Unhappy man that I am! Who will deliver me from the body of this death? The grace of God through Jesus Christ our Lord. (Rom. 7, 24-25)
In the wake of the Standard and Poor’s historic downgrade of the sovereign credit rating of the United States of America, and the not so veiled threat that it could be downgraded again in six to twenty-four months, one thing at least should be crystal clear: real changes have to be made. This is a call for the United States government to set its house in order. Analogously, it is also a call for the people of this country, especially those who have been away from their Catholic faith, to set their houses in order as well.
The immediate effects of the downgrade will probably not be as catastrophic as the collapse of Lehman Brothers, mainly because this was not something that was wholly unexpected. However, it is a humiliating indication to the government of the United States that changes must be made. No longer can politicians and bureaucrats pander to their constituents by making facial attempts to fix the national debt problem. Now they are being judged by an objective standard other than the electorate they have made an art out of manipulating. The management of this nearly out-of-control debt will force the government to make tough decisions, which will in turn cause the citizenry to make tough decisions. I doubt that austerity measures like those in Greece are headed for Main Street, USA, but it’s reasonable to conclude that tough times are coming.
This may prove to be a good thing. Tough times have a tendency to prove the metal of a person and a people. As the present economic system continues to demonstrate its glaring flaws, as the system of usury-used-to-finance-distraction is revealed to be a flimsy edifice at best, perhaps people will be forced out of their television induced stupor long enough to take a moment to account for their way of life and the things they value. That alone would be nothing short of a miracle.
I don’t pretend to know what the future holds in store for the United States, but I’m by nature an optimist. It is my hope that calm and reasonable heads will prevail, and they will suggest solutions that could cause a fundamental societal shift for the better. I hope we will see a shift in the coming years toward a distributionist economic system less dependent on mega-banks, usury and globalism. We could see the creation of an economy that generates real wealth by production, and not just mass production for unthinking consumption, but production of quality goods that are fitting for quality people. It is my hope that a healthy localism based on the model of subsidiarity will be encouraged by governments, and thereby families and communities will be strengthened and the corrosive nature of mobilism will be minimized. This may be an overly rosy picture, I admit. But like I said, I’m an optimist by nature.
And there is precedent for being hopeful. While there are many tales of personal financial woe, there are just as many tales of personal financial success. Countless Americans have sunk themselves so far in debt that recovery seemed all but impossible. However, many decided to dig in their heels and do what it would take to rise out of the debt trap. There are people who suffered through very hard times to erase thousands, even hundreds of thousands, of dollars in debt. If you speak with these people they will all tell you the same basic story: it is about overcoming and changing a corrosive, destructive lifestyle. There’s no reason to believe that as a nation a similar transformation can’t take place if citizens like you and I insist that we as a nation dig in our heels and change those policies and societal aspects that have gotten us into the mess that we now find ourselves.
Of course, there’s no guarantee that Americans will have the intestinal fortitude to see this thing through, but usually given the choice between annihilation and survival, man leans toward survival. We just have to be given a clear a vision of the true alternatives free of the distractions that cloud our vision. Today’s present economic jolt from S&P perhaps has provided a clear vision for our nation and our personal lives.
Certainly we’ve all experienced in our personal lives a similar jolt, which has given us a momentary clear vision of our lives and our purpose on this earth. Perhaps a sermon, a book, or some other reminder jars us out of our daily routine and forces us to make an account for how we are living our lives and what we value. These moments are a foreshadowing of that last account we must render for ourselves before the judgment seat of God. Unfortunately, this shock happens to countless people who, when they make that accounting, perceive what seem insurmountable obstacles that hinder them from changing their lives to conform what they know to be God’s will. This, I suspect, is one of the major reasons, other than ignorance, that keeps fallen away Catholics from coming back to the faith.
