Do Not Be Conformed to the World…or to Church Leaders

The word of the day for Catholics is “unity.” For the sake of it, entire congregations are ghettoized (TLM), bishops exiled (Strickland), faculties gutted (Sacred Heart), and dioceses fractured (Charlotte). Strange to think that the peculiar synodality project is more or less based on giving every wayward lifestyle and viewpoint a podium but the faithful who have dedicated their lives and relationships to Christ are pressed into passive, conforming ranks. 

One of the many things the heavy hands on the tiller of the Church don’t realize is that unity cannot be forced. In the short term, they may be able to line people up like identical service robots, but it only fuels an equal and opposite reaction farther down the road. It’s Newtonian psychology. 

Conformity in an evil age asks us to deny common sense, which is our use of reason. For unity’s sake, we’re told to believe that the Mass attended by almost every saint we’ve ever loved is now something pernicious. The “needle in every arm” campaign asked us to ignore the fact that a novel technology had no long-term safety testing. 1984’s Winston Smith had to swallow the non-sense that freedom is slavery and ignorance strength. 

As long as society and the Gospel are in harmony about standards of moral behavior, it’s safe to be a conformist. The vast majority of humans are; rebels have always been anomalous. But when a society is Godless, pornographic, and corrupt, conformity can kill body and soul. 

Genuine unity is spontaneous, based on shared belief and experience. It springs from joy and the “click” of recognition when we hear the truth. St. John Paul wrote: “The unity willed by God can be attained only by the adherence of all to the content of revealed faith in its entirety.” So, if unity is really the goal, the road to get there is the whole deposit of faith and not a conniption of administrative flaps.

And yet, many bishops want to take the shortcut of uniformity, executed through cancellations, firings, and fiddly rules about our devotional gestures at Mass. Uniformity is like a knockoff Patek Philippe wristwatch; it looks swanky, but it stops telling time shortly after the street vendor packs up his case and makes a run for it. 

All these firings and restrictions will never get us to true unity. The greatest pools of genuine unity are forming around those who are unjustly sidelined—not among the artificially uniform ranks of the compliant. Real unity draws people in; conformity just keeps them quiet.

When Bishop Joseph Strickland was dismissed from his diocese, there was mention of “lack of fraternity” with brother bishops. No one was supposed to say anything about the flaccid response to homosexuality in the Church, or the contradictory remarks of Pope Francis, or the failure to address the McCarrick crisis. As long as no one mentioned the elephant, the bishops were safe in their ballroom, shielded from the laity’s demands. The Strickland Problem was solved by booting him off the line to restore uniformity, a cheap and shortsighted solution.

Bishop Strickland noted recently in an interview for The Catholic Herald that “authentic unity in the Church is never built on silence in the face of error.” Far from losing his voice, the ostracized American bishop has just launched a new website to continue preaching the Gospel of Jesus Christ crucified. 

When one person speaks up, it’s a reproach to the cowardly and furtive. And if they try to silence the upstart, the opposite inevitably occurs: truth is amplified. And truth will prevail; we are in the prefatory period, just before it does. We can hasten or slacken it by our willingness to do the hard work of discernment and speaking up ourselves. 

This is not the time for mindless conformity. It’s not the time to be silent, or to assume that someone else will take care of things. It’s not a time to allow corrupt men, even among the clergy, to drive us into uniform lines of spongy followers. After everything we’ve been through, it’s not the time to abdicate our responsibility to study and discern what’s being told to us by “experts,” including theological ones.

This is a hard call for Catholics because we live within a hierarchy. We’re accustomed to following leaders we assume to be led, in turn, by Christ. But what if they’re not? What of the ones who carry on secret lives, cover up for predators, use the monies we’ve put in the basket to fund support for abortion and other abominations, betray doctrine—and even those not guilty of such egregious violations, who stand silently by, which is a sin in itself for those entrusted with souls? 

We have to take the counsel of our Lord, to obey the law of God, which they are charged with preaching (whether or not they do), but we must avoid following them into perdition. This now demands careful deliberation. It’s not the good ol’ days; we have to know our faith very well in order to assess what we’re told. That means study of the Catechism in particular because it is such a direct and concise explanation of the Faith. When bishops and clergy exhibit an ignorance—or a deliberate rejection—of the deposit of faith, we have to be informed enough to know what’s right and what’s not.

When bishops act and speak from their lawful authority on matters of faith and morals, we obey. But we don’t have to do it silently. In fact, canon law defends the dignity of the laity when they respectfully speak up:

Can. 212 §3. According to the knowledge, competence, and prestige which they possess, they (the Christian faithful) have the right and even at times the duty to manifest to the sacred pastors their opinion on matters which pertain to the good of the Church and to make their opinion known to the rest of the Christian faithful, without prejudice to the integrity of faith and morals, with reverence toward their pastors, and attentive to common advantage and the dignity of persons.

Regina Magazine has just released a film, Bread Not Stones, which is a teaching response to Bishop Michael Martin’s attempt to impose uniformity of worship upon his diocese of Charlotte, North Carolina. It’s an excellent example of speaking up reverently to their pastor whom they believe may be acting against the good of the people and the Church.

Those who speak up for truth in this age, who will not conform themselves to falsehood or treachery, stand between us and ruin. Let’s expand their ranks. Within the limits of careful discernment, we must stand up and speak out. Conformity in an evil age is a mortal risk.