Cry Baby Church

The Infantilization of American Catholics

I have never heard a homily on the following verses from St. Paul’s letter to the Ephesians.  I think it’s because of the infantilization of the American Church.

Paul writes …

So Christ himself gave the apostles, the prophets, the evangelists, the pastors and teachers, to equip his people for works of service, so that the body of Christ may be built up until we all reach unity in the faith and in the knowledge of the Son of God and become mature, attaining to the whole measure of the fullness of Christ.

Then we will no longer be infants, tossed back and forth by the waves, and blown here and there by every wind of teaching and by the cunning and craftiness of people in their deceitful scheming. Instead, speaking the truth in love, we will grow to become in every respect the mature body of him who is the head, that is, Christ. - Ephesians 4:11-15.

My paraphrase / gloss …

Christ has built up His own Body (which is the Church, the community of Christians) by providing this community (or communion) with many members with a variety of gifts - and this is for a reason.  This reason is not merely Beyond this world (“heaven” or the “Kingdom of God”).  The reason, the end, the goal toward which Christ is equipping and building up His Church is a reason that is also of this age: earthly and temporal; and this reason is our full development, here and now, “in Christ”.  The reason is not “once saved; always saved” or “go to Mass and earn a free pass”.  The reason is to become an adult, to grow up, to mature in unity “in Christ” - into, in fact, “the whole measure of the fullness of Christ”.

We have started out as babies (elsewhere, Paul says, I want to give you solid food, but I have to feed you milk because you are still infants in the Faith, when you should by now be adults), but if we remain as babies in the Faith, then here’s what will happen.  We will be tossed here and there by disturbances which are fomented (stirred up) by charlatans, grifters and scoundrels who use their “cunning and craftiness” in their “deceitful scheming”, taking advantage of our immature gullibility.

This encapsulates the purpose of the communal or social element of the Faith.  We are not merely saved as individuals, but in a community, the job of which community is to make us grow the hell up.

But in what ways is that happening in the American Church?  Rather than helping to form us into such spiritual maturity, on the contrary, the Church in this country often coddles our infantile status, so that we do indeed become dupes, marks and Charlies for the charlatans who are stirring up the waters.

For instance, the very worst public Catholic in America, the insipid and intellectually vulgar Bishop Strickland, one of only a handful of bishops worldwide removed by Pope Francis - the Pro-Big-Lie, anti-vax, Q-Anon swallowing, “the pope is not a valid pope and may actually be the antichrist, or so my friends say, wink-wink” insurrection-cheering fired-from-his-post Bishop Strickland - is now the darling of the MAGA morons, who are lauding him on the Disgraced Bishop Lecture Circuit.  He has, in fact, been booked and promoted, hailed and celebrated by yet another Catholic “apostolate” that I have been associated with but am now distancing myself from (I’m 0 for 6 at this point in Catholic Apostolates that I once trusted and worked closely with).

How is it that the Body of Christ as a community has helped these people, these “infants, tossed about by the waves and wind” of spurious and absurd doctrine and puerile politics?  If anything, the Church in America is enabling the ongoing infantilization of our fellow Christians, the way the Church enabled sex abuse, by looking the other way or by providing cover.  If Christ, according to St. Paul, gives the Church gifts so that the Church may grow in knowledge of, unity with and maturity in Him, then His gifts are being squandered right and left.

In fairness, however, I do have a handful of Catholic friends left who seem to take their faith seriously and who strive for sanity as well as sanctity.  Maybe they’re the ecclesia abscondita, the hidden Church, in the midst of the ugly public one that horrified normal people are abandoning in droves.

… except that the ugly public one did fire Bishop Strickland.  So there’s hope.