The Dangers of Triumphalism
by Fr. David M. Knight
July 27, 2024
Saturday of the Sixteenth Week of Ordinary Time
Lectionary 400
Jer 7:1-11/Mt 13:24-30
Jeremiah 7:1-11 summons us to address the “triumphalism” recognized as a bias toward falsehood and rejected by the bishops during the first session of Vatican II. Jeremiah warns against it:
Put not your trust in the deceitful words, “This is the temple of the Lord! The temple of the Lord! The temple of the Lord!”
But it was the temple of the Lord! Just as the Catholic Church is “the one true Church.” But those who keep saying, “The one true Church, the one true Church,” and finding their security in that are probably into “triumphalism”, which is a tendency to think of the Church as irresistibly conquering throughout the centuries, always receiving universal admiration for the words and deeds of its heads, and seemingly more interested in upholding its own rights and privileges than in promoting the salvation of all.”
Triumphalists love grandiose churches that shout out the majesty of God—and by association quietly whisper the wealth, social status and solidity of those who worship there. They find assurance in the robes, ceremonies and protocol that make Church officials look important and powerful: the more like earthly kings, the better. They bask in their approval, seek it, flaunt it. “How could God not be with people so obviously respected and respectable?”
God says, “Don’t be so sure.”
Only if you thoroughly reform your ways and your deeds; deal justly with your neighbor... no longer oppress the resident alien... no longer shed innocent blood... or follow strange gods... will I remain with you in this place.
In other words, it’s not who you know—even God—it’s what you are.
Matthew 13:24-30: Jesus founded the Church, and his own work was perfect. But we can adapt his parable to say, “While everyone was asleep his enemy came and sowed sin all through the Church. As the Church grew and bore fruit, there was bad fruit as well as good.”
If we ask Jesus, “Do you want us to throw the sinners out?” he answers, “No, you might throw the good out with them.” Who is to judge between prophetic witness and perversion of the faith when the official judges are precisely the ones the prophets accuse of perverting the faith? And besides, in the process of hunting down the sinners we would become worse than those we persecute. The Inquisition showed us that. No, the answer is for all to dialogue humbly with each other in love. (See Matthew 18:15-17. It was only in 1965 that the CDF, “Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith,” that Cardinal Ratzinger headed until he became Pope Benedict XVI, took that name instead of its original one (1542): “the Supreme Sacred Office of the Roman and Universal Inquisition,” abbreviated by Pope Saint Pius X in 1904 to “Supreme Sacred Congregation of the Holy Office.”)
Initiative: Fear to be near power and prestige. It rubs off.
Reflections brought to you by the Immersed in Christ Ministry
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