Angelus News | March 22, 2024 | Vol. 9 No. 6

mocracy, equality, free will, and individualism,
tend to be creatures of public
opinion. If public opinion is running
against the Church, then many of us
will lean in that direction. So that’s a
huge problem now: this desire to not be
embarrassed by Church teachings that
are inconvenient for secular society.
There’s a lot of talk these days about
polarization and political ideology
in the Church. But is there a deeper
“illness” you think might be afflicting
Catholics, regardless of whether
they’re so-called liberals or conservatives?
Look, I want to get to heaven, and a
Christian life lived well is the way to do
it. But that gets obscured, particularly
in an election year, by whether you’re
voting for Biden because of this, or for
Trump because of that. I think both
men are embarrassments to our system
of government, and a further sign of the
turmoil in our culture.
Politics is about getting and using
power, and power is our favorite golden
calf, no matter how we dress it up with
moralizing language. That’s especially
true in a time of rapid social change,
which is where we are right now. Confusion
feeds anxiety, which feeds our
Ben Lash receives Communion during an Oct. 28, 2018,
Mass for people with special needs at Jesus the Divine
Word Church in Huntingtown, Maryland. | CNS/BOB
ROLLER
appetite for control, which makes us
unhinged in some of our most important
choices.
We’re living through a kind of new
Reformation. I mean a literal re-formation
or restructuring of the way we look
at the world and ourselves. And it can
get very painful and very dangerous.
In a technologically dominant society,
the supernatural can seem implausible.
The political environment will reflect
that. So if we really believe there’s
something more than this world and
this life, then we can’t be purely political
animals. We have to see beyond
politics, because it always has a dark
side. But that’s very hard to do when
you’re wrapped in a 24/7 media cocoon
that’s often toxic and misleading.
The question of whether Trump
or Biden is “better” from a Catholic
perspective is almost irrelevant to the
real issues of the moment. Both men
are expressions, more than the cause,
of our culture’s deeper contradictions.
You can’t build a healthy society on the
worship of more and better stuff, faster.
But that’s what American life now tries
to do. I want a world where my kids and
grandkids can feed their souls as well as
their stomachs; where they can deepen
their faith in a loving and just God and
practice their religious convictions in a
way that makes the world better. I just
don’t see that happening this year or
next, no matter who gets elected.
It doesn’t absolve us as Catholics from
political involvement, but we need
a cold shower in reality about what
politics can accomplish, what it can’t,
where it’s leading us, and where it
stands in our priorities.
The concerns that people voice in
“True Confessions” track pretty closely
with what I’ve just said. They know
there’s something more than all this turmoil,
and they want something deeper
and more life-giving than a culture of
relentless conflict and name-calling,
both of which invade even the Church.
One of the bishops you interviewed
said: “I think we all need to realize,
not just bishops but all of us, that
we’ll face a much less friendly climate
in this country going forward.” After
your work on this book, what do you
think the Church can do to equip
my generation to have kids and raise
families in this less-friendly future?
We can start by helping our people be
more uncomfortable with this country.
Patriotism, properly understood, is an
important Christian virtue. It’s a form
of filial love for the best ideals of our
nation. But real love is always anchored
in truth, and the truth is — I heard
versions of this again and again while
working on “True Confessions” — we
Francis X. Maier |
SUBMITTED PHOTO
now have a culture that turns mature
citizens into self-absorbed consumers
led by even more self-absorbed and
self-flattering leaders. That doesn’t end
well.
My generation, the Baby Boomer
Catholics, were educated to be good
Americans, to assimilate, to be part of
the program. And we can be proud of
some of the things we’ve contributed
and achieved. But we don’t really
“fit” here on some fundamental level.
Again, that doesn’t give us the right to
abandon our public engagement —
quite the opposite. But this world, this
country, isn’t our home, and we’ve lost
that knowledge, which is biblical. The
New Testament says that here “we have
no lasting city, but we seek the city
which is to come.” We need to recover
that wisdom.
Unless we develop a more reserved
and critical relationship with our current
culture, we’re not doing our job as
Christians.
Two of the biggest “disruptor” moments
for priests in the last couple of
decades have been the sexual abuse
crisis and the COVID-19 pandemic.
Based on your interviews with priests
12 • ANGELUS • March 22, 2024