The Crisis in the Church is a Judgement from God

The Message of the Prophetic Books

In the midst of their commentaries on Sacred Scripture, the Fathers and theologians were masters at deriving the spiritual senses of a given passage. Very frequently, I come across gems when reading these authors—helpful reflections on my own life and on the life of the Church.

I came across one of these earlier and went down a bit of a rabbit hole on a very important motif among Catholic authors: rain as doctrine and clouds as preachers. This may not sound very important at first, but the moral applications made by Catholic authors are crucial for understanding the role of the laity when there is a “crisis of doctrine” among the teachers in the Church (obviously, quite an important situation to consider).

I’ll begin with St. Thomas, who opens with an interesting note in his Commentary on Romans. In the preface to the Epistle, one of the important points made by St. Paul concerns his desire to go to Rome to see the Christians of the city in order to “impart some spiritual gift.” He emphasizes this so strongly that he even states an oath before God, confirming the desires he frequently pours out in prayer.

St. Thomas here addresses an important question: Why wasn’t St. Paul able to go to the Romans? Obviously, he could approach the matter on a purely natural level, but instead he seeks to view it from the perspective of Divine Providence. Why would God hold back a good teacher, one with spiritual gifts to impart in abundance?

[St. Paul] touches on the obstacle preventing him from having fulfilled that intention, saying, and have been hindered hitherto either by the devil, who endeavors to prevent the preaching from which man’s salvation results: the north wind drives away rain (Prov 25:23), i.e., the doctrines of the preachers; or perhaps by God, according to whose nod the journeys and words of preachers are arranged: the clouds, i.e., preachers, scatter his lightning. They turn round and round by his guidance to accomplish all that he commands them(Job 37:11ff.).

But the Apostle wants them to know both these things for their own benefit, so that seeing his affection, they might receive his words with more reverence, and recognizing their own conduct as the obstacle hitherto preventing his visit, they might amend their lives. So the words of Isaiah express a punishment for sin: I will command the clouds to rain no rain upon it (Isa 5:6). (Rom.C1.L5.n91)

I want to hone in on that last point. St. Thomas shows that God, from time to time, restricts a Christian teacher from reaching a particular group of people. What could be the reason for withholding such a good gift?

St. Thomas explains that the combination of Paul’s expressed desire to come and the clear implication that God had not yet willed it to happen was meant to prick the consciences of the Romans and lead them to recognize something. It was not God’s fault, nor St. Paul’s fault, that he was unable to go to Rome to see the Christians. It was the fault of the Romans themselves. How was it their fault? It was a “punishment for sin” arising from “their own conduct.”

Focusing more specifically on the verse from Isaiah, it was quite common to interpret this as an act of judgment by God—namely, His refusal to send preachers (Hugh of St. Cher: Predicatoribus, qui terram Ecclesiae pluunt doctrinis, coruscant miraculis, tonant minis), something especially evident in the case of the Jews, as a punishment for their rejection of Christ and the Apostles (Gloss: Hoc post ascensionem Domini, quando nec prophetas habuerunt et apostolos repulerunt).

This is connected with the withholding of the “latter rain” in Jeremiah 3:2–3, where the prophet declares: “You would sit by the roads waiting for them like a thief in the desert; you have defiled the land with your fornications and your iniquities. Therefore, the drops of the rains were held back, and the latter rain was not given.”

This “rain” is interpreted by the authors as referring to the blessing of the Word of God given to the people (Gloss: ablata est scilicet omnium rerum benedictio, ut paterentur siccitatem sermonis Dei). Since the people had fallen into sin, God shut the mouths of preachers—a pattern that occurs throughout the history of the Church (Hugh of St. Cher: propter peccata populi saepe fit, ut Dominus claudat ora praedicatorum).

Turning to the verse from Job, we see that just as it is by the “command” of God that He judges a people by not sending them good preachers (i.e., “the clouds to rain no rain upon it”), so too it is by the gift of God that He raises up preachers to rain heavenly doctrine upon them (i.e., “by his guidance to accomplish all that he commands them”).

