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Cautionary Tales

Written by

Mark Shea

in

As a convert to the Catholic Faith, I naturally want to see others embrace it as well.  But when I talk with folks who want to be Catholic I often find myself repeating Jesus' counsel to "Count the cost."  Why?

One thing that concerns me about converts, especially from Protestantism, is that some seem to still be basically Protestant.  Some become Catholic, not because they have concluded that the Church is the trustworthy sacrament of redemption given to the world by Christ and guided by the Holy Spirit, but because they are fed up with Protestantism and are leaving it and joining the Catholics — in protest.  Such folk are soon disconcerted that the people at Our Lady of Perpetual Ordinariness are not this haven of saints and scholars, but a bunch of regular people.  Some don't know their faith at all.  Some hold political opinions that are very different from the convert's.  Some don't much take the Church's teaching seriously.  Some get their spiritual insights from Oprah, or are devout but superstitious, or have a Protestant brother-in-law who has taught them to say "Praise the Lord!" a lot.

It's all so… average to the convert who was bargaining on a safe haven from All That.  And when some Pope or bishop does something not to their liking, such converts not infrequently embrace some form of the "Two Churches/Two Magisteria" theory of a pre- vs. post-Vatican II Church and (either slowly or quickly) start to hive off into some extreme form of what they call "traditionalism" but which is, in fact, yet another kind of Protestantism, albeit one with ultra-Catholic aesthetics.

What we need to remember is that the Catholic Church is and always has been the vessel of salvation for the world.  That means that most of the people you meet are going to be ordinary — like you and me.  They are going to have the ordinary tastes, prejudices, mediocrities, failures, and virtues of their time and place.  There are, to be sure, great heroes and extraordinary people in the Catholic communion.  But to expect that as the norm and then be outraged and disappointed when it is not is, I think, great folly and, in the end, great pride.  Remember the hellish "wisdom" of C.S. Lewis' Uncle Screwtape, who would keep far from our minds the thought, "If I, being what I am, can consider myself in some sense a Christian, then why can't these people next to me in the pew"?

So though I have been appalled by some of the sins that have been revealed in the ranks of the Church in the past few years, I've never been shocked.  What did I expect?  They're just sinners like I am, and I know what I'm capable of.  In the same way, dreadful liturgical music, suburban "Church of Aren't We Fabulous" smugness, Our Lady of Pizza Hut architecture, and "True Meaning of the Miracle of the Loaves and Fishes is Caring and Sharing" homilies, and the other stuff that sometimes ails the Church has never turned me away.  For averageness is just a reminder that the Church, thank God, has room for mediocre folk like myself.

"Well then," it may be asked, "if the average Catholic is so average, why bother joining the Church?"  To quote Walker Percy, "What else is there?"  After all, it is not the Church that is mediocre, but only we, her members.  The Church is, curiously, something that exists before she has any members, because She is founded not by us, but by Christ.  The Church is the spotless Bride of Christ, made so by the Holy Spirit in the washing with water and the Word.  We, Her members, are generally nebbishes and schleps.  But She is glorious and beautiful, terrible as an army with banners.  And in Her all the fullness of the Faith subsists.  In that Faith, by the grace of God, I hope one day to be made perfect in love of God and neighbor.  But it is not my job to immanentize the eschaton.  So I can be more than merely content living in this strange divine sea of a Church, whose members are, like me, stunningly ordinary, but whose soul, the Holy Spirit, is slowly bringing us along "until we all attain to the unity of the faith and of the knowledge of the Son of God, to mature manhood, to the measure of the stature of the fullness of Christ, so that we may no longer be children, tossed to and fro by the waves and carried about by every wind of doctrine, by human cunning, by craftiness in deceitful schemes.  Rather, speaking the truth in love, we are to grow up in every way into him who is the head, into Christ, from whom the whole body, joined and held together by every joint with which it is equipped, when each part is working properly, makes the body grow so that it builds itself up in love" (Ephesians 4:13-16).

(This piece was first published in the National Catholic Register.)

Comments

  1. Guest Avatar
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    agree: There is an all important theological-descriptive sense in which Church is properly and formally defined as Head and Body. We are all familiar with that, and the theological underpinngs need no repitition here. However I am concerned that in this brief communication Mark has thrown out the baby with the bath water so to speak.He has kept the Head but severed from it the Body. For he revels in being a mere "nebbish" and "schlep" who, nonetheless, can be "more than merely content" as a member in the Body.

    As member, Mark the content nebbish and schlep, furthermore knows that this "more than content feeling" in part rests on his not having to "immanentize the eschaton" since, as member, he is being made into the perfect man as depicted in the Ephesians quote. While this is sentiment is certainly beautiful, regal, and true, there is a concern it raises. It involves the phrase "not my job to immanentize the eschaton".

