The Catholic Mind

Extract

“Love not the world, nor the things which are in the world. If any man love the world, the love of the Father is not in him. For all that is in the world is the concupiscence of the flesh and the concupiscence of the eyes and the pride of life, which is not of the Father but is of the world. And the world passeth away, and the concupiscence thereof: but he that doth the will of God abideth for ever. . . ” (I John ii, 15-17).

Bossuet recalls these words at the beginning of his Traité de la Concupiscence, and he adds this brief but profound commentary: “The last words of the Apostle show that the ‘World’ of which he speaks consists of all those who choose things visible and passing in preference to things invisible and eternal.” I would add in my turn that once we have grasped this definition of “the World,” we have as good as solved the vast problem we are going to discuss.

We are in the world. That is a fact, whether we like it or not. We cannot alter that fact. And yet we are told that we must not be of the world. How be in it and yet not of it? That is the great problem that has haunted the Christian conscience from the beginning. It is true that the Church, offers one radical solution: to flee from the world, to renounce it utterly and take refuge in the religious life. But that solution cannot be everybody’s.