The Heart of the Matter: What to Do?

Part 14 of 14 – This series of columns is based on the work of Fr. Chad Ripperger that analyzes the spirits of the past six generations and how those spirits have affected the Church.  We only ask that you consider whether his descriptions are true in a general sense, even if they do not describe you or people you know.

Fr. Ripperger’s summarizes his six-generation overview by pointing out the fruit today of the two generational spirits of incommuniction and unwillingness to suffer.

From a simple generation gap between the Lost Generation who never fully communicated the virtue of appropriating suffering, to the “Greatest” Generation in which the willingness to suffer was never embraced. . . . a spiritual and moral collapse of a society, the likes of which have not been seen for some time, is reaching its zenith. From a simple spirit which enticed a generation to reject suffering, to allow their children to be indulged, they set the subsequent generations on a path that they most likely would never have imagined. The generation is coming which will be the full inversion of the tradition passed on both in and out of the Church. (all quotes taken from Latin Mass magazine, summer 2012)

What to do about this societal moral collapse that has emptied our churches was not within the purview of Fr. Ripperger’s article.  Its value is in showing us a more complete picture of what we are dealing with.  It is up to us to take this information and form it into something that addresses, not the symptoms, but the roots of the problem.  Some of the questions we must address are below.  How do we. . .

  • offer Christ’s salvation to people who don’t think they are sinning?
  • establish the need to connect with Tradition to those who disdain it?
  • retain standards of right and wrong in a society that opposes morality?
  • curb curiosity in the occult in people who see no harm in it?
  • lead people to embrace Truth in a world where everything is relative?
  • maintain the Church’s authority when everything is viewed subjectively?
  • help people to understand that love is something other than the pursuit of pleasure?

May God guide as we seek to re-evangelize a world that has lost its way.

 The grass withers, the flower wilts, but the word of our God stands forever. (Isaiah 40:8)