Both the Catholic Church and the United States of America are in interesting times; in large part, our attitudes and actions are making the times interesting. I say “interesting” as the famous fortune cookie puts it, instead of “bad” or any related word. St. Augustine did remind us that things are as they ever were.
The Collect for today’s Mass [the 14th Sunday in Ordinary Time; Ed.] tells of the “slavery to sin” from which the Incarnation and Paschal Mystery has rescued us. As we lament the times, we do well to affirm the completed sense of Redemption. It might help us to be more receptive to prophecy, whencesoever it comes and whatever it observes.
Fifty years ago, the prophet Glenn Frey declared this word of Jack Tempchin and Robert Arnold Strandlund: “So oftentimes it happens that we live our lives in chains / And we never even know we have the key.”
Unaware, or more accurately, “hard of face and obstinate of heart” (Ez 2:4-5), we are geared to reject what prophets have to say, which is not so much foretelling the future as now-telling how God sees things. Convinced this or that messenger is unworthy to speak, we remain “rebels” who yet know God has visited them.
Church and nation alike receive periodic invitations to humility. Recall the Boston Globe spotlighting both the rampant sexual abuse by Catholic clergy, and the complicity of bishops who persistently granted them access to children and vulnerable adults. I was ordained deacon 3 months after that series printed.
22 years thence, as each new victim’s blood cries out from the soil, each new abuse reinforces our willful blindness. We persist to offend as we profess being offended. Prophets within the Church now speak as loudly as those outside. Jesus, yet “amazed at [the] lack of faith” (Mk 6:6), performs few mighty deeds. Somehow, He strengthens the Church in her very weakness (cf. 2 Cor 12:10).