Reflections of a Pilgrim: Questions That Don't Have Easy Answers

Introduction

An old man's thoughts on why members of the Church need more wisdom and less certainty.

As I near the end of my earthly pilgrimage, I find myself thinking more about questions than answers. This surprises me. I expected that after decades of faith, prayer, and study, things would be clearer. Instead, they've become more complex. Perhaps that's exactly as it should be.

The Question That Started It All

Months ago, I found myself wondering about something that seemed simple at first: Should faithful Catholics engage with our increasingly secular culture, or should we withdraw into our own communities to preserve authentic faith?

Part of what triggered writing this reflection today was the shocking assassination of Charlie Kirk, the Evangelical conservative commentator. I didn’t agree with his rhetoric, often sharp and divisive. However, the violence of his death, and the heated exchanges that surrounded his public witness before and after this murder, shook me. It brought home in a visceral way how fragile our common life has become, and how easily the culture of argument can slip into a culture of violence.

It's a pressing question. We see children confused about basic truths of human nature. We see marriage redefined, life devalued, and family structures crumbling. The culture seems hostile to everything Christians hold dear. So what do we do? Fight back, or build our own ark?

I thought this was a straightforward question with a clear Catholic answer. 

I was wrong.

When Simple Questions Reveal Complex Realities

The more I explored this question, the more layers I discovered. It turns out that faithful, orthodox Catholics, people who love the Church and want to serve God, disagree profoundly about how to respond to our cultural moment.

Some point to the abolitionists who ended slavery through political engagement. "If Christians had withdrawn from society then," they argue, "millions would have remained in chains." They believe we have a moral obligation to fight for truth in the public square, to protect the vulnerable, and to work for laws that reflect natural law and human dignity.

Others point to the early Christians who built a new civilisation by focusing on authentic community rather than political power. "The culture wars have failed," they say. "Fifty years of political engagement haven't stopped the sexual revolution or protected the family. Maybe it's time to build something new from the ground up."

Both sides make compelling arguments. Both can quote Scripture, Church teaching, and historical precedent. Both are motivated by genuine love for God and neighbour.

This confused me. How could faithful Catholics look at the same situation and reach such different conclusions?

The Deeper Problem: Vatican II's Unfinished Business

As I dug deeper, I began to understand that our current divisions trace back to something that happened in my lifetime: the Second Vatican Council. As a young adult, I remember the excitement and the confusion of those years, the hope and the disappointment that followed.

Vatican II was supposed to help the Church engage the modern world without compromising essential truths. It was a pastoral Council not defining new dogmas, but finding new ways to present eternal truths. The intention was beautiful. To open windows, to dialogue with contemporary culture, to show that Catholicism could speak to modern hearts and minds.

But something went wrong in the implementation. Or perhaps it would be more accurate to say that the implementation was never completed.

Instead of a creative synthesis between tradition and modernity, we got polarisation. Instead of faithful engagement with contemporary questions, we got a Catholic civil war that's been raging for sixty years. Go on Catholic social media and you'll see what I mean. Faithful Catholics attacking each other with a viciousness that would make secular politicians blush.

The Missing Synthesis

Looking back, it’s clear Popes John Paul II and Benedict XVI were trying to complete Vatican II's work. They understood that the Council's insights needed to be integrated with Catholic tradition, not played off against it. They showed us how to be fully Catholic and genuinely engage with modernity.

John Paul II gave us a vision of human dignity that was rooted in the Gospel but spoke to contemporary concerns about freedom and fulfilment. Benedict XVI showed us how authentic liturgy and serious theology could engage modern questions without compromising Catholic identity. Both demonstrated that you didn't have to choose between faithfulness and relevance.

The synthesis is still a work in progress. It always will be. Pope Francis invites us to discern together, offering a pastoral accompaniment that asks us to listen before we answer. The intention is good. to create space for dialogue and mercy. But the result of his pontificate was sometimes more confusion rather than clarity. Important questions got answered with "dialogue" or "discern" rather than clear guidance.

Why Certainty Isn't Always Wisdom

Here's what I've learned as an old man. The demand for immediate certainty is often the enemy of genuine wisdom.