Because our modern culture so long ago cast off God and religion as a sure guide to the forming of personal choices and lifestyles, many people who have fallen away from the Catholic faith have contaminated their lives with countless contradictions to the demands of the Gospel. These various disorders can appear to be impossibly daunting obstacles to setting one’s house in order and returning to the true faith. Modern man has gotten himself into a moral mess even worse than the debt mess in which the United States and so many individuals have gotten themselves. As it turns out the modern godless culture has produced angry and dissatisfied people. It can be seen in just about any busy mega-box-store parking lot, where people will actually fight and grow enraged over a parking place!
The materialism and hedonistic distractions of our modern world are proving ineffectual, as the present economic crisis reflects, as the lack of civility in our society reflects, and as reflected in how Americans live isolated in front of their television sets and lash out irrationally with little or no provocation. If there is any one indicator in our modern world of how irrationally angry people are, it is the phenomenon of road rage. The modern world has failed to provide the stability and happiness that everyone inherently desires. However, the average fallen away Catholic is so submerged under a kind of debt to worldliness that the long and hard ascent to a better life of faith seems impossibly arduous.
One of the greatest contributing factors to the despair often encountered by fallen away Catholics is the proliferation of divorce and remarriage in our society. In fact, the most common reason for falling away, I suspect, would be the presence of a moral impediment to practicing the faith, such as getting a divorce and remarrying. Of course, Our Blessed Lord laid down quite frankly a prohibition against divorce, and as a consequence our Catholic faith prohibits divorce and remarriage. Despite the detractors against the Church’s teaching in this regard, anyone who has read the Bible knows full well that divorce and remarriage was prohibited from the very beginning. St. Paul wrote in his first letter to the Corinthians:
But to them that are married, not I but the Lord commandeth, that the wife depart not from her husband. And if she depart, that she remain unmarried, or be reconciled to her husband. And let not the husband put away his wife. (1 Cor. 7. 10-11)
It doesn’t get any clearer than this! But if that’s not clear enough, there are still more passages (1 Cor 11. 27-30; Matt 16. 18-19; Mal 2. 16; Luke 16. 18; Mark 10. 11-12). However, this can be quite despairing for the individual that knows the Catholic Church is the true religion, but they are not only divorced and remarried, but divorced and remarried perhaps two or three times over. Such is the state of our post-Christian society, which is more polygamous than monogamous, that men and women have entered into multiple marriage contracts, and their current state of life makes the teachings of Christ regarding divorce, and their consequences for individuals, seem unbearable.
There are many liberal Catholics who, rightly, perceive the rigors entailed in divorced and remarried people attempting to reconcile their present lives with the demands of Our Blessed Lord, but seeing this struggle as insurmountable, they propose, wrongly, to water down the commands of Our Blessed Lord rather than calling people to struggle against the imperfections and disorders in their lives. They would like to see the Church change her teachings regarding divorce and remarriage to “lighten the load” for those who have divorced and remarried.
However, this would be like telling the person enslaved to debt: “Oh, well you’re thousands of dollars in debt, so there’s no point in trying to fix it.” It would be like telling the drug addict, “It’s going to be really hard to overcome those cravings, so just keep taking those drugs.” Would anyone consider such advice either good or charitable? Yet this is what the liberals would suggest the Church do in the case of divorced and remarried people. Liberals are telling these poor fallen away Catholics that they can ignore the sure medicine of the Gospel to do the seemingly easier thing, which is to wallow in their disorders. This is folly of the highest degree. “Woe to you that call evil good, and good evil: that put darkness for light, and light for darkness: that put bitter for sweet, and sweet for bitter” (Isaias 5. 20).
The liberal solution would be like telling our politicians to go about business as usual and ignore the monstrous debt they have incurred over the years. It isn’t a solution at all, but rather sloth that precedes utter failure. However, we have a tendency to apply common sense to things like economics or personal finance, but common sense seems to go out the window in matters of religion or the salvation of souls. For those facing the obstacle of divorce and remarriage they are convinced by the liberal argument because it is, indeed, easier. They can avoid the hard road of true reform. As a consequence, they end up getting angry with the Church, which despite all the liberal arguments will never change her teaching on this. Not only are they led away from the true medicine, but to their destruction they are induced to hate the teachings of the Catholic Church. Deviating from the path of righteousness by listening to the specious arguments of the misguided liberal establishment leaves the fallen away Catholic worse off in the end.
