by Kurt Hofer
My home parish isn’t much to look at. It pales in comparison to the Cathedrals of Europe. That goes for both the interior and exterior. The only thing that distinguishes it from a Protestant church is that its otherwise barren altar bears a crucifix, not a cross.
I’m well aware I can do better as far as aesthetics go. Other area churches are far more beautiful. What keeps me from leaving? Sometimes you are unaware of the ideas that shape you’re thinking until they’ve been articulated by someone else. Such was the case when, over two years ago, I heard a speech by Rusty Reno on the nature of freedom. From a hotel banquet hall in Phoenix that was equally unspectacular, Mr. Reno explained that freedom “comes from commitment.”
As Reno elaborated later on in the same talk on an “intellectual retreat” citing both Christian exegesis of the Bible and rabbinic teachings derived from the Torah, “The key to freedom is the power of our loves and loyalties.”
Up until then I’d always thought freedom originated from choice. In a consumer-driven capitalist economy choice reigns supreme. Choice is what distinguishes us. Our careers are made by choices; our “lifestyles” are more or less of our choosing. But as you get older you start to realize the finite nature of time. At my age, on the cusp of forty, commitment has, for me at least, eclipsed choice as the defining feature of my life.
I lack the time to make the choices which lead to self-invention. I’m entering the stage of life where I will be most known for my “loves and loyalties,” not the aspirations of my day-dreaming self. And perhaps most surprising of all: that commitment, as Mr. Reno predicted, has been a source of freedom.
To understand what I mean you need only watch a movie called The Challenger (2024), whose defining feature is a love-triangle that follows the three protagonists into middle-age. While I suspect the overlapping amorous attractions were a great source of suspense for most audiences, I couldn’t help but see them all as fundamentally unfree: slaves to their fleeting desires, hopelessly lost. Not committing is itself a form of commitment; by not forming a loyalty of any kind–to God, to a spouse, to our children–we become beholden to the whims of the self.The lack of any grounding loyalty is itself a kind of perversion of loyalty.
A few of my fellow parishioners and I decided, partly out of voyeuristic curiosity and partly out of the restlessness that defines our modern age, to attend a church that had a reputation for its beauty–both beauty of form and content. The Church where the Latin Mass was offered was everything my home parish was not. Ornate altars and intricate tabernacles. Beautiful side chapels for Eucharistic adoration. All the smells and bells of old Catholicism, and not just on Christmas and Easter as is the case in my home parish, but every day.
But during the Mass I felt imposter syndrome coursing through my veins. Who were these people around me? When was I supposed to kneel and what were the responsorials? I stumbled my way through the Latin missalet. After the Mass, of course, I was surrounded by strangers–well meaning ones, certainly, but strangers nonetheless.
In my home parish I know when to kneel and when not; I know the responsorials. I see familiar faces–parishioners, not strangers. I know how the church sounds when it’s empty and an opening door squeaks, jolting me into awareness of how deep in prayer I’d just been.
In my home parish the pews are a constellation of faces that all tell a story: the parishioner who is in discernment in the diaconate, the parishioner who lost her husband after years of illness, the couple who is struggling to conceive and resists the temptations of IVF, choosing to trust in God’s will instead.
When I look at the Parish Priest, Father Jim, I see the man of the cloth who brought holy communion to my hospital bed and anointed me before surgery.
All these things, as Rusty Reno elaborates in his book Return of the Strong Gods are at once a sign of commitment and of freedom. Rusty’s words, again, are more eloquent than my own on this subject:
“Our hearts remain restless. They seek to rest in loyalty to strong gods worthy of love’s devotion and sacrifice. And our hearts will find what they seek.”
Now I understand that my heart is at home in my home parish, not in the wanderlust of the restless gaze that always seeks the brighter shade of green.
Kurt Hofer is a contributing editor to the European Conservative.
Leave a Reply