Do Not Panic! God Uses Evil For Good, Even in the Church. by Dr. Jeff Mirus

By Dr. Jeff Mirus, Catholic Culture, July 31, 2023

Jeffrey Mirus holds a Ph.D. in intellectual history from Princeton University. A co-founder of Christendom College, he also pioneered Catholic Internet services. He is the founder of Trinity Communications and CatholicCulture.org.

Recently I have (yet again) heard the accusation that we at CatholicCulture.org, since we refuse to admit that Pope Francis is an anti-pope, are merely trying to curry favor with him for venal reasons of our own. There are, of course, many variations on this theme, which arise from the dissatisfaction of Catholics who are, at best, worried or, at worst, convinced that the sin of private judgment is essential under today’s ecclesiastical conditions. But we ought never to panic or behave like loose cannons simply because our personal spiritual sensibilities are frustrated. And so I respond to the essential problem as follows:

Living in an era in which the Church has very little influence over human society as a whole, we are apt to feel somewhat abandoned by God. The oldest among us can still remember a time when the Church seemed solid within herself and influential in the wider human community (not realizing, perhaps, how much this depended on an inherited but rapidly waning prior European culture). But even those memories are now some two generations in the rear-view mirror. We are now far more visibly surrounded by severe evils which too many even in today’s Church regard as goods. Where, in all this, is God? …

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