“Lord, to whom can we go? You have the words of eternal life." [John 6:68]
If I had to single out an existential quandary, which has been troubling me a lot and that I have faced and not faced time and again in this year just concluded, 2021, my first full year from beginning to end as a retiree, it would be that of how to decide whether to take someone, most anyone at his word. I know that sounds odd coming from someone who was not born yesterday and has had his experience both with stupidity and with human treachery, but that is just what makes it all so troubling. How do you get beyond Pontius Pilate's cynical "What is truth?" when dealing with people, be they strangers or not? Can I rely on any person's word, whether spoken, printed or uploaded?
So-called fake news is not even the half of what concerns me here. I guess that liars, people of bad will or intention, will always be. Into this basket I would also place materialists, the conniving and greedy, whose agenda has no room for the Lordship of Christ and for subjecting our world and our lives to His reign. They are, however, less my problem, because they can be more easily exposed and shunned for our own protection as well as for the protection of those whom we love. I am even less worried about being led astray by the petty and foolish. My difficulty has to do with other groups, and which are sometimes labeled as well-intentioned and worthy of respect. I am troubled by all those givens, confidently possessed, defended, and proclaimed by a middle aged to older sort of conservative establishment, ready to tolerate way too much for the sake of not confronting the status quo in government, business, and labor, not to mention what we are supposed to believe is mainstream Catholicism.
Above all, I guess, I am troubled by those who take their stance for and against others based more on fealty or comradeship and less on what I would think was personal integrity and an uncompromising search for truth. Jockeying for the advantage, testing loyalties, and the frequency with which others are accused of betrayal seems to trump authenticity and personal integrity.
It appears that mine or someone else's pearl of great price does not interest or give pause to those who seemingly hold the high ground, be it intellectual or moral. This supposedly friendly opposition, masquerading as allied forces, will not move beyond fortress walls and revise positions perhaps imposed upon them in their childhood or youth and never revisited.
I just read an article by someone I know as a totally integral person, whom I know I can trust. I cannot join her as she proclaims the pontificates of John Paul II and Benedict XVI to have been undermined by reason of their failure to confront and do battle with what many brand as neo-modernism. She castigates neo-conservativism and outlines a program for rallying to the banner of tradition in defense of the fullness of the faith. I suppose her experience of betrayal leads her to cancel not only what shows itself ugly in our times, but which ends up being branded as its logical precedent and equally culpable. Book burnings no longer make sense, but her search seems to be for some sort of damnatio memoriae.
What I miss in her position and in that of many others is the witness of St. Vincent Ferrer, O.P. “The Angel of the Judgment” [1350-1419], who was less into church politics and totally consumed by his preaching. I am still looking for that kind of saint in our times.
Join me in storming heaven for another "angel" like St. Vincent to call people to conversion before the great day of wrath!
PROPERANTES ADVENTUM DIEI DEI
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