The Secularizing of Catholic Teaching

For several decades now, there has been a heated debate in Catholic circles as to whether the Church should offer Holy Communion to pro-abortion politicians, or withhold it. With a self-professed Catholic who is aggressively opposed to the Texas Heartbeat Act now reigning from the White House, the debate has become all the more bitter. To put it bluntly, Catholic politicians, from the east coast to the west, are among the most dedicated promoters of abortion without any restrictions whatsoever, such that they now find themselves standing arm-and-arm with another dedicated abortion supporter – the Satanic Temple. But at least, in the case of Satanists, this support makes perfect sense. But Catholics?

In the midst of this debate, one argument has been repeatedly offered as the calm and reasonable solution to the Communion question: simply, don’t politicize the Holy Eucharist. In other words, if Holy Communion is withheld from pro-abortion Catholic politicians, then the Church is meddling in politics, and she should just stay out of them. She has no business using the Holy Eucharist as a tool for twisting the arms and wills of Washington pols.

Variations on this argument have been heard throughout the Church, to the dismay of many of the faithful. It has been defended using questionable arguments from Scripture, such as Our Lord’s statement,

“Render, therefore, to Caesar the things that are Caesar’s, and to God the things that are God’s” (Mt. 22:21).

A rhetorical question: Does life belong to Caesar or to God? Any person who believes that life belongs to Caesar – that is, to the state – is professing some political form of atheism. And it must be appreciated that atheism doesn’t merely reject God. Atheism hates God, or at least what theists call “God”. To the atheist, Caesar is the one and only absolute.

The problem with the above-mentioned solution to the abortion and Holy Communion debate is that it is founded on a twofold deception. It seems to tolerate the popular charge that the Church has intruded into politics with her idealistic religious doctrines, telling voters, representatives, senators, and even presidents what to think and do regarding a purely political issue. But no, just the opposite is the case. It is not that the Church has meddled in the affairs of politicians, but that politicians have meddled in the affairs of the Church. They have secularized the Church’s doctrine by claiming it for the secular domain of politics, and then told the Church to go away and mind her own business.

First of all, abortion pertains to the sanctity of human life, to murder, and therefore to sin. It is undeniably a moral issue. It always has been and it always will be. And if we must refer to rights in the discussion – as we should – then abortion concerns first and foremost God’s rights. For He is the Creator of human life; He alone gives it and He alone has the right to take it back again. And to honor God’s right in the matter is to then honor the right of an unborn person to be born.

Of course, the state does have some reason for being involved in the abortion topic, because abortion is not only a sin, but an injustice as well, a crime against the defenseless. Therefore, it should be a punishable offense. But because most countries have betrayed the helpless in deference to the mighty, the Church’s cry on behalf of such victims is all-the-more urgent. She must denounce the injustice, as well as condemn the sin, all the while remaining a lonely voice crying out in the wilderness, “Repent!”

Holy Scripture is filled with prohibitions of killing the innocent. From the Fifth Commandment, “You shall not kill” – Which Jesus affirmed in His own teaching (Mk. 10:19) – to the superlative moral precepts of the Gospel, the message is the same: do no harm to the innocent, and love even your enemies.

The Didache, a teaching document composed at the end of the first century, states the perennial Catholic teaching:

“Do not murder, do not commit adultery, do not practice pederasty, do not fornicate, do not steal, do not deal in magic, do not practice sorcery, do not kill a fetus by abortion, or commit infanticide” (2).

The Catechism of the Catholic Church, in passively referring to this ancient document, says,

“Since the first century, the Church has affirmed the moral evil of every procured abortion. This teaching has not changed and remains unchangeable” (CCC 2271).

There has not been a day in the two-thousand-year history of Christianity in which abortion has not been condemned as murder, even if at times there was some uncertainty as to when precisely human life first begins in the womb.

Now the abortion and Holy Communion debate also concerns a second perennial teaching of the Church. It was stated both by Christ and by Saint Paul:

“Do not give dogs what is holy; and do not throw your pearls before swine, lest they trample them under foot and turn to attack you” (Mt. 7:6).

“Whoever, therefore, eats this bread or drinks the cup of the Lord in an unworthy manner, will be guilty of profaning the Body and Blood of the Lord” (1 Cor. 11:27).

The teaching stated in the New Testament amounts to a dire and pragmatic warning: do not give what is holy – especially Holy Communion – to unrepentant sinners. For in doing so, you will not befriend them. In fact, they will turn on you all the more viciously.

