The Great Apostasy
When the United States bishops were confronted with a moral and financial crisis caused by the negligence with which the abuse of children was handled by the church in this country, an emergency meeting was quickly held in Dallas Texas in order to address this problem in a serious way. It was not simply the financial crisis that was looming already and many diocese that spurred the bishops to action, but their own credibility and the credibility of the Catholic Church. Children had been gravely harmed, psychologically and spiritually, and the bishops were determined to do all that they could to help heal the wounds already caused, and prevent even the appearance of church complicity in such reprehensible crimes in the future.
Now we have a poll which shows that an even greater crisis is upon the church. John Zogby, in conjunction with Le Moyne College in Syracuse, N.Y., has published the results of a recent poll of Catholics that has some extremely troubling conclusions and implications. Zogby’s poll reveals that most American Catholics today have a greater identification with their nationality than with their religion, and this shows up when questions are asked about their voting patterns. The poll reveals that the religion of Catholics plays little or no role in the way they vote, even on matters related in one way or another to religion. It is especially among young Catholics that religion plays an increasingly smaller part in how they think of themselves, but fully Sixty-three percent of all the Catholics polled said they believe that Catholicism is only one of many faiths that provides a path to God.
However, this growing religious indifferentism, now embraced by almost two thirds of all Catholics in this country, is only the beginning of the Church’s faith problems in the United States. The poll goes on to reveal that when it comes to doctrinal belief the situation among the young adult Catholic population, 18-29 years old, those who have supposedly been catechized “better that any previous generation” according to some of the Church’s educational experts, in fact do not believe in the foundational truth of the Christian religion, the bodily resurrection of Jesus Christ. St. Paul says “if Christ has not been raised, your faith is vain,” and the poll reports that whereas 88% of the Catholics 65 and older believed this foundational doctrine of Christianity, only 29% of Catholics in the 18-29 age group believe that Christ truly rose bodily from the dead. Thus it would seem that the catechesis programs, and the theologians who are ultimately behind these new programs have somehow managed to convince 71 % of young Catholics that, at the most, Jesus somehow lives on, but not in any bodily sense.
St. Paul was not talking about some Platonic resurrection or some continuing existence of Jesus in our memories or moral and religious ideals; nor were the Fathers and Doctors of the Church, nor is this the teaching of the Church from the beginning to our day. The Church believes that Jesus rose from the dead in a true body now existing in a glorified state. On the other hand, young adult Catholics today and no longer believe in this doctrine, which does not simply mean they have a problem in their Catholic identity, but in the Christian faith. When judged from the perspective of faith, that they are not only not Catholic, because of their religious and difference, but they are in fact not in any meaningful sense Christian, since they do not not believe the foundational truth of the Christian religion, that is, that Jesus Christ is God in the flesh, that God has truly come into human history in the flesh, and that as a result of the resurrection God remains in human flesh for all eternity.
By any objective measure of religious faith, this unbelief of young, adult Catholics constitutes a much, much greater crisis for the future of the Church in this country than the problem that was been addressed in Dallas by the American bishops. Moreover, the evidence that this crisis exists is not by any means of recent vintage. A poll conducted many years ago by Andrew Greeley revealed that Catholics and the United States had in great numbers already lost their faith. That poll revealed that only 30% of Catholics polled professed to believe in the real, bodily presence of Christ in the Holy Eucharist.
Here we are dealing with a central doctrine of the Catholic faith, and already 70% of Catholics polled were having problems believing an incarnational, non-Platonized, doctrine of the Eucharist. And yet, that was no sense of urgency, no sense that the Catholic Church was in a crisis of faith, and no effort to call an emergency meeting to deal as seriously with this problem as with the moral and financial crisis caused by the negligence with which church leaders dealt with a problem of child abuse in the past.
Moreover, even in the light of the Americanist controversy of the 19th-century, it seems that church leaders have been caught by surprise that what may not have been true and the 19th-century, that American Catholics were more American than Catholic, is now a fact in our own time. And yet this development is itself not of such a recent vintage. A Catholic professor of history at a Catholic women's college in the 1950s, conducted an informal poll in his classes over several years among the women graduating from that Catholic institution. The poll consisted of one question: "would you say you consider yourself to be a Catholic who happens to be an American, or rather an American who happens to be a Catholic?"
The response to these polls over the years was nearly unanimous. After four years of Catholic higher education, and, for most of these women, 12 years of Catholic education at the elementary and secondary level, the virtually unanimous response was that they considered themselves to be Americans who just happen to be Catholic. The conclusion of the professor, who was an immigrant from a European country, was that the American Church was already facing a crisis, and he repeated this in many articles and speeches over the years. Evidently, almost no one was listening.
