REFLECTIONS ON "CROSSING THE THRESHOLD OF HOPE" by Thomas A. Droleskey Part I is an unprecedented undertaking by a reigning Pontiff. Responding to initial-and follow-up- questions posed by Italian journalist Vittorio Messori, Pope John Paul II has provided the world with intensely personal reflections on everything from the nature of his own apostolic ministry to the state of the Church in the postconciliar era. One must read this book very carefully- and within the context of Catholic Tradition. The Pope's responses are not catechetical in nature; they are personal. provides insights into the Pope's thinking, but it is not a catalog of Catholic teaching (we have to fill that need). A careless, haphazard skimming of the Pope's new book could lead a reader to conclude that certain tenets of the Catholic faith are not important to this Holy Father. Such a conclusion would be unjust; this Pope has produced a veritable library of works defending the integrity of the Catholic faith. He has spoken eloquently about the sacerdotal nature of the Mass and of the hierarchical priesthood instituted by our Lord at the Last Supper. He warned the American bishops in 1987 about the dangers posed by dissent. He has spoken endlessly about the need for auricular Confession before one conscious of mortal sin can worthily receive Holy Communion. Most of those matters, however, are not covered in . Those looking for chinks or omissions in the book would be engaging in intellectual dishonesty if they claimed that the new book is indicative of this Pope's disinterest in defending the faith. One would have to ignore a corpus of encyclical letters, apostolic exhortations, general audience addresses, angelus talks, homilies, and directives to come to such a conclusion. As will be addressed in the final installment of this five-part series, the Pope's discussion of the postconciliar era contrasts with what could be considered a more candid assessment offered by Joseph Cardinal Ratzinger in 1986. Commentators and analysts of various stripes have been appraising the results of the Second Vatican Council. The Holy Father's rejection of the view that there is a lack of governance and discipline in the Church today is a matter that has been- and will continue to be- examined by Church historians. I will offer my own disagreements with the benign view of things taken by the Pope in a few weeks. The Holy Father, however, makes it clear in his response to the third question, dealing with how the Pope prays, that: "Because the Pope is a witness of Christ and a minister of the Good News, he is Naturally, this is neither a naive joy, nor a vain hope. The joy of victory over evil does not obfuscate-it actually intensifies- in the world and in every man. The Gospel teaches us to call good and evil by name, but it also teaches: 'Do not be conquered by evil but conquer evil with good' (cf. Rom. 12:21)." He goes on to state: "The Pope, like every Christian, must be keenly to which man is subject in the world, in his temporal future, and in his final, eternal eschatological future. The awareness of these dangers does not generate pessimism, but rather encourages the struggle for victory of good in every realm. And it is precisely from this in man and in the world " No, the Holy Father is not living in a dreamworld. He knows full well the problems that exist within the Church-and in the world-at-large. Writing for a mass audience, however, the Pope is attempting to communicate the reality of Christian hope, a virtue which neither denies the existence of problems nor dwells upon the "impossibility" of eradicating the evils which do exist. The hope that most people have is founded in an anthropocentricity which stresses materialism -and salvation through politics and political ideologies. Christian hope is founded in our Lord's victory over sin and death on the cross. It provides us with the understanding that we have the means, sanctifying and actual grace, to squarely address the problems which exist. The Holy Father's reflections must be understood in that context of Christian hope. He is trying to communicate to the non-Catholic (and the poorly catechized Catholic) that there is a purpose to human existence. The world around us is meant to reflect the transcendent glory of the Triune God. We are made to reflect that glory. How many people have any understanding of that today? The first three questions posed to the Holy Father provide great insights into his own personality. He knows that he is the Successor of St. Peter. He has no doubts about the apostolic ministry entrusted to him. "Be not afraid" is a recurring theme in the book. He knows that he, personally, is the object of persecution and ridicule for his defense of the "dignity of every human being, from the moment of conception until death." "A man can also remind himself, as well as others, of the consequences of this logic of the faith which also display the same . A man can do all of this even though he knows that because of it he will become 'a sign that will be contradicted.' "What remains for such a man? Only