The Most Urgent Question of
Our Time:
“When
the Son of Man Comes, will He Find Faith on Earth?”
(St. Luke 18.8)
No more stunning, no more frightening,
and perhaps no more ominously portentous words are spoken in
all the Gospels, in fact, in the entire New Testament —
perhaps even in the entirety of Sacred Scripture itself;
words that have become increasingly fraught with
significance with every passing year of the most unfortunate
papacy of Francis — a papacy not just likely to be
understood as among the worst … but the worst … the most
destructive to the Faith and to the Church in the 2000 year
annals of ecclesiastical history. Indeed, with every
generation following the devastation wrought by the Second
Vatican Council — that scorched earth assault on Tradition
and historical Catholicism — the question increasingly
verges on an implied and obvious answer.
We must wonder, with growing alarm, if the question that
Christ poses is, in fact, spoken of this generation, or of
one soon — very soon, to come.
As with so many of Christ’s teachings, this troubling
question is too often and too deftly explained away —
especially by the overwhelming number of the liberal
theologians and bishops who have proliferated and multiplied
since 1962 — which is to say, by “the learned and the wise”
— who have ever been an affront to God. If we heed them, it
would appear that either Christ does not know what He is
saying, or we do not know what He is saying — although we
all agree that He said something ... that sounds
suspiciously clear.
“When the Son of Man comes will He find Faith on earth?”
The question is disarmingly simple. There is nothing obscure
about it. What is alarming is that He asked it!
Why would He do that?
However reluctant we are to take Christ at His word, we must
recognize that Jesus never spoke idly: His words, His
teachings — and yes, His Commandments — were always uttered
to one explicit end: the salvation of souls — that man may
attain to Heaven and everlasting happiness ... and to avoid
Hell and eternal misery.
The Jewish religious authorities — “the learned” of His own
time — had scornfully dismissed Christ’s warning that not so
much as stone would remain standing in the great Temple1 ...
the very Temple within which, 70 years later, these words
were fulfilled when Rome laid waste in days what took 46
years to build. We tend to view such alarming statements
made by Jesus — and there are many — with the same scorn and
disdain today.
Indeed ... what has become of the “Faith of our Fathers?”
A mere fifty years ago we ourselves would have instinctively
replied “Of course He will find faith! There simply must be
some deeper, some obscure and less evident meaning to this
that we do not presently understand — and what He appears to
be saying, He is not really saying at all. Surely the
“learned” of our own day can deftly explain the answer to
this troubling question. In the end, they will conclude,
Jesus is really asking something entirely different from
what He appears to be asking and that it has nothing to do
with our very real defection from the Faith.”
It is likely that many Jews of Jesus’ time — both the
learned and the unlearned — had replied in much the same
way. In fact, they did. 2
In other words, to us, our faith, the Faith of the Catholic
Church for two millennia, could no sooner disappear than ...
well, the stones of the great Temple 2000 years ago!
If, however, we take a careful inventory of our present and
undeniably dismal and increasingly scandalous situation in
the Church — especially as it has unfolded in the last seven
decades — Jesus does not quite appear as ... “perplexing”
... as so many apparently make Him to be.
Candidly ask yourself the following:
Has the Faith — the Catholic Faith — flourished in the last
70 years, or has it withered?
Are vocations to the Priesthood and Religious life growing
or dwindling?
Are Catholics having more children or are they having fewer
children?
Are Missionary efforts, to the end of (dare we say it?)
“conversion” as mandated by Christ 2 encouraged as intrinsic
to Catholicism — or are they discouraged as impolite,
obtrusive, culturally imperialistic and inherently inimical
to the “Ecumenical spirit of Vatican II” — especially as
interpreted by Pope Francis for whom “proselytism is solemn
nonsense,” to use his own words, words that mock the
sacrifices of countless missionary saints through the 2000
years preceding Vatican II’s “more enlightened”
understanding of the Great Commission*?
Rather, we find that “conversion” to Christ and His Church
is actively discouraged — that especially under Pope Francis
it is no longer understood as a holy and inherently
necessary endeavor — instead, it is disdained, even
dismissed, as “socially and culturally incorrect” — indeed,
we find that promoting our Catholic Faith — as Christ has
commanded us to— has been forbidden by Francis and his
“progressive” coterie of feckless and disaffected cardinals
and bishops! What pope, prior to Vatican II, could ever have
envisioned this?
