Let's Make Dogma Great Again

By Fr. Benedict Kiely.
We remember Chesterton's great quip that the object of a New Year is that "we should have a new soul." Part of that, I think, apart from repentance and resolution to avoid the sins and failures of the past year, is to enter the new year with a sense of hope.
Not a naïve optimism, but a sense of hope and trust in God, and a willingness to cooperate with Him, to listen to Him. And yes, a new soul means a conversion. Let us, in a profound way, be more committed to our faith, in public and in private, even as we end the first month of the new year, than we were in 2024.
That sense of hope has, I believe, solid grounds, even if the grounds are the size of a mustard seed. Although it is necessary to speak realistically and regularly of the great void that has appeared in the West due to the decline of the Faith, and the dark forces that are massing, there are some points of light, visible, even if small, due to the darkness.
We are hearing of increasing numbers of people, some well-known - intellectuals, writers, artists - who are coming to faith in Christ. This is heart-warming and hope-inducing. There are also thousands of unknown people who are seeking baptism or want to enter the Church; you will know some of them. This is truly extraordinary as the Church goes through a very public time of great confusion. This must be the work of God because, otherwise, it makes no sense.
Therefore, one of our first thoughts, as we enter this time of newness, is to do all we can to help and bring others to the light, and for that, we require something of a new heart and soul.
We also, without any partisanship, merely from the point of view of the defense of life, free speech, and common sense, have much to hope for. The election and inauguration of President Trump have brought what we might call a necessary correction to the tsunami of idiocy which has been the hallmark of the last several years. A perfect example of that was seeing, on the "breaking news" ticker moving across the screen of the news channels, "Only two genders, Trump declares - male and female." That, of course, was breaking news in the Book of Genesis.
Inextricably linked with that, is our other thought for this new time in God's providence - the gift of our defined faith. This year of Our Lord 2025 is the 1700th anniversary of the Council of Nicaea, from which we get the Nicene Creed, which most orthodox Christians recite on Sundays and Feast Days.

Why does that matter? Surely, it is only an anniversary, and a form of words, and isn't dogma a terrible fusty old thing, because we are so undogmatic and free-thinking now, a sign of our maturity, our coming of age.
Poppycock. As G.K. Chesterton said, and I'll quote him liberally again, there are two kinds of people in the world, the "conscious dogmatists and the unconscious dogmatists. I have always found myself that the unconscious dogmatists were the most dogmatic." We saw a glaring example of the unconscious dogmatist lecturing the president and his family in Washington's National Cathedral in a most dogmatic manner.
It is fashionable folly to decry dogma, we remember again the words of Dorothy L. Sayers, that the "dogma is the drama." If people are coming to Christ, they want and need to know what they believe in; an undogmatic faith is no faith at all. Chesterton enlightens us on this: "Dogmas are not dark and mysterious; rather a dogma is like a flash of lightning - an instantaneous lucidity that opens across a whole landscape. . . Dogma is education. A teacher who is not dogmatic is simply a teacher who is not teaching."
Our age in the Western world desperately needs a period of lucidity. Obfuscation has been the normal modus operandi recently - in the world and the Church. We now need clarity and light. When the world is questioning, the very last thing it needs from Christianity is confusion.
"The faith," said Hilaire Belloc, "is the only beacon in this night, if beacon there be." As the Counc...