the words that Jesus Himself addressed to the Apostles: 'If they persecuted me, they will persecute you. If they kept my word, they will also keep yours' (John 15:20). And so: 'Have no fear!' ; do not be afraid of His love; ! Man does not cease to be great, not even in his weakness. Do not be afraid of being witnesses to the dignity of every human being, from the moment of conception until death." The Holy Father knows that he is the object of derision for his defense of Catholic truth. When discussing the "Defense of Every Life" near the end of the book, the Pope notes, "I must repeat that " The Pope is telling the world that he is aware of-but unfazed by-the criticism he receives for being a contemporary sign of contradiction of the Sign of Contradiction. As one who has had the privilege of attending five public papal Masses during this Pontificate-and one in the Pope's private chapel last year-I was very moved by the Holy Father's reflections concerning prayer. He prays with his whole being, groaning audibly as he prepares to celebrate the Holy Sacrifice of the Mass. And he reveals in that he prays for specific intentions of peoples, countries, local Churches (dioceses). He does not tell the world, however, that he spends at least two hours each day before the Blessed Sacrament (nor does he take the credit, in the question dealing with the fall of Communism, that he deserves for starting the process which led to events of 1989. That will be examined in the third installment of this series). Yes, as noted before, there are sections of the book that will be the fodder for discussion and debate among faithful Catholics. There are statements that I find incompatible with the objective situation of the Church in the postconciliar era. But it is clear that the Holy Father is attempting to reach people who have not reflected on First and Last Things. It may be the means to introduce people to the fullness of Church teaching found in . Part II The existence of God is a question that philosophers and theologians have been addressing since the beginning of recorded history. Before the onset of the Renaissance and the French Revolution, that is, prior to modernity, every civilization was based on some form of religious belief. It is natural for the human being to seek contact with the supernatural. The miracle of human life itself, the wonder and beauty of the natural world, the fury and felicity of nature-and the myriad problems caused by men in their dealings with each other-impel people to search for some Supreme Being or Absolute. Pope John Paul II handles the question of the existence of God in by pointing out the difference between the God of the philosophers and the God of Jesus Christ. It is only the God of Jesus Christ, the Pope explains, who is the living God. All philosophical attempts to know something about God are inadequate. It is only the Revelation of the Father through His Incarnate Word, Jesus Christ, which shows forth His true identity. The Holy Father nevertheless explains that philosophy is useful in proving the existence of God, that Catholic thought from the time of St. Thomas Aquinas has relied upon Aristotelian philosophy to demonstrate how human reason can apprehend the existence of a Supreme Absolute. Noting that the has been "somewhat neglected" (a deliberate understatement), the Pope quotes to illustrate the universal and eternal nature of the questions that each human being asks (the purpose of human existence, the meaning of suffering, death, disease). As the Holy Father writes: "I think that it is wrong to maintain that St. Thomas' position stands up only in the realm of the rational. One must, it is true, applaud Etienne Gilson when he agrees with St. Thomas that the intellect is the most marvelous of God's creations, but that does not mean that we must give in to a unilateral rationalism. St. Thomas celebrates all the richness and complexity of each created being, and especially of the human being. ; he continues, in fact, to be the . In this context, his -that is, his 'five ways' that lead toward a response to the question '' ['Does God exist?']- should be read." The Pope reiterates the relevance of the Thomistic proofs for the existence of God in a follow-up question posed by the book's editor, Vittorio Messori. Believing that contemporary man is rediscovering the sacred-and that positivism, which asserts that man is capable of knowing nothing beyond what is seen and felt, is on the wane in some fields of study-His Holiness explains that there is a connection between the senses and the intellect. Yes, human knowledge is primarily sensory, the Pope notes; but of his nature man can know truths. Man is capable of knowing and accepting truths which relate to his essence, an essence made by God Himself. Man is not limited to the merely sensory or empirical, as the Renaissance and the Age of Reason asserted. "It is therefore possible to speak from a solid foundation about . And if it is possible to speak of such experiences, it is difficult to deny that, in the realm of human experience one also finds good