A New Apostolate
What would we do, those living in the land of the free, if the figment of our collective imagination, our self-reliance, our autonomy — our liberty — was reduced to ashes?
Most Americans, myself included — myself first and foremost, rather — are not free. And I’m not referring to our form of government, critiquing our form of representative democracy: I’m referring to our way of life.
This nation has given me gifts, gifts for which I am greatly indebted: the ability to publicly worship my Lord, to have as many children as He will grant, to choose my occupation. I love my country, as the Church says I must, but I do not love the way of life that it fosters. I do not love it’s way of life because, despite our nation’s infatuation with freedom, it does not liberate, it enslaves.
Reach into your pocket, pull out one of the means by which you are enslaved. Another rests upon an altar shaped like a TV-stand in your family-room. You or your children may spend hours each day immersed in the artificial world composed of captivating images and dazzling sounds designed to detain your attention.
We’ve been made effeminate and lazy. Our men are boys, and our boys are babies.
Pope Leo XIII identified three evils at the root of this degradation of society in his encyclical Laetitiae Sanctae: “first, the distaste for a simple and labourious life; secondly, repugnance to suffering of any kind; thirdly, the forgetfulness of the future life.”
He goes on to describe the effects of this descent, saying,
“The greater number are thus robbed of that peace and freedom of mind which remains the reward of those who do what is right undismayed by the perils or troubles to be met with in doing so. Rather do they dream of a chimeric civilization in which all that is unpleasant shall be removed, and all that is pleasant shall be supplied. By this passionate and unbridled desire of living a life of pleasure, the minds of men are weakened, and if they do not entirely succumb, they become demoralized and miserably cower and sink under the hardships of the battle of life.”
Cardinal Sarah calls these effects “the spirit of surrender,” and says,
The spirit of surrender is a sickness of the will among the wealthy peoples. There is a permanent state of soul in those who have abandoned themselves to the pursuit of prosperity at any price, those for whom material well-being has become the purpose of their life on earth. These men — and there are many of them in the world today — have chosen passivity and retreat so as to prolong their everyday pleasure a little, so as to elude tomorrow’s difficulty.The price of cowardice is always evil.We will win the victory only if we have the courage to make sacrifices.”
Our culture is not Catholic, not even Christian. But I’m not hinting at the obvious things: abortion, the destruction of marriage and the family.
This is The Angelus, a painting by the French artist Jean-François Millet. It presents a glimpse into the life of a small Catholic family, pausing their work as the Church bells ring. As the mother and father bow their heads to pray the Angelus, in the carriage beside them, lies their baby.
How simple, how beautiful, how desirable. How conducive to a Catholic life. Contrast The Angelus with the angelus of modern man: perhaps, a man-child and his girlfriend, behind their laptops, eyes glued to the screen, in their $3500/month apartment in the city. Maybe, they pause their work to hear the breaking news that flashes across the TV. There is no child in this painting.
But what am I to do? I am a slave, and I’ve been broken. All I know is the life I live. Freedom means death. The thought of a different life, an integrated, Catholic life, where my daily bread is earned “in the sweat of the brow” is just a dream. The enemy doesn’t need to do anything; I’m too much of a coward to fight for my freedom.
Am I right to despair? In After Virtue, Alasdair MacIntyre says,
“What matters at this state is the construction of local forms of community within which civility and the intellectual and moral life can be sustained through the new dark ages which are already upon us. And if the tradition of the virtues was able to survive the horrors of the last dark ages, we are not entirely without grounds for hope. This time however the barbarians are not waiting beyond the frontiers; they have already been governing us for quite some time. And it is our lack of consciousness of this that constitutes part of our predicament. We are waiting not for a Godot, but for another — doubtless very different — St. Benedict.”
Is MacIntyre wrong? Do we have grounds for hope? Might it be time for a Catholic exodus, away from the cities to the land?
I’m naive, and I have not lived long enough for my opinion to carry any weight. But I think it is.
I think it is time for a new apostolate, an apostolate to facilitate this exodus.
I do not know how to build a house or till the land and cultivate crops, but what if a group of men existed to teach me? And what if this group of men could offer my children an education — a true Catholic education? And offer the Sacrifice of the Mass for my family to attend? Truly, this could be the center of a “community within which civility and the intellectual and moral life can be sustained,” as MacIntyre described.
A community where children have imaginations, are awe-inspired by the stars, are captivated by the words of the poet. Where young girls needn’t be concerned with which Snapchat filter makes their skin look brightest, who are taught what it means to be beautiful by their mothers in gazing at our Blessed Mother. Where boys are taught what it means to be men, not through rap music, but by their fathers in gazing at our Spiritual Father, the Pillar of Families and Model of Workmen, Saint Joseph.
We need a group, maybe a new order, led by priests but including laymen and their families, to break the bonds of slavery holding men back in our civilization. We need a group of competent men who love Jesus to start something new.
We need an order of priests who will start Catholic communities. We’ve witnessed the death of Christian culture. It’s time to begin rebuilding civilization, and we need an Apostolate dedicated to this mission.
