The Crisis of Faith
by John A. Hardon, S.J.
Every rational human being believes. When we believe we accept the
word of another person. Someone knows that something is true, either
from experience or reason, and we accept what he tells us because we
trust that he knows what he is talking about and is not deceiving us.
On this basis the only unbeliever would be a person who is completely
out of his mind. We believe that the persons whom we call our father
and mother are our parents. We believe that what we are buying is
what the store tells us is worth paying for. We believe that the
lessons we learned in childhood are true. Who would even enter
marriage unless both partners believed in the spouse with whom they
were entering matrimony? In a word, faith is part of our very nature
as rational human beings. However, it is one thing to believe in
other people and something else to believe in God. To believe in what
people tell us is called human faith. To believe in what God has
revealed is called Divine faith. To be still more clear, Divine faith
properly so called is the assent of our intellect to what God has
revealed, not because we comprehend what God tells us it true, but
only because we accept a truth on His authority who can neither
deceive, or be deceived.
God cannot deceive because He is all good and therefore cannot tell a
lie. He cannot be deceived because He knows all things and therefore
can never be wrong.
St. John the Evangelist raises one of the most embarrassing questions
in the Bible. How is it, he asked, that we who are so ready to
believe in men are so slow to believe in God? The answer is painfully
obvious. We are so slow to believe in God because what He demands of
us is nothing less than to accept incomprehensible mysteries which
are beyond our human capacity even to conceive before they are
revealed, and beyond our grasp to fully penetrate even after they are
revealed.
We see that faith and revelation are related as cause and effect. God
reveals Himself, who He is and what He wants; if we respond we
believe.
All of this has been a prelude to the real message of this article,
for the present crisis in the Catholic Church is really a crisis of
faith.
A crisis in general is a situation that was unexpected but that poses
certain grave problems for urgent solution. It is in the nature of a
disaster, but not quite. More accurately, it could be described as
impending disaster that calls for immediate and drastic action. If
action is promptly and properly taken, the impending disaster will
not occur. In fact, as a result of meeting the serious problems that
a crisis raises, great good will come from having risen to the
critical situation.
When we say that the Church is faced with a crisis of faith, we mean
just that. It is a critical period in the Church's life when millions
of her faithful are confused about their beliefs. They are uncertain
about what as Catholics they are to hold. And as a result they are
emotionally insecure, bewildered and, in Christ's words, wandering as
sheep without a shepherd.
Wherein precisely lies the crisis? It might be described as a
communitarian state of mind which differs somewhat in different
people. But many of them are in one of three mental attitudes towards
even the most sacred mysteries of Divine revelation.
Some are in open rebellion against the faith of their fathers. They
resent the fact that, as some will tell you, they had been
brainwashed to believe what modern science, or scholarship, or study,
or the social sciences, or psychology now show to have been useful
props in the past, or perhaps convenient labels for the unknown, but
these beliefs are no longer tenable today.
Other people are not yet ready to discard the Faith they may still
cherish with one part of their being, maybe for emotional or ritual
or personal reasons. But they have serious doubts about so much of
what Catholics used to believe with the naivete of children. Some
articles of faith they are willing to admit, but others they have
strong reservations about.
There is so much talk nowadays about collegiality that what used to
be called the papal primacy is, for such people, no longer an
established article of faith.
There are so many theories going the rounds about transfinalization
and transignification that belief in the real bodily presence of
Christ in the Most Holy Eucharist, for such people, is uncertain to
say the least. That is why some priests are so casual in their
indiscriminate giving of Holy Communion to anyone, whether Catholic
or Protestant or, for that matter, Jewish or Hindu.
There is so much speculation everywhere, they feel, about Christ's
personality, that it seems to them that to bring Christ down to our
own level we must make Him a human person, who perhaps, in the
Nestorian fashion, was also divine; but He only gradually developed
His full awareness of who He was. He could not, it is thought, have
been truly human if from the first moment of His existence He was
conscious of His dual identity.
There are so many problems raised by the demographic experts, and the
social scientists about the expanding world population, that not a
few people seriously doubt the teaching of the Church on
contraception. And besides, rearing a normal family in contraceptive
societies like America would place an intolerable burden on
Catholics. So they settle for questioning the Church's magisterium
and follow instead the teaching of the Church's sworn enemies.
