The Sheep are Wanting in the Fold

Abscindétur de ovíli pecus.

(from the Canticle of Habakkuk: Hab. 3:17)

Saint Benedict is famously the man who saved Western Civilization. He lived during the decades following the fall of Rome to terminal decadence and invasion, and the Order he founded went on to preserve the works of literature and history and philosophy that are the heritage of Rome and Greece. They tamed the wild lands of Europe, planting farms and vineyards where before there were none. The monks of Saint Benedict were a singular light in a dark age.

In many ways, he not only saved the works of the past, but he laid the very foundation for a new Christian culture in the West.

There are those who say we may again be approaching another such time. After all, history is replete with the rise and fall of civilizations. “Kingdoms and empires have passed away; peoples once renowned for their history and civilization have disappeared; time and again the nations, as though overwhelmed by the weight of years, have fallen asunder…” (Encyclical Iucunda Sane, Pope Pius X, 1904).

Western civilization, in its essence founded on Catholicism and the heritage of Rome, seems to be coming apart. And not just the world, but the Church as well. Increasingly, we have as a society forgotten our Catholic roots or, worse yet, risen against them and denounced them.

Are we waiting for a new and doubtless different Benedict?

Recently, Monsignor Eric Barr has written on the “unchurching of Catholics”, and he pulls no punches.

The plague we are suffering is unchurching our Catholics, particularly our Mass-going Catholics. Let me explain why this is such bad news, but why it also presents us an opportunity to rethink what being Catholic means.

Sunday Eucharist will become a distant memory for most Mass-going Catholics. The Eucharist has already been basically forgotten by a large majority of Catholics. Yet, there are still millions of practicing Catholics who have found solace in this Sacrament of sacraments. As the pandemic drags on, the parishes have only marginally opened for Mass, and that fact is not going to change soon. The parishes aren’t responding well enough to bring people back in a timely way. Actually participating in the Eucharist is no longer simply showing up for the next Eucharistic celebration. So much has to be done to allow one to attend. …. Parishes can not accommodate the numbers should everyone wish to return, and many will find it too difficult to attend, or they will pass up the opportunity, allowing more fervent parishioners to have their space. In the end, there will be a gradual falling away….

Catholics, like Jews, will become even more cultural in name than practicing in reality. Already, statistics show that 60% or more of Catholics do not participate in the weekly or even bi-monthly Eucharist. Add another 30% that will absent themselves because of coronavirus complications. The Church could easily see only around 10% of its baptized members in this country participating in Eucharistic celebrations. This statistic is present already in some places in Europe. That reality exists because of the secularization of European culture. The same secularization is happening here, but will be exacerbated and accelerated because of the plague. …

The Unchurching of Catholics will lead to an absence of personal spirituality.  One of the things the institutional Church has been good at is teaching families how to pray and live traditional Catholicism within the home. This was much more effective when families and the institution cooperated. In the last sixty years or so, families have forgotten, and the Church has labored with less success than before to instill such traditions. Praying and living the faith is about to be gone completely from most Catholics’ experience. Without the anchor of Eucharistic celebration, families will drift away and not know how to teach their children to pray or have traditions that will help them live a Catholic life. …

The Unchurching of Catholics will nearly eradicate the religious knowledge of adherents. Without an association with the Eucharist, children will remain uneducated in the faith. Already this is seen in religious education programs that are not tied to the Eucharist. Attendance is spotty and retention year after year is episodic. In the last half-century, religious knowledge among Catholics in the United States has declined….

This has been going on for a long time, but like many things it has been accelerated and exacerbated by the current plague and our response to it.

So what are we to do? How can we draw closer to Christ and to the Eucharist – which IS Christ – in these days? And how can we become, like Saint Benedict, a force for Christ into the future?

Monsignor gives some very good advice, and you should go and read what he has to say.

Also, it is worth keeping Christ in the forefront of our minds and hearts. Remember that encyclical from Pope Pius X that I quoted earlier? He goes on to say:

Kingdoms and empires have passed away; peoples once renowned for their history and civilization have disappeared; time and again the nations, as though overwhelmed by the weight of years, have fallen asunder; while the Church, indefectible in her essence, united by ties indissoluble with her heavenly Spouse, is here today radiant with eternal youth, strong with the same primitive vigor with which she came from the Heart of Christ dead upon the Cross.

Men powerful in the world have risen up against her. They have disappeared, and she remains.

Philosophical systems without number, of every form and every kind, rose up against her, arrogantly vaunting themselves her masters, as though they had at last destroyed the doctrine of the Church, refuted the dogmas of her faith, proved the absurdity of her teachings. But those systems, one after another, have passed into books of history, forgotten, bankrupt; while from the Rock of Peter the light of truth shines forth as brilliantly as on the day when Jesus first kindled it on His appearance in the world, and fed it with His Divine words: “Heaven and earth shall pass, but my words shall not pass” (Matt. 24:35).

(Encyclical Iucunda Sane, Pope Pius X, 1904)