Yet, we hear more about this “rain of doctrine” in the prophetic books. After exhortations to return to the Lord by penance and moral reformation, Joel promises that

O children of Sion, rejoice, and be joyful in the Lord your God: because he hath given you a teacher of justice, and he will make the early and the latter rain to come down to you as in the beginning. (Joel 2:23)

Hosea speaks of the beneficial effects of such great chastisements of God, stating that the effect of these humiliations will be the return to God,

In their affliction they will rise early to me: Come, and let us return to the Lord: For he hath taken us, and he will heal us: he will strike, and he will cure us. He will revive us after two days: on the third day he will raise us up, and we shall live in his sight. We shall know, and we shall follow on, that we may know the Lord. His going forth is prepared as the morning light, and he will come to us as the early and the latter rain to the earth. (Hos. 6:1-3)

Zechariah exhorts us to pray for this latter rain, promising an abundance of rain which will come from this,

Ask ye of the Lord rain in the latter season, and the Lord will make snows, and will give them showers of rain, to every one grass in the field. (Zec. 10:1)

I could go on, as this theme is quite frequent in the prophetic books, as those who are familiar with them know quite well. In light of the prophetic books, read through the tradition of the Church, we are able to derive a few conclusions that guide us in living through a drought of the Word of God.

First Principle. The drought of the Word of God is a judgment for sin. God has clearly revealed, in passage after passage, that He withholds these great gifts from His people as a punishment for sin. It is not arbitrary. It is not “unfair.” It is our sin that brings this about.

Second Principle. God has promised to take away this punishment. In prophecy after prophecy, even in their harshest criticisms of the people and of the hierarchy, the prophets do not lose hope.

It is quite common in traditionalist circles to violate these first two principles.

First, many treat the crisis as though it were merely passive. They explain the material forces that have contributed to the drought without seeing things from the perspective of Divine Providence. They cry that the Assyrians have invaded, yet fail to see them as the “rod of my anger” (Is. 10:5).

Second, the crisis causes many to “blackpill.” It leads them into despair, convincing them that such a situation cannot and will not improve. It produces a message completely devoid of hope. The faithful are driven to despair, never hearing the promises of restoration that God has given to us if we turn back to Him. Many traditionalists see themselves as imitators of the prophets in calling out evil within the Church. Rightly so. Yet they do not always carry forward the full message of the prophets, which includes the hope of restoration.

Third Principle. God is the giver of the gift of the “rain of the Word.” The clouds give rain at the command of God. It is God who sends preachers, and it is to Him alone that we must have recourse during a drought of the Word.

Fourth Principle. God has attached the means of restoration to the judgment and to the penance of the people.

First, judgments are not given by God arbitrarily. There is some error, some sin He is rooting out. Hosea tells us that those suffering the pain of the drought will be driven to return to the Lord. Is this not what ought to happen in our current crisis? Did not God permit it as a means to restore His people, to restore His priests “whose lips guard knowledge”? In the history of the Church, it is often at the impetus of such judgments that great reforms occur. Why should we view our present crisis from any other perspective?

Second, the means of restoration are tied to the penance of the people. There is no secret method for resolving the crisis. God has judged us as unfaithful and is punishing us for our own good. How are we to overcome this? The prophets have already told us, and they have attached the promise of restoration to certain objective means: prayer and penance. “He hath taken us, and he will heal us: he will strike, and he will cure us.”

The means of Church politics and propagandizing (which God has used throughout the history of the Church) are effective only when God chooses to bring about His purposes through them. Otherwise, they fail. So how do they succeed? Through prayer and penance. That is the simple answer. Yet how much time is spent on propagandizing to resolve the crisis, compared to the time devoted to those spiritual exercises that God, through the mouth of His prophets, has promised will bring about its resolution?