Who can deny the prophetic value of this last teaching – that they will turn and attack us all the more viciously? For with every Host given to a defiant potentate, their defiance becomes all the bolder. And the end result is that the Church must face a culture that is increasingly hostile to her teachings and practices, all as a result of the achievements of her own politicians! And this is the irony of it all – that, as the Church stoops lower and lower to accommodate the world and adapt her message to it, the world becomes all-the-more opposed to the Church. The more teachings we throw out, the more we’re told we must throw out. On and on it goes. At some point, won’t we run out of teachings to throw out, in our effort to win the world’s favor?

Any person can receive the Holy Eucharist, as long as they believe and are free of grave sin. It doesn’t matter how grave their past sins might have been, or how many times they might have committed them. But the Church firmly insists:

“Anyone who desires to receive Christ in Eucharistic communion must be in the state of grace. Anyone aware of having sinned mortally must not receive communion without having received absolution in the sacrament of Penance” (CCC 1415).

The abortion and Holy Communion issue, then, has a pastoral aspect to it that is being neglected, due to our hyper-sensitivity. In accord with Gospel teaching and the constant doctrine of the Church, it is gravely sinful for unrepentant actively pro-abortion politicians to receive Holy Communion. It will not ultimately help them, but only harm them. Unless they repent, this act of violence against the innocent will remain affixed to their soul until the Day of Judgement, when they will answer for it in hell fire. Therefore, to offer such persons Holy Communion is to commit an act of neglect…no, of spiritual harm to a frightening degree. Plainly, giving Holy Communion to those “who obstinately persist in manifest grave sin” (can. 915) is a spiritual disaster for all involved.

In the same way – just as with abortion – the reception of Holy Communion has been secularized by those who seemingly claim it belongs to the domain of politicians, who apparently know more about it than the Church. They deny there is any issue of unworthiness due to their pro-abortion politicking. Approaching the altar, then, becomes an important public show of defiance against Catholic teaching and authority, and an exercise of the supposed right to receive communion under any circumstances, regardless of what the Church says about it. This abuse is then broadcast far and wide by the secular media for all Catholics to see. Thus, the abuse is converted into a teaching by example. And if the Church attempts to intervene in this sacramental mayhem, then she is charged with preaching political positions under the guise of religious doctrines.

But there is still one more issue related to this topic. There is an inconsistency in the treatment of sinners. How is it that if a member of the faithful commits a single mortal sin, he or she must first confess that sin in the sacrament of Penance and receive absolution before receiving Holy Communion? And yet, politicians, whose daily efforts result in the ongoing slaughter of tens of millions of innocent children, are welcome to receive Communion, and with seldom an objection from their pastors. In fact, many of our clergy even defend their right to do so. This is a double standard: one rule for the powerless, and another for the powerful. If there is to be some fairness here, then let us at least hear the Church declare and apply this teaching to all persons, including the supreme class of politicians.

In defense of this outrage, it is often claimed that the pastors of these politicians need only to remind them of the Church’s position on abortion, grave sin, and the reception of Holy Communion. The final decision, however, is a matter of the individual’s conscience.

But is this the case in such extreme crimes as mass murder? I suspect that, if I was effectively promoting the killing of thousands of young immigrants in their beds at night, and everyone knew I was doing so, it would be fairly difficult to find a priest who would be willing to give me Holy Communion, especially at a televised Mass. Then again, isn’t the aborting of sixty-three million pre-born children the extreme extreme of mass murder?

Whatever may be the future policy of the Church regarding pro-abortion politicians and Holy Communion, the deceptive claims about political meddling and sensitivity had better give way to the just defense of the Holy Eucharist, to true pastoral concern for sinners, and to a refusal to favor the mighty over the humble. Casting Hosts before the virulent enemies of the Church is no way to serve or save them. It certainly doesn’t honor God. And it is an ongoing scandal to the faithful.

Is It Really Clericalism?

In the document, Letter of His Holiness Pope Francis to the People of God, the pope recently addressed the clerical sex scandal crisis.  One term that is found repeatedly in this letter is that of “clericalism.”  Pope Francis believes that the present Church crisis is primarily due to clericalism, and the bishops in America and elsewhere seem to be in agreement.  As a result, one already finds the term “clericalism” in one episcopal statement after another.  Even the media has seized upon it.

I would agree that clericalism is a serious problem in the Church.  It always has been, and it always will be.  But what, exactly, is clericalism?

Clericalism is one manifestation of the capital sin of pride.  The glossary of the Catechism of the Catholic Church defines the sin in this way:

“Pride is undue self-esteem or self-love, which seeks attention and honor and sets oneself in competition with God.”

In other words, to be proud is to be full of yourself.  It is to have a disordered infatuation with one’s own qualities, achievements, status, and opinions and to crave or even demand praise from others.  We are all guilty of the sin of pride and we especially act on it according to our particular station in life.

