Revelation & Revolt

If Obergefell v. Hodges has taught Catholics something, it's that Protestant Biblicalism is not enough to conserve traditional values. The debate on homosexual unions included no mention of Natural Law, possibly due to few outside the devout and Church scholars ever hearing of it. The Catholic view of reality is not widely known, which is a shame, as the Catholic view is eternal and encompassing. It grapples with and answers many of the paradoxes of human life, and through it we have a fertile garden for healthy human exploration and art.

In our modern day, Catholics use the totem of religious freedom to protect their practices, but this totem is not enough to preserve us. Religious freedom in the United States presupposes the ability of the government to regulate religious freedom, and even override it. With the current virus shutdowns, this presupposition has resolved into certainty, as houses of worship have been shut down on government orders. Aside from that, religious freedom puts us on the level of every other interest group in United States politics. The One Holy and Apostolic Roman Catholic Church, instituted by Christ, has been relegated to having the same standing as wiccanism and the church of the flying spaghetti monster.

The state of the Church itself is partially to blame, as an unbearable amount of doctrinal confusion and outright heresy has come to characterize the Church since the Second Vatican Council. Priests and Bishops preach heresy with no fear of rebuke from ecclesial authority. Also to blame is the state of the Catholic laity. Few primarily identify as Catholics, preferring instead to label themselves as primarily conservative, and as part of a larger conservative movement. They draw their ideas from that movement, even when those ideas contradict Catholic social teaching, as they often do. The goals of conservatives and the goals of the Catholic are not the same. True Catholicism demands the conversion, not only of individuals, but of the culture.

Religious freedom wasn't enough to preserve worship during this pandemic, and it won't be enough to save us, going forward. During the 1930s, many speakers attempted to alert the public outside Germany to the rising threat of Hitler. Few listened, giving Hitler almost 10 years to build an army. It took the declaration of war for people to take it seriously. This pattern of people ignoring dire warnings has been repeated many times throughout history, in everything from Communism to this very pandemic. While the situation with Catholics in the United States is not on the same scale, there is currently a propaganda war being waged on the Christian Right, of which Catholics are a part.

Between popular politicians and widely publicized books, the message from the media is clear: Christians are dangerous. The propagandists would have you believe that the perils of devout Catholicism is a bigger threat to the United States than Islamic terrorism. Before you discount the impact books and politicians, realize that books can be a lightning rod to change popular opinion. Now Harvard experts are proposing the end of homeschooling, because they think parents shouldn't have the right to impose their beliefs on their children. To them, your children are the property of the state, on loan to you.

As the range of socially acceptable beliefs moves, the Catholic faith, and Christianity as a whole will become socially unacceptable. Faith, they'll say, is for the gullible, rednecks, and an excuse for bigotry. The claim of bigotry gives fervent anti-Christians the excuse to de facto ban Christianity on the grounds that the faith itself is a public harm. This virus is the perfect example.

Radicals and technologists never let a crisis go to waste. The virus has prompted the government to infringe on the rights of millions of people, proposing new social programs to track the movements and associations of citizens. In some states, it's now a crime to visit your friend's house. It's a crime to go to Mass. It's a crime to go outside and take a walk. Drones are flying over cities, buzzing out warnings to people walking too close to one another. Countries are producing apps which will be used to track the movements of their citizens. In some countries, they're making it a crime not to have your phone on you and charged. People are going along with it because they're terrified.

After this virus is over, we can only expect religious freedoms to be further curtailed. Catholics need to have a unified response and vision to this expanding threat. That vision is not one shared by many, since so few Catholics these days know our apologetics or dogma. So my advice to young Catholics is this: during this quarantine, strengthen your faith. We need to take on a primarily Catholic identity, and read Catholic books to get a deeper understanding of our own faith.

I suggest starting with G.K. Chesterton's Orthodoxy.