Don't misunderstand me. There are absolute truths, and the Church must proclaim them clearly. The reality of God; the divinity of Christ; the meaning of the Eucharist; and the dignity of human life from conception to natural death. These aren't matters for debate or development. Yet the way we live and acclaim these truths in a world of AI, social media, and new ideologies demands patient discernment.

But how do we apply these truths in complex cultural situations? How we balance competing goods like religious freedom and moral witness in pluralistic societies? How we respond to unprecedented challenges like social media, artificial intelligence, abortion, same-sex marriage, or gender ideology? These require careful thought, not quick answers.

The problem is that our current Catholic media ecosystem rewards quick answers and tribal loyalty rather than patient thinking. If you read The Remnant, you get one set of certainties. If you read America Magazine, you get a different set. Both serve their audiences what they want to hear rather than challenging them to think more deeply.

Meanwhile, ordinary Catholics in the pews, people trying to raise faithful children, live Christian lives in secular workplaces, and make sense of Church teaching in complicated situations, feel caught in the middle. They're told they have to choose sides in battles they don't fully understand.

What I Wish I Could Tell Younger Catholics

If I could sit down with younger Catholics who are struggling with these questions, here's what I'd want to tell them:

First, don't let anyone force you into false choices. You don't have to choose between loving tradition and engaging modernity. You don't have to choose between doctrinal orthodoxy and pastoral mercy. You don't have to choose between personal holiness and social justice. The Church is big enough for all of these goods, and the tension between them is often creative rather than destructive.

Second, be suspicious of anyone offering simple solutions to complex problems. Whether they're promising that the right political strategy will save Christian civilisation, or that the right pastoral approach will heal all divisions, they're probably oversimplifying. Real life is messier than ideological frameworks suggest.

Third, learn to sit with uncertainty without losing faith. Some questions don't have clear answers yet. Some tensions can't be resolved immediately. That doesn't mean truth doesn't exist or that the Church has no guidance to offer. It means that faithful discipleship sometimes requires patience and intellectual humility.

Fourth, focus on what you can control. Instead of getting consumed by Church politics or culture wars, focus on growing in holiness, loving your family well, serving your community, and bearing witness to Christ in your own circumstances. A family dinner each week, where we ask how the Gospel shapes our work, can be a small way to hold many goods together. The Kingdom of God advances through countless small acts of faithfulness, not just through grand strategies.

The Wisdom of Complexity

I used to think that maturity meant having all the answers. Now I think it means asking better questions and being comfortable with complexity.

This doesn't mean relativism. There are still right and wrong answers. It means recognising that many of our contemporary challenges don't fit neatly into pre-existing categories. The early Christians didn't have a blueprint for how to respond to Roman persecution. Medieval Christians didn't have a manual for how to engage Islamic philosophy. Or later, there was no script for sixteenth-century Catholics on how to respond to the Protestant Reformation. Nineteenth-century Catholics didn't have clear guidance on how to respond to democratic revolutions.

Each generation of Christians has had to figure out how to live faithfully in their particular time and place with the gifts and graces God has given them. That requires both fidelity to eternal truths and creative wisdom about how to apply those truths in new situations.

Hope for the Future

Despite all the confusion and division, I remain hopeful about the Catholic Church. I've lived long enough and read enough history to see that periods of crisis often precede periods of renewal. The chaos after Vatican II may be the labour pains of something new and beautiful being born.

I see signs of hope in young Catholics who refuse to be confined by the old battles. I see it in families building authentic Christian culture in their homes. I see it in parishes finding creative ways to engage their communities. I see it in scholars working quietly to develop genuine synthesis between faith and contemporary thought.

Most importantly, I see it in the ordinary Catholics who keep showing up at Mass, trying to live faithfully despite all the confusion. They may not understand all the theological debates or political strategies, but they know that Christ is present in the Eucharist and that following Him is worth any amount of uncertainty or complexity.

A Final Word

As I approach the end of my earthly journey, I'm grateful for the questions as much as the answers. The complexity I once found frustrating now strikes me as a sign of the Church's vitality. A dead institution would have no internal tensions or debates. A living one, especially one trying to proclaim eternal truths in a rapidly changing world, will necessarily struggle with difficult questions.

