The key to the Church’s success in this world

By Dr. Jeff Mirus ( bio - articles - email ) | May 23, 2025

Pope Leo is already very busy and, inevitably, he offers encouragement to a great many persons who promote various goods. For example, the Pope sent a brief video message to encourage the Network of Universities for the Care of the Common Home as it prepares for the 2025 UN Climate Change Conference (COP30). In this message, the Pope stated: “You will reflect together on a possible remission of the public debt and of the ecological debt, a proposal that Pope Francis had suggested…. And in this jubilee year, a year of hope, this message is so important.”

It is not necessary to itemize the dozen or more messages to various groups in any given month by which popes encourage various organizations in their particular missions. It will be some time before we can discern the basic Christian themes of this new pontificate. But we can state without fear that unless these basic themes emphasize an ever deepening conversion to Christ in response to the proclamation of the Gospel, the papacy will continue its slide into irrelevance.

Why?

A good example

Actually, the Church’s ecological concerns are a good example. Ecology is very popular in theory in our day, but of course its concerns often diminish rapidly when any sort of national, business, or personal sacrifice is required to address them. But the Church necessarily has her own particular grasp of ecological questions, and this grasp depends not at all on the fundamental fears which drive most environmental proponents. The main fear for secularists is that continuing down certain paths must eventually cause irreversible damage to our material environment and therefore to ourselves. The furor over global warming, however weak or strong its actual scientific justifications, is a perfect example of the attempt to gain the necessary support to make changes in order to avoid bad material consequences.

But the primary motive for Christians—and especially for Magisterially-taught Catholics—is not that we are dependent upon nature for our own well-being but that we are dependent upon God. We are not fundamentally at the mercy of nature: We have been appointed as the stewards of God’s creation, and we have a profound obligation to exercise that stewardship wisely and well. There are many differences in the two attitudes, but the most important difference is this: If we are merely dependent on nature, we will always respond to it in accordance with our own personal needs and desires; but if we are stewards of nature, we will treat it as the precious inheritance of all and something to be cared for and developed for the greater glory of its Divine Creator.

Examples illustrating the same point could be drawn from the realities of any human concern or endeavor. The lesson learned from framing any issue in a Christian way is that our motivation is not supposed to be the advantage we can gain from addressing some issue but our mandate to respond to any given issue as the very stewards of God.

The mission of the Church

This is why the mission of the Church is not to argue for this or that particular position on an endless series of worldly proposals—that is, not to be a “player” in the socio-political contests of this world—but rather to draw all people to the acceptance of Jesus Christ as Lord and Redeemer, and to the Church as the very voice and sacrament of Christ here and now. Indeed, the Church must be recognized as Christ’s own Mystical Body so that, though a deep conversion, as many as possible can live as true extensions of Christ for the benefit of all.

The larger point here is that when the Church approaches any worldly problem in her all-too-human character as a bandwagon, she will be seen as a force to be manipulated for worldly gain and dismissed as irrelevant (or worse) when she presents an obstacle to those who value the world for their own purposes. Clearly, then, we should expect a good pope to mention a great many different problems and to encourage a great many different persons and groups who exhibit a charism of fruitful attention to these various problems. But what must always distinguish Catholics—and especially those who, by their office, are charged with the encouragement of other Catholics—is the constant connection of every subsidiary mission to the mission of Christ.

As I have written many times before, what marks the mission of Christ is its fundamental orientation to “repent and believe the Gospel” (Mk 1:15). This emphasis shines a very bright light on Catholic leaders who tend to promote good things in a quasi-Christian context only when these are things that are highly valued in the dominant culture. A genuine Christian conversion makes a huge difference not only to our goals and the ways we pursue them but also to the specific goods that are realized through our efforts. A genuine Christian conversion typically makes all the difference between pursuing goals for merely worldly or even selfish motives and pursuing them for the glory of God, through an ever-deepening conversion to God’s Son.

Vine and branches

As a mere matter of demographics, a Christless Church is an empty Church, and therefore a Church which creates no useful constituency even for the better management of this world’s affairs. For mere demographic reasons, it makes no sense for the Church to emphasize anything in this world without first attending to the conversion and expansion of her own effective membership. But this is not the only problem, for when even good ends are sought without reference to Christ, they are always sought in vain. Instead, the Church must always recognize that her own sacramental life is the primary guarantor of every true human good and all genuine human progress.

We must pray daily that Pope Leo sees this vital point clearly and emphasizes it whenever he emphasizes anything at all. The Church must always exemplify her fundamental understanding that Christ is all in all, and that even good things attempted apart from Christ will ultimately fail and disappear. Popes, bishops, pastors, and all the rest of us must learn again to advert to Christ, and never to restrict themselves to what can be promoted, in a worldly sense, apart from Him. This applies not only to the existence of any Catholic “constituency” in this world but to the ultimate good of souls.

Earlier, I asked why the papacy would continue to slide into irrelevance if it failed to place conversion to Jesus Christ at the center of its essential mission. Here is the complete answer, from Christ Himself:

I am the vine, you are the branches. He who abides in me, and I in him, he it is that bears much fruit, for apart from me you can do nothing. If a man does not abide in me, he is cast forth as a branch and withers; and the branches are gathered, thrown into the fire and burned. If you abide in me, and my words abide in you, ask whatever you will, and it shall be done for you. By this my Father is glorified, that you bear much fruit, and so prove to be my disciples. [Jn 15:5-8]