Recent events foretell a paradoxical future for Catholicism in the United States. A continual series of Government assaults against the Church highlight an acknowledged fact, that American culture, as a whole, has become more hostile to religion and particularly toward the Catholic Church which propounds a fixed set of absolute moral standards.
The conflict is reaching catastrophic dimensions. Secular antagonists are focused, beating the drums of war attacking Catholic practices, doctrines and social teachings with relentless force. Ancient heresy is now modern orthodoxy! The Church, in turn, appears timorous and with few exceptions, unable to muster its prestige and decreasing power to acknowledge, let alone confront, those forces trying to annihilate it.
Taken as a whole, large swathes of American Catholics view the Church as, “out of touch” with modernity and express little or no support for Church teaching. Among committed, core-Catholics, many choose and select individualistic doctrines. Loyalty to Church teaching has been reduced to an emotional fondness for traditional customs. Dissent continues to grow daily within Catholic ranks. The Church must address many of its very own followers who publicly refute Church teachings, among them the Vice President of the United States, the Minority Speaker of the House of Representatives, the Secretary of State, and the Secretary for Health and Human Services. The issue at stake remains: who determines who is a Catholic – the individual or the institution?
For two thousand years the Church has exerted enormous influence on the world stage, geopolitically, legally, socially, artistically and culturally. Now the American Church which appears to have abdicated its role as public champion of truth and justice, must awake to the barbarian peril. Continual retreat is not a viable solution; the Church must eventually circle its wagons! Many are convinced that a core group can no longer follow the old dictum of being in the world, but not of it. Rather it must remove itself from the popular culture to be viewed as a separate entity clearly opposing the newly propounded morality.
This core must intuitively accept that they are a counter-cultural remnant with a specific responsibility to hold fast to eternal truths in the face of monumental opposition and even ridicule, to eventually re-salt the earth.
Christ’s Church has been ensured immortality till the end of time. The culture that it produced, Christendom, has no such guarantee. A culture cannot survive when there is no unity of thought and action. The Protestant Re-Formation destroyed Christendom’s unity of thought, specifically by denying man’s ability to rationally deduce basic truths. This conviction set the stage for rampant individualism. While the Re-Formation destroyed Christendom’s unity of thought, the French Revolution destroyed its unity of action by elevating the State above man and God.
The coup de gras, which has finally annihilated Christendom, is Modernity’s plunge into rampant SEXUAL ANARCHY, promulgated by secular forces, but supported by sizeable segments of Christendom’s population.
Will the Church stop retreating and circle its wagons? When will they be circled? Who shall man the posts within the circle? All remain prominent topics for discourse.
--Xavier Rynne
