Wresting Opportunity Out of the Jaws of Crisis

The two words feel connected. Crisis and Opportunity. Despite the long-term error inherent in the claim that the Chinese character for crisis signifies opportunity, our own experience can reveal the law of contradiction expressed in the paradoxical relationship.

Each of us over the age of thirty-five has faced that moment when our backs are to the wall: Cornered, trapped, no options. Whether the catalyst was the loss of a job, a loved one or something priceless, we can feel the dry mouth, accelerated heart rate and other signs of panic instantly, if we revisit past crises. Regardless of how long ago, the memories remain salient, as if they happened yesterday, rather than decades ago. Maybe some of us can recall the intuition that there was something big going on here, the glimmering of understanding that something greater was opening up. Even through the grief or fear, we could grasp a sense of an opportunity for something brand new. Certainly, this has been true for me during a wide variety of personal calamities: The nightmare of every doctoral student where one dissertation committee member shows up at the defense only to announce that he will not approve the study. Getting fired from a highly visible job, the ending of marriage, the list is endless.

To our stunned surprise, we make it through to the other side. We learn that the future largely depends on us, like the popular song paraphrasing Nietzsche, ‘whatever doesn’t kill you makes you stronger.’

I see this same oppositional tension between crisis and opportunity happening now in the Catholic Church and in our country as a whole. Galvanized by an election year some claim as the most contentious in American history, the lines between orthodox Catholics and their opponents are drawn in the sand. The divide has been there for decades, perhaps centuries, but with the introduction of twenty-first-century media, what might once have been considered trivial becomes fuel for verbal combat.

I became a Christian Catholic during the mid-nineties persecution of Cardinal Bernard Law. The mile-high headlines in the Boston Globe were impossible to disregard. As were the acrimonious television advertisements by the law firm looking for victims. The 2016 election brought back those recollections when I read and listened to the thoughts of other Catholics, particularly those who seemed to choose ideology over obedience. Likewise, the well-publicized and seemingly endless protests against the new President and everything he says or does.

So where is the opportunity here, the possibility of ‘something else’?

Several years ago my spiritual director and I were getting to know one another, establishing the ground rules of our relationship, clarifying, if you will, what each should expect from the other. After hearing me explain what it had been like as a brand new Catholic during those years in Boston, Fr. Paul surprised - actually stunned- me when he declared that periodically the Church had to be cleansed. The Catholic Church was healthier than before, he claimed, for having gone through the sexual crisis. Further explaining that he recalled that as a boy, Pre-Vatican II Saturday morning confessions were so routine that they were devoid of contrition. In this 'post Christian' culture, Father Paul asserted, Catholics seek confession out of sincere repentance rather than cultural expectation.

Indeed.

The Democrat Party has held attraction from my very first vote for George McGovern. But the ideology of the Democrat Party regarding ‘abortion on demand’ became abhorrent since my conversion and, at long last, dealing with the consequences of my own abortion.

Surely, I was not unique in seriously considering voting for a third party candidate or just not voting. Strangely, it was the now infamous communication John Podesta and John Halpin series of emails which caused me to rethink my interest in the Libertarian Party. Halpin’s criticism about Catholics who poorly understand Thomistic thought and ‘throw around terms like subsidiarity’ got my attention as much, perhaps more, than did the abortion-on-demand platform of the Democrat Party. Ironically, his comments helped me decide.

One of the advantages of the convert is often our personal experience of life without faith or, in my case, without belief in God. We know first-hand the futility of seeking truth in the world, of living life according to godless ideas. Consequently, we gladly study the teachings, and writings of the Catholic Church in depth. Despite education and years of spiritual direction, the concepts of subsidiarity or solidarity were foreign to me. Once I understood these two vital components of Catholicism, social justice seemed linked with the current governmental policies in ways I have found personally confusing. Grasping the concept of subsidiarity grounded my increasing discomfort with the government as the primary dispenser of charity to those in need, its increasing deprecation of the critical role of work in enhancing the dignity of man and as self-proclaimed moral arbiter. In short, with the ideology of the Democrat Party.

Weeks of intense prayer for the will of God during these divisive days have brought me peace and a deeper understanding of the power and confounding mystery of our Lord. And during those times when ‘breaking news’ evokes fear for this country, I whisper, ‘Lord, help me in my unbelief.”