[This is Part 3 of the series “Religion in Society.” Click for Part 1 and Part 2.]
What could the Church possibly have to learn from a 19th century radical novel that inspired Lenin and Xi Jinpeng? Well… it’s complicated.
This is the story: About one hundred and sixty years ago, a man named Nikolay Gavrilovich Chernyshevsky sat in the Peter and Paul Fortress, which was the citadel around which the city of St. Petersburg had been built (and was also, more relevantly, a political prison) and wrote a novel. This work, entitled What Is to Be Done?, described in vivid and intermittently melodramatic terms the lives and loves of a set of high-minded young men and women who defied social convention, broke away from family ties, economic constraints, and patriarchal values to form together a self-supporting, educational, and egalitarian Utopian commune. The work itself, which the government imprisoning him made the interesting decision to allow him to write and publish, was a reflection of its author, who was a Narodnik – a Russian agrarian socialist – and a passionate advocate for progressive causes.
This summary may seem to indicate something rather didactic than wildly compelling, and indeed the novel leaves something to be desired as literature – yet one secondary character, a sort of prophetic witness to the main characters, riveted the social progressives and revolutionaries of those years and the ensuing generations, and looms over our world even now: Rakhmetov, a semi-mythic ascetic of superhuman vitality, encyclopedic learning and prodigious physical strength. Real-life revolutionists copied details and practices from this fictional figure: Lenin himself, it is said, took up weightlifting in emulation, though a more definitive act of emulation was his 1901(2) political pamphlet, published under the same title as Chernyshevsky’s novel: What Is To Be Done?—and such is the shortness of the path between the Utopian paradise and the Gulag.
What does all of this have to do with the Church, or with anything else for that matter? First of all, we as a Church have certainly had enough experiences with ideals becoming corrupted in their implementation. But the question I now have in mind right now is the paradox of poverty and wealth in the Church – a paradox which seems to mire us forever in the swamps of a superannuated civic Christianity in which virtually no one at heart believes, which is in fact a stumbling block to many who would wish to believe in Christ. And so I find myself asking: What is to be done?
Pope Francis has preached the advent of “a poor Church for the poor.” – and the Church has long been the leading private provider of social services for the poor in much of the world. Yet in the world as it is, providing social services means organization, infrastructure, budgets, fundraising, accounting, administration, lobbyists, boards of directors, and so much more. How is a Church that serves the poor to be anything but a “rich” organization, another NGO in a world of NGOs? Has Francis not warned us of as much? From a homily in April of 2013: “And when the Church wants to boast of its quantity and makes organizations, and makes offices and become somewhat bureaucratic, then the Church loses its main substance and is in danger of turning into an NGO. And the Church is not an NGO. It’s a love story … But there are those from the IOR [Istituto per le Opere di Religione, or Institute for the Works of Religion, best known to the English-speaking world as the Vatican Bank] the Vatican … excuse me, eh! .. some things are necessary, offices are required … ok! but they are necessary up to a certain point: as an aid to this love story. But when organization takes first place, love falls down and the Church, poor thing, becomes an NGO. And this is not the way forward.” This, by the way, was by no means a one-time, unique reference to the issue.
Yet conversely, how is a poor Church, a Church of Gospel simplicity, a first-generation Franciscan church, if you will, to serve the poor in the world we have? Who in the world would let such people – such bad examples! – anywhere near the poor? Begging, wearing rags, themselves practically without resources, handing out what little they have indiscriminately to good and bad alike? What is anyone to make of such people? Are we not committed to fighting poverty?
And this is where Chernyshevsky comes in: like so many of us in the Church, he had the wrong question. We don’t need to know what is to be done.
The answer we need comes from another ascetic, one far humbler than Rakhmetov. In the Gospel for Gaudete Sunday this year, people of various stations went to John the Baptist, all asking the same question: What should we do?—a question which already points to our answer today, whatever it may be. This breaks the question down to manageable size – and offers a back door out of the trap against which Pope Francis is warning us. Faced with an honest question, the Baptist is concrete: essentially, don’t cheat, don’t lie, be content if you have enough and share your excess with those who don’t.
