In Pursuit of Christ

By Mary Beth Bonacci
HERALD Columnist
(From the issue of 6/20/02)

More themes in my life. It actually started several months ago. I found a quote from John Paul II that really touched me. I copied it down, intending to use it as a column at some point. Then, of course, I lost it.

In the mean time, I moved. Well, technically, I’m still moving. I’m in the new place, but just barely. I spend my days unpacking boxes. (How did I manage to acquire so much junk?) Saturday night, exhausted, I plopped down on the sofa to watch a rerun of NBC’s mini-series "The Sixties."

I was intrigued. The show portrayed a Catholic family struggling through America’s most tumultuous decade. The parents were loving and supportive. The children went to Catholic schools. The family attended Mass regularly. And yet, they lost their way. The daughter got pregnant, drifted through a commune and found work as a stripper. The son, who began the decade as a young, idealistic civil rights worker, became a radical anti-war activist. (I went to bed before I found out just how far off-track he went.) Their poor, bewildered father just ranted and raved a lot.

Granted, this was fiction. But I don’t think it was too far from the reality of many Catholic families in the 60s.

How, I wondered that night, did all of this happen? In one decade, our teens went from Mass-attending, rosary-reciting, Baltimore Catechism-memorizing Catholics to promiscuous, drugged-out hippies. Where did their faith go? How could it have been lost so quickly?

The next day I was (once again) digging through boxes. And guess what I found? The pope’s quote I had copied months before.

Here’s the quote:

"Religion itself, without the experience of wondrous discovery of the Son of God and communion with Him . . . becomes a mere set of principles which are increasingly difficult to understand and rules which are increasingly hard to accept."

The quote struck me on an individual level, of course. It’s so much easier for me to be moral — to do the right thing — when I’m praying regularly, when I’m "connected" to Christ and experiencing His presence in my life. I want to please Christ because I love Him. Sin becomes distasteful — an offense against Someone at the center of my life. He’s acting within me. I’m a New Creation in Him. But if I get lazy and start to slack off . . . well, you know how that goes.

It also struck me on a social level. In the 1950s, we had what looked like an active and vibrant Catholic faith life. Mass attendance was high. Youth movements were burgeoning. Most Catholics could recite the definition of a sacrament ("an outward sign, instituted by Christ, to give grace") verbatim from the Baltimore Catechism. Ten years later we had dissent, social upheaval and a massive decline in the practice of the faith. We also had Vatican Council II. Many bewildered Catholics — in a truly post hoc ergo propter hoc moment — place the blame on the Council. "We didn’t have all this trouble before," they reasoned. "If we hadn’t had the Council, we still wouldn’t have it."

Perhaps a little hasty.

Sure, the faith looked vibrant in the ‘50s. But was it really? Was it based on "the experience of wondrous discovery of the Son of God and communion with Him"? Or was it more about rote practice and rule-following?

Please note: I don’t mean to offend any of you who lived a vibrant, Christ-centered Faith in the 1950s. I do believe you existed back then. But I’m not sure you were in the majority. It seems to me, as it apparently seemed to Pope John XIII, that beneath all of the hustle and bustle of Catholic activity, there was not a sufficient depth of true faith to survive the coming onslaught of social pressure. So he called the Council, to re-invigorate the Church. Unfortunately, the social pressures had a head start, intensifying several years before the Council even started.

And so the practice of the Faith, which had in many ways become "a mere set of principles which are increasingly difficult to understand and rules which are increasingly difficult to follow," fell by the wayside. Young Catholic women, presented with the Pill, no longer saw fear of pregnancy as an obstacle to sexual promiscuity. Young men, angry about the war, no longer felt constrained by conventional morality in venting that anger. (And most of them, for some strange reason, no longer felt constrained by the need to shower or shave.) Rote practice of the external functions of the Catholic Faith didn’t provide the knowledge, the strength or the grace necessary to withstand the onslaught.

The moral? It isn’t enough just to show up at Mass on Sunday. It isn’t enough just to "follow the rules." Of course, we absolutely need to do these things. But we need to do them in a context — the context of an ever-deepening relationship with Christ, and love for him. We need to pursue Him, even as He pursues us. We need to study Him and pray to Him constantly. And we need to teach our children to do the same. It’s Christ, and our relationship with Him, that gives meaning to the Mass and the rules — and our Faith.

He is a truly wondrous discovery. Don’t miss Him.

Bonacci is a frequent lecturer on chastity.

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