Waiting for a State of Emergency

You may have heard the rumors recently that, should the Society of St. Pius X go through with consecrating new bishops in July, the Vatican plans to excommunicate not only the bishops involved, but every single priest of that society as well. You may also know that the leaders of the Society of St. Pius X have appealed to a state of emergency in the Church to justify the consecrations in defiance of Rome’s wishes, stating that the salvation of souls takes precedence over obedience to the Holy See. The Vatican denies this, seeing only disobedience and, apparently, the intention to start a “new” church in the proposed consecrations; it is this charge of schism, of intending to break away, which is the given reason for the excommunication.

What I find interesting in this dispute is the whole notion of a “state of emergency.” I do not know if it has a specific meaning in canon law, about which I am wholly ignorant, but I do know that it is largely a political term of art, referring to when the normal workings of government, the constitution, are suspended or some sort of calamity has rendered their operations null and void. It has a history in civic legal systems, but alas, I am ignorant of those as well. Perhaps there is some esoteric reason for it that I am simply too ignorant to understand, but the assertion that the Church is obviously not in a state of emergency seems—well, it seems deranged to the point of madness, as of someone who is suffering a psychotic break with reality. Never Split the Differ... Raz, Tahl Best Price: $14.11 Buy New $14.09 (as of 11:15 UTC - Details)

You might find that alarmist. Isn’t the Church alive and kicking? Yes, there are problems, but the pope is out there traveling, appointing new bishops, making statements on current affairs, bravely taking on the president of the United States, giving comfort to Catholics in Africa, and even rebuking Cardinal Emeritus Gerhardt Marx for his statements advocating for the blessing of homosexual couples. And yes, there has been a marked decline since the 1960s in attendance, vocations, and other leading indicators of the Church’s health. Yes, progressive theologians and clergy control many of the institutional levers of power in the Church, humanly speaking, but things are starting to pick up.

Recent surveys of newly ordained clergy show them to be both more orthodox and politically conservative than their predecessors. And haven’t you seen all the social media posts and news coverage of new converts coming into the Church this Easter? How can you doubt things are getting better? You must lack faith if you do. Things may be bad (very bad) in some places, it is true. But we must hold to the center; the center will hold, for the center of the Faith is the successor of Peter, the rock on whom Christ built His Church. You aren’t thinking of becoming schismatic like the SSPX, are you?

If you are old enough, and aware enough of Catholic history going back into the 20th century, you will find this type of argument familiar. It is the argument of Catholicism in the United States circa 1978 to 2013, the reigns of John Paul II and Benedict XVI. These kinds of arguments were made, and made well, by the likes of the late Fr. Richard Neuhaus, whose flagship journal First Things formed the intellectual heartbeat of this type of thinking, which selected certain positive trends in the Church and read them as a “sign of the times” that things were not as dire as the “prophets of doom, ” as John XXIII once called them, were saying.

The last pontificate ought to have made clear how untenable these types of assertions are, but let me clarify the reason why. First, the papacy as the “center of unity.” In the past ten years, the Roman Pontiff, the infallible teacher and guardian of the Apostolic Faith, has

• issued a magisterial document (Amoris Laetitia) which allows for people in a state of mortal sin to knowingly take Communion, in contradiction to the clear words of Jesus Christ in Scripture,
• issued the Abu Dhabi statement affirming that God has positively willed the diversity of religions in the world, and
• issued a document (Fiducia Supplicans) which allows for the “spontaneous” but supposedly non-liturgical blessings of homosexual couples.

And these are only the most egregious examples. Each of these documents are magisterial in character, and the Vatican has not revised or corrected them as yet. They were issued by the highest authority in the Church and are now the official teaching of the one, holy, catholic and apostolic Church of Rome. These documents openly contradict Catholic teaching that is not merely ancient but contained in Divine Revelation (Scripture and/or Tradition). Even more incredibly, the man tasked with disciplining the Society of St. Pius X, Cardinal Fernández, was, by all accounts, the ghost writer for the first of these and primary author of the third. Red Light Therapy: Mir... Sloan, Mark Check Amazon for Pricing.

One would think such dire, fundamental contradictions in the teaching of the Church—whose primary mission is to teach faith in and convert people to Jesus Christ—by itself would count as a “state of emergency.” But let’s not stop there. Suppose you just aren’t convinced. What about the raft of new converts? Surely the fact that so many people are being drawn to the Church despite these terrible problems (people always agree the problems are terrible) must mean that something is still going right. The Church can’t be in a state of total suspension of normality if people are willingly entering her bosom.

I am very happy people are finding their way to the Church, hoping in the treasures that are contained with the Ark of the New Covenant. Quite frankly, the chances that they will find them—outside of Church documents—are not good. The other day, I was talking with an older member of my parish, and he made a passing remark about a friend who was Presbyterian and commented that Catholicism and Presbyterianism were basically the same thing (or words to that effect). Perhaps there was a time I might have objected to this and tried to dispute his characterization, but let’s be honest: he is completely correct.

