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“If you believe what you like in the Gospels, and reject what you don’t like, it is not the Gospel you believe in, but yourself.” — St. Augustine

And that may well be why many people are so lonely! Even the passion of the self-styled “reformer” — whether in secular or ecclesiastical circles — might best not be taken at face value. Is the desire for change a real willingness to let the other become the person God wills into being, or a device to make the other conform to one’s own design? Or in the case where institutional reform is sought, whose plan does the reformer seek to follow? 

Historically, church reformers have run into a quandary in which every new congregational leader effectively becomes pope. We have seen this not only in non-Catholic reformers but even among Catholics. Where ideology or trend takes precedence over affirming sound doctrine, we find polarities of opinion on which pope is the “right” pope or which teaching is or is not the “right” one — that is, typically the one that I like or am “comfortable” with. 

One of my sisters told me of a recent “Catholic” survey she took part in. After listing a smorgasbord of doctrines and dogmas, it invited her to mark “agree” or “disagree.” To what purpose was unclear, though the implication was that an opinion or feeling about it has some bearing on its content or validity. Since when has our Catholic faith become a menu?

Social media is rife with incentives — traps laid, to be frank — calculated to gratify a need for instant self-gratification. Some even incite participants to action, often incendiary or perverse. There is a new trend every day, but a recent one has arrived just in time to stir up mischief among children who are out of school and online. Despite nominal regulations banning minors from certain sites, children able to access them are creating their own programmed dares which, in turn, invite various postings and “likes.” One such trend this summer is the so-called “door-kicking challenge.” And it’s a call to action!

Though pranks such as this have been around for years, an uptick in instances has been noted by law enforcement officials this summer. The way it works is that social media prompts users to create more content that elicits a reaction. The result is that the one who posts the mischief they engaged in receives notice or affirmation for having been so bold as to do the dirty deed suggested — and get away with it. Lacking the prudence of a moral compass or plain old maturity, children can be oblivious of situations that are perilous, even life-threatening. Someone on the other side of the door will one day have a gun.

What is at the core of this is a demonic temptation — to wit, the age-old tactic of the biblical Tempter (cf. the first five or six chapters of Genesis) — of self-validation: “I am god,” “I create myself.” Although it is the attention of others that is overtly (“innocently?”) being sought, it is the enticement through manipulating and exploiting others to get this attention that exposes it as a devil’s game. It is the opposite of the giving and receiving of “agapic” love — that godly love which wills and seeks only the good of others. Instead, the game of doing whatever it takes to get attention “validates” the self, the act, and one’s own perceived needs.

One who is confident and assured of unconditional love — which, our faith teaches, is affected by relationship with the real God — does not need to do something to get the attention of others to prove one has worth. I will not engage in a blame game of signaling parents, teachers or “society” for some individual or collective malfeasance any more than blaming God for the sins of Adam and Eve. The “gospel” of Satan, however — “I am god and I make myself” — is everywhere and in furious competition with the one-hour-a-week homily delivering the true Gospel each Sunday. Am I being optimistic?

The satanic message is always some form of trans-humanism, an attempt to forge a “reality” or a universe out of sync with the order of the Creation of the God who IS. We see throughout history various manifestations of this “social trend,” not limited to examples found everyday on the internet. Prior to the rise of Mussolini, for example, a trend or movement called “futurism” was in vogue, in the arts and sciences. It took not much more than four years to capture the intelligentsia and evolve into fuel for fascism.

“You can be whatever you want to be” — I have heard this even from not a few valedictorians and keynoters at high school graduations — sounds innocent enough as a way of encouraging young people to dream dreams of success. But is it true? Is it what the Gospel proclaims? Is what I want what God wants for me and does it even matter what God wants and made me for? Self-creation can become a rather desperate affair, an invitation into a black hole of loneliness. One cannot find love in a mirror, a mere projection of oneself!

It’s a “Disney spirituality” that proclaims “the world is your oyster,” yours to pry apart and take from. Is not the world rather a garden to be tended with love, given to us by a Heavenly Father with the responsibility to hand it on to our children? That at least was the original intent of the Creator and the creation handed on to us. No wonder modernity has such struggles with its hyper-processed, self-absorbed cacophony of endless consumption. Sincere relationship, long-term stewardship, give and take, is completely left out of the equation. We live in this “notice me,” trend-seduced, and take-take-take madness, yet we wonder why we see so much loneliness and sadism where tenderness, compassion and mercy are in such short supply. 

It matters enormously what we believe — THE Gospel or our own gospel. Venerable Archbishop Fulton Sheen once said, “If you do not live what you believe, you will end up believing what you live.” It matters if what we believe in is the God who is real, and not some illusion of what might save us from ourselves.

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