    I must admit that  I am a little uncertain what is meant here precisely. Certainly, Mark does not intend that as member of the Church he can subsist in a nebbish passivity and just let sit back contentedly as God's grace soaks into Him. For that would certainly run counter to the universal call to holiness of VII pertaining to all members of His Body. That is, as members of the Body we are called actively to advance and thereby participate in immanentizing the eschaton as we, under grace, accept this call to individual holiness, this vocation of the laity. Can one really accept this high calling of a deepening discipleship and transformation in Christo while at the same time "being more than merely content"?

    There seems to a dissonance and tension here. Mark is "more than merely content" and has no role in immanentizing the erschaton? Yet we are called to individual holiness as vocation. There is a too close approximation of the following attitude: It is all being done for me and to me without my human struggle.

    I am cerrtain Mark does not intendto portray this attitude. he surely knows tha eventhough I greatly trust and rely upon God's power to transform me by virtue of my soul's subsistence in Church and sacrament, that does not release me from my human effeort and co-operation in that on-going divine action. I am content only in the sense of trusting in God's transformative efficacy upon me and the Body; myself  as active participate and person of active faith. But I am not then " more than merely content", for I long for deeper communion, and I humanly struggle – yes, it is a struggle always under and through grace -for a deeper relationship and communion.

    Perhaps,there has been too much complacency and contentment among Catholics;too much feeling" more than merely content". I have taught adult Catholics now for years, and have always found a disturbing false contentment among too many. The sense of, "I am in the one and only true Church, and that's about as far as my journey needs to go. God will do the rest".  We as Catholics need NOT to be so content. We are called actively to immanentize the eschaton in a sense proper to the human being in Chrsit.  That is our call.Of course, the final end times is under His providence and timimg.

    Most average Catholics contentment have left them bereft of the major teachings of the faith. Most or many have  not a clue about the major tenets of the faith nor scripture of any depth whatever. That is tragic for the Body. What we think and feel greatly shapes our felt commitment to Christ and Church. It is vitally important for the Body to be of the same mind as the Head.  God demands our activity not just our "merely content" passivity. He does not just "infuse" grace and transformation into our empty buckets. We must respond, actively engage, and become the "obedience of faith." etc. I am sure Mark realizes all this.

    However, unless I am reading Mark erroneously which is possible, I fear that the picture he has drawn implies too strongly that mere membership in this glorious Church removes us from the greater vision and call of universal holiness. That call entails an abiding contentment and faith in the Church. But importantly, on the human level where we nebbishes and schleps live, there needs to be a certain lack of contentment; a sense that, yes, we are actively participating in and advancing God's immanentizing the eschaton. The Church is not the Church on earth without the baby, the Peoople of God.

  2. Guest Avatar
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    I don't think Mark is saying that we needn't be striving for holiness.  I think what he's saying is that sometimes converts come in expecting everyone around them to BE holy instead of realizing that the Church is who she is despite the weeds and the tares.  When I was a relatively new convert I went to Defending the Faith and heard Father Groeschel address the Coming Home Network gathering about this very topic.  He talked about the problem of Protestants with a pietistic background being very disappointed when they were finally inside the Church.  I was fortunate that there were a lot of years between the pietism of my childhood and my conversion to the Catholic Church.  I spent those years in the UCC (the place my husband had grown up).  I learned how to live with people whose theology was far less informed and whose devotion to Christ far less obvious than the people I had grown up with.  Sure I still get annoyed by lousy homilies on the feeding of the five thousand, sure I still get frustrated by cafeteria Catholics, but at the end of the day this is still where we find the Eucharist, where we receive the graces of the sacraments, where the fullness of the faith is. 

    I also warn people to count the cost, but I guess it's a different cost I warn them about.  It's the cost of friendships, the cost of living as a foreigner among the natives, the cost of not being in the driver's seat as you might be in Protestant fellowships.  I love being Catholic, I wouldn't go back for anything, but the adjustment can take time. 

     Mark's cautionary warning about traditionalism is apt.  I watched in horror as a man whose tapes I enjoyed as I was coming into the Church went from traditionalist to sedevacantist.  In the process my comment was that he never quite got all of the Protestant out of him.  Those who would be more Catholic than the pope have far more in common with Martin Luther than they sometimes wish to admit.  To be Catholic is to embrace the whole Church, recognizing that she is the One Holy Catholic Church despite the weeds, the tares,  and even some false shepherds. Only the pope has the charism of infallibility, and even with the pope it is limited in its exercise.  Some converts seem to think that they have the charism of infallibility themselves.

