It is
Wednesday, and time then for our weekly journey through the ‘papal examen’, the
Pope’s Christmas talk to the Roman Curia that is such a good examination of
conscience for all of us. We are now at disease number eight of fifteen, which
is:
The disease
of existential schizophrenia. This is the disease of those who live a double
life, the fruit of that hypocrisy typical of the mediocre and of a progressive
spiritual emptiness which no doctorates or academic titles can fill.
It is a
disease which often strikes those who abandon pastoral service and restrict
themselves to bureaucratic matters, thus losing contact with reality, with
concrete people. In this way they create their own parallel world, where they
set aside all that they teach with severity to others and begin to live a
hidden and often dissolute life. For this most serious disease conversion is
most urgent and indeed indispensable (cf. Lk 15:11-32).
Clearly we
are in serious territory here. Hypocrisy is
the great charge levelled by those who are not religious against religious
people. It is perhaps a bit over-done sometimes; after all, hardly anyone
completely lives up to the tenets and high moral standards of what they
believe, and it is not ‘hypocrisy’ to simply be a struggling sinner. Hypocrisy
enters in when one puts on an outward show of virtue or claims holiness for
oneself while living something very different. Nevertheless, it is an
accusation not without some truth.
We have to
be vigilant. I say I believe ‘x’. Why am I doing ‘y’, which is inconsistent
with that? The Pope is referring to, I gather, very real corruption and
dissolute lifestyles that can and possibly do exist in high places in the
Church; I will not comment on that, neither knowing about it nor considering
that this is any of my or your business.
But on a
lower level, this is a problem which can and at least incipiently does afflict
all of us. Toleration of habitual sin in ourselves, for example, is the
beginnings of this existential schizophrenia. A ‘double life’ for me may not
mean that I’m secretly keeping a wife and three children in a suburb of Toronto
(I’m not), but it may mean that there are small corners of my life that I have simply
reserved as the personal property of Fr. Denis Lemieux, and in which poverty,
chastity, and obedience are not welcome. It can be small things, insidious
things, perhaps not even things that rise to the level of sin per se, but nonetheless have that
quality of doubleness, of duplicity.
We say we
believe in Jesus Christ. This statement of faith calls us to a radical
belonging to Christ, a radical submission to His Word. To say I believe in
Christ but then turn and say ‘But I won’t forgive the person who hurt me!’ or ‘But
I won’t take the lowest place’ or ‘But I won’t acknowledge Him before men’ (or
any other direct flouting of the precepts of the Gospel) is to live in a
perilous state of “mediocre and
progressive spiritual emptiness,” as the Holy Father so pithily puts it.
Well, it’s
Lent, isn’t it? Good time to review all these matters and make some changes. I think
there are few of us who could say with a straight face that we always and everywhere
live out our faith by doing exactly what the Lord Jesus commands us in His
Gospel. And those who do—well, you are the saints of God, so please pray for us
struggling sinners, eh?
And really,
let’s pray for one another in this. There is a terrible hampering of the Church’s
evangelical work in this. People, when they look at how Catholics live, cannot
tell that there’s any great difference between them and anyone else. This must
not be. The Gospel is so radical that, if we say we believe it and are even
trying to live it, our lives should look different, don’t you think? We should
at least be puzzling to people, don’t you think?
Let us pray
for one another, and above all let us ask the Lord to make us more faithful to
Him and live with a deeper integrity, a deeper purity of heart, seeking to
please God and not ourselves or others in all things.
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