NOT SOLD TO MODERNITY

Editorial
by Ian Hunter
London Free Press

It is a measure of the Catholic ascendancy in our time – or the abject collapse of the protestant alternatives, take your pick – that the death of John Paul ll should have occasioned such grief; and the election of Pope Benedict XVl occasioned such hope, in the heart of every ostensible protestant I know.

Losing John Paul ll hurt more than any death in my lifetime  except that of my own father; this is because, I realize in retrospect, the Holy Father had become, for countless millions of Christians, just that.  Nothing was more obvious in the faces of those who took up the death vigil in St. Peter’s Square.  No other person, in recent history, has so clearly embodied the virtues of holiness, humility, intelligence, leadership, courage, and integrity. 

When Samuel Johnson breathed his last in 1784, an acquaintance (Sir William Hamilton) remarked:  “Johnson is dead – Let us go to the next best: - There is nobody.  No man can be said to put you in mind of Johnson.” 

That is my view of John Paul ll. 

Yet despite Pope John Paul the Great, all studies suggest that there is a radical disconnect between what the Catholic church teaches and how Catholics live today. More than half of “practicing” Catholics, according to some surveys, do not follow Church teaching on birth control, abortion, and other issues.  Divorce rates are not markedly lower among Catholics. 

A decade ago, under the auspices of Pope John Paul ll and Cardinal Joseph Ratzinger, the Vatican published the Catechism of the Catholic Church; in lucid and understandable prose, the Church set out its teaching.  To a non-Catholic like me, it was the most important religious publication in recent memory.  And yet the Catechism is not being followed; in some parishes, one suspects, not even taught.

The liberal answer is to say that the church needs to move with the times, to water down, if not abandon, its dogma.  The Church, such people say, must come to terms with what passes for the contemporary mind.  Thus, during the recent conclave, the broadcast air was full of suggestions, often from commentators wearing clerical collars, that a “conciliator” must be chosen, someone who will initiate “dialogue” on women priests, someone to acknowledge that the encyclical Humanae Vitae should be “reconsidered”.

Now it is true that since Karol Wojtola became Pope John Paul ll on October 16, 1978, a moral - more accurately, an immoral - revolution has occurred.  Conduct that would once have been considered scandalous, if not perverse, is now flaunted.  So perhaps it is understandable that some  conclude that since this revolution has triumphed, the Church should drop its resistance and get onside.

If even Pope John Paul the Great could not stem the  decline in fidelity to the Church’s teaching, then what mortal can?

The truth is no one knows.  Just as the Communist empire seemed impregnable until just before its ignominious collapse, perhaps our present-day "Gomorrah" teeters on the brink of collapse; if so a Church that remains true to the faith once delivered to the saints could light the path back to sanity.

What we do know with certainty – and we know because we have the examples of mainline protestant denominations to learn from – is that there is no future for a church that sells its soul to modernity.  That church becomes irrelevant, a bad joke.  It shares the moral confusion of the times, and hence has no light to shine.

Amidst all the future uncertainty, one thing is certain: if Rome were to follow the path that the mainline protestant churches, in Canada the United and Anglican churches primarily, have recently trod, they will arrive just where they have arrived: the same empty churches presided over by the same empty prattlers.

Pope Benedict XVl knows that, and will not lead his church there.  For that, and for the obvious guiding of the Holy Spirit in the conclave, thanks be to God.

Ian Hunter, London Free Press, April 27, 2005