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G.K. Chesterton was a renowned author and commentator in Great Britain in the early 20th century. A devout, and militant, Catholic layman and apologist, he often wrote in a vigorous and self-confident vein in defense of the Catholic Faith that is often lacking today. While it is true that his views of history and society were (and are) controversial ; in essential insights into human nature and faith he is a valuable and often entertaining writer.
In one of his books he made the observation that "if a man does not STAND for something; he'll FALL for anything." (Emphasis mine.)
Recent stories and trends have brought this comment to mind. These revolve around the old concept of "apostasy". Apostasy is the sin defined as formally and knowingly abandoning the Christian Faith to embrace another religion. It is different in that sense from what is often termed "losing one's faith". Apostasy is defection from the Faith to join another religion, sect, or denomination. Traditionally viewed as a very grave sin (if deliberately done and with sufficient knowledge and full consent of the will) apostasy was always considered as endangering one's soul. The person who commits this sin was called an "apostate". One rarely if ever today does one hear the word, and it would probably be considered as rather harsh, or uncharitable.
Here another literary quote comes to mind. In Robert Bolt's splendid play A Man For All Seasons based on the life of Saint Thomas More (drawn from original sources) there is a scene where More forbids his beloved daughter Margaret to marry a young man named "Roper". When she protests, he tells her that he forbids it because Roper is a "heretic" (at that time in his life "Master Roper" is infatuated with the new Lutheran theology.) She tells her father that heretic is " an ugly word!" More replies that indeed " It is an ugly word, and it is an ugly THING!"
To describe someone as an apostate today is an ugly word, but apostasy is an ugly thing.
One reads of a New York City politician who renounced his ancestral Catholicism to become a "high priest" in "a neo-paganism" that practices animal sacrifice and earth-worship. Why? The reason he evinced was that his father developed prostate cancer. Pardon me, but I don't get the connection; or perhaps pagans (neo or otherwise) don't get cancer?
Women ( and some men) abandon Christianity to practice "Wicca" and use that seemingly religious phrase "Blessed be!". But who is "blessed"? Surely not the God of Scripture and Catholic Faith.
Tom Cruise ( former seminarian) and John Travolta abandon their Catholic upbringing to become Scientologists; a mysterious cult that promises power and knowledge through pseudo-scientific means. Unlike modern day Catholicism, the "Church of Scientology" strongly discourages "mixed marriage" and Katie Holmes renounced her Catholicism to embrace her husband's faith.
Here we have apostasy from Catholicsim into what has been described as the "world's oldest religion": paganism. Paganism goes by many names and guises; but at bottom it has been well defined as "the organized attempt to manipulate the gods". This is an old instinct in man: to propitiate the "powers that be" in order to achieve temporal power, wealth, and success. It is as old as the Garden of Eden and is the first temptation: "Ye shall be as gods!"
Then there is another form of apostasy.
The recently elected coadjutor Bishop of the Episcopal Diocese of Long Island is an Italian-American Catholic from Brooklyn who was ordained a Catholic priest and then became an Episcopalian a year later (!)( taking his priesthood with him) because he wanted to marry, and minister in a church that ordained gays and women. He clearly had to have been planning this all along. His choice as next Episcopal Bishop was undiplomatic to say the least, and our own Bishop refrained from attending his ceremony of consecration.
Sarah Palin ( and her parents) and Glenn Beck are also ex-Catholics who became some form of evangelical Protestant in the first case; and a Mormon in the second.
Both have embraced religions that are home-grown on American soil, almost confirming the old anti-Catholic prejudice that Roman Catholicism is incompatible with "Americanism." Both of them have no interest at all it seems in their old religion and clearly found little or nothing in it that met their needs.
Numerous immigrants of Latin American descent come to this country and abandon in surprising numbers their (at least) historical and cultural Catholicism for new-founded Protestant congregations specifically designed to recruit them and take them away from their old Faith.
Various "Christian" movements and sects have as their mission the recruitment of Catholics.
Now here let me return to my earlier and (very traditional) list of conditions for sin: sufficient knowledge AND full consent of the will.
I mention some names and types of people in whose cases it might well be that the "Catholicism" that they knew, or thought they knew, was confused, not consciously held, or never really practiced. At a given moment, perhaps of crisis, an attractive religion comes along and the person grasps at a seeming lifeline. So, I am not condemning these people as inidividual souls (whose actual spiritual state is known to God alone.)
However, I sometimes ask myself how they could have "fallen" for such things: animal sacrifice, witchcraft, partial Christianities, bizarre theologies and cults of power and of heavenly beings and their home-grown prophets?
Whence this constant hunger for "Bible studies" while the weekly Liturgy of the Word (in which the Bible is expounded in the context of a lived Catholic Faith) and the Holy Eucharist are treated as if they did not exist ?
How many times have I been asked directly asked after Sunday or weekday Mass, "Do you have a Bible study?" My answer is along the lines of "Yes, and you were just at it."
How is it that one eager "Bible Christian" can unhinge a life-long Catholic with one or two carefully prepared "proof texts"?
For one thing, let me be so "old fashioned" as to say that Someone might well be happy to see this. The Devil is, as Jesus said ,"a liar from the beginning"and he can use a Bible text, a bad time in one's life, a half-baked Catholic faith to work his purposes even using unwitting Christians as agents. The deception of the sects that claim to be "Christian" and use "the Catholic Bible" and don't tell you their ultimate aim; or the "de-programming and re-programming" of the cults are a far cry from the easy going "RCIA" meetings held in our parishes.
And therein lies my last point.
Might it be that WE are not convinced of the truth of the Faith we offer to others?
Are we afraid to say calmly and charitably, yet clearly, that the Catholic Church is (here it comes, folks) the true Church of Christ regardless of the sins and weaknesses (real or imagined) of its clergy and faithful?
Has Catholic preaching and education become bland, vague, unconvincing and lacking in fire and conviction?
Are we afraid to "stand" for something that has edges, shape, and is true whether or not you, me, or the wotrld think so?
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