Pius XII has already proclaimed: "There is no time to be lost."

CONDITIONS TO MARSHALL OUR ENERGIES WELL

"Attention, ingenuity and zeal," observes Jean Ousset, "is displayed by the ordinary Catholic in the pursuit of personal prosperity. In this sphere everything possible is done with a view to getting the best possible technical advice."

"Days and nights are spent on thinking up ways and means of increasing one's income or of prevailing against a competitor."

"But when it is a matter of the fate of society (on which lasting prosperity of everyone's private affairs depends), those who are admired for their worldly wisdom and initiative are outstandingly negligent, unthinking, unconcerned and lethargic. They are like passengers forever mopping up the damp in their cabin who are unconcerned that their ship is likely to sink at any moment."

"The truth is that we waste our time on trifles. We devote more time to quite inconsequential worldly matters than would be necessary to work victoriously for the safety of the Temporal City."

Thus, caution is necessary to ensure our objectives are well defined and ordered to the rehabilitation and flourishing of the temporal city. In particular, we must strive to work toward the flourishing of our local communities. To this end, we must ensure that our every action is permeated with proper aesthetic taste, refined moral character, and a broad intellectual vantage point. Actions of this integrity surely cannot be trifles.

Proper aesthetic taste protects us from ideological coercion through symbols; refined moral character stimulates upright conduct (virtue); and a broad intellectual vantage point preserves ideological consistency. Some men, for instance, neglecting the final quality, take on a narrow interprative framework to understand the present crisis. They may focus on revolutionary ideas without noticing their implications in customs. They may underestimate the theological crisis due to a half-closed eye to history. Lacking a comprehensive understanding of this crisis, their apostolic endeavors suffer from vulgar tastes, uncouth manners, and narrow conclusions. The result is an impoverished public discourse, moral formation, and abstracted solutions to the local, national, and global crises.

COMFORT AND THE NEGLECT OF CIVIC DUTY

Comfort, while a natural good, can easily become a cunning deceiver. She has often implanted seemingly innocent ideals with pernicious consequences. It can be manifest in those who "wish to be excellent husbands, excellent parents, excellent employees, excellent parishioners." Comfort leads them to retreat into the parochial life with a sense they are contributing to the world, when they should be preparing to use their newly attained stability to rehabilitate their City. Systems of patronizing artists and craftsmen, guilds, regional customs, Catholic residences, parochial libraries, schools, and so on should overflow from a vigorous parish life as good manners do from a vigorous interior life.

This mass retreat into "parish life", however, has resulted in "the greatest manifestation of political absenteeism the world has seen since the decadence of the Roman Empire - the same kind of political negligence that was the cause of that Empire's fall."

"'We leave to others,'" they [may] say, "'the study of these complex and serious questions. Our duty cannot step outside our domestic life. We cannot do everything; too many things need to be looked after already.'"

"This might appear to be a wise repsonse," notes Ousset, "but it does not justify the neglect of what is an obvious duty. The truth is that we have to do everything that is required of us by our state of life. Can a husband refuse his duties as a father in order to confine himself to his duties as a husband?" Indeed, "It is an easy way out to choose the duty which suits us best and to ignore the others." So, we cannot neglect coordinated and strategic action to rehabilitate and enhance our city.

OVERCOMING LIMITATION

Still, we do not mean to imply that we individually undertake what is beyond our strength, but that we use the strength of the parochial life to overcome our limitations.

As Pius XII has already proclaimed: "There is no time to be lost. [...] The fronts opposing one another in the religious and moral sphere are becoming more clearly distinguished. It is a time for intense effect, in which even a few moments can decide the victory!"

"Never before perhaps has the salvation of society depended on the efforts of so few people. But the few must be sufficiently resolute and prudently resolute. A few spasmodic efforts, a few gusts of belated anger will achieve nothing."

"It is recorded that when the last Moorish King of Grenada was leaving the city to go into exile, he paused on the mountain pass to look back at his beloved palace of the Alhambra and wept at the thought of what he had lost. But his mother said to him bitterly: "You do well, son, to weep like a woman over what did not have the will and tenacity to defend like a man."

"Let us take care we do not merit a similar stern reproach."