Clericalism is that manifestation of pride that afflicts the clergy.  It takes many familiar forms: misplaced pomp in liturgical and other public appearances; excessive signs of external respect; emphasis placed on clerical opinions on Church matters, to the belittling of the opinions of lay people; an aloofness and air of superiority; a tendency to look upon the laity as personal servants, and to disregard lay concerns as unimportant.

Christ warned the Apostles about clericalism.  He said,

“You know that the rulers of the Gentiles lord it over them, and the great ones make their authority over them felt.  But it shall not be so among you.  Rather, whoever wishes to be great among you shall be your servant; whoever wishes to be first among you shall be your slave.  Just so, the Son of Man did not come to be served but to serve and to give his life as a ransom for many” (Mt. 20:25–28).

The man who practices clericalism does just what Our Lord proscribes.  He makes his authority over others felt in oppressive ways.  He does not serve others, but insists that they serve him.  And he enjoys every moment of it.

Let me give one concrete example of clericalism.  Many years ago, when I was employed by the Church as an organist, I was socializing in a friary with the priests shortly before a Confirmation ceremony.  A priest who had just been ordained said to everyone present, “When I’m finally made a pastor, it’s going to be ball-and-chain.”  The priests laughed.  I was appalled.  From what I’ve heard about this priest from others, it seems his intentions have been fulfilled.

Now, let’s suppose that the pope and the bishops are correct in their assessment of what ails the modern Church, that it’s primarily clericalism.  Let’s suppose even more that they sincerely believe this is a primary problem in the Church today.  We would expect, therefore, that many changes would be put into effect that would eliminate the problem.  To imagine just a few: let cardinals be addressed, not as “Your Eminence,” but more humbly as “Cardinal so-and-so.”  Let bishops be addressed, not as “Your Excellency,” but more meekly as, “Bishop so-and-so.”  End the kissing of episcopal rings, and such expressions as the bishop’s “throne” and the bishop’s “palace,” wherever these practices are still in use.  And let’s simplify clerical and liturgical vestments as well, so that the pomp in Catholic liturgy is directed entirely to the glory of God, and not to the glory of man.  Such changes would be identifiable proof that our leaders truly believe a major problem in the Church is clericalism.

Has anybody seen these changes throughout the Catholic Church?  And does anyone expect to see these changes?  Neither do I.

The present crisis is not due to clericalism, although clericalism follows from it.  Clericalism does not make a normal healthy heterosexual man want to sexually molest another man or child.  Such a term only provides an easy escape for those unwilling to admit and confront the far more malevolent problem in the Church; namely, rampant homosexuality.  The liberal pro-gay media has escaped this admission by defining the crisis as one of pedophilia.  Church leaders have done the same.  But the statistics prove otherwise.  Pedophilia consist of sexual relations between an adult and a child thirteen years old or younger.  There have been many such incidents in this crisis, that is for certain.  And one of the most disturbing aspects of this scandal is the realization that men who are this sick, with such an extreme sexual-psychological disorder, have been ordained in droves, in spite of the various psychological and spiritual examinations candidates for the priesthood must pass.  Is this not suggestive of collusion?  However, the statistics reveal that approximately eighty percent of the sexual abuse in the Church has been committed against boys older than thirteen.  In other words, the present Church crisis is primarily one of homosexual relations between older men and younger men.  That is the politically incorrect but well-documented fact.

The present crisis in the Church is not one of clericalism or pedophilia, but widespread homosexual activity, abuse, recruitment, and protection of the guilty.  This latter tendency has unfortunately been receiving all the attention, and it’s in this protecting of the guilty that there is the alleged clericalism.  But every ring of scoundrels protects its own, so there’s nothing unique about this.  The real issue is the behavior itself, the actual sin committed, which is then being concealed and denied.  And that sin is homosexual acts.  Until the pope and bishops can face this ugly truth, the Church will continue to be mired in scandals and to decline in her reputation and her ability to perform her God-given mission.

Although I do not have proof, I think it’s a safe presumption that many holy souls in the Church’s history – men and women from all periods and places – have been afflicted with homosexual desires.  These persons have perhaps suffered in silence, confessed their occasional falls, and striven to the utmost to avoid temptation, by the grace of God.  Perhaps heaven is full of such saints.  However, especially in light of our age’s omnipresent encouragement to indulge in all forms of sexual sin, I am strongly opposed to the ordaining of homosexual men.  This includes celibate homosexual men.  Again, such persons may live lives of extraordinary sanctity, but there is far more to the priestly ministry than only personal sanctity; there is also fidelity to Catholic teaching.  And in this case, fidelity would require such a man to preach against his own affliction and tendency.  It simply is not reasonable, practical, or fair to expect a person to do this.