The situation of the church today is much worse, if the Zogby poll is accurate, and the bishops will hopefully take notice. The unbelief of more than two thirds of the future Church is a crisis unparalleled in the history of the Catholic Church in America. It is a far worse crisis that 70% of young adult Catholics do not believe in the resurrection, and 70% of all Catholics do not believe in the real presence, than the abuse of children by a minuscule number of priests, as evil as that abuse really is.
There is even some evidence that a growing number of bishops are aware of this crisis, as was seen at the last bishops meeting where catachesis was discussed. There is a growing awareness that catachetical texts need to be improved, that more doctrinal substances is required in these texts. These are hopeful signs. But in comparison to the depth of the crisis revealed in this recent poll, this is simply a small beginning, and the bishops really need to convene another crisis intervention like the one in Dallas.
The fact is of the causes of this problem are not simply the lack of adequate textbooks, and a lack of well-prepared catechists, and bad or inadequate theology theology which is affecting both these areas. These all make their contribution, but the causes extend beyond the Church itself. That is why the polling data regarding the growing Americanism of American Catholics is critically important, for this phenomenon is intimately connected with the poll data on the loss of doctrinal faith. And this fact is important not strictly speaking because there is a growing Americanism, but because this growing Americanism is today simultaneously a growing secularism which is hostile to religion and faith. Because this secularism is transmitted primarily through education, entertainment, and pop culture, it is not surprising that it is young Catholics, who are drawn into this environment with their peers, are the ones experiencing a massive loss of faith.
In other words, the prevailing secularism in American society and culture is the breeding ground for the mass apostasy which is occurring among young Catholics. Unfortunately, few Catholics in the older generation seem to understand the character of this new "secularity," and they tend to think of this secularism as neutral in its relationship to religion. They are still thinking in terms which prevailed, at least in the Church's documents, in the middle of the last century, when secularity and secularism simply referred to a proper distinction between the sacred and the profane. But today the secularism which is dominated our society is anything but neutral toward religion. At least on this one point, Islamic religious leaders seem at times to have a better grasp of the modern world that many Catholics.
But again, none of this is altogether new. Cardinal Newman, in his Tracts for the Times, written while he was still Protestant, foresaw this crisis of mass apostasy which we are now experiencing. In the first of three sermons on the Antichrist, Newman speaks of the conditions of the modern world which tend to foster apostasy from religion. His thesis is that an apostasy always is a prelude to some forerunner of the Antichrist. One example he gives is the way Arianism prepare the ground for Julian the apostate, one of the forerunners of the final Antichrist who will appear prior to Christ's second coming. There is no doubt that the liberal Protestantism which took hold on the European continent during Newman's age was seen by him as an apostasy, and we who lived in the 20th century witnessed a number of forerunners of the Antichrist, Hitler, Stalin, Mao, etc.
But Newman seems to have foreseen an even greater apostasy for the modern world, the grounds for which were being laid by the intellectual trends taking hold in the whole of Western culture during the 19th-century. To catch his thought, the following passage, which could've been written today, has to be read:
For is there not at this very time a special effort made almost all over the world, that is, every here and there, more or less, in sight or out of sight, in this or that place, but most visibly or formatively in its most civilized and powerful parts, an effort to do without religion? Is there not an opinion avowed and growing, that a nation has nothing to do with religion; that it is merely a matter for each man's own conscience, -- which is all one with saying that we may let the truth fall from the earth without trying to continue it? … is there not a feverish and ever busy endeavor to get rid of the necessity of religion in public transactions? for example … an attempt to educate without religion .. an attempt to make expedience, and not truth the end and the rule of measure of state and the enactments of law? …
Surely, there is at this day a Confederacy of evil, marshalling its hosts from all parts of the world, organizing itself, taking its measures, enclosing the Church of Christ asn a net, and preparing the way for a general apostasy from it. Whether this very apostasy is to give birth to Antichrist, or whether he is still to be delayed, we cannot know; but at any rate this apostasy, and all its tokens, and instruments, are of the Evil One and savor of death.
Of course, given Newman's epic struggle against liberal Protestantism, one could easily conclude that the apostasy he was anticipating was realized with modernism, and when he spoke of the savor of death, the death camps of the 20th century quickly come to mind.
