Dealing with Despair over the State of the Church

I stumbled upon this homily by Fr. Chad Ripperger, FSSP . He makes some very good points about the reactions “traditionalists” might have to the liturgical abuses and lack of catechesis, etc., they see in the Church. For instance, he notes:

…[I]t's very easy for traditionalists, I think, to become depressed, or to suffer despair, because they see by the grace of God, no less, all the problems within the Church. And yet, we must be very careful that when we see how bad everything is that we do not judge things by excess.

...I]f we have a passion in relationship to these things, that passion drags us to excess or defect in our judgment. And so we have to be very careful not to let sorrow overtake our judgment of how bad everything is – in the sense of looking at things and saying that we're all doomed, or suffering from despair.

Sometimes, because of how bad things are, traditionalists will allow anger to consume their life by viewing the Church. That is, every time they think of the Church, they get angry at the things that various people do within the Church. We have to be very careful to not allow the problems in the Church to affect our spiritual life.

I found his words very helpful, as I do at times find myself falling into a bit of despair over the state of the Church. And I do experience that anger he’s talking about as well!

Fr. Ripperger emphasizes that our ability to see the problems in the Church comes only from the grace of God. He points out that our suffering is real, but that we must strive to maintain humility and charity in our reactions to that suffering and those who cause it by their actions in the Church.

You can listen to the entire homily (about 13 minutes) here. I have also transcribed the homily, and present it below. I apologize to Fr. Ripperger in advance for any errors; in places I have edited the actual spoken words slightly for ease in reading. All emphases are mine.

*********

“Do not let the sun go down on your anger, do not give place to the devil.” In the name of the Father and the Son and the Holy Ghost. Amen.

As traditionalists, we have to be very careful never to go to excess or defect in our reactions to things like the state of the Church, to what people say, things of this sort. And there are certain excesses and defects, which as traditionalists, it's very easy for us to fall into. And so we must constantly be on guard against them. For, of course, virtue lies in the mean between excess and defect, but even more so, we want to know what the truth is and to lead a life according to that truth in a perfect manner.

And so I think it would be good for us to take a look at the defects which traditionalists very often suffer, to just see whether we have these defects; and if so, take the means to avoid them. There are a number of them, but I think we'll just stick with a few.

The first is that it's very easy for traditionalists, I think, to become depressed, or to suffer despair, because they see by the grace of God, no less, all the problems within the Church. And yet, we must be very careful that when we see how bad everything is, that we do not judge things by excess. So. for instance, sometimes you'll see traditionalists – not all of them, not the faithful ones, of course, but some of them who argue that the Novus Ordo Mass is invalid, or that there is no Pope, for instance with the sedevacantists.

But we all know that it's very easy when we see these things that are bad, to judge by excess. St. Thomas tells us that when we judge things intellectually, we judge things based with what we see in our imagination, that is, what we experience. And so if we have a passion in relationship to these things, that passion drags us to excess or defect in our judgment. And so we have to be very careful not to let sorrow overtake our judgment of how bad everything is – in the sense of looking at things and saying that we're all doomed, or suffering from despair.

Sometimes because of how bad things are, traditionalists will allow anger to consume their life by viewing the Church. That is, every time they think of the Church, they get angry at the things that various people do within the Church. We have to be very careful to not allow the problems in the Church to affect our spiritual life. If these problems begin to cause us to, for instance, detract against the members of the Magisterium or things like this, then we have to be very careful that if we see that, that we do what is necessary in order to put an end to it.

Now very often, what that means is that if we start seeing things are so bad, we have to get our mind off of it for a while just so that we don't end up being drawn into this excess of being angry and end up doing things that we should not. Now that doesn't mean that we're ignorant of the situation; it doesn't mean you put blinders on. It just means that when you see some defect in the Church that you should see that as God revealing it to you because He gives you the grace to see it, so that you can recognize it and then do something about it, that is to pray for those who cause the problem.

"We must have a detachment from the idea of a
healthy Church...if God wants us to suffer it, we accept it
in humility..."

We also need to have a detachment even from the idea of a healthy Church – even though we must strive for the Church to be healthy. In other words, the Church is our means to God, and so when we see members of the Church who are spiritually dysfunctional, let us put it that way, or just disordered, we have to be very careful not to let that distract us from growing in holiness, and so we should seek a certain detachment from the members, that is from seeing things in perfect order. Not that we shouldn't strive for it, but that if God wants us to suffer it, we accept it in humility.

We must also be detached from vindication. St. Thomas says that anger is a complex passion. That is, we have a certain sorrow, we suffer some harm, or we're afflicted with some harm, which all of us are by virtue of this state of the Church; and so, from that anger can arise [a situation] in which we seek the vindication of the harm that's been caused to us. In that particular case we have to be careful we have a detachment from the desire for vindication. We have to recognize that in the end, God will straighten it out, and every person will pay the last farthing.

We have to be sure that the problems in the Church do not affect our charity. If it does, then we have to, again, get our minds off of it.

We also have to be careful about detracting against the Magisterium. Now, the moralists say that we can say something negative or say something that takes away from someone's reputation only if there are three conditions that are met. The first is that it proceeds from charity, that you should do it for the love of God – not for the love of vindication, not for the love of getting your appetite sated – but out of true charity. That is, it's being done for the sake of a person who has the defect.

Second, it has to be just. We don't exaggerate it, we don't diminish it; we say it precisely to the degree that is necessary. Which brings up the third one: it has to be necessary. We have to be very careful in getting together and gossiping and complaining about the state of the Church and the various members of the Church to sate our own desire, that is vindication; or sate our own desires to see their reputation lessened in some way. Rather we have to only speak about these things when it's necessary, either for our salvation or for the spiritual well-being of someone else. And we have to be very careful about this detraction because very often people will detract against members of the Magisterium, meanwhile committing the sin of omission for not praying for the priests, bishops, and the pope who may have these defects.