A priest with a homosexual attraction will be surrounded by temptation for his entire priestly life.  The Church prudently and wisely teaches that, in order to effectively avoid sin, we must avoid the near occasions of sin, those circumstances which cause us the most potent types and degrees of temptation, those to which we are most likely to fall, based on our personal history.  A homosexual man in the priesthood, having even the purest and noblest of intentions, would nevertheless be contradicting the Church’s wise moral counsel.

An equally prudent and wise teaching of the Church warns, “Do not trust thyself.”  Do not ever place faith in yourself, in the confidence that you will not fall to a temptation.  Instead, presume that you will fall, and so, avoid the temptation.  Saint Augustine once advised his fellow priests and bishops, “Don’t ever leave me alone with a woman.”   A homosexual priest would again contradict this invaluable counsel of the Church, recklessly place his trust in himself, and allow himself to frequently be alone with one man after another.  This is a reliable recipe for moral disaster through the commission of many sins.

There is another reason that I’m opposed to the ordaining of homosexual men to the priesthood, and it concerns teaching the faithful.  To make an extreme understatement – the current state of biblical and catechetical teaching in the Catholic Church is deplorable, and it has been so for over half a century.  There is a consistently narrow selection of Christian themes that are repeated from the pulpit over and over again, ad nauseam.  Sometimes I feel as if every homily is the same as every other homily, except that the order of words has been somewhat rearranged.   And we all know the themes: love, mercy, tolerance, acceptance, blah-blah-blah.  It sounds like a campaign speech from Bernie Sanders.  We hear and read this platitude-ridden blather week after week and decade after decade.  But these themes, as much as they are basically biblical, are not accurately presented as Holy Scripture presents them.  They appear to be, not strengths and virtues, but weaknesses and vices.  For example: love, the most over-used and abused word in the modern homiletic vocabulary.  Properly understood, Jesus Christ did not teach about love; He did not say one thing about it, except to warn us about it.  Instead, Christ taught about the virtue of charity, which is about as far from the lawless passion of love as one can get.  At the very least, then, if we must have these countless homilies about love, then let our preachers distinguish the world’s love from God’s love, from Christian love.  Add an adjective, such as “holy,” and then preach about holy love.  Better yet, preach about the theological virtue of charity.

The Catechism defines charity in the following way:

“Charity is the theological virtue by which we love God above all things for his own sake, and our neighbor as ourselves for the love of God” (CCC 1822).

Charity is God-centered, transcendent, and exceedingly holy.  And if it is genuine, then it results in the acceptance of all that God has revealed through Scripture and Tradition, and the conformity of one’s actions to the divine moral law.  But this is light years above the material that is repeated day and night in the sanctuaries, halls, and classrooms of the Church today.  Instead, we hear about love, love, love, without any clarifications that would distinguish Gospel love – charity – from worldly love, which is the very opposite of charity.  After all, rock musicians sing about love all the time.  Is that Gospel love?  Absolutely not!

In my opinion, the above-mentioned narrow selection of Christian themes amounts to a new gospel, a false gospel; it amounts to an effeminate gospel.  The teachings that are presented to us week after week and decade after decade are the by-product of an effete character.  I dare say, it is precisely what a homosexual clergy, or a homosexual-influenced clergy, should be expected to teach.  It is their system of belief, their distortion of our religion.  It is the gay gospel of the world, rather than the Holy Gospel of Jesus Christ.  For this reason, it is especially compromised and confused in the area of sexual morality.

This is not to imply that all or most priests and bishops are homosexual.  Realistic estimates place the number at an average of about forty percent.  But as with the rest of the population in which homosexuals amount to only about two percent, the political, social, and cultural influence this population exerts is astounding.  If we should respect one thing about them, it should be their total dedication to their cause.  They are fearless and tireless crusaders in the effort to turn the Church gay.  This a testimony to the effect a committed and uncompromising group of people can have on others.  If only the Church would get the message and apply it, instead, to good.

My favorite religious writer – the Dominican theologian Fr. Garrigou-Lagrange – once penned a passage that struck me from the first and has remained a personal guiding principle ever since.  In a mere footnote, he wrote, ‘The greatest thing a man can do is nothing.’  This is pithy Thomistic wisdom at its best.  The greatest thing a man can do is NOTHING!  What on earth did he mean?

