No Way Home

I’ve never understood cultural Catholicism. If you extract belief while keeping the trappings of a Catholic faith devoid of, well, faith, you end up with one of the lamest country clubs around. The members aren’t cool. Their musical tastes are cringe. They may have some ethnic affiliation and a rich cultural history, but they are generally ignorant of it. Liberal and non-believing Catholics are like a bunch of has-beens clinging to the vestiges of a bygone era, not able to let go while secretly resenting everything their affiliates stand for.

There is an unnerving passage in The Imitation of Christ that I go back to again and again because it describes well the curse of the tepid Catholic (emphasis mine):

A fervent religious accepts all the things that are commanded him and does them well, but a negligent and lukewarm religious has trial upon trial, and suffers anguish from every side because he has no consolation within and is forbidden to seek it from without. The religious who does not live up to his rule exposes himself to dreadful ruin, and he who wishes to be more free and untrammeled will always be in trouble, for something or other will always displease him. (Book 1, Chapter 25)

Orthodox. Faithful. Free.

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Perhaps it’s because the baptized Catholic has, by the curse of Eve, known the taste of the fruit of knowledge of good and evil (Genesis 3:6). As St. Paul says, “Without the law sin was dead. But when the commandment came, sin revived”(Romans 7:8-9). He cannot enjoy the forbidden fruit in ignorance because his ignorance, by baptism, has been buried alive. He knows better, even if he will not admit it to himself. The curse of the apostate is that rather than being set free from shackles he is haunted by ghosts.  Liberal and non-believing Catholics are like a bunch of has-beens clinging to the vestiges of a bygone era, not able to let go while secretly resenting everything their affiliates stand for.Tweet This

A believing Catholic, on the other hand—that is another thing altogether. There is no limit to the change they can exact in the world and the course of history by the power of the Holy Spirit. With faith the size of even a mustard seed, our Lord says, nothing will be impossible for him (Matthew 17:20). 

But there is a sobering passage in the letter of St. James: “he that wavereth is like a wave of the sea, which is moved and carried about by the wind. Therefore let not that man think that he shall receive any thing of the Lord” (James 1:6-7). The believer must be all-in. Otherwise, the yeast fails to leaven. “If you shall have faith, and stagger not, not only this of the fig tree shall you do, but also if you shall say to this mountain, Take up and cast thyself into the sea, it shall be done” (Matthew 21:21).

True faith demands unwavering belief; it must bet the house and buy the pearl. For belief is not a stove dial with a 1-9 temperature gradient; it is on or it is off. The man who stands on shore is dry; when he jumps in the water, he is wet. When a man marries and the marriage is consummated, two become one. They are no longer two; they are one flesh, as if a chemical reaction has taken place. There is no undoing, no returning to the night before the wedding. Through the fissure of wills, God has made something entirely new.

But the sobering fact about faith is that faith is the central binding thread in so many of our decisions as believing, professing, all-in Catholics. We believe the promises of Christ and seek to conform our lives to the perennial teachings of the Church by faith but also in conjunction with the virtue of reason. We forgo the artificial birth control and, with quivering open arms, welcome life, conforming our mind to that of the Scriptures that children are blessings rather than burdens. 

One child may turn to two, two to four, and the math dictates that two incomes reduce to one to have a mother at home. Charity dictates we are generous not only with openness to life but support of the Church and care for the poor. And so that one income gets whittled down a little more. With all these little bodies and limited funds, perhaps one makes the decision to home educate. Would all these “alternative choices” have occurred without the thread of faith running its course through our lives? I would wager not.

Marriage is like no other contract—it has the highest legal stakes and ramifications for one’s life while so many of the terms of the agreement are glossed over or not laid out at all at the time of signing on the dotted line. Maybe that’s why, in Scripture, God likens the covenant with His people in marital terms. You think you know what you’re getting into. But you don’t, really. How could you know what the future holds? How could anyone? Abraham believed—and it was credited to him as righteousness (Romans 4:3). But he already had the knife drawn at that point. 

My parents, for all their flaws, had a “divorce is not an option” mentality, and I think that was part of the secret for their almost-fifty-year-strong marriage. My wife and I have adopted that same playbook. We stick to the vows because we have bet the house on the vows. There is no plan B. As terrifying as that is, I think this is why it works. For if we did leave that door ajar from the start, it would be like the law reviving sin. “What if?” we think at the serpent’s bequest. What if I didn’t have to put up with “all this”? What if I were with someone else? 

And because faith is that thread of contingency common to all our life’s choices as committed Catholics, the same applies: “What if….what if it’s not real? What if we’re just fools, living with all these kids, going to Mass every Sunday, sacrificing so much…for what?” The specters of apostasy hide in the shadows, while we tiptoe by the corpse of their dead faith put on a stick in a field like a scarecrow.

The Church is not a cult, and God respects our freedom; He does not gain faith by extortion. Each day, we must get up and find reason to believe, to recommit ourselves to belief. Each day, we must pray—not as a sentence to be served but as an opportunity to renew our vows. As in a marriage, we can (and though we can, it does not mean that we should) walk away—but not without massive fallout and not without betraying something that we had promised to another. 

And sometimes we need to be reminded that we should not, in fact, walk away—that it is not in our best interest to do so, that we will live to regret it, that we should dig in and wrestle with the angel like Jacob. For in leaving, we will be like foreigners wandering in a foreign land, trying to fit in with the locals and failing to ever do so. We will continually long for a home that we no longer recognize nor remember the way back to. We don’t stay because we should anymore than we leave because we can. 

God does not want divided men and tepid hearts. He wants us to be all-in, holding nothing back, with no plan B. And He promises we will not regret it if we trust Him. That’s a big ask and a trembling wager. But He does not call us “reckless” or “irresponsible” for placing that bet because, in fact, there is no alternative for a seat at this table. There’s no other way home.