Pray for the Pope!

We must also be careful not to allow our filial devotion to the office of the Papacy to wane. Now, clearly you have to make a distinction between the man who might occupy that office, and the office itself. Even St. Peter had defects; that's clear in the Gospels. But that doesn't detract from the fact that he's still the Pope; he has an awesome responsibility, and therefore we must pray for him. And if we find that we start getting to the point where we don't even want to look at him, we don't even want to listen to him, we don't even want to hear him, then in that particular case we need to start working on our charity and start praying for him.

We cannot give in also to the vice of curiosity. Sometimes, traditionalists know there's a problem and they want to understand the problem better, which is a legitimate desire; but sometimes, it gives way to a type of curiosity in which one just constantly goes around seeking to find out everything that's wrong because you're suffering from what they're doing and so you want to see everything that they're doing wrong so that you feel nice about it. You have to be very careful about this because this type of curiosity can destroy our faith if we're not careful. And it can also affect us psychologically and spiritually, which is clearly demonic, because the demons will use the defects in the Church in order to distract us from advancing in our spiritual life.

We have an obligation to protect our faith and sometimes that even means avoiding people who tell us the truth, for which we are unprepared psychologically, spiritually, and intellectually. In other words, if we know, in reading a book, that it's going to end up affecting our faith or end up [hurting] our spiritual life, then we have to avoid it. Period. Not because of the truth that's involved – we don't avoid the truth as such – but because of our own state.

Again while we have to be aware of the problems of the Church, I don't think you have to read a whole lot to be aware of it. If God's given you the grace to see the problems, it's a good thing to read knowledgeable priests who understand the situation and will proceed according to charity and truth, and present the problem clearly, than to read people who are very acrimonious about the state of the Church.

We must also be careful because sometimes this curiosity will end up burning up the time that should be spent reading the saints, or educating ourselves in the faith. It is too easy to get wrapped up in the problems in the Church, rather than just instruct ourselves in the faith. That's why I don't personally spend a whole lot of time reading books about the state of the Church. I already know what the problems are, usually better than the author does. And that's the reason I don't spend too much time. But from time to time, it's necessary for the priest to be knowledgeable about these things, so he can tell people whether it's a good book or not. But at the same time, as a priest myself, and also you as a laymen, your obligation is to know the faith, not to know the problems - even though that's necessary to avoid losing your faith. But your principle obligation is to educate yourself in your faith, and if these things are going to detract from that obligation, then you have to put them aside. So the point is, read books that teach you more about the faith, not what just tell you all the problems.

We can also see a bit of a problem because traditionalists are hurt or because they want to see the truth, and because they have a love for the truth and for what the Church teaches, they will very often engage in argumentation which we are not intellectually prepared for out of a desire to defend what we know is true. Now we have to careful about this. Obviously, we have an obligation to defend the truth according to prudence of course; we don't defend it in every circumstance because sometimes that'll actually cause things to be worse. But at the same time, we have to defend the truth to the degree that we are able, but if we start recognizing that we're getting a bit in over our head, we have to kind of step back and ask somebody who knows better to engage in that argumentation.

I'll give you an example of this. There was a case of an article that recently appeared on a website that talked about homophobia, and it gave an etymology of the term homophobia saying “homo” came from man and phobia came from fear. The person didn't even know what they were talking about. “Homo” is the Latin derivation, not the Greek, and psychological terms are in Greek, so the “homo” means "same" - it's fear of homosexuals. The person got it completely wrong. And so I got to the first line and recognized this person doesn't know what they're talking about, so I just didn't even finish reading the article. So the point is that you have to be very careful and I see this a bit more with laity more than - and even priests, because you see this even with priests, but more so with laity who...they'll take the time very often to research the subject, for instance some aspect of ecclesiology or something like that, but very often they're unaware of a broader understanding of it and so they make rather egregious problems.

So what does this mean? It means that we have to defend the faith but we're only obligated to defend the faith to the degree of our ability. And we should know that limitation and not go beyond it.

We have to be sure that we do not always seek to beat people over the head with the truth, either – for example, about the state of the Church. Granted, we're suffering, very often at the very hands of the people we're supposed to be charitable to, but … just because God gave us a grace to see the problem, that doesn't give us license to beat people over the head who can't see it. We must accept that some people simply aren't going to get it, because they do not have the grace. Or that, when we see that they don't get it, we have to engage in some type of prayer, fasting, or mortification, or some type of good works so that we can merit the grace for them to see it.

We also have to be very careful about when we're able to see it because of the grace which comes from God. We have to be careful that this doesn't provide an ego trip for us – that somehow, we're better, that we know this; other people don't know it, we're just the elite, we're just much better. The fact that God gives you the grace to see it – because nobody can see it without God's grace – is a sign it didn't come from you so there is no foundation for you being proud. Rather what it is, is God showing you the problem. And so, as a result, because it comes from grace, we are humbled at the fact that we're so blind that we can't see it without God giving us the grace.

And so, what do we have to do? If we're going to approach the situation in the Church and to help people, and to be the best thing that we can for the state of the Church, we have to grow in holiness. But we have to also be meek, so that we don't become angry; we have to have a certain humility so that we're not proud; we have to have a certain charity so we don't abuse people; but at the same time we have to beg God for the fortitude to struggle against the disastrous state of the Church so that it doesn't affect our faith, and so that we can be faithful to Him to the end.

In the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Ghost. Amen.