By DONALD DeMARCO
The door of the Catholic Church, like all the doors of this world, serves as both an entrance as well as an exit. Membership in the Church of Rome is entirely voluntary. Those who enter the Church are greeted with joy; those who make their exit evoke sadness.
As far as the secular world is concerned, however, the reverse may be the case. A major Canadian newspaper recently (May 17, 2015) offered a five-column spread to a prominent ex-Catholic to explain his defection to the Anglican Church. Converts enter the Church with incomparably less media fanfare.
Since his reasons for leaving the Church may be attractive if not convincing to some people, it is appropriate to challenge them so that such people may not continue to find them plausible. Mr. X tells us that he “gradually came to embrace the cause of same-sex marriage.” He did this because he could no longer accept, “as the Roman Catholic Church insists on proclaiming,” that homosexual relations are “disordered and sinful.”
His choice of the word “insists” portrays the Church as stubborn and unyielding. The word “proclaim” suggests something other than a teaching based on sound evidence as well as being in conformity with Scripture. He is evidently reducing his former Church to a caricature. The fact that homosexual acts cannot lead to the conception of a new human being, but often do lead to the transmission of deadly viruses, is a reality that cannot be dismissed lightly.
He tells us that he could no longer base his entire worldview and theology “around abortion, contraception, and sex rather than love, justice, and forgiveness.” At this point we must call into question his self-declaration of being “boringly honest.”
How can he, in such a facile manner, dissociate the work of pro-life Catholics, let us say, from love, justice, and forgiveness? What does he think their motivation is?
Love promotes what is good for one’s neighbor. It is love, more than anything else, that tries to dissuade a woman from having an abortion, and love that offers forgiveness if one has had an abortion. If love does not reach out to the woman who is pregnant and distressed, it is hard to understand how love would reach out to anyone in any other situation. Love is not selective. It operates wherever it is needed.
When Mr. X tells us that he “wanted to extend the circle of love,” he seems to be implying that what he really wants to do is to narrow the circle of love and enlarge the circle of criticism. Can we characterize his words as “loving” when he derides his critics as suffering from “personal insecurity” and having a “drunken nostalgia” for an “apocryphal past age” and “who see change as heresy”?
“Change” is a tiresome word and can be employed effectively from any side of an argument. The plain truth, it should be restated, is that no institution has ever been more zealous for change than the Catholic Church.
She is tireless in encouraging sinners to become more saintly, for people to transform their lives through Christ, for everyone to be loving and more just and more forgiving to everyone. Christ came into the world to change it and has given His Church the task of continuing to implement that change.
Changing doctrine, so that marriage is no longer exclusively between a man and a woman, so that chastity is no longer a virtue, so that forgiveness can be extended to the non-repentant, is not the change that Christ had in mind.
Mr. X goes on to express his confusion between the words “faithfulness” and “intransigence.” And so, he credits Pope Francis as having “broken through the intransigence of his two predecessors.” He should be more cautious in stereotyping by a single word, one who is a saint and another who is saintly. St. John Paul II and Benedict XVI were faithful to their task and urged change, but always in the right direction. We should have cause for grave concern if we cast these two previous Popes as our enemies.
In recent years, a number of extraordinary people have used the entrance door of the Church: Bernard Nathanson, Malcolm Muggeridge, Avery Dulles, Joseph Pearce, Peter Kreeft, Fr. George William Rutler, Helen Hull Hitchcock, Paul Vitz, Richard Neuhaus, Mortimer Adler, and many more. They have all served their Church with distinction. None of them saw a dichotomy between being for life and being for love.
If Mr. X is still eager for change, he might consider reusing that same entrance door that has served Christ and His Church so well over the centuries. He has offered a series of non-reasons; the real reasons for his leaving the Church remain unexpressed.
The problem may be more cultural than personal. When the late Fr. Richard Neuhaus returned to his home in Ottawa for a vacation, he assessed the situation in his native country. “It is true to say,” he wrote in First Things, “that in most aspects of life [in Canada] Christianity has been not only disestablished but also banished.” He also stated that Canadians have come to prefer the “disencumbered life.”
Accommodation to the world, rather than transformation in Christ, can be a powerful temptation. Nonetheless, the true Christian, in imitation of Christ, must always be a sign of contradiction.
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(Dr. Donald DeMarco latest works, How to Remain Sane in a World That Is Going Mad; Poetry that Enters the Mind and Warms the Heart; and How to Flourish in a Fallen World are available through Amazon.com.)
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