Just act like you believe it

An article from some time back lamenting the overall drop in Catholic membership over the decades.  

Here's the thing.  I've learned Christians are forever trying to put the best spin on - anything.  It's as if we don't like to think things are bad in the one place we can go where we want them to be good.  So it's not just a Catholic thing to latch onto any scrap of news and use that to say 'things are looking up!'.  It's as if we believe because of God, things always have to have a happy ending.  Which I'm sure, on the grand eternal scale, they will. 

That doesn't mean it will be that way always, or even over an entire generation, or even century or so.  If we really believe the Christian Faith to be True, as it has been handed down through the ages, then it's safe to say the overall Church (not just Catholic) is at a low ebb right now. 

With all that said, now let me be one of those 'but the bright spot!' types.  There have been trickles of good news here and there.  In our neck of the woods, the number of seminarians cropping up in our diocese has skyrocketed, as have several other indicators of growth and overall ecclesiastical health. 

Now, why is that?  Probably like many things, there are several reasons.  But one is our bishop who I've written about before.  Bishop Fernandes made news because of his ethnicity, as we can expect.  That's what the press zeroed in on, and that's about all the media seemed to care about.

But here's the thing.  He's actually a phenomenal Christian leader.  He's literally everywhere.  In the miniseries Jesus of Nazareth, a fictional customer of Mary Magdalene explains that she has a friend in town, Jesus of Nazareth.  She engages with him about who Jesus is and how he knows of Him.  The man says when you're on business like he is, it's impossible not to run into Jesus.  Cross a town, go into a market, turn a corner and there He is!  

That's the way our bishop is.  My sons and I were walking down a sidewalk near St. Patrick's in Columbus and who did we see walking toward us?  Almost every day he's out and about, meeting these, talking to those, leading this or doing that somewhere in central Ohio.  His energy almost gives the impression that this is important stuff, and he's on a mission.  A mission that is real and matters. 

Beyond that, he's from a STEM family you might say.  Science and medicine appears to be the family trade, though they were also strongly devoted to their Catholic Faith.  As he obviously is.  According to some of his own stories, he was originally expected to carry on the family tradition of going into the field of science or medicine.  Nonetheless, not only did he enter the priesthood, but he also became an actual exorcist for the Church.  Which is believable, since he seems to preach it as if - get this - it's real. That it's true.  That the things in the Bible and our Faith actually happened.  While no open critic of Vatican II era Catholicism, and never one to badmouth any pope I can think of, it's clear his preferences are along the lines of more traditional, old time Christian belief.  And that, I can't help but think, makes a big difference. 

Think on it.  Secularism and atheists did a wonderful job convincing the world, and not a few believers, that we're mostly in an atheistic universe with purely physical solutions to material problems - but kick around God on a Sunday if that's your meat.  But here is a man weaned in a family of science, who was himself expected to follow in the same footsteps, who ended up becoming, among so many other things, an exorcist?  That thing the movie by the same name says nobody believes anymore except some Catholics who keep it in a closet as a sort of embarrassment. 

That is a powerful witness, and the type of thing young people, fast losing all faith and trust in our modern institutions and societal foundations on either side of the fence, take note of.  We're at a stage in history where the great post-war promises of ditching the past in deference to inevitable progress are taking a black eye from reality. And even if institutions that once challenged the status quo - like higher education, arts and entertainment, and the press - are now the status quo, it doesn't mean everyone is biting.  In fact, just the opposite,  Many are applying the same jaded skepticism to their claims of authority as many in those institutions did to the heritage they inherited generations ago.   

Which is why, at the end of the day, it won't be this program or that strategy that matters.  It certainly won't be a willingness to throw the first 2000 years of Catholicism under the bus and insist this time we're getting it right.  It won't be following in the dying liberal Protestant denominations and assuming an alliance with a post-Christian world view is the way to go.  It will be acting like Bishop Fernandes.  Acting like the Catholic Faith and Christian Truth claims are in fact correct.  They're real.  That Jesus is what He said, that the One True God is, that the Church is, that the Faith is, that the miraculous and demonic and angelic is, that eternity is.  Because at the end of it all, the great dividing line will be those who really believe it is true, and those who don't. 

Remember this:

Now as they were eating, Jesus said, “Assuredly, I say to you, one of you will betray Me.” And they were exceedingly sorrowful, and each of them began to say to Him, “Lord, is it I?”  He answered and said, “He who dipped his hand with Me in the dish will betray Me. The Son of Man indeed goes just as it is written of Him, but woe to that man by whom the Son of Man is betrayed! It would have been good for that man if he had not been born.” Then Judas, who was betraying Him, answered and said, “Rabbi, is it I?” Jesus said to him, “You have said it.”   Matthew 26.21-25

Note the disciples ask 'Lord, is it I?'  Judas, on the other hand, asks 'Rabbi, is it I?'  Belief that Jesus is the Christ, the son of the Living God.  And belief that He is, no matter what He or others say, merely one of a busload of rabbis running about.  Then look what happens next.  

At the end of the day, there is a gulf beyond the size of the universe between believing Christianity is true and not believing it is actually true.  And when we are led by people who act like it is true, the results usually speak for themselves.  And they do for what should be obvious reasons.