Catholics popular again, for how long?

Anti-religious secular element has not been defeated

Most of us U.S. Catholics have been quiet, law abiding for the most part, but outwardly we’re unusually reticent to be introduced as Catholic. This has gone on in our country for decades. Often paranoid in conversations outside of our parish and apostolate circles, we are fearful of being caught out. “Oh, he’s a Catholic.” “She’s one of ‘those’ Mary worshipping loonies.”

At work, if found out, we might skulk about like we’re pariahs, the weird Christians. Christians aren’t eagerly welcomed in our culture. In fact, Catholics are the orphaned, stepchildren of the Christians. It should be the opposite, the truth—the Mother Church, the source for every Christian denomination and non-denominational set of Christ followers. Nonetheless, we are the cultic anachronisms on the fringes of acceptable religion. 

Catholics usually get the evil eye from everyone.

Image by Dominika Kukułka

The common response to being called a Catholic is to say, “Well I was raised Catholic, yes,” leaving the obvious yet awkward conclusion that we abandoned that albatross after we left home. The “nones” are heavily peppered with Roman escapees.

A few years ago, when a Catholic got elected as senator or president, or even governor, alarm bells went off in people’s heads. “Uh oh.” The pope’s influence on weighty matters, a president submitting to a higher power by genuflecting at Church, and rosary beads hanging from the rear view mirror on Air Force One? Just the idea of papists in the public square made U.S. citizenry’s heads spin.

Well, things have changed dramatically since Trump was elected a second time.

It appears that most of his new appointments and nominees are the very Catholics that folks never imagined would grasp positions of power. Trump has called upon old money Catholics, newly converted Catholics, a twice-reverted Catholic, and a warrior Christian proudly displaying his ancient Catholic tattoos.

So, while only recently eyebrows were raised and folks would worry over a Catholic here or there getting into politics, now … well … half of Trump’s appointed heads of public office are Catechism-carrying, bible thumping, Mass going, card-carrying Católico’s. From worrying about one Catholic, everybody is worried now about all these dag-nabbed Catholics running the show and taking over the whole thing. It’s the nation’s worst nightmare. “Oh no ...”

And the dirty little secret can no longer hide. Six of the nine Supreme Court jurists are Catholics, too. Yikes! What’s going on here?

Catholics are pinching themselves. While maybe a bit perturbed at the public spectacle of so many mackarel-snappers in the bosom of DC, the knee-bending faithful are secretly pleased. Proud. Some are giggling about it, and others are finally flexing their atrophied, “I’m a Catholic too, you know!” muscles.

Not wanting to throw holy water on the growing flame on lit up Catholic candles, consider two cautious reminders. An article in First Things reminds us that the anti-religious secular element has not been defeated, and in The Catholic Exchange,  Matthew McKenna explains that the old fears of Catholics is actually the right fear. No matter how many of us will get recognized in the hallways and highways of the USA, we’re not destined to be held in high esteem by the councils of the world. 

When Jesus is unhesitatingly praised as the King of the universe, the gospel message urges us all to surrender to our Trinitarian God, and holy people preach the sacrificial nature of holiness. Such Catholic counter-cultural awareness shivers the frail timbers of practically every institution on earth. Any current popularity and respect for Catholicism is not sustainable.

In McKenna’s article, Christianity is not a ‘Respectable’ religion, he notes G.K. Chesterton’s interpretation of Christ’s teaching — that “you are the salt of the earth” (Matthew 5:13) — to mean that Christians must be very different from the world. He writes: “Salt seasons and preserves beef, not because it is like beef; but because it is very unlike it.” Chesterton adds that Christ did not tell His apostles that they were merely ‘excellent’ people, but that they were the ‘exceptional’ people; permanently incongruous and incompatible people. Chesterton explained that salt can only preserve foods if it remains salty, if it keeps its bitter, tangy, and contrarian uniqueness. Thus, he concludes, the Church can only preserve and evangelize the world if it remains different from the world. 

You don’t get more different from the world than the imagery St. John the Apostle wrote about in the book of Revelation. He speaks more than other-worldly. He’s beyond the worlds we know altogether.

I, John, heard a voice from heaven speak to me: Here are my two witnesses: These are the two olive trees and the two lampstands that stand before the Lord of the earth. If anyone wants to harm them, fire comes out of their mouths and devours their enemies. In this way, anyone wanting to harm them is sure to be slain. They have the power to close up the sky so that no rain can fall during the time of their prophesying.

These are not the words of a Church organization looking to get along with the world.

Blessed be the Lord, my Rock! Blessed be the LORD, my rock, who trains my hands for battle, my fingers for war (Psalm 144). And we thought the Muslim jihad language was incendiary.

Our message, the witness we bring to the world, as warring and la-la-land as it sounds, is a harbinger of good news. There is no waffling. Our witness smacks of certainty. It sounds fantastical, too good to be true but we hang on to it with eager expectation.

Our Savior Jesus Christ has destroyed death and brought life to light through the Gospel, quotes 2nd Timorthy in Saturday’s Alleluia, introducing a teaching from Luke’s gospel. 

The gospel quotes “… that Christ died for our sins according to the Scriptures, that he was buried, that he was raised on the third day according to the Scriptures” (1 Corinthians 15:1–4).

Go back to 2nd Timothy which emphasizes the key point — Christ has destroyed death. We’ve got scriptures galore as our defense and evidence. A defense and evidence that won’t hold up in any US court, that’s for sure.

It’s a stroke of genius on Jesus’ part, and on the architects of the lectionary to include Christ’s tale about resurrection as the gospel bookend to John’s verses from Revelation. Jesus fills in the misleading gaps of a philosphy that relies upon death’s end. 

The prevelant theme of the secular narrative is that “this is all there is.” The Saducees, not just reluctant to believe in a resurrection, but incredulous that someone could be so stupid as to think they get to live forever, make fun of Jesus’ teachings about a reward in heaven, a bodily restoration after death to the earthly world.

Jesus answers with the particulars of our next life, an existence outside of time and space, explaining not just that immortality awaits us, but that the future holds an entirely different life. There’s no angels said the Saducees. Jesus counters that we’re just like the angels. They’re ‘real,’ he tells them.

The importance for the series of challenges that Jesus hears from all elements of the Jewish faiths, not only the Saducees and Pharisees, is that Catholics today are and will continue to be subjected to a similar barrage of challenges. Our beliefs in everything from purgatory to the power of sainted relics vary wildly across the spectrum of ways that God speaks to us.

Few of these revelatory images and doctrines of our holy Church are easy to understand and seem unreasonable to folks outside of the faith. It comes down to this. That our God loves us, wants to pour his Spirit into us, has written the laws of truth upon all of our hearts, everyone’s heart, and joined the ranks of creation by becoming one of us so that he can lead us with love. Does the world like that message?

That notion, that Catholic relationship to our brother the King, the indwelled comforter, and the Father of mercy is the opening, the difference that draws people to get a taste of what we believe.

Yes, the Catholic presence upon the public stage is exciting news. Can we get across our difference to others, our unreasonable belief in a loving God? How will we honor this opportunity and witness? Our difference from prevailing philosophies will likely do us in, but this is an opportunity that history doesn’t offer us very often. Let’s see how we do.