Prayer: the only revolt that ever remains standing

Austen Ivereigh admitting he's a bit of a "head-the-ball"

Austen Ivereigh over at Crux has written an article every line of which drips with a kind of prevenient cynicism. I utterly refuse to link to the site and create click-bait which will drive up their revenue. Still, I cannot help scratching my head at his brand of totalitarising contrariness.

In Ivereigh's account of the dubia crisis, those four pesky cardinals, their dubia and their lamentable followers have not a gnat pube's worth of sense, logic or grace on which to build their case. They are dissenters, akin to the pro-women priest lobby. They have rejected a Spirit-filled process and questioned the incontrovertible truth that whatever the Church does is what God wants; it's not just an infallible but an impeccable Church apparently.

Worse still, Ivereigh has seen their inner hearts and is disturbed by them. They are all hidebound by reason, this breed of self-regarding dolourists, who covert their own pain and then anaesthetise it with liturgy. They are also all totally forgetful of the fact that the Synod settled all these questions beyond doubt in favour of Communion for the divorced and remarried in certain circumstances.

But don't think that you can know why or how the Synod and Pope Francis did this. Asking for detail is casuistry. You cannot be told the principle to apply; you will only recognise it if you are a pastor. But in any case, it is not a principle. It is an understanding of the particularity of difficult cases that means somehow divine law can be suspended because, you know, even Jesus suspended the law, right?

Roma locuta, causa finita, Ivereigh says, and concludes that the train has left the station and your four pesky cardinals and every other 'dissenter' have just been left behind on the platform.

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I call this prevenient cynicism because no matter what your current reservation about Amoris Laetitia is, Ivereigh has been there before you, considered it all and educed the reasons that falsify everything you think. It's not just that the dissenters are wrong about Amoris Laetitia. They are wrong about everything. Their hearts are wrong. Their heads are wrong. Their sensibilities are wrong. They have not got any points to make. And thus they are being left behind on the station platform. They have made their own fate thus.

He tries to polish this turd of an argument by making allusions to 'friends' in the middle of it - how he has friends who think like this and how he is announcing to them their uselessness as an exercise in charity. But the effect is cold and he soon leaves off to return to his goodbye theme, presumably because it captures his feelings so well. The unbearable Burke and co. are on the platform as the Church's train pulls away from the station. Good riddance to bad rubbish.

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My only response to stuff like this these days is simply to counsel the quiet wisdom of the long game. Ivereigh is so keen to board this train that he has not stopped to think for a moment about the implications.  All these arguments about subjective culpability and obstacles to grace cannot only apply to those in second unions. Must they not also apply to the unmarried as well, because, you know, sometimes an unbelieving partner resists marriage while their devout Catholic partner longs for the Eucharist and sexual rights in equal measure? I mean, if subjective culpability can apply to believing Catholics who are not married after a real marriage, surely a fortiori, they can apply to those not married before a real marriage, capisce?  Is this not where the train is heading? And we all know the other 'hard cases' lurking behind those...

  Oh, but wait a minute, now I'm using my reason and following the implications of a principle, and that is not at all how this new station-hopping choo-choo Church works, at least not in Ivereigh's telling. I must suspend my mind. If I don't understand, it is a mystery to be accepted because the Spirit is with us. If I feel I understand it and therefore take issue with it, I'm guilty of using my mind too much. So says Ivereigh anyway. Let it not be said that he can be accused of the latter sin!

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But let me finish on a different note. Let's pray for Austen Ivereigh. His soul belongs to Jesus, and I'm not about to sit in judgment on it. I have my own soul to worry about.

But, by the same token, we should not underestimate this attempt to demoralise the supporters of the dubia. This article is only typical of a wider strategy of demoralisation that has accompanied the slow clarification of Amoris Laetitia. For ever since its real implications have begun to be drawn into the light, all questions and objections have been met with accusations of rigidity and pharisaism. Now, Ivereigh threatens them with irrelevance and redundancy. His counsel for future action? Resignation to the inevitable. Don't be left behind.

Personally, I feel the only resignation worth embracing is the resignation of prayer. We are in a maelstrom of chaos and nonsense, make no mistake about it. The rationality of the arguments is peeling off the Church's walls as quickly as it gets pasted up. We are surrounded by blather. We are taunted by cant.

So, what else is there to do but pray? Prayer is the resignation of the soul not to certain death but to the power of God in whatever circumstances. Prayer makes light of the doctors of abusive rhetoric. Prayer is a shield against certain despair.

I say it is resignation but that is only speaking from a divine perspective. From the human perspective it is revolt. And, as Bernanos remarks somewhere, prayer is the only revolt which can ever remain standing.