Faith – The Real Crisis, by Bevil Bramwell

By Bevil Bramwell, OMI, The Catholic Thing, Nov. 1, 2020

Fr. Bevil Bramwell, OMI, PhD is the former Undergraduate Dean at Catholic Distance University. His books are: Laity: Beautiful, Good and True, The World of the Sacraments, Catholics Read the Scriptures: Commentary on Benedict XVI’s Verbum Domini, and, most recently, John Paul II’s Ex Corde Ecclesiae: The Gift of Catholic Universities to the World.

In 1969, then Father Joseph Ratzinger said in a radio broadcast in Germany: “it seems certain to me that the Church is facing very hard times. The real crisis has scarcely begun. We will have to count on terrific upheavals. But I am equally certain about what will remain at the end: not the Church of the political cult, which is dead already, but the Church of faith.” Prescient as always, Ratzinger was speaking about what then looked like a Church in deep turmoil. Yet he knew that it was only the beginning.

Today, we can see just how right he was – and is.

From his study of the history of religions, he knew that Catholicism is not based on politics. (Hear, O ye bishops!) That would be to take the route of the socialists. Neither is Catholicism based on poetry. That is the foundation of many of the world’s religions, which are based on myths. And some religions are based on both politics and myths, as we see in Nazism and Chinese Communism, for example.  …