Towards a Post-Liberal Catholic Christian Church
The Church is in crisis. It has always been in crisis. A crisis is a turning point, in which important decisions are made and then implemented to bring us back to what is important, and forward toward what really matters. Many names have been given to our current crisis. Post-Christian and post-modern are just a few terms that we used today. A change from Christendom to an Apostolic Age is another name for our current crisis. For the purposes of this article, let us just use the term, post-liberal, for reasons that will soon become apparent.
At the time of the Council of Nicaea in the fourth century, there was a saying that the Church had awakened and found itself to be Arian instead of being Christian. Christological controversies of the early centuries brought clarity to the question about who Jesus Christ really was. Today, the Church has awakened again and found itself to be Woke instead of Christian. And it is time to again bring clarity to who and what we are as followers of Jesus Christ. “Woke” is a word similar to “Enlightenment.” As the Enlightenment of the last two hundred years claimed to liberate itself from the superstitions of the supposed Dark Ages of medieval times, the Woke era claims to liberate itself from the coldness of scientific materialism where “I think and therefore I am,” has morphed into “I feel this way, and therefore this is how things had better be from now on, or else!”
Whereas the Liberal Protestantism of the 19th century brought about the Conservative Fundamentalism of the 20th century, we hope for a better reaction to the Liberal Catholicism of the “spirit of Vatican II,” which is not to be equated with the actual documents of Vatican II. In fact, the demise of liberal Catholicism is all around us. As the ill-defined synodal way is functioning as the last hurrah of liberal Catholicism before its imminent collapse, we have the opportunity not only to become post-liberal, but to prophetically write a bold new chapter to church history that is more than just a reaction to the crisis that preceded it. Whereas the synodal way, especially in Germany, is a situation where the blind are leading the blind into a pit, the new Apostolic Age of the Church has the possibility for forging a new and more faithful Christendom that truly liberates us from the successive failures of modernism and post-modernism.
The Church today is actually being called to be neither liberal nor conservative. Those are political terms that are inappropriate for reference to the Church. We should only seek to be faithful to our Lord, to the Holy Bible, and to Sacred Tradition. Rather than being emotionally reactionary, we are called upon to be prayerfully responsive. Our best response is simply to be liberated from our delusions by the Kerygma. The world as we know it is not how God created it to be, because we messed it up. But Christ came on a search and rescue mission to save the lost. And, when we join Christ in the community of his Church, the Kingdom of Heaven has already dawned in our midst. When we repent and believe in the Gospel, our transformation in Christ has already begun, awaiting its completion in heaven. In a sense, we are not just post-liberal, but actually post-everything, because we have truly become a new creation in Christ!
Be assured that we are not naively attempting to make the world holy again, because it has never been holier than it is now. No, we are beyond that and seek something even more glorious. Through the power of the Holy Spirit, we have embraced a faith that calls us to personal holiness of life, in anticipation of a new heavens and a new earth which will become more holy that it ever was before Adam and Eve lost the preternatural gifts of Eden through Original Sin. However, since a false liberalism is at the heart of our spiritual crisis today, we can launch our response from the myth of human progress on which liberalism so foolishly rests. As Saint John warns us, no one should be so progressive that he does not remain rooted in the teaching of Christ (II John 9). Our only true progress in the spiritual life comes from being rooted in Christ. For this is the will of God: our sanctification (I Thessalonians 4:3).
Liberalism is an ideological secular religion. One does not have to believe in god in order to have a religion. In ideology, each person functions as their own supreme being around whom their world revolves. As a religion, liberalism has a creed, a code, and a culture. It’s creed is this: I believe in me, myself, and I, independent of others and self-autonomous; and as such I create my own reality. It’s code is this: I don’t do anything wrong because everything I do is good for me right now; and as such I devise my own morality. It’s culture is this: I party however I see fit at any given moment; and as such there are no boundaries. While radically different from that of Christianity, for example, a religion is a worldview that holds one’s life together as a current whole. The Achille’s heel of ideology is its fragile solipsism and flight from reality. When reality eventually strikes, liberal ideologies implodes on itself.
Are you ready to become a post-liberal Catholic Christian? Even if you don’t feel that you are ready enough, Christ is inviting you to come to him in faith, hope, and love anyway. Christ will guide us into the truth that will liberate us from ourselves as well as from the ways of the world as we now know it. Christ has saved us from our folly; he saves us for the liberty to move forward in his footsteps toward the dawning of his Heavenly Kingdom today, and its full revelation in the future. But that future starts even now, as we take our first steps of discipleship. Please go to CatholicChristian.org/Lifestyle to begin that journey with Christ today! And the community of the Church, led by Christ, will be there with you every step of the way.
