If we had to sum up our Holy Catholic Faith in two words, we would probably have to say “Jesus Christ”. This is because everything about our religion must ultimately have its beginning and its end in Him. The theological discipline concerned specifically with the study of Who and What Christ is called Christology. Since roughly the 1960s, a certain school of Christology has tended to be nurtured in some of the trendier theology faculties. The “Jesus” whom we encounter here ends up resembling a rather drippy singer-songwriter of a none-too-memorable psychedelic band. This figment of the imagination of mid-century theologians is so eminently insipid that his message is platitudinous to a fault, and invariably inoffensive.
What a different Jesus we find if we open the Holy Scriptures. In the Gospels, not a single banality ever passes His lips. And when it serves the cause of the establishment of the Kingdom of Heaven on earth and the salvation of souls, Our Lord is ready and able to say things that are clearly intended to be stingingly offensive to those whom He addresses. Think of when He says to the Scribes and the Pharisees: “Woe unto you hypocrites! You are like whitened sepulchres, which outwardly appear beautiful to men, but within are full of dead men's bones and all filthiness!”; or the occasion on which He tells the Pharisees that they can go and tell Herod that he is a devious old fox. If we consider that Our Lord's cousin John the Baptist called the Sadducees a brood of vipers to their faces, then we might well wonder if this facility for vituperation is something that ran in the family, at least among the men.
It is notable, of course, that these insults are never aimed at the little people – the poor or the sick, or repentant sinners looking for forgiveness. They are reserved exclusively for the great and the good, the rulers and especially the religious hierarchy of this world. The most devastating reproach of all is by no means an exception to this rule. When Our Lord outlines what He must suffer in Jerusalem, and Peter takes Him aside to remonstrate with Him, Our Lord upbraids Peter with the shocking words “Get behind me, Satan.”
This terrible rebuke looks all the more extraordinary when we see it in its full context. The Holy Gospel of St Matthew informs us that it comes just moments after Our Lord has declared Simon to be Peter, the rock on which He will build His Church, and granted to Peter the keys of the Kingdom. And then, almost in the same breath, there He is calling His newly minted first-ever Pope “Satan.”
Peter's fault is that, at this stage, he still has his eye on a beautiful jewelled crown and a gleaming gilded throne for Our Lord. His keenness to deflect his Master from His mission to die for our sins is all too reminiscent of the temptations which the devil dangled before Our Lord during His fasting in the wilderness: “Turn these stones into bread – feed the masses and you will have them in your pocket! Throw yourself off this Temple, let the populace gaze in amazement as the Angels catch you in their arms...hypnotise the media with novelties and sensational gestures. Bow down and worship me, kowtow to the politburos and steering committees of this world, and I shall give you all the kingdoms of the earth. Peter did not yet see – would not allow himself to understand – that Our Lord's throne on this earth had to be a rough-hewn Cross; that His crown, at least until His return in Glory to judge the living and the dead, must be made of thorns bejewelled with clots of blood.
So what does this teach us? Most obviously, that popes are not ready-made saints. We need to pray for them, that they always make supernatural realities and salvation a priority; that God will assist them in teaching and governing the Church, so that She is aided to the full in Her mission of saving souls for everlasting life. In Peter, Our Lord would eventually make one of His most glorious and lovable saints out of what might have looked at the beginning like rather unpromising material. But if we flick through any respectable history of the Church for more than five minutes, we shall soon discover that some of Peter's successors have been utter scoundrels who inflicted a good deal of harm on the Mystical Body of Christ on earth during their tenures. In modern times we have come to expect clean-living popes as a matter of course, but only a fool would take them for granted.
Pray also for your bishops, and pray very much for us priests. The temptation to tone down the more stringent demands of the Gospel in favour of a comfortable life and a cosy relationship with the authorities of this world and the Zeitgeist to which these powers are in thrall is always a temptation to all us – of course it is. Pray that worn down by the desire for respectability, and intimidated by the tyranny of relativism that threatens to “cancel” anyone who steps out of line, we do not turn our faces away from the Cross and leave our flocks to the wolves.
Pray, also, for the grace and the strength that you will need yourselves to remain faithful, to be steadfast in holding to the Faith in all its full-bloodedness, to be patient and painstakingly thorough in countering the Woke brainwashing to which your children are quite likely being subjected at school. We might end up being crowned with the thorns of ridicule and crucified for daring to sing a different tune in this world. You might find the social services battering at the door if your children are found to be too well-versed in the Catechism. But we can be sure that, if we are willing to make sacrifices and suffer a little for our Holy Catholic Faith in this life, then there is a golden crown of everlasting life awaiting us in the life to come.
Father Julian Large