The Sectarian Temptation

Photo by Jorge Zapata on Unsplash

I often get the impression that segments of the media, government, twitterati, and such ilk would love nothing more than for people of faith, especially Christians, to retreat into some cave and stay there until their days are ended.

And truth be told, there are days when I feel like obliging them.

I feel like leaving the cannabis-flavored-tofu eating progressives to their own chaos and insanities, let them have their revolution, where they will inevitably turn on each other and cannibalize each other like starving rats adrift on a raft. Because, as the saying goes, “All revolutions eat their own children.” I’ll return later when civilization needs to be rebuilt on something more enduring than hash and hashtags.

It reminds of a speech by the “Young Pope” in the so-named HBO series. The first season isn’t too bad, provocative, yet thoughtful at points. The show admixes real deep spiritual, ethical, and ecclesiastical issues, I liked it by the end. But be warned, the second season is awful, I couldn’t get into it, totally anti-Catholic porn, and needless sexual content.

But there was one speech that the Young Pope (aka Pope Pius XIII, aka Jude Law) gave in the Sistine Chapel to the Cardinals that continues to give me cause for reflection about the role of the church in a post-Christian world.

Here are the words the Pope says:

Brother cardinals, from this day forward, we’re not in, no matter who’s knocking on our door.

We’re in, but only for God. From this day forward, everything that was wide open is gonna be closed.

Evangelization. We’ve already done it.

Ecumenicalism. Been there, done that.

Tolerance doesn’t live here anymore. It’s been evicted. It vacated the house for the new tenant, who has diametrically opposite tastes in decorating.

We’ve been reaching out to others for years now. It’s time to stop! We are not going anywhere. We are here. Because, what are we? We are cement. And cement doesn’t move. We are cement without windows. So, we don’t look to the outside world. “Only the Church possesses the charisma of truth”, said St. Ignatius of Antioch. And he was right.

We have no reason to look out. Instead, look over there. What do you see? That’s the door. The only way in. Small and extremely uncomfortable. And anyone who wants to know us has to find out how to get through that door.   

Brother cardinals, we need to go back to being prohibited, inaccessible and mysterious. That’s the only way we can once again become desirable. That is the only way great love stories are born. And I don’t want any more part-time believers. I want great love stories. I want fanatics for God. Because fanaticism is love. Everything else is strictly a surrogate, and it stays outside the church. 

With the attitudes of the last Papacy, the church won for itself great expressions of fondness from the masses. It became popular. Isn’t that wonderful, you might be thinking! We received plenty of esteem and lots of friendship. I have no idea what to do with the friendship of the whole wide world. What I want is absolute love and total devotion to God.  

Could that mean a Church only for the few? That’s a hypothesis, and a hypothesis isn’t the same as reality. But even this hypothesis isn’t so scandalous. I say: better to have a few that are reliable than to have a great many that are distractible and indifferent. The public squares have been jam-packed, but the hearts have been emptied of God. You can’t measure love with numbers, you can only measure it in terms of intensity. In terms of blind loyalty to the imperative. Fix that word firmly in your souls: Imperative.  

From this day forth, that’s what the Pope wants, that’s what the Church wants, that’s what God wants. And so the liturgy will no longer be a social engagement, it will become hard work. And sin will no longer be forgiven at will. I don’t expect any applause from you. There will be no expressions of thanks in this chapel. None from me and none from you. Courtesy and good manners are not the business of men of God.  

What I do expect is that you will do what I have told you to do. There is nothing outside your obedience to Pius XIII. Nothing except Hell. A Hell you may know nothing about but I do. Because I’ve built it, right behind that door: Hell. These past few days, I’ve had to build Hell for you, that’s why I’ve come to you belatedly. I know you will obey because you’ve already figured out that this pope isn’t afraid to lose the faithful if they’re been even slightly unfaithful, and that means this Pope does not negotiate. On anything or with anyone.

And this Pope cannot be blackmailed! From this day forth, the word “compromise”, has been banished from the vocabulary. I’ve just deleted it. When Jesus willingly mounted the cross, he was not making compromises. And neither am I. Amen.

The script writer Paolo Sorrentino has captured one of the temptations of the church in every age, to be not just mystical and monastic, but to be separate from the world, to withdraw from the world and seek the cultivation of fidelity and purity in peace without other people around. Not a church for the world, but a church away from the world. A church that is, in every respect, contra mundum, against the world.

But against the Young Pope and the sectarian temptation, we must consider Augustine’s City of God.

Even the heavenly city, therefore, while in its state of pilgrimage, avails itself of the peace of earth, and, so far as it can without injuring faith and godliness, desires and maintains a common agreement among men regarding the acquisition of the necessaries of life, and makes this earthly peace bear upon the peace of heaven; for this alone can be truly called and esteemed the peace of the reasonable creatures, consisting as it does in the perfectly ordered and harmonious enjoyment of God and of one another in God. When we shall have reached that peace, this mortal life shall give place to one that is eternal, and our body shall be no more this animal body which by its corruption weighs down the soul, but a spiritual body feeling no want, and in all its members subjected to the will. In its pilgrim state the heavenly city possesses this peace by faith; and by this faith it lives righteously when it refers to the attainment of that peace every good action towards God and man; for the life of the city is a social life. (Civ. D. 19.17).

For Augustine there is a divide between the heavenly city and the earthly city, a moral divide, a divide over vice and virtue, a different destiny for each city too. But for Augustine what separates the earthly city from the heavenly city is not space, but grace. Heavenly citizens are on a pilgrimage witin the earthly city, their purpose is true worship rather than idolatry, to sow peace in fields of violence and to imagine a hope without end.

As pilgrims in the city of God, we still have to live, walk, and work among the earthly city, because without us, the earthly city will perish under the pressures of its own chaos, cruelty, and convulsions.

But what about you, who do you side with, Augustine or the Young Pope!