"I Was A Lefty Catholic" And Other Tales

We were at dinner a few months ago with some friends. My son's godmother introduced me to one of the guests at the table who attend the Traditional Latin Mass. "This is Rob," she said good naturedly, "he used to be a lefty-Catholic!"

I couldn't argue. But when I joined the Catholic Worker after graduating college (and three years after joining the Church), I wouldn't have known what you meant if you called me a "leftist Catholic." Sure, I read books by John Dear and the Berrigan brothers, and like any good twenty-something was attracted to the revolutionary spirit of those working for justice on behalf of the poor. My friends would protest at the School of the Americas in Georgia, we had a community garden, we hung bedsheets from the windows in a spirit of solidarity and liberation. When I moved to Philly, I went to St. Vincent de Paul in Germantown where we joined hands around the altar when the priest would break leavened honey-wheat bread; the liturgical abuses, in hindsight, were legion.

It's all easy to see now. But at the time, I was totally ignorant of the factions in the Church, just happy to have been saved, forgiven, and redeemed, and feeding, clothing, and sheltering the poor as Jesus called us to do.

But now I see the hold-overs form the Ploughshares movement and other social justice initiatives, and they just look...weary, and a little passed-by. I'm not sure if their children practice the Faith, but my guess--since the "praxis" of liberation and the here-and-now was often given more importance than stodgy old doctrine--is that many do not, since the spirit of the revolution is harder to pass on than formative teaching by way of the catechism.

Our age is the age of social experimentation. We have experimented with marriage, with conception and human life, with the foundations of society--the family--with political ideology, with what it means to be a man and what it means to be a woman. In the Church, the years of experimentation in throwing off the shackles of dogma for primacy of conscience and religious communities traded habits for secular garb.

Since I've been laid up in bed sick for the past couple days, I've been watching some movies and things. One recommended by a priest I know was an obscure 1973 made-for-TV film on Youtube called "The Conflict," starring a young Martin Sheen who plays Fr. Kinsella, a young liberationist priest sent from Rome to his religious order in Ireland to straighten them out and to work on banning the TLM.

A telling exchange occurs about halfway through the film between Fr. Kinsella and one of the monks:


Monk: You're one of those new priests, aren't you, the revolutionaries? 

Fr. Kinsella: Are you interested in that? 

M: Tell me: is it true, in South America, some priests are overthrowing the government? 

FK: Yes they are. 

M: How can they be doing the likes of that? 

FK: Well why not? The early Christians were revolutionaries, remember? 

M: What does that got to do with saving souls for God? 

FK: Everything! Do you know in places like South America young priests our age are dying for the causes of social justice? 

M: What are they doing being priests? You know, if i wanted to join the IRA, I'd have joined the IRA. But I joined the Church. 

FK: So the Church can be a powerful instrument of change! It can lead a revolution that people will follow. You have enormous influence! 

M: You know, that's trite! Look at the people over there on the mainland. They don't want your social justice. They want the old Mass. They want to believe in something, something more than this world can offer them. And what do you offer, Father?  

FK: Well perhaps a better life, Father, not pie in the sky. 

M: Ah, but you're a priest. That's not your job. They want you to forgive them their sins, to baptize them, marry them, bury them. Show them there's a God above them, a God who cares about them. Now the old parish priests knew that. You don't.


The exchange was meaningful for me not as much for what it had to do with the Mass (though that is a primary focus of the film), but because, in this particular exchange at least, it got to the heart of the role of the priest and the desires of those who cling to the Faith:

They want you to forgive them their sins

to baptize them

marry them

bury them

Show them there's a God above them

a God who cares about them

Liberation Theology was wedded and adapted to a godless Marxism and concerned itself more with the immediate here-and-now than the eternal, the social more than the timeless. As a praxis-based experiment, it's motives may have had some merit (alleviation of the suffering of the poor, economic justice, etc), but it failed to bear the fruit to sustain itself. Personal prayer and sanctity, at least in my experience in the movement, was never emphasized very much. I know enough to know that any life without the sustenance of prayer doesn't have much of a future. 

Here's the thing: Anti-foundationalism, post-modernism, and 21st century liberalism are not homes of peace. Because the work of justice is never fully accomplished, and the revolution is always just around the corner, and the fuel tank of agitation and outrage is always needing a refilling to keep the vehicle of change from stalling out. That does NOT mean we can ignore the plight of the poor or become like the rich man dining sumptuously at his table while Lazarus licks his sores. It does NOT mean we cannot see and admire the laudable work of justice and models of civil disobedience, as could be seen in, for example, the fight for civil rights in our country. 

But as a whole, if I had to put money down, I would not place my chips at the table of the National Catholic Reporter types to save the Church in a post-modern wasteland. The force of the culture is too strong, and we need a rope braided strong with centuries of tradition and clear teaching to keep us from washing out to sea. We need a 'movement' that lauds the timeless and encourages (and gives the tool for) the development of personal holiness, for the culture is converted a saint at a time. We need a movement that steeps itself in deep and devoted personal prayer, develops a practice of piety sharpened by mortification, and draws its strength from Christ in the Eucharist. A movement that encourages frequent confession, and does not see sacramentals as nice little charms, but recognizes them as the armor necessary to protect its followers spiritually. A movement that thousands of canonized saints have themselves been a part of, leading the way and leaving their footsteps in the dirt for us to follow, for the themselves follow the crucified Christ. 

Judge a tree by its fruits, but make sure you see the fruit through eyes that can distinguish the temporal from the eternal, the 'here and now' from the place where souls exist until the end of time. Gear everything you have, everything you own, everything you can will, towards the Eternal. Follow closely in the footsteps of the saints who have gone before you, read about their lives and follow their examples, and don't stray from the path. Pass the Faith to your children so that they might be saved. Form your conscience in obedience. And never cease in prayer.

I can't afford to put my hope of eternal salvation in a social experiment like liberal Catholicism. Maybe I'm just getting older and (hopefully) a little wiser--or, at least, am wising up a little, but I'm happy to have left liberal Catholicism behind. Only took twenty years to "get woke" to tradition, obedience, and the hard road to sanctification. 

But better late than never.