A Small Herd Resists.

We will soon have priests reduced to the role of social workers and the message of faith reduced to political vision.  Everything will seem lost, but at the right time, at the most dramatic stage of the crisis, the Church will be reborn.  She will be smaller, poorer, almost catacombal, but also more holy.  Because it will no longer be the Church of those who seek to please the world, but the Church of the faithful to God and his eternal law.  Rebirth will be the work of a small rest, seemingly insignificant yet indomitable, passed through a process of purification.  Because that's how God works.  Against evil, a small herd resists.

—Joseph Ratzinger aka Pope Benedict XVI

I don’t actually like Ratzinger that much, generally.  But I strangely agree with what he says here, though from a completely (or mostly anyway) different perspective.    

In the Modern world, which as an article of “Enlightenment” (rationalist/materialist/individualist) philosophy denies any kind of transcendence and questions if not denies the reality of God, ministers of the gospel have no function that is not reduced to something secular, useful, and quantifiable.

Therefore, ministers in the Modern Age largely became merely informal, unofficial agents of the culture: their main job was promoting patriotism, social conformity, and dutiful participation in the capitalistic economy.  At most they tried to make Scripture and theology serve the establishment.  The cascading civilizational crises of the first half of the 20th century blew the cover off this role of religion for many.  The domesticated god they were preaching about, little more than a mascot and cheerleader for the Modern world, basically failed in every way possible.  Many ministers, who could not stomach the old role, went into other more practical professions, like psychology, social work, education, the arts, law, or politics.  This is what my dad’s generation went through.  (It is still happening as I understand that only a fraction of seminarians today are preparing for service in congregations.)  

The church has not gotten over this.  We still automatically reduce faith to something intelligible to secular Modernity, and very often that comes down to politics.  This happens on both right and left, obviously.  Now, politics is not unimportant.  There is no apolitical gospel; Jesus’ message and life had deeply and undeniably political and economic dimensions.  We live our our faith in our political actions, whether we admit it or not.  The problem occurs when the secular stuff is given priority and sets the tone.

But for the Church our politics and economics have to be derivative and secondary; they have to be based on and grow out of our spiritual life, our discipleship, rooted in contemplation.  I call this the “vertical” dimension, the “eternal” that intersects with our time, connecting us to God’s truth and life.  Without it we are just political activists, loyal to some ego-centric ideology, which is doomed to disintegration with whatever Empire it has projected and imposed on us.  Which makes it “evil,” as Ratzinger says.  When the Church allows itself to be pressed into the service of some secular political agenda, it becomes complicit in the reign of terror that faction inevitably produces when it takes power.

Rather, the Church’s true calling is to make disciples who then flavor and influence culture in the direction of God’s eternal truth, revealed in Jesus Christ as he is attested in Scripture.  This truth actually has a specific content, which I summarize as love and justice.  It is inclusion, forgiveness, welcome, and equality.  It is sharing, generosity, simplicity, and humility.  It is community and healing, and all the other qualities we see in Jesus.  It necessarily identifies with the marginalized, the broken, and the lost.  It cares for creation.  It is universal compassion.

These are all things we glean from the Scriptures about Jesus Christ and how he indicates we need to live.  I didn’t make them up.  They are not some “left agenda.”  Read the gospels for yourself and see.  Read the Sermon on the Mount.  Read Romans 12.  

So, the gospel must not be reduced to a political vision… but it has to be expressed in one.  The people who share that vision and express it will always be a “small herd,” a tiny flock, a seemingly insignificant minority, gathering to sing, pray, hear the Lord’s Word, and share in his Body and Blood.  As such we function as leaven, light, and salt, flavoring and influencing a larger world, coaxing it ever closer to the truth.

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