How Detachment from the “Real” Has Impacted the Church, by Julian Kwasniewski

By Julian Kwasniewski, Crisis Magazine, Dec. 11, 2023

Julian Kwasniewski is a musician specializing in renaissance Lute and vocal music, an artist and graphic designer, as well as marketing consultant for several Catholic companies. His writings have appeared in National Catholic Register, Latin Mass Magazine, OnePeterFive, and New Liturgical Movement. You can find some of his artwork on Etsy.

One wonders how different things would be if the prominent Churchmen who have done such damage to the Church had the experience of a more “real” life.

Without dirt, blood, fear, cold, or romance, the “princes of the Church” will be ignorant of real life, men, and tradition. 

Experience is everything, the saying goes. Well, almost everything. The difficult thing is how many spiritual directors and pastors have to give directions on things of which they often know very little, most of all marriage and family life. As Hubert van Zeller notes (in We Sing While There’s Voice Left), “neither books nor sermons, nor even the force of other people’s lives, can do service for personal experience.”

Even if it isn’t a particular “sting of the flesh to distress us,” then “it is simply the unfolding of life which does the work of wearing down our self-sufficiency” and gives a man the experience he needs to live wisely and advise others how to do so also. It is not so much his knowledge of theology (indispensable though that is) as the sense that a priest has “endured the same temptations” which gives a penitent confidence in his help, van Zeller recognizes. …

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