"You should write more on this."
"Are you ever going to start writing again? Here's our submissions address."
"You have a unique voice in today's landscape. You should use it more."
As we enter this time of extended darkness in the Church, I am told these things. I always think its a great idea, and yet when I try to write.... I got nothing. That's not entirely true. I have a lot of words I put down, and some of those words even leave me nodding, and I know they would resonate with an audience. Yet I never save and publish.
Do this long enough and you will inevitably get something along the lines of the following:
"Are you okay?"
"Is there a crisis of faith?" (Few ask this directly, but its clear what they are getting at.)
I've found myself more and more thinking about this question. Not "why am I not writing more" but what that lack of writing says. Have the issues of salience dropped? Certainly not. If anything, they've intensified. We're reaching a point of darkness that is rivaled only by how pathetic the entire spectacle of Church leadership is becoming. In many ways, the Church is beginning to resemble her ailing and sickly pontiff: immobile, bitter, complaining about how nothing has worked, and looking for somebody to blame. One could see that with the release of the Pope's latest instruction on the liturgy, which seems to place the entire failure of the Post Vatican II liturgical reform (of which modern man is now incapable of perceiving) on the fact the TLM distracted Catholics from directing their energies towards living out the true reality the Council calls us to. In 2013 this would cause outrage. In 2022, I sincerely believe this should cause pity on a dying man who ended up being not up to the task placed before him, by God, and by those who installed him on the throne.
So why not write more about it? Why not amplify ones voice, especially as we get deeper into this darkness, and the response of the Church becomes even more feeble and pathetic? I think here we run into a tension (not a problem per se) with calls for reform in the Church: at what point does one became Ham, the son of Noah, pointing out the nakedness of our father for spectacle to other Catholics?
When I took classes on public speaking and debate as a student, the one lesson always hammered home was to make the point and move on. If you stick with a point too long, you begin to look like a fanatic, and, more importantly, you are signaling to your audience your previous attempts to make the point weren't terribly compelling. This rule should be elevated even more when talking about the defects and faults of others. Once you've made the point you want to make about someone's failing, move on. If you stay there too long, in addition to the things I mentioned above, you might end up being seen as cruel and vindictive. You yourself may begin to become cruel and vindictive.
Seeing the humanity in someone can be a tough business, especially when, in the case of Francis, he has spent the last 18 months making sure that when people see me, they don't see my humanity, only my perceived threat to power, and as a scapegoat for a variety of sins in the Church. Yet Noah had dignity, even in his drunken state of excess and frailty.
I also don't want to be one of the various Catholic personalities. I do not want to be Mark Shea, a man who has so consumed himself with rage, he is unable to see the Cross as anything other than an instrument of said rage. I do not want to be Dawn Eden, someone who hasn't written anything influential or important in a decade, but now, stuck in a feedback loop that her livelihood depends on, tailors whatever things she does write to pop the influential. (A fate that befalls a lot of academics of any persuasion, Catholicism being no exception.) I don't want to be Steve Skojec or one of the countless trads who didn't move on from the established point, and got consumed in a deadly cocktail of rage and monetization. I also don't want to be the EWTN/Crisis crowd, who have mostly abandoned the cross in favor of a political crusade. And let's be real, do I really need to belabor why I don't want to be the guys at Where Peter Is?
So what will I be? The guy who mostly pokes fun at those trying, and failing, at finding a balance between being a good writer and a good Catholic? (Well besides that. Sorry, most of you earned it the jeers.) I don't have an easy answer to that. The obvious is that I'll continue being a husband and a father. I'll continue being someone who reads good Catholic commentary. Just because I can't figure out how to maintain that balance doesn't mean you can't. Yet I would only ask of you who do write: have compassion on the passing of an age. There are many people who meant well in trying to carry out something that was doomed to failure. There are also those whose heart is black as coal now who were not always that way. As they meet the end of their cause, have mercy on them. For that mercy might enkindle within their heart the fire of the Spirit that has long been dormant.
Finally, when you do write, try to write beyond the controversy. A million writers can write about why this or that thing is an outrage. They are easily replaceable, and after a few years of burning themselves out, they are replaceable. It takes someone special to see the struggles in light of a larger picture. I firmly believe that larger picture is one of a dying age, and we must make sense of what comes after that age's death. The moment we trads have hoped for (the death of the post-concilliar revolution and its "spirit") is upon us. It dominates the horizon, and anyone who looks up (something actively discouraged) see it. We have been told for 50 years that there is no storm, or that if there is one, it is a lot further away. Now, we are blamed for the storm! Focusing on discourse about the coming storm makes little sense when it is now here, and how beyond it, we can see the end of that storm as well. Don't ignore the suffering of those in the Church at the hands of bishops and Rome, yet read the signs of their impending doom. If we want something better to replace them, we must think about that more.
This isn't me shutting down. I'll still write from time to time. It's just a realization that as the old ways fade, so does the way we talk about those old ways.
