I recently had the privilege of interviewing Fr. Donald Haggerty for our upcoming season of The Choices We Face. Fr. Haggerty is a priest of the Archdiocese of New York and one of the most insightful spiritual writers today. In his book, The Hour of Testing: Spiritual Depth and Insight in a Time of Ecclesial Uncertainty, he talks about how we are living in a time of tremendous hostility in the culture towards the Church and towards God. He describes it as a metaphysical rupture in which people are departing from reality. It reminds me of Romans chapter one where Paul says, “although they knew God they did not honor him as God or give thanks to him,” and “they exchanged the truth about God for a lie and worshipped and served the creature rather than the Creator.” (Rom 1:21, 25)

One of the themes of Fr. Haggerty’s book is how man today has cast off God and is putting himself in the place of God. He is glorifying himself rather than God, and we are seeing this in many ways. Science is ready to solve the problem of death, but the solutions that scientists are talking about involve uploading our brain into a computer somewhere. The kind of eternal life that they are promising through science is not eternal life. It is the prolongation of fallen human life and all its darkness, pain, and suffering. The eternal life that Jesus came to offer us is not just a prolongation of human life on this earth. It is a higher level where there will be no more death, pain, or suffering, and where our bodies will be glorified with the glory of God because of God’s mercy and love to us in giving us Jesus. What is really at stake in this battle right now – the hostility towards God, the order of creation, and his Son, Jesus Christ – is a very profound challenge to the Church.

In The Hour of Testing, Fr. Haggerty says this:

These proposals of modern day science, as in the Nazi period, depend on the death of God as the Creator. The whisper of the satanic voice can be distinctly heard in such talk. Most of humanity will not realize what is happening and will likely acquiesce once again in history without protest to the superior intelligence and authority of the scientists. The future decades may display instead a shocking acceptance of these supposed advances. The truth of God will be denied, and the consequence will be new forms of godless inventiveness in science and technology. . . . Without God, the perception of reality has become subservient to a purely subjective spirit. We have become godlike individuals who can determine what is real rather than creatures who receive what is real from a divine source of power beyond ourselves. (80-83)

Besides pointing out the seriousness of the challenge from a culture that is turning away from God and putting itself in the place of God, Fr. Haggerty also talks about the sickness coming into the Church. There is a rebellion in the Church and people are casting off the authority of God. He says we are living in a time where people are calling for doctrine to change, even though doctrine cannot change because it comes from God. God is revealed to us through the reliability of Sacred Scripture and Sacred Tradition, and we find a reliable account of it in the Catechism of the Catholic Church, and yet, there are huge forces within the Church that no longer accept what the Catholic Church teaches about marriage and sexuality, gender identity, and how the Church itself should be ordered and structured. The Catechism of the Catholic Church says that the Church itself is going to have to go through a severe trial and test just before the Lord returns where a false Messianism is going to arise, where perhaps the Antichrist is going to arise and promise a solution to the world (CCC, 676-678). It may be a scientific solution, a political solution, a medical solution, or a solution to the problem of death and poverty, but it is going to come with a price. It is going to come with the price of rejecting Christ or creating a Christ in our own image to suit ourselves, and this is one of the great dangers in the Church today.

There are a lot of people who are sympathetic towards Christ and who consider themselves good Christians, but it is not the real Jesus Christ. They create a Christ that affirms them in what they want to do with their life and what they believe. Fr. Haggerty told me about the pain in his own heart when he hears confessions and counsels people. There are quite a few people that come to him who are daily communicants and who are living in manifest mortal sin and illicit relationships. They are doing things that are deadly, things that Scripture and the Church say will exclude us from the kingdom of God, and they think everything is fine. A lot of people have reinterpreted the Christian faith and what it means to be a Catholic to suit what they want to do. This is a grave deception.

So, what does Fr. Haggerty suggest we ought to do? He suggests we ought to be realistic, to acknowledge that we have serious challenges facing us. Right now, we are in a tremendous satanic assault on the Church and within the Church. We need to keep the truth clear in our head and to meditate on the Word of God. We need to respect the Tradition of the Church. We need to use the Catechism of the Catholic Church as a sure guide to what the Church teaches. Jesus promised to be with us and He is going to give us wisdom. He will not let us be separated from the Church, even if large sections of the Church go into apostasy or Church leaders no longer teach the truth clearly. Fr. Haggerty identifies that there can be an apostasy of silence—that is, not explicitly denying truths of faith, but never talking about them. If truths of the faith are not spoken about regularly, people can have the impression that they’re not important or we don’t believe them anymore. So, he emphasizes the importance of priests having the courage and boldness to speak the truth of love and fearing God more than human beings.

The solution that Fr. Haggerty spends most of his time in the book talking about is us being more fully united to the Passion of Christ and more fully joining ourselves with his suffering love for the sake of the salvation of the world. He proposes that we offer all the suffering of this time – the suffering of the test we are enduring, the suffering of disunity in the Church, the suffering of apostasy, the suffering of evil that is arising in the world, the suffering of confusion and contradiction in the Church – and letting it drive us deeper into relationship and union with the Lord. I think of Paul’s words: “I complete what is lacking in Christ’s afflictions for the sake of his body, that is, the church.” (Col 1:24) Of course, nothing is lacking in the suffering of Christ. It is totally sufficient for the salvation of all the billions of human beings who ever lived, but all the human beings who ever lived or will live need to open their hearts to receive that mercy. The Lord is giving us a chance to participate with Him in the salvation of souls by offering all our suffering, particularly the suffering of living in a time of ecclesial uncertainty, and bearing the pain of that with Jesus.