The Glorious Failures of the Catholic Church

The Glorious Failures of the Catholic Church July 7, 2015

800px-Caravaggio_-_Martirio_di_San_Pietro

The Martyrdom of St. Peter by Michelangelo Merisi da Caravaggio

Today I was out for a run when I heard it. And it stopped me in my tracks.

“There is nothing that fails like success.”

Uh, excuse me?

Now, granted, I shouldn’t have been surprised. After all, I have been listening (and re-listening) to this same guy saying similar odd things for years during my routine runs. But instead of dismissing this statement as pure foolishness, I had to stop. And think.

Because this guy is a genius.

G.K. Chesterton (through the austere voice of David Grizzly Smith) was piping through the earbuds of my iPhone. From the introductory chapter of Chesterton’s 1905 classic, Heretics, Chesterton was making his point. And it was a damned good one.

“There is nothing that fails like success.”

My first reaction was to think, “Oh, he’s got it wrong.” Curiously, in the last few days before I heard Chesterton utter his statement the correct phrase, as I always knew it, had seeped into my consciousness, “There is nothing that succeeds like success.” Surely, this adage attributed to Alexandre Dumas was what Chesterton truly meant, right?

Wrong.

In fact, Chesterton emphatically meant what he said. Why?

Because it is absolutely true.

Backing up to better understand where Chesterton was coming from, I heard this,

“A man who is perpetually thinking…of whether this cause or that cause is promising, is the man who will never believe in anything long enough to make it succeed. The opportunistic politician is like a man who should abandon billiards because he was beaten at billiards, and abandon golf because he was beaten at golf. There is nothing which is so weak for working purposes as this enormous importance attached to immediate victory. There is nothing that fails like success.”

At first, I thought that this phrase was critical of the concept of “success”, but then I began to think of it differently. I flipped it and approached it in a paradoxical Chestertonian fashion. The willingness to fail again and again en route to the ultimate goal can be an indispensable feature of success. Or in other words…

True. Success. Often. Fails. First.

And Fails.

And Fails.

Not convinced? In light of recent events, many call the Catholic Church a failure. You’ve heard the words. Dogmatic. Intolerant. Arrogant. Unreasonable. Unloving. Even the adoration of Pope Francis by the Church’s biggest critics comes at the expense of Francis’ predecessors and the honest representation of his faithfulness to the Catholic Creed.

And yet here the Church is.

It survived failure in the death of its Christ on a bloodied cross (which in truth, begat its greatest success – Redemption & Resurrection).

It survived failure in the inverted execution of its first Pope.

It survived failure in the beheading of its greatest evangelist.

It survived failures in martyrs and wars, debates and schisms, oppression and anarchy. Over years and years and years. To requote Chesterton,

“There is nothing which is so weak for working purposes as this enormous importance attached to immediate victory. There is nothing that fails like success.”

For the Church, there has been a seemingly endless string of failures without immediate victory. But in spite of its failures, the belief in the Creed of Christ endured. And endures. Christ gave us many assurances, but the one he gave about the Church is particularly comforting,

“And so I say to you, you are Peter, and upon this rock I will build my church, and the gates of the netherworld shall not prevail against it.”

– Matthew 16:18

He didn’t say the road would be easy, but that victory would be assured. Because it had already been won. That is why our Church is not triumphal even though it is triumphant. It is a Church of paradox. In our setbacks, we look to the heavens. In our weakness, we are made strong. In our failures, we succeed.

So, lest you are tempted…don’t be dismayed. Don’t despair.

Nothing fails like success.

Absolutely nothing.

——————————– Image Credit: Wikimedia Commons


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