[William F.] Buckley’s touching a nerve because he’s forcing attention on the Catholic Church’s belief in the redemptive power of suffering, something most people are aware of at a general level but don’t recognize as being absolutely central to Catholicism. I suspect I’m not the only one who was taught as a callow youth that literally any pain you endure — even down to jamming your toe — can be “offered up to God” as a good work of sorts. Just as mortification of the flesh has passed out of fashion in the West, it’s hard for secular Americans to respect the idea that it’s good for the Pope to be suffering like this, not because it shows his strength or tests his character but because suffering, in and of itself, is good.
Same thing with Lenten sacrifices, which get misinterpreted as a device to remind you that the life of the spirit is superior to the life of the body — both a cultural error and a theological one, since in fact your soul and glorified body will be reunited on the Last Day. Giving something up for Lent is solely about deprivation; that’s why you’re specifically advised not just to give up smoking or eating sweets or anything else you’d give up as a New Year’s resolution, but to give up something that you will miss and that isn’t harmful to you. (Harmful stuff like yanking it you’re supposed to have permanently given up anyway.)
Tim Cavanaugh, “Don’t Cry. It’s a Waste of Good Suffering”, Reason Hit and Run, 2005-02-15.
June 17, 2020
QotD: The theological role of suffering in Catholicism
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