My prayer for the Church is that we learn to struggle well: with charity rather than venom; with humility rather than arrogance; with patience rather than haste. The world is watching how we handle our disagreements. If we can model faithful dialogue in the face of complex challenges, we might help our secular neighbours learn how to do the same.

The pilgrimage continues, and the path ahead may be uncertain. But the destination remains clear: the City of God, where all our questions will find their answers and all our complex struggles will be resolved in the perfect harmony of divine truth and love. Until then, may we walk together with wisdom, humility, and hope. Pilgrims on the way to the City of God.

Postscript: Theological Note

As I was writing these reflections, I realised how much of what I’ve stumbled toward in my old age was already said by the Church herself by the Church Fathers, at Vatican II, and in the teaching of the popes since then. Far from calling for withdrawal, the Council and later popes consistently emphasise that the pilgrim Church must walk in history, engaging culture without being absorbed by it. As St Augustine recognised, the Church is a pilgrim walking toward the City of God, longing for eternal peace but working for earthly peace in the meantime. He writes that the heavenly city “while it sojourns on earth … calls citizens out of all nations, and gathers together a society of pilgrims …” and that the pilgrim City “possesses this peace by faith … while it sojourns on earth, though it has already received the promise of redemption” (City of God 20.17) [1].

• Gaudium et Spes tells us plainly that “the Church lives in a constant tension between the old and the new, a source of growth,” and that Christians are to “work with all men in building a more human world” while holding fast to the truth of Christ. It also reminds us that the Gospel both draws from and renews human culture (See: 57, 58, 62 ) [2].
• Christus Dominus asks bishops to present Catholic teaching “adapted to the needs of the times” while guarding the deposit of faith (See: 13) [3]. That balance, fidelity without rigidity, adaptability without compromise, is exactly the kind of wisdom I’ve been longing for.
• In Centesimus Annus (See: 49–51), John Paul II highlights solidarity, the renewal of culture, and the primacy of inner conversion as the heart of the Church’s witness [4].
• In Ecclesia in Europa (See: 97), he reminds us that Christians, though on pilgrimage toward the heavenly city, are also called to help make this world more human and more just [5].
• John Paul II in Fides et Ratio insisted that the Church’s mission is a diakonia of truth, walking with all people in the search for wisdom, stressing the harmony between faith and reason. Benedict XVI, in Spe Salvi, spoke of hope that keeps us steady as we labour in this world. In Caritas in Veritate he reminded us that truth and love must walk together. In Deus Caritas Est he showed how charity unites faith with practical witness. [See: 6–9].
• This all echoes what Pope Francis wrote in Gaudete et Exsultate (1): that holiness is lived in everyday faithfulness, not in tribal battles [See: 10].

Taken together, these voices confirm that the call for humility, discernment, and “integrated witness” isn’t only my personal conviction. It’s deeply Catholic. The pilgrim path I’ve tried to describe is the very one the Church herself has marked out for us: not to retreat into safe certainties, not to surrender to confusion, but to be faithful, patiently engage with the world God has given us to love. To propose, not impose the Christian Gospel.

Ours is a post Chrisitan, secular age, increasingly hostile to truth and blind to God. The temptation is either to retreat into our enclaves, to fight culture with culture, or to accommodate the world. But the Gospel points us to another way: we are called to discern, not to divide; to speak the truth in love. We are pilgrims, not strangers in this world, longing for the heavenly city.

Lord Jesus, grant us the grace to be patient pilgrims, faithful to your unchanging Word, yet wise enough to listen to the cries of our time. Help us to build, not walls, but bridges of charity, that those who see us may glimpse the hope of your City.

References

1. Augustine, City of God, Book 20, ch. 17. 
2. Gaudium et Spes (Pastoral Constitution on the Church in the Modern World), 57, 58, 62. 
3. Christus Dominus (Decree on the Pastoral Office of Bishops), 13. 
4. John Paul II, Centesimus Annus (1991), 49–51. 
5. John Paul II, Ecclesia in Europa (2003), 97. 
6. John Paul II, Fides et Ratio (1998), 2. 
7. Benedict XVI, Spe Salvi (2007), 22. 
8. Benedict XVI, Caritas in Veritate (2009), 9. 
9. Benedict XVI, Deus Caritas Est (2005), 1.
10. Francis, Gaudete et Exsultate (2018), 1.