REDISCOVERING CHRISTIANITY

Confusion and Doubt in the Church

Henri de Lubac, noted theologian and one of Joseph Ratzinger’s most influential early thinkers, writing in 1945 at the end of WWII, at a time of great confusion and doubt in the Church and about the Church, said very simply:

“The big task consists then in rediscovering Christianity in its plenitude and in its purity.”

We are not now at the end of a war but at the end of an era, the end of the era of Christendom. Our Church is in crisis, a most serious crisis, and has been for some time. The tragedy is the lack of any significant recognition of the magnitude of the crisis by hierarchy, scholars and commentators. The stagnation and decline of Christianity in the past three quarters of a century has been prophesized and subsequently realized in numerous ways: massive loss of Catholic population relative to total population, serious declines in Baptisms and Marriages and the Priesthood. How can something as magnificent as life in Christ once discovered become “undiscovered”, become hidden once more? Yes, all is easily lost. We desperately need to rediscover Christianity. Here I wish to offer what is the core in Christianity that needs to be rediscovered both in plenitude and purity.

Rather than address the seriousness of the crisis, current attention is submerged in a focus on Church-State relations. Our confusion at the end of this era centers around the role of the Church in the political world, in the world of the State, in the domain of public positions of Church hierarchy that are now rapidly disseminated by a network of media that is not altogether unbiased. Bishops present themselves in contrasting pastoral camps and now even parish councils make Catholic press “headlines’ in supporting their Cardinal’s confrontational position on communion to politicians openly defiant to the truth. It is comical almost to tears. Alternative options are constantly presented, and all is accompanied by an ever-increasing sense of frustration. The root cause of all this frenetic activity is simple: there has been a loss of the core, the essence of Christianity and therefore there is an intense need for its rediscovery.

What Needs To Be Rediscovered

To discover something is to uncover, (dis-cover), to reveal, to bring to the light. The question here is “What is it in Christianity that needs to be rediscovered; what is it that has been lost or hidden that needs to be found or uncovered?”

Christ did not call forth apostles and disciples to initiate a Church with the objective of changing the political structure of the world; Christ came to change the heart of the human being. To change my heart is to discover that Christ came to free me from the incredible desire I have to live my life focused exclusively on myself. We then live in a state of constant fear, more specifically, a fear of death. This fear of death in all its forms, including physical, political, financial, loss of health, reputation, then dominates our behavior and responses. Christ called us forth to free us from this fear of death – to live our lives for the other, in fact to be ready to give our life for the other, out of love. But this is a love we do not have by our human nature, but it is the love that Christ wishes to give us so that our mission as a Christian is fulfilled. That mission is to be Christ in our world, to have the nature of Christ revealed in our lives.

Christ’s Call: Love Your Enemy

Here is where we are “off course”. Rather than calls for Church re-ordering or re-structuring, rather than polite and not so polite doctrinal shouting across ecclesial halls, what should be announced clearly and unambiguously is the call of Jesus Christ to love. But not the saccharine love of the culture, not the accommodating, conformist movement of a Christianity to the hostile embrace of totally alien ideologies but the love announced by Jesus Christ, a love that is meant to reveal the love of God for all people. That love is radical and needs to be seen as radical, i.e., pointing towards the root, the original. In a recent series of brilliant lectures, Giuseppe Gennarini, Responsible Catechist of the Neocatechumenal Way of the United States has clearly demonstrated that the core of what is to be rediscovered, to be recaptured, so as to meet the challenges of our era is the announcement of Jesus Christ in his Sermon on the Mount. Here is the core:

“But I say this to you, love your enemies and pray for those who persecute you.”

Who loves their enemies today in the Spirit of Jesus Christ? Who prays for their ideological adversaries, their persecutors? Political enemies? To love the enemy is to announce the Truth, not with a triumphal air, not with any trace of vindictiveness, not with some other objective in mind but solely out of love. To love the enemy and announce the Truth is not possible on the human level. This is the crucial teaching that seems to have been lost. We are weak, sinful creatures with so many conflicting and arrogant ways that we actually do believe that we can love the enemy by our own strength. Yet our experience clearly tells us otherwise. It is only through the reception of the grace of God, offered always in total love, that the heart of a man or woman can be transformed to act with the nature of Christ. In acting in this nature of Jesus Christ, of loving the enemy in announcing the Truth, the rediscovered Christian either as politician, commentator, bishop, or whomever (including a Parish Council), is ready to be decapitated of their reputations, their desire to be heard and known, their livelihood, and instead to lay joyfully in the gutter in front of that Truth.

Here we must face the scoffers and the sardonic smiles of the cynic who shouts: “It is essential to get real! ‘Love as Christ loves’ is a really great, almost operatic announcement but in the end, merely entertaining. Direct involvement on the part of the Church is crucial, followed by direct political action and hand to hand combat on the ideological doctrinal battlefield!”.

The crisis in which the Church is now immersed has developed precisely from such a misguided direction. The average self-described Catholic has long since abandoned any significant interest in current dogmatic issues (including politicians receiving Communion, same sex marriages…) and is largely affected only in disinterested passing by media reports of Church behavior and, in any event has already long since left active participation in the faith. A few years ago, I estimated, using a rather extensive, fully calibrated ecclesial model, that a total of about 15 million people had already left the US Church from 1950-2010.

Why Love the Enemy?

The operative question is “Why?”. The magnitude of the crisis is clear, although unacknowledged, yet its underlying cause lies hidden in this undiscovered Christianity. The Catholic adult, who left a long time ago and comes only occasionally, asks the two central questions (again De Lubac) which have not been answered, let alone even addressed:

• Is this Christianity of which you speak really true? and
• Is this Christianity really necessary?

Obviously, the response of the majority of Catholic Christians has been to doubt the truth of Christ’s claims (love the enemy, be ready to give your life and pass from death to life). All of the culture, far too often reinforced by a preaching that seeks affection, is to improve one’s level of comfort, of avoidance of discomfort, of loving those who love you.  The average Christian today simply acts as if Christianity is really not all that necessary in one’s life.

Why Go To Mass?

Why regular Sunday Mass? The Covid hiatus was a clear demonstration of the lack of necessity of Christianity. Physical attendance at Sunday Mass was not practiced for a long period with no apparent consequences. The distorted conclusion was therefore that Mass was not all that necessary for one’s life and could easily be relegated to an occasional practice at one’s convenience.

This confusion is a direct result of the failure to announce the Truth with the love of Christ which always radically results in acceptance or rejection, in loving embrace or violent retaliation. This is the risk the Christian faced from the beginning and now faces once again at the end of the era of Christendom. The result will be a smaller Church.

The Great Grace of Courage and Humility

To recapture something is to lay ahold of that which has “escaped” and needs to be once more apprehended. Rediscovering Christianity is to believe that there is a Christianity that has been lost and needs to be found. Christianity is Christ and Christ desires to embed the Divine life within the Christian. That which the Lord wishes to embed is the love of the enemy which, of necessity, relies on our grace-filled willingness to give our lives for the Truth. This requires a great grace of courage and humility.  If this core of the Sermon is announced, publicly and profoundly, with a grace-filled conviction, this Christianity of which we speak will be shown to be true, will be rediscovered and in being true, will be shown to be necessary.