Two Towers

In the coming weeks, we will be posting segments from the text of John Meehan's Two Towers-the deChristianization of America and a Plan for Renewal here. We feel it is an important book deserving wide readership-and thus are putting it online in segments.

John Meehan is the co-founder and retired President of Magdalen College in Warner, NH. Without further words on our part, let us begin at the beginning....

Two Towers-the de-Christianization of America and a Plan for Renewal

(Ccpyright John Meehan 2005)

Preface

The Two Towers Explained
For too many years now, I have listened to questions from distraught, almost hopeless, lay people. Why does the Catholic Church in this country seem so wishy-washy? Why have so many young people stopped going to Mass? Why is there such a lack of reverence in church? What happened to priestly vocations? Why are parishes closing? Why is there so much scandal? How did this falling apart come about? What is the cause of this crisis? Who is responsible for it?

This book will attempt to address the substantive issue behind the questions above, and to offer a practical solution. It must be understood from the outset, however, that, while the exposure of sexual misconduct by a few priests and the administrative negligence of some bishops is certainly horrible and humiliating, that scandal is not the actual institutional crisis. The crisis is much deeper than and goes way beyond the sexual perversity of any priest or the malfeasance of any bishop. In my judgment, the crisis in the Catholic Church in America is de-Christianization, which is nothing else than the separation of two towers: the first being the tower of Faith, and the second being the tower of morals.

De-Christianization means that the tower of Faith has become disconnected from the tower of morals. The separation of the tower of Faith from the tower of morals is the taproot of de-Christianization in the United States. As with the destruction of the two towers in New York City on September 11, 2001, the disconnection of Faith from morals has a history and cultural force behind it: the how, why, what, and who, so to speak.

The twin towers of the World Trade Center were destroyed unexpectedly by a sinister force seeking cataclysmic damage to the economic and political infrastructure of this country. It is no less true that there has been a malevolent attempt to separate, and then to collapse, the two towers of Christendom: Faith and morals.

Let me describe the two towers. Scripturally grounded in our "Father in the Faith" — Abraham of the Old Testament — the tower of Faith is cemented firmly in an ancient heritage and a long-standing tradition. Moses, the Law, and the prophets are its girders. The apostles, the Gospels, and papal succession are its framework. Church councils, ex cathedra declarations, and the lives of saintly men and women are its exterior covering. The Eucharistic Sacrifice, seven sacraments, and Liturgy of the Hours are its interior activity. Comprised of sacred scripture, apostolic tradition, and a living magisterium, this tower is called by the Roman Catholic Church the "Deposit of Faith."

The architectural plan of the tower of morals is found in the order of Creation. Due to the Original Sin of Adam and Eve, the construction of this tower required "hands-on" experience and supernatural intervention. Thus, the erection of the tower of morals proceeded ever so slowly during a near 3,000-year course of Western history. Cost overruns, as it were, came from a long record of unjust laws imposed by a variety of oppressive political regimes and a lack of cultural consensus regarding right ethical behavior. To complete construction of this tower, a common codification of Church and secular law was necessary if the tower of morals was to settle into a recognizable hall of legal justice. The Judeo-Christian system of organizing and directing public and private life by way of Divine Law and the natural law is the foundation supporting the edifice. The administration of just laws is its framework. Human statutes are its exterior covering. Equal protection under law is its interior activity.

Standing side-by-side, the tower of Faith and the tower of morals have served as sturdy pillars of civilized living in most parts of the Western world.

Postscript

This written work is not a scholarly treatise. It is a brief account of the historical and cultural experiences of a layman who seeks to give solace to every childlike believer who has suffered silently in the pew of a parish church. Childlike believers have agonized because they refused to be defined by any other reference point than their identity as baptized Catholics. In context, their inner suffering has been a muted cry for real freedom.

The cruelest response to the pain of childlike-believing lay people has been the attempt to explain their suffering away with prepackaged psychological or sociological answers from the secular world. But, childlike believers chose not to descend into the hollow pit of human ideas. Rather, they elected to embrace a life of interior freedom through personal prayer, hoping that their children and grandchildren would be spared the agony of baptismal loneliness, a deeply-felt spiritual wound that is hell to endure.

With the strongest possible emphasis, let me state that to be childlike does not mean to be childish or naive, that is to say, a baptized person is to be neither irrational nor simple-minded:

Let the little children come to me; do not stop them; for it is to such as these that the Kingdom of God belongs. I tell you solemnly, anyone who does not welcome the Kingdom of God like a little child will never enter it. (Mk 10:14-15)

To be childlike means to have a baptismal instinct for the realities found in revealed truths:

The whole company of the faithful, who have an anointing by the Holy Spirit, cannot err in faith. They manifest this distinctive characteristic of theirs in the supernatural instinct of faith (sensus fidei) of the whole people when, from the bishops to the most ordinary lay person among the faithful, they display a universal agreement on matters of Faith and morals. (Dogmatic Constitution on the Church, no.4)

Childlike believers are the baptized who possess a sincere belief in the Person of Jesus Christ and His divinely-founded Catholic Church. The future Pope Benedict XVI, Josef Cardinal Ratzinger, while Prefect of the Sacred Congregation of the Faith and Doctrine in Rome, extolled the fidelity and docility of childlike believers:

The universal Catholic Church still lives also on the enormous strength of those people who are humble believers. In this sense, the great host of those who need love and who give love is indeed her true treasure: simple people who are capable of truth because, as the Lord says, they have remained children. Through all the changes of history, they have retained their perception of what is essential.

With profound fraternal love, this book is dedicated to childlike believers, lay people who see and live by the light of Faith.