Just ask yourself: would a Catholic transported from 1890 into your average American parish today be able to tell if they were in a Catholic house of worship or not? Would they recognize the Mass as a Catholic rite? How about the content of the homilies? Perhaps not in every case, but in many, if not most, they would not.

If that sounds preposterous to you, let me say that if you are part of a unicorn Novus Ordo parish, a wonderful Newman Center, or a parish run by a solid religious order, you are not crazy for thinking I am overdoing things. The Catholic Church is vast and contains many mansions within it. You are not wrong to insist upon the reality of these oases of faith. But they are a drop in an ocean of spiritual rot, deformation, and malaise.

They are not what most people in and outside the Church think of when you mention the Catholic Church to them because that is not how the Catholic Faith is practiced in most places. It is easy to shut yourself up in one of these oases (I have done this myself) and imagine there is nothing fundamentally wrong. This is a very human thing to do, but it is completely divorced from the harsh reality of the situation.

Perhaps this is still not enough for you. All of those people are just wrong, you may say, and it is the minority who are correct. These things don’t matter because, in time, the minority will leaven the whole and change all of this. You just need to have faith. Just think of the new, young generation of priests? Are they not a sign of fundamental vitality, that all the alarms of people crying about a “return to tradition” being necessary to save the Church are overwrought? Doesn’t such an attitude betray a lack of faith in God, in the Holy Spirit, a lack of trust in His promises to the Church never to desert her? Bronson Vitamin K2 D3 ... Check Amazon for Pricing.

Yes, let us talk about the priesthood. The younger priests are, by and large, wonderful; and I am grateful for every one of their vocations to serve Christ and His Church. The only problem is that in the next two decades or so, there will only be a handful of them left (metaphorically speaking) to carry on the work of Christ. Current estimates of the average ratio of priests to Catholics in an American parish is around 1 to 2,500—that is, one priest serves 2,500 Catholics with all that entails. One estimate of the number of priests in the year 2060, based on current levels of vocations and retirements, puts it at one priest for every 10,000 Catholics. It could be much higher, depending on how the trends develop.

If those numbers don’t mean much to you, one shrewd observer has compared it to the situation in a place where Catholics are a tiny minority—Dubai—which helps visualize what they mean:

St. Mary’s Catholic Church in Dubai, United Arab Emirates, is one model that might show what this future world of parish life will look like. Due to restrictions on the faith from the Islamic government, with 350,000 Catholics being served by only 9 priests, or around one priest per 40,000 Catholics. While they have 7 Masses on Sunday, in practice, the extremely low priest to laity ratio means that oddities like having vigil Masses for Sunday beginning as early as 7:00 AM on Saturday. Good luck making it to confession (two-minute-long confessions would have to be run by two priests simultaneously for 16 hours a day every single day) to have a chance of making it in. Good luck even getting to know someone who knows your priest, let alone knowing him personally. I’m not going to say that maintaining one’s faith is impossible in these circumstances. But all the incentives are aligned against it.

I have already experienced something of this in my own life, having moved recently from an area that is relatively plentiful in priests and vocations (the Kansas City Metro Area) to one which is relatively lacking (Central Florida). Where I lived in Kansas City, there were two parishes within a five-minute drive from where I lived that offered daily confession. Where I am living now, the nearest parishes are 25 and 35 minutes away, and one offers confession once a week, the other twice a week. The pastors at both parishes are in their 70s and their assistants are all foreign, either from India or Africa. In the coming years, this problem will accelerate far beyond the present situation.

Nature’s Bounty ... Check Amazon for Pricing. As you might have noticed, the Catholic Church cannot exist without priests; and quite soon there will not be enough to serve the people of God in many places. This is why so many progressives have been pushing for married priests, women priests, and every other dubious expedient they can think of for years now. Catholics tend to think of the Church in Western countries as a sort of spiritual empire with an endless supply of manpower for all the peoples it governs. I am guessing that is how many recent converts probably understand her. The reality is that she has already ceased to be this, and in the coming years she will simply not be able to minister to the many who might want to enter her bosom, unless something changes drastically and soon.

I don’t need to tell you what you likely already know if you are reading this essay—that the traditional religious orders don’t have these problems and have a much better priest-to-Catholic ratio than the rest of the Church. I sometimes wonder if people accuse the Society of St. Pius X of being schismatic because it produces vocations at a much higher clip than the rest of the Western Church—as if refusing to decline along with the rest of the Church is tantamount to schism. One could point out that the Priestly Fraternity of St. Peter, which is in communion with Rome, has an even higher priest-to-Catholic ratio than the SSPX, so why not just submit to Rome?

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