It is the common view that the alpha man manly man is the character that is quick to curse, quick to punch, and has half-a-dozen beautiful women hanging on him at all times.  He’s the handsome stud who’s sleeping with all the babes.  But this is actually backwards.  It takes no strength to indulge in one’s desires.  It requires no heroism to surrender to temptation, vice, and sin.  There’s simply nothing manly about falling on the moral battlefield or surrendering to one’s spiritual enemy.  On the contrary, the strong man is the one who fights his sinful desires and wins.  The Christian hero confronts his temptations like a soldier of Christ, defeats them by the grace of God, and walks away from the preternatural battlefield with his soul intact.  In the face of sin, the true man of God stands strong and does…nothing!  That is, he does not act on his temptations, but resists them.  Through the spiritual gift of self-mastery, he overcomes his most potent foe: himself.

This is precisely what the homosexual lifestyle requires and homosexual propaganda demands – that a person should surrender to his or her own temptations and be a bloody victim on the moral battlefield.

In my opinion, the presentation of Catholic teaching and preaching has been deplorable for so long because homosexualism – an actual ideology, meaning a philosophy, world view, culture, and religion all based on the homosexual fixation – has dominated the Church for decades.  The fragmentary gospel that we encounter throughout the modern Church is a gay false gospel that has served, not God, but the devil.

Until the Church ceases to ordain homosexual men, this gay false gospel will continue to be preached far and wide.  May God Almighty give our pope, bishops, priests, and deacons the manly courage to fight the good fight of faith, crush this moral evil, and reform His Holy Catholic Church.

Pray for us, Saint Peter Damian.

Even the Devil Must Bear Witness

I was born and raised in a liberal Catholic environment.  I attended twelve years of Catholic school, went to Sunday Mass with my family, was an altar boy, went to monthly confession with my class, and was educated by nuns and priests as well as Catholic laymen.  My father was the school physician and cared for the parish priests, and my mother was the parish organist.  To state the obvious, my upbringing was Catholic, Catholic, Catholic.  But the key word in all of this is not the term “Catholic,” but the term “liberal.”  To say we were Catholics is simply misleading; rather, we were liberal Catholics, and this little qualifier changes everything.  It means that, although ostensibly my daily life was surrounded by the appearances of Catholicism, in fact, the Catholicism generally went no deeper than the appearances.  And to make brief what could be a very long story, let me summarize the rest by saying that my intellect during those twelve years was far from Catholic.

We did not study the Bible; we did not study the Catechism; we did not study the history of the Church; we did not learn how to understand, explain, or defend the Church’s teachings; we did not read the lives of the Saints; we did not pray the Rosary, say grace before meals, attend the Stations of the Cross or Eucharistic Benediction, or practice penances.  The ostensibly Catholic environment in which I was raised expected only that we would remain in an ostensibly Catholic environment, never taking our religion too seriously, never inquiring too deeply into its teachings, and never practicing too literally its morality.  The Holy Mass and the Holy Eucharist?  Frequent confession?  Heaven, hell, and purgatory?  Grace, free will, and merit?  Atonement and Redemption?  Apostolic succession?  Papal infallibility?  The Purpose of life?  Heresy, apostasy, and schism?  Divorce, adultery, cohabitation, contraception, and homosexuality?  Whatever.  I was vaguely familiar with these terms and presumed they were Catholic issues of some type, but I couldn’t possibly understand or explain them, nor did I feel obligated to believe or respect them, nor did I.  It was merely the stuff that liberal Catholics could expect to hear about once in a while – usually from the old men in Rome – but that shouldn’t cause them any fear or concern.  For none of it – we lazily presumed – was actually true or even important.  And if it was…whatever.

What was the outcome of this liberal Catholic upbringing?  With a heavy heart I can say – like so many of you – the outcome has been that most of my siblings have left the Church.  And during my twenties, when I began to ask all the big questions in life and found that my religious formation offered me no answers, I left as well and became a virulent anti-Catholic.  For I thought the problem was Catholicism itself.

Shouldn’t this have been expected?  After all, if our priests and bishops have preached for decades that one Church, denomination, or religion is basically as good as any other, then isn’t it only natural and logical that those who have absorbed such ecumenical cheerleading should never again come back?  Yes, if everyone and their pet is going to heaven, regardless of their religion, personal beliefs, or actual sins, then why should we stay for even one more Kyrie?  If there is no substantial difference between St. Mary’s Catholic Parish and Duck River Baptist Church, then let’s skip the whole religious thing and sleep in on Sunday mornings.

It is the countless Catholics who have fallen away that have actually acted on the sermons of the past fifty years.  They are the ones who have taken it all seriously.  And those who have remained in the Church – they are the ones who have, thanks be to God Almighty, not taken seriously the preaching of the liberals and ecumaniacs.  Our pastors should be thankful that many of us simply ignore their homilies and remain in spite of them.  And if ever we take them seriously, they’ll know it when they see the empty pews.