When Newman speaks of this general apostasy giving rise possibly to the Antichrist, even the crisis of modernism and evils of the 20th century may not be enough to justify that kind of conclusion. In point of fact, the effect of modernism on the Catholic Church, in terms of the loss of faith and really does not compare with the loss of faith that has occurred after the two great wars of the 20th century. There seems to be both a qualitative and quantitative difference between the apostasy resulting from liberal Protestantism and Catholic modernism on the one hand, and the great apostasy which has occurred since the end of the second world war in Europe, and since the second Vatican Council in the United States.
The difference seems to be that liberal Protestantism and Catholic modernism were phenomena limited in their impact, for the most part, to rather narrow intellectual circles, those involved in higher education, and cultural eletes. Whereas today, the influence of secularism, religious indifferentism, materialism is spread through popular culture and at all levels of education, and their impact has been devastating on the religious faith of evil, and especially the young.
Likewise, the forerunner of the Antichrist today, assuming it is still forerunner, which is both generating and generated by this general apostasy, is not easily identified with any individual like Hitler or Julia the apostolate, but is more a spirit of the times, which has become the spirit of Antichrist. Individual historical figures may be shadows or forbodings of the final individual who will be the Antichrist. But there is also in the course of history situations where the "Spirit of the Times" is a foreboding and in anticipation of the pirit that will drive that final antichrist. Newman speaks of this spirt, a principle of evil at work in rhe world, in that same sermon:
Doubtless this malignant principle has been at work since, from time to time, though kept under [control] by him that "withholdeth." Nay, for what we know, at this very time there is a fierce struggle, the Spirit of Antichrist attempting to rise, and the political power in those countries which are prophetically Roman, firm and vigorous in in repressing it. …certainly there is at this very time, as in the days of our fathers, a fierce and lawless principle everywhere at work, -- a spirit of rebellion against God and man, which the powers of government in each country can barely keep under with their greatest efforts.
There can be no question what spirit Newman is speaking about here as the Spirit of Antichrist, for in the end, the Spirit which is a malignant principle of evil, and which manipulates Spirit of the Times in certain eras, and the forerunners of the Antichrist and the Antichrist himself, is the evil one himself, the prince of darkness. What is operating in the contemporary world is this spirit of the Antichrist, not an individual is such, but a principle of rebellion against God and man. What has been holding back the full onslaught of this evil principle is, ironically, the power of government on the one hand, using its repressive powers against its anarchy, and the power of the Church, using its preaching and sacramental graces.
But what has been happening in the latter part of the 20th century at and accelerated rate is the weakening of both of these powers. Governments are weakened by their collaboration with secularism and materialism and their rejection of any alliance whatsoever with religion. Governments are inevitably weakened in their struggle against anarchy and rebellion when they reject the moral law itself as the basis and ground of civil law. The Church, on the other hand, has been weakened by its own internal struggle against the influence of a skeptical liberalism which undermines faith, by a fearful and reactionary traditionalism which paralyzes by attempting to freeze the Church in a particular cultural and historical mold, and by its own internal spirit of rebellion which cuts across these two camps. The weakening of the powers holding back the Spirit of the Antichrist has had a devastating effect on both the Church and the state.
Like Newman, we should be extremely cautious when it comes to identifying the present apostasy as the one that will immediately prepare the way for the Antichrist in person. Nevertheless, it is about time for us honestly to recognize the face of this principle of evil in the present crisis of the Church, and to recognize the depth of this crisis, and the complexity involved in the roots of this massive apostasy from the Christian faith. True, the apostasy has certain roots within the Church itself, but even more so in the intellectual and cultural movements that dominate our world, that have infiltrated its intellectual and cultural institutions. There is no easy fix available.
Cardinal Ratzinger, writing back in 1971, echoed the thought of Newman, so long ago now, when had this to say. "Thus it seems certain to me that very hard times await the Church. Her own crisis has as yet hardly begun." His analysis, here and elsewhere in his writings, concerning the roots of this terrible crisis are not so very different from that of Newman. But Ratzinger goes on to say that he now sees the Church being purified, precisely in order to confront this crisis, "but after the purification of these uprootings, a great strength will emanate from a spiritualized and simplified Church." Ratzinger is not naive, and he knows that "the way will be long and wearisome … " But he also knows the Church is capable of regeneration, and can present itself to any generation, when thus purified and renewed interiorly, as something entirely new. He writes, "Today, too, the future of the Church can and will depend only on the strength of those who have deep roots and live from the pure fullness of their faith." There is much to be done, to be sure, but unless it proceeds from this fullness of faith, it will not be able to overcome the apostasy that now threatens to engulf us.