We’re very good at the essentially negative project of tracing our social woes to false philosophies of self-interest and personal autonomy. But merely freeing ourselves from these, if that were possible on its own, from Chesterton’s point of view, would be gravely insufficient, since so far we would lack the primordial loyalty which we need in order to be good.
The dearth of sound teaching and the trivialization of worship at St. Typical’s will not ready anyone for the brutality of red martyrdom or for the long, slow, disciplined agony of white martyrdom. Grace builds on nature. The bodies, minds, and hearts of the Typicalians are, humanly speaking, unprepared to receive the graces necessary for any form of costly fidelity—whether the cost of fidelity is paid all at once in blood or paid over decades of hidden yet heroic daily duty. Fr. Cheerful has made clear that he will not offer the necessary preparation; the Typicalians have made clear that they will not receive it.
The critical point is that the leftist attack on the Church isn’t from the outside. It is waged daily in nearly every church and Catholic school by women in the pews and in the school pick-up line, however unwittingly. The Marxist ideal of women prioritizing career over family has won. Friedan and Sanger have won. Women have come to truly believe that living their best life means using birth control and abortion to make way for career opportunities.
The ribald – and often insightful – 1960s comedian Lenny Bruce once quipped: “Everybody knows which church you’re talking about when you talk about The Church.” The Catholic Church reveals God, and God alone is our Judge. But the Church, as the Mystical Body of Christ, is The Bogeyman for many people.
Catholics love to talk about virtue and “flourishing.” But holiness is different and can sometimes demand or accompany the crushing of what might seem to be the way of “flourishing.” Jesus did not tell us to take up the Cross and flourish. To be crucified is not to flourish. Where holiness is forgotten family life must be bourgeois at best.