For at least six years I despised the Catholic Church and every trace or shadow of Catholicism.  During that time, I trained myself in the black craft of anti-Catholic argumentation.  I formed my intellect with the writings of the Protestant so-called “Reformers;” I studied the King James Version Bible, supplemented by Protestant commentaries; I read Church history from a Protestant perspective; I attended countless worship services of both denominations and cults, prayed fervently for the purest Gospel faith, and believed I was born again and saved; and I often discussed and debated Christian belief with both Protestant ministers and lay people, constantly enforcing my own positions with anti-Catholic arguments.

In spite of this monumental intellectual effort, in spite of studying religion for hours each day, the cracks in my anti-Catholicsm began to appear.  They struck its foundation from every direction, from studying more carefully the Bible, from reading the Apostolic Fathers, from reflecting on Church history, and from considering the catastrophic state of Christendom in light of the private interpretation of Holy Scripture.  All of these noble pursuits revealed the flaws in my arguments and the errors in Protestantism itself.  Their combined effect increasingly pointed back to the last place on earth I was willing to go.  I told myself over and over, “God forbid; I will never again be a Catholic.”  In a panic, I begged God in prayer to save me from Catholicism and to help me remain Protestant.  I asked Him to lead me to anyone or anything that would help me maintain a Protestant faith.   A hundred times I prayed, “Lord, save me from this!  Don’t ever ask me to be Catholic again!”  And then God answered my prayers with another type of fracture: He forced the devil to bear witness to the truth.

I had always been fascinated with the New Age Movement – fascinated in that I recognized the grave threat this neo-pagan revival posed to the Christian faith and world.  As a result, I had studied about it for years and gained a sound understanding of its fundamental beliefs and practices.  One topic that frequently came up in these studies was Satanism – the beliefs and practices of Satanists.  But I recognized over and over again one aspect of Satanic practice that increasingly bothered me: the Black Mass.  When the foremost opponents of the Kingdom of God – the Christ-loathing Satanists – gathered to offer their most formal and solemn blasphemous praises to the devil, they performed a mockery of the Catholic Mass said backwards in Latin and on the back of a naked woman!  They did not perform a mockery of a Protestant service.  They did not sing multiple hymn verses to Satan, or listen to forty-five minute sermons on hatred and blasphemy, or answer an evil altar call, or read backwards the KJV Bible, or even preach their own Satanic Bible on street corners.  No.  When Satanists wanted to perform the wickedest act of blasphemy, they turned to a mockery of the Holy Mass.  And when they wanted to perform the lowest act of sacrilege, they sought to desecrate a Host.  No, not a piece of communion bread from a Protestant service, but only a Host consecrated at Holy Mass by a Catholic priest.

These unwelcome realizations caused me great pain as I reflected on their meaning.  Why, I wondered, would the Satanists not mock Protestantism – almost as a favor to me?  Then I could have a desperately needed reason to remain Protestant!

Three more giant cracks soon appeared.  I learned, first, that one of the most significant symptoms of demonic possession was the inability of the possessed to tolerate the moment of consecration at Holy Mass, and second, that they could not bear to consume a consecrated Host.  And then I learned from a former Satanic priestess (turned Catholic) that such a person could identify a single consecrated Host in a bowl of unconsecrated hosts.  Why?  Because the demons, the possessed, and those who have received certain powers from the devil, are painfully sensitive to the presence of their enemy, Jesus Christ.  CRUNCH!

The Church teaches that – mystery of mysteries – the devil and his fallen angelic companions can do nothing except what they are allowed to do by God.  They are not free; rather, they are like chained junkyard dogs – vicious as can preternaturally be, but hopelessly chained by Divine Providence.  And in spite of all their wicked stratagems and desires, the demons cannot prevent one iota of the establishment of God’s Kingdom, and they even contribute to its establishment with their resistance to it.

In every way, Satan and the demons are the antithesis of God and everything godly.  Hence, in hating, they bear witness to divine love; in killing, they bear witness to the sacredness of life; in promoting perversity, they bear witness to purity; in assaulting the family, they bear witness to traditional marriage; in despising the Gospel, they bear witness to the truth that sets us free; and in mocking both the Catholic Church and the Holy Mass, they only bear witness to all things authentically Catholic.  For every act of demonic evil is answered with infinitely superior acts of divine goodness – in Christ’s Incarnation and atoning death, in the establishment of His Church, in her edifying teachings and grace-bearing sacraments, and in God’s promises of a blessed eternal life for the just in the presence of the beautiful Thrice-Holy God.  No matter what he does or says or where he goes, even the devil must bear witness.

