Spiritual Starvation

Openly atheist and clearly unchallenged: David Cameron's girlfriend.

I would suggest you skip the first part of this – still very interesting – blog post from Monsignor Pope (the part with the “oh how guilty I feel that I struggle with my weight whilst other don’t have enough to eat”) and jump directly to the serious part: the comparison between the stages leading to the physical starvation and the correspondent symptoms of the spiritual starvation in the West.

The comparison is useful and certainly a tool for reflection, though I dare to say I am far less pessimistic than Monsignore.

Particularly concerning Europe, I think we are far away from being doomed, though we are certainly in a worse shape than the United States.

Interestingly, Monsignor Pope mentions the Pope saying that the lights are going out in Europe, without telling us what this very same Pope is doing to avoid this happening. I mean, not by talking – he is, undoubtedly, good at that – but by acting. Can’t see much of that I admit; at least, by far not enough to start that reversal of fortune Catholicism in Europe needs.

And in fact, it seems to me that the initial stages described by Monsignor Pope (weakness and confusion) beautifully apply to the Vatican. Weakness, because no one seems able or willingly to declare war to the rampant secularism (they most certainly don’t; they deplore it, which is vastly different) and to start to uproot the evil among the bishops; and confusion, because the present Church  hierarchy stills wants to be everything to everyone: recover Tradition, and accept the Neocathecumenal masses; enact Summorum Pontificum,  and refuse to enforce it; desire a reconciliation with the SSPX, and insist in keeping the tenets of Conciliar thinking; promote orthodoxy, and host Assisi gatherings.

The lack of clarity of the European Christianity is first and foremost the result of the lack of a clear guidance from the European Church. The spiritual starvation so well described by Monsignor Pope applies to the European Church hierarchy in exactly the same way; the apathy and lethargy are those we can see every day in front of rampant heresy among bishops and priests. 

It is good to notice and criticise the dangerous secular drift of the Western world. But it is, in my eyes, dangerous not to see that this does not come from irresistible forces expanding notwithstanding the Church’s resistance, but from very resistible forces which have expanded because the Church has made no resistance. 

It is, of course, not too late. By far not. But the awakening must start from the place where it is most important that right thinking – and, far more importantly, acting – sets in: Rome.

Mundabor