and evil, truth and beauty, and God.... Man recognizes himself as an ethical being, capable of acting according to criteria of good and evil, and not only those of profit and pleasure. He also recognizes himself as , capable of putting himself in contact with God. Prayer-of which we talked earlier-is in a certain sense the first verification of such a reality." Establishing these principles, the Holy Father, in response to a question about whether God is hiding, writes that the notion of a "hidden" God has nothing to do with the writings of St. Thomas Aquinas-or with the Judeo-Christian tradition. He ascribes the notion of a "hidden" God to modern philosophy, particularly that of Descartes, which "split thought from existence and identified existence with reason itself: '' ('I think, therefore I am')." God is not hidden. He has revealed Himself totally in the Second Person of the Blessed Trinity made man. In a certain sense, the Pope relates, God was "hiding" in the pages of the Old Testament. He had not revealed His fullness. That fullness of Revelation came about in such a way as to be considered utter madness in the eyes of the world, even to those people of the stock of Abraham from whom our Lord assumed His sacred humanity. "It is precisely in this birth, and then through the Passion, the cross, and the Resurrection that the self-revelation of God in the history of man reached its zenith-the Revelation of the invisible God in the visible humanity of Christ." The Jewish people of our Lord's time were not expecting the Messiah to be born into poverty and anonymity as a helpless Babe in Bethlehem. They were expecting a political messiah who would throw off the shackles of Roman rule, restoring Israel to the political glory she had before the kingdom was split, before the Babylonian Captivity. They could not have imagined that the Messiah would have been God in the flesh! The Holy Father writes of this with special poignancy: "Let's try to be impartial in our reasoning: , thereby expanding the possibilities of our knowing Him? In truth, . In a certain sense God has gone too far! Didn't Christ perhaps become 'a stumbling block to Jews and foolishness to Gentiles'? (I Cor. 1:23). Precisely because He called God His Father, because He revealed Him so openly in Himself, He could not but elicit the impression that it was too much.... Man was no longer able to tolerate such closeness, and thus the protests began. ". Neither can accept a God who is so human. 'It is not suitable to speak of God in this way,' they protest. 'He must remain absolutely transcendent; He must remain pure Majesty. Majesty full of mercy, certainly, but not to the point of paying for the faults of His own creatures, for their sins'." In other words, the Pope is saying that Jesus Christ has been rejected by the world precisely because He dared to reveal the Father in such a personal manner. He is, as the Pope emphasizes very clearly in response to another question, the Son of God. He is different from Socrates or Muhammad or Buddha. He is no mere wise man or prophet or enlightened one. "He is .... He holds within Himself the entire intimate world of divinity, the entire Mystery of the Trinity, and the mystery both of temporal life and of immortality. He is true man. In Him the divine is not confused with the human. There remains something essentially divine." As the Holy Father writes, our Lord does "more than just promulgate principles of religious discipline," as Muhammad had done. "Less still is He similar to , with his denial of all that is created." He is the Savior of man. He alone is the truth. Noting that many of the councils of the first millennium revolved around questions concerning the Holy Trinity, the Pope says that the heart of all questions studied by the Church is Jesus Christ. He has been "the center of the faith and life of Christians, at the center of their witness, which often led to the shedding of their blood." All of the living Tradition of the Church points to Jesus Christ as the center and sum of human existence. In particular, Mariology is quintessentially . For, as the Pope reminds us, "'He was conceived of the Holy Spirit and born of the Virgin Mary'." The Apostles' Creed and Nicene-Constantinopolitan Creed attest to the uniqueness of Jesus Christ. The professions made in each creed are not the products of human wisdom. "" Both Pauline and Johannine literature provide the basis for the tenets of the Church's two great creeds. Both Saints Paul and John describe the redemptive mission of the Word made Flesh. Man, created by God, has been redeemed by the Son of God made man. "Perhaps [rather than 'Male and female He created them'] it would be better to say: 'Male and female He redeemed them'." The Pope is trying to convey the centrality of our Lord's redemptive act to a humanity searching for a hidden God, seeking answers to eternal questions. It is only in Jesus Christ, as He has revealed Himself through sacred Scripture and apostolic Tradition, that men can find the hidden God they seek in all the wrong places. Part III Responding to a