In the Gospels, the demons, speaking through the possessed, repeatedly bore witness to Christ.  In His presence they would pitiably cry out,

“We know who you are, the Holy One of God!  Have you come to torment us before the time?”

They feared Christ; they dreaded His holy presence and divine power.  They wanted to run from Him, but couldn’t.  As our Lord drove them out of the possessed, they would fall to the ground in their last moments, flailing about and screaming in the agony of exorcism, bearing witness over and over again to Christ our Lord.  And to this day, nothing has changed.  Exorcisms continue to bear witness to the spiritual powers given to the Church by Christ, while the inability of the possessed to endure the Holy Mass and the Holy Eucharist bears witness to the Real Presence of Christ in the Sacrament of sacraments.

Several years before she died, my mother heard me tell on The Fullness of Truth radio program the story of the Eucharistic Miracle of Lanciano.  My own beloved mother, a life-long Catholic who had secretly prayed daily for my return to the Church, had never heard of this remarkable story in which the findings of modern science demonstrated the assertions of faith in the Eucharistic Real Presence.  She could only shake her head afterwards and ask one question that I will never forget: “Why?  Why did they never tell us such things?”

Indeed, why hadn’t they told us such things?  Why did the Church miserably fail to testify to herself, to her own magnificent teachings, and to her precious divine Savior and His saving Gospel?  Would it have caused a breach in the truth-loathing liberal and ecumenical mission to do so?  Must everything be thrown overboard in order to save and serve the New-Church euphoria, including immortal souls?

I guess my parents could only give us what they had been given.  I hold absolutely nothing against them.  They were the best of parents, but they raised us in an age of religious revolution, when the Church wanted to be something other than Christ had made her, and when she wanted to possess something other than Christ had given her.  And to this day, the Catholic Church still suffers from the same identity crisis in which she would prefer to be just another merely human institution with just another assortment of human ideas and customs.  But such is not the case, for she is God’s exceptional channel of divine truth and grace, and she has the gravest obligation to dispense these to a lost and languishing human race.

How I wish all of these astounding and life-transforming truths had been persuasively taught to us so many years ago in that liberal Catholic environment.  If they had, that godless liberalism, alas exorcised by Gospel truth, would have instantly fled back to the fiery hell from which it had come.

“At Jesus’ name
every knee must bend
In the heavens, on the earth,
and under the earth,
and every tongue proclaim
to the glory of God the Father:
JESUS CHRIST IS LORD!”

– Phil. 2:10-11

Bored Out of the Church

 

I recently found myself out of state for an afternoon. I happened to be near my old childhood parish, so, since there were a few hours to kill, I stopped at the church to pray the divine office. The interior was exactly as I remembered it thirty years ago – contemporary, cold, barren, and distractingly ugly. No altar rails of any kind, tabernacle to the side and priest’s chair elevated in the center, no confessionals within the nave (probably a “reconciliation room” down a hallway), and rather than a crucifix, a massive risen Christ on a painfully stark sanctuary wall. It was truly a “worship space” for the “parish family” sharing in the “celebration” of the “Eucharistic banquet” around the “holy table”. A brochure in the vestibule proclaimed that this was a “Vatican II parish.”  I would strongly disagree, but that’s another topic.

After praying the office, I went for a meandering drive through the old schoolyards and neighborhoods of my childhood – always a dangerous thing for a middle-aged man. Needless to say, it was a depressing day, and I was glad to get back home that evening to western Massachusetts.

I’ve always felt sadness at recalling the past, remembering the struggles of growing up, and most especially, the religious emptiness, confusion, and anger of my youth. I was raised in a liberal Catholic environment from top to bottom – from home, to church, to school. Liberalism, liberalism, and more liberalism. Interpreted, this means sex education, folk Masses, nuns without religious habits, gay priests and teachers, clay sacred vessels, the absence of grace before meals, catechism and Bible studies, Eucharistic Benediction, Stations of the Cross, and the Rosary, and an attitude that those pompous old men in Rome loved to impose on us ordinary folk a thousand burdensome rules and regulations about pre-marital sex, contraception, abortion, and so on. Even Sunday Mass was regarded as an obligation to be fulfilled; it was that boring forty-five minute recitation of memorized words and perfunctorily performed gestures, a sermon full of platitudes, and a little something to eat just before the dismissal.

After a full twelve years of Catholic schooling, and perhaps six of serving as an altar boy, I lacked even a rudimentary understanding of the faith.  And I dare say, I lacked also an experience of genuine Catholicism.

Ignorance is the key to boredom. So, after finally graduating from Catholic high school, I left the Church. I was bored out of the Church. And hardly a soul on earth cared about the departure…except my mother, God bless her soul.

