Michael Fighting
"Michael…who standeth for…thy people," — Dan. 12:1-12
G. SHOULD WE AWAIT A MIRACLE?
Many have insisted that any effort on the part of the faithful to restore the Church would necessarily be an attempt to escape the well-merited punishment meted out to us by God as punishment for our sins. We cannot deny that we deserve such punishment, but we have already suffered a great deal as it is. We cannot develop a guilt obsession, as we discussed earlier, for this only serves to pave the way to greater evils.
If we have offered up our sufferings in reparation for our sins each morning in our Morning Offering, we have done penance for them in this way. To persist in an attitude of unforgiveness is to persist in Jansenism (heresy) and, moreover, it is to deny the infinite mercy of God. As Father Cristiani said, Christ admonished the sinner to "Go and sin no more." We cannot pretend, in our false humility, that God would be any less merciful to us, the new chosen people, than he was to the continually disobedient Israelites of the Old Testament.
God gave us free will. He gave each of us various gifts, which we must either develop and use to His honor and glory, or bury in the field like the foolish servant Christ spoke of in His parable. At the time of our personal judgment, each of us will be held accountable for the use of these gifts, and we must be able to account for them to the last farthing. We must believe it is the Will of God that the Church continue, forever unchanged in Her doctrine and constitution.
Can we dare to feign unworthiness to avoid accomplishing God's will? Not if we wish to gain heaven. Perhaps, the German Catholic philosopher, Peter Wust, says it best in his Essays on Order: "We may ask 'should not God raise up among ourselves... some great figure, like, for instance, St. Francis or St. Dominic who, through the miracles and grace of his character would bring about at one blow the great reaction, which the weakness of our hands and the poverty of our souls make it impossible to effect by the natural way of isolated actions?' It would surely be a mistake, if we men of little faith denied the possibility of such an amazing intervention of providence. But it would be equally mistaken to sit still and placidly await such a miracle of grace, in order thereby, to get rid of all personal responsibility; that would be disastrous fatalism... . It is true; "spiritus ibi vult spirat;' we can never force the Spirit's miracle of grace; we must hope for it, wait for it, beg for it. But we must never make such a hope, the pretext for sinking into a mystic lethargy, for shirking personal effort. We ourselves, must begin to take action, and only then may we justly expect that God will act with us. We must ourselves, try to prepare for the new outpouring of the Spirit." (A_ Treasury of Catholic Thinking, Ralph L. Woods, Editor, p. 73.)
As we might expect, Reverend George Tyrell has his contribution to make once again, this time on the errors of fatalism. He writes:
"It is sometimes very hard to resist the impression that members of other religious denominations who have no divine guarantee for the perpetuity of their sect, who believe, therefore, that all depends on their united efforts, are often more zealous, more united, more public-spirited, generous, selfsacrificing, than many Catholics, who, under cover of confidence in the Divine promise, justify a certain apathy and indifference in the Church's cause, which is really the fruit of a secret fatalism. These latter say: "God will bring all things right in the end"; but they forget that we must help Him to bring them right; that "how far right" depends wholly on us; that if "less right" through our supine fatalism, it will be anything but right for us.
--"But apart from this unfortunate fatalism, which may infect all alike--clergy, as well as laity, the energies of the latter are often paralyzed by the misapprehension, already alluded, to which regards the relation between clergy and laity as analogous to that between soldier and civilian in the secular state, and therefore considers the layman as exempt from all duty of forwarding the Church's cause upon earth, and limits his obligation to that of passively submitting his own soul to be operated upon by the sacraments and teaching of the Church.
--"One probable cause of periods of apathy and inertness among the laity is the different exigencies of times of danger and times of safety. In crises of special peril, where much depends on unity and promptitude, both of judgment and action, all initiative is wisely gathered up to the head and center of the Church's social organism, and that blind, passive obedience is required of the members which is required of soldiers in the hour of battle, when, if each were left to judge as he chose, and do as he judged, chaos and defeat would be the result. But what is good in a crisis and in time of danger is not good at other times. Blind obedience is the best on certain occasions, but it is not the best in itself; it is not the better for being blind. In itself and where practicable, an intelligent and sympathetic obedience is better, such as was the obedience of Christ to His Father's will.