If Jesus is the Way, the Truth, and the Life, how can deviating from the course He sets out bring the stability or happiness for which the dissatisfied fallen away Catholic longs? Instead of half measures, what is required is a real determination to make things right, and that means to do what needs to be done to achieve one’s salvation. If people are willing to go to extraordinary lengths to free themselves from debt and to set their personal finances on the straight narrow, how much more should they go to extraordinary lengths, no matter how painful, to set right their relationship with God? This could very well mean re-evaluating one’s current relationships that have been caused by divorce and remarriage, and even making radical adjustments. This will mean turning things upside down, and it could very well mean causing, in the short term, hurt feelings, loneliness and other emotional trauma. These sacrifices though will achieve the stability and happiness missing in the life of the dissatisfied fallen away Catholic, and ultimately eternal salvation in the long run.
There is one thing that we can know for sure, and that is no obstacle is really insurmountable because we have grace from God. We know from our holy religion that the Holy Ghost influences our lives by enlightening the mind and strengthening the will, and this we call actual grace. We also know that these graces are sufficient to overcome any and every struggle. However, man must cooperate. Actual graces are obtained by the performance of good works, especially prayer, fasting and almsdeeds. The best way of obtaining actual grace is by devoutly hearing the Holy Mass and worthily receiving Holy Communion and practicing frequent Confession if one is properly disposed. Even when graces are received, God requires, because of our free will, our free response. The first actual grace could be a holy inclination, that if responded to with enthusiasm leads to a string of more graces that gives us the strength to pursue and then accomplish what one had been inspired to pursue.
For example, a common obstacle often confronted by modern men and women is having been mutilated by voluntary surgical sterilization prior to converting to the Catholic faith or while being away from the Church. True contrition for this past sin necessarily entails desiring to make amends. A good Catholic couple who faces this obstacle prays, fasts and gives alms; she and her husband devoutly hears the Mass, receives the sacraments of the Church devoutly, and they are given a holy inspiration, by grace, to reverse the surgical sterilization and do away with this disorder that is a carryover from their former lives. However, this inspiration is met with many obstacles, such as finding the money to finance the procedure and poor physical health. Nonetheless, they resolve to start putting aside a little money every week and to get into better shape. Their response to this initial grace leads to a string of even more actual graces. They grow in their love for each other and the children they already have; they start exercising and making better dietary choices; they stop taking little things for granted; their financial situation improves, and the husband finds a better job that will allow him to put money into a flexible spending account, allowing them pay off the remaining fee for the surgery. Eventually they are granted the very special grace of a new born child. This child means so much to them especially since they had to overcome such great obstacles to bring this new and precious baby into their lives.
This is but one example of something that happens all the time for traditional Catholics who heed the call of grace. These victories are made sweet by the fact that so much had to be overcome, and they give consolation because they demonstrate how intimately the Holy Ghost works in the lives of God’s children. The obstacles that we overcome in our lives are only limited by how much grace we choose to accept or reject. This is not to say that everything we want we will get. Not all desires, even good desires, are holy inspirations, so we should always qualify our prayers by asking that God’s will be done, and not our own. At times God wishes to prove us by suffering, and we ought to rejoice in the opportunity. However, the basic principle is still at work. We have to cooperate with grace, and this cooperation constitutes real effort on our part, to make the changes in our lives that will bring us true happiness, and if we do, God will provide even more of the necessary graces to achieve these changes.
The downgrade of the United States’ sovereign credit rating is a clarion call for real reform. It ought to also, by analogy, be a clarion call for those that are currently away from the Church for one reason or another to reform their lives and their relationship with God. The road ahead is fraught, no doubt, with pain and suffering, but by God’s grace you can hope with confidence for a bright and better future.
It starts with prayer, and the counsel of a good traditional Catholic priest. Please start your journey right now. Don’t wait another day to start to set your house in order.
From this week's letter to members of the Confraternity of St. Peter by Fr. J. Fryar FSSP:
