More hopeful reflections

I blogged a bit about some reasons for hope yesterday, but got distracted by domestics while writing (domestic issues, not domestic servants, since you ask). So the thoughts were not as well formulated, or as comprehensive, as I had planned.

So today, whilst occupied with other duties, I remembered several other points I had intended to make, and indeed some of the pithy and engaging ways in which I was going to put them across.

However, now I finally have the time to sit and write, all those words, they seem to slip away. 

Still, I will do what I can to articulate them - and as with yesterday's post, this is as much a memo to self as anything else.

But I really do think that there are more reasons for being hopeful than I mentioned yesterday.

One is simply that the battle lines are much clearer now. There are more bishops unmistakably on the side of orthodoxy, and others more clearly taking up mistaken positions. That in itself is an improvement, I think, on the more confused state of affairs over the last decades.

There is also the fact that the confused generation of those who lived through the turmoil of the changes of the 60s and 70s are no longer the only, or even the dominant, voice in the Church.

There is the rise of the strongly orthodox leadership from the less privileged parts of the globe, forged in the fire of real faith and real persecution, who see the dilettante posturing of some liberal bishops in North Western Europe and the US for what it is.

There is the growing number of young people committed to orthodoxy, unscarred by old battles, who look at tradition without jaundice and see much that is good there.

There are even in the decadent NW Europe, and US, several courageous bishops who really believe, and who are leading their flock, despite the opposition of some of their peers.

There are countless good and holy priests and religious, quietly getting on with their vocations.

And there is a growing body of laity, increasingly connecting with each other, supporting and encouraging each other, whether formally through some of the new movements or informally through friendships and even the samizdat of social media; families who are finding that they are not, in fact, alone in striving to raise their kids as Catholic in a rather more comprehensive way than is normative in the average parish.

And, as Mother Teresa remarked, we are not required to win - only to remain faithful...

And the gates of Hell shall not prevail.