I confess I went to sleep last night hoping it wasn’t true that Cardinal George Pell died. I had hoped we would see another book out of him, among other things. The Australian will always be remembered for being falsely accused and imprisoned, perhaps less known for identifying and implementing economic reforms in the Vatican. I remember him best as an encourager in the Christian life. I last saw him a little over a year ago in New York. He gave a talk at St. Patrick’s Cathedral and implored compassion and courage in living and sharing the Christian faith in the current chaos of our culture:
One might paraphrase my first suggestion by stating that traditional Catholicism, and the Jewish traditions from which it drank, are heading in the right direction. The Catholic story, when centred squarely and courageously on Christ, demonstrates that the message is marketable and improves humanity. The mix works when we work with the Lord.
My second suggestion is that you, my listeners, strive to understand that secular modernity causes multiple forms of suffering that we can often ameliorate when we understand their true origins. We also need to remember that Christ was a healer of the blind, the disabled, the sick and the possessed. We need to bring His healing to others.
Throughout the talk, he quoted from a recent talk from Mary Eberstadt and continued:
Eberstadt is quite explicit that this truth has gone unsaid for too long. Secularism is an inferior culture, small of heart, which defines suffering down, so that victims are not acknowledged as victims but as justified collateral damage. Compare this to the heart of the Lord we see in the Gospels, in his response to the victims of sin and suffering. This is the heart that we must have.
The secularists are wreckers and they are busy at work. Chaos is the end result. Chaos is the main characteristic of the way of life the secularist wreckers are imposing upon us, not liberation. Not health or peace of mind or communities united beneath and beyond their differences, but a tribal, fretful void, anxious, divided and regularly frightened: now by COVID and the spectre of global warming. The forms of misery today are acute and various.
Is the widespread sexual dysfunction caused by pornography in Japan to become the norm in our society; yet another cross for our beleaguered youth? Language is used cleverly to define suffering down. Homosexuals are gays; when all the evidence shows they are often as miserable and sad as the rest of us. Prostitutes are sex workers sometimes ranked ahead of the churches in the COVID crisis as providing essential social services. Data about the transgender population is often whitewashed such as data about suicide rates, eating disorders, substance abuse and other forms of mental distress. Similar processes are at work among young people generally, especially those from broken and blended families where love and stability have been missing.
There is a strong correlation between mental distress and the decline of organized religion when social bonds are weakened. Damaged people do not thrive, but Christianity in particular deepens the sense of community and social belonging. Anxiety and depression are connected with disconnection and loneliness. Drugs, such as marijuana, are long-term depressants; drugs damage perceptions and self-understanding, but it is a reassurance even for fevered minds if they are aware that God is in charge, that God is good, and beyond this vale of tears, all will be well. The damage from drugs – think of the opioid crisis in the USA – now rivals the damage from alcohol.
Children in particular suffer in fractured families, but not just the children; so do the spouses or partners suffer too from nervous distress, hurt and the subsequent substance abuse from drugs and opioids. In America at least, and I suspect in Australia and the U.K. the no-religioners, the nones, are the most mentally afflicted. And we have the scourge of youth suicide, so terrible and so sad. So often problems in the home don’t stay in the home. We must encourage our teachers to continue their valiant work in our schools to bring help and healing to their student victims of the chaos. There are no substitutes for kindness and long-term support – which is the practical, day-to-day expression of real love.
I believe that today’s generation of young Christian intellectuals are presented with an unusual opportunity to speak the truth to the void, to give voice to the voiceless as Eberstadt challenged the social scientists to so act.
Change for the better will only come with two things: when many voices present the facts, figures, arguments, and evidence about the human causes and costs of the secularization push – The chaos should be named and shamed; while Christians continue to show that they will not abandon those who have been abandoned, offering them instead healing and friendship and the Good News of the one true God’s great love for us.
I pray for the repose of his soul. And I also pray that we continue to learn from him. He wrote three volumes of diaries during his time in jail. Throughout, he takes solace in the Liturgy of the Hours, the prayer of the Church. With the recent NFL exception, prayers are often seen by our secular culture as inaction. It’s a wellspring and largely untapped power.