question about the history of salvation posed by Vittorio Messori in Pope John Paul II provides a brief history lesson about the role played by modern philosophy in the advancement of anthropocentricity. For it is anthropecentricity (man seen as the center of everything) which is the chief hallmark of modernity. The Holy Father discusses the influence of Descartes, observing that the Cartesian mindset divorces man from God, placing individual human thought as the source of all knowledge. Truth, therefore, becomes a matter of individual speculation; truth is relativized. The Pope characterizes this succinctly: "Only that which corresponds to human thought makes sense. The objective truth of this thought is not as important as the fact that something exists in human consciousness." That is Descartes and Immanuel Kant reject metaphysics in favor of a philosophy of knowledge which relies totally upon human senses and the natural and humanistic sciences. The contemporary expression of Descartes and Kant can be found in social sciences, disciplines which seek to explain the problems of humanity from an anti-theistic, anthropocentric point of view. There is no place for Christ and His Holy Church in any truly "scholarly" attempt to assess human behavior. The Pope notes that Descartes' philosophy is not solely responsible for the "movement away from Christianity' in Europe, a process which had a number of sources (not the last being the Protestant Revolution, something the Pope does not discuss in ) He notes, however that the modern rationalism of Descartes helped to create the climate in which the estrangement between faith and culture became possible. Just as one can lose his grip on the spiritual life gradually, so it is possible for the influence of the true faith in a civilization to wane over the course of time. Going further into the reasons for the collapse of Christendom in Europe, His Holiness places his finger quite accurately on the French Revolution, the grandfather of all modern rebellions. "The French Revolution, during the Reign of Tenor, knocked down the altars dedicated to Christ, tossed crucifixes into the streets, introduced the cult of the goddess Reason On the basis of this, there was a proclamation of . The spiritual patrimony and, in particular, the moral patrimony of Christianity were thus torn from their evangelical foundation. In order to restore Christianity to its full vitality, it is essential to return to that foundation." It should be noted that the spirit of the French Revolution is what best describes American politics since the time of Andrew Jackson in the 1820s. The belief in radical, egalitarian majoritarianism is the guiding force of those in power in the halls of academe - and those in charge of the executive branch of our own national government in 1995. The whole concept of God is one that can be defined on the basis of rationalism and naturalism, having little if anything to do with the Redeemer of man, Jesus Christ. It is easy to create a world without God from such a point of view, a world in which we believe in our ability to resolve problems through government structures. Such a belief, bordering on a modern Pelagianism, is held by not a few American bishops, particularly those wedded to the welfare state, those who have rejected the Catholic principle of subsidiarity. Elaborating on the significance of rationalism and naturalism for the history of salvation, the Holy Father strikes an important chord: The Enlightenment (and the modernity born several centuries before in the Renaissance) rejected the Incarnation." "God so loved the world that He gave His only Son, so that everyone who believes in Him might not perish but might have eternal life' (John 3:16)." All of this is too much for "modern" thinkers. The Pope writes: "According to the Enlightenment mentality, the world does not need God's love. And God, in turn, is not above all, Love. If anything, He is an Intellect, an intellect that eternally knows. No one needs His intervention in the world that exists, that is self-sufficient, that is transparent to human knowledge, that is ever more free of mysteries thanks to scientific research, that is ever more an inexhaustible mine of raw materials for man - of modern technology. " Yes, modern man worships himself and his accomplishments But the Holy Father is quick to point out that such a view is not the source of man's happiness at all. "Rather it has become the source of his ruin." "This world which appears to be a great workshop in which knowledge is developed by man, which appears as progress and civilization, as a modern system of communications, as a structure of democratic freedoms without any limitations, this world is not capable of making man happy." God alone is the source of man's happiness. The world "is not capable of saving him from evil, in all of its types and forms -- illness, epidemics, cataclysms, catastrophes, and the like. This world, with all its riches and its wants, needs to be saved, to redeemed." Try as modernity has to create utopia, it has failed. Men still die. Wars