     Of course all of us should be growing in knowledge and holiness. The average Catholic has been too captured by the spirit of the world, catechesis over the past decades has been awful.  However, converts often can be the breath of fresh air that wakes up the cradle Catholics in the pew.  My sponsor's daughter told me a few years ago that my questions as I was contemplating becoming Catholic were a spur to their whole family to begin learning more about their faith.  I have another friend who is now homeschooling her youngest children (who are very serious Catholics) after having the older ones all lapse from the faith after Catholic school educations.  She is doing this in part because of my encouragement. I have not made a big splash in our parish.  Most people probably don't have a clue who I am.  I never wrote a book about my conversion, but I believe that I have had an impact on the lives of some cradle Catholics and that they have also had an impact on me.  I actually find much less of a sense of false contentment among them than I did among some of the Protestants I knew.

  3. Guest Avatar
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    The caution about immanentizing the eschaton comes from the writings of the political philosopher Eric Voegelin who recognized Marxism and other collectivist movements of the 20th century as gnostic enterprises that were attempting to sustitute a man-made utopia for the Kingdom of God. The point with Mark's article is precisely the opposite, lwall, of your interpretation. It is because this vale of tears comes to an end only in the timing of God that the struggle for holiness continues here. The struggle for holiness has as one of its main components humility, which Mark highlights by noting its ludicrous opposite in the attitude of the convert to the faith who looks around and wonders everyone else in the true Church cannot be the great Christian he is.

    Please note that I did you the favor of putting your comment into paragraphs — this being about the 4th or 5th time I have done that for you.  Unless you are not sighted or are otherwise handicapped from use of the enter key, I expect you to do that yourself from now on. If you have a disability of some kind let me know and I will gladly do that for you henceforth as I have time.

  4. Guest Avatar
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    Mary,

    The formatting lumps comments into one big paragraph on the initial posting sometimes, even when we have used the enter key.  For some reason I can usually correct it afterward by editing, but the first post gets put in as one blob. 

    I know it's frustrating, but its frustrating for us too!

    PTR!

  5. Guest Avatar
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    mkocahn: I do not understand the editing format style you require.  Please instruct. Well, as stated in my post, I may very well be reading Mark incorrectly and so perhaps I have done so. That Mark's reference to "immanentizing the escahaton" as rooted in Voegelin went right past me, but it was somewhat obliquely referenced in the article. Still I am a little uncomfortable with notions that tend to suggest or hint at our being a "little more than content." I need to have the meanings of this contentment spelled out a bit. Of course, there is the ever present opposite distortion of a purely humanistic-collectivist attempt at utopia. But what is this contentment all about, please. Also, I am uncomfortable with our not being involved in immanentizing unless you first explain that you are specifically going against Marxist and other  collectivist utopias etc. Thanks.

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    For what it's worth… I am a protestant becoming catholic and was struggling recently with the whole pedophile priest issue raised once again  with the news of the the large settlement in California. Mark's column today was a helpful reminder to me that I will be disappointed often by what I experience in the Catholic Church.  People are still very "human" whether protestant or Catholic. Nevertheless, I prefer to struggle within the fullness of the Catholic tradition than outside it.

  7. Guest Avatar
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    Alan,

    Best regards and I am confident you when you come home to the Church, you find that both the good news and the bad news is that the Church in many ways is a big family.

  8. Guest Avatar
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    Googling the phrase "immanentizing the eschaton" yields a remarkable number of hits. I checked the first pages worth and discovered this definition "trying to make that which belongs to the afterlife happen here and now (on Earth)" or "trying to create heaven here on Earth."

     

    Those using the phrase seem to be remarkablely consistent in meaning so I think it is quite safe to believe that that is what Mark Shea meant.

     

    However I do think that it would have been good to define that phrase for those of us not alive in the 50's and 60's and who haven't spent time in the sort of politics in which the phrase is encountered.

     

    BTW I read "more than merely content" as meaning that Mark Shea is positively happy perhaps even joyful to be "living in this strange divine sea of a Church".

     

    lwall would you have been as worried by the article if instead of "immanentizing the escahation" he wrote "create heaven on earth" and instead of "more than merely content" he wrote "happy" or more likely "joyful"?

    The people you talk about sound like they're resting in being merely content rather then any more than.

  9. Guest Avatar
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    To ekwell : I would be more comfortable just knowing what Mark meant by " more than content". What is being said here? more than content as oppossed to less than content?…   more than content as in not interiorly unnsettled? … more than content as meaning complacent because as member of the the Church he knows that God will transforming his soul ( this was what I initially took it to mean i ala Mark's follow up Ephesians quote)  …more than content????? Is the content language perhaps meant as a foil to something else? If so, what? Over zealousness maybe? Yes, joyful would have worked better if not connected to the equally ambiguous phrase " not my job to immanentize the eschaton" which, as I have explained, iIS our calling in a certain sense. If Mark had meant to contrast progess of the Church on earth as She struggles to Incarnate Christ more deeply in the world against a merely human effort ala Mrax et. al to utopias, then that would be well understaood and quite clear. But as it is written, it sounds flippant and a little laisez faire and triumphalistic.    