Among priests, they have heard and read so much about being open to
the Spirit, so much about problems of identity, so much about
optional celibacy, so much about leadership instead of authority,
about relating to the world, about cultic mentality instead of sound
involvement, about the Eucharist as a meal, and confession being
emotionally harmful, so much about a functional priesthood, so much
about the hierarchy as teachers, indeed, but not divinely authorized
to command obedience.
We have acquired a whole new vocabulary about relevance, and
involvement and harmonization and power politics and the third way
and sensitivity programs and ritual preoccupation and respectful
disobedience and communal discernment and institutionalism, that it
is no wonder so many have serious doubts not only about this or that
feature of Catholic life, but even about its value at all.
Given all that is happening, a third group of people are not
rejecting the Faith or in serious doubt about Catholic doctrine, but
they are bewildered. Modern popes have addressed in their documents
the synonyms for bewilderment that besets millions of the still
faithful faithful. They are confused, and distraught, and perplexed,
and worried and some are all but crushed by the spectacle of a post-
conciliar Church that is caught up in an interior convulsion of
spirit that has rocked all of Christendom to its foundations.
In spite of brave words to the contrary, anyone familiar with what is
happening is concerned; and the spectacle shows no signs of an early
abating.
Why the Crisis?
Sheer realism, then, requires that we admit there is a crisis of
faith in the Church. What are we to make of it? How to explain it?
Why is there a crisis at all? By now many explanations have been
given and they all have merit, insofar as they honestly face the
facts and concede what those who still believe firmly are convinced
is true: that for numerous still nominal Catholics, and for not a few
of their clerical, religious and lay leaders, the unqualified faith
of Catholic Christianity has been weakened and for some of them has
been lost.
What complicates the issue and, in fact, is part of the crisis, is
that not infrequently those who no longer interiorly believe in the
integrity of God's revelation insist that they are not only
Christians and Catholics but frankly better Christians and better
Catholics than those whom they condescendingly call pre-counciliar,
or anti-intellectual, or simply unaware of what is going on.
There is no point here in answering the learned objections brought up
against the historic faith of the Catholic Church. Nor is there room
in the present context for dealing at length with those who speak of
discontinuity of faith in place of continuity, or who opt for a
continuing revelation that erases the notion of a completed
revelation in the person of Jesus Christ and the apostolic age, or
who insist on redefining every single premise of the Church's
perennial teaching, in favor of a process theology in which
everything-including God-is said to be in perpetual and never-ending
change.
Why did such a crisis come about in the first place? Surely no
phenomenon is without some explanation, and this one better be
explained. The explanation is not hard to find. There is a crisis of
faith in the Catholic Church because there has been an intrusion of
alien ideas.
The moment we say this, however, we are immediately confronted with
the two terms, "intrusion" and "alien ideas," for the simple reason
that those responsible for the crisis will deny either that there has
been an intrusion or that the new ideas are anything else except that
they are "new," but they should not be called alien.
An idea is alien to any religion when it openly contradicts what that
religion stands for. For example: the Catholic Church has always
believed that God is all perfect because He is infinite. There are
now writers, ostensibly Catholic, who say the opposite, that God is
finite and, in fact, He needs us to reach whatever perfection He will
eventually attain.
The Catholic Church has always believed that God became man in the
Person of Jesus Christ. There are now learned writers who deny this:
they believe that Jesus is somehow divine because God was close to
Him, but He is really only human, the Man from Nazareth.
The Catholic Church has always believed that Christian marriage is an
indissoluble union of one man and one woman until death. There are
now presumably Catholic moralists who say that is part of the past.
From now on (they say) even sacramental marriages can and should be
dissolved with the freedom to enter a second or a third partnership
after divorce.
The Catholic Church has always believed that Jesus Christ practiced
the counsels of chastity, poverty, and obedience, and those who
receive the grace are urged to follow His example. But now there are
ostensibly Catholic proponents of a new spirituality that erases this
whole tradition. Instead of celibacy they propose meaningful
relationships with persons of the opposite or same sex; instead of
actual poverty they would substitute a subjective concern for the
poor, and instead of obedience they promote shared responsibility or
group consensus to replace authority.
But if these ideas are alien, in the sense of foreign to the Catholic
philosophy of life, are they intrusions? Yes, they are on several
counts, as anyone who knows what is taking place in the world can
testify.
