Catholicism Will Not Die

Our Lord promises to us that until the close of the age, the Catholic Church will not fall away and that, no matter what, the gates of Hell shall not prevail against her. I posit to you that Our Lord is right, that He is with us always, to the close of the age (Matthew 28:20). To suggest any other claim is to try to contradict Our Lord Jesus Christ, to try to use human reason to overcome the words of the Incarnate Second Person of the Trinity.

I do not intend to get into the controversies of the Second Vatican Council’s changes, for this is a topic I am neither educated enough to engage in nor desire to enter. Rather, I only intend to emphasize the essential crux of the Gospel: “Death is swallowed up in Victory” (1 Cor 15:54).

Regrettably, it is true that the Church has struggled over the past century. Catholic marriages have greatly decreased, nearly halving from 2000 to 2012. Priestly vocations have decreased, and lies about Catholic doctrine have polluted communities. However, I strongly disagree that it necessarily follows that the Catholic Church is dying; rather, for reasons outside of the Liturgy, it has entered into an apostolic age.

Venerable Bishop Fulton Sheen expressed this thought in 1974: “We are at the end of

Christendom, now not Christianity, not the Church.” To believe that the death of Christendom

implies the death of the Church is to make a grave error. Rather, we must accept that the world

no longer holds the values of the Church. Monsignor James Shea, President of the University of

Mary, expresses how in recognizing that “we have really entered an apostolic age” we must then

change the way in which we live our faith. We must exude the divine life of Christ and make

disciples of all nations.

To judge the Church solely by worldly standards, like the statistics above, is to reprehensibly forget about the immaterial spiritual state of the Church. The health of this state is largely connected to the faithful maintaining the three theological virtues: faith, hope, and charity. By worldly standards, one could remark that the early Church had moments in which it was ‘dying.’

However, death is not possible when one has faith, when one is born into the divine life of Christ, when one lives within His divine Sonship. The health of the Church rests here.

This is eminent in the lives of the saints. 

The year is 1559. The Protestant Reformation occurred well over 40 years before and Lutheranism has spread throughout almost all of Europe. In response to numerous heresies and a leaching of power, the Spanish Monarchy establishes the Spanish Inquisition. 

Caught between this was an innocent Dominican Priest, Fray Louis of Granada. His crime was writing books for the laity, teaching a common and general way of perfection for all states of life. Despite wrongly being accused of heresy, Father Fray Louis Granada chose not to turn inward; he chose not to complain, nor conclude that the Church was dying. 

Rather, he stayed faithful and continued to write books for the faithful until, and after, he was finally exonerated by the Council of Trent. Through his faith, hope, and love the same works that were deemed heretical by the Spanish Inquisition ended up drawing some of the Church’s most prominent Saints closer to the Lord, namely St. Francis de Sales and St. Teresa of Avila. 

Venerable Louis of Granada kept three things throughout this time: the theological

virtues, especially hope. In response to the current difficulties in the Church and the world, I invite you to hope like Louis of Granada. 

In keeping hope and trusting in the Church, we shall be remarked as men “given to the world by God for the great and universal good of souls,” just as St. Teresa of Avila remarks of Venerable Louis of Granada.