Would the Baptist’s prescriptions and proscriptions end poverty?—actually, they might, but that’s not the point. I have noted elsewhere how Francis’s papacy is every bit as much the witness against utilitarianism that Benedict’s was against relativism. While many today might identify with Leonard Cohen’s take on the Church: “Anything, Roman Catholicism, Buddhism, LSD, I’m for anything that works,” the Pope is taking us away from the works of the world and telling us to live a certain way – no, more, to be a certain way. and let the chips fall where they may.
The Jesuits now remembered as the North American Martyrs embedded themselves among the Wendat people (Hurons), learning their language and sharing their way of life; while many Indigenous converted, only some remained with the Church in the face of being decimated by disease, which they (rightly) attributed to the Europeans. St. Peter Claver fed, clothed, washed, and cared for enslaved persons, even spending nights with them in the slave quarters of plantations; he could do this only with the grudging tolerance of the colonial social structure. He did nothing to end slavery per se; indeed, he purchased and kept a number of slaves, although their duties were limited to helping him care for the enslaved. St. Teresa of Calcutta was castigated for the inefficiency and poor medical standards of her work in India, yet the meaning of her mission, of what she was doing and being, remained clear to fervent apologists, mainstream believers, and even some of those who disliked her. The common denominator?—personal acts of care and a life of taking the lowest place.
Of course, the Church has entertained other approaches, A century after the Jesuits, the Sulpician François Picquet came among the Iroquois with gifts and resources, exceptional language mastery and oratorical skills, and considerable political acumen. He built a fortified mission that was the basis for the town of Ogdensburg, NY; he sparred with colonial authorities; he even led Indigenous fighters into battle. Legend attributed even more to his efforts. He was spectacularly effective, as the world would see effectiveness. Yet – no prejudice to his sincerity or his mission – no one would ever think of canonizing him, and there are countless others like him throughout history who are just as little honored or remembered. The only reason I know of Picquet is that I once did some research for a company that was designing a sustainable land use project for Ogdensburg.
Nor are these other approaches necessarily in any way worldly, or discreditable. Although Evangelical Protestants rightly hold the place of honor in of this regard, Daniel O’Connell, the political leader of Ireland’s Catholics for half a century, tried to rally the Irish in America to abolish slavery – and possibly no one in our time has done more for the health of the world’s poor than a plausible future saint, the late Dr. Paul Farmer.
So, which approach is “right”? On one level, the question is impossible to answer – although there are few things more dangerous than an idealistic utilitarian. On another and deeper level, though this may seem scandalous to say: it doesn’t matter. It isn’t the point. Turning again to St. Teresa of Calcutta: “God does not call us to be successful, but to be faithful.” Those newly converted by the teachings of John the Baptist asked the right question, for themselves, for us as Catholics, and for the Church as a whole: What should we do?—or rather, what should we do? What is our personal call, our vocation, our mission?
So what does this mean for the Church as a whole?—above all for the Church on earth, which, as an entity in time, has a mission to the world of its time? What should we do?
I don’t know. And I don’t have to; I’m not the Pope, and I’m not a bishop – although I am more than willing, in my station in life as a philosopher, to do what I can to work toward an answer. I do know that what we should do will become apparent only at the end of a path of discernment, a path of purification, a path on which Ratzinger already saw the Church embarking in 1969 and which Francis (and, under his leadership, all of us) must negotiate with fear and trembling now. I also know we need to pray – for the Church, for the world, and for ourselves.
Image: Rembrandt, St John the Baptist Preaching (about 1634-35). Gemäldegalerie, Berlin. By Dosseman – Own work, CC BY-SA 4.0, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=112421489
Dr. Paul Chu is currently a philosophy instructor for CTState, the Connecticut Community College, and has previously taught philosophy in college, university, and seminary settings. He also served as a staff writer and editor for various national publications. He is co-founder of Sacred Beauty, a Private Association of the Faithful in the Diocese of Bridgeport dedicated to honoring the beauty and holiness of God through artistic and intellectual creativity founded in prayer, especially Eucharistic contemplation. He contributes regularly to https://questionsdisputedandotherwise.substack.com/.
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