Is our understanding of the Catholic Church, as an
absolutely unique institution indispensable to the ordinary
means of salvation, emphasized as urgently today (if it is
emphasized at all) as it was a hundred years ago? Fifty
years ago? Indeed, is the concept itself — of the
singularity and indispensability of the Holy Catholic Church
— still deemed an actual dogma and a viable concept at all?
For all our insolence and equivocation, we know the answers,
and we are uncomfortable with them, for they fly in the face
of Christ and all that He taught — to say nothing of Sacred
Scripture, Holy Tradition, and the Sacred Deposit of the
Faith entrusted to the Catholic Church by God Himself.
Indeed, Christ’s question takes on a greater sense of
urgency still, for the sheep are scattered and confused as
never before. The papacy of Francis has been disastrous for
the Church. Why? Precisely because he has taken Vatican II
to its logical conclusion: the irrelevance of the Church.
Ubi est Pastor?
Where is the Shepherd? Who is earnestly addressing this
spiritual malaise and religious decay due to the indolence
and dereliction of the vast majority of American and
European bishops who appear far more eager for secular
plaudits than the now quaint and discredited notion of “the
salvation of souls.” Pope Francis has effectively declared
this mandate defunct in favor of the rehabilitation of
bodies, societies, economies, and “the environment.” That
the passing material environment of man is infinitely less
important than the eternal abode of his soul, often appears
to elude Francis. Indeed, it appears to elude most Catholics
whose mantra increasingly coincides with the world’s:
‘social activism!’ ... not ‘interior conversion’ away from
this world ... and to Christ.
Shame! Shame on us! By our silence, our fear of being
disparaged by “other Catholics” for the sake of Christ, we
condone this travesty — are complicit in it ... even promote
it!
What will motivate us to recognize, and to redress, this
frightful and ultimately deadly state of affairs?
There are, after all, other contenders in this world for the
souls of men ... seen and unseen! As our own wick smolders,
others blaze! The burning Crescent of Islam, poised like a
scimitar, and every bit as deadly, glows and grows in the
east, and with it, not an ethnic, but a Religious Cleansing
to which the world remains indifferent — an expunging of
every vestige of Christianity in partibus infidelium. And
even Islam has its secular collaborators: the European Union
— once a continent raised up from utter barbarism to a
civilization formed and ennobled by its Catholic heritage —
will no longer tolerate the inclusion of its indissoluble
Christian heritage within its Constitution. Not only does it
thoroughly repudiate its own Christian cultural heritage —
it prohibits it — even banishes it! This is nothing less
than self-loathing. And perhaps it ought to be.
Surely, then, in our effort to remedy this impending state
of dissolution, we will first turn to our bishops, since
they are, preeminently, the “Teachers and Guardians of the
Faith”. But more often than not — much more often than not —
in the well-appointed office at the end of the corridor we
do not find a shepherd of souls but a deeply sequestered,
occasionally avuncular, and predictably remote ...
“administrator.”
Relegating his prime responsibility as Teacher and Promoter
of the Faith ... to others, in the form of Lay committees
and subcommittees largely “chaired” by liberal Catholics
more concerned with social issues than the salvation of
souls, are we confident that the patrimony of our faith will
somehow percolate through this strata of already
contaminated soil and reach our children authentically and
intact? Is our fear mitigated ... or further exacerbated ...
by our bishops’ resolute lack of diligence in being
attentive to what Catholic colleges and theologians in their
own dioceses are really teaching — and who are teaching the
teachers ... who, in turn, are teaching our children?
Do you think that your bishop actually — that is to say,
cognitively — is aware of, or even concerned with — what the
teachers themselves are actually teaching?
Not in this diocese. Not in Boston. In fact, Cardinal Sean
Patrick O’Malley had routinely feted, praised, and held up
as exemplary, the clueless “Catechists” who churn out our
children to the Sacrament of Confirmation — with no clue
whatever of that in which they are being confirmed. By
comparison, even the dismal failure of our public schools in
Boston must be deemed a stunning success.
For most of us — especially in the Archdiocese of Boston,
but no less elsewhere — the answer is, as they say, a
“no-brainer:” it is a universally resounding no. Most of us
find, to our growing dismay and deepening cynicism, that our
bishops appear to have “more important,” more ... “pressing”
things to do ... than to communicate the Faith to the
faithful ... especially the children.
Really, we beg the question: if no one teaches the teachers
— who, then, teaches the children? If they are not brought
the faith by those to whom it has been entrusted — the
bishops, the episcopacy — who will bring it to them?
