Dear Friends,

The great Alex de Tocqueville, a French politician and statesman, wrote about the emerging nation of the United States in a now famous book he published in 1832, Du système pénitentiaire aux États-Unis et de son application en France. In his book he describes the change in social conditions taking place, including the disappearance of the aristocracy. Tocqueville studies the growth of democracy and studies a number of factors paving the way for it to become the main political reality of our country: allowing all men to enter the clergy, trading and commerce giving economic opportunity to people everywhere, and the abolition of the elite class’ hold on opportunity, land and fortune. He called it “an irresistible revolution.”

Tocqueville also penned a work called, L'Ancien régime et la revolution, where he writes, “Ever since the great revolution of the sixteenth century, when the spirit of free inquiry was evoked to decide which of the various Christian traditions were true and which false, there had constantly appeared, from time to time, inquisitive or daring minds which disputed or denied them all. The train of thought which in the time of Luther had expelled from the Catholic fold several millions of Catholics drove a few Christians every year out of the pale of Christianity itself: heresy was followed by unbelief.”

It is a compelling argument that the door that Luther and the others opened would open then still other doors that would lead to unbelief. Before Luther, the Church was seen throughout the West as the legitimate voice of God in the world. Even in times when her bishops were corrupt or in heresy, the Church’s place as the voice of God was never brought into question. One recalls St. Thomas More who when asked how he could die for the pope of the time stated that he was dying not for the man but for the office.

Once the voice of the Church was denied and Christ’s promise to Peter sent into oblivion (Mt 16: 18-20), the perceived right to unbelief was opened. Today, we see a mass confusion when it comes to Christian belief. Beyond the many shades of belief in Christ and what that means, we find a hard disconnect between faith in Christ and faith in the Church. The Church is seen as largely a structure to be used at the discretion of the believer in Christ – take her or leave her. For many today, the unmooring of faith to Church has created a blasé that has set them on the ocean of no belief.

Christian faith in the future will be centered on those religions that are tenacious in their insistence on the objective truths taught and revealed to us by Sacred Scripture. In an effort to fit in we sometimes dilute the radical edge of what we believe in. We believe in Jesus Christ who is inseparably united to the Church He founded.

“The Lord Jesus, the only Saviour, did not only establish a simple community of disciples, but constituted the Church as a salvific mystery: he himself is in the Church and the Church is in him (cf. Jn 15:1ff.; Gal 3:28; Eph 4:15-16; Acts 9:5)...Christ and the Church can neither be confused nor separated, and constitute a single “whole Christ”. And this is what will save us from a wrong path: belief in Christ and the Church, His voice in the world.

Fr. Al