  10. Guest Avatar
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    Everyone should be able to type into the comment box and hit the enter key while you are typing to create paragraphs.

    As I just now did.  Then, when you hit post comment, those hard returns should still be here.

    If this is not happening for any of you, please tell me if you are typing right into the rich text editor, or pasting from a text document.

    We need to fix this if it is a technical problem on our end.

  11. Guest Avatar
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    Mark might as well have addressed his article to me personally.  As a convert I continue to struggle with my protestant mindset.  Coming from a culture where protest is seen as something very valuable and courageous, it is sometimes difficult to stop protesting as a way of life. I became a Catholic because nothing else comes close to expressing the relationship I want with Christ. It would be fair to say that I became a Catholic bite by bite.  In that process it is only natural that certain aspects of the Church seem more understandable, more desireable, perhaps even more important than other aspects. That is a big mistake. By ignoring those less understandable, less desireable aspects of the whole Church I am sliding back into being a Protestant. Neither fish nor fowl.  It sounds easy to accept the whole Church in one big gulp, but for me it has not been so easy.  Lest I sound like a lost cause, I am not.  It took a long time for me to get this far, and it may take a little longer to get the rest of the way.  I will get there. Bite by bite.

  12. Guest Avatar
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    I would read  more than content as opposed to merely being content, 'more than' being a modifier to content. And this is in contrast to being upset that your fellow Catholics are not perfect (given the article as a whole) but rather ordinary. 

     

    In context I'd state that Mark is saying that his job is not to try to make his fellow Catholics perfect through his own means but to allow for the (often gradual) work of the Holy Spirit within us. We are not called to try to create an earthly heaven (and my search for uses of the phrase did not find an alternate meaning).  This doesn't mean that there isn't room for improvement or even that we shouldn't try with God's grace to aid in these improvements, just simply that expecting earthly perfection even if just in the Catholic Church is  expecting too much (and something we are not promised).

     I'm fairly sure he doesn't advocate laisez faire for the simple reason that he cares enough to write these articles.  

  13. Guest Avatar
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    OK.

  14. Guest Avatar
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    Lwall and PTR, what OS and browsers are you guys using?

  15. Guest Avatar
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    Windows XP and Internet Explorer. I think I can do the spacing you request. Thanks.

  16. Guest Avatar
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    You write "they are fed up with Protestantism and are leaving it and joining the Catholics."

    Yeah, unfortunately I feel the same way about the Catholic church. But I have not yet become an Episcopalian. Or a Unitarian.

  17. Guest Avatar
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    Janedoe, why are you "fed up"?

  18. Guest Avatar
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    Janedoe, this is what gets me:  Let me be honest and I will try to be nice at the same time — which anyone who knows me will tell you takes heroic effort. I am also going to try not to sound like an evangelical Protestant (which might be harder).

    (Deep breath.)

    Unitarians do not believe in Jesus.  They do not worship him. They do not trust in the mercy of his Sacred Heart because they do not believe they need mercy.

    Do you know the Lord? If you know the Lord, if you have ever for one minute trembled in the fire of His love, wept in adoration, been stunned by the depths of his mercy – how , oh how, I must ask in sincere dismay, could you for one minute consider a religion that rejects him?

    HIm?

    Regardless of how any human being annoys… or even betrays us, how could we ever justify taking it out on HIM?

  19. Guest Avatar
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    Here, here!  Bravo Mark.  We have witnessed the tendency for many, even cradle born Catholics, who sincerely crave holiness to be drawn toward extreme traditionalism.  The subtle conspiracy theories that often draw them in has to be the work of Screwtapes' uncle.

     

    So, in thirst for the gift of Christ's body and blood, we too, endure and do what we can to grow in our own holiness, pray for everyone, and remain in our "modern" parish as leaven in bread.  And you know, I find most of my fellow (though sometimes confused) parishioners far more loving and willing to learn than those friends who seek their vision of holiness in extreme traditionalism.  Seldom have I been turned away when I have asked, "Do you know what the Church actually teaches on that?"  And usually those who want to know are surprised, and open to learning. 

     

    The true sadness will come when those caught up in traditionalism begin to see the cracks in their choice, and then, where will they turn?  Who is their ultimate authority?  And how can they trust themselves to not be deceived?  I know, myself, that I am a grand master at self deception.  That God, truly, for the gift of our (His) Church!

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