It will take much wisdom, and not a little courage

The Idolatry of Disbelief

by Regis Martin

There are many profound and beautiful things to mark the reader’s passage throughLumen Fidei, the long awaited encyclical on faith by Pope Francis, issued on June 29, the Solemnity of the Holy Apostles Peter and Paul.

Beginning, of course, with the recognition that the lion’s share of the work derives from his learned and holy predecessor, Benedict XVI, the unmistakable imprint of whose acute theological intelligence is all over the document.

Francis may have put his name to the text, but the real and decisive shaping force belongs to Benedict. Which is only fitting inasmuch as Lumen Fidei represents the very last of the three great encyclicals on the virtues defining the Christian life, beginning with Deus Caritas Est (2005), followed by Spe Salvi(2007), culminating finally in Lumen Fidei (2013).

There is one section that especially stands out, indeed, it is given an almost prophetic prominence, and that is Article 13, which, in its sounding of the awful depths of our post-modern malaise, reminds us all of the urgency of the need for the light of faith. 

For it is precisely here that we see the real and permanent difference between faith and that idolatry which has become the special province of post-modern man. It is an idolatry which having once encircled us in darkness will, if unchecked, inexorably lead to despair and death.

So what exactly is idolatry? And how does it characterize the age in which we live? 

 The text is wonderfully clear and emphatic in telling us that idolatry stands always in opposition to faith. That when we lose the way of faith, the result is not a sudden fall into nothingness, which, admittedly, is no easy matter to sustain (outside, that is, the precincts of network television, where shows about nothing abound). But rather a tendency towards that sheer disordered dissipation of desire, which, all too often, becomes a belief in anything. 

So in saying no to the one living God, who is the only God—the God of Cosmos and Covenant, the God of Israel and the Lord Jesus Christ—we fall prey to a corrupt and corrupting array of false gods, to powers and principalities that tyrannize over the human heart, reducing everything to the anarchy of an appetite grown limitless and depraved.

“Once man has lost the fundamental orientation which unifies his existence,” the pope warns, “he breaks down into the multiplicity of his desires … his life story disintegrates into a myriad of unconnected instants.” 

 Not a single one of which can ever add up to anything remotely approaching that sense of end or purpose on which our lives depend for direction and ballast. Such is the fleeting and insubstantial gossamer of human desire when left untethered to truth, to the truth about God of which faith holds the deposit box.

The fall into idolatry, then, becomes simply another name for polytheism, which the text describes as “an aimless passing from one lord to another,” offering its victims, “not a journey but rather a plethora of paths leading nowhere and forming a vast labyrinth.” And those who elect to go down that road, refusing to entrust their lives to God, are fated only to hear the loud incessant screech of the idols as they cry out: “Here, put your trust in me!”

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