still occur. Injustices are rampant. Natural and manmade disasters abound. Not only is modernity a rejection of the Incarnation, it is a rejection of observations derived from pure reason as early as the poet-philosopher Homer (who understood the universality of human nature). All political ideologies fail in their efforts to create a justice which is man- based. They do so because they fail to take into account the reality of original and actual sin; indeed, they reject the whole concept of sin. As the Pope affirms, post- Enlightenment thought "refuses to accept the reality of sin and, in particular, it refuses to accept original sin." The rejection of original and actual sin is common to both Soviet Bolshevism and Western liberalism, both the offshoots of the Enlightenment, although the former came by way of the French Revolution (with the latter greatly influenced by it in the past 160 years). Explaining how 'enlightened' thinkers in his own Poland were upset by his defense of the Decalogue and the commandment of love, the Holy Father reflects that "the Pope becomes when he tries to convince the world of human sin." He goes on to point out an important distinction, however: "Nevertheless, convincing the world of the existence of sin is not the same thing as condemning it for sinning.... ." Salvation, the Pope writes, was made necessary because of the sin of the first Adam. The second Adam, our Lord Jesus Christ endured His cross to save each human being. His saving work started with the infant Church on Pentecost Sunday, with the work of the Apostles being continued until the end of time. The history of salvation is the story of God's love for each person - and each person's free response to Christ's redemptive act on a daily basis. Every man can view the meaning of his existence only in light of the history of salvation. We are part of that history. Our participation in the very inner life of the Trinity by means of sanctifying grace enables us to bear witness to the splendor of Truth Incarnate in a world which has been formed in the past 400 years or so by a rejection of Christ and His Holy Church. Part IV Many parts of touch upon the core of the holy faith. Nowhere is this better demonstrated than in the Holy Father's responses to questions about the purpose of human suffering. As one who has seen his country endure the torment of Nazi occupation and Soviet domination, as one who nearly lost his life in 1981 and who has undergone all types of medical problems in the past few years, Pope John Paul II is not unaccustomed to suffering. He has experienced it. He has been an eyewitness to it. He has seen it in his many travels around the world. The Holy Father explains that God created man as a free being. Man freely rejected God, thereby introducing evil into the world. This evil is allowed to exist to permit the omnipotent God to enter the world to experience the depths of human suffering. ". If suffering is present in the history of humanity, one understands why His omnipotence was manifested in the . The scandal of the cross remains the key to the interpretation of the great mystery of suffering, which is so much a part of the history of mankind." The Pope indicates that Christ suffers anew in each of His members in the Church Militant. This occurs because man, who condemned the God-Man on Good Friday, continues to reject Him today. "Isn't this the truth about the history of humanity, the truth about our century? In our time the same condemnation has been repeated in many courts of oppressive totalitarian regimes. And isn't it also being repeated in the parliaments of democracies where, for example, laws are regularly passed condemning to death a person not yet born?" Emphasizing that God is always on the side of the suffering, the Holy Father notes that the agony on the cross was necessary to demonstrate the depths of God's love. ", who order Him to justify Himself before your tribunal, think about yourself, if you are not responsible for the death of this condemned man, . Consider if this judgment and its result the cross and then the Resurrection-are not your only way to salvation." For the cross is the royal road to the Resurrection, the means by which we can help to pay what we owe for our own judgment of God. Suffering is bound up in the mystery of salvation with love: God's love for us-and ours for Him. Many elements of the Pope's book deserve notice. Time and space limitations do not permit a full explication of all of them. Suffice it to discuss one other aspect of the book prior to a final installment, which will describe the Pope's view of the post-conciliar era. That aspect involves the fall of Communism. The Pope exercises tremendous modesty when writing about the demise of the ideology which dominated his homeland for nearly 45 years. For he played a pivotal, indispensable role in the events which led to the rise of Solidarity, whose political power in 1989, shortly after its reinstatement, would prompt the fall of all Soviet bloc states in but a few short months. And that process helped to expedite the demise