My wife and I spent Saturday this past weekend at the Archdiocese of St. Paul and Minneapolis’ Newly Married Retreat (0-7 years or marriage). Outside of the marriage-related takeaways, I came away with two main thoughts:

1. We, as Catholics, should expect persecution. From Obergefell, to states expanding abortion, to the widespread disdain laid bare against Catholics (Covington Catholic), to the open persecution of Catholic beliefs as bigoted that render one unfit for public service, this ain’t stopping. It’s easy to become discouraged that the line in the sand has been drawn (the world and the left against Catholicism) and we appear to be losing. We should expect this to continue. The forces of evil will not stop. Persecution may look different now than it did in the past, but it is persecution nonetheless. And we need saints and martyrs (maybe not in the literal sense) to step up. We must speak truth to power and model beauty and truth in our lives.
2. We are the counter-culture, and that’s okay (and maybe even good). Married millennial? Whatever floats your boat. Not using contraceptives? Oh, you’re one of those people. Oppose abortion? You hate women. Etc. Etc. As Ross Douthat put it recently: “It was the church’s own leadership that decided, in the years following the Second Vatican Council, that the attachment to the church as culture had become an impediment to the mission of preaching the gospel in the modern world. It was the leadership that embraced a different approach, in which Catholic Christianity would seek to enter more fully into modern culture, adopting its styles and habits — modernist and even brutalist church architecture, casual dress, guitar music, a general suburban and Protestant affect, etc. — in order to effectively transform it from within. It was the leadership that decided that much . . . Catholicism’s cultural glory — the old Mass above all, but also a host of customs and costumes and rituals — needed to be retired in order to reach people in a more disenchanted age . . . The path forward for the Catholic Church in the modern world is extraordinarily uncertain. But there is no plausible path that does not involve . . . more of what once made Catholicism both great and weird, and could yet make it both again.”

So I’m not sure (no one is right now) where the Church is going. And that’s unsettling and somewhat scary. But my working plan for keeping holy and trying to glorify God is to continue my overall withdraw from the modern world. While I am not perfect–I watched the Super Bowl yesterday; I still have the smartphone addiction that I am trying to break; I get caught up in The Controversy of the Day–I do know this: the things that make me and my family feel satisfied (praying, reading, being outside, spending time together, listening to good music) are mostly free and mostly things people could have done 400 years ago.

“Finally, draw your strength from the Lord and from his mighty power. Put on the armor of God so that you may be able to stand firm against the tactics of the devil. For our struggle is not with flesh and blood but with the principalities, with the powers, with the world rulers of this present darkness, with the evil spirits in the heavens. Therefore, put on the armor of God, that you may be able to resist on the evil day and, having done everything, to hold your ground. So stand fast with your loins girded in truth, clothed with righteousness as a breastplate, and your feet shod in readiness for the gospel of peace. In all circumstances, hold faith as a shield, to quench all [the] flaming arrows of the evil one. And take the helmet of salvation and the sword of the Spirit, which is the word of God.”–Ephesians 6:10-17.

Related posts:

“Nones” Podcasts to check out: part 1 Rejoice for a Baptism