Will they — how can they — acquire the Faith ... if no one
brings it to them? Saint Paul is very clear about this:
“How then shall they call on him, in whom they have not
believed? Or how shall they believe him, of whom they have
not heard?
And how shall they hear, without a preacher? And how shall
they preach unless they be sent ...?” (Romans 10.14-15)
Ask yourself candidly: do you know more ... or less ... of
your Catholic faith than your children? Very likely more —
although, in all honesty, it is probably little. You
politely assent to the now quaint Catholic notion that
“parents are the primary teachers of their children,” but
knowing little of your own Faith, you simply shell out
$175.00 per child and pan off this grave responsibility to
others of whom you know nothing, and who themselves largely
know nothing of the faith they presume to teach. You go
through the motions as careless of what your children are
taught in their 10 years of “Religious Education” as your
bishop is of what the teachers teach. 10 years later, and
$1500 poorer per child, you scratch your head and wonder why
Johnny still does not know God, and why Judy never goes to
Mass — and yet we have agreed that you know more than your
children ...
What, then, we must ask — with growing apprehension — will
your children teach their children ...?
What will they — who know even less than you — teach those
who know nothing?
Total Ignorance
The momentum, as we see, is inexorable — until it culminates
in total ignorance: every generation knows less of their
faith than the generation preceding it. It is, in the end,
the devolution from doctrine to legend, from legend to
fiction, and from fiction to myth.
That is not just a poor, but a stultifying and ultimately
deadly patrimony.
This default — at every level — in transmitting the
authentic Catholic faith intact ... leaves Jesus’ question
very suddenly very real.
“Recently, a Gallup poll was taken on Catholic attitudes
toward Holy Communion. The poll showed serious confusion
among Catholics about one of the most basic beliefs of the
Church. Only 30 percent of those surveyed believe they are
actually receiving the Body and Blood, soul and divinity of
the Lord Jesus Christ under the appearance of bread and
wine.” 4
The problem is more than mathematical; as we have seen, it
is exponential. 70% of Catholics do not possess this most
fundamental, this most essential understanding of the core
article of genuine Catholic doctrine: that “Unless you eat
of the flesh of the Son of Man, and drink His Blood, you
have no life in you.” Heavy stuff!
It is not just a matter of the greatest concern, but nothing
less than a matter of the gravest dereliction that most
Catholics do not realize — do not know — that the very Mass
itself is an abbreviation of “The Most Holy Sacrifice of the
Mass”, and that it is really a Sacrifice, the actual
re-enactment of Calvary before their very eyes!
This failure of understanding ... culminates in a failure in
Faith. It possesses, in significant ways, the remorseless
characteristics of mathematical certainties. Not
understanding, grasping — having never been taught — the
most elementary features of the faith, how can they be
understood to possess what they have not acquired, and how
can they transmit, pass on, what they do not possess? It is
inescapable.
Prognostication, of course, is for fools.
But the words of Christ are certainties that will come to
pass.
“Weep not for Me, but for your children,” 5 Christ told the
sorrowing women on the road to Calvary.
Jesus’ question, then — “When the Son of Man comes will He
find faith on earth?”— is not a “rhetorical question” at
all; it is a question fraught with enormous significance ...
the frightful answer to which appears to be unfolding before
our very eyes ... but that is if you take Christ at His word
— and given Jesus’ track record on things yet to come, we
would do well and wisely to give pause for more than
thought.
Are you worried now ...? Not nearly enough.
And this is all the more frightening still.
Geoffrey K.
Mondello
Editor
Boston Catholic Journal
Printable PDF Version
_____________________________________________
1 St. Matthew 24.1
2
St. John 2.19
3
St.
Matthew 28:19
4
https://www.catholicculture.org/docs/doc_view.cfm?recnum=1340
5
St. Luke 23.28
*
“Going
therefore, teach ye all nations; baptizing them in the name of the
Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Ghost. Teaching them to
observe all things whatsoever I have commanded you: and behold I
am with you all days, even to the consummation of the world.”
(St. Matthew 28.19-20)

Totally Faithful to the Sacred Deposit of
Faith entrusted to the Holy See in Rome
“Scio
opera tua ... quia modicum habes virtutem, et servasti
verbum Meum, nec non negasti Nomen Meum”
“I
know your works ... that you have but little power,
and yet you have kept My word, and have not denied My
Name.”
(Apocalypse 3.8)
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