of the Soviet Union on Christmas Day three years ago. Recognizing that Communism was (and remains) an assault against the voice of God, the Holy Father writes: "Yes, this is rather carefully planned. Many will do just about anything so that His voice cannot be heard, so that only the voice of man will be heard, a voice that has nothing to offer except the things of this world. And sometimes such an offer brings with it a destruction of cosmic proportions. Isn't this the tragic history of our century?" That is not only the tragic history of our century. It is the history of modernity, the history of man since the recrudescence of sophism in the Renaissance. That is why Pope Leo XIII issued in 1891, which, Pope John Paul II explains, "in a certain sense predicted the fall of Communism, a fall which would cost humanity and Europe dearly, " Although not mentioned in , Pope Pius XI's remains, in my own estimation, the finest critique of Marxism- Leninism ever written. That Communism was destined to fall on its own is clear. It is a fraudulent ideology. Instrumental in the demise of Soviet Bolshevism (which, for the time being, is gone; Communism continues to pose a threat in the former Soviet Union and in Eastern Europe, and no less continues to enslave people in mainland China, Vietnam, Laos, North Korea, Cuba, and Ethiopia) was the Blessed Mother. The Pope claims not to have paid much attention to the Fatima message prior to his being shot in St. Peter's Square on May 13th, 1981. He notes: "And what are we to say of the who suddenly, on the eve of the outbreak of the October Revolution, heard: 'Russia will convert' and 'in the end, my Heart will triumph'....? They could not have invented those predictions. They did not know enough about history or geography, much less the social movements and ideological developments. And nevertheless it happened just as they said. "Perhaps this is also why the Pope was called from 'a faraway country,' perhaps this is why it was necessary for the assassination attempt to be made in St. Peter's Square precisely on May 13th, 1981, the anniversary of the first apparition at Fatima-so that all could become more transparent and comprehensible, so that the voice of God which speaks in human history through the 'signs of the times' could be more easily heard and understood." What the Pope is unwilling to discuss in his book is the fact that he was targeted by the late Soviet President Leonid Brezhnev for having been the inspiration-and driving force-behind Solidarity. The Holy Father's first pastoral visit to his homeland after ascending to the Chair of Peter moved a little shipyard electrician in Gdansk to form what would become, in effect, an opposition political party. Unthinkable in a Communist state. The Pope's vocal support for human rights in his homeland, as well as a private letter he wrote warning Brezhnev not to crush Solidarity with Soviet troops, prompted Yuri Andropov's KGB to use escaped Turkish murderer Mehmet Ali Agca as its foil to silence the voice of the Vicar of Christ. Evil never learns. The Devil seeks to destroy the message by attacks upon the Word's messengers. Solidarity was crushed on Dec. 13th, 1981 by the Polish government, which acted at the behest of Brezhnev. The Holy Father denounced martial law in the strongest terms. Indeed, so strong was his moral force that Polish President Wojciech Jaruzelski's entire body shook visibly (his knees were knocking against each other) in the Pope's presence when the two met in 1983 in Poland. Martial law was lifted several days after the Pope left, and Solidarity became legal again within months of the Pope's third pastoral visit in 1987. And that would lead inexorably to the demand for partly free elections in 1989, something that then Soviet President Mikhail Gorbachev did not stop. The fall of Communism in Poland led to its fall in Czechoslovakia, Hungary, East Germany, and Bulgaria (Romania was a much different case; there has been no real change there). All of that would expedite the demise of the Soviet Union two years later. Although the Holy Father notes correctly that Communism was destined to fall on its own, it is clear that he was an instrument of God in this respect. His election in 1978 led to a chain of events which few of us believed we would witness in our own lifetime. Granted, other factors were at work. Ronald Reagan played his part, as did Gorbachev, who proved to be a most unwitting agent against the ideology to which he remains so committed. But Pope John Paul II, aided by the prayers in time and in eternity of millions of Catholics who faithfully fulfilled (and fulfill, for the total conversion of Russia is not complete) our Lady's Fatima requests, is the human being principally responsible for the turn of events in 1989 and 1991. And it was not only his words or his actions which helped to fuel the process of Communism's peaceful demise: It was his prayerful, patient endurance of the cross-and his deep eucharistic piety and profound Marian devotion-which helped to expedite the events still unfolding before our very