George Weigel

During the 2001 Synod of Bishops, Cardinal Francis George of Chicago, who’d suffered through a lot of synodal speechifying and small-group discussions over the years, made a trenchant observation: “Jesus Christ didn’t intend his Church to be governed by a committee.”

Out on the Kansas plains, he was just turning 21 when the Second Vatican Council promulgated its “Dogmatic Constitution on the Church” (Lumen Gentium) and its “Decree on the Pastoral Office of the Bishops in the Church” (Christus Dominus). So it’s unlikely that the fathers of Vatican II had Charles Joseph Chaput in mind when they described the ideal diocesan bishop in the third millennium of Christian history – an evangelist, sanctifier and governor who would accept those weighty responsibilities so that the gospel might be proposed for the salvation of the world.

If you’re feeling a bit down about the future of Catholicism in the United States, ask yourself these questions: Why haven’t American seminaries emptied over the past 16 months, as Crisis 2.0 continues to roil the U.S. church and an aggressive media regularly puts Catholicism in the worst possible public light? Why haven’t the McCarrick affair, the Pennsylvania grand jury report, the Bransfield affair, and other revelations of episcopal misgovernance (and worse) caused a mass exodus of young men from priestly formation? Can you name another profession, regularly subjected to media ridicule and popular caricature, to which young men are applying in greater numbers than 20 years ago?

Throughout the 20th century – the greatest period of martyrdom in history – persecuted Christians used the dross of this world to make religious artifacts.