My new book The Faith Unboxed will be released on March 20. It is available to pre-order now from Amazon, Barnes & Noble, or direct from the publisher, and I encourage you all to buy a copy. A major Croatian publishing house has already expressed interest in a Croatian-language edition, and I hope to see the book translated into other languages as well. The themes I explore throughout the book will be of interest to everyone who follows our project at the Spe Salvi Institute, and I share below an excerpt that is particularly relevant to our interest in the European past, present, and future of the idea of Christian culture throughout the world.
As a Western man, I believe it is no accident that the seat of the Catholic Church is in Europe. Indeed, Western civilization and the Catholic Church go hand in hand.
Although the Faith has spread to the ends of the earth and, in some cases, is much more vibrant in far-flung places than in the Old World, it is folly to abandon the idea of a Western Christian society. Rather, it is the Roman—i.e. Western, Catholic faith that has transformed many different cultures on other continents. Happily, some of these cultures are now able to reinvigorate the West with the same message that the West once brought to them.
Perhaps the most important part of the witness back to the secular West from African and Asian nations, in particular, is the martyrdom that Catholics and other Christians experience in a context where Church institutions are embattled, if they exist at all. For the most part, persecution and martyrdom happen either in non-Christian authoritarian states that deem any religion a threat (China and North Korea, for example) or from Islamist groups and governments whose totalizing vision of religion excludes the gospel of Jesus Christ.
A Catholic group called Aid to the Church in Need reported that in 2021 and the first part of 2022, 5,000 Christians were killed in various attacks for their faith. In the year 2018, ninety percent of Christians killed for their faith worldwide were Nigerian, and most of them were killed by the Islamist group Boko Haram, according to Ray Cavanagh in an article for Catholic World Report. Nonetheless, or perhaps as a result, there are now almost thirty-two million baptized Catholics in Nigeria, representing fifteen percent of the population, as reported by The Pillar. The bloody testimony of Catholic Nigerians poses the question to Catholics in the West, where religion is private and institutional: Would we keep it up if there were a decent chance of being killed?
We may soon find out.
Sadly, the still Christ-haunted secular West is experiencing its own attacks, which are certainly smaller in comparison to Nigeria’s plight, but all the more shocking because they are taking place not only on soil supposedly claimed for religious toleration but even more significantly in lands where the Catholic Church was once an indisputable way of life. Perhaps the most infamous example in recent years was the murder of the French priest, Fr. Jacques Hamel, in 2016. While celebrating Mass in a church in the northern French
city of Rouen, Hamel’s throat was cut by terrorists sponsored by the group Islamic State. Four men were convicted of terrorist conspiracy in 2022, and the cause for Hamel’s sainthood is now active, with his former church serving as something of a pilgrimage site. France, once known as “the eldest daughter of the Church,” is now an officially non-Christian secular country, with a ten percent Muslim population that is not particularly interested in a neutral, religion-free public square.
It seems likely that France, along with the rest of Europe and perhaps even the United States, will continue to see martyrdom in the years to come. Nonetheless, the greatest enemy of the Faith is not the violent designs of other religions’ extremists, but rather the indifference of Western society to the truth claims of the Catholic Church. If Catholics thought of their faith as more than a personal choice made possible by institutional structures like churches and schools, they would stand up and mount a challenge to the enemies of Christian culture in the way some medieval and early modern Europeans did.
Although we are coming up short today on figures like Charles Martel and Jan Sobieski, it is still better to chart a course back toward Christian civilization—indeed, toward a Catholic society—instead of either surrendering to a merely personal religion or morbidly anticipating a return to the catacombs. If underground Christianity should become our only option, then so be it. But why go down without a fight, however foolhardy it may seem? People stand up to preserve institutions all the time. How much more sensible is it to insist on the perseverance of a society marked by something much greater than any institution could hope to be?
Ironically, as all institutions fail in the West, the Catholic Church may have an opportunity to reclaim its identity as the ground of communal life, even where communities are smaller and more intentional than a society-wide “people.” Just as the ancient Israelites bided their time in Babylon, with a faithful remnant keeping the candle of their God-given identity burning until they could return to a YHWH-centered society, so too should Catholics in the West today hold tight to our once-great cultural heritage in anticipation of its renewal. Catholics who really understand that the Catholic Church is not an institution may help lead the way in the long project of re-establishing a Catholic community that sets the tone for the rest of a nation.
In his prophetic lecture from 1939 called “The Idea of a Christian Society,” the Anglican T.S. Eliot described this faithful remnant as “the Community of Christians.” He noted that these people would be “composed of both clergy and laity, of the more conscious, more spiritually and intellectually developed of both.” Because the Catholic Church is not itself just an institution, the “Community of Christians” can evaluate the Church’s institutions for their value among a renewed people of God of a larger scale.
A while back, I mentioned the Cathedral of Notre Dame in Reims, France. I want now to say something about the more famous Notre Dame in Paris.
On April 15, 2019, I had been a Roman Catholic for 109 days, and I was in the thick of unemployment after resigning my ministry in the Episcopal Church. Every day was difficult, but I was spiritually attentive, looking for and expecting God’s provision every day. But on that day, I stood at the television set in horror as one of the greatest symbols of Christian civilization went up in flames. The burning of Notre Dame remains all the more heartbreaking—and consonant with the ever-encroaching nihilism of our age—because there is no clear explanation for what happened. It appears not to have been terrorism or malice. It just burned. And although Catholics and non-Catholics worldwide rejoice that the building has been restored more or less to glory, the images of Notre Dame’s near demise are illustrative.
On the one hand, obviously the Catholic Church in France—let alone elsewhere on earth—would have endured even if Notre Dame had been reduced to rubble. There would still have been thousands of functioning churches—great ones, small ones, and everything in between. Contrast this fact with what happened to Judaism after the destruction of the Temple a few decades after the life of Christ. Contrast too with what would become of Islam if Mecca disappeared. Christianity is more than any one building or location, however important.
But it is worth considering that the extraordinary beauty and storied history of buildings like Notre Dame point beyond the world to heaven. In other words, we need Notre Dame because it shows us how an entire city and nation once did and could again revolve around a work of human hands that has an otherworldly purpose. Moreover, although few other buildings on earth rival Notre Dame’s symbolic value, its existence gives every sacred building—and indeed, every sacred institution rooted in the Catholic Church—something to aspire to. Notre Dame survived the Protestant Reformation and the French Revolution. Today, it still stands amid the official secularism of la France laïque, representing the ongoing encounter with the living God who has revealed much more to humanity than an institution.
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