eyes. All of this is instructive for those of us who live in the United States. If it is possible for Soviet Bolshevism to die a relatively peaceful death (or, at least, peaceful remission), is it not possible for the confusion within the Church in this country to come to an end? The next and final installment will discuss the hope we need to travel by faith through these difficult days in the life of the Church in this country. PART V offers many essential insights into the truths of the holy faith. Certain parts of the book, however, reflect the Holy Father's personal judgments, which are by no means infallible. This is particularly true when it comes to the Pope's discussion of the state of the Church in the postconciliar era. "If the postconciliar Church has difficulties in the area of doctrine and discipline, these difficulties are not serious enough to present a real threat of new divisions. The Church of the Second Vatican Council, , truly serves this world in a variety of ways and presents itself as the true Body of Christ, as the minister of His saving and redemptive mission, as the promoter of justice and peace. In a divided world, , acknowledged as such even by its enemies and still present today in world politics and international organizations. Not everyone is comfortable with this force, but the Church continues to repeat with the Apostles: 'It is impossible for us not to speak about what we have seen and heard' (Acts 4:20). In this way, it remains faithful to itself and radiates that "" which the Holy Spirit pours out upon His Bride." The Catholic Church is the Mystical Body of Jesus Christ. She will last until the end of time. We have nothing to fear from the forces of the world, the flesh, and the Devil. And we have nothing to fear from the confusion which now exists within Christ's Mystical Body. Having the supernatural virtue of hope, however, cannot blind us to the real problems within the Church which do impede the unity which the Pope refers to, the unity our Lord Himself prayed for at the Last Supper. Real problems of governance within the Church make the defense of every life, a hallmark of Pope John Paul II's Pontificate, more difficult to realize. For the plain fact is that we would not have the extent of social problems (contraception, abortion, divorce and remarriage without a decree of nullity, sexual activity outside of marriage, materialism, careerism, mindless violence) if there were a true, not just a nominal, unity within Holy Mother Church. Many people profess faith in the Catholic Church each Sunday during Mass. But, for many, that profession of faith is hollow. They have been taught by pastors and curates, religious and lay teachers, theologians and liturgists-among many others-to make of the faith what they want. A la carte Catholicism has become the norm, not the exception. A daily communicant, for example, in St. Joseph's Parish in Kings Park, Long Island, was described in a local newspaper as an ardent defender of a "woman's right to choose an abortion." She actually escorts women into killing centers! A daily communicant, mind you. Her pastor has been unavailable for comment, even after weeks of trying to reach him. She is considered to be a Catholic in good standing. And then we have the case of a pastor on Long Island who said this past Lent that "there are only a few articles in the Creed that we have to believe in. Everything else is up for grabs." The sad reality is that these two examples are not isolated. We see parallel instances all across the United States and Canada, while faithful Catholics get browbeaten for defending orthodox teaching. To be sure, the problems we face in the postconciliar era did not develop overnight. The deliberate misinterpretation of the decrees of the Second Vatican Council was part of a theologically relativistic agenda which had been developing for quite some time. Remember, there was an attempt to Americanize the Church in the United States right at the very beginning of the Republic. No less than Archbishop John Carroll sought permission for an English Mass. He, among many others, desired for Catholics to be accepted" by the Protestant majority. One of the principal concerns of many priests throughout the course of the 19th century was to educate new Catholic immigrants about the "necessity" of fitting into the dominant culture. Church leaders made little effort to guide Catholics to establish the reign of Christ as King of this country. No, many in the Church hierarchy were content with what became the "privatization" of the Catholic faith; it was socially accepted to attend Mass on Sundays and weekdays, to have devotions and retreats. But it was considered un-American to take our faith into the marketplace. Catholics had to reassure Protestant America that they posed no threat to the precepts of democracy and egalitarian majoritarianism. John Kennedy typified this attitude. As a presidential candidate in 1959, he proclaimed his principal allegiance to the American Constitution (in the case of any conflict with his faith) two years before the Second