They are first of all an intrusion because they are unjustified by
the premises of authentic Roman Catholicism. A finite God is not an
infinite God; a merely human Jesus is not the Son of God who became
man for our salvation; a sacramental priesthood is not a merely
functional ministry; an indissoluble marriage is not a dissoluble
marriage; and a purely subjective poverty or nominal celibacy or
verbal obedience are not the evangelical counsels that the Church has
declared were revealed to us in the life and teaching of the Savior.
Either the Catholic Church remains constant in her fundamental
articles of faith, over the centuries, or she is no longer the Church
founded by Christ.
These alien ideas are furthermore an intrusion because for many
persons they have literally invaded people's minds by unsuspected
credence being given to things that appeared orthodox but are in fact
heterodox.
It is not to lay blame on particular individuals whose names by now
are commonplace to anyone professionally in the sacred sciences. What
is beyond question is that in many, perhaps most, cases when these
vagrant ideas were first ventilated they seemed so plausible, even
persuasive, that it is not surprising there have been so many victims
of this massive assault on the believing Catholic mind.
But there is one more reason that must sadly be added to explain why
it is justifiable to call what we are describing an invasion of alien
ideas. An invasion is, by definition, done not only by an outside
force and not only surreptitiously. It is also done coercively.
Of course it is not always by physical force, although physical
violence even now is being exercised against millions of our fellow
Christians in China, and Africa, where the most inhuman means are
used to break down the resistance of priests, religious and the
laity-to give up their Catholic heritage.
What is meant by intrusion is the coercive pressure: psychological
and social, economic and legal, academic and professional,
educational and governmental that cumulatively can become all but
irresistible to conformity with the people and agencies and
institutions that are in control of today's mind-shaping structures
and social communications.
That some of these compulsive elements have also entered the sacred
precincts of the Church's organization is not strange. There is a
crusade of conformism in societies like America. Woe to anyone who
dares to raise a voice in protest or who invokes the rights of
conscience to protect himself from those who, in the name of
conscience, are demanding allegiance to doctrinaire theories of a
structure-less Church, or a cult-less priesthood, or a ruleless
religious life, or that every marriage is open to ecclesiastical
annulment.
Just one more observation, a plea for confidence, which means
implicit trust in God.
No one who knows what the situation is, doubts that the Catholic
Church is going through a veritable emergency of faith. What is an
emergency but a time for urgent decisions, that is discriminating
judgment? What leaders of the Church need to do today do today is not
be shaken by the storm that is raging all around them, but to hold on
literally for dear life to what Christ has revealed, to what has been
defended for us by the champions of orthodoxy like Athanasius,
Augustine, Jerome and Gregory the Great, lived out before us by
saints and mystics like Benedict, Francis and Ignatius Loyola, like
Clare, Margaret Mary and Teresa, like Elizabeth Seton and Thomas
More, and experienced by us in whatever span of life we have so far
lived.
There are seductive voices everywhere and some are very erudite. They
may also claim numbers on their side. But no, the numbers in favor of
the true Faith and the true Church are legion. They are all the
myriad souls since Christ ascended to His Father who are now in the
Church Triumphant. They are our intercessors before the throne of
God, as they are also our consolation that we are not deceived. The
present crisis is really a challenge or, better, a glorious
opportunity to prove our loyalty to Christ the Truth so that one day
we may possess Christ our Life who told us not to fear, "I have
overcome the world." So shall we, with the help of His grace, and the
Church will be the better and stronger for the experience of these
critical times.
Prayer
Lord Jesus, you foretold that your Church would suffer opposition and
persecution, even as you did. You declared that, so far from being
anxious or worried, we should actually rejoice when the world hates
us and says all manner of evil against us, for your Name. Give us the
courage we need to resist the onslaught of seductive untruth. Above
all, give us the confidence to realize that the trials of this life
are a prelude to the glory that waits us, provided we have remained
unshaken in our allegiance to you and your spouse, the Holy Catholic
Church, of which you are the Teacher and the Guide. Amen.
Father John Hardon, S.J. is Executive Editor of The Catholic Faith.
This article was taken from the March/April 1996 issue of "The
Catholic Faith". Published bi-monthly for 24.95 a year by Ignatius
Press. To subscribe, call: 1-800-651-1531 or write: The Catholic
Faith, P.O. Box 160, Snohomish, WA 98291-0160.
Copyright (c) 1996 EWTN
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