Apocalypse Now, by Francis X. Maier
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*Image: Conversion on the Way to Damascus, by Caravaggio; 1601. Cerasi Chapel, Santa Maria del Popolo, Rome.
By Francis X. Maier, The Catholic Thing, Feb. 16, 2023
Francis X. Maier is a senior fellow in Catholic studies at the Ethics and Public Policy Center.
I’m a derivative writer. I wish I were creative. I wish I were ingenious. But my friends and colleagues, and others I admire, are just smarter than I am. This would be sad if it weren’t also consoling. I can’t fix the world, but I don’t need to. Neither do you. In the vast stream of history, individuals rarely seem to matter. . .except in the eyes of God. But of course that’s the one place that really does matter.
So the implications for each of us are worth noting, and they’re captured best by a familiar cleric in a recent interview:
Interviewer: In your opinion, what are the greatest areas of reform needed to renew the Church?
Familiar cleric: Us; all of us. We’re the problem. Structures and policies are important, but people are decisive. In a sense, the focus of real Church reform is always the same: you and me. It’s that simple, and also that difficult. No one really likes to change, because it’s hard. And the essence of conversion is a sea change in the way we think and live. In its Hebrew root, “holy” doesn’t mean “good,” although holy people are always good. Holy means “different from” and “other than.” Christians are meant to be different from and other than the ways of the world. So if we want to reform the Church, we first need to reform ourselves. …