--"Of this state of things, a novelist already quoted writes: 'If then this Church is the bulwark of modern society, can there be a more ignoble destiny than to sit still and let her, unaided and single-handed, confront the vast and terrific forces that are arrayed against her? On the other hand, can there be a more sublime destiny, or a more noble undertaking
than to stand by her side and throw in such little forces as are placed at our disposal in her support and for the confusion of her enemies? Yet hitherto the entire struggle has been tacitly left by laymen in the hands of the captains of the King's hosts. Against all the natural and supernatural agencies at work in the world, opposed to God and His Christ--heresy and infidelity, with their tremendous intellectual forces, irreligious governments, with all State appliances, treasuries, armies, navies, at their disposal; the press, with its far-reaching power; literature that derives its supreme attraction from its un-Christian or immoral teachings; art, that is the workshop of Satan; politics that would exile the Church from the world; the drink syndicates that are becoming omnipotent through human impotency; the social evil that has forced itself to be State recognized; schools from which God is banished; family circles where religion is never mentioned; society that would take offense at God's name--in a word, against all the professed badness of the world, and against all the unconfessed indifference marshalled in hostile array ... stand timidly on the side of Christ, a handful of priests, a few weak women, a literature that is saved from ridicule barely by its good intentions, and a few saints who lift up their hands ... from the mountain whilst the armies of Israel are hard pressed in the valleys of humiliation and defeat. All this time what are Catholic laymen doing? Absolutely nothing; either defensive or aggressive. With the exception of a few St. Vincent de Paul Societies, there is absolutely no organization that would combine into one solid body all the zeal and talent of thousands of young men who would dare and do a great deal for Jesus Christ, but who are now kept back from want of an inspiring voice that would tell them: Go, and throw in all your resources of mind and body to destroy the empire of Belial and to extend the empire of Christ."'!!!
What is this fatalism Wust and Tyrell speak of? The Catholic Encyclopedia defines it in its ancient sense as: "...the inexorable decree of the gods directing the course of the universe...the future life of each individual is so rigorously predetermined in all its details by an antecedent external agency, that his own volitions or desires have no power to alter the course of events... fate is blind, arbitrary, relentless. It moves inexorably onwards, effecting the most terrible catastrophes, impressing us with a feeling of helpless consternation and harrowing our moral sense, if we venture upon a moral judgment at all. Modern materialistic fatalism ... is in some ways more extreme than the ancient pagan fatalism... the materialistic scientist is logically committed to the conclusion that our mental states ... themselves can, in no way, alter the course of events, or affect the movements of a single molecule of matter." Fatalism, Vol. V.)
The author of this article, Reverend Moher, aligns fatalism with determinism; and determinism with materialism: "...For materialism holds that every incident in the history of the universe is the inevitable outcome of the mechanical and physical movements and changes which have gone before." (Determinism, Vol. IV.) Moher calls this theory "fatal to ethics and fundamental Christian belief...." Pius IX and the Vatican Council condemned Materialism (DZ 1758, 1802, 1805), and the Vatican Council gave special mention to "...the duty of observing also the constitutions and decrees by which those opinions...not enumerated here ... have been proscribed and prohibited by the Holy See." (DZ 1820.) Fatalism is also explicitly proscribed in the condemnation of the errors of John Wycliffe, by the Council of Constance. (DZ 6O7.)
Concerning the manner in which Catholics should conduct themselves in spiritual combat, Archbishop Richard Cushing wrote: "God does not intervene miraculously in the direction of history. Rarely, indeed, do the heavens split and the voice or the hand of God emerge to turn the tide of things or forcibly direct into better ways, the fortunes of men or nations. A few times God has spoken from the mountaintop or through His Son; and always, He teaches through His Church. But almost never, even in these cases, does He achieve His purpose directly and without reference to human cooperation. Normally, God works His will through secondary causes, through human agents... . It is God's will that the world be peopled with intelligent beings, freely contributing to His glory and accomplishing His purpose." (p. 16.) "...God wills what is right ... not what is wrong... . It is to speak up as God would will, when there is need of support for virtue, sanity, and good order. Sometimes, the cry of protest or word of support does not even come from the Church in the sense of the 'Official Church;' sometimes, the cry or word must be yours...."' to
(Call to the Laity, p. 114-115.)
"To every thing there is a season, and a time to every purpose under heaven." In ages past, saints rightfully awaited the results of God's providence in their personal lives. But in times of crises, we must remember such saints as Athanasius, Bernard, Norbert, Catherine of Siena, Pius V, Thomas More, and Pius X. They wished only to serve God in silence and obscurity, yet they were forced by circumstances to champion the Church. We can refuse the graces necessary to defend our faith and sit idly by while others work for God's glory. But in passing up our tickets to sainthood, we should remember not to complain when the heat is turned up in the nether regions.
It is as necessary to prepare ourselves for that holy exercise as it is to tune the guitar before playing it. "Before prayer prepare thy soul, and be not as a man that tempteth God." (Ecclesiasticus 18:23) To tempt God is to expect Him to work in an extraordinary manner when something can be accomplished by other means. And since the preparation of the heart is so essential for attaining devotion, he who would expect to attain it without this means would for all practical purposes be tempting God. Summa of the Christian Life, Venerable Louis of Grenada, volume 2, pages 314-5
