The Antidote to Despair

If despair is not an option for the Catholic, why are so many (myself included) tending to despair?  It is a tricky question and one that needs to be at least faced  if not answered.

Despair is a tool of the Devil.  We know that.  And he is an absolute master in manipulating events so that we can more easily fall into despair.  We know this as well.  So, why do we fall into despair?

I'm afraid the answer is all too easy: the people who run the Church now, and have run it for decades (many decades), are, at least far too many of them, cowards, mediocrities, traitors, idiots and poofs.  They grab the microphones and are the ones heard by most of the world.  For example, a near-illiterate priest named Thomas Rosica is the man Rome thinks is the best spokesman for the major events going on in the Vatican. But nonentity that Rosica is, he is only one of many.  These past few weeks simple Catholics have been thrown into, or are on the brink of, despair.

Despair has to be fought off....but how?  In the face of such monumental evil and betrayal by our own Churchmen, what attitude should we Catholics assume?  It seems now virtually impossible not to fall into despair, and yet...

If my readers will permit I would like to recommend an antidote to this frame of mind.  It comes from the pen of Brother Andre Marie over at Saint Benedict Center.  We recommend reading this short essay in full.  But a sample is in order:

When considering the multiple scandals and heresies besetting the Church in our time, three Biblical verses come immediately to mind:

“And whosoever shall scandalize one of these little ones that believe in me; it were better for him that a millstone were hanged around his neck, and he were cast into the sea” (Mark 9:41).

“Woe to the world because of scandals. For it must needs be that scandals come: but nevertheless woe to that man by whom the scandal cometh” (Matthew 18:7).

“For there must be also heresies: that they also, who are approved, may be made manifest among you” (1 Cor. 11:19).

These two utterances of Our Lord and one of the Apostle to the Gentiles would be appropriate matter for our meditation, especially considering them in their tropological sense (concerning which, see here and here).

In a piece I recently wrote, I made a statement that I think is important — not because I wrote it, obviously, but because of the dogmatic truth that it expresses, one that is often forgotten today by the anxious faithful:

The work of conversion — and the work of living the Catholic life, which is an ongoing conversion — is the work of grace. The Mediatrix of All Grace is more powerful than the purveyors of ecclesiastical novelty, who will come and go while the Cross stands still.

The rest can be read here: http://catholicism.org/scandal-heresy-and-grace.html

A common retort to people who tell this writer to avoid is despair is this: easy to say, hard to do.  But I believe Brother Andre's timely attempt to address this great problem is better, and more apposite.  It is also a workable antidote.

Scandal....heresy....and grace.