Vatican Council convened. His declaration was welcomed by many in ecclesiastical office in this country. It was important, after all, to have a "Catholic" elected President. John Kennedy's attitude about his faith was expressed by the author Henry James, as summarized in Nigel Hamilton's : "We talked about it a lot. He found great difficulty in believing most of the tenets of the Catholic faith. Church bored him! He hardly ever went. Religion didn't interest him. He was all for being au courant, very much up to date with the things that were going on at the time, but not eternal verities. He wasn't going to drop his religion. He liked the way it made him special, different in a Protestant world. But otherwise it didn't give him the things people need religion for. And he wasn't going to wrestle with what far brighter, more capable, more feeling people did invest in-'I just don't have time for it'." To be sure, the faith was taught relatively well in the preconciliar era. The Catholic faith, not personal opinion, was taught in school after school, college after college, seminary after seminary. Yes, there were problems here and there; it has been so since the apostolic era. But the widespread acceptance of personal opinion having the same authority as that of the , which characterizes our situation today, would have been unthinkable 40 years ago. And while Pope Pius XII warned about certain trends among liturgists as early as 1947 in , the liturgical experience of Catholics in the preconciliar era was yet another expression of unity within the Body of Christ. Priests around the world celebrated the Mass of the Traditional rite the same way around the world. Personal idiosyncrasies, such as those Pope John Paul II wrote about in 15 years ago, had no opportunity to emerge. But it is not unfair to observe that the seeds of our current confusion were sown a long time ago. What the postconciliar era has done is give fertile ground for those intent on undermining the faith. The Church in America continues to reap a harvest of uninformed and malformed consciences. To recognize this situation is not to be a negativist. It is, however, to understand that the lack of discipline in the Church has made it possible for dissidents to act with utter impunity. A candid admission of this reality does not detract from the intentions of the fathers of the Second Vatican Council, including then-Archbishop Karol Wojtyla. Even Joseph Cardinal Ratzinger, prefect of the Sacred Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith, has written about the confusion within the Church, as has Silvio Cardinal Oddi, former prefect of the Sacred Congregation for the Clergy. And the Pope himself, early on during his Pontificate, spoke candidly about dissent and disobedience, going so far as to tell the American bishops in 1987 that dissent posed a "serious threat" to the faith! I would thus have to take issue with the Pope's rather benign view of the state of the Church in the postconciliar era in . A de facto schism is upon us. Those who know him have said that he wants to avoid an open schism. Some of us, however, wonder which is worse: a situation in which people who deny whole articles of the faith, including papal infallibility on matters of faith and morals, are in a position to mislead souls?; or one in which such people go their own way? The desire to maintain formal unity is understandable. The result of that, however, could be to further undermine the unity of the faith. Witness the present effort to denigrate . We are not pessimists, however. We are Catholics. We are disciples of Jesus Christ. We keep our hands on the plow, attempting to plant the seeds of the true faith in hostile ground. We pray for more discipline and governance within the Church, starting from the top down. But we continue our efforts, through grace, to help re-establish all things in Christ. Our Lord is permitting His Mystical Body to be tortured just as He permitted His own physical Body to be racked on the cross. He is permitting a purification of the Church. And He wants to use us as instruments in that purification. What I would have stressed, if asked about the postconciliar era, is the hope we must have in Jesus Christ-and the faith we must have in the Triune God to help us be so converted to First and Last Things that we can effect a true conversion to the Sacred Heart of Jesus through Mary's Immaculate Heart. Problems we have. We must admit that. But we have a solution: the holy cross. We continue to cross the threshold of hope in our own lives each day, lifting high the cross of Christ as we do so. For it is only through the cross that the Church can offer hope to a fallen world. These articles were taken from the November 10, 1994, January 12, 19, 26, and Feb. 2, 1995 issues of "The Wanderer," 201 Ohio Street, St. Paul, MN 55107, 612-224-5733. Subscription Price: $35.00 per year; six months $20.00. ------------------------------------------------------------------- The electronic form of this document is copyrighted. 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