.  The culture of each era may tear apart the Church, but in so doing, they only reveal their own falsehood.  The Crucifixion leads to the Resurrection.  The truth of God’s love stands regardless of how hard the storms rage.  The current culture will eventually fade and die, as have so many others before it.  What remains, the real Church, will be there to catch it as it falls and ultimately transform it.

It is entirely understandable that much of the contemporary Church would rather live in a time of peace, security and calm and will try to return to such a period. But these are not the times that God has given the current Church.  He gave it incredibly important work to do.  He asks it to be ready to catch a falling world and to transform it.  He is counting on you to do that work, and he will do it with you.