On the Feast of Corpus Christi earlier this summer—the feast celebrating the Body and Blood of Our Lord—a good number of the staff here at ChurchMilitant.TV and St. Michael’s Media attended a parish that appropriately marked the event by a solemn Eucharistic procession.
It was quite soul-stirring to see hundreds of faithful Catholics in reverential procession following Our Lord and singing hymns. It is a small but strong reminder, a promise of what eternity will hold for us.
But with that inner joy, there is a tinge of sadness—sadness for all those fellow baptized who were golfing, shopping, or watching the World Cup. These souls are simply indifferent to the great gift available to them—their Catholic Faith. They do not care or believe—at least not in a supernatural way. They are indifferent Catholics, and there is nothing more pitiable this side of Hell.
And we say “Hell,” because regardless of what some theologians may hold forth about having a “reasonable hope that all men are saved”—they, quite simply, are not.
Consider this one small point. It is a command from Almighty God that Catholics attend Mass. The vast majority ignore this command. They are simply indifferent to it. But being indifferent to one commandment is almost always a guarantee that one is indifferent to others as well. People ignore one command because they reject the entire system—the whole cloth. It is never as simple as rejecting a single rule.
Most of these Catholics are “nice” enough, to be sure. But there is no commandment to be “nice.” In the more than 750,000 words that appear in Sacred Scripture, not once does the word “nice” appear.
People whom everyone liked because they were never disagreeable, never caused offense—the “nice” people—are the ones who inevitably wind up eternally separated from God. They were never disagreeable because they were indifferent to the Faith and its tenets in this life such that they would never separate themselves from the larger crowd, go against the grain, and stand on principles handed down from Heaven.
Since they chose to live apart from Heaven in this life, refusing to conform their will wholly to God, and chose instead to remain with the rest of the crowd, then God ratifies their earthly choice for all eternity. They live apart from Heaven and they remain with their own—only in this circumstance they will have lost their indifferentism. It’s a bit difficult to be indifferent, after all, when you are suffering the torments of Hell.
It was the greatest source of Our Blessed Lord’s agony in the Garden of Gethsemane: the knowledge with all that he was about to undergo that down through the ages, untold numbers of the human race would be indifferent or even hostile to His sacrifice, and would perish.
It was not just fear of the physical pain He would endure—it was His Divine foreknowledge of the damned, which He felt in human flesh that sweat blood. This is why he told His Apostles, “My soul is sorrowful even to the point of death.” His deep sorrow was for the lost souls who would not care enough, who would not believe enough.
While we look with our earthbound eyes at the beauty and solemnity of a eucharistic procession on so great a feast, He saw with His Divine eyes the many more souls who would not be in the procession, who would reject the Church, who would not care enough to investigate the truth of Her teachings when they are morally bound to do so.
This reality should not be something for us to despair over. It should be a source of spiritual motivation for us, an encouragement to reach back into time and offer Our Lord some solace for His suffering for the lost by trying our utmost to limit their number, great as it will be, and wake up the indifferent.
We all sin. The difference between many Catholics today is that some repent of their sins while most are indifferent toward them. Our Blessed Mother said at Fatima that many souls go to Hell because they have no one to pray for them. This is the major reason ChurchMilitant.TV takes the approach we do toward lukewarm leaders in the Church. They are, by their own lack of boldness, assisting the indifferent souls into Hell—and it will be their fate as well if they do not change course.
God’s Mercy does not extend to those indifferent toward it any more than aid to an alcoholic in denial helps him. I close with a thought totally lost on the indifferent, both laity and most especially clergy:
God loves us unconditionally—but He does not SAVE us unconditionally.
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Michael Voris is senior executive producer of Church Militant TV.
