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


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 "If Christians had withdrawn from society then," they argue, "millions would have remained in chains."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 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. 

Comments

  1. Gadjo will try to think of a fulsome response to all this (he almost did to the previous post, not liking to see it so remain unardorned by comments, but alas too late). We may live in "a post-Christian age", but the influence of the late Charlie Kirk, whatever one may have thought of his approach, seems to imply that the young are for turning, turning back to things that perhaps even their parents were not providing them, but that they somehow feel must be at the very base of everything.

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  2. Thank you for sharing those reflections, Jack. I have to admit that Charlie Kirk's assassination has affected me quite deeply: it feels like that bullet was the brutal full stop at the end of a chapter, and we're about to move into something much darker. FWIW, I've never felt that Kirk's rhetoric was particularly divisive from what I've seen of him. He seemed a typical American Evangelical - sharp, to the point, ready with answers and verses in soundbites: I don't think his rambling interlocutors left any room for nuance or unknowing.

    I think I want to take issue with the idea that we live in a secular society (if we understand secular as being 'godless', rather than simply 'of the world' in the Pauline sense). The Church has historically found herself in theological conflict. In pagan Rome, Christians were accused of being atheists; heresies formed around (mis)understanding of God; at the Reformation there was, for all the division, a common understanding of what was at stake; even the Church's conflict with Islam is fundamentally about who has the true God. But Christians seem to struggle with the 'post-Christian world' because there is no rival understanding of god(s) to tackle.

    I think this is wrong. What we have seen over the past few weeks (with the murders of both Charlie Kirk and Iryna Zarutska has been accompanied by nothing short of religious fervour: the celebrations, the twisting of reality to fit dogma, the recitation of creedal statements. It's exactly the same insanity that the faithful exhibit when they burn each other at the stake, or throw a neighbour in the lake because her milk turned sour.

    I think the Church(es) need to understand that this isn't a struggle against a theological, 'secular' vacuum. Everything is spiritual. It's a struggle against powers and principalities. The Church has been engaging with society assuming a shared starting point in post-enlightenment rationalism but, as you can see from many of Kirk's debates, you can't oppose fundamentalism with facts. Most of the students who 'debated' him were not there for discussion, but to try to convert him or shut him up. It's the same as trying to have a conversation with a Jehovah's Witness about what St. John's Prologue means in the Greek. Data and logic will never overcome feelings and emotions.

    The Church must return to mystery. Her armour is faith, prayer, the Eucharist, confession, and fasting. Because if she doesn't offer people the peace of Christ, someone else is going to offer them the sword - and God help us all if that happens.

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    1. I think I want to take issue with the idea that we live in a secular society (if we understand secular as being 'godless', rather than simply 'of the world' in the Pauline sense).
      That's what my next reflection is about.

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  3. Fundamentally I always thought that Charlie Kirk was a decent man, in the main doing the right thing. He developed a very effective debating style, helped by some of the idiots who tried their luck in debating with him. BUT a lot of what he said was style over substance, his debating wins were often victory of technique, rather than victory of fact

    He was only divisive in the way the majority of individuals are, in that they disagree with so much of the lefts crap.

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    1. Ps I was at the Vatican the other day and was taken aback by it's laxness in dress code. Particularly amongst the younger women. Let's just say that their cleavage was way more than a cleavage. But they were all gaining access to the main square. I'm getting old but I was a little startled. Is there no one fighting for dignity anymore!!!!

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    2. Have you "Swum the Tiber" Clive?!

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    3. Considering the sexual licentiousness I witnessed, I think not!
      I'll need to visit regularly to witness for myself that. Things aren't getting worse

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    4. It's a tricky one. I think we largely lost the idea of 'Sunday best' for church decades ago. The Vatican is as much a tourist destination as it is a religious one, and a lot of visitors are going to be only tangentially religious, if at all. Personally, I dislike the touristification of religious sites - I was in York a while back and couldn't believe the admission prices for the Minster (which is apparently now more expensive than a tour of the Vatican!)

      But if we have to turn churches into sightseeing opportunities, should we exclude the immodestly dressed (and you'll see the same at any English cathedral in the summer - tourists tottering around in high heels wearing next to nothing) or give them every chance to encounter the living God while they're there? Christ ate with tax collectors and sinners, after all, and told the temple priests that 'the tax collectors and the prostitutes go into the kingdom of God before you'. That said, if you visit an Orthodox Church in Eastern Europe even as a tourist, you'll be asked to cover up (including men in shorts). They usually have wrap around skirts available for women who are wearing trousers, too.

      In the same way that none of us are worthy to stand before God, yet we are all made worthy in Christ, how we dress for God is important and also irrelevant. I know convert women who make a big deal of wearing plain, modest clothes and veiling in church, but whose piety of life doesn't match their piety of dress. Of course, the easiest answer is to become a religious: then clothing takes care of itself!

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    5. I'm sure I left a comment here this morning.

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    6. You did - it went into 'spam' for some reason. Now released from Purgatory/Toll Booth.

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    7. If it is to "give them every chance to encounter the living God," then they shouldn't be charged for entry. Let people make a donation. I always get in for free to the Cathedrals by advising the attendants that I am there to pray. And I always do. Oddly, Westminster Cathedral is free to enter and has few tourists.

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    8. I think my scriptural quote about the people with whom Christ hung around must've triggered the spam filter.

      I agree, cathedrals have to make up their mind whether they want to be tourist attractions or houses of God. If it's the latter (as it should be!), then you can't charge people to enter. I don't mind charging for guided tours or asking for donations, but an entrance fee puts a financial barrier between God and people which is unchristian, IMO. It's the same with places with pushy attendants, which is where speaking another language comes in handy 😌

      There were some tourists at Westminster Cathedral last time I was there (ages ago, I'm not a fan of going into London). I suspect it's overshadowed by its more famous and older neighbour at the Abbey, and I don't think it really markets itself as a tourist destination.

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    9. The problem with all this sexualised behaviour is in to old to benefit!!!!!!!

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