Should we "Bother" with the Crisis?

 I know my return to blogging is for real because I now can never finish what I set out to do.  I have 3 or 4 grand ideas I want to write about, but things keep getting in the way.  I want to write about the Trumpist temptation of traditionalism.  I want to write a general overview of what I think are the main camps in the Church today.  Yet, in true blogging fashion, something else comes along, and I lose my train of thought.  Yet I think it's something that's really worth talking about.

I was given this opportunity by one Jeff Culbreath in a discussion on Twitter.  Now for those who have been in the trad world for awhile, Jeff is an old name.  Indeed, one of the original traditionalists who took up blogging.  In one form or another, Jeff has been going at this for 2-3 decades now.  I bring this up because I don't want to give the idea that Jeff is some Johnny come lately who doesn't understand the struggle.  He's lived it, he's taken arrows, and he's done a lot of great work, and most of it not in his writing.  So what did he say?

Most Catholics have no business bothering themselves with "The crisis".  Sometimes i wonder if my fellow eggheads online know any real Catholics in the pews.

I know a lot of good people, who have done a lot of good, to traditionalism and the Church as a whole, who hold this idea.  This idea is still wrong in just about every way.  Yet let's first talk about the one way in which it is right.  There is a certain danger in obsessing over the latest scandal de jure or news from a far away land in the Vatican.  Especially when it's done as a form of entertainment online.  That isn't productive, and its ruined countless souls. To the extent this is what one means, then that is correct.

Yet it's wrong every other way.  First is the idea that there is such a thing as a "real Catholic", opposed from the "fake Catholic", and said "fake Catholic" always seems to hold views you disagree with.  It has in common more with political revolutionary movements that seek to purge the impious from their ranks, even if the impious held ideas that five minutes ago were perfectly normal and acceptable.  So let us speak bluntly:  if you are baptized validly, you are a "real Catholic."  Even a Catholic under punishment is still a "real Catholic."  The idea that only "real Catholics" care about things that matter is not only false, it's also telling on yourself.  You've decided, on your own authority, to say what a real Catholic is and is not.  If the Pope and Magisterium say something different, well, who cares what they think?

Second is the idea that "real Catholics" are immune from struggling with certain things, and we shouldn't talk about those struggles, because they aren't becoming of "real Catholics."  This, again, is nonsense.  Catholics are just like everybody else.  We have a lot going for us, and we've got a lot going against us.  If we writers are going to do anything, it should be to talk about Catholicism as it actually exists in the world, not how we wish it would exist.  Sometimes that involves a lot of people angry and upset, even if that anger and sorrow is misdirected.  That's just as much a valid part of the Catholic experience as some boring commentary on the seven sorrowful mysteries that nobody actually reads, but everyone acts like it "matters."  I actually think Catholics need to speak about that stuff more, but that's for another time.

Third is it gets the point about "bothering themselves with the crisis" completely backwards.  The crisis will bother you, whether you want it to or not.  When we are part of a church facing a financial and demographic cliff even before a pandemic, and what that means, that is the crisis.  When you can't get a priest for your mass due to a vocations shortage of cataclysmic proportions that was ignored for decades, that is the crisis.  Yet let us put a more human touch on the matter.

I know an individual who was a weekly Mass goer, in a family of people who mostly stopped going, or didn't really believe.  Yet this individual had a "problem":  she was gay.  Now she had nobody who could give her guidance on how to live with that, outside of the double sins of homophobia and the belief that there really wasn't a difference between homosexuality and heterosexuality.  She got engaged to someone she was dating, and then her partner lost her position in parish ministry, once the reality of Church teaching entered reality.  All of this took her completely by surprise, because nobody ever wanted to address this topic honestly, because its extremely messy.  Now she's estranged from the Church (during the pandemic, she has stayed away from mass, and continues to do so now that the obligation has returned), and the familial bonds are frayed because the family had no clue how to address this from a Catholic perspective either.

Now while this is a composite person, this is no doubt what a lot of "real Catholics" are going through.  That is the fruit of the crisis.  Not everyone has the option of retreating from the world and only hanging out with people who have no struggles.  Honestly, many of us wouldn't even go to that if we could.  That's not where we feel called.

Finally its a belief that if we don't talk about something, its not real, or it doesn't matter.  This places way too much stock in our own feelings and beliefs, and it shows a pretty callous indifference to those who *are* struggling.  An indifference that is not Christianity.  Now you might not feel called to address that.  Yet there are others who want to,  and we should be helping those individuals do so.  I can tell you this:  a lot of the people I discuss the crisis and the faith with aren't Catholics at Mass every Sunday.  They are those fallen away, those who were never Catholic, and they genuinely want to know how on earth I manage to stay Catholic, and why I even want to be Catholic.  I'll tell you something: I love telling them those reasons and that story, and it never gets old, and it never ceases to resonate with them.  They aren't going to convert over that, but I've used the crisis to give them a bit of hope about God.

There is no running from the crisis we face.  We will be bothered by it.  So we might as well bother it back.  What matters is how we bother it back.  Different people will do so in different ways, and those ways will change over time.  Spending too much time dealing with it one way is never healthy, as it needs to be informed by events, situations, circumstances, state in life, etc.  A new convert will react to the crisis a lot differently than someone who has been there for decades.  

There's also something a bit insidious about this suggestion that "Real Catholics" shouldn't "bother themselves" with the crisis when it involves actions of the hierarchy or the ordained.  This reaction itself is a reaction molded by the crisis, and deserves its own treatment, but we've spoken enough today.  Put this down on the list of ideas I swear I'll get to eventually.  For the 100 or so readers, you've stuck with me long enough over the years, you know I come around.