For the Time Being

The Catholic Thing

By Robert Royal
So, the National Conventions are over. Labor Day is only a week away, after which there will be no rest for the wicked until Election Day. (And beyond.) The final session - miserere, Domine - of the Synod on Synodality opens exactly one month after our celebration of labor, though ten "study groups" will grind on for months after, with (likely) predictable results. And here we all are, like old Noah, still dry in the post-dog-days of August, but expecting the deluge.
What, then, is someone who loves America and the Church - and is trying to live a Catholic life within the current toil and trouble of both - to do?
Many people feel the temptation to abandon ship. And it's entirely understandable when, in several crucial respects, you don't recognize your country - sometimes even your Church - anymore. But faithfulness and perseverance - two virtues that aren't as urgent in "ordinary" times (i.e., when things are going tolerably well) - were made for intolerable times like these. Indeed, times like these help us to develop those extraordinary virtues. Which is what we should be doing just now.
St. Paul says:
we have peace with God through our Lord Jesus Christ, through whom we also have obtained our introduction by faith into this grace in which we stand; and we celebrate in hope of the glory of God. And not only this, but we also celebrate in our tribulations, knowing that tribulation brings about perseverance; and perseverance, proven character; and proven character, hope; and hope does not disappoint, because the love of God has been poured out within our hearts through the Holy Spirit. (Romans 5, emphasis added)
And just how do we do all that? First of all, by not denying or downplaying present perils - by looking frankly at how radically disordered things have become and recognizing that no one election, or "the next pope," is going to provide a short-term solution. Our situation is like the one described by the ancient Roman historian Livy: we're so unsettled that we can stand neither the disease nor the cure.
Still, we have to find a way to live through the present until better angels are at hand. St. Thomas More once said: "The times are never so bad but that a good man can live in them," wisdom to live by just now.
We must vote and seek to reform the public order with all the energy and clarity we can muster, of course. And keep up a regular prayer and sacramental life. But also not allow ourselves to be too disoriented by much that is going on that we can see, but cannot fix.
W.H. Auden, a Christian grappling with how to live in the wake of the devastation of World War II, captured the feeling of many people who actually wanted to do something, even make great sacrifices, to confront widespread disorders:
Can great Hercules keep his
Extraordinary promise
To reinvigorate the Empire?
Utterly lost, he cannot
Even locate his task but
Stands in some decaying orchard
Or the irregular shadow
Of a ruined temple …
("For the Time Being')
Hercules was a pagan hero. A Christian knows that there's a time for reinvigorating and a time when the task is virtuously enduring - until God sorts things out, when we've gotten ourselves to the point where we're helpless.
Yet we also need to try understanding our moment. At least in America, we may have grown too confident in the belief that our system is the natural order of things and can be quickly recovered. Not so. It took great good fortune, wise founders, and happy circumstance to make it as remarkable as it has been. But no political order is forever.
In City of God, St. Augustine demonstrated why even ancient Rome was not eternal. And that that's a good thing because it helps keep us from believing, like the builders of the Tower of Babel, that we can create some worldly order sufficient to itself that can even reach Heaven. Augustine wrote of that after Rome had been invaded, to the great astonishment of his contemporaries, for the first time in 800 years.
An urgen...