In C.S. Lewis's The Screwtape Letters, published in 1942, a senior demon advises his nephew on how to corrupt a human soul:

"The patient can, of course, be encouraged to revenge himself by some vindictive feelings directed towards the German leaders, and that is good so far as it goes. But it is usually a sort of melodramatic or mythical hatred directed against imaginary scapegoats. He has never met these people in real life - they are lay figures modelled on what he gets from newspapers."

Lay figures. Imaginary scapegoats. People we've never met, hated based on what we read.

Lewis wrote that eighty years ago. He could have written it this morning.

I thought of it lately when I saw a few parishioners sniping at each other in the comments section of one of their facebook posts. And if I'm honest, I have to step back and pray a lot to not jump into these comment sections myself.

You're not crazy for being tired of this.

Sixty-six percent of Americans say they're worn out by political stress. Eight in ten describe our politics as "divisive," "corrupt," "messy," "polarized." Eighty percent have few or no friends across the political aisle - double what it was twenty years ago.

The loudest voices aren't representative. Most Americans aren't energized partisans. They're exhausted ones. One study called it "a gap between the involved few and the disengaged many."

The exhausted don't trend. Fatigue doesn't go viral. The tired majority sits in silence, wondering if they're the only ones who want the fighting to stop.

You're not the only one. You're most of us.

What We Lost

A piece in Catholic World Report earlier this year named it:

"The polarization will not end until we all stop using the Faith as a proxy for our politics and begin rebuilding the shared Catholic culture that once made disagreement possible without rupture. That culture - rooted in the sacraments, parish life, and a common moral imagination - was never perfect, but it provided a grammar for unity that our current ideological sorting has all but erased."

A grammar for unity. A shared language. A common imagination. Not agreement on everything - but a framework sturdy enough to hold disagreement without shattering.

We used to have that. Catholics who disagreed about policy still knelt at the same rail, still blessed themselves with the same water, still received the same Body and Blood. The sacraments held us together even when our opinions pulled us apart.

The same article: "When Catholics no longer share a thick culture of the sacraments, parish life, and a coherent moral imagination, we inevitably fall back on the only identity structures our society still offers: partisan ones."

Faith got flattened into a checklist. Religion became ethics, ethics became politics, politics became tribe. And once your tribe is your identity, anyone outside it isn't just wrong - they're the enemy.

The Hour for Love

Pope Leo XIV named this in his first homily as pope on May 18, 2025, in front of 200,000 people in St. Peter's Square and millions of faithful globally:

"Brothers and sisters, I would like that our first great desire be for a united Church, a sign of unity and communion, which becomes a leaven for a reconciled world."

"In this our time, we still see too much discord, too many wounds caused by hatred, violence, prejudice, the fear of difference..."

And then:

"This is the hour for love."

The Paulist Fathers have built an initiative around this - the Communion Project. Fr. Jonathan Lewis, one of its leaders, says: "We're reading the temperature of the room or the culture, instead of setting the temperature according to our values and the truths of the Church."

We've been shaped by the culture's sorting. We've let the algorithm decide who our enemies are. We've forgotten that we're supposed to set the temperature, not take it.

Where Healing Starts

Not with the nation. Not with the political parties. Not even with the Church universal.

Catholic social teaching says start with the smallest unit capable of addressing the problem. Subsidiarity. Start close. Move outward.

The family.

The domestic church. The place where a child first learns whether disagreement means rupture or whether love can hold difference. Where patience is practiced daily, where forgiveness isn't theoretical, where you might sit across the table from someone who sees the world differently and you pass the bread anyway.

If we can't hold communion in our own homes, we won't hold it anywhere. The family is where the grammar of unity is first learned - or never learned at all.

The parish.

This may be the most important circle we have left, as the families and communities at the other ends of this list have so often broken down.

The parish is one of the last non-sorted spaces in American life. You don't choose your fellow parishioners the way you choose your social media feed. You don't get to block the family in the pew ahead of you. You show up, and there they are - people who voted differently, who watch different news, who see the world through different lenses - and you kneel together. You receive together. You say "Peace be with you" and you have to mean it.

I've watched this for years now at St. Elizabeth and before that at St. Mary's and at Holy Family and the other parishes where I've been. I've distributed Communion to people I know disagree with each other deeply. They come forward anyway. They receive the same Lord. The Sacrament holds what the culture cannot.

The community.

The neighborhood, the town, the civic space. It's harder here, because there's no sacrament to bind us. But there are still shared values and practices that can.

Showing up to the same school board meeting. Coaching the same Little League team. Serving at the same food pantry. Working alongside people you wouldn't choose, for a purpose bigger than your preferences.

The exhausted middle doesn't need another political program. It needs spaces where communion is practiced - where we remember that the person across from us is not a position to defeat but a neighbor to love.

A Leaven, Not a Fortress

This is not a call to retreat.

The Benedict Option has been misread as "run away and hide." The better reading - and Pope Leo's vision - is cultivation. Building a culture thick enough to hold disagreement. Forming families and parishes and communities where people are shaped by something deeper than the outrage cycle.

Catholic World Report again: "If polarization is the symptom, the remedy must be the slow, deliberate rebuilding of a shared Catholic culture. And that culture must be sturdy enough to hold real disagreement without rupture."

Pope Leo called us to be "a small leaven of unity, communion and fraternity within the world." A leaven works from inside. It doesn't separate from the dough - it transforms it from within.

What I've Seen

I spent most of the summer on sabbatical from ministry - stepping back from parish work and from as much social media, from the news cycle, from the noise. The exhaustion lifted. Not because the problems went away, but because I stopped letting the algorithm set my emotional temperature.

Then I went to San Antonio to watch my son Matthew graduate from Air Force Basic Training. I sat in bleachers with hundreds of other families - from every part of the country, every background, every political persuasion. Nobody asked how anyone voted. We were just parents, watching our kids, sharing the weight of sacrifice together.

On September 12, 2001, we knew the difference between an enemy and a neighbor. Twenty-five years later, we've forgotten. But at that Air Force Base in San Antonio, for a few days, I remembered.

The Only Path Forward

Catholic World Report: "Recovering it is not nostalgia; it is the only path forward."

Not nostalgia. Not pretending the past was perfect. But recognizing that we've lost something essential - a grammar for unity, a culture thick enough to hold us together - and deciding to rebuild it.

Start with the family. Move to the parish. Extend into the community.

Subsidiarity. Concentric circles. Love working outward.

If you're exhausted, you're not alone. Most of us are right there with you. The Church gives us a place to go - a table where we can still sit together, a rail where we can still kneel, a Lord who holds what we cannot.

If this resonated with you, I'd be honored if you shared it with someone who might need to hear it.

Michael Halbrook is a Catholic deacon, husband, and father of four. He writes at DeaconMichael.net and sends a weekly email called Wednesday @ Lunch - reflections on faith, family, work, and life. Subscribe here.