In other words, when an American Catholic proclaims their “orthodoxy” loud and proud but equivocates on these issues, when they clearly prefer a specific, contemporary ideology to the patrimony of the Church, I think they are wrong; I think they engage in what I have been calling “heteropraxy.” They hold up their right belief, their mass attendance, and their prayer as if these things are the only marks of a Christian. You shall, however, know them by their fruits. Deeds matter; supposed orthodoxy without orthopraxy is a whited sepulcher, a seemingly-living tree with rotten roots.
And this matters in the modern world, where, whether we like it or not, we Christians are associated with hypocrisy. I do not mean that we are reviled by atheists or anti-Christians; I mean that those who are apathetic to religion or otherwise open to it think we put flagrantly-un-Christian politics ahead of everything else. This recent interview helps to capture the point; it collects a lot of excellent surveys driving home how many people feel about us. They see heteropraxy and nothing else. In modern society, how can we evangelize if we look more like the Pharisees than like Christ?
Some might now say: that’s all well and good, but why concentrate on these problems when we have a massive issue of apostasy, when bishops cannot be made to speak up, when even our hierarchs seem to believe nothing? In part, I have chosen to make this argument because I think it’s easier to get supposedly orthodox people to at rightly than it is to convert the creed-less. More importantly, however, I have argued in this way because I think that problem might be partly addressed by attending to what I have outlined above.
It is true that there is a group of people out there who act rightly but are heterodox. These people might feed the hungry and clothe the naked but might do so without ever mentioning Christ in word or deed, without praying for the poor. Further, they might say it does not matter what one believes, as long as one does good. We might call this heterodoxy combined with orthopraxy; here we see the inverse of the phenomenon of American conservatism.
This remains an issue; we ought to address it. It is a phenomenon I would like to address in another post (this one already being so long). We ought to preach with our words and our deeds; we ought to pray, keep the cult of the saints, recite the creed, and do all else that is right for the upbuilding of the soul. We might say that the whole problem with evangelism today is the rarity of orthodoxy’s coinciding with orthopraxy. Whenever we are missing one, we are missing out on the fullness of the Faith. Catholicism is neither mere belief nor mere action. If we wish to create sustainable communities, if we wish to help people, if we wish to be perfect as our Heavenly Father is perfect, we must pray, believe, and act in accord with the full Tradition of the Church No excuses; no master but Christ.
Ad-Free & Subscriber Log-In