Three days after my trip out of state, I received an unexpected email from an old friend who had been searching for me online. He was once my best friend, but we had lost contact with each other for perhaps twenty-five years. We had attended school and played in bands together and used to dream out loud about the gorgeous girlfriends or wives we would one day have. To get immediately to my point – he’s no longer a Catholic, but is now a Baptist. He said that when he was Catholic, he found himself not wanting to go to Church most of the time. Surprise, surprise. He had been dragged through the same liberal machinery that I had been. And he, too, was another casualty of liberal Catholicism, of false Catholicism. He left a Church he never knew and a faith he never heard convincingly and courageously proclaimed. I can’t blame him for initially leaving, because the so-called Catholicism that we had both experienced was a load of leftist rubbish. It was anything but authentically Catholic. And it was painfully boring.

In the perennial battle between orthodox and heterodox Catholicism, between authentic and fraudulent Catholicism, I’d like to make one observation.  Liberal Catholcism is allegedly the peoples’ version of the faith. It’s supposedly relevant to real daily life and the issues that concern real ordinary people. It doesn’t brow beat or offend, but only comforts and consoles; it’s non-judgmental and tolerant of diverse beliefs and life styles. In other words, it has been designed in strict accordance with the prevailing spirit of the times to please the masses, and it is free and able at any moment to make the next requested adaptation to the secular zeitgeist.

Why, then, have so many Catholics left the Church in the heyday of this godless liberalism? Because liberalism fails to provide humanity with what it most needs: namely, the supernatural gifts of absolute truth and divine grace. And this failure in the supernatural domain results in utter boredom, as it should.  For the human person longs for the divine and finds true fulfillment and joy in God alone.

Liberalism places before man an over-sized image of his own fallen self. This image is not for reflection, but for admiration and adoration. Liberalism does not invite man to recognize either the tragic human condition or the divinely provided remedy to it. Instead, it intoxicates man with self-love and produces self-adulation – the very antithesis of true religion and charity itself. He falls in love with an image that is actually grotesque beyond comprehension; only, modern man has become blind to this type of grotesqueness, to moral and spiritual ugliness. He believes, not the hard revealed truth about himself, but only the lie that he is beautiful just as he is, just as he comes into this world bereft of sanctifying grace, and thus, spiritual beauty. And He believes also that nothing in his personal behavior could increase this interior ugliness. Hence the liberal mantra, “God loves and accepts us just the way we are.” I dare say that if this were the case, Christ would never have died on Calvary, for there would have been no need to die, no need to redeem humanity.  And now that our Lord has objectively redeemed us, we must subjectively respond to His salvific plea.

The Catholic religion is the fullness of this salvific plea. It is the masterful divine scheme which no human being or society could have invented. It speaks to us the truth about God, the world, man, and the catastrophic human condition. And it offers to us the only solution to this catastrophe – absolute truth and divine grace, without which there is no salvation.

Liberalism cannot see or will not admit the existence of this preternatural catastrophe. As a result, it denies the substance of the divine scheme and the reasons behind it. It presumes everything to be optional and fully subject to its editing. Whatever is difficult or mysterious, it simply disregards without a concern that it might be essential or necessary. “You don’t like this particular dogma? Fine, ignore it. You don’t like that particular moral precept? Fine, violate it. You don’t like the transcendence of the Holy Sacrifice of the Mass? Fine; turn up the guitars, pound the drums, boost the song leader’s microphone and let’s sing about ourselves. Celebrate the community. Sing, not about man’s desperate need for God, but about God’s love and admiration for man just as he is.”

There is nothing in this navel-gazing brand of anti-religion that the human soul needs or that cannot already be found in the world. We already have the self-help industry, human potential movement, and New Age spirituality. The world already offers a thousand ways to spoil, flatter, massage, and adore the self.  The Gospel is meant to be the remedy to this obsessive self-infatuation.

The Church is at her all-time worst whenever she tries to imitate this self-infatuated worldliness, because she was designed to be other-worldy and was given an other-worldly commission to “go out” to the world with the Gospel and bring into the Kingdom of God all who would respond to it.  And ironically, whenever she is most this-worldly, it is then that she most neglects the world by withholding from it the divine scheme for salvation that is the Gospel. Such a treasure was given in order to be given, and to the degree the Church keeps this treasure to herself, she has nothing.

In a morbid sort of way, I would like to know exactly how many of my old Catholic classmates have survived their liberal formation and retained any amount of belief, and how many regularly attend Mass, confess their sins, study the faith, and live a holy Catholic life. Based on the many studies on the state of the modern Church, I believe the number would be quite small. And this is the mathematical indictment of liberal Catholicism, of that “religion” that has abandoned man’s inherent religious nature, leaving him utterly bored.